In this special episode of The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special, Ben sits down with fitness writer, author and podcaster, Zuby, to discuss his new book, "Strong Advice: A Guide to Fitness for Everybody" and how he broke every women's weightlifting record in the UK in one session while identifying as a woman. He also discusses why he thinks there are biological differences between men and women, and the backlash he received when he made a video of himself breaking the world's heaviest women's deadlift record. Ben Shapiro is a standup comedian, writer, podcaster and host of the 'Real Talk With Zuby' podcast. He is also the author of Strong Advice, a guide to fitness for everyone, and is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. Ben is a long-time friend and supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, and has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, and CNN. He is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post and Huffpost, as well as many other publications. In this episode, Ben and Zuby discuss how they came to be friends, how they became friends, and what it was like growing up in a conservative Christian background and growing up as a rapper in the late 90s and early 00s in America, and how the world views on transgenderism and gender identity in the 21st century. It's a must listen! episode, you won't want to miss it! - Ben Shapiro's Sunday Special with the Real Talk With Zuby. - Subscribe to the Ben Shapiro show on YouTube - Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about Ben Shapiro. Subscribe on Podchaser and subscribe to his Podcasts! Subscribe on PODCAST - Rate/subscribe to his podcast Subscribe on Stitcher Subscribe on Spare Cash - Rate and review his podcast on iTunes Subscribe on your favourite podcast platform Subscribe on Podcasts and leave us a review on iTunes Review and review on Poshmark Subscribe on Itunes Learn more on this Podcast - Rate & Shout Out! Thank you for listening to Ben Shapiro s Sunday Special? - Rate, review, review and subscribe on your thoughts on the show on this week's episode of the BenShapiro's new podcast, The Real Talk with Ben Shapiro Podcast and much more! Subscribe to his Insta - Subscribe and review Ben's Hustler Podcast - subscribe on iTunes - subscribe to Ben's Podcast - click here!
00:00:00.000I think one of the worst things you can do, especially to a young person, is to convince them that they're some kind of victim and that the world is against them and that they're oppressed, especially if that's not actually true.
00:00:11.000because I believe that whatever lens you view the world through is gonna be your reality.
00:00:25.000This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special.
00:00:27.000I'm excited to welcome to the show independent rapper, host of Real Talk with Zuby podcast, the author of Strong Advice, Zuby's Guide to Fitness for Everybody.
00:00:38.000Well, the first I had seen of any of your work, obviously it wasn't rap, because as we will discuss, I have some differences with you on rap, and I'm going to have you convince me that I really ought to listen to more rap.
00:00:49.000But the first I was aware of you was when you cut that hilarious video that obviously went viral of you breaking every women's weightlifting record in the UK in one session, basically, while identifying as a woman.
00:01:03.000Number one, what was the origin of that particular idea?
00:01:05.000Number two, did they actually change the books to reflect the fact that as a woman, you had now destroyed all of the records?
00:01:11.000OK, so well, how do I start with this?
00:01:14.000So those videos were actually just from some of my random training sessions.
00:01:19.000So I didn't actually enter a sanctioned powerlifting meet and officially break the records.
00:01:23.000But I had the videos on my phone and I'd seen a whole bunch of stories popping up on my timeline about Transgender women beating biological women in their own sports.
00:01:33.000It was happening in athletics and weightlifting, all these kind of things.
00:01:36.000So just out of curiosity, I did a Google search just to see what the powerlifting records were in Britain for females in my own weight class.
00:01:45.000And I saw them all, and I was like, oh, I can beat these Quite comprehensively.
00:01:50.000So I just did a search on my phone and I had videos of training clips of me lifting more than those.
00:01:55.000So I literally just created that first deadlift tweet.
00:01:57.000So it was a video that already existed on my phone and it was already on the internet but without any context except it being from my training session.
00:02:04.000So I just wrote that caption, you know, I keep hearing about how biological men have no physical advantage over women so watch me destroy the British women's deadlift record.
00:02:12.000Without trying, and I really wasn't trying in that video, because that video was about 60 kilos, 100 pounds below my maximum, which was kind of the point, because I'm not even a competitive athlete.
00:02:22.000So I just put that out there, thinking it would get a couple of laughs from my existing audience, and lo and behold, it took over the internet for a couple of days and got international coverage, and now here we are.
00:03:00.000I've got followers who are trans and I've had lots of messages from people who are actually trans saying, dude, that was hilarious.
00:03:09.000Because they understand the reality, they got the humor.
00:03:12.000There was a very tiny, tiny percentage of people, less than 1% of people, who responded to it, who were trying to attribute some kind of malice to what I was doing.
00:03:22.000There were people who were angry at it for different reasons, though.
00:03:37.000You kind of got the point, but you've also really, really missed it here.
00:03:40.000And then there were also other people trying to say that it came from some place of hatred towards transgender people or LGBT people as a whole, which of course it wasn't.
00:03:50.000Some people were saying, oh, well, you didn't go on the hormone therapy, so you're not really this or you're not really that.
00:03:56.000Pretty sure even if I did go on hormone therapy for one year, I wouldn't exactly be equivalent to someone born a female.
00:04:03.000But yeah, there was a little bit of blowback, as expected, just given how many people ended up seeing it.
00:05:02.000When I was in my first year, I started rapping.
00:05:05.000When I was a kid I used to play piano, so I did some music in the past then.
00:05:09.000I also played trombone in a band for a while.
00:05:11.000And then I kind of fell out of love with music and fell back into it.
00:05:16.000I was a hip-hop fan in my teen years at school.
00:05:19.000And then I started rapping in university and discovered I had a knack for writing lyrics and performing.
00:05:24.000So I released my first album, Commercial Underground, when I was 19.
