RadixJournal - May 02, 2026


What's the Frequency, Kenneth？

Hosted by
Richard Spencer
Mentioned
Giuseppe Verdi Don Giovanni Alex Jones Africans Mozart Verity Calvin
Andrew Wilson Vs. Bloodthirsty Fascist Women Unite the Plight

Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

139.29

Word count

2,469

Sentence count

—

Harmful content

Toxicity

17

sentences flagged

Hate speech

13

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I discuss the differences between classical music and rap, and why rap is better than classical music in terms of its melodic and rhythmic qualities, and the influence of Wagner and Mozart on the evolution of classical music.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I feel as though rap as a form of music, take the lyrics aside, the substance aside, the music itself, maybe not inherently evil, I don't know if I would do it quite as far, but the music itself is, to say that here's Mozart, or Handel's Messiah, and here's rap, but the lyrics are Christian now, I changed the lyrics.
00:00:23.920 It's not about the lyrics, it's about the music itself.
00:00:25.640 So, okay. Let me just explain what is going on here. So in the spectrum between African drumming and pure melodious Wagnerian endless melody, it's a spectrum and rap is like right here.
00:00:49.720 basically there is what we there's a spectrum between rhythm and melody let's say and
00:00:56.640 over here you have what we would i think correctly call primitive music where it is pure rhythm and
00:01:06.760 there isn't even really a tone now there is often some sort of tone but it's just beating and maybe
00:01:12.760 like so there's some melody of some sort but even the melody is just a rhythm that's over here on
00:01:22.900 this side of the spectrum and then you have like tristan unto zolda where rhythm in a way has been
00:01:31.460 overcome and it is just unending melody there is rhythm in there but you don't certainly don't
00:01:39.560 hear it. And, you know, it's like climbing and moving, but it never reaches a culmination.
00:01:52.020 And maybe right in here in the middle, you have like rock and roll or Giuseppe Verdi or something
00:01:57.660 where there is a tremendous amount of rhythm, but there's also just beautiful melody or rock,
00:02:05.500 like catchy melody or you know energetic melody and and it's sort of combined into something
00:02:12.660 rap is again closer to Africans beating on drums because they have there is no melody in effect
00:02:21.380 there might be something like a little hitch a little um what is it uh what do they call it a
00:02:27.300 clip or a uh whatever there's some word for it uh but it's like a hook yes there's some hook
00:02:36.320 right so it's like burning and burning and it's like
00:02:43.060 it's just it's just rhythm now is there something interesting about rap of the rhymes and speaking
00:02:54.800 that fast or that lazily in some cases perhaps but that's what's going on it's not even necessarily 0.97
00:03:03.940 more degenerate you know it's like Africans are over here Italians are right in the middle 0.95
00:03:10.620 and then Germans are over here from like rhythm to autism or melody and and that's why Verity is 0.99
00:03:21.120 so great because there's a little bit of that african dance music and verity there's a lot of
00:03:28.960 dance literally dance music and verity if verity were a composer today he might integrate like
00:03:35.040 techno rhythm and beats into his music dramas there's no doubt about it he would if he were
00:03:40.660 alive today so it's like verity is in touch with a little bit of the primitive the rhythm that
00:03:48.100 makes you move but he's also very much in touch with melody unquestionably he has beautiful
00:03:53.660 melodies and even later in his career with like otello and you know except there's a little bit
00:03:58.680 of wagner going on with some of these melodies that he's pursuing and love themes so that's
00:04:07.060 what's happening i don't know what to tell you it's not like it's degenerate any more degenerate
00:04:13.760 like I could even I mean Nietzsche's criticism of Wagner is that he's degenerate in effect decadent
00:04:20.280 and he's right but it's not like some scheme to make us more sexual or something there's always
00:04:29.600 something sexual and rhythmic and in music and Wagner in some moods not in Tristan but in some
00:04:37.140 moods actually captures of that he is the man he captures that I should say he is the man that wrote
00:04:42.880 the ride of the valkyries after all which is very rhythmic and infectious the the mozart's music
00:04:51.820 was shaped around the mass it was shaped around the christian theology and the worship of god
00:04:55.560 no it was not it was not that's just absurd um the the thing that shaped
00:05:06.700 what we call classical music of the 18th or early to mid 19th century is sonata form
00:05:15.280 and it's you introduce you know a a theme
00:05:21.860 uh like and then you'll introduce a secondary theme often in a different key and then you'll
00:05:31.140 develop on these themes and then it all comes back with both themes played in the same um uh key
