Apathy – Where the River Meets the Sea

Our guest today is a hip hop legend with an improbable story raised by teenage parents in an economically destitute area of Eastern Connecticut at Bromley, better known as Apathy grew up obsessed with rap and hip hop app started his MC journey at the age of 15 by traveling to New York city for rap battles and ciphers, trying to make it as a white rapper before Eminem, Apathy quickly made a name for himself with incredible skills as a battle rap.

Almost got him shot and killed one night at the famous fever nightclub in the Bronx. After escaping death that night, he continued his journey as an emcee and became an independent recording artist, making his first appearance on the debut album from Jedi mind tricks. The rest, as they say is history.

Since that time app has toured the world as an independent artist and his work with some of the biggest labels and hip hop artists of all times such as DJ premium. Pete rock, Pharoahe Monch NAS, Snoop Dogg, Lincoln park, Busta rhymes, and many, many more Apathy continues to have a huge following all over the globe.

But most recently Greer has began a Greer as a top producing real estate agent. While at the same time, releasing critically acclaimed hip hop albums. This is going to be a fun one for my brother. Welcome to the run GPG. Yo, I’m so happy to be here right now, man. I’m really pumped. This is one of the podcasts that I actually really listened to in love.

So I’m very excited to be honest. Yeah. We’re excited to have you. I was telling you a few days ago that your, you know, your bio and your life may be one of the most unique and interesting I’ve ever read. You know, you’ve been through some stuff, brother. Right? So, I heard Ben Baller recently call himself the Forrest Gump of hip hop, which I think might actually be a perfect label for you.

However, I would definitely call you the Forrest Gump of real estate now, which we’ll we’ll we’ll talk about eventually. I used to hang out with Ben Baller in LA. Oh wow. Okay. Small world. You know, you did have an amazing, you know, career in hip hop, but first I want to get a bit more of the app Bromley stories.

Take us back to the beginning. Where are you from? Where did you grow up and how did your journey in hip hop begin? Connecticut is a state where people, the first thing that people think when they hear Connecticut is they think affluent rich 1% or, like, you know, what’s his name? The late night show host, David Letterman lives out here.

I think Kenny G lives out here and you know, all these different people. So people think this bridge is affluent. 1% or a majority of Connecticut is just not. And the, you know, the areas that are rich are the, the smaller percentage. And most of the Connecticut, a lot of Connecticut was old school, textile towns, you know, they, they had thread mills and they had textiles and all of these different things.

When all those things went out of business, everybody was poor. You know, and so there’s a lot of poor areas where it’s crazy to happen. And, also the cities like New Britain, New Haven, Bridgeport, or Hartford, obviously all of those areas are crazy. So they’re, they’re, they’re very crazy areas.

So people have this misconception about Connecticut, like it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, really super nice and it’s actually a wild place in a lot of different places. And when I grew up. I grew up in a town called Willimantic Connecticut. And, it was one of those places that was economically destitute. My parents were teenagers when they had me, very intelligent people, but, you know, they, we, we grew up tough.

We grew up welfare, government cheese, and you know, my whole family, they kind of grew up very blue collar working class. And, and that’s what it was. I remember back as far as being a little kid and you know, my father, we had a radio show here, a college radio show, and they would play hip hop. They would play, you know, Douggie fresh and slick Rick and all of these different things.

And my father was the coolest, man. He would stay up and tape. These shows with me, he would listen to hip hop. He would appreciate the lyrics with me. It wasn’t one of those things where he tried to scold me and, you know, tell me whatever. So he would go through that process with me. I remember we. He would stay up with me with a little boombox and he flipped the tape when, you know, the tape was getting to the end and I fell asleep cause the show would run late.

So he would stay up and taped the whole thing for me. So that was pretty cool, man. My uncle was into it. My uncle had a lot of hip hop, 40 fives. He was break dancing, all that. So I grew up when hip hop was, was, you know, at its infancy in, in watching that tape. Yeah. So that, that leads to my next question, which was, you know, what were your early influences in music?

Like what hip hop albums did you grew up listening to? Or did you even absolutely. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I grew up with a lot of stuff too, like classic rock and, you know, that’s what my family was really big in the classic rock, but hip hop wise, I remember the first thing that I remember hearing is Shaka Khan and Melly, Mel, I feel.

And I remember the intro, you know, Kim coming in, Shaka Khan, let me Rocky, let me be a Shaka Khan. And I was like, oh, what is this? You know what I mean? And so I was so enamored with it and I was so in love with it that I would walk around the house and be wrapping those lyrics. But I changed the lyrics. I’d be like, I’d be like, give me some chicken soup and the number of the bababa, you know what I’m saying?

