The Notorious PhD: Dr. Todd Boyd

Transcript

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Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the culture, episode 152.

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We're still celebrating Black History Month and we have a very special guest today to help us continue to do that.

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This gentleman needs no introduction.

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He is a professor of cinema and media studies.

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He is a renowned speaker, an in-demand television commentator, a critically acclaimed author.

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His new book actually just came out.

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I got my copy Rappers Deluxe how Hip Hop Made the World.

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I'll put that up on the screen so everybody can see and make sure you all go cop that.

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And he's written what Seven books.

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Now he's the one and only hip hop professor at the University of Southern California.

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He is known as, or they call him the notorious PhD, the incomparable Dr Todd Boyd.

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Thank you for coming on, brother.

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How can I get an autograph copy?

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How can I send this to you and get this autograph?

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Man when you at?

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Man, this book is beautiful.

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Where you at you, in New York, new Jersey.

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Man we'll have to figure something out Next time.

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I'm out that way.

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This book is beautiful man.

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Thank you Like everything about it.

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I'm ready to dive into it, thank you, thank you, yeah, but let's get going.

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Man, can you introduce yourself to an audience?

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You need no introduction, but just give us a brief summary to our listeners.

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Dr Todd Boyd, sometimes known as notorious PhD.

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This is actually my eighth book and, you know, dropped a couple weeks back and we out here making the rounds trying to promote it so that everybody knows it's available and encouraging people to cop and check it out and, you know, get into what I tried to put down in the book.

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Yeah, and I mean, I think this book and yourself as a guest, is like the physical embodiment of you.

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Know what this podcast is because you know you represent the culture and the things you talk about is the same things that we talk about on this podcast the culture, the genre, hip hop, you know racism, a little bit of sports and we try to tie it all together.

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Tell us a little bit about you.

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Know what made you write this book?

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I know you've been writing it for a few years now.

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I mean, I've been telling people, you know, as I'm doing the rounds promoting it.

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I've been telling people that I actually started writing this book when I was nine years old.

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I just didn't, I just didn't realize it.

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You know, I was nine years old, a year, cool Herc through the legendary party that we identified as the beginning of hip hop, and you know the images from that era the music, film, sports, overall culture and everything after.

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It was with me, you know, and has been with me all these years.

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I mean, I actually started writing it back in, I think, 2021.

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The year gets fuzzy, but you know, I think the thing that's important is, you know, we've been talking about 50 years of hip hop and you know, 50 years is a long time.

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That's not a trend or a fad.

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You don't have 50 year trends or 50 year fads when you're around for 50 years.

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That's, that's substantial.

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And I feel like, you know, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, I couldn't have written this book.

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I needed everything to transpire and play out the way it has in order to write it.

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So you know, here we are.

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I mean, maybe year 51 now, but you know, even beyond that, when I started writing a book, I wasn't necessarily thinking about 50 years.

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At some point in the process.

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I think I realized it would kind of coincide with that.

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But the story of hip hop is one that's unfolded from the 70s and 80s, 90s and we cover all this in the book from the beginning, you know, to the present, and try and give you the fact that this is half a century.

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You know this is, this is half a century and there's a lot of substance there and I want people to come away from it recognizing this is epic and you need to understand those 50 years to understand how epic it really is.

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Yeah for sure, no doubt.

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I mean we're going to jump around.

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We got a lot of topics to discuss.

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You know, talking about 50 years of hip hop, what can you tell us about?

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You know where the culture is going when considering where it came from.

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You know, you created the academic study of hip hop.

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Others teach hip hop and KRS.1 is the first person that comes to mind because I know he teaches it in universities and so forth.

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But you're, you're, you're the, you're the first one, correct?

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Yeah, as?

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far as I know.

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I mean, I think you know what I often say about this is you know I come from the culture.

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You know there may be other people who by this time are doing their thing, but I'm the first one to come out of the culture.

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You know right.

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And you know I was MCing back when MCs were expected to.

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You know, get the crowd hype.

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I'm an OG in this, you know.

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So I'm a few years before Rock Him start bringing the poetry to the bars.

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So I don't have bars for you like that.

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But I'm about to say you're going to give us a couple bars or 16.

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Now I ain't got them kind of bars for you, because I'm actually before that time, but I have the most respect for it.

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But you know everything I talk about in the book.

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I mean particularly in the early chapters.

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The book is broken up into five chapters, starting with the 70s, ending with the 2010s and beyond to where we are now.

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But you know everything I talk about in the book.

