- Do you think that it is hard to be
a rapper with your kind of skin tone?
- What are you tryin' to say?
- Can we open?
- You can open.
What's up?
- I don't recognize you.
- Do you know who I am?
- No.
- Are you?
- Ryan Gosling.
[laughter]
- Wow-ow.
- What is your job?
- I am a musician.
- Have you ever done a stage dive?
- I've done many stage dives.
- How many hours a week do you work?
- Who's to say how much work really tour is?
You're really only on stage for like,
an hour and a half a night.
- And plus you're already just
restating the songs that you already made.
- Right, is that even work in the first place?
Question mark. We don't know.
- Is there like song that you get like tired of singing?
- Yes, it's a song called Thrift Shop.
[Laughter]
- What school do you guys go to?
- What's your favorite song?
- Uh, McCleur.
I got to McCleur and he goes to Hamilton.
- You guys go to different schools.
- Yeah.
- Man back in the day,
McCleur and Hamilton use to be kinda bad schools.
- Oh, McCleur sucks.
- Does it?
- Yes.
- That's where I probably started to do drugs,
was with McCleur kids man.
[Laughter]
Like actually for real.
I went to a McCleur party, in seventh grade,
and I think that was it.
- Why do you always use your hands when you talk, like well?
- I rap, so like I.
- Told ya!
You do it.
- No I'm showing you, this is like exaggerated,
but like yeah, I rap.
- Have you been recognized?
- I got recognized on the way over here.
I was in Barnes and Nobel, someone stops me and says
"Has anyone ever told you, that you look
a lot like Macklemore?"
So, normally I just say no, but today I said yes.
And she said, "I mean obviously you're not him."
And in my mind I'm like, does she think I look older?
I was thinking the other day that should
keep a wig in my glove compartment of my car.
I'm thinking like a brown kinda shag,
maybe a weird hat, some sunglasses,
I don't know.
[laughter]
- When you wrote the song White Privilege,
did you actually mean what you were saying?
- Yeah, absolutely.
The first version of White Privilege
I wrote when I was in college.
It was 2005, so thirteen.
- That was three years before I was born.
- Yeah, so it was thirteen years ago.
Long time ago, and I was observing a change in culture.
It was an observation.
It was questioning what's my place in this culture,
and processing it through a song.
- One of my favorite songs is the Immigrant Song.
- Who sings that?
- Led Zeppelin.
- Mmm.
- How do you not know that?
- Cause I listen to rap dude.
- Since you're a rapper, like you feel like
there's booze around you a lot, or?
- Yeah, everywhere I go there's just a bottle Ciroc vodka.
No, I'm just kidding.
- Okay good.
- There is definitely a lot of alcohol
in the music industry in general,
but it's been a really long time
since I've had a drink of alcohol.
- That's pretty good.
- Yeah.
I think that what separates me from a normal person,
is that when I put a drink or a drug into my body,
it's like I have an allergic reaction to it,
and I can't get enough of it.
So for me, any drug is a bad drug for me.
- Where you on drugs once?
- I was.
- Mmm.
- Oof, yeah. It's a long road back.
- Yeah.
- Well Tommy, you wouldn't know.
- Well yeah I wouldn't know,
but I read all the like pamphlets they give us in school.
Don't do drugs kids, which is probably accurate.
- And you've listened.
- Yeah.
- Good.
- Can you still write music when you take drugs?
- Music that's not very good, yes.
- What's the most recent time you've had a relapse?
- Two years ago, it was bad, this is bad.
- Okay.
- No it's fine, we can go there.
- No, no, no, if you don't want to.
- No it's fine.
There was a photo shoot, for People Magazine.
I was told that we were going to be a like,
50 sexiest people.
- Nice.
- It turns out, it was like 50 sexiest like animal hunters.
- You hunt, do you hunt?
- Which is like a big difference.
- Yeah.
- Um, yeah.
- Yeah, like great.
So I was very high, I think I passed out at some point.
- Oh geez.
- It was all bad.
Anyway, that was the last time.
- What would you say your favorite drink is now?
- You know what I really enjoy,
is a fine chilled bottle of Martinelli's.
- That's delicious, the apple cider?
- Yeah man. - Pretty good.
- Do you still have the same passion for music
from when you started?
- I'm having to think about it, so I would say probably not.
I don't know, it's a tough question.
I feel like I'm kind of in a transition point in my life,
I wanna be a good dad.
- Do you have kids?
- I do.
- How many?
- Two kids.
You guys wanna see a picture of my daughter?
- Okay.
- That's my new baby.
- Do you think you're a good role model to your fans?
- It depends on the song.
What I try to embody with my music is being myself.
There's good versions of me,
and then there's the other person.
I have kind of this, yin and yang type of thing
to my personality.
So, depending on the song, you might get either version.
It's true to who I am, and other people
can relate to it too.
We're not perfect,
there's days where you're probably a great kid,
and there's day where sometimes your parents are like
"Oh my God."
Maybe. Maybe you're just great all the time, I don't know.
- Thank you.
- Are you?
- Kind of.
- See what I'm saying, see what I'm saying?
- Do you guys have any ideas in terms of
song, or songs, or album, or concepts, or any sort of idea
that I should put in to my music?
- Honestly no, cause like you've been
doing pretty good by yourself.
- Your albums are great.
- Good job Tom.
- We like them.
- I love you guys.
We'll thank you guys.
- You wanna sing Marmalade?
- Can I hear you do it?
- Okay.
Ain't nobody get up in my car today.
- Aye.
- Back seat feeling like a charter plane.
- Aye.
- I be riding through the town,
my music up.
Windows down yeah you can hear me now.
I turn it up.
- Up.
- I need that bass.
- Bass!
- And my chain so bright can't see my face.
I be riding through the town, town, town,
I be riding through the town, town, town.
Yeah, I'm done.
[laughter and clapping]
- Yo that was very good.
That was very, I'm very impressed.
- I'm sweating.