And I would, I would do what’s what’s the equivalent of freestyling, but as a little, little kid, I had, you know, four or five, six years old. I had no idea what I was doing. So, you know, that’s where I fell in love with it. That’s where I decided that, you know, rapping was something that was in the cards for me.

I didn’t take it seriously though until like the nineties. That’s when I started writing my verses down and going really hard, but yeah, growing up, my, my influences would definitely one BMC, you know, originally Beastie boys and run DMC. I have super emotional attachments to my father. Got me. Both of those tapes.

My father had a big work van. It was this big light blue work van where he would, you know, he did carpet installation and we would drive around and it was so cool. I remember some. Bumping the Beastie Boys and my dad turned it up loud and ate Q in it. So it would bump. And I just felt like the coolest kid in the world, you know?

So when it’s summertime and I’m driving around, those are things that make me think of my father and how cool he was. Well, you know, as far as growing up Eric B and Rakim, public enemy, you know, KRS one boogie down productions, jungle brothers, all of those, you know, that’s, that’s originally what I started at.

And how did your journey in hip hop begin specifically? Like, did you start as an emcee right away freestyling or were you involved in another part of the culture? I find sometimes like artists, like, you know, they’re musicians, they’re rappers, you know, they’re MCs, but they, they were Graf writers or they were b-boys or something else.

Like, did you jump right in as a MC? Right. Well, yeah, I mean, I started out when I was starting to heavily participate, not just be a fan, but when I started to participate in my own. I was mostly an MC, but during this time period, the late eighties, early nineties, it wasn’t uncommon for you to live the culture and do multiple things.

Like I was a graph, right. And I was running with graph writers and it wasn’t uncommon to do multiple things. I could DJ a little bit, and it was pretty common to do. All of the elements because we were so in love with it. And we were so starved for it, it erupted so hard. And it was like a religion to us that we would do all of those elements.

But emceeing is totally what my thing was. You know, I, I would sit and read the dictionary and I would kill myself writing verses and, and listening to the guys who blew my mind. That is what I set the bar for. That’s what I strive for. Yeah, I love that. And you touched on it, like, what were those early years like for you, as you mentioned, you were trying to make a name as a white rapper before M and M.

So what was it like trying to establish a name and a reputation then? Well, when I grew up, I grew up around a lot of black kids, a lot of Puerto Rican kids. So nothing was weird to me. Nothing was different cause we all knew each other from growing up. So, matter of fact, I didn’t even know. I wasn’t allowed to say the N word until like the year 1993, because I was called that all my life, because I grew up on a block with mostly black families who are also integrated into my family as well through cousins and stuff like that.

So I didn’t really know that it wasn’t cool to be a white rapper at that point. I, you know, I grew up listening to pro black rap and being very cognitive of racism and systemic oppression, even at a young age. That is the rap that I grew up listening to the ex clans, the public enemy. So I was aware of what was going on at that time.

But I didn’t realize that it applied to me because my ale likes for the most part, weren’t really white people. That’s not who I was with, that wasn’t my peer group. So I didn’t really understand that. And when I started getting into the scene and going out to places. Where people didn’t necessarily know me super well.

That’s when I started feeling it. You know, when we started traveling to New York to go and ciphers, that’s when I started feeling it. And that’s when I was like, oh, damn, okay. I, you know, I gotta, I gotta watch what I’m doing is step lightly and pay attention to the way I carry myself. You know? And I, I remember the first time that I was on radio.

W H U S 91.7 in Storrs, Connecticut, which is the university of Connecticut campus back in around 1993 at the university of Connecticut, which is in, you know, stores, Connecticut, my mentor, a guy who ended up becoming my mentor, DJ boogie, Rockman of doula. He had me on his show and they were like big brothers.

You know, I was still like a little punk. And they were older than me and they had me come up to this show and they had me rhyme over a tribe called quest award tour. So I’m sitting there spitting and I’m dropping them bombs. Cause you know, once again, I didn’t know that that was a, a bad thing for me to do, even though I grew up with them in a pro black rap, I still didn’t think it applied to me to not say that word or that it would offend somebody.

So when I did, it was stereotypical. Record needle off the record, skirt, you know what I mean? And they went to commercials, they went to music break and they sang, and DJ boogie was like, do you know what you’re saying? Do you know what that word means? Do you know what this is about? Blah, blah, blah.

And he schooled me. He did me a great service by bringing that to my attention, schooling me, and probably saved me quite a few ass weapons along the way. And so I’m, I’m forever indebted and he became a great friend to me and a mentor to me. And, he’s a great guy. But after that, going to these ciphers in New York is where I really started establishing who I am in, in the path that I was taking.