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I lived it, I experienced it, I'm familiar with it, I know about it and I was doing this, you know, 20 years before I became a professor, before I finished graduate school, got my PhD and started, you know, doing my thing USC School of Cinematic Arts dealing with popular culture.

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You know film, music, television, sports, fashion, art, all that.

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So what I give you in the book is personal, it's also professional and I think that's what makes it unique is, you know, back in the early 90s, when I started at USC, right after the LA riots, people were looking at me crazy.

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You know, when I was talking about hip hop in a college class, you know people looking at me real funny.

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Now it's different.

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You know, 30 years later, people can appreciate it in ways that they couldn't back then.

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So you know, for me, it was all about what I had lived, but also what I studied, what I researched, what I observed, what I wrote about, and hitting it at those two levels, as I say, I think, is what makes it unique, because it's personal, but it's also professional, and you don't find too many people, if any, who have come about it, and certainly not before I was doing it back then.

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Yeah, I mean I'm what the these I wouldn't say the younger kids would call an old head.

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You know my playlist is going to have mostly 80s and 90s rap and stuff like that.

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So I wanted to ask you how has the genre changed from its inception in the 70s to what it is now, and has it changed for the better in your opinion?

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I mean, I think it has changed substantially.

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You know, for the 70s, if you think about it and this is what I talk about in the book for much of the 70s, unless you were, you know, in the Bronx or in Queens, or unless you were on the scene, you didn't hear the music.

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You had to be there and participate in it.

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But then, you know, once the music is available on the radio, you can hear it anywhere.

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And then later, when videos, you know, start to blow up, you can see it.

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And so you know, I think that's a big difference.

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You know, I remember the first time I heard rappers delight.

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Then I heard Curtis blow.

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You know I was in high school when this music came out.

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Like you know, everybody I knew was digging rappers delight and I was on Kurt Blow and I liked Christmas rapping better than I did the breaks, you know.

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And then you know when Sugar Hill came back with Apache and Sequence, I mean I remember all this like vividly before we get to Bambata.

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And you know what I'm saying.

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Master Flash, you know DMC I'm in college by this point.

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So you know I've been there since before it started, and I remember particularly everybody was getting off on.

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You know Michael Jackson and Prince.

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You know early nineties and I'm trying to listen to DMC, you know.

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So you know, thinking about it from that perspective and having observed it, I mean, as I mentioned, rock Kim, you know Rock Kim came with the poetry.

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You know, cat like Big Daddy Kane, nwa, ice Cube, you know my God, chuck D and Public Enemy.

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So you know, I mean, if you ask me what I'm putting on my list, a lot of it's going to come from that era.

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But you know about the nineties, everything blew up.

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You know Big and Pock and Nas and Wu Tang, jay-z, I mean Puff, I mean you know Outkast, I mean you know, just every decade you got these new artists who were doing their thing and kind of building on what came before it.

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And then you know, you get up to the present and I'm like you know, I listened to a lot of these young cats and can appreciate what they're doing.

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You know I respect it.

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I can't put a finger on what to call this era because you know it started off with a party rap and hyping up the crowd and hyping up your DJ.

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Then it went to more lyrical with rock, eminem, then it went to social commentary and then it went to the gangster rap, which was an offshoot of the social commentary.

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Then we have the 90s.

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It was back to lyrical and storytelling.

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But now I don't know what to call this without without you know, without dissing it, without insulting it, you know, without calling it mumble rap, I don't know what to call this era.

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I guess this is the vibe era.

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That's what the young kids would call it.

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I mean, you know I, you know I try to be tolerant.

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I think it's the word I would use.

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What I recognize is that my age?

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Now, you know, I'm not.

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I'm not the target audience, so I don't want to you know.

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I don't want to dismiss what is intended for somebody else, but as a long time participant and observer of the culture, I mean, you know, I hear cat like Drake.

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I hear cat like J Cole.

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I mean J Cole's got bars, whatever era he's in.

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It's like, in a lot of ways it's kind of like the NBA.

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You know, if you could hoop, you could hoop and you know you might be part of one era or another, but a great hooper can fit in any era and they had the ability to adapt to the circumstances of that era.

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So you know, I don't know what people are doing now.

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Specifically, I feel like a lot of what happened before.

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Like I say in the book, you know, when you get to the fourth chapter of the book and you're talking about the 2000s, hip hop helped elect a president.

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You know I mean Obama's very much part of what hip hop and its impact you know had on America.

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And when you do that, like what else is there to do after?

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You know it's like we helped elect a president, you know.