00:05:28.000and put that out just independently, sold a few thousand copies, and that kind of set the spark of, oh, this is maybe something I can do something with.
00:06:21.000But I'm aware that I have a lot to offer beyond just the music.
00:06:25.000You know, I've got something to add to the conversation.
00:06:28.000There's stuff I can help people with in terms of fitness and developing a stronger mindset and stuff like that.
00:06:34.000And all those avenues are things I'm trying to contribute to the world in a positive way, really.
00:06:39.000So I have many, many questions, and I'm going to get to all of them in just one second.
00:06:42.000But first, I used to go to the post office all the time, and then I realized that I didn't have to go to the post office anymore, which is great because the post office is wonderful.
00:06:49.000But who wants to spend the time in the car and schlepping the the packages and then you have to wait in the line.
00:06:53.000Instead, you can do everything from home.
00:06:57.000Stamps.com, they bring all the amazing services of the U.S. Postal Office directly to your computer.
00:07:01.000Whether you're a small office sending invoices or an online seller shipping out products, even a warehouse sending thousands of packages a day, Stamps.com can handle it all with ease.
00:07:09.000Simply use your computer to print official U.S.
00:07:12.000postage 24-7 for any letter, any package, any class of mail, anywhere you want to send it.
00:07:17.000Once your mail is ready, you just hand it to your mail carrier or you drop it in a mailbox.
00:08:02.000As somebody who, for one particular reason, is not allowed in Saudi Arabia, what exactly was that like for you? - I actually really liked it.
00:08:10.000Where I grew up was, it was kind of like a bubble.
00:08:12.000It was an expat community, so you had people there from all over.
00:08:18.000It's why my accent doesn't even sound British, because I lived in Saudi Arabia and I was in the American school system for such a long time.
00:08:24.000And I'm someone who's really hard to influence, so even when I went to the UK, my accent just didn't really shift too much.
00:08:30.000But it was a great place to grow up, really, like, diversity in the true sense of the word.
00:08:35.000I was surrounded by people of All different nationalities, different religions, different races, whatever, just from the very, very beginning, which is part of why I find some of the identity politics stuff that's happening now really, really weird, because I didn't grow up with any of that.
00:09:22.000But there's also a lot of pros to it and the way they there's a lot of things I think that country could learn from a place like the US or UK.
00:09:31.000There's also stuff I think the US and UK could learn from a country like Saudi Arabia, which people might be surprised to hear. - And what are some of the things you think that the West could learn from Saudi Arabia? - Well, I think, firstly, it's a very, I know you're a religious person.
00:10:02.000And there's some stuff that maybe people in the West may think should be allowed, which is not allowed there.
00:10:07.000But when it comes to things like, I'd say, a lot of the social issues and problems that are major issues in the modern western world, they hardly exist over there, right?
00:10:18.000So if you're talking about broken families or fatherless homes, or, you know, yeah, kids growing up without parents, drug addiction, alcoholism and alcohol problems, all that, it's just not a thing there.
00:10:31.000Because alcohol is illegal, there's no drugs.
00:10:36.000And again, people fear God, so You find that people there are very honest, actually.
00:10:42.000People are extremely honest, very hospitable, very traditional in certain senses.
00:10:49.000It's an easy place to criticize for a lot of reasons, but it does have its benefits to society in terms of just things working and functioning and people kind of being on the same page and just knowing, OK, this is how we do things.
00:11:06.000And it's a weird one to balance, but as someone who lived there for 19 years, you can certainly see how it works and it's not all bad in the way that people seem to think that it is.
00:11:16.000I mean, you have this really iconoclastic worldview where you talk a lot about responsibility, and you're obviously anti-identity politics.
00:11:24.000I mean, you talked a little bit, obviously, already about the fact that you grew up in a diverse community, but identity politics is so much a part of modern politics, and it's something that I deplore a lot of people on the political right and many in the political center seem to deplore, but it obviously is a serious force in both European politics and certainly in American politics.
00:11:41.000What do you make of the upswing in identity politics, people seeming to identify by racial group or ethnic group rather than identifying as individuals?
00:11:52.000Like I said, all throughout my life, whether it's what my parents and my family taught me or the schooling I went through both in Saudi and in the UK and even up through university, none of this A lot of these talking points just were not a thing.
00:12:08.000It seemed like people had moved past all that stuff.
00:12:11.000Obviously, it was a major problem in the past, and it still is in certain countries.
00:12:16.000But it seemed like in the mid-2010s or early 2010s, suddenly people started falling back into this sort of racial identitarianism.
00:12:25.000There's a version of it on the far right.
00:12:27.000There's a version of it on the far left.
00:12:30.000They don't seem to want to accept the fact that they're actually kind of similar to each other in a lot of ways.
00:12:36.000Their motives and wording of stuff might be a little bit different, but they're kind of playing the same game, and I'm very much an individualist who's just like, look, I don't care where you're from, I don't care what skin color you are, I don't care what Sexuality, all that kind of stuff.
00:12:51.000It seems so obvious and basic and people do say it, but then a lot of people, the way they behave and the rhetoric they use, it starts defying what they're claiming to talk about.
00:13:04.000So yeah, I'd say it lines with just my own personality and then where I was raised, my own family, my parents, it was just never A thing.
00:13:14.000They never sat me down and were like, oh, Zuby, you're black and we're black, so life is going to be harder for you, or you're going to have to work 10, you know, all that stuff.
00:13:25.000There's something that people call the talk, and I never got the talk in that sense, which I'm very grateful for, because I think one of the worst things you can do, especially to a young person, is to convince them that they're some kind of victim, and that the world is against them, and that they're oppressed, especially if that's not actually True, because I believe that whatever lens you view the world through is gonna be your reality if you walk around thinking that.
