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Two longtime music pros (Sensei & Fatboi) go deep on what makes music great. A podcast for music producers, artists, and fans.
Fatboi is a Multi-platinum, Grammy nominated, award winning producer whose credits include: Camoflauge, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Gucci Mane, Young Jeezy, Rocko, Shawty Redd, Flo Rida, Bow Wow, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Juvenile, Yung Joc, Gorilla Zoe, OJ Da Juiceman, 8Ball & MJG, Jeremih, 2 Chainz, Nicki Minaj, Bobby V, Ludacris and Yo Gotti, Monica, Zay Smith, TK Kravitz, Future.
Sensei Hollywood (a.k.a. Dan Marshall) formerly an instructor and chair of the Audio Production program at the Art Institute of Atlanta, is an accomplished musician, producer, engineer who's performed on and engineered multi--platinum records with Big Boi, Outkast, Killer Mike, Chamillionaire, Carlos Santana, Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Ron Isley, Lil Wayne, Trillville, Monica, and more...
Sensei (00:00)
So we're going to react to
Rick Beato reacting to the songs on the 2026 Grammys, some of which sampled songs from before that sampled other songs. So this is like a Russian nesting doll of content we're fixing to do here, I think.
Fatboi (00:17)
Yeah.
I have been feeling that music has been taking hits
Sensei (00:23)
Well, mean, so the the
the thesis statement is music in 2026 is just not what it used to be. And there's definitely a danger of being the old guys like back in my day, we had real music, blah, blah, blah. Every generation kind of says that to some degree. I got to say, if we watch this, we might kind of come away objectively with a different vibe on that, because it does seem like something is lesser. In general.
Fatboi (00:39)
Yeah.
mean,
it is,
Sensei (01:28)
Let's just jump in. We're going to react to Rick Beato reacting to the quality or lack thereof of songs in the that are on the list for the twenty twenty six Grammys. So let me see if I can get this dialed up here.
Fatboi (01:32)
you
Sensei (01:43)
All right, is music actually getting worse like I've talked about in videos in the past? Well, let's just look at the 1984 nominees for Song of the Year and compare them to the nominees for the 2026 Grammys for Song of the Year. Let's look at the 1984 songs. This is a very exciting category, as you know.
Because this is the one that has so long been designated for that,
Fatboi (02:08)
Stop stop stop it
Okay, first off, this is great because you got Stevie Wonder reading a teleprompter.
Sensei (02:17)
That was a Saturday live bit wasn't it?
Fatboi (02:20)
Yeah, yeah.
Look, see, and that's what I love about Stevie Wonder because, and you know everybody in the audience and in the world that was watching the Grammys was like, what's he reading?
Sensei (02:34)
That's funny.
Fatboi (02:36)
And he stumbled over some words like he was reading on the teleprompter.
Sensei (02:39)
Yeah,
but everyone's in on the bit, but also the caliber of the presenters here in this old Grammy. You got Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan. ⁓ my God. All right. Let's let's let's give a move in here. Let's see what we got here. And of course, you know, only one can win. But I think and I'm sure Bob, you feel the same way that just being nominated in itself is an honor. So you got it.
Fatboi (02:45)
Yes. Yes. And, and Bob Dylan together.
Sensei (03:08)
the nominees are
Fatboi (03:12)
Ahem.
Sensei (03:16)
Okay, number one, Lionel Richie is still getting out there playing huge stadiums. I've seen him. It's an amazing live situation. He's got more pyro than Ozzy. I was blown away. But this song was a huge cultural phenomenon in and of itself. I think my high school marching band played this song. You know, it was one of those things back in 84, 85, whenever this was.
Fatboi (03:23)
right now today.
Yeah.
Sensei (03:48)
okay ⁓
Alright, come on now. Beat it.
Fatboi (04:05)
One thing that I've already noticed about just two songs in on the nominations.
These songs do not sound anything alike.
Sensei (04:17)
Boom.
Fatboi (04:18)
anything alike.
Sensei (04:21)
What common elements do they even have, you
Fatboi (04:23)
You know what
saying? One is rock, heavily rock influenced. The other super pop, light, feel good. ⁓ But two songs in, and we have no similar elements of the songs. And everybody, everybody back then in the 80s,
was still using the same synthesizers, the same, you know, they're using the same things. It was less stuff, right. It was less choice. And to get an edge, everybody who could afford it was using the top gear. The Roland Jupiter, the Minimobe, the Yamaha CS-80. I mean, everybody's using the same gear, but they're...
Sensei (04:54)
There was less stuff. There was less choice.
That, that...
Fatboi (05:18)
still tweaking it different.
Sensei (05:21)
Yeah, no, so far two in totally, totally different DNA in these songs. Michael Jackson songwriter. Billy Jean.
Fatboi (05:23)
Two in, totally different.
Stop it.
two songs, three songs in, two songs by the same artist and we still got three totally different songs. Two by the same artist, two by the same artist and in the world we live in today, it is almost impossible to have two songs come up from the same artist and they don't sound the same.
Sensei (05:46)
Exactly.
I mean like almost every song off this album was a hit.
Fatboi (06:03)
Not
nine nine songs on that album eight of them singles
Sensei (06:06)
or singles yeah
yeah no no this is this is a high watermark for pop music i think here
Fatboi (06:14)
That says a lot.
Sensei (06:20)
Every Breath you take Sting by god okay completely different and we just did a show about this one and it's still holding up it's the number number one selling song on bmi i think it was what we 40 years ago
Fatboi (06:21)
Four songs in.
Feel different.
Still holding up, today.
And this is what 40 years ago?
This is 40 years ago.
Sensei (06:42)
And people still rediscovering the song like it was yesterday.
Fatboi (06:46)
40 years ago people 40 years ago
Another different song!
Sensei (06:56)
Now
Fatboi (06:57)
Six
songs in, is it six songs now? Five, six and not one song sounds the same. But the only thing I can, okay, they sound like eighties era songs, but they don't sound the same.
Sensei (06:59)
Five maybe I don't know. Yeah
No, there's definitely some, I mean, if you zoom out, maybe there's some grand commonalities about it, but definitely they're their own animal. They're not copies of each other. If nothing else. Dennis Madkowski.
Let me look at that. Let me see that. He said, me look at that.
Fatboi (07:43)
Let me look at that.
Sensei (07:55)
so Sting won it that year, but man, that's some tough, that's some stiff competition.
Fatboi (08:02)
And see, it's almost like, okay, any one of those songs could have won. Any one of those songs could have won. Yes. I mean, if no matter which direction you went, if any song in that category would have won, the only thing you, know, outside of you just being a super fan and thinking that your guy should have won it, outside of that,
Sensei (08:09)
arguably should have won.
Fatboi (08:28)
the argument would have been like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see why it won. I can see why it won. For every song in the category today, I feel like you already know which song is gonna win. was just the, number one, was the one that got the most streams or it's the most popular artist. It's more.
Sensei (08:41)
Mmm.
or the one
the record company wants to put out there more.
Fatboi (08:57)
Yeah, the one that they put the most money in for. Yeah.
Sensei (09:01)
You know, it's a promotional thing now. This,
this seemed more like a celebration of actual success. I mean, I, I, I, I'm, have a pretty jaded view of the music business, you know? So I, I, you know, it's always been a promotional thing, blah, blah, blah. And they're always going to pop up there near tent pole artists, but there was definitely, you know, rubber met the road and these songs proved themselves. People went out to the store and
exchange money for the pieces of plastic with these songs on them, you know? ⁓
Fatboi (09:30)
Yeah.
You might've spent your last five dollars for a song that you love versus getting something to eat, which was a criteria that Barry Gordy used ⁓ at Motown to see if they were going to go with the single once he got everybody's opinion on it. Is this...
Sensei (09:43)
Hmm.
Cough
Fatboi (09:58)
Is this a record that you're going to spend your last $5 on or are you going to go get something to eat? And that was the criteria. And, and back then, I think maybe in this same year, LL Cool J's album, his first album came out and, ⁓ Michael Jordan was the hottest basketball player on the planet and
A lot of people think the Jordan brand shoes were just flying off the shelf for all these decades because of how much everybody loved ⁓ Jordan. But.
LL Cool J on his first album put on a pair of Jordans and the Jordan brand took off after that. Now, yeah, there's some people that get Jordans because Jordans cool, but the main catalyst for those shoes selling the way they are is because rappers and the cool kids had Jordans. Even in the hood, the guys on the street.
corners, they had Jordans and these are the things that, and the reason those guys had Jordans is because they see the rap. They saw LL Cool J with Jordans on. know, that, this back here, back then, the kind of, ⁓ the kind of effect that
Sensei (11:25)
Right.
Fatboi (11:42)
these musicians, these artists had on pop culture was incredibly just, I mean, you know, a lot of people like to call some of these today's artists, ⁓ this generation's Michael Jackson, they have no clue, man. They have no clue what that was. They've never seen anything like that.
Sensei (12:02)
Nah
No, I mean.
No, like, 100 million records sold or something crazy, you know?
Fatboi (12:13)
And I
don't think anybody ever will. the kind of effect that it had on the world,
Sensei (12:26)
You know, and the other thing and like this is hot off the presses when we're recording this, like, I don't know, three or four days ago, MTV finally shut down. Like I didn't even know it was still in existence, but right. Yeah. But once they went to reality TV, it was all over for me. But back in the 80s, those five or six songs were on MTV constantly. You could not escape them. Yeah.
