August 20, 2023 • 57 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
OK, and we are live. Welcome to the 7th episode of
our series Authentic Conversations in English.
Today we're joined with a reallyspecial guest who's a rapper,
actually very wellknown musician, very prominent, and
we're going to discuss his field.
So, old Man Saxon, why don't youintroduce yourself to the
(00:23):
audience? Hey y'all, I'm Old Man Saxon.
I'm a rapper based in Denver, CoYeah, I make music and art ASIC.
And do you know any other languages as well?
Or are you just just an English guy?
You know what's funny is in order to get into college and
(00:46):
to, like, graduate college, I had to take Spanish.
But I don't know if I don't knowwhat happened.
I don't know how I got. I don't know how I passed those
classes. Muy buy Poquito okay.
Yeah, no, It's learning a language.
Especially in school, that's a whole different thing.
(01:06):
And that's. Yeah, it is.
That's annoying, yeah. Yeah, that's why I like what
you're doing too. It's just like, yeah, cuz a lot
of people that I know who are who English isn't their first
language, a lot of them learn from TV and media and stuff.
So it's way, yeah, it's a littlebit different than taking, you
know three months of classes where you know you're going at
(01:28):
the teacher speed. Not your own, right.
Exactly. Yeah.
And to learn a language, you really, you have to go above and
beyond in your own time, really,to make that stuff happen.
That's it's no joke. So we got Allie is here.
OK, shout out to you Nutshell 15waving.
Yeah. So I see some of you guys here
(01:49):
are now popping in from Facebook, mostly Facebook, some
from YouTube. So throughout the stream, as
we're having this conversation, if there's any expressions that
you guys don't understand or if there are any terms that you
don't understand, you can Simplyput it in the chat.
Occasionally we can stop and we can address it.
If you guys have any questions whatsoever, Okay.
(02:09):
And as you're popping in, let usknow where you're from, what
your native language is and yeah, that's about it.
So, so, old man Saxon, before westart, I'm going to play a
quick, quick clip of you. It's one of my favorite
performances by you. So it'll be, it'll be pretty
fun, Okay. Let's see here.
(02:32):
Put it on the screen OK. I'm from Denver, Co.
I ain't never been in no water and I ain't never been on no,
(02:52):
this is the same. Start my musical performance
now, DJ OK, OK, OK. So Old Man Saxon, this
experience here, man, you lookedreally comfortable on stage
there. You looked really comfortable.
(03:13):
So is, is this something you're you're used to doing?
What was going through your headduring that, during that
performance there? Such a good question because
like I. I was comfortable because of how
much I saw, how nervous everyoneelse was.
That's right. It was the the concept of the
(03:35):
show is, you know, we get these rappers, they come up on stage
and they rap on front of super famous rappers, right.
And for just a normal rapper or someone who wasn't prepared, I
just see that being super nerve,right, Right.
So. When I was kind of in the green
room, I could see everyone else being nervous.
(03:56):
And then when I when I was in the green room, someone else
went on before me and then they come back and he was like, oh,
because we knew that Cardi B, Chance and TI were going to be
the judges, but no one knew thatSnoop was going to be there.
So this dude comes back and he'slike, Snoop's out there.
And I was like, what? And.
(04:17):
For some reason, that even made it like me, a little more calm
because Snoop I had been listening to since I was, you
know, five or six years old or whatever.
And you know, Cardi B's a new rapper.
Chance is a newer rapper. TI, relative to Snoop, is a
newer rapper. But Snoop was like, oh, I have
(04:39):
to do like I have to show him because he's West Coast.
That's like we're all in my. Influences come from musically.
So yeah. And then the other thing was,
I'm glad you said I look comfortable because I think a
lot of people who saw the show, they almost had a little bit of,
(05:01):
I'm just going to say, for lack of a better term, a little bit
of hatred that I got on this show and that I had this, you
know, two-minute audition and then now I'm getting all this
praise. But.
Everything that happened before I got on the show led me to be
comfortable once I got on the show, right.
(05:22):
It wasn't like I was like, oh, there's a rap audition.
Let me pick up this mic and let's go.
Like, I've been doing this for, you know, 8 plus years at the
time. So I was gonna say, how did you
get into it? Rap.
OK, so rap or the show rap in general, because you said before
you were doing this before. So like how did how did that
(05:44):
even spark? How did that start?
And then also like the old man old name, the name Old Man
Saxon. Where does that come from as
well? So I got into hip hop when I was
probably 7 years old. My brother, I have a Big Brother
who listens to him. He always listen to hip hop
right? And so.
(06:05):
When I was younger, I just pretty much wanted to do
anything he was doing because I thought it was cool.
So he used to listen to this rapper, whose name is E40 and
E40 Raps really fast, you know, really mumbled and stuff, right?
And you know, very his vocabulary is very regional to
where he's from. Like, if you're from a different
(06:26):
place, you might not even know what he's talking about.
So I would sit. In my room, listen to E40 tapes
and write the lyrics down. And I would rewind it if I
didn't understand it, Write it down, Rewind, write it down
until I got a whole like his whole songs memorized in my
head. And now as a. 30 plus adult, I
(06:49):
realized that was like passion. That was like some real passion
from A7 or 8 year old kid to be like I wanna know this and write
it down right. So that's kind of where it
started. And then I got older.
And when I was in middle school,I used to.
Have freestyle battles at lunch with just this other kid.
(07:12):
His name was Josh Johnson. I'll never forgive him.
And I'm like just I'll remember that name forever.
And so somehow, and I still to this day do not know how somehow
we were rapping and then making money off of it.
Like kids in middle school like betting.
I don't know where are they getting money from?
(07:33):
I have no idea. And.
So yeah, I was doing that. And then I got to college or
high school. College.
And to be perfectly honest, and I think a lot of musicians would
tell you this, the reason I got into, like, making music was for
girls. Like, that's what it was.
It was to get girls to go. That's that's honest, OK, I.
(07:57):
Promise. It was like, hey, girls, notice
me. I have a talent.
So then I went to college. And then.
I didn't really start trying to pursue it professionally until I
was done with college. I moved out to LA and I had a
job as a video game tester for Konami and it seemed like it was
(08:20):
going to be like the best job ever, you know?
It's like Konami has some of my favorite video games like Metal
Gear Solid and things like that.I.
The actual job of it was, so what's the word?
Just terrible. I'll just say terrible because
you would go in and you'd be assigned one game, right?
(08:43):
So this one game you have to play over and over and over and
over again until you found a bug.
If you found a bug, you call thedevelopers.
They would send you a new build.You have to play it over and
over and over again until you find it.
I say all of that to say. I was like, I can't do this.
I have, I have this talent in me.
(09:04):
I'm a rapper. I have this talent.
I can't spend my life playing video games that are not even
fun to me. So I quit my job and then I like
didn't have any money. So I ended up sleeping in my car
for like 13 months, just living out the back of my car and
(09:25):
writing music and. So that's how I got into rap.
The name Old Man Saxon, though, comes from everyone.
Not everyone. A lot of people in hip hop being
named Young this or Little that,you know, little Little Bow Wow
(09:45):
had to grow. He had to lose the little at
some point. He's like, I'm an adult, like, I
can't be Little Bow Wow anymore.I'm just Bow Wow.
So for me. It was OK.
They're growing out of their name.
I would like to be the person that grows into his name so that
if I'm. Yeah, if I'm sixty, 7080 years
old, still rapping, I was like, oh, it's old man Saxon, of
(10:07):
course, just let him. Let him do it.
Yeah. Oh, that's no, that's sick man.
That's that's a cool story. And yeah, I could totally see
that if you were doing that fromsuch a young age with E 42.
Yeah, yeah, maybe that's maybe that's telling video games was
it wasn't exactly, wasn't exactly your purpose in life
(10:29):
here. Yeah, and don't get me wrong, I
still love video games. But yeah, after that job it was
I'm definitely playing less cuz I would come home from that job
and my roommate like, oh, you want to play something?
I was like, no, we're talking atall, dude.
Exactly. And I want to address another
thing you said there. But I'm just gonna address some
of these chats here. So Shayner, I'm from Bangladesh.
(10:53):
OK, shout out to Bangladesh. That's in.
From Morocco. OK, cool.
Shout out to you. Hello.
Ath Suliyeman. Hello Sir.
How can I get in conversation with you, please?
I'm a student from Mali. Crazy about the English
language. Yeah, just refer to the link in
any of our descriptions. I'll pop it into the chat here
for you guys. I just click the link and you
(11:15):
can find our WhatsApp group. All our resource to learn
English. It's all there.
So here's the link. There you go.
And if you guys have any questions throughout the stream,
we're just simulating a conversation.
If there are any expressions, any terms that you guys don't
understand, you can simply type it in the chat and we'll address
it. We'll clarify it for you.
(11:36):
And then if you like to support the platform, you can do so by
liking the video on whichever platform you're on.
And yeah, that's about it. So old man Saxon.
OK, so you talked about having rap battles with with a guy when
you were younger. So that that's like I think at
every high school, at least where I came from to in Canada,
people did that. That's just, that's part of the
(11:57):
culture I guess. Yeah, so.
So some of you guys here who arewatching, if you're from like
Bangladesh and Morocco, okay, maybe this might not be a thing
here. I don't think hip hop's as big
in your culture as it is in Canada, United States or English
speaking countries, okay. But typically when we're
younger, having rap vows and stuff trying to embarrass other
(12:19):
people teasing each other. It's definitely part of our
culture and ironically, because,or coincidentally because this
is an English learning podcast or English learning platform,
when it comes to vocabulary, when you're rapping, when it
comes to playing with the words,when it comes to hip hop music
(12:40):
and rap music, is this somethingthat was kind of natural for
you, old man Saxon, or having a strong vocabulary?
Is this something that you actually need to work on, like
you actually would try to learn new words, you try to learn new
puns or metaphors or whatever? Or is this something that would
kind of just come natural through life experience?
Or is it a skill that you work on?
(13:01):
I think for me. I it was something that I kind
of learned absorbed through media, right?
Like I have my wife always like asked me some like weird
question or some like random fact and I'll know the fact and
all. And like most of the time I'll
(13:22):
be like, oh, I know, I know thatfrom The Simpsons.
Like I gained so much information just from watching
things right? I was.
I've heard of other rappers who like.
Well, I used to read the dictionary and it's like, oh,
that's great. But like, I would say as of
until like maybe five years ago,I couldn't have told you what an
adjective was, You know, like, Ididn't know like like the ins
(13:46):
and outs of the English languagelike that.
But because of my love for hip hop and media, I learned a lot
of things through that, for sure.