00:13:51.000The whole society and nation is very, very racist and very, very sexist and very, very bigoted.
00:13:57.000You'll start to see those things even where they don't exist, right?
00:14:01.000You'll get onto a bus and the bus driver might be a little bit rude to you and you'll say, oh, he was like that to me because I'm black or because I'm a woman, whereas it might just be that he's not a very nice guy or he's in a bad mood or whatever, right?
00:14:13.000you start reading intentions that may not even be there.
00:14:17.000And you're seeing people doing this a lot now, right?
00:14:19.000You're hearing people talking about things like the rise of white supremacy and things.
00:14:28.000If they are, then let me know because I need to be aware, right?
00:14:31.000But you're having people just saying these terms and putting things out there and really catastrophizing in a way.
00:14:37.000And I just don't think it's helpful to people.
00:14:39.000Like I said, I just don't think you want to be convincing people that they are victims, that they're oppressed, and then getting mad at them.
00:14:48.000I've had people get mad at me for telling them I'm not oppressed.
00:14:51.000Which to me is the most bizarre thing.
00:14:53.000I've literally been in arguments with people where they're trying to convince me I'm impressed.
00:15:45.000I mean, I talk to a lot of folks on the left, obviously.
00:15:47.000I have friends on the left, many of whom are people of color, and there is this constant conversation about systems of oppression, systemic oppression in the United States, institutional racism, the legacy of vestiges of the past, Jim Crow and slavery.
00:16:01.000You know, I don't even like the term people of color.
00:16:27.000So why would I need a word for everybody who's not white?
00:16:33.000Because I don't see the world that way.
00:16:39.000I have some black friends on the left who really do focus in a lot on what they believe to be the imbalances of power between white folks and black folks in the United States, primarily because they're not European.
00:16:52.000And they talk about the disparities in terms of systemic oppression, institutional racism, and vestiges of old institutions.
00:16:59.000So you see, for example, the New York Times in the last few weeks pushing what they call the 1619 Project, the idea that the United States was founded and steeped in racism and white supremacy and that all of the institutions are corrupted at root level by slavery and that capitalism is a vestige of slavery, that all inequality is a vestige of slavery.
00:17:16.000My perspective has always been that, of course, these are realities, particularly in the past.
00:17:22.000I mean, there's no way to deny the evil of slavery, nor should anybody.
00:17:25.000No way to deny the evil of Jim Crow, nor should anybody.
00:17:27.000It's very important to understand that stuff.
00:17:28.000When it comes to helping people in the here and now, I'm not sure how it helps people in the here and now to tell them that the obstacles that they face in their life are vestiges of an unchangeable system that is rooted in the American or Western DNA, when it seems to me that the vast majority of Going forward, inequality is not going to be driven by systemic oppression.
00:17:49.000It's going to be driven by individual decision-making, and people making good decisions are going to be able to rise in this society.
00:17:54.000Where do you come down on that particular debate?
00:17:56.000Yeah, I mean, I mostly agree with you there.
00:17:58.000I mean, I think at some point, it's important to acknowledge history, and I think most people, regardless of their political leanings, do that, and they're like, look, in the past, human beings have done a lot of messed up stuff.
00:18:12.000And there's no question that black Americans historically have suffered direct oppression all the way through to not so long ago.
00:18:23.000And I don't think there's any question that there are still after effects and aftershocks of that.
00:18:29.000So it's one of those situations where a lot of people want to be like either or and they want to view it as some binary either.
00:18:35.000Everything is systemic and everything is institutionalized and everything has a problem with the system.
00:18:41.000Or go completely on this other side and say everything is down to individual choices.
00:18:49.000Both of those have elements of truth in them.
00:18:53.000I would say that for looking ahead, looking for people who exist now, people who are in the future, nobody who exists now was ever a slave, nor were their parents, nor do they hold slaves, neither did their parents.
00:19:07.000So I think you can acknowledge the history and say, OK, look, this is where things have come from.
00:19:13.000But then look at, OK, what are the current problems that are happening amongst certain communities right now?
00:19:20.000OK, if you removed racism from the heart of every American in the world with some of these problems that are facing, you could say, I don't really use the term black community because it's too broad.
00:19:33.000But if you look at some of the problems with, you know, black Americans or the black American community, to use the terminology, are facing, I'd say a big one is has to do a lot of it stems from family.
00:19:46.000A lot of it stems from family, fatherless homes.
00:19:49.000It's like this big elephant in the room that a lot of people don't really want to address.
00:19:53.000Just the way people treat each other, the way people value or don't value life.
00:19:59.000to some degree and this is generally still talking about a very small minority of a minority but those are real problems and those are not problems that exist because of racism okay people focus on when it comes to something institutionalized or systemic a lot of people would focus on on the justice system right so
00:20:18.000So people will say, oh, well, you know, there might be... I haven't looked at all the data on this, but I know a lot of people say that black people may get longer sentences for the same crime, or some people think that the police are kind of just going around randomly shooting black men, which I don't really think is...
00:20:36.000I think those are the ones that get the most media attention, but if you look at the data, it doesn't really seem to fit that narrative from what I've seen.
00:20:44.000I mean, I used to believe that, too, until I looked at the wider picture and was like, OK, well, what else is happening here that's not being reported?
00:20:50.000And I was like, hmm, the narrative isn't quite as simple as people are saying here.
00:20:55.000So my point is that if you removed racism completely, Those issues that I've just talked about, for the most part, would still continue to exist and persist, which would suggest to me that that's not the main issue here, right?
00:21:09.000The issue is aspects of culture and behavior and personal responsibility.
00:21:15.000So I think a much better message, rather than telling people that the system is out to get them or the game is rigged against them or whatnot, which you can't really do anything Firstly, I don't think it's true.