00:05:39.940 that's sonata form uh there are basically aria forms that are very often aab
00:05:51.420 they don't take the form of rock music which is verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus usually
00:06:01.140 um that's an interesting form they they'll they'll often have a long melodic line another
00:06:07.240 long melodic line they might go somewhere uh the next time uh you know verity wrote at least
00:06:14.520 through his middle period with you know aria cabaletta so you have a slow sort of thoughtful
00:06:19.400 beautifully melodic number and then the cabaletta where it's fast and you know
00:06:26.660 like all and you sing a high note at the end and everyone's jumping to their feet to applaud
00:06:33.780 so on um music is conventional and it's based on these conventions it's not based on the mass
00:06:42.300 vog i mean not wagner mozart was bringing like advanced music to sacred music but i actually
00:06:52.380 looked it up through evil ai and learned that nine to ten percent of mozart's music were um
00:07:01.180 liturgical in nature so this notion that it's coming from the church is just wrong now you
00:07:09.120 could make that argument with bach but they don't make that argument so i'm not going to try to help
00:07:14.940 out their bad argument but mozart was traveling around europe he spent three-fourths of his life
00:07:22.260 moving, and he was traveling around Europe playing for various sovereigns. He was remarkably secular.
00:07:30.940 He wrote an opera about Don Giovanni. He wrote an opera about Kozifa and Tutte. All women are like
00:07:37.040 that. He also wrote an amazing mass. He was also, by the way, Calvin, my, you know, Catholic-based
00:07:50.140 catholic guy with an afro he also was a freemason by the way and he literally wrote an opera about
00:07:57.820 freemasonry which is called the magic flute pro freemasonry by the way it wasn't a based
00:08:06.600 alex jones opera in which the people triumph over the evils of freemasonry it was about
00:08:13.100 the wonders of freemasonry so maybe you guys don't know anything about music i don't know
00:08:20.680 kind of sounds like it you're choosing quite possibly the worst example imaginable to make
00:08:31.740 your point rap music was centered around rebellion against society and it was sexuality violence but
00:08:38.800 it's deeper than just the words or the beats it's the frequencies okay this is where he loses me
00:08:44.500 now you could definitely say that rock music because of the rhythm the drums that it was
00:08:51.340 about sexuality and sexuality can be rebellious or destabilizing i would agree totally with that
00:08:58.600 i mean we now listen to elvis and it's like quaint or wholesome and i like elvis but it that was
00:09:06.060 radical in the 50s like him shaking his hips the cbs news would only or cbs would only like
00:09:12.140 broadcast him above the waist because he was just making people feel
00:09:17.200 a little too excited down there with those hips shaking of elvis
00:09:22.620 um it's sexual precisely because it's more rhythmic and again this goes back to the scale
00:09:29.100 of like rhythm to melody where do you fall on the scale rock is closer to the primitive drumming that
00:09:35.900 is all about the heartbeat raising the heartbeat by drumming making you move through the rhythm
00:09:41.180 rock is more like that so it's more sexual and that's rebellious but now he goes into frequency
00:09:47.620 in 1939 there he is um the rothshaws and the rockefellas came together got some scientists
00:09:53.220 and some musicians together and said let's shift the frequency of a from was it 440 hertz to 453
00:09:58.240 hertz look it up and essentially they want the masses to be enraged to be ready for war they
00:10:03.820 don't want the masses to be peaceful and seeking god that's so good i that's so what you're telling
00:10:10.920 me is it's not just the lyrics but rap the music itself is jewish yes i love it i feel okay i mean
00:10:18.560 look i'm sure that there are jewish producers of rap that have been indispensable in promoting rap
00:10:26.820 but like i don't know buddy like rap is kind of black i mean i don't know call me crazy here but
00:10:34.200 it seems like rap is black actually i i don't know i know nothing about rap perhaps i need to learn
00:10:42.420 more about the history of rap but kind of seems black that's my impression as an outsider that
00:10:48.940 black people listen to rap music and perform rap music i don't it's about the african-american 0.98
00:10:55.220 experience i don't know i mean call me naive but i think we might want to blame rap on the blacks 0.99
00:11:02.580 if you don't like it i mean give me a fucking break i and look i get it there what they're 0.95
00:11:09.320 probably saying is like producers are doing this and i get that actually but let's also not like 0.98
00:11:16.400 pretend that black people are innocent here if rap is the enemy like let's not pretend that they
00:11:24.620 didn't do it and that it doesn't appeal to them and that it doesn't express some inner nature 0.94
00:11:31.860 of the black through rap music i mean come on now the a440 thing so i actually had learned about