That makes sense, that yeah, of course, to the people listening
as native English speakers, we learn the English language by
heart, Okay. We don't.
We don't study grammatical rules.
(14:07):
We don't study like what a noun and adjective is, what the past
participle is. We we don't study that stuff,
really. It's just it's just natural for
us. So when you're learning English
from native speakers, try to keep that in mind.
Try to keep that in the back of your head there.
But yeah, next thing is, when itcomes to creating a song, for
(14:27):
example, what does the process look like?
What does the creation process look like if you're gonna make
the song? So it's a bunch of different
ways. I'll tell you how it was when I
was younger, just starting to make music.
It was literally just writing a verse, right?
Just writing words that would rhyme.
(14:49):
And then by the time I was done.I'd go, oh, that's a verse.
And then I'd try to make a hook,right?
And then it got to a point whereI was meeting producers.
I was meeting people who knew how to make beats.
So I would ask for beats, they would give me the beats, and
then I'd try to make a song out of it.
Now I'm at a point where I produce a lot of my own music,
(15:11):
so most of the time I will startwith the beat.
And then end up writing the songafter or you're writing the
actual lyrics after. But I would also say there's no
real formula to it sometimes like one of these.
With this, I had a show yesterday that I performed a
(15:33):
song I never performed before, and that song I made because I
had made a beat for a TV show orsomething.
It didn't get picked up, but I made a beat.
And I made this, the lyrics overthat beat.
Then I went back, I revisited the song maybe a year later, and
(15:53):
I said, OK, this beat sucks. I'm going to change the beat.
So I made a whole different beatwith the lyrics I already had.
So I didn't have to change the lyrics.
I just had those same lyrics andthey made a beat over it.
So yeah, there's a lot of different ways, but most of the
time, majority of the time it's the beat 1st and then the
lyrics. Okay.
(16:14):
I see Got it. And then OK And then you put it
together and stuff and then I guess, do you outsource like
editing? I know a lot of people edit
their music in a way where maybethey'll change the pitch of
their voice, do things like that.
How does that look typically? So I and that's something that
I've just started learning too, because I used to outsource all
(16:36):
of these things. I used to have someone what they
call mix the song. And master the song.
And what mixing of the song is, is, you know making all of the
elements of the song sound like they're together instead of
something that sounds like it's on top or lower than another
instrument. So now, and because it was a lot
(16:59):
of time wasted waiting for otherpeople to.
Finish something. I was just like, I gotta learn
to do this myself, even if I won't do it all the time.
It's just good to know how to mix and master a song on my own.
But yeah, that's even that process now is all done in house
(17:21):
by me, right? I see Okay.
And then when it comes to your community for your music.
So obviously you know social media is a big thing these days,
right? So a lot of people are engaging
online and whatnot. They'll probably be following
your music, following your social media online.
Do you prefer engaging with yoursupporters online, or do you
(17:43):
prefer engaging with them in person?
That's such an interesting question because I.
Is it? I'm very much an introvert in a
lot of spaces, right? Like if I had a show yesterday
and after the show I talked to the people and it was great.
(18:07):
But I'm very It's very energy draining.
It drains me to be out, especially on a Friday night
downtown Denver where everyone is just hustling, bustle and
drinking and partying. I'm, I'm not have two kids and
I'm like it's not the same energy for me right online.
(18:32):
I hate that even more because like I think social media, the
way it's kind of set up is to keep you on there, right.
So if you're if my intention initially is to go.
I'm going to go online and talk to some fans and, you know,
(18:53):
respond to messages that should take about 10 minutes.
I end up spending an hour looking at fight videos or
something like it's like, wait, how did I get here?
What happened? So I, I, I would if the question
is what do I like more online orin person?
It's definitely in person but neither are easy for me.
(19:19):
And yeah, social media. Yeah, you're right.
I've been caught. I'm definitely guilty of doing
that too. If you're on there for too long,
you start seeing And then Ben a Mitt here says damn old man
Saxon. How you doing brother?
I'm. Good.
How you doing, Ben Legend? I cannot believe you're here.
(19:43):
OK, Ben. Ben rocks with you.
OK, Paridi. Hello, Sir.
I'm happy to be here. Yeah.
SAC Passe. Paridi.
Welcome back. Welcome back, man.
OK, so when it comes to collaborations, now if you had
to collaborate with an artist, let's say dead or alive could be
(20:06):
a deceased artist as well. Who would you pick to collab
with and why? I would say Parliament like
they're very, they're funk bands, just very funky type of
stuff. And Parliament actually was an
influence in a lot of Bay Area hip hop.
(20:28):
So. And that leads into my next
person, which is probably Mac Dre.
He's a Bay Area rapper that passed, I think 2006, just
really my favorite rapper of alltime just because of his
influence. Matt Dre made-up words pretty
(20:49):
much just like E40. He made-up words and they just
became part of the dialogue in his region.
And then I was like and the the other thing that I thought was
just really cool about Matt Dre that might be a little weird is
how do I say this, He made it. He kind of made it cool for
(21:12):
black people to do ecstasy. Now just stick with me for a
second because before that, likethe stigma with black people's
drug use is like, yeah, you know, you know, evil, right?
It's crack. It's like, you know, they're
ruining the communities while atthe same time white people and
other non black people were doing ecstasy and going to
(21:32):
parties and it's just like, whoa, look at these wacky people
and it's like, wait, what? So Mac Dre was like, OK, we're
going to call this Fizz and we're going to dance and make
weird faces and stuff and it wasjust like, yeah, like this is
we're just all having fun, right?
And so Mac Dre is one of them. E40 also because of his unique
(21:54):
style and longevity, like as oldman Saxon, I pretty much strive
to be like E40 still making music when I'm 50 years old.
Yeah, and if I had to put just another let me try to think of a
non hip hop, non funk person, I'm going to say Billy Eilish.
(22:19):
Billy Eilish. OK, well, I don't know why I
just said it. That's a heavy.
Yeah, that's a heavy contrast. Yeah.
No, Some of the best songs I've heard, they're actually huge
contrast. I actually want to get your
opinion on that. When, like that country hip hop
first came out, I forget who theartist was.
(22:43):
Old Town Road or something. I think that was.
Oh, not little Nas. X little Nas X like it's such a
huge contrast. Like yeah, what's your take on
that? Do you think it works like when
you do something that's just completely like black and white
and you slot them together? Absolutely.
Or do you think it's it's too it's too far out.
It's too unorthodox. No.
I would say that most sort of art forms that we have are kind
(23:10):
of mashed together between two things.
Well, especially hip hop, right?Because if people don't know,
like the history of hip hop, hiphop is heavily influenced by
disco, right? So it became like these disco
songs where they were turning the breaks or the parts of the
song that didn't have words in it and they were changed.
(23:32):
They were slooping that part andadding different drums to it.
So yeah, I I think that, you know, that kind of breeds
innovation and having these two separate things mashed together
make something cool. And even before Little Nods, XI
would say like Nelly, Nelly kindof had a little bit of that
(23:54):
country hip hop sort of thing. So yeah, I loved it.
OK, cool. Cool.
We have we have more chats here.Ben, I've seen you on Netflix.
You are amazing, Sir. OK.
Thank you. I put my bets on you making it
to the final with D Smoke. I couldn't believe they put you
(24:14):
head to head with him on your style.
Very good. Yeah, they did put you head to
head with him. You you were both.
I thought I wanted to see both of you guys in the last round,
but I would say that's also, that's also someone I would like
to collab with. Also, D Smoke just, he's just a
chill dude. He's a good rapper also, yeah.
(24:35):
Yeah, yeah, he was cool too. He can, he can help you with
your Spanish too. So there you go.
That's so like we all know success.
You know, it's not linear, right?
Success is up and down and back and forward scribbled.
(24:56):
So typically, what are some common challenges you may face?
And how do you overcome them mentally?
I think so. I have a song called Hasn't
Happened and pretty much the premise of the song is I have to
(25:16):
keep on working as if I haven't achieved any success, right?
Because I think a lot of the time, especially in hip hop,
people will be quick to be like,you made it like you have done
it like you were. You had before the Netflix show,
I had a video that had millions of views, right?
(25:37):
You did it like, oh man, you became a famous rapper.
And it's like, well, I I don't think so.
And then even after the Netflix show, wow, like you did it, you
had hundreds of thousands of followers.
Now on Instagram, you've made itand I think not letting.
(25:58):
I think letting success be a flowing, moving thing that you
go with instead of it being a point like, yeah, And also like,
yeah, being satisfied. But don't make it think, don't
make it seem like you're done, right.
(26:20):
If you get a million views, it'snot like the end all be all I
can chill, I can relax. If you get on Netflix don't make
it seem like oh I did it, I can just chill and relax.
I think the success is the actual journey of it and being
able to continue on doing your passion regardless of failures
(26:44):
or ups or downs, right? It's just the success is the
journey and the consistency of the pursuit.
Well, definitely, yeah. It's it's definitely true.
It's nice to have a good balance, right?
You want to stay humble, but youalso don't want to stay so
humble where you're not really enjoying the process either.
(27:08):
That makes sense. Yeah, absolutely.
So, yeah, no, that's that's definitely true.
That's definitely true. And we have some chats.
Here is the geffe. Sorry if I butchered your name
there. Thanks, Avery, for English.
Yeah, no problem. Shout to you, Dale.
Hello, everyone. How's it going?
What's the lesson for today? Yeah, Dale, we're just having a
advanced English conversation among two native English
(27:29):
speakers. If there's any terms, any
expressions you don't understand, we can address them.
That's that's what we're doing today.
Ben spoken like a true artist. Much respect.
Okay, shout out to you Ben shoutout to you.
So okay. Is there anything else that you
also pursue outside of music, Old man Saxon?
(27:51):
Or are you just all in on music?So create music so yes, yes and
no. So I think one of the most time
consuming things is raising children.
So like that is that alone is just like it's whole thing but
as far as like professional wiseeverything that I do that's
(28:15):
everything that I do is music related but it's not always old
man Saxon making music. So one of the things that I do
that is kind of the bigger moneymaker is making music for
TV and commercials and movies and things like that.
And it's called SYNC licensing. And what SYNC licensing is, is
(28:39):
you'll make a beat or you'll make a song and then music
supervisor, a person who works on a TV show, will be looking
for music to put in the TV show.So everyone out there, when you
hear music in a show, a movie, atrailer, a commercial, someone's
getting paid, an artist is getting paid for that music and
(29:02):
there's music in everything, right?