00:21:30.000Or if it is, it's to a very light degree.
00:21:33.000And I think most people would want to get it so that it's completely gone.
00:21:36.000I think everyone's on the same page on that.
00:22:04.000Even if you're not coming from a great place, even if you're not coming from, you know, the top, even if you're in the bottom quartile to begin with, over the course of time, several decades, I know you've talked about this a lot, right?
00:22:15.000If people make good decisions and avoid, not even just make good decisions, but avoid making really bad decisions, then I do believe that most people
00:22:26.000Can not most people I do believe that all people can succeed to some degree and be happy and be content and whatever and not just be angry at all the time and not be getting more divided and falling back more more into tribal identity and all that I mean it's just sad for me to see that happen because again I'm obsessed with the idea of potential so when I'm I kind of see potential and it's not being fulfilled or people are
00:22:50.000Running around just doing and saying things that aren't helpful, then I find it personally quite frustrating.
00:22:58.000So, obviously you're not American, you've spent some time in America, but what is the perspective from abroad on President Trump, upon whose shoulders apparently all of world peace rests?
00:23:09.000Okay, I can't speak for the rest of the world, I can speak for myself personally.
00:23:13.000I'm not going to try to give the whole UK view or the whole abroad view.
00:23:16.000I think the UK view as a whole is Mostly negative, but not as negative as the press would probably like to make people believe there are a lot of Trump supporters or people who think he's generally doing a good job in the UK.
00:23:32.000My personal view is that I think he's doing a pretty good job in terms of what he's actually doing.
00:23:43.000I've been familiar with Donald Trump for decades, so a lot of people are acting like he's somebody just brand new who's out there.
00:24:07.000But do I think it's good that someone's in there kind of breaking the matrix, in a way?
00:24:12.000Yeah, I do think it's good and in terms of his policies and the way the country seems to be going in terms of the economy and jobs and stuff like that.
00:24:24.000Hasn't started any super crazy, new crazy wars that I know a lot of people were worried about.
00:24:29.000You know, I do remember in 2016 when it happened and people were saying, oh gosh, this is going to lead to World War III and it's going to be nuking North Korea and we're going to be in all these fights and battles and all that.
00:24:43.000And in terms of the opposition, They seem to be struggling to get somebody who is better than him.
00:24:49.000So as far as I'm saying, you know, even if people don't like his personality or don't like some of the things that he said or whatever, it's kind of like, well, who's better?
00:25:32.000I don't believe he's a racist, and the fact that he only suddenly became racist to people in 2015, 2016, despite being in the public eye for many decades, is really suspicious to me.
00:25:43.000In the world of hip-hop, Donald Trump was extremely popular.
00:25:46.000I don't know how aware you are of this.
00:26:00.000He was the aspirational figure for a lot of these rappers who are entrepreneurial minded, business minded, wanted to go out, hustle, get that money, you know, be the, be the ghetto version of Trump or whatever.
00:26:11.000And that's a, you know, I think Jay-Z has a lyric, you know, I'm the hood's equivalent of Trump or something like that.
00:26:17.000And then in again, in 2015, 2016, all this suddenly changed very, very quickly.
00:26:22.000And I think a lot of that was was media driven.
00:26:25.000So when it comes to that, I don't think he's a racist.
00:26:27.000I don't think he's a white supremacist.
00:26:29.000I think that he says dumb, insensitive stuff sometimes that can certainly be It certainly gives his opponents and people who already don't like him in the media a way to take something he said and give it a racial sort of twist even when there wasn't.
00:26:49.000A great example would be, I don't know, like the thing he said about Baltimore being rat infested.
00:26:53.000To me, that has zero racial connotations at all.
00:26:56.000If someone says a place is rat infested, I'm just like, okay, it's a rat infested, right?
00:27:00.000But then people were saying, oh, he used the word infested.
00:27:02.000That somehow implies, I mean, that's a pretty racist interpretation of it.
00:27:07.000If you're saying, oh, he said that because, I was like, my brain didn't even go, you know what I mean?
00:28:15.000I grew up listening to classical music almost entirely, some Broadway, maybe, well, not maybe, so a lot of classic jazz like Oscar Peterson.
00:28:23.000But apparently, number one, do you think that it's racist not to like rap?
00:28:27.000Because I've been told that if I do not like rap, then this is because I do not like black people, which I find shocking since I particularly like jazz, which is a black art form.
00:28:35.000So can we just assuage my fears here that I'm not a racist for not liking rap?
00:28:40.000And then you can convince me that I'm actually wrong about rap.
00:28:52.000I don't get how someone can jump... Also, Twitter has changed in radical ways.
00:28:56.000Like, it used to be that 10 years ago you could make a joke about rap not being music, and you're stupid if you disagree, and people were like, ah, that's a joke.
00:29:02.000And now it's like, no, you meant that you hate black people.
00:29:05.000It's like, whoa, where did that come from?
00:29:06.000People really read non-existent malice and non-existent interpretations into things people say.
00:29:14.000It's just a weird trend, which I do hope goes away, because it's really annoying.
00:29:20.000And also, it makes it difficult to take those words seriously, okay?
00:29:25.000If someone, you know, you're an Orthodox Jew, if someone says that you're a Nazi, or you're a white supremacist, or I've been called a white supremacist, if someone, you know, calls everything racist, everything sexist, then it really dilutes those terms to the point where I don't even know what these things mean anymore.
00:29:44.000If someone actually is legitimately far right or a legitimate neo-nazi, I'd like to know who that person is.
00:29:51.000But if you're just going to call everybody that, then you're just providing cover for the real bad guys.
00:29:55.000So I do wish people would kind of chill on that kind of rhetoric.