Fatboi (12:35)
It should have been there, that is. Yeah, it's done, yeah.
These songs right here that
they're talking about, every single last one of them on MTV all day, every day, every hour on the hour, some of them twice within the hour.
Sensei (13:06)
Easily, maybe five times an hour. ⁓ I got it. got it. OK, let me we're going to get back to the video, but I want to do my old. My memory of MTV. OK, I was 12 years old and there was this arcade. This is like Stranger Things. I'm like the demographic for Stranger Things. Yeah, arcade. You put tokens in the machines and play the video games. We would go to a place.
Fatboi (13:09)
Yeah, depending on the segment you're in.
Yeah, yeah, you get...
man, the arcades. Kids don't know nothing about arcades.
Sensei (13:34)
where they had all these video games. Well, this special one right around my neighborhood, right across from the YMCA pool, ⁓ they did up like a dance club and no one danced because it was, you know, 12 years old and whatever. But like they put like a disco ball and they had a big screen TV that showed MTV all the time. And it was before the cable company had MTV on their roster. So it was nothing but these songs, maybe some Huey Lewis, CZ Top, ⁓ you know, but Michael Jackson.
Fatboi (14:01)
you
Sensei (14:05)
You know, maniacs on constantly on on on the screens. And that was my 12 year old self. That's how I experienced pop popular music. You know, the other things I got from bootleg cassettes, you know, the rock and roll stuff. But the pop music came from MTV. And it was a time when it was hard to get. It was like pirated into this. ⁓
Fatboi (14:20)
Yeah. Yep.
Sensei (14:31)
That was when it was cool. Now it's so commodified and it's ran its life cycle. So
Fatboi (14:35)
Well, that was
my introduction to pop. Well, I knew pop music, but you heard pop whenever somebody put it on a pop radio station, you know. ⁓ But this right here, and you get to see these artists perform these songs on TV. MTV was my main introduction to pop music like that. So I...
Sensei (14:40)
Cough cough
Fatboi (15:03)
I learned a lot of songs that I otherwise probably wouldn't have learned. I mean, I may have ended up hearing it, but
Sensei (15:12)
End.
Fatboi (15:14)
Intimately getting involved with that record because I might've been watching MTV to wait on Michael Jackson or run DMC to come on.
Sensei (15:21)
It wasn't, maybe this is a thing we forget, but there was a time when it was pretty much only white people on MTV. It took some doing for Michael Jackson to make that leap into MTV and open those doors.
Fatboi (15:34)
Yeah.
Well,
wasn't watching them, you know, so I wasn't watching MTV until Run DMC and Michael and Prince and Rick James until these guys won because there were other, BET wasn't around yet, but ⁓ they had ⁓ things like ⁓ The Box ⁓ and other, yeah, and they only came on it from here to here and then it was done.
Sensei (16:01)
Friday night Friday night videos was Yeah, midnight
on Friday or whatever
Fatboi (16:08)
Yeah, that's
stuff like that. but MTV, because of, you know, my demographic waiting on Michael Jackson and Prince and Run DMC, ⁓ MTV became the go-to.
Sensei (16:25)
Man, and it took someone of a stature of Michael Jackson to break those walls down. And I was talking about bootleg cassettes. You know, I had Thriller on cassette when I was 12, even though I was listening to Iron Maiden and Ozzy and Rush and everything. You know, that album was bigger than the genre. And that's why it's one of these those songs that make up the album last, because what they put into those songs last
for decades. can't predict the future, but man, those songs were bigger than the songs today, I guess, is what we're saying.
Fatboi (16:54)
Ahem.
Yeah, you just,
you said something really, really important. The, the point was back then to create a body of work. Each, each project was a body of work that you put, didn't go, you're not going into the studio to create a single and just hope the single carries the album. No, you're going in there to create a body of work. the, the, the
Sensei (17:12)
Hmm.
Cough
Fatboi (17:30)
The staple then was have at least three singles, because we're going to try to get three singles deep.
Sensei (17:34)
Mm.
And they don't want to sound like each other either. want all 12 of these songs on the record. I want 12 different songs.
Fatboi (17:39)
And you don't want them to sound like each other.
12 different songs and those songs, the three that you wanted, you wanted to have ⁓ the dance record, the big pop hit and the big ballad. Now what's your criteria for, if you could get a single in each one of those sectors, those categories, your album is...
Incredible. Now, if you can go beyond that and the rest of the album is still just, my God, man, each one of these songs could be single still, but it depends on if the label is going to ⁓ put more money into, you know, but man, outside of that, you had these incredible bodies of work and I don't see, it's very rare that somebody is putting out, like even Beyonce to me,
Sensei (18:17)
Cough
Get behind him, yeah.
Right.
Fatboi (18:41)
Like with country Carter, she put a body of work out with country Carter, but a lot of her, you know, recent ⁓ outings hasn't been the body of work that she, ⁓ the Renaissance album was a body of work too, because it had a, there was a concept behind it.
Sensei (18:44)
Right, definitely, definitely.
I think that's what you're putting your finger on something there, the concept of the record, of the album. It's like a little book. It has to have a theme. They have to connect somehow these songs, these chapters in the book, you know.
Fatboi (19:14)
Concept, concept albums. Yes, it has a story.
Yes. Yes.
Concept albums have always been... Kendrick Lamar, give him... Kendrick Lamar puts out Bodies of Work because he steady puts... He always, every time he's come out, he puts out a concept album. Drake used to do that. Drake, early Drake, maybe Drake's first four or five albums.
Sensei (19:47)
Cough
Fatboi (19:50)
were concept albums. And now he just kind of just, he drops an album with just a bunch of stuff on it. But it's very few today that give you concept albums. And to me, concept albums, if you're following a concept, you're gonna get a body of work.
Sensei (20:13)
Well, I think part of the reason for that, and we're gonna get to it in this video, I think to some degree, there used to be one songwriter per song. There were two maybe. Now there's seven, 10. If you got 15 chefs in the kitchen, how is your meal gonna have a theme, you know?
Fatboi (20:22)
Yeah. ⁓ yes. Yes.
You know, that bothers me too because I mean, even some, a lot of this is the producers, not necessarily who pinned the record. You still might have several people who pinned it, but it's like, man, a lot of these simple hip hop beats is five guys on one track.
Sensei (20:46)
Cough
You
think there's one on here, there's like 10 writers on here. But part of that is just people flexing for the business. know, I got you involved with this somehow, so I need a piece of this. And maybe that's the only reliably profitable part of this endeavor is owning some publishing on the song. And I think that's why people are fighting for that, you know?
Fatboi (21:11)
Yeah.
Puffy ⁓ really ⁓ made that popular in the industry where, yeah, yeah, yeah. And where you might have 20 writers in the room and you take a line from this writer, a line from that writer, a line from that writer, a line from that writer, and you ⁓ consolidate.
Sensei (21:22)
a thing. He set the precedent where the exec producer would just kind of take this piece. I mean
Fatboi (21:41)
a whole song based off of that line, that line, that line, this line, that line, that line and comp and takes and me as the executive producer, I'm going to take my percentage regardless. And then y'all going to divide the rest of it up between the 20 of you. And here you go. And here we are today, which
Sensei (21:46)
with your cop-and-takes.
Cough
So
what we're saying is this is all Diddy's fault.
Fatboi (22:11)
I mean, and you know, our,
our business is, it's a monkey see monkey. It's a monkey see monkey do business. So, ⁓ if you, you find out something that is successful and it works, then you know, everybody, Hey, this is how this guy, you know, one guy might've been in one room and he went and told 10 other people that, this is how puffy does it. This is how you get these hits. And then everybody thinks that's the way that's what we're doing.
Sensei (22:24)
Mmm.
that's what we're doing now. This is the nineties. We're,
we're, we're owning the whole thing. We're entrepreneurs, executives, instead of musicians or whatever.
Fatboi (22:45)
If you're a prince and you have that kind of mindset, why do I need 20 people to get, you ain't gonna think the way I'm thinking anyway. You're just gonna keep saying the thing that you think is the most popular to say. I'm going that way with it. Y'all say this, y'all say tomato, I say tomato.
Sensei (23:05)
Well, and what happens, it happens in every business like that. You get a bunch of "Yes Men, you know, just trying to stay in the room so they get their 5%. There's 20 of us now, you know, writing the song, you know, so they'll tell you what they think you want to hear and you don't get an actual contribution. You don't get actual creativity, you know.
Fatboi (23:14)
Yeah.
Yeah. If you have a strong writer and I'm like this today, know, ⁓ Angel Del Rey, ⁓ man, I found her back in like 2000, somebody brought her to me and I'm like, yo, she is dope. And she wrote the ⁓ Ella May record, this is, ⁓ but she's a strong writer. Angel can write the whole record and Angel is very competitive.
And she doesn't like being in the room with other writers and I don't blame her and people force her to be in the room with other writers. And it's kind of like, no, she can write the record herself, man. And it's going to have life of its own because everybody else in this room, if you put Angel in a room with nine other people, it's 10 people in there. Nine of them all think the same. They don't think like her.
She is going to come out of left field with something that's just new and fresh and different. And it seems like where we are today as a society, everybody, I call it same-ism. Everybody wants to be the same. Nobody wants to be different.
