there's no such thing as a bad experience there's experiences you don't like and they hug and they hurt right but to define something as a bad experience my father was really you know strict on order um organization and the uh incremental completion of tasks you know um and you know also combined with my mother's push on on education uh as a really young child you know we had to put hospital
corners on our beds and our shoes were lined up you know so and you know at at six years old we were we were forced to think along those military lines um and everything was a mission to my father like you know never there was nothing that was um a basic task you weren't just gonna wash the dishes you know it was a mission you know that had to be completed with um you know military
precision you know down to how much dishwashing liquid you're using and how much the bottle cost and if you use that much and how many dishes do you wash with that amount of dishwashing liquid and how long are you going to be able to use this dishwashing bottle so you can relate that to how much work you have to do to be able to watch that many your dad sounds indian that's more that is intense yeah you
know so it was really you know his mind was like that and i took you know we always take the things we hate the most from our parents but you know from that the the gift of of structure and the gift of breaking tasks down you know you said you know you set the goal but the breaking the tasks down into smaller manageable pieces was a thing that i came out of my childhood with um
you know for for example you met jl yeah yeah so i told when i when i said i wanted to i wanted to be the biggest movie star in the world you know and i was 18 or so i haven't met i want to be the biggest movie star in the world so the first thing that we did is we looked at okay well what are the top 10 movies of all time because if you want to be the biggest movie star in the world you're going to have to
make the biggest movies in the world so we said well what are the top 10 movies so we looked at the top 10 movies we said well what are the patterns what are the patterns in the top 10 movies and at the time 10 out of 10 were special effects movies and 9 out of 10 were special effects movies with creatures and eight out of ten were special effects movies with creatures and a love story
so you know for that's where the bent for me towards sci-fi movies came from the recognition of the patterns of sci-fi creatures and a love story so that became what we were looking for with everything and then independence day was a no-brainer and then men in black was you know behind that and it it's it's that kind of uh systemized algorithm yes right exactly looking for what's the
what is the pattern you know and that's that's uh you know one of the one one of the gifts my father uh uh stuck me with coming coming out of childhood yeah this is one of my favorite parts about talking to you because of this ability to to turn those into gifts yeah and and i i want to just emphasize that point to everyone who's listening and watching again because i think we're living in a time right now where
there's a lot of bitterness towards parents and what we've received and some and rightly so as well like some things are you know quite hard to deal with that level of trauma etc but at the same time when we start looking at our lives this way not in not in a fake way or in genuine way but but really start to process some of these things to see the powers that it gave us absolutely well
all the superheroes that we all love in sci-fi movies they all got their powers from bad things yeah exactly no one ever had something good happened to them and then they like for spider-man he got bit by a spider yeah like all the superheroes we all love and worship all got their powers from something bad happening to them you know it's really difficult to say that to someone yeah in the
in the middle of the the throws and you should have added experience yeah we've talked about that right but you know from sitting on this side of the experiences that i've shared i you know in in my life and in my experience um [Music] there's there's there's no such thing as a bad experience right there's experiences you don't like and they hug and they hurt right but to define something as a bad
experience for for me um has not been true everything that's ever happened to me in my life that at the time um was deeply traumatic and and debilitating you know there's there's you know been only two times in my life when i contemplated suicide wow you know there's been two times in my life um you know the the once was when my my uh mother and father uh separated when my parents broke up and i you know
i was 12. and you know that was one of the only you know serious times in my life that i contemplated suicide but even out of that as i look back on that the pain of that experience cultivated devotion in my life to my family and i just never wanted to have my children suffer that and of course the you know the i got divorced with from cherie so that was i was recreating that situation
but it it woke me up in a way that forced me to try to connect with my children so the the negative experiences or the things that were awful at the time there you know there's there's always the other side of the coin and in my experience i've cultivated uh only positive things out of the most negative experiences of my life my my my father's death um and the six weeks up to my father's
death was probably the most formative time in my life and as painful as it was and as difficult it wasn't all the stuff that came up during the time i still it it was a powerful formative positive experience in my life tell us a bit about that if you don't mind about why you felt it was formative and because i think a lot of people go through the loss of their parents and you know we've talked about this like
the idea of like sometimes people regret of what they did or didn't say to them yeah yeah yeah or maybe what they expected of their parent what was it that was so powerful that allowed you to feel that way about that moment because um i got a i got a gift that some people don't get and it was that the doctors told us he had six weeks to live right so and then he lived for four months
right so i i got a warning so most peop you know most people don't get a warning you just get the call one day and you just you just didn't get a chance um and when i found out that he was dying um it just by the grace of god was in the middle of the shooting i was doing a movie called collateral beauty and it was about a guy dealing with the death of his daughter so i was into the
tibetan book of living and dying and um reading all the uh was it elizabeth kubler uh just reading all the all this stuff about death so i've been programmed for six months and i had read and studied all of this all these books about death and grief and dying and then i get the message and i was like i said you know i sat down with my father and of course i had all of my traumas and all of my issues and
everything with them but i had also been six months of programming of all of the things that you're supposed to do you know to prepare yourself for the death of a loved one and you know so i sat with him and we we talked about everything so i said everything that i wanted to say and we we got to those six weeks and when we got to those six weeks uh we were clear but then he lived for another
three months so what happened was every meeting every time i saw him i was flying back to la but every every time i saw him um was like oh thank god yeah and then every time we say goodbye we made sure we said a good thorough full goodbye because we knew at any moment that could it could actually be the last goodbye right and but the lesson was it's always like that when we say goodbye we can't know if
this is the last time we will ever see you should never greet someone casually or say goodbye to someone casually and that lesson came from that experience every moment was so rich every time we saw each other and every time we said goodbye we made sure it was a good thorough full goodbye but that's how you're supposed to live every day anyway every time you leave your house could be the last time
you're supposed to like be in the richness of your hellos and goodbyes and thank yous you know and you know so i learned that lesson um with my father and then when he when he passed it was easy we were we were finished you know and just the lesson of that kind of presence and that kind of attention and that kind of recognition that tomorrow's not promised you know and just getting getting shaken out of
thinking that you're going to have you know tomorrow anybody who hasn't spoken to their parents or their brother or their cousin that they had a thing with or their ex and they don't talk anymore call them right now you just don't like don't think you're gonna have a chance to call them to to mar to tomorrow or next week and it's like that that opportunity with my father changed every relationship
in my life i i've cleaned all of the relationships in my life to no regret i do not want someone to be gone and i wish i had and wish i could have and um i'm i'm just i'm not doing that in my life that's beautiful man thank you for sharing that that's that's just hearing you say that i think there's a lot of people who needed to hear that and i'm hoping everyone's gonna pick up the
phone and message and if that person's not here anymore still write them a letter right absolutely right if they're not here anymore and you didn't get to say all of that write a letter read it out to them read it to a picture of them if that's what it takes allow yourself to share and express don't hold it in and hold it back because somehow that energy will still reach
that person and that energy's left you too so absolutely you know even if you can't call someone up today make sure you make sure you still follow the same practice because yeah it's it's just not it's never worth it it's never worth it it's just never worth it never worth it and and i love that idea of valuing each hello and goodbye absolutely and not taking it for granted or taking it lightly you never know
whatever's gonna happen right you just have no idea and unfortunately we we we see it this is this is the um there's actually a beautiful i don't know if we ever talked about this there's a beautiful piece in the mahabharata which is the gita is a small part of and one of the students asked the teacher he said what's the most amazing thing in the world like what's the most incredible
thing in the world and the teacher responds and says the most incredible amazing thing in the world is that we see people leave all around us but we never think it's going to be us i never like so you see it and you have that moment again and again and then you lose someone in your life and you think oh that could be me or you could be someone else and you live like that for a day yeah and then the
complacency sets back in absolutely tell us a bit about you know you've been studying world religions and spiritual paths for for a long time and the first time i officially reached out to you and your team and everyone which was a few years back now was because i saw that you'd been reading the gita and the gita was obviously the book that i read and studied so deeply and and fell in love
with and after having studied world religions myself too and and i've i've had beautiful experiences reading the bible and the quran and and the gita and so when i saw you talking about it when you were in india i was just like wow like this is amazing like i'm already a huge fan i love will smith like how is will reading the guitar i was like how did that even happen and then when i got
to know you and jada and spoken family i realized that you'd taken on a challenge to like study a world religion every year and tell us about that and what you learned along the way what were some of the traditions that stood out in your journey uh that that and what did you learn from them whether it was the kabbalah or even scientology all those because you've shared so many beautiful lessons with me
from what you've studied yeah and i'd love to pass them on so what what was uh i guess probably in the the first 10 years of our marriage that was uh me and jada's bonding right so every year we would pick a spiritual tradition and we would study it all all the way through how did you even start doing that like because when i hit when i heard you did that i think jada told me first him