So that's a big thing that I do.Another thing that I've kind of
just started is I'm doing research on how hip hop affects
the future of the youth, right? So when I was really young I and
(29:27):
I don't know if this is true forall young people, but this is
kind of part of the research. But when I was really young, I
could only, I couldn't picture myself as an old person, as an
adult, right? And I think I remember 2 songs.
One was ice cubes. Today was a good day.
And then he says I'm 23 or no. He says I hooked it up for later
(29:51):
as I hit the doe thinking will Ilive another 24?
In my mind I'm thinking 24 years, right?
And then I'm like, OK, that's pretty young.
But then the next year Coolio, he comes out with a song, says
I'm 23 now, will I live to be 24?
The way things are going, I don't know, right?
I'll be like 8 years old and be like, whoa, that's not that far
away from what I know. And I remember once I had
(30:15):
reached the age of 25 being like, whoa, I didn't expect to
be here right now. So and then now, even as an
adult the Ice Cube song set it up for later as I hit the dough
thinking, well, I live another 24.
He was talking about 24 hours, right?
So he was talking about being 25.
He's talking about being the next day.
(30:36):
So and these are, these are classic songs.
These are really amazing songs that I love.
Right? But now what I'm doing is I've
been going into schools and I'vebeen asking kids, what genre of
music do you listen to? Who's your favorite artist and
what is the maximum age you see yourself?
(31:00):
It's crazy because kids who listen to hip hop see themselves
to age 19/20/22. Think like really young ages,
kids who listen to pop, gospel, different sorts of music, see
themselves to 70 different ages,right?
Like a very vast space right there.
(31:23):
So what I'm doing now is I just had a pilot program for this is
I went into a school and I bringmy recording equipment.
We talk about our future as as these kids like are 10 years
old, we talk about, hey, so you want to be a basketball player,
(31:45):
for example, right? But you only see yourself till
age 19, right? How the hell is that possible?
Like your own. You have to be 18 to get into
the league. So now how old do you see
yourself? Okay.
I see myself to this age and then I we keep talking about it.
We talk about our future in a way that kind of combats how,
especially now a lot of the hip hop is talking to them, which
(32:08):
is, hey, I'm scared for my life.I have a gun, I'm gonna shoot
anyone I don't trust. That's kind of like a big part
of it. So what I'm doing is we're going
in, we're talking about our future, and then we are
recording these a song about howwhat we're going to do to make
our future better. And in doing this, one of the
(32:31):
kids who saw himself to 19 yearsold after the program was done,
he saw himself to be 70 years old.
So just the thought of putting these seeds in these kids head
about, if you only see yourself to 19, think about the decisions
you'll make if that's the case, right?
(32:53):
I'm not going to. I'm not saving for anything.
I'm not doing anything. I'm living life like it's my
last day on earth. Which I mean, you can say that's
cool too. You can say that's how some
people live their life anyway. But I just think, especially for
young black children, it's probably better for them to see
themselves in the future rather than be short.
(33:17):
The short, tiny life that you'reliving is, yeah, So that's the
thing that I'm doing also. Yeah, that's.
No, that's totally valid. That's totally valid.
And it's very difficult though, to see yourself that way at such
a young age. Of course it's pretty much
impossible. It's just so unpredictable what
will come in the future. And even if you look back every
(33:39):
five years or so, they say like every five years.
Your mindset dramatically changes or the way that you per
staple life dramatically changes.
So when you're 25 versus 20, when you're 20 versus 1515
versus 1045 versus 35, like yeah, so that's that's not going
to stop. I believe that's good.
(34:00):
You're probably. Right.
Yeah, but but trying to if. Yeah, if you can successfully
sell kids on the idea of being more forward thinking.
Yeah, well, even in the, in the adult selfhelp space, there's
this idea of write your goals down, visualize them and then
(34:23):
you'll achieve it, right. So, and there's science behind
that is you're 33% more likely to achieve a goal if you write
it down and visualize it. So why can't we do that with
these children in a way that will help them kind of perceive
their future a little better? And yeah, you can.
(34:44):
I'd say, yeah, if you're more intentional about where you want
to end up, you can definitely end up there.
The only thing is the path that you take to get there, that will
probably that'll be unexpected. Like, I always knew I wanted to
play basketball in university, so I worked really hard in high
school to get there. But once I got there, the school
(35:05):
I ended up at, I never would have imagined I'd end up at that
school and the. The path to success.
During the five years I played, I never thought he would go the
way it went. Basically, as a kid I thought
success was more linear, but it's all for the place.
So yeah, wait. What school was it?
(35:25):
It's a it's a university in Canada called McGill University.
Not sure if you've heard of it. Yeah, it's.
Not that far from Toronto where you went one time.
It's a three hour drive from there.
So yeah, but were they like goodat basketball?
What was? I wanna know more about this.
Yeah, like. Canadian basketball, it's.
I'd say it's like a mid, minor D1 team in the States.
(35:50):
Okay, we. Play D1 teams and exhibition
games. We beat a lot of them and we
lose to a lot of them, yeah. So, like, we played Duke, for
example, we played against Zion Williamson and Margie Barrett.
Yeah. And we, we got our asses kicked
and that. That's crazy.
Yeah, that makes. Sense.
But then we played against some other teams, like some smaller
teams like Lamar or some of these places in the southern
(36:13):
states in America. And then we we we beat those
teams essentially so. Our levels probably like amid.
D1 team. It's probably what Canadian
basketball or the better teams in Canadian basketball are.
Probably like that. Yeah.
Yeah, that guy's a brick, bro. That guy's a brick.
(36:35):
People make memes and make fun of him for being fat or
overweight. No, he's well.
When we played him, he was like,he was hard, bro.
He was hard. Pause.
But yeah. Let's see here, Dell.
All right, thanks. I got it.
OK, Dell. OK, Darius, I understand the
(36:57):
rappers perfectly until they start rapping.
Yeah. For the people listening out
there, if you're going to try touse music to improve your
English skills, it's really tough.
I highly recommend you listen tomusic at a level that you can
currently understand, or where you can at least understand at
least 80% of what's being said. Because if you understand less
(37:19):
than that, you're just going to be lost.
You're going to get frustrated, you're going to have to end up
looking up every single word, every single slang term, and
it's going to drive you crazy. So try to listen to music that's
at your current level of Englishand then slowly progress up.
And the same thing goes for listening.
If you're watching TV, etcetera,do the same thing.
(37:40):
And even something you mentionedearlier, Old Man Saxon, you said
that. In many cases, musicians, they
make up words. And honestly, just English
speakers in general, we make up,we completely fabricate words
out of thin air. We'll say like if instead of
saying that's good, we would saythat's goodish like.
(38:02):
That's goodish or something likethat.
We'll just totally make up words.
And yeah, I had a had an interesting conversation with
another man on an old podcast before too.
And he was saying that we were talking about if Mandarin
Chinese would surpass the English language as the most
common language in the world. But he said something
(38:25):
interesting. He said English will replace
English. New words will be invented, new
slang terminology, new lingo. This English today will get
outdated and then a new version of English will come in the
future. And I think that's.
Yeah. That's that's very.
I mean, yeah, it's already like a year old English, you know
(38:47):
there's it's already kind of taken over a different gender.
But also what I'll say about listening or not understanding
rappers once they start rapping.Something that I also used to do
was print off lyrics of songs and just try to read it with the
(39:08):
song, right? It's a song that I really liked
and I might not understand. I'll print it off and I'll read
it with it. So that's also something that
could help. Yeah for sure.
If it's a song like Automatic byE40 or something like that, it's
not exactly. Yeah, there you go Nutshell 115,
shout out to the Twitch gang, the people here from Twitch LOL.
(39:29):
Agree Yes. Definitely Darius.
I understand the rappers perfectly until they start to
perform. Do native speakers sometimes
have troubles catching the lyrics?
Absolutely, yes. Unless you're like Old Man Saxon
and you, you know, you would actually see the lyrics.
You'd read them out, you listen to the many times you'd actually
listen to the lyrics. Some people listen passively.
(39:50):
They don't actually pay attention to what's being said.
Then yes, that's totally normal,even for nature.
It's also a mixing thing, right?Some songs just aren't mixed
that well, so that the voice comes out enough, right?
So yeah, it's some songs are very hard to understand.
Yeah, for sure. And and so I'm gonna make the
(40:12):
assumption that when you listen to music, Old man Saxon, you
listen to actually hear the lyrics, right?
Or sometimes you just listen forfun.
Just. Like, so for the most part, yes.
And even actually I bring that reminds me of, like do people,
do native speakers understand the lyrics sometimes?
(40:33):
There was a whole genre of hip hop that was called mumble rap
for a while, right. People were just mumbling, like
purposely making you not understand what they're saying.
So yeah, just adds that there's,yeah, we have a lot of trouble
listening, but as far as music now.
It's been something that I've had to work like struggle with
(40:55):
because I have two kids, five and six, right, and they can't
listen to hip hop, or at least the type of hip hop I was
listening to when I was young orthe mainstream stuff now.
So my knowledge of current hip hop has been a little lacking.
(41:17):
It's only been like as of recently I've been listening to
more because of my research project, but I mostly listen to
music without lyrics or. It's funny that I'm on this.
I listen to music with a different language, so I listen
to a lot of bossa Nova, a lot oflike African funk, just because
(41:41):
I think I listen so closely to lyrics that I can't do anything
else. If I'm listening to like,
English lyrics, I'm like sittingthere like, what did he say?
What did he say? So if I'm listening to like
Bossa Nova, it's just like, you know, it's like just great to
hear, you know? Yeah, for sure.
I do a lot of that too, actually.
Yeah, listening to music in different languages as well.
(42:03):
And yeah, sometimes, even thoughI don't understand what it
means, I don't know how to describe it or how to articulate
this properly, but it still speaks me in some way. 1 billion
percent understand, so even I used to.
There is this song by this Asianrapper named Keith Eight, who
(42:24):
came out a long time ago and I used to teach this class in LA.
It's like a hip hop class. And I would show my students
this song and no one knew what he was saying, but everyone got
it, you know, like they understood.
And I think that's something that music does, if it's done
well, is you, you'll get it. But you might not understand it
(42:46):
for sure. I couldn't agree more.
Ben Amitsa Mumble rap is hell. I like the way you keep it
coherent. It's a pleasure listening to you
shout out to you Ben. Now, throughout your time
performing music, creating music, getting into music
(43:09):
throughout the whole span of your life, what do you think was
the most influential lesson thatyou've learnt?
How do you think that your experiences changed you?
So I would say the best lesson Ilearned is I was in LA and I was
(43:32):
my friends. They have a jam band.
