[Music] that's why we're here for all the Freaks and the Geeks but also to acknowledge and reflect on the journey that you as Oliver tree have been on are still on you're a transparent dude you tell your truth in any given moment through your music you dress it up sometimes but at the core of it there's always something
deep going on huh yes sir well the art to me is my life's work so music specifically is where you get to meet the real guy so who were you before music became your voice music's been my voice since I was really young I mean I've been making music since I was 3 years old so this is not a new thing it's just been something I did for
self-entertainment I didn't know it could be a job or anything like that did you realize at any given moment though that it was more deeply connected to your spirit and to your desire to communicate it was just something like drinking water eating food I never thought of it as anything I didn't even know difference you know it's just what
I've done my house I grew up in was very musical so it was just like I didn't learn any other languages music was the language that was taught in my house making art was you know I used to make film me and my friends were making basically trailers for movies that would never get made and I'd do my own talk shows and different things with my
friends and we would wear these crazy outfits my dad had all these costumes from burning man and uh that was kind of our production wardrobe and uh we would just make films all the time for self- entertainment and we would just make music all the time and I never knew that that was like something that could be a
job let alone anything that you could do that would resonate with people that was just what I did probably didn't even realize how lucky you were to grow up in a creative house 100% you just take it for granted but the truth is my parents they instead of buying new cars they would they made an agreement we would buy art for the house and instruments
instead of having a new vehicle or something like that they prioritize art as the number one priority so my next question is what grade did you get in seventh grade uh C minus I thought your last album was your last album and I it was well I don't believe I don't never believe that anymore and you know why you know who's
to blame for that Jay-Z Jay-Z when he retired and gave us the Black Album I was like the ribbon's on it it's done and then when he came back I was so happy but the downside is I'll never believe an artist when they retire ever again it's just why would you have to retire from from music because it's an awful business but okay great point but
when you started you weren't attached to the business there was a thing called the internet and when you started you didn't even use the internet you were just making out for odd sake in your house well I'll just start off by saying the only reason I came to do this interview is because I been given an award for being the number one singer in
the world from me yes and apple music I want to shout out Steve Jobs sorry hang on whoa whoa whoa whoa it's it's a very specific award it is just for me doesn't reflect the opinion of the company a person the company has said many nice things we have but the awards from me just FYI well I thank you and I thank
apple and Mr Steve Jobs and uh yeah this thing my kid fifth award real gold here wait this is for your kid you're regifting your kids Awards I mean I don't have them lying around you guys don't have a budget here this is Apple music aren't you guys a multi-trillion you know what you you've just asked the magic question and unlocked the truth
the answer is no we can't buy on nothing I love it I love it who's the most famous person you have in your oh my god dude you would like to know this guy's a cloud chaser what's going on here zaye this isn't the guy I know give me a phone I don't have it I left it in the other room but I've got crazy connects bro who do you want to know did Diplo
pay you the 100 G's he owes you from the Super Bowl that's a great question so Diplo is actually me and him had a bet at the Super Bowl and um let's just say the Bengals did not win and Diplo is down bat 100 G's but he hasn't paid me yet but he's going to the wire went in I think it should go through the way that
it looked it was it was a last minute bit based on the final play of the game well it was just the game that was the last play of the game that was when it was over he thought he was winning he was rubbing it in my face the whole time there's no way he thought he was winning when the when the when the Rams what they were like first down and like
within the 20 yard line and they were they were always always going to score they were always going to score we always knew that yeah la baby 100 G's 100 G's not bad for one afternoon yeah but yeah Diplo he's a sucker and I will say I made some country house music with him in one day yeah can't wait for you
to hear this I hope it blesses your ears cu the best song I've ever made but Diplo is a chump now I want to talk a bit more about this album Cowboy tears yes he got the name right this time I love it he's got a dis look at this guy I tell you what he's he's he's got a full heart unless you up and then he's like an elephant then turn he's just