when i heard you did that i was just like i was i was just it just took me a back because i've almost you don't come across that all the time and i i was lucky enough to study world religions my father started encouraging me when i was about 14 to start reading spiritual books and i i dated a muslim girl who asked me to read the quran that's how i read the quran which was a wonderful
experience of my life at 16 i read the bible because we would celebrate christmas and i'd feel guilty that we celebrated christmas but i didn't hadn't read the bible so i started going to church on christmas and then reading about christ in the bible and i just absolutely fell in love with the scripture and then i was just reading so many different books and finally i came back to the gita which was the book i
was brought up with but yeah tell me about even why you and jada decided to do that so i don't even know how it developed as a thing i know um uh when we got married we were trying to decide you know what what church we were going to get married and were we going to get married in baltimore or philly and would would it who was going to be the the priests you know and you know so gamey had a different
religious background than gigi you know you know so we were trying to figure all of that kind of stuff out and and jada didn't want to do any of that jada wanted for she and i to go to a mountain you know and you know pledge our love and devotion to one another to god without you know she felt like we we weren't going to um adhere to this specific religious tradition we would
just be picking it for our her mother or my grandmother or something to try to figure that out so um i think the discussion about the the religious background we would raise our children in is what came up uh when we were when we first got married um and she grew up in a thing called the ethical society in in baltimore and they would honor the the different religions um
and my background i i grew up i went to uh baptist church um i went to a catholic school and some somewhere in that first decade of our marriage we were like oh wouldn't it be hot if we could say that we had read cover to cover all of the major holy books um and we we started with the the bible and i just remember seeing her bible was mark you know how i do my books now you see how like all my books are
highlighted all the way through and you know she completed the entire bible you know seven months before me right so now it's on right so then when it came to time for the for the quran i was like i was i wanted to win yeah right [Laughter] but you know so we would take a year and we would study all of these traditions as a you know really as a way of the two of us bonding spiritually and and
you know intellectually around the concepts and you know we went through kabbalah um and uh you know scientology and really what was happening is every time i would meet someone who was of a different tradition i would allow that person to introduce me to what their tradition was and then i did ali and so we circled back around to the quran during during that time but we really just we we love the the idea of
of spirituality and the study of the love of god um and uh we we don't necessarily believe in organized religion we believe that the organization's kind of jump ahead of the spirituality you know the the you know the church of christ is very different than christ the the the steps that christ actually walked you know so we started to notice uh those kinds of differences and we
just we really just wanted to find um the truth you know what is the truth and you see how my whole family dives in the kids are doing it yeah now you know with the with the the gita and it's and it's really uh just just trying to find our way you know in in this world yeah and and and and i love that and i was so fascinated by that myself because i saw that within myself and so when i saw it with you and the
family i was i was so drawn to that because yeah i think that a lot of what we're trying to figure out in today's world has been suffered for long enough in an internal way that when you're diving into these books of wisdom there's just so much there to on earth because people have been through the same challenges for decades and decades and decades the the the problems have already been solved yeah
i'm lived and lived and solved you know and at the core of all of the you know the the spiritual teachings that i've ever studied at the at the core of all of the ideas um how you treat your neighbor is central right yes absolutely yet somehow people manage to twist you know in in all the faiths and all backgrounds people do unto others as you would have them do unto you is very clear
if you ask yourself that question well in this situation how would i have them do unto me and you did that you'd never have a problem yeah because the answer is never going to be i think they should curse me out and spit on me and whoop my ass cause i was tripping it's like you just you know i mean i guess somebody yeah maybe no no no no i think you're right i think you're right if i were in
this situation how would i want them to treat me yeah yeah right huge it's the most simple yeah yeah our teachers in the ashram would always tell us and i've said this to you before but they'd always tell us that these principles you'll learn them on day one you'll think that you know them on day two but you spend your whole life trying to realize yes and and that's the challenge with us
that we we take what we learn on day one and what we know on day two to be like i already know that yes exactly and then the the teaching doesn't what i love about what we've been doing is like the teaching gets to like reveal itself to you it's like it's always opening up it's like a lotus flower it's always blooming it's not like oh it's open now it doesn't matter yeah it's like always opening up to you and
if you give it that time and patience then you can truly see it grow and bloom into something but if you just if you just try and force it open it just i mean you know if you forced a flower open it would just break yeah and that's what happens what i say what i say to you all the time is you know so to give people a sense of it so we're we were doing you know two to four hours a a day
you know you know a few days a week for months for months yeah for months you know and you know i we were spending as much time together as we were would spend with our families or other things so we we we've we've logged some real hours in this in this last year and the thing that was always amazing to me is that we could take eight hours right and we spend it and we get it we
study we do all of that and you leave my house and i pick up my phone how quickly somebody could snatch me i was like and and it really is a serious moment-to-moment practice to remember to be nice to people when you get sucked back into the foolishness so hard and so fast and that was frustrating to me for a while like like literally we would do eight hours [Music] and i'm great i'm great and you wouldn't be
off of this off of the block yet and i pick up my phone and it's a business call and literally that fast like literally in in 45 seconds my mind could get triggered back into that that mindset you know i i i know now that that's just it's every day yeah it's you don't you know you don't get to know it and be done like it's a it's a daily practice for the rest of your life to be able to deal with the foolishness
of this world in a way that's uh productive and kind yeah now everyone knows i'm terrible at what i do well i know it's like as soon as you have you're really bad at this oh jay you should have left will with a little more girth than that no no you can't even last two seconds tonight that's terrible well you're working you're working with years of of sediment you know all of us
lifetimes like the conditioning is so strong yeah yeah and it's it's almost like when we start to do the work you're walking into a garden full of weeds yeah yeah so all the flowers are covered all the beauty of the garden is covered in weeds and so you're cutting down the weeds but because you've been watering the weeds for so long they keep growing yeah and so you keep cutting them down and then they keep growing
back it's the example the analogy of the mirror that's given um in the vedic tradition around how when you walk in and you try and clean a mirror that hasn't been cleaned for lifetimes it's dusty and so when you start cleaning it the dust comes up in your face and you're like oh i can't see i can't i can't see and that's what we're all going through and we when we start realizing what you just
said the day to day it's like if you if if all of us said we want to plant i keep using gardening analogies but it's only because it makes so much sense i feel because we're so disconnected from nature our mindset has become instant and our mindset has become now whereas when you watch nature nature's never insulin yeah i call that hunting versus farming right everybody hunting versus farming where where
people just look just let's let's get it let's get it and eat right that's a great yeah love that i love that you know versus no we're gonna like we're gonna play the crops i love that yeah because it's it's it's the idea that if you if me and you said we want to plant a tree you'd have to come back to that tree every day to see how it was doing yeah and it wouldn't be a tree for
many many years but you'd have to come back every day water it sunlight move it replant the soil and that's what we're doing with ourselves but for some reason because we're so disconnected from nature now we think that oh if i just meditate today then it's you know it's like saying oh i'll eat today and i don't have to eat tomorrow oh yeah bro oh i showered last night last week i'm good i'm good
but uh but yeah it's you know and i again it was your commitment i remember when we were on that first phone call and i was like you were like oh yeah i want to work on this i was like how much time do you have like how much time do you have and i you know you will smith something and you don't have any time and and i don't know how serious you get yet i'm not i'm not aware yet of how how
immersed and obsessed you get with stuff i'm still learning about you and then you're like i've got two hours and i was like all right two hours a week two hours bi-weekly two hours monthly you're like no two hours a hours a day and i was like wow he's real like he's serious i was like wow he's for real and then you know it's just it was and i'd go away and you reinspired so much of my own study and that's what
i was telling to you over christmas which is when we kind of broke off as i went to london and you've been traveling it's like i spent the whole of christmas reading myself for four to eight hours a day meditating again it's beautiful because i felt i had to be more to give you more that's beautiful and and i think that that was such a gift you gave me where i felt back in love
with what i fell in love with years ago that's beautiful because of the work we were doing yeah and because when you're answering someone's questions you have to read deeper and think more and reflect more and so for me i went away from those meetings going gosh i you know i better start reading more that's what's so beautiful about sharing something like that together it was
great when uh with the the rather not swami when when uh you told him that you were going to be working with me and i just loved his response you say oh that is so great you're going to get to teach all of the things you need to learn i remember i was i was just telling you i was like i was i was explaining to him how sincere you are and i was like you know he's so serious and he's sincere and
that's what he came back with you know that's when you know you've got a good teacher he knows how to like squash your ego yeah and make you realize how small you are and and it was beautiful because from that moment that was my attitude when i was meeting you i was like i'm saying this for me i'm saying this you know and that allows you to be so much more um just allows you to get out the way yeah
and let the wisdom do its work yep that's so real this the central um problem that has been the focus of my life and everything that i've done has been centered on um [Music] having a successful love relationship right so i saw my parents when when they were growing up and i hated that my parents uh marriage deteriorated and um you know as young as i can remember five six years old i wanted to be married i