Interesting story. Now that leads to the next question. I’m about to ask you, which is. You know, you ended up making a name for yourself in these battles, cyphers, and that led to a near death experience in the Bronx one night. Like what happened that night? Yeah. So we were always hungry to go out and, and do hip hop and like.

Nowadays. It’s, it’s tough to imagine because nowadays everybody is a rapper. Everybody has songs. Everybody has Spotify. Everybody has an artist page. So it’s tough to think of a world where everybody was not a rapper or an MC. And you were like a Jedi Knight back in the days. You know what I’m saying?

Because you were special when you walked into the party and people knew you had a name and knew who you were. People were like, oh, damn, here comes, blah, blah, blah. He might rock the mic tonight. You know what I mean? It was a big deal. So we went to New York. We were always trying to go out in different neighborhoods and connect with different people and find different ciphers.

We would just go out there without a plan. I mean, we were, we would go up there rock cycle. And then not be able to go home because Metro north stopped after a certain point. So we would literally ride the subway all night long and just pass out occasionally here and there with our backpacks tucked behind us, we would sleep on the subway.

So, one night we went out to the Bronx, to the, the, the classic club, the disco fever, and that’s the legendary club in the Bronx. Something was going on there. I don’t remember what it was, but it was me, Mike, and this dude named etcetera that we used to roll with, et cetera, was from. And we went out there and I remember everything like even we knew we wanted to get into clubs.

We stashed our pokers. We had little knives. We always carried little pokers in our pocket. So we stashed them over by these bushes. And then we start walking and we see a cipher out in front of disco fever. So we go over to the cipher, we’re listening to everybody and me and Mike are white. Mike looked like he’s Puerto Rican or something and et cetera as a black dude.

So we go in there and I’m persona. I’m like a white kid going. And I’m starting to wrap everybody else’s wrapping. So I’m starting to rap too, and I’m killing it. I’m seeing lyrics that they probably weren’t used to white dudes doing because prior to M and M their frame of reference was what vanilla ice, third base Beastie boys.

So it was a different thing at that point in time. So I’m spitting really ultra lyrical stuff and really aggressive Baddeley stuff. And these dudes. Furious. Some of them were entertained by it, but this one, dude, his boys were like, egging them on. They’re like, yo, these white boys killing you, bro. These white boys roasted you.

And this dude is getting angry and I’m seeing it. And then he lifts up his shirt and he’s got a little revolver. I’ll never forget. I saw a little revolver in his waistband. And he was like, yo, I’m about to set it. I’m about to set it. And he’s like pulling for his gun. And my man opened, Mike thought.

Lyrics. He thought he meant he was going to set it with rats. So Mike goes, you’ll set it that, bro, what are you waiting for? Set it. And I’m like, shut up. So my main etcetera grabs us both. We literally ran into this bodega. We run into the front side of the bodega and we bounce out the side of the bodega and then we’re running to the train, like the movie, the warriors, where they’re running away from the Turnbull ACS.

So we ran to the train to get in there. Tell Mike the story and Mike’s like, oh, damn, for real. I didn’t even know. But yeah, man, we left our pokers behind and all that, you know, we just had to get out of there, but that was a crazy time in New York was a really wild time. It’s tough to explain to people. Think about New York in the nineties and they’re like, oh yeah, cool.

We’ll take and clean the smalls, not in New York, which was wild in the dark and creepy back in the nineties, dead ass. It was a different energy in a different vibe. And I kinda missed the dirty New York of the eighties. Personally. I missed that.

Where did the name Apathy come from? Apathy came from my father, who was a very deep dude. My father was like the white version of furious styles. So when I was a teenager, I left my mom’s to go live with my dad because I was getting in trouble. Then my dad would go for walks with me and he would talk to me about everything.

And we had one conversation and I was like, ah, I don’t love that. I hate it. And he said, well, hate isn’t the opposite of love. Apathy is. And I said, what is it? He said, go look it up. That was his thing. He told me to go look it up in the dictionary. So I went to the dictionary, looked it up and the word was crazy to me because I really tried to think about what that word meant.

And it kind of stuck with me. And I put the name on it for two reasons. A because I wanted to bring attention to the word. Because now the word is popular, it wasn’t popular back in the day. Number two, it was a play on words of me being a young MC saying, you know, I’m not feeling so that, that was one of the reasons as well.

But, those are the two reasons, primarily that I took in. Well, it is unique and it’s memorable. So that’s good. Now you did eventually, make your debut on a Jedi mind tricks album, which is crazy to think about, I can’t think of a cooler way, you know, to break into the a w than on a Jedi mind tricks album.

I mean, they were, I mean, they were cool amongst the younger underground, but they were still, you know, respected by the mainstream too. I mean, it was the perfect mix there. So can you tell us how that happened? And then, from there, how your career. Right. That radio station that I told you about before I became a staff member there as a teenager, and I have my own show in one day.