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So now you have Kendrick Lamar winning a Pulitzer Prize, nas performing with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, you know JM Beyoncé and a Tiffany's commercial with a Basquiat.

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You know Swiss Beats and Alicia Keys with their art collection.

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You know people are talking about buying paintings as opposed to buying cars and sneakers, so it's like whatever's going on now is cool.

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Nas with his investments, yeah, yeah, I mean we could list.

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There's a whole long list of things we could mention of how, you know, the game, like Big said, went from actually to classy, like where we are now is like so much further than where we started.

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And so I feel, like this younger generation, it's time for them to like do their thing, but they have a great foundation from which to do it.

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I'm from the era when the foundation was being built, so it's a different perspective.

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Yeah, I wanted to read a quote that you gave to the publication, the rap regarding your book, where you said this book is about the culture.

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The music is part of.

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The culture, is the frame that you sort of see everything through, but it's also movies, fashion, language, politics, sports and art.

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I was interested in all these connections beyond the music and I'm glad you mentioned the NBA because I wanted to tell we just had the All Star Weekend that just passed, and it wasn't recently, it was a couple of years ago.

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You had mentioned on the Rich Eisen show the importance of MJ and speaking of Michael Jordan in his documentary speaking about.

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He spoke about the George Floyd incident, and we all know that Jordan never really spoke on social issues ever, and so I wanted to ask you how important is it for for some of these athletes, especially black athletes, to speak out about social and cultural issues?

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Cause I feel like LeBron right now for this era, he's that guy that speaks up.

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When we was coming up, we didn't have a guy like that, I mean I look at it in terms of generation, I mean Jordan.

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I mean Jordan's a year older than me.

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You know, we were in college at the same time and I think for a lot of people back then, I mean Jordan was in a unique position.

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But you know, I think the thinking at the time was, you know, if you look at it, you sort of pull back.

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You know you have Muhammad Ali and John Carlos and Tommy Smith.

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You have that generation.

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Michael Jordan represents a different generation and LeBron represents a different generation.

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From that, and I think we are, we are all products of our generation.

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In a way.

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The thinking at the time, you know, when Michael was in the mix, was don't do anything that's gonna interfere with your bag, so to speak.

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Right, right, you wanna sell them sneakers.

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Yeah, and you know I don't know if that really aged well and I think even he realizes it when it comes up now.

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You know he even says in the last dance, you know I was selfish and I recognize I was selfish.

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I think this is what he said.

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I think he recognizes now, maybe at the time that made sense but it doesn't age well and perhaps if, given the opportunity for, you know, redo, he might have approached it differently or maybe not, but you're not gonna get no redo.

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So this is why we talk about it.

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I think in that generation the thing was, as I say, like do what you can to get your bag.

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Lebron's part of a different generation, you know Michael got a bag.

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I mean the generation before us you know you're talking Kareem, dr J was altogether different.

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I mean you know it hadn't been that long that the game had been integrated, relatively speaking.

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So the further you get away from that, I think, the more freedom you have.

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And LeBron and LeBron's generation is in a position where they have stood out and spoken up and I mean go back to the bubble.

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You know, during COVID and everything you know, there were guys who wanted to lead a bubble to go and like, participate in those George Floyd protests.

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So I have a great deal of respect, you know, for what LeBron is doing.

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Honestly, I think Mike might've got a bad rap.

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I can understand it from a generational perspective.

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I just think you know, sometimes you say things in a moment and you have no idea how they're gonna age.

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And that statement about Republicans by Nikes, too, didn't age well.

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But you know, a lot of people at the time felt the same way that he did.

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They just didn't have the resources.

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And since we're in the topic of sneakers, you know Trump dropped his new, never surrendered, but I call them the Air Force Trumps.

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And there's a Fox News contributor yeah, fox News, a gentleman by the name of Raymond Arroyo, and I wanna get into the topic of racism and you let me know, both of y'all, let me know if this is racist Because he goes.

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His exact comment was this is connecting with black America because they love sneakers.

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He said this is a big deal, certainly in the inner city.

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So when you have Trump roll out his sneaker line, they're like wait a minute, this is cool.

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He's reaching them on a level that defies and is above politics.

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The culture always trumps politics and Trump understands culture like no politician I've ever seen.

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So when I first read that, I was like all right, this sounds a little racist.

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It's certainly ignorant, very ignorant.

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I mean, you know, I kept I saw on social media earlier today.

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I saw several people post that, several people and I honestly just kept laughing because when I saw the shoes, I think maybe the day before I kept thinking Tom Ford wants his tee back.