wanted to have a family um i've never been the guy that that you know wanted to do threesomes and groupies and i like i just i've never been that guy i always wanted to uh commit and have a single successful relationship so the the scientist in my mind and in my study of spiritual texts and things like that i've always been looking for the secret to successful uh
love relationships and then as i've grown it's sort of expanded and i'm seeing the through line oh the same basic ideas are successful parenting and the same basic ideas are being a successful follower or a successful leader or successful student and i started to see the central issues with all of human relating and it's it's the the problems or it's not even problems the problem is really singular
in if you're talking about a husband and a wife or you're talking about a a parent and a child or a democrat and a republican or a you know a saudi and an american whatever in all of the configurations of of human difficulty at the at the center of it is almost exclusively a lack of understanding of the other person's perspective right and you know it sounds simple and it it it it may oversimplify
slightly but the the concept of ignorance the concepts of ignorance and delusion are always the problem yeah yeah right it's it's always the center if you have a difficulty with another human being there's some point of ignorance and some point of delusion that are keeping you from being able on both sides on both sides right and the the problem is you can only worry about yours you have to clear yours
and then once you clear yours and your vision gets uh clean and purified and you approach a person from a purified space things get a whole lot easier you know and it's like you're all you're you are always bringing poison to the party and when you recognize that in any difficulty you're having with any human being you brought poison to the party right and if you can focus on locating and purifying
the the poison you brought it opens up entirely new avenues of connection and compromise and solutions that you can create with a person and you know that has really been the the central focus of my life and being an actor has been spectacular in that way because my life is exploring my mind you know and changing it and that's one of the things i learned as soon as i cracked it open i remember
reading the seven spiritual laws of success and tearing up you know and i remember reading asking and it's given by stranger hicks and like feeling my whole vibration change and that is one of the most um that is the first time that i realized that there are two realities there's a reality that we see with our um eyes and our feel and touch and then there is a reality just as real where
it is our spiritual world that we can create and manifest and that is the reality with a capital r you know what i'm saying that's the real reality that you bring to the other reality and so anyway i did these exercises man like i never read i only read books because i had to in school that was like my thing like i could relate you know and it was some good books right like we i remember we were at animal farm the
hobby all these great books that helped me but i still never read on my own time so these were the first books i read on my own time you know i graduated high school i ended up me i ended up meeting kanye right before i graduated high school so i ended up rapping for him it's a classic fairy tale hip-hop story you meet your idol you rap for him he hears you out and i have been recording cds since i
was 11 years old man so i have been passing out cds around school selling them for five dollars three dollars i have been participating in open mics battle rapping i had gone to the radio station every friday after school even when you know because when i turned 16 my grandmother had a stroke and she had a brand new car so it just it was a bittersweet thing because it was tragic to see my grandma
you know have a stroke and the strongest woman i've ever seen literally get old instantaneously and then i ended up getting a car which provided me to get places that i needed to get to you know to make uh to make the moves i was trying to make because i was a i had that man the hustler mentality i was like i had to do it you know eminem was the only rapper from detroit at the time that was doing it big
and just to keep it real i was i got to represent for the for black you feel me and be like and put on for my city and i just felt the responsibility man and i know i'm skipping around a lot that's so good man that's so good yeah but um i would do this radio show every week i you know and that led me to meeting kanye because he was at the radio promoting his album late registration at
the time and you know i met him from doing the radio show there every friday i lied and said i left my phone in the back offices so they would let me in the back to go check cause i knew that's where the artist would go i got a chance to rap for him as he was walking out you know he was like i'm real busy how did you have the courage to do that because i feel like people probably see you
and they're like i want to go rap for like you know people want to repeat all the time yeah exactly so how did you how do you think you were able to even have the courage to be like i'm just gonna find a way in the hallway like you know when he's walking he's a busy guy well because when i did that radio show every friday we were wrapped on the air on the radio yeah that was the most nerve-wracking
thing i've ever had to do in my life it would be like oh my god everybody who's listening to the radio right now is hearing me and that was a beautiful platform right for up-and-coming mcs to come in and display and um i would i would write a new verse every week and i was super nervous so i had done that for about a year straight already by the time i met him so i was
used to rapping under pressure right so when i saw him and was delivering it it was just like i had so many wraps in my head already and i was freestyling and i was used to delivering under pressure so i was able to um [Music] dynamically you know i delivered it as best i could yeah um and he he heard me he heard me out and he was like well you got a cd and it's like well yeah cause i had cds that i
was selling in high school i had my cds ready i had a buy already i had everything ready and it's crazy because ever since i was 11 years old every single thing i had done so far i led up to that moment it all happened and it was like yeah i had the cd i had this i had that and he followed through but it took years after that that's what people don't get it wasn't like i rapped for him
and that was it you know i rapped for him and thought it was gonna be like that that's why i didn't go to school that's why i turned everything down and then i stopped getting a response from him and then all my friends are in college a whole semester goes by and they're like man you could have came to school would you you still at home like what's up what's up with kanye what's up with your
record deal like what's up like that's the hardest to hear that's the hardest and i come from a family my grandma's like why you know you need to go to school like this is the way to a better life you know she grew up in poverty and made her way to that point you know and she's like education is the way and it was the hardest thing to go against the grain you know and my mom was really
one of the only people who even though she was a teacher herself right an english teacher has her master's degree she she know she knew what it was like to have a dream and she knew what it was like to chase it you know so she believed of course education is important but you can always go back and get it you can't always leave your you know take that chance the other way around yeah so during that time period for like
a year and a half or two what i did was that was the first time i intentionally worked on myself and i intentionally would read these books and meditate every day and you know imagine myself like living the life that i was you know trying to live and it's just uh i don't know how to explain it it was like i feel like i was there and what that did was it put me there it
really did to make a long story short it put me there what were the work that you were doing with that meditation envisioning because i'm sure like you said and i'm really glad you brought it up because before like you said i was at the radio station i was yeah i was rapping live i was nervous like what i what i find is that with yourself and and stories like yours there's manifestation but there's also a
ton of hard work oh yeah in the background yes it is tell me about that part of what were you doing in the background while you're meditating you're envisioning you're seeing yourself there what's happening with rap music and music well one of the things that i would do in my meditations is i would put out the like i would like let me attract the people energy places wow
that i need to go to the next level in my career let me attract the people and i would meet people i would meet producers and we would lock in and you know who had as common um belief is mine or like you know the same one and like i'm trying to get on as a producer like you trying to get on less work right and um i would write things down i would just it was just my i treated it like it was a job and
also one of the things i had to put in perspective is that it didn't matter how hard i was working necessarily it really mattered how smart i was working you know i had a perception it is hard work you're right but i had the perception that it takes hard work until i realized that some of the most successful people i knew would work a couple hours a day yeah and enjoy their life yeah it's flowing and at the end of
my and me and my mom we grew up in debt and she worked two jobs and she was working most of her life so it just didn't make sense to me you know early on i'm like it's not about working hard it's about working efficiently and smarter so that's one of the things i i really learned at that age too so i would it's a big lesson you know because a lot of the other people who i would see at
studios they would be like man i made eight songs today like i'd be like well i'm still i've been working on the same song for like a week and a half but it's not about it's not about that you know it's it's about it's about the product it's about what you what you're doing and and and uh not about necessarily how much you're pumping out you know what i mean and that was a that was something i
really had to um accept because your ego will not let you accept that sometimes we've been conditioned right to to think all these things and that's when i feel like one of the things your book talks about we've been conditioned to uh think a certain way we've been conditioned to you know we we're given like a certain amount of of uh option guidance options directions you're supposed to do this
you're supposed to do that you're supposed to follow the line you're supposed to do that you're supposed to do that you guys got to do you know the our whole lives and a lot of that is just some of it's great but some of it just doesn't apply to everyone you know and that's that's one of the things i had to realize and uh re do my foundation of my whole life and be my architect
well said man that's beautiful i love the way you've expressed that because that must have been an uncomfortable place to live for one or two years when you feel you're gonna get your break it doesn't happen your friends are now moved on yeah and everyone's and i'm still in the same bed that i grew up in yeah you know i i was sleeping in a twin size bed man i'm 18 19 years old you feel me yeah and
uh it was so frustrating and it was a test of my ego bro it was a test of my ego but i was a visual i would visualize kanye reaching out i would visualize i just knew that it was gonna happen i didn't know how and like i was like i'm gonna make it happen somehow and it just it did bro and it's like something you gotta trust you know imagine you being on a cliff and it's like there's no more cliff
there but you like hey man there's an invisible bridge you know if you had a if you had a guidance next to you like you had your higher self walking next to you and you're like bro there's nowhere to walk and he's like i'm telling you if you take a step it's an invisible bridge right in front of you and that takes a lot of faith to walk on that bridge yeah you know that you can't even see