The vinyl for their EAP came out. It was called the Amber probe EAP. And, I get this vinyl and I put this vinyl on and I hear these guys rapping about this real esoteric metaphysical stuff, which is what me and my crew were rapping about at that time to them. We thought we were the only ones. We were really surprised to hear anybody else doing this.

So, he had an email. On the vinyl, right? That was the only method of contact. So I wrote to him and we started talking on the phone and shit. I’m talking about Vinny, passive Jedi, and mind tricks. We started chopping it up on the phone and talking all the time and we would rap for each other. And then at one point he was like, yo, listen, we’re recording the LP.

You should come down. I want to get you on this record, take a train down to Philly and, come down here. So, and, and at that time I was dating a Canadian MC name attorney who is a pretty well-known and, her, this, her, I dated her when she was like 17, 18, like I, and I was, no, she was a year younger than me, so she was super young, but she came to live with me for a while in Connecticut.

And we took a train down to. And we went out there and started recording with paths and we did three songs and we were rocking in the producer’s house. His name was Stoop, the enemy of mankind. And I remember it being like a million degrees in there. And I remember the stoop system. His older sister was furious that we were there for some reason, she just wasn’t feeling it.

So the whole vibe was messed up and we’re sitting there trying to record in the bedroom. And it was just really crazy, man, but we had a lot of fun. We were out in love park and Philly with all these professional skateboarders. So that’s how it happened, man. And I ended up on three songs on that album and it was unbelievable.

The rush that I got. When I saw the vinyl come out and I was actually on vinyl, it was beyond explanation. It was just super crazy, man. I can’t even explain how incredible that was to me at that point. That’s awesome. What a cool way to make a debut? Like I said, I think everybody who had some knowledge of hip hop at the time or was into it, you know, thought Jedi mind tricks were.

The coolest, you know, and it was an interesting time in the history of hip hop at that time. Because you know, it wasn’t, maybe it was starting to become a little bit more mainstream, but I think corporations in record labels are starting to see the popularity of hip hop exploding. And that’s why there were so many mainstream collaborations at that time, during that decade, you know, you signed to Atlantic records and so on.

Is that how you saw it? That’s that was like kind of the, the apex of when things started to really. You know, I exploded at that time. Well, here’s the thing, the interesting thing is, towards the end of the nineties, something started to happen. Actually, I’ll I’ll even be, I’ll even give you more credit than that.

It was like mid nineties to the end of the nineties, we had something called the indie boom in the Indy. Boom was all of these independent artists. We were trying to emulate our hero. You know, digging in the crates, the Wu Tang’s, the bootcamp clicks, all the MCs. We wanted to do what they were doing, our big brothers.

So we started to put out records ourselves and we started linking up with independent labels and they started selling. It took off like college radio was a big proponent of that in college radio helped Excel that and propagate our music. It just really blew up. So, you know, guys like us who were young, we’re sitting there, we would give a record label, two songs, right.

A side B side, and there would be the clean, instrumental, dirty, you know, acapella and same thing on the BC. They would advance us like teenagers, like five to $10,000 for one of those singles. And then we also had friends who would do it themselves and make all the money themselves. But it was like, this is crazy.

It was a whole new world for us. Cause we’re like, yo, what? We would have done this for free. You know what I’m saying? You could have given us anything, we were so stupid and just excited to get the props and get the acknowledgement and get the place in history that we would have done it for anything.

And these labels started to come out and pay us and they stand, they started to pay us for shows. I’ll never forget when I won my first battle and they gave me $400 for a battle. I wanted Rhode Island and I was like, oh, I tried to play it. Cool. But then I remember getting in the car and being. Yo, this is Christ $400 for, I would’ve done this for free.

I would have paid to get here and do this. So it was wild at that point, during that indie boom, and that’s what started to happen with the independent market. That’s why we, we, we kind of started to flourish at that point in time. And then later the major started taking, viewing us as a pool of. Talent to start drawing from.

So some of us came out of that. You know, some of us got deals. I got a deal. I got signed at the same time around the time that little brother got signed, we relabeled mates, me and Lupe fiasco were label mates. We, we came up together. You know what I’m saying? Like there was a whole bunch of us who got that attention.

You know, we always had that as a goal in mind to get signed to a major, because we thought we were going to change the world. We had the noble idea of damn bro, I’m going to get signed to a major, and I’m going to make the next Illmatic. I’m going to have a premiere there. I’m going to do this. And I’m going to make the most classic hip hop and bring hip hop back.

You know what I’m saying? And that’s not how it went once these ANRs got their meat hooks in us, we were just, you know, we were lost, bro. Like it was crazy the stuff that they wanted us to do, the stuff that they had us do and the stuff that I wouldn’t go for. So you had a really interesting, solo career, but you also had crazy collaborations and guest appearances.