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If you look at him you can see where that like I ain't even thinking that Graphic design for that tee comes from.

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Yep, I mean, look, you know, I'm a sneakerhead, I'm an OG sneakerhead.

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I've been doing this since 74.

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So, yeah, I like sneakers and I know a lot of other people that like sneakers.

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I don't think that's necessarily bad, but you can't just come up with any kind of you know, courtyards sneaker and think that Buy or vote.

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Yeah, yeah, like I just kept looking at the shoe, I'm like ain't nobody rocking these?

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You know?

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I mean maybe if the design on the sneakers was cool, people might rock them.

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But you know, people in the sneakerhead community are can be harsh critics.

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They don't like every sneaker that comes out.

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So it's like not just about you know, he's got a sneaker.

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Is your sneaker cool and is it something that somebody's gonna wear?

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But I think what dude was saying was really ignorant, because you know black people, people in the inner city, they like sneakers and you know Trump did this.

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So now Trump's going to appeal to them.

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I mean that just indicates that he knows nothing about the culture and he's basing his opinion on a stereotype and he's uninformed, I mean.

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And I'm sure if we could see what he had on his feet when he said that, that he had trash on his feet.

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So you know, I mean I wouldn't listen to somebody like that because clearly he doesn't know what he's talking about and even then the people that may or may not have that mentality are probably not even old enough to vote Right, the people that are gonna vote.

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I want to know what your policies are.

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How can you help my community?

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And also you know, okay, even if your sneakers were cool, you're gonna vote for somebody because their sneakers are cool.

00:20:46.733 --> 00:20:50.058
Voting and cool sneakers are two different things.

00:20:50.058 --> 00:20:59.694
You know, and if that's all it's gonna take to get somebody to vote for you, then you know the election would have been decided a long time ago.

00:20:59.694 --> 00:21:00.769
It's much deeper than that.

00:21:00.769 --> 00:21:06.873
That's why I keep saying the statement is ignorant and honestly, it's so ignorant.

00:21:06.873 --> 00:21:12.132
I don't really need to spend that much time explaining how ignorant it really is.

00:21:14.424 --> 00:21:14.766
Fact.

00:21:14.766 --> 00:21:22.834
So, staying on racist topics, I have up here this I don't know if any of you saw this.

00:21:22.834 --> 00:21:33.635
I call it the racist permission slip out of Miami-Dade County Public Schools and it says students will participate and listen to a book written by an African American and the parent has to sign.

00:21:33.635 --> 00:21:34.970
This is an actual permission slip.

00:21:34.970 --> 00:21:43.792
The parent has to sign to allow their student to listen to a book written by a black man.

00:21:45.576 --> 00:21:46.900
Yeah, I saw this.

00:21:46.900 --> 00:21:48.384
I saw this the other day.

00:21:49.476 --> 00:21:50.898
And right away I tweeted something out.

00:21:50.898 --> 00:21:54.508
I said you know, this is the racism that's going on in 2024 still.

00:21:56.256 --> 00:21:58.181
Yeah, you, you have to get a form.

00:21:58.181 --> 00:22:04.373
You have to get a form signed In order to listen to a black speaker.

00:22:04.373 --> 00:22:07.102
I Mean this was so ridiculous.

00:22:07.102 --> 00:22:10.555
When I saw it I just kept thinking there's got to be more to the story.

00:22:10.555 --> 00:22:12.519
Maybe they're in.

00:22:12.519 --> 00:22:15.406
But I just kept thinking this is just too dumb.

00:22:15.406 --> 00:22:29.465
But it is Florida and you know the governor of Florida is, you know he's on one, so Maybe it is as simple as it looks.

00:22:29.465 --> 00:22:37.355
But I mean the question is okay, you have to sign a piece of paper in order for your kid to hear a black speaker.

00:22:37.355 --> 00:22:40.084
All right, that makes no sense to me.

00:22:42.195 --> 00:22:43.179
See and I pose these.

00:22:43.318 --> 00:22:44.422
I pulled go ahead.

00:22:44.561 --> 00:22:45.084
Oh, love Jeff.

00:22:45.084 --> 00:22:46.446
We had this conversation all the time.

00:22:46.446 --> 00:22:52.567
You also asked me every time I was having a second, like it's just racist, and I always try to explain to you.

00:22:52.567 --> 00:23:00.922
You're confusing racism with I Guess you can say stupidity like ignorance.

00:23:00.922 --> 00:23:06.481
We're being cute about it, like cuz, yeah, but like okay, you know how you talk about the Trump Seekers.