but that's what i had to do because that's that's that's the decision i made i wasn't about to go back to school at that moment i wasn't about to go back to my friends and be like man y'all was right like i messed up man i should just you know i i couldn't do it you know and that may have been my ego too but i did let that motivate me and um that's just that's just how it went you
know and then he did reach out yeah tell us about tell us about that moment how it felt internally around were you like oh wow this manifestation stuff works was that a point where you deepened your faith and belief in the invisible bridge where you were like oh this stuff really works or do you think you already believed that it worked and it was just about trust or was this like a confidence point i had to trust it
first yeah okay i had to trust at first beautiful yeah you know and that's the thing with everything you got to trust it and uh then it started working you know things necessarily don't work before you trust it it's kind of like you got you know i think that's one of the lessons i had to learn you know i had to trust in me trust myself trust the process trust god speed
you know that expression is uh so popular for a reason you know you can make all these plans my grandmother says be like man guy you make all these plans god god's gonna laugh at you yes yeah yeah you know that classic saying and she would say that to me and it so many sayings like that just means so much more now because it's true that's why it's so popular what goes around comes around you know
all these little things that we heard they're true yeah they're true yeah you know uh so it's it's been a beautiful time and when he did when he did reach out it was just it felt like it was confirmation that that trust uh wasn't wasted it's all a higher power right and that and that is guiding us and wants to support us yes and does support us not one student does support us absolutely did you ask him why it
took him so long no because you know i knew people who were like 30 40 years old that never got their shot so i'm not gonna be like man took two years what took so long you know but uh you know and it was a process after that and things i'm not gonna sit here and say life is smooth sailing never you know it's it's not smooth sailing it's like a constant unraveling experience right
and things don't it's so many times where other things don't go my way and i've done all the work and i'm like why didn't this happen how i wanted it to happen and then sometimes where i didn't expect things to do anything and it was turns out to be one of my biggest songs in my career my biggest moments are one of my great you know greatest experiences or things that i've like
okay i put so much energy and power into this and not do what i wanted it to do like these are things that i go through on it on a daily basis but i had to realize that it's all the the side of life that i'm on is such a unique side and it's the bless the blessed side yeah and that anything that happens to me anything you know whether i it's all it's all love it's all beautiful you know and it's something to
be learned from it it's something to be gained from it it's you know that you when you win something you learn something when you lose something you learn something you know you still win something yeah you gain something you know so it's it's crazy man it's really crazy did you find that when you finally made it into the music industry that there were people like you that
meditated that were visioning that were working from this deeper core place did you did you find that or did you find that your spirituality was almost threatened or questioned or there weren't people seeing eye to eye how did you feel about that did you find like it was still natural to stay true to what got you there because you had a very different journey in terms of internal journey towards music yeah
i would see both yeah i would see people one of the reasons i wanted to sign a kanye because his first album inspired me so much yeah same thing and i can tell that his whether he knows it or not he is he's a he is for clearly as a manifestor he clearly is a spiritual being too you know or you could call it religious to me it's uh you know there are so many similarities right um but he is he is somebody who is a
manifesto he's somebody who's a creator right he's somebody who uh i've saw him wield ideas from you know the inspiration of god or you know whatever whatever he can say it is but that drew me to him you know what i mean and yeah i've seen in a lot of people i've seen it you know when i sit and talk to jay-z it's like i don't have to sit and like talk to him so deeply about it i can
just tell that he has this you know there are a lot of people who i met even dj khaled yeah yeah you know he's somebody who is you know manifesting a manifesto yeah you know and his story is crazy i don't know if you've ever talked to him i haven't his story is crazy man and you know it's a beautiful beautiful story and we all have stories and there are people who like those are people who you would kind
of like be like oh okay i can see that but then there are people who i also have met or even janae you know you could tell janae is like very aware for sure and um you know somebody who is spiritually in tune you know what i mean yeah that's what that's what i love about this conversation and all the people you're mentioning i think we see a we see an external pr version
of who we think those people are on the front cover of magazines or music videos or whatever it may be but behind everyone there's a deeper story it wasn't just like that tell us about when i'm intrigued because i feel like a lot of people listening to us right now they may actually feel blocked from that envisioning right they feel blunt like they feel like they're just they're not getting when
have you felt blocked or if someone's listening and they feel blocked what's blocking them like how do they remove that how do they let go what are what are they needing to let go of well this is deep dog you're getting deep i had to i had to go there with you you're giving me deep talk so i don't wanna you know gotta dive in well one thing i have learned on my journey is that there are blocks that are
sometimes placed on us from our parents or from our surroundings and whether you believe this or not i believe it is true even from a past life and it makes total sense because i met complete babies who were like this is like an old man in here right he's very mature you know it's like but anyway um i have worked with people who have helped me remove blocks from my life marie diamond being one of them
you know and that's a whole deeper conversation but she has um in the last few years as someone who has helped um who has been a mentor to me spiritually and helped me along my spiritual journey and um [Music] you know honestly when i look when i just think about the blocks that i've had in my life so to go back to that to think about people who are feeling blocked know that
you have to believe that you can feel unblocked because you're giving it power by acknowledging like i'm blocked i'm blocked you're putting that out in the universe remember like what we said the sayings that people live by that you've heard what goes around comes around what you get is what you give those are real things and you subconsciously and that subconscious mind is just as powerful as the conscious one
he's ah i'm feeling blocked or man i'm just i'm down bad you know i've heard people just say all these things that they put on themselves like i can't figure it out i can't figure it out i can't figure it out so okay imagine if you're in front of the universe and god and he's like whatever you say i'm gonna give back to you like whatever you say i'm gonna give it back to you so you stand up here like
i can't figure it out man i can't i can't make money i can't do this i can't do you know i just i feel like i it's like even when i did feel black i never and if i did think that i never owned it and i'd be like no okay i gotta switch that i gotta i gotta feel better so the first key to unblocking something is acknowledging that you are blocking yourself for sure you know and i do think there are some
deeper blocks that you gotta work harder on to remove like blocks that may have not even been put there from you so you're not even acknowledging it or not or know how to um remove it and there are special people who can do this you know that can help you get rid of it but i do feel like you're blocking yourself and you got to realize that stop blocking yourself it doesn't matter if you
don't have money don't say you don't have money yeah because i got money money's coming in right now like who i feel feels good to be rich if you keep that mentality and you're you're not rich i sh promise you if you really believe it which you have to believe it because you just have to this if you you know uh you will be whatever you want to be and it's never too late to be who you want
to be yeah absolutely yeah i used to have a mentor i remember used to repeat to me the napoleon hill words of like you become what you think about yeah and he just keeps saying it to me and he told me to keep saying it when he first said it i was just like oh come on like you know how many times you're gonna say it it's like a mantra when i first became a monk and they introduced me to mantra saying
the same thing every day again and again and you're thinking oh this ain't gonna work but actually what you're saying is true that when you repeat you become what you think about yeah and when you keep repeating it it becomes your vocabulary it becomes your mindset it becomes your thought and then it becomes your reality and and your spawner i love what you said about being in front of god
and you saying i can't do this i can't do that and god's given you back exactly exactly what you're repeating he's like you're right man you can yeah all right yeah you said it yeah and that is such a great way of thinking about it yeah as a conversation around how we're creating our reality through our repetition yeah i can't wait to talk to you about being a monk too that's like when we have dinner next
week next week some but um one of the things that you that made me think about this is when i would come home and watch bob ross on pbs painting the pictures or when i would watch michael jordan and all these and kobe bryant and all these inspiring people when i was growing up mike tyson writer just michael jackson anybody that i can think of uh i like i like our like artwork on the
wall a few people you mentioned are up there yeah yeah but when i was thinking about that it just brings me back to uh technique how much life how much of life is truly technique and that is one of the biggest secrets i've learned um when i was going through one of the roughest times of my life a few years ago i just turned 30 and i was feeling so depressed bro um and i just moved into my house that
i've been in for a few years in beverly hills right slashes i got it from slash from guns and roses you know all these name all of my neighbors are you know vanna white is my neighbor i'm like talking like this is like to me this was like my dream this is my dream neighborhood right and i was in the worst condition of my life bro i just felt i felt it was just too hard for me to
even get through the day i felt like how did you get there why did it get there after all of this envisioning focus inner work how did it get there you know why i got there because i lost touch with it a little bit not just because of that i burned myself out i wasn't paying attention to what myself was saying to me i was doing it for all different other reasons i need to do this show i need to do five
shows so i can get this money take care of this person and do it for this ah my management everybody is expecting me i got all these people i got people who are on my payrolls i'm like i'm putting everybody before me yeah i didn't know how to balance um work and work because there's a work that you do for your career and there's a work that you do for yourself yes no one ever taught
me that because no one knew no one knew you know no one knew like this is something that my dad didn't know this is something my mom didn't know their mentality is you work as hard as you can you work as hard as you can so i come from a place where it's like you got to keep the foot on there next you got to keep going hard you don't want to lose your opportunity yeah that was my thinking