Sensei (24:22)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mmm.
You scroll through Instagram
and it merges you into the hive mind because you see what everyone else is doing and you want to fit in.
Fatboi (24:44)
Yeah. People even look the same. They
even look the same. Nobody wants to look different now. Like everybody looks the same. The women all wear their hair the same. They put makeup on the same. The guys all wear the same hoodies, the same, you know, everybody with the pooch, ice, the mask and you know, it's just, man, nobody's an individual no more. Nobody thinks for themselves.
Sensei (25:10)
Man, when
you look at the people in the Grammys audience, they're awardees. No one's gonna confuse Lionel Richie with Michael Jackson or Sting. Everyone's got their own thing, you know?
Fatboi (25:19)
Not at all.
I mean, even,
even, even, even Stevie and Bob today, you put two people up there, they're which one is which? I can't tell that they're very same. They're, the same. They're similar. So yeah, man. ⁓
Sensei (25:28)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hey, let's keep pushing on this video, even though we've got a commercial pause here somehow. Let's see. Let's see what it's looking like today. ⁓
it's not enough that the two presenters are legends themselves Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan two of the greatest songwriters of all time announcing song of the year well the songs you have Lionel Richie all night long then you have Michael Jackson with two songs Billie Jean and beat it now these are written just by them no second songwriters no third songwriters no fourth songwriters then you have every breath you take sting and then you have maniac which is the of course
When we did that episode about every breath you take, there's a couple guys in the police that have a little issue with who got who were writing credit on that, but we.
Fatboi (26:29)
You
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a little
bit of an issue with that one, but you know.
Sensei (26:38)
We digress.
Only song that's written by two people, which is Michael Simbello and Dennis Mikowski. So I thought, let's compare it to the 2025 Grammys for Song of the Year, which is happening in about three weeks. Hey, back in the 80s, you could sort of be a nobody, like famous and still get hit records. You know? But ⁓ that was a huge, that was from the Flashdance soundtrack and that was a huge movie.
Fatboi (26:46)
and bellow.
Yeah.
Yeah. Michael Cimbello.
Michael Cimbello, that was his song? Maniac? That was his song. Okay. She's a man. I mean, even to the point where that song and that movie was so iconic, when Maniac comes on, everybody knows to do the...
Sensei (27:11)
Well, one of, yeah, one of, yeah.
That dance sequence, that video made that song from that from movie. Then when she does the thing with the water and the whole.
Fatboi (27:32)
I mean, hey, the water, she was a maniac.
She went off on her audition.
Sensei (27:43)
Right and and the thing about it too is the video the image is united with the song for us
Fatboi (27:49)
with the song.
That's something that's missing today too. I think maybe the last, ⁓ one of the last soundtracks that actually matched what's going on in the movie was like ⁓ Boomerang ⁓ or maybe a John Singleton movie, Higher Learning, know, where, or Baby Boy, where you get songs that look,
Sensei (28:04)
Hmm.
Fatboi (28:18)
Here's the movie, we need songs. And they would go out and get artists to make a song for the movie unless the artists already had a song that fit. But they would actually create songs for the movie. Now it's just a collection of songs. You know what changed that? What changed that, and I remember when it started changing, Mike Karen at Atlantic came, and Mike Karen,
Sensei (28:21)
that relate to the movie.
Right. Or they wrote the movie around the song or something. Yeah. No, I hear you. There's a theme. That's a thematic thing. You know, they're thinking what?
Fatboi (28:47)
I give Mike Karen his flowers because he found ways to really promote new artists that he was bringing into the game. he used, ⁓ he would, ⁓ especially ⁓ with the Fast and Furious franchise, Atlantic got tabbed to do the soundtrack and he would just, anybody that I want to promote, I'm just going to start funneling them through these soundtracks.
which was genius as a businessman. Kudos to that. But that started becoming the norm.
Sensei (29:17)
⁓
It watered down the whole conceptual thing. It's just like, this is the billboard. This is the thing we have to do to promote. Yeah, OK. As opposed to a collaboration.
Fatboi (29:31)
Where, where, where the
collaboration, where, whereas, okay, this label might've done the soundtrack, but not every artist on the soundtrack might not be on that label. Now you go back to the sixties or the early seventies, ⁓ Cooley high, that whole soundtrack was done by Motown. Every song in there was, you know, but, ⁓
the relationship to Barry Gordy, you understand. And if you're talking about the late 60s, early 70s, the sound of America was Motown. If you turned on the radio, the Supremes, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, that was the sound of every ⁓ black-
Sensei (30:04)
Cough
Fatboi (30:32)
neighborhood, any black demographic in America at the time. So who are you going to get to? That was the sound of ⁓ black America. So that is understood.
But in today's time, it's just random songs that have nothing to do with the movie at all whatsoever.
Sensei (30:54)
Well, movies have kind of fallen apart too. The whole movie industry is kind of... I think the whole media landscape has changed and different.
Fatboi (30:56)
And even movies have fallen apart, yes.
I mean,
we don't even have news anymore. It's just opinions. It's all opinionated.
Sensei (31:07)
Not really. Well, and it really
and billionaires are writing checks and buying a whole media platforms, buying whole websites, buying whole social media deals like outright. So like there's no, you know, there was something about I guess curation is better word than gatekeeping. But having a some kind of structure where people had to prove their worth and things were validated on an objective level.
before they kind of got out to the public, at least, you know, there was an assurance of quality or assurance of truth, veritas, I don't know, like, you know.
Fatboi (31:45)
Yeah, mean, maybe Walter Cronkite might have been the last person to actually read the news.
Sensei (31:53)
Well that people trusted that was the thing about walter cronchite. He would say that's the way it is And people like yes walter were with you. I don't think you you you can't count on that now with the the news You can take it to the bank
Fatboi (31:57)
people trusted it.
Yeah, yeah.
If Walter delivered it, we believe him. We believe Walter, because Walter,
if it's something not real, Walter ain't even going to report it.
Sensei (32:17)
Hey, when Walter Cronkite said the Vietnam War is not winnable, they started pulling out. That was how much that trust the whole nation had in the news gatherers and the media, because they were objective. They were segmented off from having to ⁓ make a profit. They were just there. They were viewed as a service, as a public interest service.
Fatboi (32:40)
He was the voice of America.
Yeah.
Sensei (32:47)
You know, and man, we could do it like about four hours on that, but don't get me started. Hey, but it's definitely part and parcel of why music in general, media in general, seems to have declined. Let's get through this video though. I'm gonna wanna see what we're gonna react to here. What I'm gonna talk about is Anxiety by Doechi. Check it out.
Fatboi (32:50)
⁓ yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Sensei (33:12)
You should recognize this. ⁓ I talked about this on one of my top 10 Spotify countdowns. That song is actually based on a Gotye song from 2011 called Somebody That I Used To Know. This is Gotye. So it's a direct sample of that song.
Fatboi (33:38)
You
Sensei (33:41)
But that song is actually a sample of Luis Bonfa's 1967 song, Seville.
Fatboi (33:48)
Mm-hmm. Whoa.
Sensei (33:52)
So I guess don't you just took the Gotye song, removed the vocals, and then sang your own song over it? That really makes it more streamlined. You don't even have to actually build a song at all. You just take someone else's lyrics and stuff. I'll just take that off and I'll just do my own thing over it. Song number two. Okay, okay. It thoughts.
Fatboi (34:09)
Stop it with that right there.
Okay. All right. My thoughts on that sampling is an art. ⁓ but, and when I say that I'm saying I took a sample and I did something with it. I, I didn't, I didn't just take a loop of it. And then now I just, yeah. Cause basically if that's the case,
Sensei (34:23)
Cough
Boom.
Write a new song over the whole song, yeah.
Fatboi (34:37)
Why not just go get them and have them replayed in studio for you?
Sensei (34:41)
Why
not just get a karaoke CD? ⁓ CD, sorry. Get a karaoke thing in. Yeah, I'm old. think about these things. Yeah, it's karaoke if you're just singing over the actual song. At least the Gotye kind of flipped the sample a little bit or cut it in half at least and put some other elements on it.
Fatboi (34:46)
What is that?
Yeah.
And see, I've sampled that record, but I did some things to it. ⁓ I did, yeah, yeah, Yeah. ⁓
Sensei (35:08)
That's what you're supposed to do. You're to put your own imprint on it. You're paying
homage to what came before. You're benefiting from this familiarity, but you have to take it somewhere new. I thought that was the deal, right? ⁓
Fatboi (35:18)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I don't think I've ever any sample that I've ever, okay. Which my record, the record that I brought up previously, the Ella May record is an interpolation. ⁓ So I did, I replayed something from the original Shalimar record. This is for the lover in you. ⁓
Sensei (35:31)
Cough cough
Fatboi (35:48)
But I added my own, yeah, I added my own elements to it. ⁓ I took a melody, I gave ⁓ Angel a melody, a key melody from the original and told her, just make sure we have that melody in it and you do you around that melody. And she did that and she turned it into its own thing.
Sensei (35:48)
but you recontextualized it.
Fatboi (36:17)
It's not the same thing. But yeah, it's supposed to.
Sensei (36:21)
That's what music's supposed to do. It's supposed to evolve. If you're going to borrow some
DNA from another creation, you have to add to it. You have to let it mutate, you know?