00:23:06.481 --> 00:23:09.449
A few moments ago you ever seen above the rim.

00:23:10.415 --> 00:23:11.136
Yes, I love that movie.

00:23:11.136 --> 00:23:13.403
They were actually giving it a couple days, so right.

00:23:13.742 --> 00:23:15.867
So is a part when Marlon Wayne plays boogaloo.

00:23:15.867 --> 00:23:22.299
He comes out to the court with that gold jumpsuit trying to hoop Like that's the things remind me of.

00:23:22.299 --> 00:23:24.405
Like they was clowning them wearing that.

00:23:24.405 --> 00:23:41.507
If you're not going to see anybody in the streets wearing no sneakers ever, like dr Boyd said that there's no swag to them, like you do some ghosts on something, american flag and a Tina like oh man, this is really gonna capitalize on a black fan base.

00:23:41.507 --> 00:23:43.638
No, it's not how it works.

00:23:43.638 --> 00:23:47.087
You're even the person who spoke up after it.

00:23:47.087 --> 00:23:49.420
He's just preaching to his audience.

00:23:49.420 --> 00:23:54.568
He's not talking to black people, so I'm not gonna waste my energy getting offended by it's like.

00:23:54.568 --> 00:23:55.934
I know you're not talking about me.

00:23:55.934 --> 00:23:58.984
You're speaking to a particular base that's going to black.

00:23:58.984 --> 00:24:00.450
Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense.

00:24:00.450 --> 00:24:01.914
Black people like sneakers.

00:24:01.914 --> 00:24:03.219
That means they like sneakers.

00:24:03.219 --> 00:24:03.921
They're like Trump.

00:24:03.921 --> 00:24:05.346
If they like Trump, they'll vote for him.

00:24:05.346 --> 00:24:10.807
It's not that kind of simple through line from one point to another, but they believe so.

00:24:11.756 --> 00:24:21.266
Even with this, you're saying that I need a permission slip to hear the words of a black person.

00:24:21.266 --> 00:24:25.983
If you say it out loud, you realize how dumb it sounds.

00:24:25.983 --> 00:24:27.266
Black, okay.

00:24:27.266 --> 00:24:32.405
What is Distinctive about this person voice from that person voice because they're speaking.

00:24:32.405 --> 00:24:35.007
How do you know that they're black, like it?

00:24:35.007 --> 00:24:36.515
There's no reflection of it at all.

00:24:36.515 --> 00:24:46.002
But the thing is a good idea and the fact that he are Giving this to children and like you're sending it to parents and there's no pushback from the parents, like this, is a bad idea.

00:24:46.002 --> 00:24:48.048
Like they're parents signing off on it.

00:24:48.048 --> 00:24:52.243
It speaks to a deeper problem that's systemic in our society.

00:24:52.243 --> 00:25:01.186
Not just this, but again it's Florida and talking about Trump, he's in Mar-a-Lago, so all kind of like leaks together again.

00:25:01.186 --> 00:25:04.279
Don't confuse racism with stupidity.

00:25:04.279 --> 00:25:07.926
It they're very close cousins, but it ain't that.

00:25:07.926 --> 00:25:09.249
This is just dumb.

00:25:12.457 --> 00:25:12.778
Amen.

00:25:12.778 --> 00:25:21.367
But I bring up racism because I wanted to pose the question has racism played a role, whether big or small, and helping hip-hop grow?

00:25:21.367 --> 00:25:38.846
You know, you go back to the 90s when David Stern, from an NBA, wanted to put the dress code because guys like Island Iverson you know we're rocking too much gold or baggy pants and the do rags and whatever it was, and you know they were considered dogs and whatever, the gangsters and whatever.

00:25:38.846 --> 00:25:40.691
So he wanted them to be.

00:25:40.691 --> 00:25:45.260
You know, more clean-cut and Wear a suit while you're sitting on the bench and whatever.

00:25:45.260 --> 00:25:46.924
And you know these.

00:25:46.924 --> 00:25:55.627
I'm not, I'm not saying he was racist, but I'm saying this this stuff causes a backlash and a reaction, and a reaction that you know makes change ultimately.

00:25:55.627 --> 00:25:57.096
So do you.

00:25:57.096 --> 00:26:01.528
I think that racism has had any type of effect in helping hip-hop grow.

00:26:03.195 --> 00:26:19.968
I mean, you know, I think that example of the dress code is interesting because If you watch an NBA game now, you know you're gonna watch people walking into the arena and they're gonna be talking about their fit.