but really i had already had it yeah you know i already have it so now to take it to another place i got to take care of myself so i can bring my best self to the table and it's something that life forced me to do it's something that like forced me to do man and i had to stop everything i was doing and completely fall back bro completely fall back from looking at things about me from being
online completely far back from all the obligations i had to do performances money i was losing like it was just like i had to fall back from everything and take some time and that's when i met marie diamond and obviously i had no i seen her on the secret i was you know i knew about her and my mom taking one of her classes emailed marie diamond and was like hey my son is a musician this and this and this
and then she got an email back from marie diamond she my mom was freaking out and marie diamond said this is so crazy because my son has sean on his vision board wow and she was i've never worked with a rapper you know i've never done anything like this she's worked with big people you know big big clients but uh anyway uh that was a serendipity you know that was a meant to be thing and
it came at a time right where i needed it and i just i got into the technique of loving myself bro bringing it back to the point i said earlier when i would look at bob ross and michael jordan's all technique so much of life is technique what you do is technique because it's you know i had to get into the technique of loving myself i had to really make sure that i put myself as a priority my meditations came
before anything me writing down my intentions you know every day or every other day or you know writing my thoughts down like that was a priority to me um spend just spending time for myself being out in nature right working uh working i started taking care of myself more working out that's something i never did i gained 30 pounds i gained 30 pounds wow yeah we got to show like a beforehand yeah yeah
yeah we'll get it we'll get it for this crazy i used to look totally different it changed me for the better and it just it's just it's built my strength up it's giving me more strength to deal with things when they don't go my way before it would tear me down before i used to let people's opinions about me really did really affect me yeah same and now it's like what was i even
what am i even thinking right now you know what i mean you could it's crazy how we can look and see a comment that's like i love you i appreciate you you changed my life amazing man this guy sucks and we'd be like man this dude just said i suck i'm doing something wrong you know it's crazy how our mind immediately goes there because our ego yeah you know or maybe because something else but i think
it's just that ego it is tell me about why do you think delusion is useful and where have you also seen it be dangerous because i think both is well i think it kind of depends on what reality you're trying to create but i do believe in you know i used to walk around saying all my beats are a million dollars a beat and i'm a billionaire and i just went platinum eight times these are all
things i would say like that would have not happened and they were insane me and bugis my best friend who started diamond he put out a um a project back in 2011 and we called it 2020 and i produced the whole thing and we did the entire album from the perspective of 2020. so it was like we're on rolls royces and we just made millions of like it was all just distorted reality but it ended up becoming reality so i do
believe that if you want to change your reality you have to already believe that it is your reality but obviously if you like are trying to do something evil or ill-intent it's not gonna be great for everyone else but yeah just before we started recording we were talking about you know being creative and being busy and you said something really interesting you were just like you know
i'm always creative i've always got stuff going on here and then you're like there's some days where i don't you know feeling lazy like walk us through that because as someone who's super creative who's loved for your creativity and how original your work is and that's why i've always liked you i've always thought your sound is very original and unique and it's hard to like be like it's like oh it
sounds like that person or sounds like it's like oh no no this is original like that's where i've always resonated with your work tell us about how that is something you achieve even though there are days where you kind of feel like i just want to sleep all day or whatever yeah it's tough because uh me and bowie's talk about it all the time the highs and lows of an artist is
really dramatic at least for me like i'll have days if i go into the studio and make something i love i'm like on cloud nine like everything is great in my life but then i go to sleep and i wake up and that next day none of that matters like i move on very quickly and and i'm just like okay now i need to make another one but if i can't make another one if that day i'm just not feeling it or i go to the studio and i
try nothing works i'm like this is i should just give up this is this is it i'll never get a creative sourcing you know what i mean and it gets very like you sink really low sometimes especially if you go for me i make so much music that if i don't make a song for four days i'm like this is crazy like what's happening i'm depressed so it's hard but you got to just remember that um
you just have to have faith in sort of the creator in the infinite and you know i don't feel like i really make music i feel like i deliver it you know because i feel like it when i have those moments it's just something that's coming to me and i'm the vessel and now i'm just delivering it and i'm executing it and i'm almost discovering it in the studio i don't know if i'm creating i'm
discovering it if that makes sense so you're not always gonna be in that place where you're getting the message and you're getting the energy so this is what it is it's just hard it's the waiting time in between will make you feel like this is it i'll never make another song what makes you feel that i love what you just said about delivering versus creating i i think that's phenomenal and
it's explained really well what makes you feel like you're in alignment where you can deliver versus forcing you to create like what are the things that lack of thought right yeah lack of thought those times where you get into that place where you're not thinking and you're just feeling and like i said just delivering like i'm not even thinking about what oh should i say this like you get the
inspiration and you just execute it that's when you just enter that flow state and it's just special you know but it's tricky it's hard especially like i said as i got not even necessarily older just more visibility there's outside chatter now in my head you know what people are gonna think i know that i'm not just releasing it to my friends anymore like you know so it's it's become trickier to
tune out everything but um yeah man just try to focus on the present moment that's like what the one thing that i learned this past year was really like how do i slow down time and i was like okay well the way i slow down time is to slow down my thoughts and the way i slow down my thoughts is to be present you know you notice if you're just mindless and you're you know you're making a sandwich but you're thinking
about oh my god what i need to do tomorrow and what all of a sudden two hours passes right but if you really think about like you know you cutting the sandwich and what that's like and you stepping on the grass and what your feet feel like time moves really slow you realize how slow time moves so i just try to do that i try to stay in the present even in the studio you know i don't try to
uh have my thoughts already beyond when this comes out and this is gonna be like this and how's it gonna go then i'm just like man let me just like actually hear the music and feel the music and just operate from this place i love hearing you talk about this man because you know these are some of the principles that i'm constantly sharing in my work yeah but hearing how it applies to a music
artist in your career it brings me so much joy yeah because it's practical it's real like you've got time pressures you've got you've got uh pressures from labels collaborations whatever it may be like there are real life pressures but when i hear you say that and that's how you feel aligned how did you get introduced to this work or this set of thoughts and beliefs and mindsets was it something that you
had since you were a kid or where did you start exploring with the idea of being present experiencing fear delivery the present moment is recent because you know what i didn't need i felt almost like i didn't need to be present i guess when i was coming up because there wasn't anything pulling me away from the present moment i kind of only had the present moment if that makes sense it
was just me and bugis in the basement making songs and that was it there wasn't tours coming up and videos you know there was none of that so uh but as this past year and past couple years have been happening i got into the power of now book and just sort of just the whole ideology around just being present started reading more into that whole theory and i just i bought you know i
bought into it a lot of this stuff people don't realize that a lot of the stuff like the teachings the self-help stuff you have to be open to receiving it you know and if you're not open to receiving and you're not willing to buy into it then i you know i hear you but god bless you know i can only tell people it works for me um but it worked for me you know being president yeah i love that you
mentioned the power of now and then when you talk about flow state yeah for anyone who's listening if you've not read that book it's a brilliant book as well flow state yeah it's called flow and for anyone who doesn't know flow the way it's defined in that book is where your skills meet your challenge exactly so i saw like a youtube video yes that was like enough for me i should read the book though yeah no no
no but you brought it up and it's it's a brilliant concept and you're really experiencing that because most people it says experience when their challenge is above their skills and so they feel frustrated disappointed when they give up yeah all their skills are above their challenge and then they feel bored because they actually have more skills than what they're trying to achieve and
i think that's i fell into that a little bit which is why i started working with outside producers because it was so easy for me to just like go downstairs and make like a rust song you know like i have a million beats i can make it be boom do this it's like alright cool whatever you know but it kind of i got into like a rut creatively because i was making songs but i was like i don't even it
just wasn't even that fun you know and i think it was because it wasn't that challenging anymore so um i started working with outside producers where it was like okay this is a bit of a challenge and then further i started trying to get on beats even if no one hears them i started to get on production that i don't like in a sense almost to just be like can i make a song out of this wow yeah just like because i
got the studio in my house and i don't need anyone to record me so i can just be down there like experimenting so there's been beats that producers send me and i'm like i don't like this at all but i wonder if i can make a song out of it and it becomes this cool little like fun project and a lot of times it's turned into songs that i'm like this is crazy wow like i get so much more
fulfillment out of it because i couldn't see it coming a lot of my songs i'm like before you know when i'm making the beat i already know what the whole song's gonna sound like and most of those usually end up being very successful so i'm not gonna downplay them but it does make the process not as uh on an easter egg hunt yeah yeah yeah so yeah yeah i love hearing that because
that's putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation right and most of us avoid that yeah yeah yeah most of us just want to hear a beat and feel something straight away right we'll see because people are around other people i would never i would probably never do that if there was people in the studio yeah with me like actually out of all the beats you played give me the one i don't like and i'm