Fatboi (36:29)
Yeah,
you have to make the new creation its own thing.
Sensei (36:34)
Yeah, no, definitely. All right. Let's keep it rolling called Luther. It's by Kendrick Lamar and SZA. The song is actually based on a Luther Vandross song from 1982 called If This World Were Mine that was written by Marvin Gaye. Actually, this song has 10 songwriters.
Fatboi (36:45)
Luther Vandross.
Sensei (37:03)
So it took 10 people to write that song. Am I going to hear this song? 10, 10 people to write that song.
Fatboi (37:06)
All right, stop that. this, 10 people to
write that, I didn't know that because I didn't do any kind of deep dive into that record. But the way they flipped the record.
Sensei (37:14)
Cough
Fatboi (37:23)
This is the example of what I'm talking about with the sample. did, whoever produced this song, they did the sample flip justice. It was dope. I love how they flipped that sample. Now, the 10 writers could also be, because you're also including the original writers, yes, yes. So the 10 writers ain't necessarily the new people. Yeah.
Sensei (37:44)
The people you sampled. Yeah, okay. That's a good.
It's just it's the business of
I just put your record in here and as a sample. I owe these four songwriters credit. Plus, I got some collabs on this one and yeah. Yeah. OK, so.
Fatboi (37:55)
Yeah, yeah, right. Yep, yep. So
it could have been five writers on the original record, because Luther didn't write that record by himself. Yeah.
Sensei (38:04)
That's a good point. Yeah, no, that's a good point because that town
is a little ridiculous until you think about, well, you know, we're building on top of something and we have to give credit where credit is due.
Fatboi (38:11)
Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
You didn't because on Angel was the only one that wrote ⁓ the Ella May record. But when it's all said and done ⁓ with myself included, there's one, two, three, four, there's six writers on the song. It started with just me and Angel.
Sensei (38:31)
Cough
Fatboi (38:39)
But by the time the song was done, there's six writers on the song. There's Howard Hewitt ⁓ from Shalimar, ⁓ another writer, a partner of his. I can't think of his name right now. Myself, Angel, Ella Mae, because Ella Mae wrote a pre-chorus into the record that Angel didn't have in there.
Sensei (38:52)
Okay.
Fatboi (39:08)
and DJ Mustard. DJ Mustard flipped the drums a little different from how I had it. He made the drums more R &B traditional. I had the record more club oriented at first. So those are your new writers, but we all contributed to that record. And Dana Myers, that's the other writer. So at the end of the day, there's six writers instead of two.
Sensei (39:21)
Okay.
Well, but some of this is just how records get produced now. It's not one guy booking out a studio, bringing in musicians. This is what you play. You play this, you play that. It gets passed around for people to collaborate in different locations. And it just naturally lends itself to multi-way song splits. I would think.
Fatboi (39:37)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah,
you got records today that, I'm not saying this record because this record is a sample, but ⁓ an original record and it still might have 10 writers on it because it took five people to make the beat and it took five people to write the lyrics. 10 people to me, that's just...
Sensei (39:59)
Right, right, right.
Well, and also the
way the money goes, there's less studio musician stuff happening. You know, the only money really to be realized is in the publishing. And that's why people are looking for the piece of the pie. And it's getting split more, I would say. But because back in the day, they had strict reunion rules. got a musician, you pay him X much for this minimum three hours, blah, blah, blah. If he does this, he gets double or whatever, you know.
Fatboi (40:30)
That's it.
That's it. Yeah.
And here's another
thing, the money, right?
Quincy Jones, the budgets were a lot bigger back then because you had to pay all these musicians, maybe orchestras, all this stuff. So what Quincy Jones production calls...
Sensei (40:56)
Cough
Right.
Just production costs were cost more. The
tape itself was kind of an expensive item, you know.
Fatboi (41:11)
So you're talking about Quincy probably getting a million dollars himself for production. And then past that, going to hip hop, Dr. Timbaland and all, they might be getting 350 to 500 for a track. Going to Pharrell and ⁓ Lil Jon and these guys, they might've... ⁓
gotten between 100, 2,550 a track going to my era, we might've been getting between 30 and 50 a track. But see how it starts. And reason being is because...
I could produce a whole track myself. There's no musicians. You know, I might use a guitar player on one, but there's one guitar, Dan played the guitar part and everything else is me. I'm doing everything unless I bring in a piano player. Cause okay, you got to, need, this song has to, needs to go to church. So go to church. But outside of that, I mean, we're, producing these records ourselves. So we,
Sensei (42:23)
Right, right.
Fatboi (42:29)
We don't need these big, super big budgets because we're not paying all these musicians all over the place. So the budget started getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Now I'm still active right now today and they're trying to squeeze me now for $5,000. It's like $5,000, man, I wiped my ass with $5,000. Versus being used to getting between 30 and 75,000.
Sensei (42:35)
Right.
Hmm.
Fatboi (42:59)
You know, and that's per track, you know, unless it was a song deal and song deals, 75, 100, 120, and this might be for four songs. But now it's just like, man, we only got 5K for you in the budget. Don't hurt us, OG. What?
You call me OG, you're giving me my flowers on that. You're giving me my respect in that regard. But the respect is just going in the name and what I've done to contribute to trap music. You ain't paying it forward in what you're trying to pay me now. But the music industry is making billions from streams.
Sensei (43:48)
Seems like the streamer guy is making billions from streams. I don't know if any musicians are making billions from streams. Guy owned Spotify is doing pretty good.
Fatboi (43:55)
No, we ain't getting billions.
doing pretty good. And the record labels got smart and did deals with them. Now look, I will say, and we got to clip this because this is important to say, Pastor Troy was the first person I heard with, well Prince was ⁓ the first artist really championing ownership, getting your masters and all that ⁓ publicly.
first person that's saying we really don't need labels, do it yourself. But Pastor Troy was the first person that I heard talking about ⁓ putting out his own albums through a DSP. And this is when Apple was just, it was super, super, super new. Spotify wasn't even out yet. Yes, yes, it was still called iTunes. So it was...
Sensei (44:52)
It was just had, it was still called iTunes.
I still call it that.
Fatboi (44:59)
super new, super
new. And Pastor Troy was trying to get everybody to get on this page. And everybody was still like, no, no, no, man, we got to go through the label, label, label, label, label, label. Yeah, I mean, because at the time, like I said, we were still getting paid depending on the artist and the budget that they had, 30 to 75K per track.
Sensei (45:10)
Right, right.
Fatboi (45:22)
So we're still looking at it. We're not looking at it from what Prince initiated with ownership. We're not looking at it from the ownership side of it. Pastor Troy was already ahead of the curve. We're like, man, I mean, you know, and he got himself into trouble with his label because before he put an album out with Universal, he will put an independent album out, um, his self.
Sensei (45:25)
Cough
Fatboi (45:52)
And that would cause a little friction with the label and all that. But Pastor Troy had the right idea. he saw it coming. And this is how we kind of let hip hop get away from us, right there. And hip hop got away from us and now it's uncontrollable. It got into the wrong hands of people that don't have a genuine love for hip hop.
Sensei (45:54)
friction.
Right, we start coming.
Fatboi (46:20)
And now it's just one big same song all over the place. Ain't nobody having no variations. Once, once every five years, J Cole or Kendrick Lamar might come out with an album that got some variation in it, but everything else, all the women are making the same songs. All the dudes are making the same songs. And I think if this was a principle that a concept that we got into back then.
think we're in a different place now.
Sensei (46:57)
Definitely. Hey, let's keep pushing forward Song number four features an interpolation. That means it borrows the melody of another song. This is Lady Gaga, Abracadabra.
Fatboi (47:00)
Let's get back in.
which is what I did.
You see that? That's generic. That's generic.
Sensei (47:19)
Okay, I don't get this. I don't
I think Rick's gonna say the same thing. I don't recognize a song she must have interpolated from. So whatever, you know, but it is like I'm not even sure what the song is about for.
Fatboi (47:37)
And
it's Lady Gaga and it's like, okay, this is her lane. But even for Lady Gaga, it's like, Gaga used to push the envelope.
Sensei (47:45)
It's a little
derivative of herself a little bit. Wouldn't you say? Yeah, I know.
Fatboi (47:51)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. It's just her doing more of her.
Sensei (47:56)
This is a copy of Susie and the Banshee. says it's an interpolation. They're included in the song rating. I don't hear it. You know, I don't know why they're paying them for that, but whatever. ⁓ The song is very run of the mill dance song and everything. You know, to me, it's just nothing memorable about it. Song number three. And it's a decent song, but top song of the year, Contender? What? All right.
Fatboi (48:18)
Yeah, it's not that.
When Gaga first came out, the stuff she was putting out then was worthy of Song of the Year.
Sensei (48:28)
It was definitely pushing the envelope.
Fatboi (48:31)
She was pushing the envelope and she was delivering bodies of work. She was doing incredible stuff. And now, 20 years later, it's just like, gaga's almost to the point, okay, where can I go? Let me just give more of my gaga stuff and just.
Sensei (48:36)
Yes.
Well, that's that's what the record
labels keep asking for. Copies of what worked before, because that's the safe play, allegedly.
Fatboi (48:52)
Yeah. It's safe.
Yeah. Yeah.