They were playing at this bar. I wasn't a part of the show at
all. I was just in the audience, just
chilling, right? And they were like, hey, Saxon,
come up like let's. Do a rap like let's rap with the
band and I I got it up there andAvery, I forgot every lyric that
(43:55):
I've ever done. Like, I didn't remember any
lyrics from any songs. So I'm just sitting there like
and they're playing and they're kind of looking at me and the
audience is looking at me. I choked.
I completely choked. Right.
And. I didn't.
I probably said like 5 words andwent back and sat down at the
bar and just like you know, had people like, oh it's OK you
(44:17):
know? But I think there's two lessons
there. One I learned was always be
prepared. Like I think hip hop is a is a
cool space for people that like have freestyles and come up and
do things. But if.
If you're not feeling it and you're not prepared, it's not
going to be as good as if you are feeling it and you are
(44:39):
right. Second thing I learned was, oh,
like I'm not. Dissuade it from this.
Like, I want to do this again. Like I still want to be a
rapper. I can see a lot of people that
happening and I'm just being like, ah, OK, that was
embarrassing. But for me, I was like, well, I
(45:01):
guess I got to do better and I learned how to not make that
happen again. And that was like a huge
learning point for me. Yeah, you, you can draw that
parallel. Yeah.
With almost anything in life, you need failure.
Almost. It's it's almost like you need
that failure just to build that character or show what you're
(45:21):
made of. Sometimes, unfortunately,
sometimes it can break people. And though they actually will
quit, especially in sports. I saw that they they're not,
they're not getting any minutes.Their first two years, they
quit. I could, I could have done the
same thing. And I and I understand it.
I totally understand. But, but if you can persevere,
if you can overcome that, that'ssomething that no one could take
(45:43):
away from you for the rest of your life.
So absolutely that's great that you are, that's great that you
did that. But yeah, I guess you didn't
want to try to freestyle, you just forgot the lyrics and you
just. Yeah, there was something about
the beat they were playing was like too fast a freestyle and.
(46:04):
I couldn't think of any verse that I made, like, ever.
It was one of the most. It was such a bizarre experience
that it made me think I needed to do that.
Like something had to happen. Because every once in a while,
like, I'll forget a couple. Like, I had a show yesterday I
was practicing for and like one of my most popular songs called
(46:26):
Hell Yeah. Like, I just completely forgot
the 1st 4 bars. Not while I was up there on
stage, but while I was preparing.
Which brings me to that point again.
Be prepared, right? You gotta be prepared.
I think a lot of times it's coolto just go up there and a lot of
rappers especially like if you listen to.
(46:48):
How? What Jayz's process is right?
Apparently Jayz doesn't write anything down.
He goes into the booth and he just remembers it all.
And that's awesome for him. But that doesn't work for me.
That doesn't work for a lot of rappers who try to do that.
I've been in the studio with people who are like, Oh yeah, I
don't write nothing down. I just go up there and do it.
(47:08):
Then it takes them two hours to record a verse.
So it's like, OK, what's? So yeah, preparation is, it's
just very important. Super important.
All right, That completely makessense.
And then you have to give adviceto aspiring rappers, I would
imagine, like some people would reach out to you and ask you for
advice just regarding getting into the industry in general.
(47:32):
Yeah. What advice would you give these
people wanna take that path of becoming a musician?
The thing that I try to stay away from is advice, because
advice is what other people would do, right?
(47:52):
I like to give stories before advice, right?
Because someone will give you advice, but that's just their
experience being transmitted through their mouths.
Like I don't need to actually that nice.
If, if I would give advice, it'dbe my story.
My story is I love this thing. I loved hip hop.
I love rap. I loved it so much that I was
(48:13):
willing to live in my car for 13months of my life working at a
restaurant, but still in the back of my head while sleeping
in the back of my car, knowing. I'm gonna make it out of this
because I can rap, right? That was my whole thing.
So if that would be my story to people who are asking for
(48:34):
advice, just I guess I I made sure that I loved it and that's
why it works, right? That makes sense.
And then I was gonna say, how doyou deal with criticism in
general, Just criticism. Do you just screen it out
altogether? Because I know some people, they
there's different schools of thought about this.
(48:54):
Some people want to see the criticism so they can actually
take it in and like overcome it or improve or whatever they want
to do with it. And some people just block it
out altogether. How do you handle criticism?
I think there's there's different types of criticism
also, right? So I read all my comments on all
(49:14):
of my music videos because. I made this thing and I want to
know what people think about it.The majority of the comments are
positive and every once in a while there will be something
negative or critiquing. But that goes into my 2 sorts of
critique. There's one critique where it's
like, oh, this is something thatI saw that might actually help
(49:36):
you in the future if I tell you this.
Dope. Thank you for that.
No matter. Even if you said it with a
little bit of spice to you. Like I I hear what you're
saying, OK. But then there's the critique
where it's just hate, right? It's just like I don't like
this, right. Which you can't do anything with
that information. I don't even know.
You faceless human like, OK, youdon't like it.
(49:58):
That's what's up. So for me, there's I like to
get, I like to get the criticismthat it's something that I can
actually use. And then the ones that I can't
use, I mean, I'm not going to say like, I don't remember.
Well, I don't really remember them.
But I I I know what it feels like to have made something and
(50:22):
had someone say that they don't like it because it's not a great
feeling. But it also doesn't affect how
I'm going to make things in the future, if that makes sense.
It's just a thing that someone said but.
Right. OK.
And yeah, like you said, there are different types of
criticism. There's some that's
constructive. There's some that's not
(50:42):
constructive at all. Yeah.
So no, no, that that totally makes sense.
That last question here before we wrap up.
So when you create music, do youtry to create a, do you put
thought into the storytelling process of your lyrics?
Are you just trying to make it fun?
(51:04):
Exactly. And make it deliver your music
or deliver your lyrics in a certain way to the person who's
going to be listening to it. Or do you try to like, add
elements of storytelling and stuff like that?
It's. So I would say, depending on the
song, honestly, most of my songshave some sort of comedic value
to it even like my most popular song is called The Perils.
(51:28):
It's about, it's literally aboutthat 13 months I spent homeless.
So it's the lyrics are. 6:00 AM Wake up all along.
Like, what can your boy say? Shit, shower, shave is taking
the whole day, right? So it's like very real things
about what I went through duringthat year.
(51:50):
So for that, for that song specifically, I was living in
that environment, so it wasn't like.
I'm thinking of a story like I'mabout to think of the story and
then write it out. It was like, I remember when I
started writing it, I was it wasprobably 12 or 11:00 PM.
(52:15):
I was in LA, in Koreatown, aboutto go to sleep.
I'm sitting in my car. I could see the moon,
everything. I was like, oh, it's a nice
night. I should talk about how sad this
is. And I started with the line,
6:00 AM, wake up. And then I was just like, OK, we
just keep writing about things that happened while I was
homeless. So that's one type of song.
(52:38):
But then there's other type of songs.
Other types of songs, like Hell yeah.
Which is just like a fun party song where honestly I'm just
saying things to try to be as. Sny is sny a word sly.
Sly OK, let's see. Sly and slick and like, as funny
as possible without people beinglike, without it being overt,
(53:03):
like, ha ha ha, this is hilarious.
Like, it's just like, oh, it's afun party song and I dig it.
So there's different types of songs, but yeah, I approach them
depending on what type it is. I approach them very
differently. OK, I got you.
And before we wrap up, we'll address the last chats here.
Ben, can you spit a verse right here live.
(53:26):
No pressure. Could you please?
Big fan here from the other sideof the world.
Ben, I love you so much. But no, absolutely not.
I I stopped doing that when I realized like, I'm making money
off of it now. And it'd be like, I can't
(53:46):
explain it. It'd be like.
Hey basketball player, like here's a ball.
Go do a dunk right now and be like, wait, what I'm trying to
do? But then I I do have an album
coming out November 14th. And honestly, Ben, e-mail me at
old Van Saxon at Gmail. I'll write you a song, but I
(54:08):
don't want to do that right now.There you go, Ben says.
That's cool. I get it.
OK, OK. Shots You Ben Darius, are there
any European rappers you like? Damn, I don't know.
I actually don't know. And I think it's something about
when you say European, I start to think of all of Europe.
(54:30):
But let me think, like more people fix in the country.
Like, do you like, do you like British rappers, like that drill
rap? I don't like drill at all.
I really don't. I'm gonna say no, even though
that sounds super harsh. I'm gonna say no.
Yeah, I can get a lot of American rappers that I like.
Demi burpee. So, well, there you go.
(54:52):
I mean, yeah, I'm not a huge fanof the British accent.
I pissed off a lot of British English teachers saying that
too. But but yeah, I don't.
I think it sounds so goofy, like, and I I'm sure, I'm sure
they say the same thing about the Canadian accent or the
American. But like, it's just so foreign
(55:13):
to me. Like, do you even notice the
difference between a Canadian accent and an American accent?
It's like I'm speaking with a Canadian one right now, so.
Yeah, no, I definitely do. It's it's a little.
I can't even describe it, but I I can tell, right.
Good. OK And Nicholas, big fan, OK,
shout out to you, Nicholas, Ben says.
(55:35):
Wow. OK, cool.
OK, so Oman Saxon, before we wrap up here, where can they
find you on social media? And do you have any projects
that you are working on? You said you were working on an
album, right? Yes, so old man Saxon on
everything. Pretty much Facebook, YouTube,
(55:55):
Twitter, Instagram. And yes, right now I do.
I finished the project. It's a EP called So Long, coming
out November 14th and. Yeah, I'm still just making
music for. The other thing I've been doing
too is I'm working on a kids album because as I say, like
(56:16):
I've been having problems letting my kids listen to my
music. So I'm making music, a more
poppy kids album, kind of just for my children that I'll
probably release someday. Oh, that's that's cool.
That's cool. OK.
And for us, it's just Arc English.
All platforms, whichever platform it is, if you want to
(56:37):
get in touch with us, you want any of our resource to learn
English. I'll post the link right now in
the chats and you can simply consult that.
And coming soon, myself and our team, we're going to be offering
private lessons and group lessons.
So you like to join the wait list?
You can simply refer to the linkI posted in the chats and you'll
be able to join then. We already got a lot of people
(57:00):
on the wait list, so I'll try tomake sure that I get tutors on
our team who specialize in particular, the things that
you're looking for in an Englishtutor, whether it be an exam,
immigration, whatever it is. So, OK.
And Ben says November 14th. I'll keep waiting for it.
(57:20):
OK. Sick.
Nope. Ben.
Best of luck. OK.
Thank you. OK.
And that is all. Thank you again, old man Saxon,
for coming out. It was a pleasure.
Thank you. Until next time, people.