What, what does your creative process look like? Like do you think of words and phrases and write them down as they come to you? Or do you start with a beat? What does that process like? It’s always different there. There’s no, I don’t have a formula. Like other people have formulas. I’ll write a verse first sometimes, and I’ll have a verse that I hold on to for seven years and then find the right fit for it later one day and be like, oh damn, you know what?

This verse would be good for this. Then there’s times where I sit down with the beat, then there’s times where I’ve written songs and I don’t even, they wrote themselves so fast. I swear to God, it was. Some cosmic connection and it just wrote itself. I have this song called check the check, which is one of my biggest songs and is produced by evidence.

And I don’t even remember writing that song. That song literally wrote itself. So it’s always different. But I think the one thing that all my friends in the music industry who work with me can attest to is I’m like the fastest writer. Like I write super fast when it comes to doing this. I’m always like the, the guy who finishes first and then I’m hanging out, maybe trying to help people with some bars for their joints.

You know what I’m saying? So it’s weird how it comes. It just comes out of the ether for me. You know what I mean? It’s the inspiration that just hits me. It’s like I’m channeling something. So, so that’s how it’s always been for me. And in these words, I have to give the credit though to the way I write to the guys who I studied.

You know what I mean? I studied them so seriously. Other people listen to them. And other people liked it and there were fans of it, but I studied it to like the molecular level. I picked everything. They said, why they put certain words together, the alliteration, the phonetics, all of these things.

And that’s why I write this way. So next question. Have you ever had a writer’s block or worse yet? Have you ever frozen on stage or forgot, you know, lyrics in a battle? Yeah, I forget, you know, I forgot the lyrics on stage at the performance, but it’s like, I just kind of keep it moving. I’ll either freestyle it or try to like, bring it back or just joke with the crowd.

It’s never awkward. I like to joke with the crowd a lot, you know what I mean? Like I’m, I’m really personable and chill with the crowd. It’s never awkward, like, Aw man, I did a da. I’m like, well, there goes that, like, you know what I’m saying? Like, or a freestyle off the top of the dome or something like that.

But, yeah, man. It’s it’s, I’ve had writer’s block like a long time ago, but I haven’t had it in a very long time. It’s just, I, I feel like if I don’t feel like writing, I just don’t right now, but, w w there used to be right as black back in the day and he used to drive me insane. It was very frustrating.

How did you get out of it? Stop writing. I would stop writing and just leave it alone and wait till it hit me. And I think listening to other rappers too, would inspire me because, you know, I remember back in the nineties, there was this there’s this DJ Tony touch and Tony touch at a 50 MCs mixtape.

And every time I would listen, I would pretend. All right. Imagine if I’m about to come in, what am I going to say to impress all these people? You know, so I think I use that mind frame to what inspire me to want to impress people and say some flights, but, that, that, that was like a long time ago, but I, I think just put the pen down, like whenever I was dealing with writer’s block, I would just stop writing.

It’s good advice. The next question I have is about the best live moment. I mean, you’ve, you’ve performed live all over the world for many years. I don’t know how many, you know, live shows you’ve actually done, but do you have a best moment? You know, they come to the top of your mind when you think about your best moment of life and actually your worst month.

Live may be the most embarrassing moment on stage, right? I think the best moment, it’s, it’s tough to say, man, I’ve had so many highs and so many shows wanting to be with each other. I think when we started doing the big, big festivals and, you know, And we saw, we will be performing in front of 50,000 people. And we saw how many people knew the words to our records and how many people were going crazy.

And I mean, when you see thousands of people who know the words to your song and they’re, they’re moving their hands where you tell them to move and they’re so excited and it, that. Tons and tons and tons and tons of fans wearing your shirt in the audience. That’s like the high that you, you just, I can’t even describe it.

It’s unbelievable. But, my worst moments on stage were accidents. You know what I’m saying? Like there was one moment and I cringe at telling this, but I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, I didn’t really know, but I remember we were in salt lake city and they had these, I was with styles of beyond who were part of Fort minor with Mike Shinoda in that.

And we were rocking on stage. And there was this. Like a big metal barrier. And, everybody was in the front and I was really hyped and I’m hyping everything up. And, I saw a girl who I thought was sitting and I’m like, yo, what the fuck are you doing sin? I said, get up. I said, come on, get up. And I’m looking at her and pointing at her.

And then I go near the barrier and she’s in a wheelchair. And I was just like, no, when I tell you, I wish I could disintegrate. I wish I could have just vanished and disintegrated. She was super cool when I spent some time chatting with her after, but wholly, I had no idea. And, I just wish that I could’ve detonated at that point because I just felt so terrible, but I just didn’t know.