Sensei (48:56)
is also an interpolation meaning it uses the melody of another song. This song uses the melody of Mickey that came out in 1982. Check it out. This is Rosé and Bruno Mars, a song called APT.
Fatboi (48:59)
you
Sensei (49:17)
Okay, I don't mean to keep harping on this, but this song took 11 p-
Fatboi (49:19)
I just...
to me.
Sensei (49:23)
Eleven writers. It might be the sample. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Fatboi (49:24)
11 writers, that's insane. Well, again, it's an interpolation. So yeah, so even on the interpolation,
how many people was on the original? ⁓ But is it me or do a lot of these new singers don't, a lot of these new singers not have life and energy in their stuff? okay, the original Mickey,
Oh, Mickey, you're so, ah, you're da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-
Sensei (49:52)
Alright!
That the the the lady
that sang that was like a maniac. She was kind of had like a punk rock edge, even though she was dressed as a cheerleader and like it was like passionate and like even though it was a silly little song, it kind of rocked in a punk rock way because just how she delivered it, you know.
Fatboi (50:03)
Yes. Yes. It was it was energy in that.
Yeah!
And
if you, if anybody has heard the Mickey record or familiar with any of these songs, it was huge. It was huge. If anybody's familiar with that record, listen to how she sounds on that record, how she delivers that record. And it's like a lot of these new, I don't, I don't get, I don't, I don't get a lot of the new artists.
Sensei (50:23)
That was a huge record back when I was 12. Yeah.
Yeah.
Fatboi (50:45)
really delivering these powerful performances is just kind of... You know, like the producer didn't even say, you can do that better.
Sensei (50:58)
Well, you you said performances. Are these performers even like performing anymore? I think there's like less performing in general and it's just standing around a studio that naturally sucks the life out of it. Maybe COVID changed a lot of patterns, the way Ticketmaster kind of locks down lot of performance venues. I feel like Michael Jackson earned his stripes by performing before he recorded, you know? There's something to that.
Fatboi (51:24)
And he would perform
in the studio while like the feeling of the song that he had.
Sensei (51:29)
Cough
As if you were
singing it to somebody right there.
Fatboi (51:36)
Yes,
he would be performing in the studio. you know, that's why you hear snaps. You might hear his feet shuffle in the studio a little bit. They had to put him on a platform ⁓ so his shoes wouldn't bleed into the mic.
Sensei (51:41)
Right.
because he's in it.
So the lifelessness you're talking about, maybe as a function of like people aren't performing or they're just doing the same things. They're just kind of trying to imitate this cue sheet they've been given.
Fatboi (52:06)
Okay, well now that makes me question the producer because my job is to get the best performance out of this artist. I'm not even gonna let you, I'm the kind of guy, and you've seen me do this, I'm not even gonna let you finish that phrase. If it's lifeless, I'm stopping you, and I don't care if it pisses you off, because sometimes as a producer, I may need to piss you off.
Sensei (52:32)
You got me.
Fatboi (52:34)
to get the performance I need out of you for this record. And after it's over with, I hope we're friends still. But...
Sensei (52:39)
Yeah.
You and Stanley
Kubrick have that in common.
Fatboi (52:48)
But you know, the artists, that's the key. Back in you know, in coming in my era, I could piss the artists off and after they hear what I got them to do and they understood, it's like, yeah, and then their future performances got better off top because of that. But you piss some of these new artists off today and they don't want to deal with you no more.
Sensei (52:50)
but the performance is the key.
They don't understand the master plan.
Fatboi (53:20)
They don't, they don't see it. As a producer, I'm looking at the house already built. I'm looking at the house in its total. I see the whole finished picture. That's it.
Sensei (53:33)
Right. They're just looking at the foundation that got poured. They
see the plumbens roughed in, they don't know the final vision.
Fatboi (53:41)
I see the whole picture. you know, maybe that has, so I don't know, man, but 11 writers.
Sensei (53:47)
Let's
11 right. It seems like a lot, but like you say, I don't know if Rick's taken into account the sampling and the generations of songwriting when that interpolation sampling happens, but to write an incredibly lightweight song. That's the only term I can think of when I hear this. This is like the most unserious song. It sounds like a song for five year olds. The next four nominees are actually originals. Why?
Fatboi (53:54)
Yeah, that's it,
you
Ha
⁓ man, which Mickey was. Mickey
was that same, and I know what they're trying to do. So me as a producer, yeah. Yeah, it was.
Sensei (54:21)
It literally was like a kid's song, like a high
school chant kind of cheerleader thing.
Fatboi (54:27)
Which was why I said what I said about, if you're going to, if you're going to interpolate Mickey, I need the energy of the original Mickey. Where's that? Oh, Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine.
Sensei (54:31)
Cough
or
or a complete flip where it's like the ironically dark version of it or, you know, how they do for movie trailers and, you know, like going completely different direction. it was sort of coloring in the lines. Then, yeah, and I'm with you on that.
Fatboi (54:49)
Yeah!
Yeah. Even
the rock version of Beat It.
Or was it Billie Jean that they re-did? I think it was Beated.
those guys put energy in that record, man.
Sensei (55:13)
⁓
Annie, are you okay?
Fatboi (55:16)
was that the one they redid? That, that, that man, it's energy in it.
Sensei (55:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Annie. Are you okay? Are you okay, Annie? Yeah, yeah,
Yeah, no, they've they flipped that
Fatboi (55:25)
They flipped it, man. And it was dope. Their interpolation of that record was fire. Smooth criminal. Man, their interpretation of that record was brilliant to me.
Sensei (55:30)
Smooth criminal. It took me a second. Yeah, yeah.
Keep it moving here, let's This one is by Bad Bunny, it's called DTMF. Okay, this Bad Bunny song to me is kind of interesting.
of the other songs, the production on it is really cool. It's not memorable to me. Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand what they're saying, so.
Fatboi (56:10)
⁓
Yeah, okay. My thing is I'm listening to all the songs and I'm thinking, okay, do any of these songs that we've been listening to that's in best song category, are any of them so memorable to the point that 40 years later we still gonna be playing these songs?
Sensei (56:13)
Cough
Could you put that one up against I'll Be Watching You? Could you put that one up against Billie Jean?
Fatboi (56:34)
There's no song in
this category can stand up next to any of those songs in that 1984 category to me.
Sensei (56:47)
Yeah, we're not just talking
about general music in 2026. We're talking about the songs of the year for 20.
Fatboi (56:52)
songs of the year.
They don't stand up to any of, to me, okay, what does that say about us as a society now?
Sensei (57:04)
Well, that's kind of the greater point, man. Like, I personally blame these things because they've fragmented society. They've decimated media. They've changed the way we consume media. We're talking before, like, stereo is almost dead because everyone listens to the stupid little speaker at the bottom of their phone in mono. Right. So, yeah, I think there's bigger tectonic shifts that have happened with
Culture and media and technology that have hurt all kinds of media including music including movies and television and all that kind of stuff It's it's bigger, but it's terrible what makes it through the cracks and the concrete, you know, used to be flowers Now it's I don't know what it is
Fatboi (57:52)
Sad man.
Sensei (57:54)
All right, let's keep it moving. The next song is called Golden. It's from the K-pop Demon Hunter soundtrack.
Fatboi (58:00)
See how there's energy in that?
Sensei (58:02)
more life in there than Bad Bunny, I'll give you that. All right, so this K-pop Demon Hunter song, this is... There's definitely a little more energy, youthfulness, playfulness. Is it the song of the year? Is it as good as Billie Jean? ⁓
Fatboi (58:06)
There's energy in that.
No, I don't hear. No,
no. didn't. See, okay, I'm not a kid anymore. I'm not 12 years old. So I don't know if this song is changing somebody's life the way Billie Jean did when I heard it or affecting a kid's life.
Sensei (58:23)
really well.
I mean, that's true.
It's highly possible we're two, maybe three old men yelling at the clouds in this context, but, you know, we're not experiencing it the way the kids are.
Fatboi (58:47)
⁓ The way the
kid, yeah, so, and like you said, they're experiencing it here.
Sensei (58:56)
Well, and sleepovers, we're all gonna watch Netflix and watch this movie, the K-Pop Demon Hunters, and maybe that's the most communal experience they're having with music, is watching the movie together. But it's, you know.
Fatboi (59:11)
But here's the thing, here's the thing. When we were kids, there were still older songs from our parents' generation that still affected us, right? And music that we were listening to, our parents were liking some of our stuff too.
Sensei (59:20)
course.
There's always some cross pollination. Yeah
Fatboi (59:34)
I'm not really liking the-
Sensei (59:37)
Maybe this crop of songs. I mean, I hear music that's happening nowadays that I do dig. It ain't in this list of the top songs of the year. I'll tell you that.
Fatboi (59:46)
Yeah. And put it like this, my son Damien, when he was a kid, when he was a baby, three years old, his favorite artist was Michael Jackson. I had to buy This Is It, the This Is It DVD.
to calm him down when he would cry sometimes. I would have to put that on and let him watch Michael Jackson and he would stop crying or whatever was going on with him at the time.
Sensei (1:00:21)
Man, apparently my favorite when I was a baby was Johnny Cash, who is still a legend and his songs do still stand up. But let's not digress. Again, same, same, same. These people are like Mount Rushmore worthy. All these people we just named are Mount Rushmore worthy.