Peace.
OK, and we are live. Welcome to the 7th episode of
our series Authentic Conversations in English.
Today we're joined with a reallyspecial guest who's a rapper,
actually very wellknown musician, very prominent, and
we're going to discuss his field.
So, old Man Saxon, why don't youintroduce yourself to the
(00:23):
audience? Hey y'all, I'm Old Man Saxon.
I'm a rapper based in Denver, CoYeah, I make music and art ASIC.
And do you know any other languages as well?
Or are you just just an English guy?
You know what's funny is in order to get into college and
(00:46):
to, like, graduate college, I had to take Spanish.
But I don't know if I don't knowwhat happened.
I don't know how I got. I don't know how I passed those
classes. Muy buy Poquito okay.
Yeah, no, It's learning a language.
Especially in school, that's a whole different thing.
(01:06):
And that's. Yeah, it is.
That's annoying, yeah. Yeah, that's why I like what
you're doing too. It's just like, yeah, cuz a lot
of people that I know who are who English isn't their first
language, a lot of them learn from TV and media and stuff.
So it's way, yeah, it's a littlebit different than taking, you
know three months of classes where you know you're going at
(01:28):
the teacher speed. Not your own, right.
Exactly. Yeah.
And to learn a language, you really, you have to go above and
beyond in your own time, really,to make that stuff happen.
That's it's no joke. So we got Allie is here.
OK, shout out to you Nutshell 15waving.
Yeah. So I see some of you guys here
(01:49):
are now popping in from Facebook, mostly Facebook, some
from YouTube. So throughout the stream, as
we're having this conversation, if there's any expressions that
you guys don't understand or if there are any terms that you
don't understand, you can Simplyput it in the chat.
Occasionally we can stop and we can address it.
If you guys have any questions whatsoever, Okay.
(02:09):
And as you're popping in, let usknow where you're from, what
your native language is and yeah, that's about it.
So, so, old man Saxon, before westart, I'm going to play a
quick, quick clip of you. It's one of my favorite
performances by you. So it'll be, it'll be pretty
fun, Okay. Let's see here.
(02:32):
Put it on the screen OK. I'm from Denver, Co.
I ain't never been in no water and I ain't never been on no,
(02:52):
this is the same. Start my musical performance
now, DJ OK, OK, OK. So Old Man Saxon, this
experience here, man, you lookedreally comfortable on stage
there. You looked really comfortable.
(03:13):
So is, is this something you're you're used to doing?
What was going through your headduring that, during that
performance there? Such a good question because
like I. I was comfortable because of how
much I saw, how nervous everyoneelse was.
That's right. It was the the concept of the
(03:35):
show is, you know, we get these rappers, they come up on stage
and they rap on front of super famous rappers, right.
And for just a normal rapper or someone who wasn't prepared, I
just see that being super nerve,right, Right.
So. When I was kind of in the green
room, I could see everyone else being nervous.
(03:56):
And then when I when I was in the green room, someone else
went on before me and then they come back and he was like, oh,
because we knew that Cardi B, Chance and TI were going to be
the judges, but no one knew thatSnoop was going to be there.
So this dude comes back and he'slike, Snoop's out there.
And I was like, what? And.
(04:17):
For some reason, that even made it like me, a little more calm
because Snoop I had been listening to since I was, you
know, five or six years old or whatever.
And you know, Cardi B's a new rapper.
Chance is a newer rapper. TI, relative to Snoop, is a
newer rapper. But Snoop was like, oh, I have
(04:39):
to do like I have to show him because he's West Coast.
That's like we're all in my. Influences come from musically.
So yeah. And then the other thing was,
I'm glad you said I look comfortable because I think a
lot of people who saw the show, they almost had a little bit of,
(05:01):
I'm just going to say, for lack of a better term, a little bit
of hatred that I got on this show and that I had this, you
know, two-minute audition and then now I'm getting all this
praise. But.
Everything that happened before I got on the show led me to be
comfortable once I got on the show, right.
(05:22):
It wasn't like I was like, oh, there's a rap audition.
Let me pick up this mic and let's go.
Like, I've been doing this for, you know, 8 plus years at the
time. So I was gonna say, how did you
get into it? Rap.
OK, so rap or the show rap in general, because you said before
you were doing this before. So like how did how did that
(05:44):
even spark? How did that start?
And then also like the old man old name, the name Old Man
Saxon. Where does that come from as
well? So I got into hip hop when I was
probably 7 years old. My brother, I have a Big Brother
who listens to him. He always listen to hip hop
right? And so.
(06:05):
When I was younger, I just pretty much wanted to do
anything he was doing because I thought it was cool.
So he used to listen to this rapper, whose name is E40 and
E40 Raps really fast, you know, really mumbled and stuff, right?
And you know, very his vocabulary is very regional to
where he's from. Like, if you're from a different
(06:26):
place, you might not even know what he's talking about.
So I would sit. In my room, listen to E40 tapes
and write the lyrics down. And I would rewind it if I
didn't understand it, Write it down, Rewind, write it down
until I got a whole like his whole songs memorized in my
head. And now as a. 30 plus adult, I
(06:49):
realized that was like passion. That was like some real passion
from A7 or 8 year old kid to be like I wanna know this and write
it down right. So that's kind of where it
started. And then I got older.
And when I was in middle school,I used to.
Have freestyle battles at lunch with just this other kid.
(07:12):
His name was Josh Johnson. I'll never forgive him.
And I'm like just I'll remember that name forever.
And so somehow, and I still to this day do not know how somehow
we were rapping and then making money off of it.
Like kids in middle school like betting.
I don't know where are they getting money from?
(07:33):
I have no idea. And.
So yeah, I was doing that. And then I got to college or
high school. College.
And to be perfectly honest, and I think a lot of musicians would
tell you this, the reason I got into, like, making music was for
girls. Like, that's what it was.
It was to get girls to go. That's that's honest, OK, I.
(07:57):
Promise. It was like, hey, girls, notice
me. I have a talent.
So then I went to college. And then.
I didn't really start trying to pursue it professionally until I
was done with college. I moved out to LA and I had a
job as a video game tester for Konami and it seemed like it was
(08:20):
going to be like the best job ever, you know?
It's like Konami has some of my favorite video games like Metal
Gear Solid and things like that.I.
The actual job of it was, so what's the word?
Just terrible. I'll just say terrible because
you would go in and you'd be assigned one game, right?
(08:43):
So this one game you have to play over and over and over and
over again until you found a bug.
If you found a bug, you call thedevelopers.
They would send you a new build.You have to play it over and
over and over again until you find it.
I say all of that to say. I was like, I can't do this.
I have, I have this talent in me.
(09:04):
I'm a rapper. I have this talent.
I can't spend my life playing video games that are not even
fun to me. So I quit my job and then I like
didn't have any money. So I ended up sleeping in my car
for like 13 months, just living out the back of my car and
(09:25):
writing music and. So that's how I got into rap.
The name Old Man Saxon, though, comes from everyone.
Not everyone. A lot of people in hip hop being
named Young this or Little that,you know, little Little Bow Wow
(09:45):
had to grow. He had to lose the little at
some point. He's like, I'm an adult, like, I
can't be Little Bow Wow anymore.I'm just Bow Wow.
So for me. It was OK.
They're growing out of their name.
I would like to be the person that grows into his name so that
if I'm. Yeah, if I'm sixty, 7080 years
old, still rapping, I was like, oh, it's old man Saxon, of
(10:07):
course, just let him. Let him do it.
Yeah. Oh, that's no, that's sick man.
That's that's a cool story. And yeah, I could totally see
that if you were doing that fromsuch a young age with E 42.
Yeah, yeah, maybe that's maybe that's telling video games was
it wasn't exactly, wasn't exactly your purpose in life
(10:29):
here. Yeah, and don't get me wrong, I
still love video games. But yeah, after that job it was
I'm definitely playing less cuz I would come home from that job
and my roommate like, oh, you want to play something?
I was like, no, we're talking atall, dude.
Exactly. And I want to address another
thing you said there. But I'm just gonna address some
of these chats here. So Shayner, I'm from Bangladesh.
(10:53):
OK, shout out to Bangladesh. That's in.
From Morocco. OK, cool.
Shout out to you. Hello.
Ath Suliyeman. Hello Sir.
How can I get in conversation with you, please?
I'm a student from Mali. Crazy about the English
language. Yeah, just refer to the link in
any of our descriptions. I'll pop it into the chat here
for you guys. I just click the link and you
(11:15):
can find our WhatsApp group. All our resource to learn
English. It's all there.
So here's the link. There you go.
And if you guys have any questions throughout the stream,
we're just simulating a conversation.
If there are any expressions, any terms that you guys don't
understand, you can simply type it in the chat and we'll address
it. We'll clarify it for you.
(11:36):
And then if you like to support the platform, you can do so by
liking the video on whichever platform you're on.
And yeah, that's about it. So old man Saxon.
OK, so you talked about having rap battles with with a guy when
you were younger. So that that's like I think at
every high school, at least where I came from to in Canada,
people did that. That's just, that's part of the
(11:57):
culture I guess. Yeah, so.
So some of you guys here who arewatching, if you're from like
Bangladesh and Morocco, okay, maybe this might not be a thing
here. I don't think hip hop's as big
in your culture as it is in Canada, United States or English
speaking countries, okay. But typically when we're
younger, having rap vows and stuff trying to embarrass other
(12:19):
people teasing each other. It's definitely part of our
culture and ironically, because,or coincidentally because this
is an English learning podcast or English learning platform,
when it comes to vocabulary, when you're rapping, when it
comes to playing with the words,when it comes to hip hop music
(12:40):
and rap music, is this somethingthat was kind of natural for
you, old man Saxon, or having a strong vocabulary?
Is this something that you actually need to work on, like
you actually would try to learn new words, you try to learn new
puns or metaphors or whatever? Or is this something that would
kind of just come natural through life experience?
Or is it a skill that you work on?
(13:01):
I think for me. I it was something that I kind
of learned absorbed through media, right?
Like I have my wife always like asked me some like weird
question or some like random fact and I'll know the fact and
all. And like most of the time I'll
(13:22):
be like, oh, I know, I know thatfrom The Simpsons.
Like I gained so much information just from watching
things right? I was.
I've heard of other rappers who like.
Well, I used to read the dictionary and it's like, oh,
that's great. But like, I would say as of
until like maybe five years ago,I couldn't have told you what an
adjective was, You know, like, Ididn't know like like the ins
(13:46):
and outs of the English languagelike that.
But because of my love for hip hop and media, I learned a lot
of things through that, for sure.