And then, you know, what occurred to me later? Like you, why would somebody be sitting at a concert like that? You should have put that together, but I was just so hyped and caught in the moment on stage that I didn’t realize that. And that was just a moment where I just wished, oh my God, to listen. The insensitivity of Apathy.

I mean, you know, insensitive. Now, like as mentioned, you know, you had some pretty awesome collaborations over the years, you know, what was your favorite? You know, you’ve worked with a DJ premier, Pete rock, NAS, Snoop dogg. Do you have a favorite collaborator? Not like, like working with premier, working with in, in that particular song with Pharoahe Monch and Pete rock together, highlight of my career, absolute highlight, like working with Snoop dope, super dope.

We weren’t in the studio like that, but I met Snoop on several occasions. And then when I wrote the record, it was through Scoop the Ville. We worked on the record and that record took a year to come to fruition. They didn’t want to give any percentage. They didn’t want to give any royalties.

So we held our ground and said, well, forget it. Then we were not trying to do it. So a year later they came back and were like, all right, cool. We’ll take the record. So working with Snoop was incredible, but DJ premiere, man, DJ premiere, Pete rock Pharaoh. All the guys from the nineties mean the absolute world.

To me, I’m more of a fan than the average fan. I’m a psycho, this is my religion. So even working with guys like the Legion who are more obscure, more, more people don’t know and YAG Fu. and also, you know, even big, big groups, like high row, like being down with those guys. It’s literally my dream come true.

Like it’s beyond this, this hip hop thing is religion to me. Truly, truly. I worship it. I love it. I’m obsessed with it. And working with those guys. Is the absolute pinnacle of anything. And it is also the reason why I believe manifestation must be real and manifesting your destiny must be real. There’s no other explanation for it.

I agree.

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Okay. So who would be your dream collaboration today? Anyone you’d like to work with like a bucket list project, right? Any of the Wu Tang guys, man, I have not worked with any of the wool guys. I’d love to work with meth. I love to work with Ghostface. Other than that, I’d love to work with NAS. Naas will probably be.

My dream. I did kind of work with NAS. I did a remix for nods that I ended up doing. They wanted me to put a verse on, but it wasn’t like I was in the studio and started something from scratch. I remixed the record with him and did a verse for them, which they paid me for NAS, you know, all of them, they, I got paid to do that with him.

It’s just, I wish I was in the studio and recorded it. Yeah. I also noticed a lot of Canadian references or bars in your music. Why is that? Canada’s like my favorite place in the world, man. Like I’m in love with Canada. It’s like a, a nicer, more pleasant version of America. That’s more calm. So when we started touring in Canada, At first, we didn’t know what to make of it.

And we’re like, damn, yo, everybody’s nice here. They are trying to play us out. Like, what is this? And then it just turns out. Everybody’s just really cool. It’s up there. We’ve done a Canadian cousins tour. We’ve done the escape, the Canada tour. We’ve done all of these two. We’ve made tons of Canadian merchandise. I’ve made a lot of references in songs and shouted it out.

You know, I spent tons of time in Canada. I really, really love it there. And hopefully, I’ll end up there one day. You know what I’m saying? When. When I’m older, I wind up in can’t retire and Canada. Super cool. We’d love to have your app . What do you think has been the biggest contributor to your success or longevity in the game?

I think consistency. I think that I take this seriously. I’ve never, ever, ever cut corners or just tried to hurry songs out. If you ask OSI who I’ve worked with or U S self, they all know I’m like a tortured soul maniac, psycho perfectionist, DJ premier. Who’s my very good friend told me that the two hardest people to work with in the industry, because there’s such wacko, perfectionist or Kanye west and Apathy, DJ premier said this.

So I think that. Even so, I don’t know how to take that. I think it’s a compliment, but you know what I’m saying? Like, I’m just a perfectionist man. So I think the consistency of me being like that, I think my fans just think they know they’re going to get something good and I never let them down, I think.

Yep. And the next question I have is what advice would you give a newcomer or, you know, a young guy trying to make you younger, I’ll try to make a name in the hip hop game. What advice would you give? I would say work very hard, be consistent and do it for love. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen for you.

Don’t view this as I have to do this to blow. Or else my life is over it. I mean, it’s lottery odds, man. It’s not always about talent. Sometimes the planets have to align for you to arrive. And sometimes that doesn’t always happen. I’ve met thousands of artists who have incredible songs who have amazing stuff and no one has ever heard them because it just wasn’t meant to be.

So I would say just hardcore, super hard working. Humility and consistency and just doing it for the love. Don’t do it because you think it’s going to be your meal ticket. Cause that’s not going to work. That’s great advice. Now tell us about your latest album, where the river meets the sea. Can you tell us what inspired it and what it’s.