Fatboi (1:00:28)
Yes. My favorite as a baby was Marvin Gaye. See what I'm saying? See what I'm saying? These guys are our era. Yeah.
They're not our era, but yet we still, like my parents said, I used to walk around, this is crazy. I used to walk around with an eight track tape of Marvin Gaye and try to stick it in the walls and make it play.
Sensei (1:00:55)
Hehehehehe
I regret to inform you that you are old.
Fatboi (1:01:01)
Well, you know, our era
is cassette tape and CD. That's our era. But if you're born in a certain era, eight-track tapes were still around, so they were something for us to play with.
Sensei (1:01:07)
Yeah, I wonder.
Like,
⁓ dad, you still listen to music on your phone? You don't have a cerebral cortex implant for your music? I just kind of heard another good song. It was really good. you hear that? Yeah, that's how it's going to go. Did you get your AI beam into your cortex yet? ⁓ God. Let's keep it moving. It's melodic. To me, this is interesting. K-pop has its own sound. This has its own sound. This is really pop.
Fatboi (1:01:30)
Right, yeah.
Sensei (1:01:40)
but it's interesting for what it is. Song number seven is Man Child by Sabrina Carpenter.
Fatboi (1:01:49)
And why is it so many songs in this category now?
Sensei (1:01:52)
Seems like a lot, six or seven, eight, nine, 10 songs. Maybe they haven't whittled down the list yet as of this area.
Fatboi (1:01:56)
This is seven
right now. We're seven in.
Sensei (1:02:02)
Let's hear the song a little bit.
Fatboi (1:02:03)
Okay.
Sensei (1:02:11)
Okay, so man child, I made a video about it. This is... I mean...
Fatboi (1:02:13)
That it don't sound like
a song of the year. cool, but it don't sound like a song of the year. Yeah, yeah. It's a good song, but 40 years from now, are our kids going to be playing this record?
Sensei (1:02:19)
There's like nothing wrong with it. It's just does it have a timeless quality like.
Will anyone.
I can't, my money is on no, but I've been wrong before. Such a generic sounding song. I'm sure Sabrina Carpenter, she's got some way better songs than this. To me, this is one of the most generic songs that I heard in my Spotify top 10 videos this year. And then the last song is by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas called Wildflower. But I see her
Fatboi (1:02:36)
Yeah, yeah, well...
Mm.
which means that the label was pushing for that.
Sensei (1:03:02)
⁓
This song is actually great. I mean, it's got a great melody. I gotta say it's the best of the lot. Yeah, I mean.
Fatboi (1:03:16)
Yeah.
Yeah. But is it song of the year worthy? Yeah. Is it still those?
Sensei (1:03:22)
Is it beat it equivalent?
I man, don't, yeah. It's, it could be a soundtrack.
Fatboi (1:03:31)
And this was the other thing. You when we were kids, the song of the year was either a huge dance record that just had the world going crazy, or it was a huge ballad that nobody like this.
Sensei (1:03:46)
Everyone
slow danced too at the eighth grade dance and whatever or got all hyped up when it came on.
Fatboi (1:03:49)
Yes. Yes. Like this, right?
For these songs in this category, for 26, that would be the big ballot that would challenge everything else. But is it song of the year, big ballot?
Sensei (1:04:10)
It's at Rick's point, man, it's it's a weak crop. Honestly, it's always subjective, but man, I just can't hear the life that was in that crop we looked at from the mid 80s, you know, with Beat It and Billie Jean and every breath you take. Like there was something happening there that is not now.
Fatboi (1:04:33)
When do you think
It started changing at the Grammys where the song of the year category was getting watered down and weak because the songs that everybody was delivering was just generic. It's just cool. Everything's just cool.
Sensei (1:04:52)
That is the that's
the $64,000 question because it's happened over time. I guess is the closest thing I can give to a reasonable answer. It's just the trends have happened that they're they don't have these tentpole artists that have that kind of charisma so much anymore.
Fatboi (1:05:10)
you know what else too?
It was a highly competitive market back then too. ⁓ Everybody wasn't friends back then. They might've gotten cool, but we didn't have social media to see what the next guy was doing. All they were doing, they were taking care of their business and hearing the other guy's songs. And they knew they had to top that.
Sensei (1:05:20)
Hmm.
Right. And they take it back to their
team. This is what Michael Jackson's cooking up. You guys get to work.
Fatboi (1:05:37)
We got to top, we got
to, we got to top that, you know, like, like, like Michael Jackson and Prince, they were of the, they were the Larry Bird and Magic Johnson of the music business. They needed each other to feed off of, and that kept each other like, you know, Michael even said, if I get a, if I get a song idea at three o'clock in the morning, I have to get, I have to get up and do this song because if I don't,
God to give it to Prince. So, and today,
Sensei (1:06:08)
Mmm.
There's something
about that. There's something useful about not friendly rivalry, just, you know, sportsmanship rivalry trying to, yeah.
Fatboi (1:06:17)
Yup. Yes, sportsmanship rivals today.
Everybody is haha. I'm not trying to do anything to you friends.
Sensei (1:06:25)
I'm just putting
this out on Instagram, see if it blows up. I don't know, whatever. Or I'll just do an unboxing of my new thing tomorrow or whatever.
Fatboi (1:06:33)
Nobody's trying to cut anybody's neck now. Even the competition between the guitar players from the 50s and 60s. And they even had the phrase, I'm trying to chop your head. That's why they call guitars acts.
Sensei (1:06:37)
Mmm.
Well, maybe ⁓ Kendrick Lamar might have a different opinion about that.
Fatboi (1:06:52)
Well, okay. But, Kendrick still comes
from a time where that was part of it.
Sensei (1:06:58)
Hey, maybe people are so hungry for that. That's why it became such a cultural phenomenon, you know, ⁓ some of that competitiveness, you know.
Fatboi (1:07:05)
Yeah, mean, man, everything is all, okay, first and foremost, I will say this.
The competition is within yourself first and foremost. Yes, I'm trying to be better than what I was today, tomorrow. And then the day after that, and then the day after that. Okay, now outside of that, me trying to be outdo myself, now, okay, the industry is competitive. The market is competitive. Okay, now is what I'm doing.
Sensei (1:07:18)
It should be. It should be.
Yeah, right.
Yes.
Fatboi (1:07:44)
competitive in the market and who's the top dog in the market. Cause that's who I'm gunning at. And you have to have that kind of, you have to be a dog in this. Like.
Sensei (1:07:57)
You have to have
a goal and a vision and perhaps having an enemy or an opponent helps you get that focus to get your plan together. Yeah. You got to have a villain to have a hero, right?
Fatboi (1:08:00)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, there has to be an enemy. got to be a monster somewhere in there. A monster to slay. You have to have a monster to slay.
Exactly. Do you think Aretha Franklin was cool with all the other... No, she was trying to chop the head off.
Sensei (1:08:25)
Lionel Richie and Sting are slugging it out backstage. Hey, my money's on Lionel Richie in that fight, by the way.
Fatboi (1:08:30)
I saw something recently in that, yeah, probably.
I saw something recently and this is how it should be, right? And I don't want anybody to get offended. It's just how things were. ⁓ I saw Gladys Knight talking about when she was
opening up for James Brown, right?
Sensei (1:08:54)
Hmm.
Well, I'm sure that was a interesting dynamic.
Fatboi (1:08:58)
but Gladys and the Pips were killing it, killing it. And she said she heard James behind the stage one time say, get that bitch off the stage, right? Cause she's killing him. And at another show,
Sensei (1:09:02)
Right.
It's killing me.
Cough cough
Fatboi (1:09:22)
⁓ hold on. this? No, no, no. This wasn't glad. This is Patty Labelle. Pat is killing it. Get them bitches off the stage.
And then later on at another show, James had to come up to her and give her her props and tell her, hey, you you bad, you bad. And ⁓ then he told her, you know, you can be ⁓ the example for all the young ladies going forward. Like we need this example.
for young women to look up to. You can be that right there. And Patty took that in and she loved that. what I was saying about, ⁓ but that was the competitiveness and James Brown, know, once somebody's so bad, you get to the point where you're like, okay, I got to give it you, you bad. Now, what I was saying about Gladys Knight, Diana Ross,
Sensei (1:10:14)
The competitiveness.
Mmm.
Fatboi (1:10:31)
actually kicked, had them kicked off the tour because they were opening up for the Supremes, Gladys Knight and the Pips, killing the Supremes. But the whole thing was like, nobody could touch Diana Ross and the Supremes at the time. Nobody, nobody. But Diana Ross was so scared of what Gladys Knight was bringing that she called Barry and Barry called Gladys.
Sensei (1:10:37)
Mmm.
Fatboi (1:11:01)
and told Gladys, you know, she was excited that she got the call from Barry. She thought she was about to get a call and say, hey, y'all out there killing it. I'm hearing about you. And Barry was like, yeah, no, it's not that kind of call. We're going to, we're going to, we're going to send you home. And that's because Diana thought that they were a threat to her, which they really weren't.
Sensei (1:11:16)
Mmm.
you
Fatboi (1:11:31)
It was just, man, we get to see these new kids that's killing it, but we get to see Diana Ross too, who is this shit?
Sensei (1:11:35)
Right.