turned like Dad never let you never let you forget it I came in here I was like I'm going to be the most serious interview I ever had good let's get into and that's literally what we're doing here but I did beef with you last time I was on you did but did you or did you not send a message back to me saying I wasn't really serious no what happened
was was serious don't be mad at me because I got upset with you about the album title can we have a conversation is that true or is that true or false what happened was you said you or did you not I never got the text bro where's the text man I wasn't really mad at you are we good can we have another what I said was true or false
false is you said you were going to text me I got no text and I said I made him mad and I hurt the dude's feelings so I was like just send him whatever I had my assistant reach out it's so good that's why you have an assistant ground cover literally I have these I just say tell them whenever he wants to hear being your assistant what
a nightmare job that is BR you don't you don't want to work for me uh it's interesting to me because and this is the line that I feel you walk and I love watching you walk it and I don't know where I really want to like untangle it cuz I I like it from a Fan's point of view but I'll I'll try is that you are a great writer and a great creative but
and and I love the way that you present your art each time with a real eye on detail and on on creating a world but this whole kind of like spend 2 million bucks the label all that stuff feels very kind of art EX it feels sort of like a a part of it whereas I've known a lot artist who genuinely ha their labels
yeah yeah they're too scared to say it but I think with you it's like isn't it all just part of the experiment everything's an experiment even coming on this show why do you have to be like that why are you going to give you you gave me the award and he's telling me this is his kids award he's reting kids award Z you did me dirty bro
no bro I'm just and this thing you said it worked and there's you just call my show a show I I have respect for you just not your show that's just so DB I told this guy I wanted to have a serious interview I was going to come on and be a sweet heart and then what happens reality hits baby you walked in with a madeup award
that no one gave you what are you talking about I did take it out of the green room but hey let's just keep it can we cut that part out no nothing's getting cut out this was given to me by Zane l no it wasn't was why you got to do me dirty like that man cuz man you came in dirty you me worse than Fant dirty I came in with multiple hugs nothing the sweetest
guy all of a tree everything about you's Dirty Man dir you're scaring me I'm part of the music industry which is the scummiest of scummy indust everything that's wrong with the music industry I know and so are you dude Deep Pockets he's got his fancy clothes he's like the definition of cool this guy shows up he's got his Ariana Grande interview and
he's got his Kanye outfit on he walks in and he's like a billionaire and he can't do what why'd you cancel on my first interview what he was lost traveling the world I was in Where Were You Chicago oh yeah must have been really hard to get back so you're here now we're having this conversation it won't be the last
it may be the last it's not going to be the last you and I both hope this is the last no I don't no I don't but I do want to know cuz it's that's all fun yeah but what was going on when these song because you didn't have to make an album which meant you had to make an album exactly that's a great point so what was
going on that made you need to write these really sad songs I think to be a human is to suffer it's like there's never ending cycle of suffering okay so what were you suffering from what was making you sad at the time heartbreak that's for certain um just the realization that I'm a failure and what everything I mean that's that's for me
to decide it is absolutely I'm not going to try and disuade you from that but in order to get past that that feeling right making art helps but there's also you have to work you have to work on yourself right that was the big thing and I think we touched upon that before but I had so much growth making this album it was beyond oh yeah I evolved as
artist the two are in Tandem and if you don't evolve as a human it's very hard to evolve as an artist correct so what I found was working on myself working on my soul healing myself um I got sober during the course of making this album drinking a problem not drinking I've been a drug addict since I was 15 basically
something I've struggled with for most of my adult life I mean if all of it I don't know when youd become an adult but yeah I was basically an adult when I was a kid if that makes any sense long story short this album covers a wide range of topics everything from addiction to heartbreak to finance you know for me money is not a big thing I talk about it
but really as long as I can afford to make art and that's why I partnered with Atlantic was so that I could make great art cuz you pour it all into it that's the thing if you I think I've mentioned this in the past but I took way less on my advances so I could have bigger video budgets I said I'll take half as much