Absolutely my life, life hit me so hard, around like my father got cancer, my father and I were very, very, very close, like he’s he was my everything, and he got cancer and he was, he was dying and it gave me massive anxiety. Around the time when I recorded my album honky Kong, it was like, hell for me, it was hell I couldn’t leave.

I was a Gora phobic. If people watch the check to check video, That doing that check to check. Me going outside and leaving my house. Every moment that you’re watching that video of me being out, I was in pain. I could feel my molecules and my cells were just in pain because of the agoraphobia that I had.

It was, it was, I was absolute hell. I felt terrible. At that time, my father was dying. It was accelerating pretty fast. And everything was messed up. And then I had pancreatitis and I almost died. 2012. I was in the hospital in critical condition, missed my father’s funeral. Then my wife and I got married, then I had two kids.

All of those things that happen in life are so profound to me. And I would just drive around thinking about stuff. I didn’t get to go to my father’s funeral. My father doesn’t have a grave site. My father didn’t get to see what my kids looked like. All of that was burning a hole in my soul and in my heart and in my brain.

And I had to write it. I had to get it out. That’s why I made those songs. And when I made that album, I realized I didn’t want to make an album where every fucking song was all doom and gloom about my dad dying and my kids being born. So I tried to fill it up with stuff that matched, but those songs in particular, I had to get out those emotions because they were just bottled up and they were killing.

So right in that music and doing that was cathartic. You know, I mean, there’s lines in there where I said, I swear to God that I’m crying while I’m writing this. How can a demon try to teach an angel righteousness? You know, talking about my kids and all that stuff legit. I was right. I was leaking right in that, just getting that out, getting that poison out.

So that’s, that’s what the album is about in the title. The river is your life. You know what I’m saying? Your lifespan. That’s why, that’s why that old song row, row, row your boat. People think that’s a kid song. That’s a deep ass song, man. Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Your stream of consciousness life is, but a dream life is, but a dream we’re here for a finite small amount of.

So you have this river of consciousness, this river of light that you’re traveling down. And then until you get to the sea, which is the vast expanse of infinity, you have your life to go down the stream, which is your time. And everybody’s allotted that time in this life. And then it goes out to the vast expanse and actually literally right here, out the window, I.

Where the Thames river dumps out into the block, the island sounds into the Atlantic ocean. So I live directly where the river meets the sea too. So that meant that as well. Now, the other crazy thing about you is you’re also a top producing real estate agent. How and why did you get into real estate?

Two, two reasons. First of all, when my wife and I were looking at homes, the real estate agents were so. And there was a multiple that we worked with. They weren’t listening to us. They weren’t giving us proper knowledge and education. That I was so confused during the process that I’m like, I don’t know what the fuck is going on or what this is for or what that is.

And why are they springing this on me at this point in time? You know what I’m saying? Like maybe I could have done more research, fellow busy guy. So I’m like, wait a minute. Closing costs. How do you figure these out in Dah, dah dah. And those were all that sprung on me at the last minute. So I told my wife, I said, you know, I can’t believe this industry sustains itself.

This is unbelievable to me. I, you know, I have a Larry David moment. I said, one day, I’m going to be a realtor. I swear to God, I will, I can do this. So. And, you know, my partner and I, with music, we run a very tight ship. We’re very organized. We’re very methodical people, with how we’ve run our independent label for so long.

The second part of wanting to become a realtor was him. And I would do tours. We do these big tours and have these huge piles of cash. Then I’d make all this money and then I’d come home and just whittle away at the pile, whittle away at the pile, whittle away at the pile. And I’m like him and I both know.

We’ve got to start investing our money and we decided we don’t really want to go the stock market route. You know, we don’t want to go, just go ham on stocks. So we’re like, we decided after a long conversation, we’re like, let’s do real estate. And he’s like, you know, I’ll fund certain stuff and blah, blah, blah, you get your license.

And, and, you know, you’ll, you’ll handle this and learn this and that. So we were gonna, you know, double-team that operation like that. So I went and got my license. And as I’m going through the tests and, and, you know, I didn’t graduate high school when I was going through the testing. And when I was learning about everything, I was like, this is fantastic.

And I’m so proud of myself that I’m actually doing this at school. The class was tough, man. I don’t know if everybody felt like that, but learning all of that dumb minutia and all the dumb shit that doesn’t really matter. And then when you get to the test, none of that, the year lead paint was banned is not in the test and how many square feet are in an acre is not in the test.

And nothing that makes sense is not in the test. So. I’m like, God damn. And then when I finally passed, because I didn’t pass the first time and when I finally passed, I was like, this is incredible. And then I got into it. And when I finally started selling and I started being like, oh my God, I know what I’m doing.