just gonna try to make something you know what i mean yeah i like that's why i always tell people whatever your craft is make sure you have it in your house if you can because those moments of solitude when you can kind of just be weird and you know experiment and dance around crazy and be nuts that's where you're really gonna you know i have a i have a line where i say the public praises
people for what they practice in private you know so uh i just feel like that's when you got to hone in on everything is what you're doing in private so i like when i'm by myself in the studio i'll be getting weird [Laughter] can you tell us what's the weirdest thing that's ever happened i mean it's not that weird but it's like when i'm by myself i'll put on a beat that i'm like i don't even know
what i'm about to do on this and i'll just put the auto tune all the way up and go stand in the booth for 60 takes just wailing and just making noises and i'll be like this is wild or this is trash but this was really cool you know like i sent my manager some song i did uh where i made a beat and i just put the auto-tune on full blast and just freestyled the whole song and i was like i just had to get it out
yeah but it was cool but like i would never put it out but it was awesome dude this is so inspiring i i that's i love that approach yeah it's just it's so refreshing hearing that it's a refreshing process yeah you know because you get so rigid with like your process and this is what i do and we sit here and i make this kind of song it's like every once in a while you have
to shake the snow globe that's where that whole concept came from you have to just you know it's like the tin man and was it awesome turn the auto-tune up and put on some crazy heat and let me just be a maniac for an hour it breaks the formula we work in this formulaic yeah product line manufacturing and you don't you can't manufacture greatness that's from school yeah that's from school
school is such a factory setup you know how were you at school what kind of i was incredible at school to be honest i'm not even a lie i was i was like i'm really not i was not one of those like yeah i struggled in school and it was difficult i was really really good at school because i wouldn't apply myself but i was definitely the kid who like didn't study never did homework but i
would get a's and b's on all the tests and so i was just like but i would be like you know i was second i always say this and it's not even something i'm necessarily proud of but it just gives context but like a senior superlative i was like second for most likely to make a teacher retire because i was just the kid in class like constantly talking distracting people challenging the teacher but i had an a
in the class so i was just super annoying which i know is a surprise to so many people and so tell me go back to the point you were making before before i interjected around why you think that factory yes well yeah because you know you're you have an expiration date as a kid in school you got to be out by a certain time in high school whatever age it is uh go to this department of the building
when the bell rings you know what i mean it's just very like like there's no creativity in there you know that's why i'm really big on having arts in schools and you know just because otherwise you just i don't know just like creates these robots i love that you break the mold how do you get to a point though where you've what i find fascinating already your process is fascinating to me what i find
more interesting though is that your your ability to trust yourself yeah when you come up with something insane because very few people ever allow themselves to do a wild card thing right now when you do a wild card thing in the studio on your own and you discover something like a sound or a auto tune or whatever it is and you discover a a b or a sound that yeah oh i like this how
do you then trust yourself to go with that when now when you play it to someone they might be like all right you're crazy russ like this is never gonna work how do you then approach that it's that level of it's that stain of confidence that's just you can't remove i just still oh like unnas has this quote in an interview i believe where he said if it doesn't scare you you shouldn't put it out so
i've always kind of like kept that in the back of my head you know i usually move with that and i'm and i'm cool with that i like that with my fans what i've created is this trust and this unpredicted uh un predictably unpredictable sort of relationship where they know they can expect me to be doing the unexpected meeting they know it might be raps they know it might be singing but they don't know what it's
going to sound like but they know it's going to be me and so i think i've done a very good job at painting my canvas and kind of giving people who i am so it's allowed me a lot of creative freedom i always tell up and coming artists like when you're coming up you don't want it then this is my opinion when you're coming up and you're building your fan base you're conditioning them to expect a
certain thing from you a certain sound or whatever and you're you're creating this creative window a lot of people if you just come up only rapping right you get your whole fan base off of only rapping let's say you know you just you haven't really fully tapped into you yet and now you want to start singing a lot of fans are going to be like you switched up what are you doing did it
and you know you could lose a lot of people and they might think that you're changing when really the whole time that's been you you just didn't have enough time to discover it so i was really proud of myself that i was able to kind of give people the whole scope of my creativity so that when i do go left field no one's gonna be like what are you doing because it's kind of like oh yeah that's russ just being russ like
we know that sometimes he's giving us red sometimes it's yellow sometimes it's orange whatever you know that's kind of why i did the artworks all like that too yeah just to let you know that all my music is all different colors it's not just one just spending this time with you already and even when you came in and stuff like you're someone who's who's very comfortable in their own skin
but at the same time you're not arrogant and egotistic did everyone hear that yeah i'm just that's a first you know no i agree too i think i fought into the own narrative he doesn't have an ego no i definitely haven't no i mean in the sense of let's yeah let's talk about ego for a bit because and and i mean in a good way i was saying as a compliment that i feel that you have a very
uh you know what from what i'm hearing or at least and i'm only basing on this conversation i've had with you but it's like there's a stability between like knowing you want to learn more and be better yeah but you are confident about who you are and where you are which is which is a beautiful place to be by the way thank you who doesn't want to be between those two things yeah uh how have you tempered
that ego that we all have with the desire to learn and grow and realize there's more to go but i'm really happy with what i've done because that's what i'm hearing yeah but i want to kind of break that down for people because i think a lot of people live in either extreme either they're celebrating their last win right for like seven years right or they're just like i'm the worst i'm
never gonna win i'm never gonna win and they don't appreciate where they are yeah i think for me to be honest despite perception or whatever um i had to hype myself up i had to be the biggest believer of myself that's the only reason why any of this worked and i think that and because i'm very vocal about it because i'm putting it out into the universe so that it comes back it could come off like i think
i have nothing left to learn and no nobody can offer me anything and i know it's like no y'all just don't know what self-belief sounds like clearly um you might know what it looks like and some people are just more quiet about their self-belief just to get people to like them otherwise you get kind of my perception but but no i've always still been a massive fan of people and a massive just
supporter of anything dope anyone anyone that knows me from when i was nothing to now from two years old to now like if you're dope at anything i'm always the first person to like root for you dm you send you advice like bro hit me anytime and even just looking up to people i'm i'm a fan out i'm like yo you're incredible i would love to work with you i'm that person too so i don't know i just
there's it's the duality you are able to have the utmost confidence in yourself while still also knowing that okay but this person is really dope too and if we come together it could be really fire i'm just really confident in myself and so i'm not desperate to reach after collabs and things like that but it doesn't mean i don't think that i know everything and you know i'm always
asking all my like my engineer friends like yo what plugin is that like this is crazy oh you're fired you know people guess you could ask even like kid super when i first met him the dude who made this sweater uh he did my gypsy video years ago like 2014 and when i first met him he thought i was hella weird because or like socially awkward because i kept giving him mad compliments because i was so it was like my first
real kind of video ish even though it wasn't like some big production but i was just so enamored by the process and i thought it was so dope that i'm just like that's who i am i'm a very complimentary person and like i'm always gonna give people their flowers and he was just like i'm like nah i genuinely feel like that so i don't know i've always been able to have that level of
duality yeah i love the idea of that that paradox like it feels like uh it feels like it's not allowed like it sounds like it should not be possible to think both those things yeah but actually that's where all the magic happens i agree right like that you we always think no you have to choose you have to decide or you're either raw but actually hearing you say that yeah actually i i think both those
things yeah uh i i love that and i love how that doesn't stop you from appreciating others yeah uh who was it that appreciated your sound earlier on that you think made a difference to you and and may you know guided you or was it just you for yourself it was me and probably bugis like you know for the longest time it was just bugis rapping and me producing and that was uh my closest example of like someone
who i thought had really good taste and i trusted their opinion artistically so when bugis gave me the green light to be like yo yeah you should rap it was just kind of like okay well game over for everyone else like if bugas thinks it's tight you know so and that's how it still is like um you know you it's it's important to have you only need one but it's important to have at least one person who
believes in you sometimes almost more than you and and there is no jealousy or weird uh you can't win because then i won't win like it's a very weird thing so i always you know commend boogies for being like the best friend you could have in something that i'm doing you know what i mean yeah let's talk about that i like what you brought there about men specifically like
and you took me straight back to like my teenagers where yeah i'd be best friend with a dude and he'd be like my brother but then we'd go out and he'd be like all right let's see you can get more girls today right like that would be his mentality or like well like oh let's see who who'll be better at the sport today and it was every time i've realized that everyone in my life or male relationships
if every time a guy a friend of mine has tried to turn a friendship into a competition yeah they haven't lost it in my life yeah like they're no longer in my life because i just wanted to be friends well now don't get me wrong me and bugas dumb competitive okay explain we played basketball together like anything me and boogies will turn into a competition for sure but when it comes to a dream you're following after
like it's never like yo how many streams did your song do bro you know what i'm saying it's never been that how do you build that balance what is it about him and what is it about you that allows you to build that kind of a friendship because i think that's rare yeah i think especially in today's social media world stream world i mean followers views comments engagement all this stuff that