That makes sense, that yeah, of course, to the people listening
as native English speakers, we learn the English language by
heart, Okay. We don't.
We don't study grammatical rules.
(14:07):
We don't study like what a noun and adjective is, what the past
participle is. We we don't study that stuff,
really. It's just it's just natural for
us. So when you're learning English
from native speakers, try to keep that in mind.
Try to keep that in the back of your head there.
But yeah, next thing is, when itcomes to creating a song, for
(14:27):
example, what does the process look like?
What does the creation process look like if you're gonna make
the song? So it's a bunch of different
ways. I'll tell you how it was when I
was younger, just starting to make music.
It was literally just writing a verse, right?
Just writing words that would rhyme.
(14:49):
And then by the time I was done.I'd go, oh, that's a verse.
And then I'd try to make a hook,right?
And then it got to a point whereI was meeting producers.
I was meeting people who knew how to make beats.
So I would ask for beats, they would give me the beats, and
then I'd try to make a song out of it.
Now I'm at a point where I produce a lot of my own music,
(15:11):
so most of the time I will startwith the beat.
And then end up writing the songafter or you're writing the
actual lyrics after. But I would also say there's no
real formula to it sometimes like one of these.
With this, I had a show yesterday that I performed a
(15:33):
song I never performed before, and that song I made because I
had made a beat for a TV show orsomething.
It didn't get picked up, but I made a beat.
And I made this, the lyrics overthat beat.
Then I went back, I revisited the song maybe a year later, and
(15:53):
I said, OK, this beat sucks. I'm going to change the beat.
So I made a whole different beatwith the lyrics I already had.
So I didn't have to change the lyrics.
I just had those same lyrics andthey made a beat over it.
So yeah, there's a lot of different ways, but most of the
time, majority of the time it's the beat 1st and then the
lyrics. Okay.
(16:14):
I see Got it. And then OK And then you put it
together and stuff and then I guess, do you outsource like
editing? I know a lot of people edit
their music in a way where maybethey'll change the pitch of
their voice, do things like that.
How does that look typically? So I and that's something that
I've just started learning too, because I used to outsource all
(16:36):
of these things. I used to have someone what they
call mix the song. And master the song.
And what mixing of the song is, is, you know making all of the
elements of the song sound like they're together instead of
something that sounds like it's on top or lower than another
instrument. So now, and because it was a lot
(16:59):
of time wasted waiting for otherpeople to.
Finish something. I was just like, I gotta learn
to do this myself, even if I won't do it all the time.
It's just good to know how to mix and master a song on my own.
But yeah, that's even that process now is all done in house
(17:21):
by me, right? I see Okay.
And then when it comes to your community for your music.
So obviously you know social media is a big thing these days,
right? So a lot of people are engaging
online and whatnot. They'll probably be following
your music, following your social media online.
Do you prefer engaging with yoursupporters online, or do you
(17:43):
prefer engaging with them in person?
That's such an interesting question because I.
Is it? I'm very much an introvert in a
lot of spaces, right? Like if I had a show yesterday
and after the show I talked to the people and it was great.
(18:07):
But I'm very It's very energy draining.
It drains me to be out, especially on a Friday night
downtown Denver where everyone is just hustling, bustle and
drinking and partying. I'm, I'm not have two kids and
I'm like it's not the same energy for me right online.
(18:32):
I hate that even more because like I think social media, the
way it's kind of set up is to keep you on there, right.
So if you're if my intention initially is to go.
I'm going to go online and talk to some fans and, you know,
(18:53):
respond to messages that should take about 10 minutes.
I end up spending an hour looking at fight videos or
something like it's like, wait, how did I get here?
What happened? So I, I, I would if the question
is what do I like more online orin person?
It's definitely in person but neither are easy for me.
(19:19):
And yeah, social media. Yeah, you're right.
I've been caught. I'm definitely guilty of doing
that too. If you're on there for too long,
you start seeing And then Ben a Mitt here says damn old man
Saxon. How you doing brother?
I'm. Good.
How you doing, Ben Legend? I cannot believe you're here.
(19:43):
OK, Ben. Ben rocks with you.
OK, Paridi. Hello, Sir.
I'm happy to be here. Yeah.
SAC Passe. Paridi.
Welcome back. Welcome back, man.
OK, so when it comes to collaborations, now if you had
to collaborate with an artist, let's say dead or alive could be
(20:06):
a deceased artist as well. Who would you pick to collab
with and why? I would say Parliament like
they're very, they're funk bands, just very funky type of
stuff. And Parliament actually was an
influence in a lot of Bay Area hip hop.
(20:28):
So. And that leads into my next
person, which is probably Mac Dre.
He's a Bay Area rapper that passed, I think 2006, just
really my favorite rapper of alltime just because of his
influence. Matt Dre made-up words pretty
(20:49):
much just like E40. He made-up words and they just
became part of the dialogue in his region.
And then I was like and the the other thing that I thought was
just really cool about Matt Dre that might be a little weird is
how do I say this, He made it. He kind of made it cool for
(21:12):
black people to do ecstasy. Now just stick with me for a
second because before that, likethe stigma with black people's
drug use is like, yeah, you know, you know, evil, right?
It's crack. It's like, you know, they're
ruining the communities while atthe same time white people and
other non black people were doing ecstasy and going to
(21:32):
parties and it's just like, whoa, look at these wacky people
and it's like, wait, what? So Mac Dre was like, OK, we're
going to call this Fizz and we're going to dance and make
weird faces and stuff and it wasjust like, yeah, like this is
we're just all having fun, right?
And so Mac Dre is one of them. E40 also because of his unique
(21:54):
style and longevity, like as oldman Saxon, I pretty much strive
to be like E40 still making music when I'm 50 years old.
Yeah, and if I had to put just another let me try to think of a
non hip hop, non funk person, I'm going to say Billy Eilish.
(22:19):
Billy Eilish. OK, well, I don't know why I
just said it. That's a heavy.
Yeah, that's a heavy contrast. Yeah.
No, Some of the best songs I've heard, they're actually huge
contrast. I actually want to get your
opinion on that. When, like that country hip hop
first came out, I forget who theartist was.
(22:43):
Old Town Road or something. I think that was.
Oh, not little Nas. X little Nas X like it's such a
huge contrast. Like yeah, what's your take on
that? Do you think it works like when
you do something that's just completely like black and white
and you slot them together? Absolutely.
Or do you think it's it's too it's too far out.
It's too unorthodox. No.
I would say that most sort of art forms that we have are kind
(23:10):
of mashed together between two things.
Well, especially hip hop, right?Because if people don't know,
like the history of hip hop, hiphop is heavily influenced by
disco, right? So it became like these disco
songs where they were turning the breaks or the parts of the
song that didn't have words in it and they were changed.
(23:32):
They were slooping that part andadding different drums to it.
So yeah, I I think that, you know, that kind of breeds
innovation and having these two separate things mashed together
make something cool. And even before Little Nods, XI
would say like Nelly, Nelly kindof had a little bit of that
(23:54):
country hip hop sort of thing. So yeah, I loved it.
OK, cool. Cool.
We have we have more chats here.Ben, I've seen you on Netflix.
You are amazing, Sir. OK.
Thank you. I put my bets on you making it
to the final with D Smoke. I couldn't believe they put you
(24:14):
head to head with him on your style.
Very good. Yeah, they did put you head to
head with him. You you were both.
I thought I wanted to see both of you guys in the last round,
but I would say that's also, that's also someone I would like
to collab with. Also, D Smoke just, he's just a
chill dude. He's a good rapper also, yeah.
(24:35):
Yeah, yeah, he was cool too. He can, he can help you with
your Spanish too. So there you go.
That's so like we all know success.
You know, it's not linear, right?
Success is up and down and back and forward scribbled.
(24:56):
So typically, what are some common challenges you may face?
And how do you overcome them mentally?
I think so. I have a song called Hasn't
Happened and pretty much the premise of the song is I have to
(25:16):
keep on working as if I haven't achieved any success, right?
Because I think a lot of the time, especially in hip hop,
people will be quick to be like,you made it like you have done
it like you were. You had before the Netflix show,
I had a video that had millions of views, right?
(25:37):
You did it like, oh man, you became a famous rapper.
And it's like, well, I I don't think so.
And then even after the Netflix show, wow, like you did it, you
had hundreds of thousands of followers.
Now on Instagram, you've made itand I think not letting.
(25:58):
I think letting success be a flowing, moving thing that you
go with instead of it being a point like, yeah, And also like,
yeah, being satisfied. But don't make it think, don't
make it seem like you're done, right.
(26:20):
If you get a million views, it'snot like the end all be all I
can chill, I can relax. If you get on Netflix don't make
it seem like oh I did it, I can just chill and relax.
I think the success is the actual journey of it and being
able to continue on doing your passion regardless of failures
(26:44):
or ups or downs, right? It's just the success is the
journey and the consistency of the pursuit.
Well, definitely, yeah. It's it's definitely true.
It's nice to have a good balance, right?
You want to stay humble, but youalso don't want to stay so
humble where you're not really enjoying the process either.
(27:08):
That makes sense. Yeah, absolutely.
So, yeah, no, that's that's definitely true.
That's definitely true. And we have some chats.
Here is the geffe. Sorry if I butchered your name
there. Thanks, Avery, for English.
Yeah, no problem. Shout to you, Dale.
Hello, everyone. How's it going?
What's the lesson for today? Yeah, Dale, we're just having a
advanced English conversation among two native English
(27:29):
speakers. If there's any terms, any
expressions you don't understand, we can address them.
That's that's what we're doing today.
Ben spoken like a true artist. Much respect.
Okay, shout out to you Ben shoutout to you.
So okay. Is there anything else that you
also pursue outside of music, Old man Saxon?
(27:51):
Or are you just all in on music?So create music so yes, yes and
no. So I think one of the most time
consuming things is raising children.
So like that is that alone is just like it's whole thing but
as far as like professional wiseeverything that I do that's
(28:15):
everything that I do is music related but it's not always old
man Saxon making music. So one of the things that I do
that is kind of the bigger moneymaker is making music for
TV and commercials and movies and things like that.
And it's called SYNC licensing. And what SYNC licensing is, is
(28:39):
you'll make a beat or you'll make a song and then music
supervisor, a person who works on a TV show, will be looking
for music to put in the TV show.So everyone out there, when you
hear music in a show, a movie, atrailer, a commercial, someone's
getting paid, an artist is getting paid for that music and
(29:02):
there's music in everything, right?