00:29:58.000Okay, so my case against rap is, I have the musical case against rap, and then I'll get to the cultural case.
00:30:04.000So the musical case against rap is that, in my view, and the view of my music theorist father who went to music school, there are three elements to music.
00:30:14.000There is harmony, there is melody, and there is rhythm.
00:30:17.000And rap only fulfills one of these, the rhythm section.
00:30:20.000There's not a lot of melody, and there's not a lot of harmony.
00:30:23.000And thus it is basically effectively spoken rhythm.
00:30:26.000And so it's not actually a form of music.
00:30:41.000Well there's certainly melody in the beats and even some rappers rapping slash singing certainly has a melody.
00:30:49.000I'm not a particularly melodic rapper myself there are artists who sort of sing rap a lot more but I'd certainly say in terms of the the production there's a lot of Harmony and melody in there.
00:31:03.000In terms of rapping itself, obviously rapping is a different art from singing, so the focus is on the rhythm rather than on the melodies and the harmonies by intention, otherwise you'd be singing.
00:31:15.000I'm not too great at harmony and melody, and people don't want to, nobody would pay to see me on stage singing.
00:31:22.000But in terms of the lyricism and the rhythm, that's really where the skill lies.
00:31:30.000So as an art form, it's a really unique form of music in a lot of ways.
00:31:35.000One, I think, is that you've just got the space to express yourself.
00:31:41.000And in hip-hop, you can really rap about anything.
00:31:44.000You can make a song about absolutely anything.
00:32:16.000You can just share opinions on pretty much anything.
00:32:19.000And so it's really, really unique in that sense.
00:32:24.000And yeah, I think it's a little bit like They're very different music forms, but I think it's a little bit like country in that regard, in the way that you can kind of make a song about anything, and the people who write the lyrics tend to be the same people who perform them.
00:32:39.000Whereas in genres like pop and even rock, it's not uncommon to have a separate songwriter who then provides that to the person who sings it.
00:32:46.000So with hip-hop, what you're really getting is the artist's own expression.
00:32:51.000So I can go away, I could write a song, and what someone's listening to is really just The mind of Zuby, just like they can listen to this conversation, this interview, and they're getting what's going on in my mind.
00:33:02.000It's the same if they go and they listen to the lyrics of my songs.
00:33:04.000They know, okay, this is the story he's telling.
00:33:11.000In terms of the music aspects to it, whether or not you like that and it vibes with you and you're feeling with that that's that's that's totally subjective so my other kind of artistic criticism of rap is maybe a stereotype about how rap is written
00:33:23.000so i have this this kind of theory and it holds true across all musical form which is that art and craft are not in opposition but very often they seem to be placed in opposition meaning there's a and this leads to my criticism of rock along the same lines as my criticism of rap which was that rock was an actual degradation of skill for for music from jazz which was actually a degradation of skill from classical.
00:33:45.000The amount of talent and work, mostly work, that you have to put into mastering a classical instrument is a lot higher than the amount of talent and work you'd have to put into playing three chords in a rock song.
00:33:58.000And so when it comes to the lyrics in rap, maybe, I'm sure, part of it is because I just don't have a lot of experience.
00:34:04.000to love rap but it seems like that there's a lot of praise that's put out for particular rappers who it seems to me are doing something that doesn't seem innately very difficult it doesn't seem like the the lyrics have exact rhyme i have this criticism of even i mean in musical theater this is one of my criticisms of lemmanuel miranda actually is that he doesn't use exact rhyme enough he uses near rhymes and he and he uses sort of easier forms of rhyme very often and stacks lyrics in order to make things sound more complex than they are and then you watch movies about rap
00:34:32.000and it seems like somebody just gets up on the mic and they just go and it's and how much work actually goes into crafting a rap lyric how much time has to go into figuring out the rhythmic scheme and the rhyme scheme because i think that would change my opinion somewhat on how rap is constructed Sure, this really depends on the rapper, to be totally honest with you.
00:34:50.000There are rappers who, I would totally agree, do not spend much time or thought or energy in crafting what they're saying.
00:35:00.000They just put something together and it's a very basic rhyme scheme and they just go there and it'll be quite repetitive.
00:35:05.000In terms of the content, there's not really any decent message in there.
00:35:11.000They're not using any clever wordplay or anything like that.
00:35:14.000So to me, that's what makes a bad rapper.
00:35:17.000If you were to take a great rapper, I don't know, Nas, Eminem, Jay-Z, someone like that, whose lyrics are a lot more complex and in-depth than, you know, I'd like to, or myself, of course, I'd like to think, a lot of thought goes, a lot goes into it.
00:35:32.000A lot goes into it in terms of the rhythmic patterns and what you'd call the flow, which is essentially how you, how you ride the beat.
00:35:39.000So if you've got a beat that's faster tempo, you might rap at double, double the speed and have your, you're, you're, you're essentially using your voice kind of like a percussive instrument.
00:35:56.000In terms of the delivery, but then in terms of the actual lyrical content, for me, for a great artist, that's where the real thought comes in.
00:36:04.000And again, when it comes to hip-hop, if you're making a hip-hop song, average rap song probably has eight to ten times the amount of lyrics, if not more, as pretty much any other genre.
00:36:26.000I like to think, you know, in all my songs, I put a lot of thought into what I'm saying and the message I'm trying to communicate out there.
00:36:32.000And there's a lot of wordplay and a lot of metaphors and similes and just trying to do clever stuff with the writing.
00:36:40.000So, again, I think that the real answer to that is it depends on the rapper.
00:36:45.000Just like you could have somebody who does a very basic form of dance or playing an instrument and they're just, okay, I'm going to just play the piano like that.
00:36:55.000Yeah, like that versus someone who's a proper virtuoso.
00:36:58.000You do get the same thing in hip-hop and with rap.