we all talk about i think we're both trying to do the same thing you know and we're both uh we were both real friends before all this and we both understood you know we read napoleon hill so we understand the power of a mastermind and we just as big of egos as me and him have we never let it get in the way of like supporting one another and any of that you know so i don't know i just
think it comes down to the person like how real are you you know some people are just fake this is what it is yeah yeah no and that and that idea of being able to have at least even one person just one that's all you want you don't need yeah because sometimes we try and we want 10 or 20 like that and you're right for most of us we're lucky to have one yeah and that's that's a good enough
start you mentioned napoleon hill and mastermind when what age were you when you read that book 17. bugis gave me the book so bugis was putting me on to a lot of that stuff he put me onto napoleon hill he put me on to the alchemist um you know so that's the thing we weren't just like the i would say the like typical 17 18 year olds you know hanging out we graduated high school 17
and we just were locked in the studio from then until now you know so it was a lot of self-discovery but out the gate once we left high school we were reading those books so it was just kind of like we were ready to go mentally like we read those books and we we're both the kind of the kind of people that we buy into something quick and then we latch on to it and then that's that you know if that's what we believe you
can't tell us anything different you know like if i'm go i went vegan for a year because i watched one documentary and like that was that like once something clicks in my brain i'm done you know i mean like right now i haven't had bread or grains in two weeks because i just like woke up and it clicked like my brother nutritionist told me and i latched on to him boom that's it i've like me and him have
always been very good at just once we decide something that's what it is he lost a bunch of weight you know 30 40 pounds because he just decided i'm done you know so once me and him decided this is what we were doing with our lives there was no yeah but maybe we're not doing it with our lives or this was it and we were both fully committed and every day and every like
every second of our lives was committed to this you know uh it was just something i did in within my community but um by as circumstance goes you know sometimes destiny finds you and and and you try and push something away many times i think you know jay and i've had probably many conversations over the years where i've been like i just don't know if this is what i meant to do or like yeah i do this you know that kind
of thing where you you keep trying to turn away from something but it kept coming back to me kept knocking on my door just kept on trying to go no music yeah no music yeah like yes yeah you know like when you have to write a um on a form you know occupation and i would always stop and be like what do i write there you know am i because i i was a i i wrote i did art i was i was a dancer
but i didn't want to write musician or artist or writer i just didn't know what to write because i didn't fully identify with being able to say this is what i am so yeah it came it came bit by bit and i think one of the big catalysts for me with feeling confident to try to accept the role of you know embracing my my uh creativity and and engaging it in service of spreading this type of music more
is the fact that yoga meditation mindfulness those things over the last 10 years became so much more mainstream than they ever were and when i was a child i never would have imagined that would be the case i thought that that was just the strange way that i grew up you know and that like kids used to ask me like so why don't you you know like why are you vegetarian and what do you why do you
have a name like that and stuff like that [Laughter] but now it's like no this is pretty it's pretty normal especially in l.a yeah so yeah it's it's been a it's been a journey but i'm so grateful to be doing this now it brings me so much fulfillment yeah we're grateful to you too for sticking it through and and continuing on and we're never going to let you quit funny music is going to keep
but we love that yeah we love that both of you for everyone who's listening and watching i think there's such a pressure these days for young people especially to find their purpose or discover what they want to do for the rest of their lives and you can see in both of the way you are experiencing it's kind of not been like that it's kind of been much more of this meandering path than kind of getting
lost and then refining and then feeling stuck and then questioning everything and then finding it and this almost like magical approach to like i found my purpose so i found my you know calling it doesn't work like that and it's nice to see two people who are creating an artistic but it's kind of coming over time it's such a process it's such a journey and there's so many internal
obstacles that need to be looked at and that need to be worked on until you can step into your calling until you can step into your purpose fully um and god knows i'm still trying to step in yes i'm still trying to step in yeah what would you say are both of your um i don't know daily things that you do in your lives that help enrich you or uplift you what are the things that you've started to do yeah i think on a
daily basis because i feel like they're the things that really make you know a difference if you're doing something regularly yeah i've watched a few of you now [Laughter] well i i find um that daily meditation daily i practice mantra meditation daily and that is something that um i really hold on to like i imagine you know if you take life to be like a river that is the current is flowing
very fast um in some of these sacred rivers in india where people uh they take a dip you know as a purifying kind of act they have these metal chains that are in the water that you hold onto when you go in to make sure you don't get swept away so i i see the the mantra meditation um as sort of like this chain to hold on to in the rushing current of life and it really even though it's not it's
not easy i know willow has you know a yoga practice you've been cultivating for a long time to do anything daily is not an easy thing and you don't always feel like doing it and sometimes you do it robotically and then you're like ugh you know i gotta come back to you know the deeper reason of why i'm doing this but to just keep that commitment um it develops a relationship with
sacred space within it develops a relationship with the divine that really is it's it's a lifesaver it's it's um it gives me inspiration it gives me sense of connection and it and it's a meditation that the particular mantra that i that i recite daily the meditation is on how can i be of service and a prayer for service please allow me to be of service in this life so i love how willow was describing that
that that service it brings you out of that space because every day we have to push against our tendency to be self-absorbed it's like at every moment we tend to be caught in our head thinking about our own worries and things like that and and to turn that around to how can i serve it's it's such a dramatic you know state change and so for me that helps it helps then you know whether i'm doing one thing or
another just to to keep connecting with that um core reason of why of what is yeah what is the purpose of my existence to serve it makes things it makes things a lot more simpler and joyful yeah i i'm just going to piggyback off of what what janavi said um yes i've been cultivating a yoga practice for about i want to say two years oh we see those pokes yeah yeah yeah i want to say two years or a
year and a half um and you know another thing aside from meditation that i try to do daily sometimes it doesn't happen um i read every day right now i'm reading inner engineering by sad guru so that's something that i've been putting my time into every day so whether it's you know literature yoga or meditation one of those things is happening every day so i'm just like
john levy said i truly believe that that consistency and that repetition is what's needed in order to get into a state where it is second nature where you don't have to think about it anymore where it's habitual exactly and that's that's where i'm trying to be that's where i'm striving to i think what you both are doing keeping it consistent that's probably how you know you've realized what the
benefits are that living a life without it that feels more unnatural than than doing the practice oh i was thinking about how you know both of your practices are things which people have been doing for years such an ancient thing that people have been doing but what's incredible about your music is that it's i think it's shown so many people who are probably unfamiliar with meditation unfamiliar with yoga or see
it as something that's so unfamiliar um that you know meditation music or mountain music is for everybody like it's such a universal thing yeah that um so many different types of people can connect to it just by your different backgrounds that you two have connected to it in such a different way um and how you're sharing it it's yeah it's beautiful to see how different meditation music and
devotional music can actually be and how many different types of people it can it can connect yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm glad you put that bass on it so i could turn it up in the car i love it the first time i heard it i was telling jelly it was just like you've learned it's just all the music what you've made is it's like that perfect combination between being timeless and pure
but then being current and relevant exactly and you've created in my in my opinion whatever it's worth like it sounds like a no genre like it's it's new it's different it's it's not you can't just go oh yeah that's that kind of music i wouldn't even put it under meditational music like it's it's beyond that and i think that you know credit to both of your artistry to be able to expand
that much what's different about creating devotional music for both of you and generally for you to stretch out your comfort zone from a music place of now creating this new genre that you have together so for willow for you more like what's what's different about korean devotional music for you from your perspective and generally from yours like almost going the other way and like oh now we're
creating something a bit newer to what i'm used to yeah um you know my lyrics that you know in the willow album and in ardipithecus my first album um you know i talk a lot about duality i talk a lot about spirit i talk a lot about you know cycles i have a song that's called cycles on on my first album the language is very modern and what i love about sanskrit is that it it's deeper than language
um and i think the the real difference is bringing that um ancient vibration to it that isn't just coming from me it's coming from generations and generations of of deeply spiritual individuals who have carried this on and i think you know feeling that is is the biggest difference for me because it's not just me coming up with something wow that's really powerful yeah that's incredible to think of it like that
that's so well articulate that's beautiful thank you you accept me oh my gosh oh yeah wow wow i've just been i've been hit by your by your articulation of that that's so beautiful yeah i think it's so interesting because i think for me it was almost i wouldn't say the opposite because naturally we're trying to retain the the purity of devotional space and like with with recording we set up a
little altar like in this in the studio it's it's really nice to have that feel to be a sacred space yeah but um with this ep um because most of the time i'm singing mantra which i which obviously those words are not mine i'm putting my heart my prayer into it but i'm also trusting the power of that ancient vibration that timeless vibration to touch the heart of another
and then and for that reason i don't i don't take credit when someone has you know a powerful experience with it's like oh yeah that's that's what it does that's what it does to me too so i'm just trying to you know be facilitate this experience but with this uh album i definitely was stretching myself because i think just before we came together i was i'd been recently feeling a lot more inspired to