So that's a big thing that I do.Another thing that I've kind of
just started is I'm doing research on how hip hop affects
the future of the youth, right? So when I was really young I and
(29:27):
I don't know if this is true forall young people, but this is
kind of part of the research. But when I was really young, I
could only, I couldn't picture myself as an old person, as an
adult, right? And I think I remember 2 songs.
One was ice cubes. Today was a good day.
And then he says I'm 23 or no. He says I hooked it up for later
(29:51):
as I hit the doe thinking will Ilive another 24?
In my mind I'm thinking 24 years, right?
And then I'm like, OK, that's pretty young.
But then the next year Coolio, he comes out with a song, says
I'm 23 now, will I live to be 24?
The way things are going, I don't know, right?
I'll be like 8 years old and be like, whoa, that's not that far
away from what I know. And I remember once I had
(30:15):
reached the age of 25 being like, whoa, I didn't expect to
be here right now. So and then now, even as an
adult the Ice Cube song set it up for later as I hit the dough
thinking, well, I live another 24.
He was talking about 24 hours, right?
So he was talking about being 25.
He's talking about being the next day.
(30:36):
So and these are, these are classic songs.
These are really amazing songs that I love.
Right? But now what I'm doing is I've
been going into schools and I'vebeen asking kids, what genre of
music do you listen to? Who's your favorite artist and
what is the maximum age you see yourself?
(31:00):
It's crazy because kids who listen to hip hop see themselves
to age 19/20/22. Think like really young ages,
kids who listen to pop, gospel, different sorts of music, see
themselves to 70 different ages,right?
Like a very vast space right there.
(31:23):
So what I'm doing now is I just had a pilot program for this is
I went into a school and I bringmy recording equipment.
We talk about our future as as these kids like are 10 years
old, we talk about, hey, so you want to be a basketball player,
(31:45):
for example, right? But you only see yourself till
age 19, right? How the hell is that possible?
Like your own. You have to be 18 to get into
the league. So now how old do you see
yourself? Okay.
I see myself to this age and then I we keep talking about it.
We talk about our future in a way that kind of combats how,
especially now a lot of the hip hop is talking to them, which
(32:08):
is, hey, I'm scared for my life.I have a gun, I'm gonna shoot
anyone I don't trust. That's kind of like a big part
of it. So what I'm doing is we're going
in, we're talking about our future, and then we are
recording these a song about howwhat we're going to do to make
our future better. And in doing this, one of the
(32:31):
kids who saw himself to 19 yearsold after the program was done,
he saw himself to be 70 years old.
So just the thought of putting these seeds in these kids head
about, if you only see yourself to 19, think about the decisions
you'll make if that's the case, right?
(32:53):
I'm not going to. I'm not saving for anything.
I'm not doing anything. I'm living life like it's my
last day on earth. Which I mean, you can say that's
cool too. You can say that's how some
people live their life anyway. But I just think, especially for
young black children, it's probably better for them to see
themselves in the future rather than be short.
(33:17):
The short, tiny life that you'reliving is, yeah, So that's the
thing that I'm doing also. Yeah, that's.
No, that's totally valid. That's totally valid.
And it's very difficult though, to see yourself that way at such
a young age. Of course it's pretty much
impossible. It's just so unpredictable what
will come in the future. And even if you look back every
(33:39):
five years or so, they say like every five years.
Your mindset dramatically changes or the way that you per
staple life dramatically changes.
So when you're 25 versus 20, when you're 20 versus 1515
versus 1045 versus 35, like yeah, so that's that's not going
to stop. I believe that's good.
(34:00):
You're probably. Right.
Yeah, but but trying to if. Yeah, if you can successfully
sell kids on the idea of being more forward thinking.
Yeah, well, even in the, in the adult selfhelp space, there's
this idea of write your goals down, visualize them and then
(34:23):
you'll achieve it, right. So, and there's science behind
that is you're 33% more likely to achieve a goal if you write
it down and visualize it. So why can't we do that with
these children in a way that will help them kind of perceive
their future a little better? And yeah, you can.
(34:44):
I'd say, yeah, if you're more intentional about where you want
to end up, you can definitely end up there.
The only thing is the path that you take to get there, that will
probably that'll be unexpected. Like, I always knew I wanted to
play basketball in university, so I worked really hard in high
school to get there. But once I got there, the school
(35:05):
I ended up at, I never would have imagined I'd end up at that
school and the. The path to success.
During the five years I played, I never thought he would go the
way it went. Basically, as a kid I thought
success was more linear, but it's all for the place.
So yeah, wait. What school was it?
(35:25):
It's a it's a university in Canada called McGill University.
Not sure if you've heard of it. Yeah, it's.
Not that far from Toronto where you went one time.
It's a three hour drive from there.
So yeah, but were they like goodat basketball?
What was? I wanna know more about this.
Yeah, like. Canadian basketball, it's.
I'd say it's like a mid, minor D1 team in the States.
(35:50):
Okay, we. Play D1 teams and exhibition
games. We beat a lot of them and we
lose to a lot of them, yeah. So, like, we played Duke, for
example, we played against Zion Williamson and Margie Barrett.
Yeah. And we, we got our asses kicked
and that. That's crazy.
Yeah, that makes. Sense.
But then we played against some other teams, like some smaller
teams like Lamar or some of these places in the southern
(36:13):
states in America. And then we we we beat those
teams essentially so. Our levels probably like amid.
D1 team. It's probably what Canadian
basketball or the better teams in Canadian basketball are.
Probably like that. Yeah.
Yeah, that guy's a brick, bro. That guy's a brick.
(36:35):
People make memes and make fun of him for being fat or
overweight. No, he's well.
When we played him, he was like,he was hard, bro.
He was hard. Pause.
But yeah. Let's see here, Dell.
All right, thanks. I got it.
OK, Dell. OK, Darius, I understand the
(36:57):
rappers perfectly until they start rapping.
Yeah. For the people listening out
there, if you're going to try touse music to improve your
English skills, it's really tough.
I highly recommend you listen tomusic at a level that you can
currently understand, or where you can at least understand at
least 80% of what's being said. Because if you understand less
(37:19):
than that, you're just going to be lost.
You're going to get frustrated, you're going to have to end up
looking up every single word, every single slang term, and
it's going to drive you crazy. So try to listen to music that's
at your current level of Englishand then slowly progress up.
And the same thing goes for listening.
If you're watching TV, etcetera,do the same thing.
(37:40):
And even something you mentionedearlier, Old Man Saxon, you said
that. In many cases, musicians, they
make up words. And honestly, just English
speakers in general, we make up,we completely fabricate words
out of thin air. We'll say like if instead of
saying that's good, we would saythat's goodish like.
(38:02):
That's goodish or something likethat.
We'll just totally make up words.
And yeah, I had a had an interesting conversation with
another man on an old podcast before too.
And he was saying that we were talking about if Mandarin
Chinese would surpass the English language as the most
common language in the world. But he said something
(38:25):
interesting. He said English will replace
English. New words will be invented, new
slang terminology, new lingo. This English today will get
outdated and then a new version of English will come in the
future. And I think that's.
Yeah. That's that's very.
I mean, yeah, it's already like a year old English, you know
(38:47):
there's it's already kind of taken over a different gender.
But also what I'll say about listening or not understanding
rappers once they start rapping.Something that I also used to do
was print off lyrics of songs and just try to read it with the
(39:08):
song, right? It's a song that I really liked
and I might not understand. I'll print it off and I'll read
it with it. So that's also something that
could help. Yeah for sure.
If it's a song like Automatic byE40 or something like that, it's
not exactly. Yeah, there you go Nutshell 115,
shout out to the Twitch gang, the people here from Twitch LOL.
(39:29):
Agree Yes. Definitely Darius.
I understand the rappers perfectly until they start to
perform. Do native speakers sometimes
have troubles catching the lyrics?
Absolutely, yes. Unless you're like Old Man Saxon
and you, you know, you would actually see the lyrics.
You'd read them out, you listen to the many times you'd actually
listen to the lyrics. Some people listen passively.
(39:50):
They don't actually pay attention to what's being said.
Then yes, that's totally normal,even for nature.
It's also a mixing thing, right?Some songs just aren't mixed
that well, so that the voice comes out enough, right?
So yeah, it's some songs are very hard to understand.
Yeah, for sure. And and so I'm gonna make the
(40:12):
assumption that when you listen to music, Old man Saxon, you
listen to actually hear the lyrics, right?
Or sometimes you just listen forfun.
Just. Like, so for the most part, yes.
And even actually I bring that reminds me of, like do people,
do native speakers understand the lyrics sometimes?
(40:33):
There was a whole genre of hip hop that was called mumble rap
for a while, right. People were just mumbling, like
purposely making you not understand what they're saying.
So yeah, just adds that there's,yeah, we have a lot of trouble
listening, but as far as music now.
It's been something that I've had to work like struggle with
(40:55):
because I have two kids, five and six, right, and they can't
listen to hip hop, or at least the type of hip hop I was
listening to when I was young orthe mainstream stuff now.
So my knowledge of current hip hop has been a little lacking.
(41:17):
It's only been like as of recently I've been listening to
more because of my research project, but I mostly listen to
music without lyrics or. It's funny that I'm on this.
I listen to music with a different language, so I listen
to a lot of bossa Nova, a lot oflike African funk, just because
(41:41):
I think I listen so closely to lyrics that I can't do anything
else. If I'm listening to like,
English lyrics, I'm like sittingthere like, what did he say?
What did he say? So if I'm listening to like
Bossa Nova, it's just like, you know, it's like just great to
hear, you know? Yeah, for sure.
I do a lot of that too, actually.
Yeah, listening to music in different languages as well.
(42:03):
And yeah, sometimes, even thoughI don't understand what it
means, I don't know how to describe it or how to articulate
this properly, but it still speaks me in some way. 1 billion
percent understand, so even I used to.
There is this song by this Asianrapper named Keith Eight, who
(42:24):
came out a long time ago and I used to teach this class in LA.
It's like a hip hop class. And I would show my students
this song and no one knew what he was saying, but everyone got
it, you know, like they understood.
And I think that's something that music does, if it's done
well, is you, you'll get it. But you might not understand it
(42:46):
for sure. I couldn't agree more.
Ben Amitsa Mumble rap is hell. I like the way you keep it
coherent. It's a pleasure listening to you
shout out to you Ben. Now, throughout your time
performing music, creating music, getting into music
(43:09):
throughout the whole span of your life, what do you think was
the most influential lesson thatyou've learnt?
How do you think that your experiences changed you?
So I would say the best lesson Ilearned is I was in LA and I was
(43:32):
my friends. They have a jam band.