And I know that I’m doing it for the right reason because I’m helping people and I’m not trying to just have a commission and just Jack their money. I want to help these people. And I want to get them into a house that they have. Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever with their kids in. And they have Thanksgiving and they have family over that meant the world to me, that I helped those people move into those homes.

That would be their life. And that meant all of the difference to me. And I said, I remember telling myself, I said, yo, we’re still going to do investments, but I love this man. I’m in love with this. Like, this is. I don’t really even want to tour anymore. We’re still going to tour, you know, but I’m like, this is, this is my new thing.

This is how I felt about hip hop when I was a teenager. So, and that’s where I’m at now. That’s, that’s what, that’s what I’m in love with now. I love talking about it. I love helping people. I love meeting other realtors. I love the whole process of it. And I think it’s grossly underrated as an intimate connection from client to realtor.

Yeah, real estate can be a lot of fun, bro. What projects are you working on? I am working on an album with this producer named Sue Bangers, who is absolutely incredible. He’s worked with some huge heavyweights and he’s a good friend of mine. Been a good friend of mine for a long time. And we have an album with Jayda kiss on it.

Black fought, um, incredible, incredible album. RJ pane self-titled is on it. I have great, great guest appearances on it. So I’m going to be dropping that before the end of the year. I’m still doing music, but most importantly I’m trying to build something to educate and inspire realtors, younger realtors.

You know what I’m saying? A form in a collective that’s going to form like Voltron or the Wu Tang clan of realtors to inspire and give people a realistic perspective. Here’s what I hate. And I’ll just be honest. I hate fluff flexing showing off arrogance from realtors. I hate creating a fake facade that is not realistic.

That is not real for realtors because younger realtors who are coming in lose sight of what is real and what they should be doing. So I am creating a space to educate. To talk with and build with the younger realtors who want to come in and make this a great industry. Very cool. Looking forward to those and looking forward to the, the new album.

Is there a name for it yet? Yeah, it’s called king of gods. No second, which is an illusion to a common RA who is the king of gods. There is no second. The number one. Okay. And if you weren’t a hip hop legend, a hip hop icon. Apathy, what would you have been oceanography? I would do oceanography or I would work with people with mental disorders, and, and maybe people who, you know, had, I don’t know, down syndrome or, or, or something like that.

Those are the things that I would do. Here’s one app that’ll make you think this app here’s one. That’ll make you think if you could have dinner with any three people in history past or present, who would they be and why? Oh, mark. Cause he was just a brilliant mind. He was really fascinating, a hilarious guy too, from what I gather that I mean, you know, manly P hall, cause he was a brilliant esoteric outside the box thing.

And also Carl Sagan cause Carl Sagan is just, he’s one of my favorites of all time. One of my favorite writers, one of my favorites, he’s just incredible. So I think those three guys would be pretty awesome. I mean, I feel like one lesson I’ve learned is a lot of entertainers will let you down. You know what I’m saying?

And it’s not always great to meet your heroes. So I think those guys are a pretty safe lineup of people who I’d like to hear what they have to say. Yeah. That’s a pretty interesting table. Imagine that. Yeah. Yeah. Mine would be. Kanye West, Donald Trump and Apathy. That’d be my, I would be like, who brought me here?

Why am I here? Why am I here with these guys? Yeah. Okay. Here here’s two questions left on the app. The first is you’re opening a bottle of champagne a year from now celebrating something you’ve accomplished. What would that be? Making a million dollars a year in one year in one. Okay. All right.

That’s legit. Sometimes I ask people that question and they, they, they can’t answer that. You know, it all comes down to goals. And now here’s the final question. Have you thought about your place in hip hop or music history? Like what’s the legacy of app Bromley? Like when all is said and done, what do you want to be remembered for hip hop?

Very seriously. Hip hop is not. Just something that’s just fun to me. Hip hop is not, I want people to know how much I valued it and how much it meant to me. You know, hip hop is woven into the fabric of who I am. It is who I am. And it’s, it’s, it’s everything to me, you know, I mean, hip hop is up there with my family and with everything else, it’s everything that I’ve ever had.

It’s a majority of my memories. It’s a majority of my motivation. It made it. So I live the life that I do. It is everything, you know, it, it, hip hop is the glue in the fabric that has structured my life. Totally. Credible to my man. It was an absolute honor to get to know you better and hear your story.

What inspires you, your creative process as we talked about and all that history of hip hop, right? With, and its current state as well. So that was a fun one for me. And I know our listeners and subscribers will like it too. They’re going to really enjoy it. Love you, man. That was a fantastic interview.

Thank you, man. Thank you. Everything.