00:26:19.968 --> 00:26:39.727
You know, I mean, on social media, every game now, they're gonna be pictures of people in their fit, which is kind of funny to me because back, you know, in the early 2000s, cats were rocking throwback jerseys and everything was like really oversized baggy jeans.

00:26:39.727 --> 00:26:47.246
You know, 8x white tees and that whole era, you know, and everything was was super baggy.

00:26:47.246 --> 00:26:47.928
And that's when.

00:26:47.928 --> 00:26:51.180
That's when the dress code was proposed.

00:26:51.180 --> 00:26:53.085
I mean, you know, I like fashion.

00:26:53.085 --> 00:27:00.338
So, honestly, I never really had that much of a problem with the dress code, because you're basically trying to say Clean up your act.

00:27:00.338 --> 00:27:07.102
You're on television, we want a certain standard and I think you know there are jobs throughout society that have dress codes.

00:27:07.102 --> 00:27:10.067
So I didn't necessarily think that was racist.

00:27:10.067 --> 00:27:20.787
It was clearly intended to, you know, help sort of Get rid of a certain look, and that look was directly associated with hip-hop.

00:27:21.517 --> 00:27:26.826
But, as I say, if you look at it now, everybody's trying to rap.

00:27:26.826 --> 00:27:29.055
You know, everybody's trying to show off their fit.

00:27:29.055 --> 00:27:31.721
And if you go back to the era before that.

00:27:31.721 --> 00:27:47.136
I mean, we were talking about Jordan earlier, but you know, I remember when Isaiah and Magic and Michael Jordan and Pat Riley were on the cover of GQ magazine Grand Hill, you know they were clean, like Back in that era.

00:27:47.136 --> 00:27:55.920
I phrased it with the suits yeah, clyde, exactly Clyde, phrasing with that 70s flair, you know, drj, you know with the fro, I mean.

00:27:55.920 --> 00:28:02.057
So you know, the styles change and the players, I think you know, represent their era.

00:28:02.057 --> 00:28:24.625
But that piece of it in and of itself, I didn't really have a issue with Because I understood what he was trying to do and I think what we see now kind of affirms that point, because everybody now is, you know, pj Tucker is, like, you know, shagilius Alexander, so so many guys now want to be known for their fit Kuzma, um.

00:28:24.625 --> 00:28:26.689
So it's just kind of interesting how that played out.

00:28:29.516 --> 00:28:32.362
Yeah, before I move on from this, I wanted to touch on this topic.

00:28:32.362 --> 00:28:35.128
Me and aunt have this argument all the time.

00:28:35.128 --> 00:28:36.799
He's gonna laugh when I mentioned it.

00:28:37.080 --> 00:28:38.005
I got start this shit.

00:28:40.397 --> 00:28:56.519
Because I wanted to ask you your thoughts on Eminem and, as he a valued member or just A guest, somebody like Lord Jamar would have you Believe go ahead, doctor culture.

00:28:56.820 --> 00:28:59.486
You got it, you got it back yeah and I'm a prefix.

00:28:59.526 --> 00:29:00.669
I'm gonna tell you where this stems from.

00:29:00.669 --> 00:29:08.701
Okay, dr Boy, this stems from every time I ask somebody of color To give me their top five.

00:29:08.701 --> 00:29:11.319
Never, a hundred percent of the time.

00:29:11.319 --> 00:29:12.883
They never have Eminem in.

00:29:12.883 --> 00:29:15.608
So I pose the question to aunt why is that?

00:29:15.608 --> 00:29:17.037
Is it a?

00:29:17.037 --> 00:29:18.401
Is it a cultural thing?

00:29:18.401 --> 00:29:19.041
Is it?

00:29:19.041 --> 00:29:21.008
Is it a black and white thing?

00:29:21.008 --> 00:29:22.156
You know what I mean?

00:29:22.156 --> 00:29:38.887
I've always felt like he deserves to be mentioned among the grace, but from my perspective and from from my, from what I've seen, from my experience, black people are hesitant to mention him and that and that list.

00:29:38.887 --> 00:29:40.797
I Mean.

00:29:40.938 --> 00:29:45.463
I can't speak on why People leave him off their top five list.

00:29:45.463 --> 00:29:56.335
If you, you know, if you ask people to top five, they're giving you their top five right and maybe there's a particular reason why they mentioned some people and not others.

00:29:56.335 --> 00:29:59.162
But if you only limited it, if it's, I'm sorry.

00:29:59.162 --> 00:30:04.273
If it's limited only to five people, there's gonna be a lot of people that left that are left off.