They were playing at this bar. I wasn't a part of the show at
all. I was just in the audience, just
chilling, right? And they were like, hey, Saxon,
come up like let's. Do a rap like let's rap with the
band and I I got it up there andAvery, I forgot every lyric that
(43:55):
I've ever done. Like, I didn't remember any
lyrics from any songs. So I'm just sitting there like
and they're playing and they're kind of looking at me and the
audience is looking at me. I choked.
I completely choked. Right.
And. I didn't.
I probably said like 5 words andwent back and sat down at the
bar and just like you know, had people like, oh it's OK you
(44:17):
know? But I think there's two lessons
there. One I learned was always be
prepared. Like I think hip hop is a is a
cool space for people that like have freestyles and come up and
do things. But if.
If you're not feeling it and you're not prepared, it's not
going to be as good as if you are feeling it and you are
(44:39):
right. Second thing I learned was, oh,
like I'm not. Dissuade it from this.
Like, I want to do this again. Like I still want to be a
rapper. I can see a lot of people that
happening and I'm just being like, ah, OK, that was
embarrassing. But for me, I was like, well, I
(45:01):
guess I got to do better and I learned how to not make that
happen again. And that was like a huge
learning point for me. Yeah, you, you can draw that
parallel. Yeah.
With almost anything in life, you need failure.
Almost. It's it's almost like you need
that failure just to build that character or show what you're
(45:21):
made of. Sometimes, unfortunately,
sometimes it can break people. And though they actually will
quit, especially in sports. I saw that they they're not,
they're not getting any minutes.Their first two years, they
quit. I could, I could have done the
same thing. And I and I understand it.
I totally understand. But, but if you can persevere,
if you can overcome that, that'ssomething that no one could take
(45:43):
away from you for the rest of your life.
So absolutely that's great that you are, that's great that you
did that. But yeah, I guess you didn't
want to try to freestyle, you just forgot the lyrics and you
just. Yeah, there was something about
the beat they were playing was like too fast a freestyle and.
(46:04):
I couldn't think of any verse that I made, like, ever.
It was one of the most. It was such a bizarre experience
that it made me think I needed to do that.
Like something had to happen. Because every once in a while,
like, I'll forget a couple. Like, I had a show yesterday I
was practicing for and like one of my most popular songs called
(46:26):
Hell Yeah. Like, I just completely forgot
the 1st 4 bars. Not while I was up there on
stage, but while I was preparing.
Which brings me to that point again.
Be prepared, right? You gotta be prepared.
I think a lot of times it's coolto just go up there and a lot of
rappers especially like if you listen to.
(46:48):
How? What Jayz's process is right?
Apparently Jayz doesn't write anything down.
He goes into the booth and he just remembers it all.
And that's awesome for him. But that doesn't work for me.
That doesn't work for a lot of rappers who try to do that.
I've been in the studio with people who are like, Oh yeah, I
don't write nothing down. I just go up there and do it.
(47:08):
Then it takes them two hours to record a verse.
So it's like, OK, what's? So yeah, preparation is, it's
just very important. Super important.
All right, That completely makessense.
And then you have to give adviceto aspiring rappers, I would
imagine, like some people would reach out to you and ask you for
advice just regarding getting into the industry in general.
(47:32):
Yeah. What advice would you give these
people wanna take that path of becoming a musician?
The thing that I try to stay away from is advice, because
advice is what other people would do, right?
(47:52):
I like to give stories before advice, right?
Because someone will give you advice, but that's just their
experience being transmitted through their mouths.
Like I don't need to actually that nice.
If, if I would give advice, it'dbe my story.
My story is I love this thing. I loved hip hop.
I love rap. I loved it so much that I was
(48:13):
willing to live in my car for 13months of my life working at a
restaurant, but still in the back of my head while sleeping
in the back of my car, knowing. I'm gonna make it out of this
because I can rap, right? That was my whole thing.
So if that would be my story to people who are asking for
(48:34):
advice, just I guess I I made sure that I loved it and that's
why it works, right? That makes sense.
And then I was gonna say, how doyou deal with criticism in
general, Just criticism. Do you just screen it out
altogether? Because I know some people, they
there's different schools of thought about this.
(48:54):
Some people want to see the criticism so they can actually
take it in and like overcome it or improve or whatever they want
to do with it. And some people just block it
out altogether. How do you handle criticism?
I think there's there's different types of criticism
also, right? So I read all my comments on all
(49:14):
of my music videos because. I made this thing and I want to
know what people think about it.The majority of the comments are
positive and every once in a while there will be something
negative or critiquing. But that goes into my 2 sorts of
critique. There's one critique where it's
like, oh, this is something thatI saw that might actually help
(49:36):
you in the future if I tell you this.
Dope. Thank you for that.
No matter. Even if you said it with a
little bit of spice to you. Like I I hear what you're
saying, OK. But then there's the critique
where it's just hate, right? It's just like I don't like
this, right. Which you can't do anything with
that information. I don't even know.
You faceless human like, OK, youdon't like it.
(49:58):
That's what's up. So for me, there's I like to
get, I like to get the criticismthat it's something that I can
actually use. And then the ones that I can't
use, I mean, I'm not going to say like, I don't remember.
Well, I don't really remember them.
But I I I know what it feels like to have made something and
(50:22):
had someone say that they don't like it because it's not a great
feeling. But it also doesn't affect how
I'm going to make things in the future, if that makes sense.
It's just a thing that someone said but.
Right. OK.
And yeah, like you said, there are different types of
criticism. There's some that's
constructive. There's some that's not
(50:42):
constructive at all. Yeah.
So no, no, that that totally makes sense.
That last question here before we wrap up.
So when you create music, do youtry to create a, do you put
thought into the storytelling process of your lyrics?
Are you just trying to make it fun?
(51:04):
Exactly. And make it deliver your music
or deliver your lyrics in a certain way to the person who's
going to be listening to it. Or do you try to like, add
elements of storytelling and stuff like that?
It's. So I would say, depending on the
song, honestly, most of my songshave some sort of comedic value
to it even like my most popular song is called The Perils.
(51:28):
It's about, it's literally aboutthat 13 months I spent homeless.
So it's the lyrics are. 6:00 AM Wake up all along.
Like, what can your boy say? Shit, shower, shave is taking
the whole day, right? So it's like very real things
about what I went through duringthat year.
(51:50):
So for that, for that song specifically, I was living in
that environment, so it wasn't like.
I'm thinking of a story like I'mabout to think of the story and
then write it out. It was like, I remember when I
started writing it, I was it wasprobably 12 or 11:00 PM.
(52:15):
I was in LA, in Koreatown, aboutto go to sleep.
I'm sitting in my car. I could see the moon,
everything. I was like, oh, it's a nice
night. I should talk about how sad this
is. And I started with the line,
6:00 AM, wake up. And then I was just like, OK, we
just keep writing about things that happened while I was
homeless. So that's one type of song.
(52:38):
But then there's other type of songs.
Other types of songs, like Hell yeah.
Which is just like a fun party song where honestly I'm just
saying things to try to be as. Sny is sny a word sly.
Sly OK, let's see. Sly and slick and like, as funny
as possible without people beinglike, without it being overt,
(53:03):
like, ha ha ha, this is hilarious.
Like, it's just like, oh, it's afun party song and I dig it.
So there's different types of songs, but yeah, I approach them
depending on what type it is. I approach them very
differently. OK, I got you.
And before we wrap up, we'll address the last chats here.
Ben, can you spit a verse right here live.
(53:26):
No pressure. Could you please?
Big fan here from the other sideof the world.
Ben, I love you so much. But no, absolutely not.
I I stopped doing that when I realized like, I'm making money
off of it now. And it'd be like, I can't
(53:46):
explain it. It'd be like.
Hey basketball player, like here's a ball.
Go do a dunk right now and be like, wait, what I'm trying to
do? But then I I do have an album
coming out November 14th. And honestly, Ben, e-mail me at
old Van Saxon at Gmail. I'll write you a song, but I
(54:08):
don't want to do that right now.There you go, Ben says.
That's cool. I get it.
OK, OK. Shots You Ben Darius, are there
any European rappers you like? Damn, I don't know.
I actually don't know. And I think it's something about
when you say European, I start to think of all of Europe.
(54:30):
But let me think, like more people fix in the country.
Like, do you like, do you like British rappers, like that drill
rap? I don't like drill at all.
I really don't. I'm gonna say no, even though
that sounds super harsh. I'm gonna say no.
Yeah, I can get a lot of American rappers that I like.
Demi burpee. So, well, there you go.
(54:52):
I mean, yeah, I'm not a huge fanof the British accent.
I pissed off a lot of British English teachers saying that
too. But but yeah, I don't.
I think it sounds so goofy, like, and I I'm sure, I'm sure
they say the same thing about the Canadian accent or the
American. But like, it's just so foreign
(55:13):
to me. Like, do you even notice the
difference between a Canadian accent and an American accent?
It's like I'm speaking with a Canadian one right now, so.
Yeah, no, I definitely do. It's it's a little.
I can't even describe it, but I I can tell, right.
Good. OK And Nicholas, big fan, OK,
shout out to you, Nicholas, Ben says.
(55:35):
Wow. OK, cool.
OK, so Oman Saxon, before we wrap up here, where can they
find you on social media? And do you have any projects
that you are working on? You said you were working on an
album, right? Yes, so old man Saxon on
everything. Pretty much Facebook, YouTube,
(55:55):
Twitter, Instagram. And yes, right now I do.
I finished the project. It's a EP called So Long, coming
out November 14th and. Yeah, I'm still just making
music for. The other thing I've been doing
too is I'm working on a kids album because as I say, like
(56:16):
I've been having problems letting my kids listen to my
music. So I'm making music, a more
poppy kids album, kind of just for my children that I'll
probably release someday. Oh, that's that's cool.
That's cool. OK.
And for us, it's just Arc English.
All platforms, whichever platform it is, if you want to
(56:37):
get in touch with us, you want any of our resource to learn
English. I'll post the link right now in
the chats and you can simply consult that.
And coming soon, myself and our team, we're going to be offering
private lessons and group lessons.
So you like to join the wait list?
You can simply refer to the linkI posted in the chats and you'll
be able to join then. We already got a lot of people
(57:00):
on the wait list, so I'll try tomake sure that I get tutors on
our team who specialize in particular, the things that
you're looking for in an Englishtutor, whether it be an exam,
immigration, whatever it is. So, OK.
And Ben says November 14th. I'll keep waiting for it.
(57:20):
OK. Sick.
Nope. Ben.
Best of luck. OK.
Thank you. OK.
And that is all. Thank you again, old man Saxon,
for coming out. It was a pleasure.
Thank you. Until next time, people.
Peace.
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