00:37:03.000It's funny, with my parents, my parents used to be a little bit disparaging of rap and hip-hop until I started doing it.
00:37:09.000And they saw me performing and were like, how is he doing that?
00:37:12.000That's where they're really like, okay, that's a talent.
00:37:15.000Okay, so let's talk about the cultural critique of hip-hop and rap.
00:37:19.000So, for a long time in the United States, there's been criticism, and I think some of it is well-founded, about the messages that are purveyed by hip-hop and rap.
00:37:28.000And, you know, there are folks like Candace Owens on the right who have critiqued my critique of hip-hop.
00:37:33.000They've said that I'm not really seeing a lot of the deeper messages in hip-hop.
00:37:36.000She particularly likes to talk about the value of capitalism and success in hip-hop.
00:37:40.000She says that, to cite the Trump example, the emulation of success in hip hop is really strong, and she sees that as a strong positive.
00:37:48.000From the outside, when I listen to hip hop, I don't hear a lot of family-oriented messages.
00:37:53.000In fact, I hear a lot of messages that are degrading to women.
00:37:56.000I hear messages that push violence, that are disparaging to the police.
00:38:00.000I hear messages very often that seem to treat relationships between men and women as something disposable or glorify mistreatment of women.
00:38:10.000And that's not a criticism of your art, because obviously I want to discuss your messages in a second.
00:38:14.000But the art form overall, which obviously has a major impact, not just on black young people, but is disproportionately listened to actually by white young people.
00:38:23.000I don't particularly like a lot of the messages that I hear in hip hop.
00:38:27.000By the way, I've made similar criticisms of pop music, which I think does a lot of the same things.
00:38:31.000What do you make of that particular critique?
00:38:34.000You're not going to get a lot of pushback from me on that one because I think you're correct.
00:38:40.000Especially in terms of the popular mainstream stuff that gets pushed out there hard.
00:38:45.000A lot of the stuff that gets the promotion that people will hear on the radio or in nightclubs and stuff like that.
00:38:51.000A lot of it does have a lot of negative messaging.
00:38:54.000Part of that is the reason why from the very beginning of my music career I was like, I'm going to do the opposite of that.
00:39:02.000I think that I think it's a truth in entertainment in general.
00:39:07.000I don't think that's something that is, I think compared to other genres, you might get more of that in the hip-hop art form.
00:39:14.000And I think a lot of that is down to the artists and where they're coming from and whatnot.
00:39:18.000But a lot of it is also what people want to, it's a weird supply and demand thing as well.
00:39:24.000This is something I've questioned myself for a very long time, is how much of this is what people are demanding, and so artists are just continuing to supply it because it works.
00:39:36.000People might say, oh, we don't like the misogynistic messages, we don't like the drugs, we don't like the violence, but people are dancing to it and buying it and purchasing it.
00:39:44.000People are going to keep on making it.
00:39:46.000So I don't know how much of it is just that versus how much is, you know, record companies and people in power in the entertainment industry and whatnot wanting those to be the messages that get the push out there, because there's a lot of positive hip-hop out there.
00:40:00.000There's a lot of positive hip-hop that's not degrading at all, that's non-violent, that's not profane, but a lot of the time it doesn't get the same push, it doesn't get the same shine, it's not being embraced by all these mainstream channels, and that's something that For twenty years, I've been looking at it and thinking, hmm, that's interesting.
00:40:18.000So I don't really know how much of it is artist-driven versus fan-driven.
00:40:23.000Beyond hip-hop, like I said, I think it's an issue in entertainment in general, whether you're talking all forms of music, certainly pop music as well, like you said, video games, movies, TV.
00:40:35.000There's a lot of stuff that's put out there which is certainly questionable.
00:40:43.000And it's a funny one for me because to some degree I'm like, it's just entertainment.
00:40:48.000And you know, the truth is, for whatever reason, we humans, I think especially guys, do like To some degree, we do like violence.
00:41:00.000We do like gangster movies where you're kind of rooting for the bad guy and whatnot, which that doesn't mean you go out there in real life and that's the way.
00:41:09.000You go out there and you behave that way.
00:41:10.000You see this thing where people are saying, oh, do violent video games cause people to commit violence and stuff.
00:41:15.000The evidence doesn't seem to show that's the case, but I'll do stuff in a video game that I wouldn't dream of.
00:41:20.000I wouldn't dream of doing it in real life.
00:41:48.000I do wonder whether rap does, just as an art form, because it is verbally based.
00:41:52.000You can listen to a pop song and you can sing the pop song without knowing any of the lyrics, whereas it would be impossible to do that with a rap song because, obviously, the lyrics are the entirety of the song, or at least the vast majority of the song.
00:42:04.000I wonder if the verbalization and the identification with the words is stronger in hip-hop than it would be with other genres, for example.
00:42:13.000I mean, the way I look at it, to be totally honest, is I make positive, inspirational, motivational hip-hop music.
00:42:21.000And I've had people tell me, in real life and online, that they've been directly influenced or inspired in a positive way by my music.
00:42:29.000So if that can exist, It must be possible that the opposite can also exist and that there can be negative influences and impacts from certain messages being put out there in hip hop and other forms of art.
00:42:44.000So can you talk about one of the, because I'm sure most of my listeners and most of the people who are watching this haven't heard any of your stuff.
00:42:51.000So can you talk about some of the messages that you include in some of your songs?
00:43:22.000I've got some songs where the message is Quite light, and it's not, obviously, this is like a super positive, inspirational song, but I've got some where I think it's a lot clearer, and certainly if you listen to the entire body of work, the full album, I think most people would come away thinking, okay, that was an inspirational, positive thing.
