what's up man it's been a long time it's great to see you likewise my house everything everything is great congratulations on all the continued success in life i'm so grateful we're both still here and i'm excited to see you man likewise brother likewise it's been too long but you've
been busy you've been busy you've given us so many points of contact and reasons to continue to support through quality and also coming back with this music which is great and and it's a very personal sounding project you know a chance for you to reflect on what the
journey has been and what what it all means to you i mean we know how important 1999 was a mixtape that changed your life it's not lost on us this is called 2000 and the subject matter reflects that right i mean it reflects the life lived to this point absolutely absolutely you you couldn't
have worded it more perfectly you know i'm saying like if 1999 was that come up project 2000 is that same kid just on the other side of the fence while we've got you in a reflective mode on on mixtape to this album you know really moved by survivor's guilt and the fact that as
life moves on we remain in memoriam of the people that we lost along the way how how hard and challenging was it to or how even therapeutic was it for you to create that song it was incredibly therapeutic man you know even just the way that it started right like i just kind of started writing a
song i was in the shower one day and um like a rhyme scheme had came to me you know i'm saying it was uh something along the lines of rich and rotten and i i kind of started to dive deep into that whole idea of like how my life is where is that now and you know because i i had recently
came to terms with the term survivor skill and i recently at the time i'm saying not like you know recently now but at the time when i made the song i had realized that i've been affected by this thing called survivor's guilt and it hit so close to home because
you know when i first came out i was trying to bring everybody along with me you know what i'm saying i was trying to put my whole team on my back and try i was in hopes that they could receive the same success that i was receiving that's what makes you so special joey is that you know you
throughout your art your voice you strive to to to to create it to go into a place of depth you know um and it's not to say that you can't leave a mic smoking and tatters on the ground but it's like you use every bar in every moment if you feel it to try to express
it as opposed to run from it and even in a song like cruise control which is effectively you know that's a hit record but you you don't waste words man word up hold up now i appreciate that how'd this one happen tell us a little story about cruise control man so shout out to
mike will you know what i'm saying because he's the genius behind the sound of it you know he he definitely gave me the canvas that i was able to draw on and as soon as i heard the beat man it just kind of spoke to me it felt very aspirational felt ambitious it felt reflective and you know that's just kind
of i i just kind of approached it awesome yo 30 million by age 30 motivated to reach my goals trust me i ain't worried you know what i'm saying like it's just the feeling of it it just feels limitless you know what i'm saying it feels like all right man i'm trusting in
my faith and i'm leaping on for the cliff with no safety net you know what i'm saying we just going you know you see there's a bit of a resurgence going on with some of your older songs while you're continuing to prop us and get us ready to continue to get us ready with
this new music and so it's this wonderful world with the crossroads of of of what you mean versus what you're becoming a meeting um you know i'm on tick tock now i'm seeing a lot of joey badass love on there a lot of people rediscovering lyrics making videos and content out of it it must be really nice
to know that that timelessness we talk about in music now applies to what you do absolutely man absolutely it is by far the greatest feeling you know because these these kids they keep my name alive you know i'm saying that dave my music has touched him for years and it will
continue to touch them for years to come where it just continues to spread like wildfire even 10 years later you know and i'm just i'm just i'm just incredibly grateful for that but when you think about the you know the young kid and you were a young kid i can say
that without feeling you know like i'm putting you in a box you you were so young with you and your friends when you came out making these songs and at a time when i was the idea of bars and the way that the beat sounded and that golden era no one was really messing
with that and you were really forging forward with it you think about what was inspiring that young kid are you any closer to understanding where this desire to make music from that space came from for me it's just like really being a fan of the art you know what i mean like i i i am i am
truly a student to this game you know what i mean and i came in literally student to this game and that hasn't changed you know i mean i'm a student in every room that i walk into um so uh yeah you know it's definitely a great feeling to to to still be able to carry on this art
form in in the way that i do and to be able to carve out a lane for myself how has it been moving into the other arts you know in particular cinema and and your tv work man it's incredible like you know activity and film acting was something that i always wanted to do i
was you know a lot of people know i was a theater student in high school then i got kicked out because my attendance was just shady but um but your intention was there yeah my intention was there you know what like i you know growing up in new york like immediately i noticed that trying to
become an actor in new york city was like damn near impossible not that becoming a rapper had higher chances but i just felt more confident in music so i told myself you know i'll focus on music and in the future i'll use that to leverage the acting here here i am you know i mean it's going
great it's going great i look forward to more opportunities the coolest thing about like a lot something that's been happening a lot lately is you know people got introduced to the to the actor first and then they get to discover my music you know what i mean so it's kind of
cool because you know they fall in love with this character that i'm playing and they don't even really realize that oh that's the joey badass guy that i've heard about there's an incredible list of people who are lined up on this on this album and you know you've chosen
really deliberately and by design from the producers like static selector uh you know chuck is on there which is awesome love that guy um mike will and even some of the people as well like i mean just working with diddy you know generationally bringing the two of you
together um he would definitely understand where you're coming from he's obviously a fan and a huge proponent and an influence in the era from which you actually represent so how was it kind of making that happen man it was like clockwork you know uh over the last what six years
puff and i have formed this real deep brotherly bond you know what i'm saying so he like like we've we've been talking about my next album for like you know literally over the last five years and stuff like that so this opportunity just kind of presented itself like i laid down the intro track
was in the studio we were all excited about it it was actually the last song that i recorded on the whole album yeah because i had the album i'm just like i need an intro i need an intro i need a way to start this thing and we just got in the studio shout out to my
boy eric shout out to my boy uh mcclenny um yeah we got in studio we laid it down and i literally just called puff like yo i got it joey i've never asked you like who was the north star for you from an artistic point of view who can you honestly say was the artist that you can
trace it back to that gave you that that real nudge to want to make music yourself who was the one that really inspired you to that degree well initially it was it's a tie between jay-z and biggie you know i'm i'm a brooklyn kid i'm brooklyn-born so they were very instrumental throughout
like my childhood and my musical upbringing but once i got older once i got older i got to say capitalistics you know i mean like he was my brother he was my my partner like my best friend and um you know he was so incredibly talented and within proximity
you know i'm saying like i like i grew up listening to the greats but to to me steve's was like we we we were you know colleagues we were right amongst each other so we we always you know pushed each other's pen but like he by far pushed my pen the most to this day he pushes my pen [Music] you