I don't know. I mean,
I guess the insecurities of artistry kind of leak out different ways, you know, but, know, some I remember seeing Motley Crue open for Ozzy back in the day. I liked them. I mean, it was just as good, you know, and that was like what I didn't seem like there was a competitiveness. Now that I look back as a grownup, I remember they had like five feet of stage and Ozzy had this 200 foot set, you know. ⁓
Fatboi (1:12:03)
Man,
had to be, and it's kind of like the great athletes of any era. They didn't want to be friends. They didn't shake hands with the guys from the other team. They didn't talk to them. Now, maybe out of season, they might've been friends with a couple of guys. Because some guys you went to college with and all that, but...
That competitive nature before the game, we ain't shaking hands. And in music, especially in hip hop, that's how hip hop used to be. I ain't friends with none of these motherfuckers. I'm trying to their head off. I'm trying to chop these guys head off. And if somebody has a hot record and I hear it, we're going to the studio right now.
Sensei (1:12:47)
Man, so.
Fatboi (1:13:01)
and we're going to chop their head off.
Sensei (1:13:04)
So, so let's sum it up. Is that what's missing?
Fatboi (1:13:08)
Partly, yes. I think everybody is too friendly and nobody has a villain to defeat, a monster to defeat. Now, Kendrick Lamar became a monster, but he was already a monster. But he was a sleeping monster and Drake woke him up.
Sensei (1:13:10)
What's what's?
We're.
Like Cthulhu. Like the Elder Ones. ⁓ I have been summoned and they rain down upon them and like, ⁓ Drake won't do that anymore.
Fatboi (1:13:29)
You know, so like, yeah.
Why would you want to
purposely antagonize that monster? Why?
Sensei (1:13:45)
Well, yeah. Well, that and I think there's something to the idea of mystique about an artist. Like, yeah, no, I think he's a good exception that proves the rule about today's music versus what was going on in the 80s when you had Lionel Richie.
Fatboi (1:13:53)
And the mystique, yeah. Kenny Blumar still has mystique.
Sensei (1:14:08)
Michael Jackson's sting people that mystique that had an an aura about them that was bigger than Normal life, you know and their music reflected that and because of that I feel
Fatboi (1:14:15)
Okay
Sensei (1:14:24)
it lasts for decades and new generations and new generations after that still discover it, you know, and appreciate it and it lasts and it makes it into stranger things. And even the 12 year olds dig it, even though it's 40 something years old, you know, but not.
Fatboi (1:14:37)
Right. Yeah. I mean, you
have these TikTok challenges that keep bringing up all these old records and you know, the kids are, they're celebrating the records like they're new.
Sensei (1:14:51)
It's new to them.
Fatboi (1:14:52)
The main thing is, I think music suffers because before the new era got to where it is, you had to do stuff to make music.
Sensei (1:15:06)
Well, yeah, for one thing, yeah, you had to do more things to make music. The media landscape was different. Like there only like three television networks at one point, you know. ⁓ Right. there were and you were curated. It wasn't like bubbling up from the grassroots. It was you had to kind of prove yourself to people who would gatekeep a little bit. And there's good and bad things about that. But one thing is.
Fatboi (1:15:16)
and all the record labels are merging too. It's like, you don't...
Sensei (1:15:34)
I do think that has a lot to do with quality assurance before they put a record out. Well, maybe that's not the right word, but some kind of like, are these guys good? Do they have it together? ⁓
Fatboi (1:15:38)
Gatekeeping.
⁓ it's a buzzword. It's a
gatekeeping is the buzzword now. Cause cause my it's
Sensei (1:15:49)
It's a loaded word too though, you
Fatboi (1:15:51)
my, my take on gatekeeping is back in the day before social media, ⁓ or the internet came into play. There were walls up, regional, you know, Atlanta had it sound.
Sensei (1:16:07)
Mmm.
Fatboi (1:16:09)
Minneapolis had its sound, LA had its sound, New York had its sound, Florida had its sound, everywhere had its sound. Now, within those walls of a demographic, the area sounded that way, because Prince wasn't the only one making that sound in Minneapolis. It was a Minneapolis sound. Prince was just the best.
Sensei (1:16:28)
It was a Minneapolis sound, yeah. Or
you put strings on a disco thing. That's the Philly sound kind of, you know.
Fatboi (1:16:36)
The
Philadelphia, exactly. know, so, um, before those walls came down and then nobody knew how, you know, the Detroit sound, if you wanted that Motown sound, you had to go get it. You had to go to Detroit to get it. If you wanted the Philly sound, you had to go to Philly to get it. If you wanted that soulful Atlanta, that soulful Atlanta sound, you had to come here to get it. If you wanted that stack sound, you had to go to Memphis to get it.
Sensei (1:16:51)
Hmm.
Right.
Fatboi (1:17:06)
If you wanted the pop sound, you had to go to LA to get it. You wanted country. You know, so, so that part of it. Yeah. Walls have come down.
Sensei (1:17:10)
Right. Or London. Or yeah. Yeah. So. So those walls are those walls have come down.
And it's kind of a good thing that everyone knows the New York compression trick or the LA style of mixing or whatever, but like also it kind of generifies it sort of like a strip mall. You go to like a strip mall in North Carolina, they got an Olive Garden just like they got one here in Atlanta, you know, like it's like the same change.
Fatboi (1:17:27)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Right. It's the same. it takes
away, which carries over into the music, mystique is gone of certain things. you know, I always, I love to find out how Prince got the sound that he got. I like to discover that. I like to find out how Quincy Jones did this sound.
Sensei (1:17:46)
Mmm.
Fatboi (1:18:06)
And then, and then once I found out, I held that to my chest. I didn't tell everybody how, like when we were working on, what we were working on, maybe Monica, we working on Monica and I used a Prince technique of running the piano through a chorus pedal. I remember I used that technique and everybody was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Sensei (1:18:10)
Mmm.
Mmm.
Right, yeah yeah.
Fatboi (1:18:32)
And you know, I told us in that in that room, it's like, yeah, I got this from Prince, man. I found out how he was doing his pianos, why his pianos were sounding. He was running them through the rolling guitar pedal. And everybody was like, wow, that sound. And I didn't tell it. Yeah, did it. And I didn't tell I didn't. Other than us in our
Sensei (1:18:35)
Right.
Right, right.
You can't do that and all you did it, you Yeah.
Fatboi (1:19:02)
circle. I didn't tell anybody. I didn't go around and show everybody how to get that in right now today. Well, I just, I just told them maybe that's why music. I just gave you guys a secret that I've been using that nobody has been knowing how I was getting it. I just exposed it, but whatever. And people, people are finding these things out.
Sensei (1:19:11)
Well it's 2026, that's what you do, and that's why music sucks now, right?
Cough cough
Fatboi (1:19:31)
but they're doing it from experiment and not necessarily knowing, you know, because the thing is you have everything at your disposal now, all these plugins and all that. And experimentation goes rampant now, which back then when you had to do things and plug things into things and make it sound away, experimenting was, that was the experimentation. Yeah. Yeah.
Sensei (1:19:52)
experiment. That was what the studio was. It was the lab. You
know, we're testing something out new. don't want the same old thing. I mean, it's sort of like, man, if everyone knows how the rabbit got in the hat, no one's going to want to go see a magician anymore. Right? Everyone's a magician now. I know the trick. You know, was a fake bottom or whatever. The mystery is gone and there's no show anymore.
Fatboi (1:20:01)
We don't want the same old.
Exactly.
Yeah, I know the trick.
Yeah, even with how we were doing the trap sound with the 808s, how we were ⁓ tuning the 808s to basically fill in for what would have been a bass line.
Sensei (1:20:34)
Right, making some melodic things happening with the 808.
Fatboi (1:20:37)
With, with 808s like that was,
my God. mean, cause everybody, everybody and their mom has an MPC, but they're not doing with the MPCs what we're doing with them in the South. How are you guys doing that down there? You know, and, and, and once the internet popped up, all these tutorial videos started coming out. ⁓ and, they weren't even doing it from the MPC because you know, most of these young guys couldn't afford MPCs.
Sensei (1:20:59)
Right.
Yeah, it's like, right. Like the samples and yeah, the fruity loops.
Fatboi (1:21:07)
but they had laptops and they had Fruity Loops.
And they were given tutorials on how to do this and how to do that. it's like, at first it used to bother me because it's like, damn, you giving shit away. Like this was our superpower. And really the only thing that kind of, the only thing that bothered me at the time, at this time was, Timberland and Dr. Dre and all these guys that came.
before us were able to hold on to their sound for 10 years. We were able to hold on to our sound for two, three, five years. I give it five years. The shelf life was shorter because everybody found it. But then because of the internet and social media, at the same time that trap was taken off, the walls came down.
Sensei (1:21:46)
Hmm.
Yeah, the shelf life is shorter. Yeah.
Fatboi (1:22:09)
and the whole world started doing our sound. It became a world sound and not just an Atlanta sound. Because in the South, everybody in the South, we were all doing similar things in the South, but each part of the South was doing something different. Memphis hip hop was different from Texas. Texas was different from Louisiana. Louisiana was different from Atlanta. Atlanta was different from Florida.
Sensei (1:22:12)
Right.
Fatboi (1:22:38)
And the South is the biggest demographic of hip hop because you have so many Southern States. But when the walls came down because of the aid of the internet, the world caught on to what the hot sound was and everybody started doing it. And it over saturated trap to the point where they even started renaming other ⁓ genres of music trap like that ain't trap.