but I want to put that money into my marketing budgets which is just your music video budgets because that's pretty much the only way you Market music nowadays so it ended up being the kind of thing where my friends they made triple as much money as me but they couldn't even get a $220,000 music video how did you need help getting off drugs
I mean I only just got fully sober basically I got off weed a yearo ago I got off alcohol I would say eight months ago or something and then I quit vaping like a month ago by doing mushrooms micro doing micro doing and for those who don't know this is like a very powerful tool for addiction M you know when you have those
urges you just take a little bit more but just kind of having micro doing throughout the day for about a week and it's so powerful and I'm around everyone who's constantly smoking and all these things and to get off of that was a big deal and it's very hard to do but through just using proper dosing on M micro doing mushrooms
is is very powerful why did you start in the first place bordedom like what you any closer understanding it was yeah it was from my cousin dying um when I was in Middle School he um got spalman angitis and he went brain dead in like two days and that was like and I had to say goodbye to him at the hospital like he was like a vegetable trauma and that
was like before that I like wouldn't do drugs my friends like oh we're going to go smoke and this is like when I was in sixth grade or whatever so it's like my friends's like we're going to go smoke and I'm like no I'm not going to smoke like I don't do that you know and I was like totally against the idea of using
drugs my parents had done everything they could to like raise the right values for me but as soon as I like experienced that and I he passed away that went out the window and it was like the kind of thing where I basically would tell myself like oh yeah I could die at any moment cuz he was only a year older than me he was
like one of my best friends we had just taken him to Mexico that summer and me and my brother he was in between our age but since he was older than me like we didn't have the competition him and my brother were like more competing for the alpha male whereas me and him didn't so I was really I was way closer with him
he was like really close to me my favorite cousin one of my best friends and so like when he died I was like whoa I could die at any second I want to see what else this world has to offer which I think in some ways was an excuse for me to just Escape through drugs I think trauma plays it trauma is such a crazy thing like a lot of times you don't even
really acknowledge that you've gone through it until much later and and it really needs a home and it needs to attach itself to something and it's it's powerful I mean it's it's it requires a lot of work and it was crazy because it started out with just oh yeah a little smoking of weed and then it turns into
ecstasy on a school night and then it turns into eating like every type of drug and then it moves up to you know numbing yourself with ketamine and then it moves up to experimenting with meth and heroin you know Ian destuction by Distraction yeah and it just is this thing and it's like it becomes the thing where you're starting with one thing and
then you're doing seven drugs at once you know what I mean taking as much little bit of this little bit of that and it becomes like spiraling to the point where my parents kicked me out in high school they're like you're no longer welcome to live here I was selling drugs to survive and living at my friend's house sleeping on their
couches I could have gone down that path yeah and I did go down it to a certain extent but I hit rock bottom I did this family trip to Burning Man and I ate way too much LSD and I ended up long story short having my own rebirth and going to my funeral seeing my whole death play out and that was my rock bottom as a drug addict and
after that I still I stopped all hard drugs and I had this opportunity to perform and do DJ sets I used to be a DubStep DJ in high school which plays into the whole thing of drugs you know that scene's so rooted around drug use and um and I had an opportunity to play a big show my first real Big Show and so that gave me out L instead of needing to
do drugs I could pour my time and energy into preparing for the show so it basically saved my life that's where music became my religion yeah and that was a big part of my um really being able to sacrifice my life for music and bow down to the music Gods yeah worship at the different altar that was a religious kind of moment for me that was
like whoa the music gods are going to watch over me and if I bow down to them they will take care of me why did you decide to mix some a rocker because bro I'm traveling the world right now trying to hit all seven continents in one year before you turn 29 the goal was to hit all seven continents before I turned 30
which is still the goal MH but then I was like why not do it before I'm 29 why stop there get out and and yeah I'm always just touring and I don't get to really see that much so after covid and after I left my grandparents Ranch I made an effort to say hey I'm going to start just only going to places that I've never been so I lived in Russia for