00:30:04.294 --> 00:30:08.827
I Mean, you know, I look at it from a historical standpoint.

00:30:08.827 --> 00:30:22.910
You know, for a long time we had White artists Appropriate in black culture and taking credit for it, and perhaps the big, the biggest example of this would be somebody like Elvis Presley.

00:30:22.910 --> 00:30:32.634
When you get to, hip-hop is different because you know Elvis and you know his manager, tom Parker.

00:30:32.634 --> 00:30:38.288
They could appropriate, I think, the cat's names, roy Holliday.

00:30:38.288 --> 00:30:46.894
If you go looking him up and if you listen to him, you know it's obvious how Elvis is straight bit my man style and a lot of people don't even know this cat is.

00:30:46.894 --> 00:30:49.555
And Elvis is, you know, considered an icon.

00:30:49.555 --> 00:30:58.967
So you could just go and like, really you know, steal the culture and turn around and make people think it was yours.

00:30:58.967 --> 00:31:01.494
You could completely appropriate it and exploit it and get away with it.

00:31:01.494 --> 00:31:03.433
There was nothing to stop him from doing that.

00:31:03.433 --> 00:31:15.719
But when you get up to the era of Eminem, I mean, what I think is always interesting is Eminem wouldn't have a career if it wasn't for dr Dre he needed.

00:31:15.759 --> 00:31:18.325
Dre's cosign like he needed.

00:31:18.325 --> 00:31:24.244
You know Dre, he needed somebody who had credibility in hip-hop Already to cosign him.

00:31:24.244 --> 00:31:35.422
And remember, before Eminem came out, most people when they thought about a white rapper, thought about vanilla ice, and vanilla ice was wack and everybody Recognized he was wack.

00:31:35.422 --> 00:31:43.113
So Eminem had to prove to people that he wasn't there just because he was white, like.

00:31:43.113 --> 00:31:48.893
So when you listen to Eminem, I mean the dude can rap, like clearly he's got skills.

00:31:48.893 --> 00:31:49.474
There's no debating that.

00:31:49.994 --> 00:31:56.655
I think what happened at the time know, what I noticed Was a lot of radio stations that weren't playing Hip-hop.

00:31:56.655 --> 00:31:58.886
All of a sudden they started playing Eminem.

00:31:58.886 --> 00:32:03.651
Now why weren't you playing this music before?

00:32:03.651 --> 00:32:15.259
But now that you have, you know, eminem, you want to play his music and I think a lot of other people started saying he's the greatest rapper ever During that time.

00:32:15.259 --> 00:32:16.567
And I'm like he can rap.

00:32:16.567 --> 00:32:21.826
He's not the greatest, he can rap.

00:32:21.826 --> 00:32:22.614
It's just like the NBA.

00:32:22.614 --> 00:32:25.445
There's been a lot of great players in the NBA.

00:32:25.445 --> 00:32:31.148
It's not just one or two, there's been a lot over a long period of time.

00:32:31.148 --> 00:32:32.634
It's been a lot of great MCs, it's not just one or two.

00:32:32.634 --> 00:32:39.082
So where somebody places him on their list, I think that's personal To me.

00:32:39.082 --> 00:32:42.882
I think Eminem Can rap.

00:32:42.902 --> 00:32:46.654
My issue has always been what is he rapping about?

00:32:46.654 --> 00:32:48.339
Like so, chuck, you know Chuck D.

00:32:48.339 --> 00:32:49.713
He's been a great rapper.

00:32:49.713 --> 00:32:53.483
Like so, chuck, you know Chuck D has his line.

00:32:53.483 --> 00:32:55.327
I don't rhyme for the sake of riddling.

00:32:55.327 --> 00:33:00.787
When I hear him what I hear somebody rhyming for the sake of riddling, that's cool.

00:33:00.787 --> 00:33:05.807
But the MCs that I have always appreciated there was more depth to it.

00:33:05.807 --> 00:33:13.701
Like, eminem is really clever and, I think, very good at what he does and he's always been cool.

00:33:13.701 --> 00:33:20.172
I feel like a lot of people outside of him have tried to use him to make points.

00:33:20.172 --> 00:33:28.066
He didn't do it, but people were using him in his career, because he was white, to try and say things that he himself wasn't saying.

00:33:28.066 --> 00:33:28.767
As an MC.

00:33:28.767 --> 00:33:30.537
I think he's cool.

00:33:30.537 --> 00:33:31.900
Is he in my top five?

00:33:31.900 --> 00:33:33.463
No, is he in my top 10?