00:43:44.000I mean, the truth is, in life, you've got good and bad, you've got positive and negative, not everything is happy-go-lucky, you know?
00:43:51.000Yeah, so you've gotta have that, that balance and that side of things.
00:44:27.000Yeah, it could be deemed like a little bit cocky or arrogant or whatever, but it does also pump people up, right?
00:44:32.000It makes people listen to that, whether they're going to work or they're in the gym or whatever, and it motivates and it inspires them when you're hearing the story, especially with, you know, some of these rappers' stories.
00:44:44.000I think it's always interesting to look at A lot of times, and even what we've been doing is focusing on the words, because a lot of people ask about rappers and, I guess, other public figures as role models.
00:44:55.000You know, what's the degree of responsibility?
00:45:06.000But in terms of rappers, there are a lot of rappers I am inspired by.
00:45:11.000Some of them, not so much by their lyrics, but by what they've actually done in their life.
00:45:15.000And I do sometimes wish that they themselves, and even the media, sort of focused on that a little bit more.
00:45:21.000I mean, I sort of feel this way about Jay-Z and Beyonce, honestly.
00:45:23.000Like, I look at them, they're unbelievably successful.
00:45:25.000They're married, they have kids together.
00:45:27.000They seem like they're living a pretty traditional lifestyle, but when I listen to any of their music, that is not exactly what I'm getting from their music.
00:45:33.000Yeah, I mean, the guy literally went from selling drugs in the streets of New York to becoming, he's a billionaire now.
00:45:44.000And independently, he created his own company, put out his own records, created his own clothing line, beverage brands, all these sponsorship deals.
00:46:01.000Like, in that sense, that's totally a role model.
00:46:03.000If you're going to go and listen to, you know, Big Pimpin' and go through, come through the lyrics of that and try to find, like, somebody, then yeah, maybe not.
00:46:12.000So, you know, even guys like 50 Cent, you know, in terms of being a businessman and an entrepreneur and really going from rags to riches, something to nothing, super duper inspiring.
00:46:23.000In a way, I wish they'd put more of that directly in their music, because I kind of feel there's two ways to look at them.
00:46:29.000You can focus on the lyrics and some of the words and some of the things they're saying and be like, ooh, that's a terrible role model.
00:46:35.000But you could also look at what they've actually done and their life story and be like, oh wow, this person is...
00:46:42.000I feel the same way about Snoop Dogg, frankly.
00:46:43.000I mean, the guy has been incredibly successful.
00:46:45.000He's got a really close relationship with his kids, as far as I'm aware.
00:46:49.000And again, you listen to the music and it's something completely different.
00:46:52.000And I wish that every successful person follows a similar path, which is you work hard and you keep your head down and you do something you're good at and people want you to do.
00:47:02.000And then when it comes to the messages that are purveyed, it's almost In many cases, the complete opposite of that.
00:47:11.000It's like, well, it was within the system that you became the owner of an NBA team.
00:47:14.000So I'm pretty sure that the system is probably you should just encourage people to do what you did, which is to work hard and make creative decisions and invest in yourself.
00:47:22.000Yeah, like I said, I wish, I don't know all these guys personally, I wish they would make that more explicit and prominent in their music and their messaging, because sometimes you'll watch an interview with them, and you'll listen to the songs, and it's almost like quite a different person.
00:47:39.000In the interviews, you're really getting that story and that positive vibe, but then sometimes in the music, not all the time.
00:47:47.000Lots of these guys do have some positive songs here and there and whatnot.
00:47:53.000At the end of the day, like we've been saying, I can only control what I do and the content that I put out there.
00:47:59.000I can't police everybody else, nor what I really want to be able to.
00:48:05.000But I think there's a lot of positive and inspiration that can be gleaned if you sort of look at it the right way, or you look at it a certain way.
00:48:13.000I don't mean to put you on the spot or make you do a show for us or anything, but what's your favorite song that you've written and what's your favorite lyric?
00:50:03.000Especially as Nigerian parents, I know that it's quite rare for, you know, to have a son who went to Oxford and then have him go and pursue something as artistic and creative as music.
00:50:34.000I lift a lot of heavy weights, a lot of compound exercises, deadlifts, bench press, squat, overhead press, pull-ups, stuff like that.
00:50:41.000That's what 80, 90% of my workouts consist of.
00:50:45.000And then the diet, depending on what I'm trying to do, whether I'm trying to build or gain or just maintain.
00:50:52.000These last several years, it's really been more about maintenance and then occasionally going on a cut to shed some body fat if I've put on a few pounds over the winter, like most people naturally do.
00:51:02.000So it's fairly simple, but the thing that's really key is consistency.
00:51:09.000Just like with everything else, both with training and with diet, it's really about consistency.
00:51:12.000I mean, I've been going to the gym now for about 16 or 17 years.
00:52:16.000I kind of follow a little bit of an 80-20 rule, which is that as long as 80% of what I'm eating is nutritious and good, then the other 20 can be not super amazing.
00:52:27.000If I'm trying to lean down, then I'll dial it in a little bit just to, you know, bring my calories down and whatnot.
00:52:49.000Because seriously, I'm working out like an hour a day and then I'm looking at my app and it's like, you have 1,400 calories or you will gain weight.
00:53:48.000This sounds fantastic to me, frankly, because I keep hearing I have to eat nothing but vegetables.
00:53:52.000And I'll be honest, I've given up on the six pack.
00:53:55.000I just figure it's never going to happen.
00:53:56.000I'm going to blame it on my body type and my genetics, even though that's probably just giving up on life.
00:54:02.000Yeah, so it does really what I've tried to lay out in the book is to show that it's not super duper complex and you don't need to eat just rabbit food.
00:54:13.000You can actually enjoy foods that you like whilst still hitting your numbers and reaching your targets and not to the detriment of your performance and the way you feel and perform and everything like that.