You know, me and Southside had a conversation. In fact, is this trap to you? And I'm listening to it and it's EDM, but they're calling certain sectors of EDM trap. And I'm like, that ain't trap. But because they took Waka Flocka and put him in EDM and started doing the, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, bow, bow, bow, bow. They started calling that trap. Now you're pervert, you're perverting the meanings.
of the genres is lost the context. It's like, ain't trap. And now when you say, you say trap and then there's there's confusion of what you're talking about. It's like, no trap, trap, trap is trap. Like hip hop trap, Gucci man, Jeezy, Rocco, know, that's trap future, you know, 21.
Sensei (1:23:39)
It's lost its context.
Well...
Fatboi (1:24:07)
That's trap. But now you got this stuff over here just because EDM producers and house producers were taking samples from walk a flock of now that's trap. And you put some ⁓ 808s in house, which was, my God, which 808s had already been there, but they were just straight. Now they're, they're, they're doing, you know, they're melodic now and like EDM.
Sensei (1:24:16)
Wow.
Fatboi (1:24:32)
took a whole nother, before it became EDM, was house music. It graduated into industrial, trap, so many sub genres.
Sensei (1:24:42)
there's so many sub genres and
those guys argue about it all the time. Just like metal has this stuff too, you know. Every genre wants to divide, everyone wants to differentiate themselves from what came before. I mean...
Fatboi (1:24:49)
Yeah,
This is the
real that, this is the real that. And me, I turned into one of the old guys of trap, like that ain't trap.
Sensei (1:24:59)
Yeah.
It has a has a way of sneaking up on you this old age thing.
Fatboi (1:25:09)
Yeah, it does. It does.
40 years from now, do we have, is anybody, okay, the Kendrick Lamar song, 40 years from now, that song is still gonna be getting played.
Sensei (1:25:20)
It just might, if nothing else for the cultural phenomena non that it became, you know?
Fatboi (1:25:27)
I have several songs in my catalog that I still think will be getting played 40 years from now because they're getting played 20 years later. They're still getting played. So I think, I don't think all of a sudden songs from my catalog, like Wasted, Wasted has a theme to it. Every holiday, that theme comes out. Everybody's going to be celebrating something. Everybody's going to get wasted in some kind of way.
Sensei (1:25:36)
Mm.
What the?
What?
Fatboi (1:25:56)
40 years from now, people are still going to be getting Wasted, and it's a record that will probably still play.
Sensei (1:26:04)
Well, because it owns a vibe, right? Is that what's missing from that current crop of songs we were just listening to? The vibe or the emotion that it sells?
Fatboi (1:26:16)
I don't hear any of these songs like, okay, that song wasted. See, there used to be a thing where we would purposely, okay, we got to own the summer. We got to come up with a song, the summertime hit. Like we own the summer. Wasted owned the summer. It was the song of the summer.
Sensei (1:26:34)
summer song.
Fatboi (1:26:47)
I don't see any, Kendrick Lamar had song of the year, but that song ruled that season. You know what I mean? Of course, now back then, of course we knew Wasted was going to, if we had the song of the summer, of course it's going to last into next year and beyond. But if we get the hit of the summer, it's going to carry.
Sensei (1:27:05)
Right, because...
Fatboi (1:27:17)
The competition is, we got the best song of the summer. Ain't nobody fucking with it.
Sensei (1:27:22)
Well,
and that's what drives the quality up is that desire to best whoever's else is in the arena, right?
Fatboi (1:27:29)
Yeah.
And, and, and you know, okay. That friendly competition that you're talking about, my friendly competition of first round picks. were all first round draft picks of our era. Me, Charity Red, Zay Toven, Drummer Boy, ⁓ DJ Toon. We all first round picks, all first round picks from the same draft. Right?
Sensei (1:27:55)
Right?
Fatboi (1:27:59)
who's gonna win the MVP? And we all friendly with each other. We all cool with each other. Them my guys.
Sensei (1:28:06)
⁓
There's a level of respect, but there's still that competitiveness.
Fatboi (1:28:10)
And that's what kept Trap going so hard because it was like, man, Toomp just did that?
shawty red just did that. Zay just did that. Drummer just did. man. But, but on the flip side, they're like, damn fat boy just did that. shit. You know, and, and, and everybody, if all the friends are getting on the same song, like all the friends, five guys are producing the same song. But then when you listen to the elements of the song, it's like, man, it took five y'all to make.
Sensei (1:28:25)
Right, right, right.
Right, right, right.
Fatboi (1:28:49)
that beat? Like, come on, like really? It took five of y'all to make that beat? And I don't have an issue with collaborative efforts. I don't have an issue with it, but it shouldn't take five people to make the same type song that this song is. If we're gonna be five of us in there, let's try to create something that ain't been done or something that
Sensei (1:28:50)
Right.
So, right.
Right, well...
Fatboi (1:29:17)
was done yesteryear and we've got a new take on it. finna... Five of us, let's make the song of the summer.
Sensei (1:29:27)
the song of the summer. So let's sum this up. What do we need? What's the prescription for this illness that current music has? How we get that life back into it?
Fatboi (1:29:40)
originality, not catering to what you think social media wants you to do. Do what you feel, if it's good to you, trust and believe that it's going to carry over into your fan base. Cause we didn't have social media telling us what was hot. That was coming from us. We think this is hot.
We think this is hot, and if we think it's hot, and it's the 80-20 rule. I think everybody need to get back to the 80-20 rule. You put 10 people in the room, eight of them like it, two don't. We're going with the eight.
Eight don't like it, two do. We going with the eight. Okay, let's go to something else. Y'all don't like this. Okay, we going to something else. But now, but that means you have to have "No Men" in your corner. You gotta have somebody telling you, no, that ain't it.
Sensei (1:30:43)
Not as opposed to a "Yes Man", you need a "No Man" like, someone keeps it real and just like, yeah, you know.
Fatboi (1:30:45)
Yeah, you need a no man.
I would rather have the "No Men" than the "Yes Men" and even get you a "Wrong Man"
Sensei (1:31:00)
Hehehehehe
Fatboi (1:31:02)
And
the "Wrong Man" is the guy that everything that wins, he don't like it.
Sensei (1:31:09)
So like an anti-focus group. anything he likes, you're like, that's whack.
Fatboi (1:31:15)
If he likes
it, it ain't it. If he hates it, yeah, go with that. That's the one. That's the one.
Sensei (1:31:23)
Is that why I keep getting invited to the studio? Hey.
Fatboi (1:31:26)
Get
you a "Wrong Man. Like if he don't like it, hey, that's it. Because I've already tested out the 80-20 rule. He's part of the 20.
Sensei (1:31:30)
Yeah, man.
So yeah, so if he's on that side, then you know you got it lined up. Well, hey man, I think what you said, believing in yourself, maybe turning off the phone once in a while and just kind of vibing and surrounding yourself with people, surround yourself with people that will tell you the truth or you can rely on them to be wrong. Maybe you get something new out of that.
Fatboi (1:31:52)
Turn that stuff off, man. Turn it off. Don't have any distractions.
Think of this, think about this. How come the second act of most people's careers don't do well?
Sensei (1:32:16)
because they're surrounded by industry people now. When they blew up, they were just in their crib with their friends trying to figure it out and they came up with something new.
Fatboi (1:32:18)
because the...
and they got rid of all the, they got rid of all the no people. Now the train, the train is smoking now. The train smoke is, man, you can see this train smoke from miles away now.
Sensei (1:32:34)
So everyone's coming to see what the big deal is,
Fatboi (1:32:37)
Everybody that's coming in to join the new team you get rid of the old team the guys that would tell you know You threw
Sensei (1:32:43)
throw them off the bandwagon. They're
bummers. They keep telling me that my music stinks, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Fatboi (1:32:49)
All the new people that you're bringing in, they're all yes people because their main focus is trying to join this money train.
Sensei (1:32:58)
Hmm.
Fatboi (1:32:59)
And the money train is more important than the product we're delivering. And once you have these "Yes Men in play, the quality of your music is going to start going down because you got rid of all the notes. You got 10 "Yes Men.
Sensei (1:33:08)
Just make sure.
Hey, sometimes that that train's heading over the cliff.
Fatboi (1:33:21)
Yeah, yeah.
And they don't see. And everything, Michael Jackson probably had the longest run of any artist that I know. And even he got rid of "No Men. And that's probably around the time when Michael's music wasn't hitting quite the same.
Sensei (1:33:46)
Yep.
So honesty is the best policy. Maybe that's what we're missing is just some lack of artifice and yet finding that mystique, the balance between honesty and mystique, I guess.
Fatboi (1:33:51)
Amen.
the balance and don't get caught up in your own hype because once you get caught up in your own hype.
The "No Men sound like haters now. And you're only looking for validation through "Yes Men because now you're saying that the haters don't get it. No, they get it. It ain't it.
Sensei (1:34:13)
Hmm.
Mmm.
Sometimes the haters are right. Well,
that's a good segue.
learning to listen to yourself is truly the highest level.
Fatboi (1:34:35)
truth
The truth sounds like hate to those who hate the truth.
Sensei (1:34:46)
And on that note, we're going to dip out because.
Fatboi (1:34:49)
It's levels to this.
Sensei (1:34:50)
Thanks for watching. We'll catch you on the next one.