to write lyrics in english that convey some of these ideas and and themes which was daunting for me because it's not something i it's something i hardly ever do let alone record i i have tons of voice notes in my phone which will never see the light of day you know ideas that i've had but it was so cool because i didn't think we would actually work on those things but when i showed some of
them to willow she was so um encouraging and excited about it and i was sort of like well what do you think like you add your lyrics into she was like no i love this i think we should go for it i was like really and then so to to actually bring some of those ideas to life um for me that was a beautiful experience of being able to come outside of the space of okay this is just mantra it's not me but here's
this here's this you know ancient sound vibration to actually hear some words that i wrote which convey how i want to you know take a snapshot of this um this sentiment for instance of surrender or um what you've experienced how i've experienced or what or or what's meaningful to me or to us you know and and for me that was a really uh that was extremely powerful it i came
away being like whoa i i didn't know i could do yeah yes so i'm so grateful for that yeah it was it was it was beautiful yeah i could feel i could feel that that sense of hesitancy that's why i was like yeah i was like let's go full flag are you sure she's like let's do it yeah yeah because i was like you you gonna know the the greatness of you today what's the uh both of you live real lives in the real
world you know you you go through your challenges every single day and people who listen to this are going through their own challenges what's been something that's been really beautiful or powerful for both of you individually that you feel has helped you discover answers at tough times or find new directions at tough times what is it that both of you have turned to in your
own life whether it be musical or not that that you think that almost what is it that people can do to express themselves more because it feels like so many of our feelings do get bottled up and do just get thought about inside what has been powerful for you individually i mean it might it might be a little um unorthodox but i actually really really enjoy looking at myself in the mirror and
explaining like like telling like having a conversation with myself basically like when i'm when i'm having tough emotions that i feel like i don't want to express to other people or i feel like embarrassed or whatever it is um i always try to like just look at myself and be like no you're valid like explain the full depth of everything that you're feeling and then look at yourself and
like explain back to yourself why why those emotions not why those emotions are okay but accepting yourself in a certain way um and you know sometimes when the face time doesn't work and people don't answer their phone you can talk to yourself yeah and it does work it does work for me it does i love that that's so good yeah i've never heard anyone do that in the mirror taking journaling to another level yeah
you're actually facing yourself which i think a lot of the times we are battling with our own self rather than with other people and so actually like looking at yourself in the mirror and and speaking to yourself is so powerful it gets deep the tears start flowing and then you start looking at yourself exactly and you're like dang like i see you like you're we're together in this
like we got each other i love that yeah yeah that's awesome i hope everyone tries that out this week yeah everybody's listening and watching try it out i'm being serious sometimes i feel weird saying it because people you know are like that's ridiculous but i've done it and it has stopped the tears wow yeah i was thinking as you were speaking that for me um writing has always been a powerful one
and it's funny because i i think of the page being like a mirror and i think many people find writing to be like that yeah um to the point where i remember some difficult points in my life where i didn't write for a very long time for probably two years i didn't write anything on a page because i was afraid of what would come out and what i would see i felt just this complete block you know and
then to release that to start i always feel such a relief when i put a pen on the paper and start to write and i was introduced to the practice of free writing some some years ago there's a famous book called the artist's way by julia cameron and this practice of mourning pages is something that many people have found a lot of uh yeah just incredible experiences from so i i started to do that and i still turned to
that when i i mean i i try to do it regularly but it's also one of those things you go through phases you know but for me yeah so writing is is always a huge huge help um i mean stating the obvious i think you know kirtan meditation music of course but my other huge one which i think will and i share is is to connect with nature 100 just to walk i mean i think i try and go for a walk in nature every day and without
fail it's like a bomb it's uplifting it brings me back to myself it sparks ideas and creativity it's it's just like uh the the road and the page they're my two friends that really helped me so much i love that yeah i love that that's so awesome and and i guess that's what's inspired a lot of your work i know genevieve whenever you're doing your bbc pause for thought sessions you talk a
lot about the environment and climate change and yeah and that where where do you see that intersection between like art and the environment or climate change or expression and that is there a synergy there or or is it just something that you feel is a different part of you where your care comes from i think it's absolutely intertwined i mean nature is the most beautiful
art that we can witness and observe i'm so inspired by um by the natural world and my mom is a really avid gardener and and lover of you know wild plants and herbs and she sort of brought us up like that to observe and learn about all the properties of of plants and trees around us so i'm i'm kind of obsessed with plants and flowers and people could laugh at me but it's like i'm always looking and
inspired by the textures by the shapes by the um by the different aromas yeah everything and so our nature inspires me creatively immensely and in terms of caring for nature i think like like a person the more you know a person the more you care so the more we observe and connect and feel a sense of relationship with nature um that care it's like why wouldn't i care i'm that it's it's a it's a
beautiful exchange absolutely there's a mutual exchange of nourishment going on and i think also with the particular um type of creativity and art you know the the questions that i'm asking or that we're asking about service about divinity these these kinds of uh these kinds of things they bring us also closer to our deepest essence which i believe is is meant to be in harmony with nature so
the more that you the more that you're coming into that space again it just becomes a very natural connection to feel and so yeah i i'm kind of a nature addict and i and i i know like when i visited willow in her home you know there's such a beautiful view of the ocean and it's like it's it's just a it's a part of you right yeah one's gotta be there and i have to i would i think a significant decline in
my mental health would happen if i were to live in a city yeah um or i mean i do live in a city but if i were to live like amongst buildings yeah exactly yeah um like i need to wake up and see trees just one tree exactly at least at least one at least one i i need it's i'm a nature addict what can i say just like you yeah um and that's definitely one of the biggest healing agents in my life 100
yeah well we've been talking about this for the past couple of days about how you see this connection between spirituality and science and physics and spirituality and you've always been very much talking about like science and physics and like but then you're also really interested in spirituality tell us about how you started to see so early in your life the connection and synergy between the two
because i think so often they're talked about so separately or 100 they're seen as like divisive or disconnected exactly yeah um i think one of the the biggest the biggest moments in my life that made me really move towards this um marriage of spirituality and science was um you know i had been reading a lot of spiritual literature i had been reading a lot of osho a lot of i read this one book called oneness
and that book changed my life forever and just the idea of vibration and that everything is vibration really hit me because i am a musician and music is like the biggest love of my life um and then learning about string theory was ah just opened my mind into such a place that it was like these two things are the same like people think that they're separate and in some ways they
are but in the fundament they're just two sides of the same coin um and so that inspired me to just dive really deep into the physical world and just how things work and that's how i um just got into physics and started studying physics um and you know i haven't been i've been studying more of the spiritual lane recently it's hard it's it's hard i will say to study them deeply at the same time
um but i i study them separately deeply and i go back and forth and then try to figure out how to bring them together in some way but in my life you know i'm constantly i'm constantly relating um my spiritual experiences with you know all of the scientific things that i've read or you know just being in physics class and telling my physics teacher like oh you should read this book and he's like
okay i'm a physics teacher i'm not a metaphysics teacher um so i just i just want to continue to just get more intelligent and and more intelligent while also losing my ego i think is where i'm trying to go which is kind of um counter-intuitive yeah but i think it is possible yeah absolutely and intelligence in service exactly and so that's that's really just i have lots of goals
but that's one of them save the world exactly yeah i have lots of goals um but they all give me joy and and really just my curiosity for both makes makes life just exciting you know those those two things just make my life feel exciting to me yeah i actually think that that that paradox is what makes it exciting yeah if your pursuit was only to become intelligent you'd get bored
exactly and if your pursuit was only to remove ego it wouldn't be as exciting quite tough and so actually both of them together is a beautiful path and and and often the path that can only be walked when you do both paths to reach to really get it right i love that that's also why i really admire you jay because you while also having been a monk for five years three three years you are also one of the most intelligent
people i know um and that's so inspiring to see that you can do both and that both can be done um it just inspires me to do it it just inspires me to try to actually try to actually put that into my own life um and i'm just so happy that you're you're in my life so that i can i can see you grow and and constantly learn from you and that's really amazing to me oh you're the sweetest i'm like getting all
emotional now but now we're just gonna be crying no i love that i really appreciate it no i was like willow's 40 year old grandma inside her talking i know i'm proud i know i love it no i really appreciate that from you it's you know it's i think we both have a lot more in common than we know too totally we're kind of discovering it recently yes i'm just like oh yeah i can learn a
lot and that's why yeah i think what we all were talking about yesterday is and i think why we all like being around each other is and and why who everyone is listening or watching i'm hoping that this is encouraging you to connect with like-hearted people connect with and collaborate with people that you're close to because when you can be yourself and you don't have to apologize by asking for permission to say
something or expressing who you are and you welcome them if you want even more videos just like this one make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here if you listen to most conversations it's obvious the person is not thinking or they would never say what they're saying or if you stand back and observe their behavior they would never do what they were doing if they were thinking