00:33:33.463 --> 00:33:46.472
No doesn't mean he's not a good MC, but I just have different standards when I think about the great MCs and certainly he's had some great records, but I'm just not willing to say he's the greatest ever.

00:33:47.715 --> 00:33:48.136
That's fair.

00:33:48.136 --> 00:33:49.599
I'm gonna start looking at it differently now.

00:33:50.642 --> 00:33:52.605
Oh, it took him to tell you look at a different.

00:33:52.605 --> 00:33:53.628
Been telling you for years.

00:33:55.215 --> 00:33:55.757
On his answer.

00:33:55.757 --> 00:33:57.580
You just told me like yeah, I don't fuck with his music.

00:33:58.021 --> 00:33:58.884
It's not okay.

00:33:58.884 --> 00:33:59.786
I love him.

00:33:59.786 --> 00:34:03.401
Some fathers, it's not Not fucking with his music.

00:34:03.401 --> 00:34:07.285
Again, he can rap for a second rap he's extremely good at it.

00:34:07.285 --> 00:34:09.159
But when he does it it annoys me.

00:34:09.159 --> 00:34:12.748
Like he's a rap-a-drap dude right like the whole song rap god.

00:34:12.748 --> 00:34:18.722
Like I'm glad that you can rap really fast and I can kind of sort of understand you.

00:34:18.722 --> 00:34:21.168
But I'm like, yeah, busted can do the same thing.

00:34:21.168 --> 00:34:24.161
Great, you're not impressed, I'm he's.

00:34:24.161 --> 00:34:25.885
He's like he's a bee at everything.

00:34:25.885 --> 00:34:27.007
He doesn't excel at one thing.

00:34:27.007 --> 00:34:28.922
He's just really good at putting words together.

00:34:28.922 --> 00:34:29.463
That's great.

00:34:29.463 --> 00:34:31.659
Is he gonna be in my top five?

00:34:31.659 --> 00:34:33.583
No, I'm sorry to tell you that.

00:34:33.583 --> 00:34:46.262
No, but am I gonna say, in a sense of Influencing hip-hop, he'll probably be in that, in that level, because without Eminem Drey doesn't break into those markets.

00:34:46.262 --> 00:34:50.905
Without Eminem you're not getting that halftime Super Bowl show.

00:34:50.905 --> 00:34:55.440
You need that presence for him to finally crack that glass ceiling.

00:34:55.782 --> 00:34:59.047
Like hip-hop has always grown slowly, like you always like.

00:34:59.047 --> 00:35:02.644
This quote the, the two pop line, the, the growth of roof and concrete.

00:35:02.644 --> 00:35:16.920
As much as they have tried to kill hip-hop by MTV not playing the videos by saying that they're bad influence, that they're destructive to society and children, misogynistic lyric, violence and everything else at the great.

00:35:16.920 --> 00:35:26.224
At this point, 50 years later, it's an influence and pop, art, music, fashion, culture.

00:35:26.224 --> 00:35:34.728
We've Almost been like an offshoot of culture and now we've come like completely ingrained inside of it.

00:35:34.728 --> 00:35:40.420
You cannot tell, from this point forward, the the culture of this country without it.

00:35:40.420 --> 00:35:45.048
We've touched every single branch, every tree that falls from it.

00:35:45.048 --> 00:35:49.025
What, what makes things fly, what those fashion designs?

00:35:49.025 --> 00:35:50.431
Why they want to mess with hip-hop artists?

00:35:50.431 --> 00:35:51.655
Because we carry the culture.

00:35:51.655 --> 00:35:57.007
We're the people that people want to watch and see that they want to look like and act like and be like.

00:35:57.007 --> 00:36:01.614
Before they weren't fucking with us like the hope, like like we're from the East Coast.

00:36:01.614 --> 00:36:05.045
Timberland was a construction boot.

00:36:05.045 --> 00:36:09.786
You just walk around in them, heavy-ass boots, right, we made them popular.

00:36:09.786 --> 00:36:15.108
Now they're coming out with different styles and colors and everything I said cuz we wanted it.

00:36:15.108 --> 00:36:24.007
And then those other kids from you know those nice super neighborhoods, they're walking around with Timberland, they're wearing fittings, they're doing the stuff that we did.

00:36:24.007 --> 00:36:30.934
That's why it matters and without Eminem, like that part, we can never quite grasp that audience.

00:36:30.934 --> 00:36:44.869

The Notorious PhD: Dr. Todd Boyd

Dr. Todd Boyd

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