00:54:25.000So, depending on how big somebody is generally is going to determine how many calories they can have in total along with their activity level.
00:54:33.000So, if you're bigger and more active, you can kind of get away with eating more naturally and you don't need to be quite as precise and strict as someone who's got only 2,000 calories to work with might.
00:54:48.000Yeah, the foods themselves are important from a nutritional standpoint, but in terms of just macronutrients and protein, carb, fat breakdown, there's a whole lot of flexibility you can have in there.
00:54:59.000There's a couple of key rules that matter, and then everything outside of that is sort of details.
00:55:04.000People get bogged down in the details.
00:55:06.000People say, what time of the day should I go to the gym?
00:56:51.000Lots of my training is powerlifting based, and powerlifting is only based around squatting, deadlifting, and bench pressing, which I understand for a lot of people will get boring really, really quickly.
00:57:01.000And if you're not competing in those lifts, then you Don't need to just limit yourself to those ones.
00:57:06.000In terms of lifting heavy though, I mean, heavy is firstly a relative thing.
00:57:10.000So I recommend people lifting relatively heavy to what they're capable of.
00:57:15.000So that could be anywhere from 70 to 85% of their one rep maximum, for example.
00:57:22.000And you might do that for three reps or five reps or six reps or something like that.
00:57:26.000In terms of injury risk, it's not huge as long as you lift correctly.
00:57:32.000A lot of the injuries come from people just not doing the lift the right way.
00:57:37.000So that's not a problem with the weights or lifting in general.
00:57:41.000Did you work with a trainer for a while to make sure that you were lifting correctly?
00:57:46.000At the very, very early stage, I would talk to the gym instructors and just make sure I was doing stuff right, but it's largely self-taught for me.
00:57:55.000It's largely self-taught, and I've done it for so long now.
00:57:57.000I mean, I've also done a personal training qualification, so I'm actually qualified to train other people.
00:58:12.000This is how you do a bench press and whatnot.
00:58:14.000But I think a lot of people don't do the exercises correctly.
00:58:17.000And you get a lot of people who want to lift with the ego rather than with the muscles.
00:58:21.000So they'll rack up 50% more weight than they should probably have on the bar.
00:58:25.000And then they'll start bringing their back into it and lifting, arching their back on a bench press and doing all this crazy stuff.
00:58:32.000doing these quarter squats instead of actually going all the way down.
00:58:34.000There's a lot of things that people do, and it's best to, again, strip it back to the basics and just learn to do the movements properly.
00:58:41.000And then once you've got that down, then you can start sort of cranking it up.
00:58:46.000I mean, as somebody who's obviously very health-oriented, what do you make of the body positivity movement?
00:58:49.000So this has obviously become a big thing lately, right?
00:58:51.000You've got all these people who are basically saying, however you look, that's fine and it's good, and any critique of anybody along any lines is a bad idea.
00:59:01.000And, I mean, frankly, I found that it is feeling fat that has gotten me to go to the gym.
00:59:05.000That feeling out of shape and feeling like I don't look good is a bigger moment.
00:59:10.000Whenever people say, well, you want to work out so that you feel healthy.
00:59:12.000And it's like, well, but you don't know what it's like to feel healthy until you actually feel healthy, especially when you start working out.
00:59:34.000I think society in general is trying to get rid of standards for sort of anything, and I think the body positivity thing is just another symptom of that, sort of another branch of the, let's just do away with aspiring to anything.
00:59:47.000Doesn't matter what you look like, doesn't matter how much you weigh, you can still be healthy.
01:00:25.000You've got subsidized medical health care.
01:00:27.000So actually someone being morbidly obese, that does actually affect other people too, right?
01:00:31.000Because it costs tens of billions of pounds to the NHS every year.
01:00:36.000So I don't think that's what you want to be encouraging.
01:00:38.000Like a lot of these things, I think that A kernel of it comes from a good place of sympathy and kindness and saying, "Yeah, I'm not in favor of bullying people.
01:00:48.000I don't think you should find someone who's overweight and be pointing at them and saying they're mean or being mean to them or anything like that." But as someone who was previously fat, A lot of people don't know this.
01:01:00.000As someone who was previously fat, I'm quite glad that I felt a little bit of shame and I wasn't totally happy with how I looked and that was the first thing.
01:01:09.000It's not what necessarily kept me in the gym, but it's what got me going in the first place of being like, man, I can do better.
01:01:18.000I started seeing some results and it was like, okay, cool.
01:01:19.000Just became a habit and kept going with that.
01:01:23.000I think you should give yourself a reason to be body positive, not just because you exist and you breathe air, but because you've put in some semblance of effort to, you know, you don't need to maximize your appearance and your health, but at least take care of it.
01:01:40.000You only get one body, and you've got to live with it for the rest of your life.
01:01:43.000So even if it's not about the aesthetics and what you look like and looking hot and sexy, it's just about actually being healthy and having a working heart that keeps going and your liver and your kidneys and all that stuff, then yeah, do it.
01:01:57.000Especially if you've got a family or a spouse or whatever, it's even more important because you should want to live a good life, not just for yourself, live a good long life for yourself and your children as well.
01:02:07.000So in a second, I want to ask you about your religious worldview, which we haven't touched on at all.
01:02:11.000But first, if you want to hear Zuby's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
01:02:14.000To subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com, click subscribe, you can hear the end of our conversation over there.
01:02:19.000Well, Zuby, I really want to thank you for stopping by.
01:02:21.000Everybody should go check out Zuby's book, Strong Advice, Zuby's guide to fitness for everybody.
01:02:25.000He's got a podcast as well, Real Talk with Zuby, and listen to his music on Spotify and Apple Music.