00:11:41.300 this but i i reminded myself about this so okay a440 you always know so whenever you go to a
00:11:49.440 symphony concert or an opera or musical or whatever you know they tune on a like
00:11:55.960 and then everyone starts tuning and then you're on one tonic note it's a it's 440 400 hertz 440
00:12:04.800 hertz that is 400 vibrations per minute so if you had a string just to imagine you pluck the string
00:12:12.560 and it's vibrating at 440 per minute it's a convention it's basically a way of maintaining
00:12:22.000 uniformity internationally so that i mean it would be different like if you're tuning at a 440
00:12:30.620 the high c and d quell apira is can be performed by certain tenors now if you're tuning at a 480
00:12:40.460 it's a higher pitch you just you literally can't sing that high and so you want to kind of
00:12:47.480 maintain uniformity now what i've also heard and someone's done research on this where they found
00:12:53.180 a tuning fork for a in like a harpsichord maker who made harpsichords for mozart or something and
00:13:01.020 it was like 420 or 430 so 432 okay there it is so it was slightly different now this does this
00:13:10.700 matter yes it's different i i get it but all keys are relative and all tones are either flat or sharp
00:13:22.920 relative to the tonic so like it just doesn't matter you know maybe a 440 is a good one but
00:13:32.460 maybe it's just sort of arbitrary it would be like it would be like saying um like how much
00:13:40.280 water is in this is it eight ounces or is it a cup it's like it's the same thing you're just
00:13:46.620 using different words or maybe that's not the best analogy but it's just it's all relative so
00:13:52.800 a key like the the 12 tone scale is based on that a and we've you can't even in a piano like you see
00:14:02.380 the white keys and the black keys it's not even like perfect intervals we've sort of like fudged
00:14:08.960 it slightly to get that well-tempered clavier where you can play all the notes
00:14:13.400 but it just it does not matter like mary had a little lamb sounds the same if you're singing
00:14:23.440 in the key of d or the key of e or the key of f it's the same melody i don't know i i presume
00:14:30.040 people who understand music theory totally get what i'm saying i'm trying to explain it on some
00:14:35.540 elemental level just in case you don't know music you know it's mary had a little lamb mary
00:14:43.260 had a little m mary had a little m mary had a little m they all sound the same it's the same
00:14:49.640 tune because the ratio between the intervals is the same it doesn't matter where you start 1.00
00:14:54.880 or where you're going to end on the tonic so this is bullshit this is ridiculous bullshit 0.99
00:15:04.340 and the the tone a 440 only matters to the extent that the human voice is involved in production 0.99
00:15:13.800 so and of course strings as well and the brass like there's you can only go so high in a violin
00:15:21.560 the human being can only sing so high so you have to have a sort of standardization of the note of
00:15:30.800 the central note so that we're sort of all on the same playing field,
00:15:35.560 so to speak, you know, it's like saying, look,
00:15:38.020 doesn't matter if the football field is 99 yards or 101 yards,
00:15:43.260 it doesn't really matter,
00:15:44.700 but we're just saying it's 100 yards so that you can play football anywhere
00:15:49.560 and you, you, it's standardized.
00:15:52.920 That's the point of standardization. This is bullshit, 1.00
00:15:56.220 but apparently on Tik TOK people think that there's some like frequency 0.99
00:16:00.700 like there's a frequency for your shokra or like this like 538 is like either evil or relaxing or
00:16:10.500 something this is just ridiculous you're hearing frequencies all over the place 0.96
00:16:16.500 it's just bullshit tiktok like mysticism that he's engaging in now might it be the case that 0.93
00:16:27.580 at some point they raised a like four hertz or eight hertz so that in some ways like it was a 0.96
00:16:35.220 little bit higher pitched like all things i mean you're just transposing music a little bit higher
00:16:40.860 so that it like jumped out at you or something okay but like this guy imagines the plot from
00:16:47.140 uh what is that movie the kingsman the first kingsman where there's like a frequency that
00:16:52.580 makes you go insane like you just hit the frequency and then like the uh all those
00:16:57.300 westboro baptist churchgoers just start brutally murdering each other or something 0.85
00:17:02.160 this is just absurd this is all absurd 0.98
00:17:08.400 and afro-catholic man does not know what he's talking about and yet he's lecturing on like 1.00
00:17:16.920 saving western civilization i mean give me a fucking break 0.99
00:17:21.160 mad max yeah the irony of anti-semitism is the word about the music and saying the music is jewish 0.97
00:17:33.200 but not at all concerned about the jewish scriptures yes by the way the bible's jewish
00:17:39.700 like are you saying that the bible is jewish
00:17:42.300 Yes, it's Jewish.