four months how was that incredible just give us some Topline Reflections on Russia well Russia I'm not going to get into the political side of things cuz that's completely out of my wheelhouse but the art the music videos and the music topnotch I mean their film schools it's a different school of thought they're making some of the most
incredible most I don't know how I would say this sophisticated music videos like even their artist like the smallest artists their music videos are better than the biggest artists Amica how when you land in Russia and your desires to try and go and be a part of the community into actually you know assimilate in a
meaningful way rather than just play a show and get out where do you begin like how do you begin to see the real Russia through the artist lens and not through you as an artist in your lens well I think the best way to see any culture is to go through the locals and to be introduced to it by the people who really live there that's the only way to
really get The Insider view so you had an the ground connection who then started that process yeah so I worked with this band Little Big who's like Russian royalty they make like some of the craziest music videos um and their music is just wild uh but basically I worked on music with them for a year they came to uh La I was living at a
house at the time and they recorded with me there and we would send tracks back and forth for a year we had built you know a real connection and by the time I finally could get into Russia cuz it's extremely hard we had to get our visas approved by the Office of the President it took us like six months just to get
into the country and once I got there I'm like I'm not leaving yeah I stayed as long as I could with my Visa and I actually tried to extend my Visa by joining the military which that's another story I'm not going to get too far into that but I made a documentary of the process I was in boot camp for literally weeks and weeks and then you
actually went began the proceed yeah I was trying to get my full citizenship and I ended up getting kicked out because I didn't pass the drug test this is when I wasn't fully sober but it wasn't hard drugs I was using what I thought was just a supplement and I ended up being a steroid and so I got kicked out for steroids you got kicked
out of Russia whilst you were in the in the process of trying to join the Russian military it sounds crazy for having steroids in your blood yeah but I will say there's a documentary I filmed of this process and working with the locals and I will say it may never come out I filmed 20 documentaries over the last five years
and we're trying to get enough editors to edit them because I'm filming more than I can actually edit edit down yeah but Russia was crazy I got to see it from the artist perspective I got to be introduced by the locals and I did that with the French I worked with some French rappers Lorenzo made a bilingual documentary with him in France and that
was like four years ago still hasn't come out yet basically they spoke in French the whole time we spoke in English and we didn't even understand what each other was saying and when we ended up editing it we didn't even know what they were saying so we just wrote whatever we thought sounded best as the subtitles but I'm always just trying to
work with different cultures being just introduced to seeing something new that's how I get inspired that's how I maintain not burning out so this year four months in Russia I went to Costa Rica um to just do a little bit of soul searching um and I'm riding motor scooters around world I'm making a documentary about motor scootering
around the globe I went to um Morocco and Egypt for a month I was in the Middle East and in Africa Northern Africa and then I just got back from India and Thailand for a month how was India India is probably one of my favorite places I've ever been why nothing like it that country should be its own continent the amount of people
how dense it is have you been no never you got to go yeah it was the most incredible thing I've ever seen just culture shock beyond belief overwhelming yeah over whelming but the most sweet loving people I hung out with the kids I hung out with people fishermen I helped push their boats out into the water it
was crazy like the different experiences I've had that's why I like making documentaries because it pushes me outside of my comfort zone not to say I need a camera to be there to do some of this stuff but for me it pushes me to be like well let's go do something crazy he just did one of his fake laughs too there it is there it is that's so
fake that's fake no way don't tell me what's fake about me when you're the one who's literally just done the documentary behind the documentary behind the documentary behind the documentary told me you just taken a hundred people their life's work you're going to throw it away it's funny to you it's funny and then you're like this
guy's fake laughing you do you love to fake laugh I saw you do it in the Ed Sharon episode I fig I figured what's your problem with Ed Sharon I want to work Ed if you're watching this out time is up thanks for coming on my is thanks for coming on my show man I got some other things I needed to tell you go ahead the album Cowboy tears