Kane Brown is a country music singer-songwriter and multi-platinum artist. He s been in the business for over 20 years and is one of the most respected artists in country music. In this episode, we talk about his early days in Nashville, how he got his start in the industry, and what it s like being signed to a major label like Sony/ATV. He also talks about how he s managed to break through in the country music scene and why he s so damn good at what he does. We also talk about some of his biggest mistakes and how he dealt with them, and how to deal with the pressures of being a country artist in today s country music landscape. And, of course, there s a little bit of country music in there somewhere. If you like country music, you ll love this episode of the WDFA Podcast! Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, and share it with a friend! Music: Sturgill Simpson Country - "Old Town Road" - "The Best Country Song" Country Music: Old Town Road - "Good Ole' Time" - "Dancing With Myself (feat. Garth Brooks) Nashville - "Cameo" - "Ain't No Country No Country" - (Solo) - (Blame It On You" . - (Feat. John Griggs & The Bandit - "I'm Too Effing Highlighted) - "Wanna Bein' Country?" - (featuring Country Music? & More! - "No Country Music" -(featuring Kane Brown - ) and is a Country Artist? & ( ) & (Singer/Songwriter/Songwriting - ( ) - (Selling His Best Song , And . ( ) & ( ) & ( ) . & Other Music: Is This Is My Name? . . and ( )& ( ) and ( The Best Country Music - "Let's Talk About It? , ( ) , ( And More! )& // ( ) And ( ) is a Friend of the Week! &( ) And ( ] ...and ( ) ... AND ( ) ( ) Also Can't Stop This Is The Best Song Of The Week?
00:02:03.000I mean, I think I was really kind of one of the first people who was able to bring something to, like when I got my first deal, it was like, well, I already had a built-in fan base.
00:02:59.000And I think that's the credit to, you know, I mean, Randy Goodman, who still runs Sony Nashville, has always been forward thinking in that.
00:03:07.000Like at least before, in my opinion, all the other labels in Nashville were thinking about that stuff.
00:03:13.000He was always thinking about what's the next thing or like how do we stay ahead of the trend or whatever.
00:03:19.000And other labels weren't doing that at that time.
00:03:21.000When you first started doing it on Vine, were you just doing it because it was just a thing that you could put your shit on?
00:03:28.000You obviously didn't think that it would take off the way it did.
00:03:43.000And so it was like, you would have to pick out what's the most impactful section Of a George Strait song, or of a Waylon Jennings song, or anything I can sing, or of something that's on the radio, a Lee Bryce song, or whatever it was.
00:03:57.000And go, what's the singingest-ass part of this song?
00:04:00.000And I would get on there and just sing that six seconds on my guitar.
00:04:05.000And then put it on there, and people were sharing and sharing.
00:04:08.000And then when I put my own music out, I'm like...
00:04:11.000Well, obviously I'm going to market to these people that are already like my voice and stuff.
00:05:37.000Went the route, like, they had the deal, they had the songs, it wasn't the right time, but then the artist thing just wasn't for them either.
00:05:46.000Like, going around and doing PR stuff, like, that gave them anxiety.
00:07:05.000Like, to me, it's like, if it's summer, the weather's nice, the drinks are flowing, you know, and, dude, your song's on the boat, That's the soundtrack to like the best time that someone could possibly be having.
00:10:59.000So if you stand on top of that building, they owned everything you can see from the top of that building, which is like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of acres.
00:12:38.000Dude, they imported, and someone's definitely going to fact check me on this, but I believe they imported everything from overseas on this whole place.
00:13:50.000Yeah, there were so many that, again, they were giving these cows some sort of feed to discourage the mushrooms from growing in their shit.
00:15:02.000Yeah, it's hard when you have roots in a place.
00:15:05.000Yeah, my dad, you know, my dad's 69 and his two best friends live in Asheville and, you know, they drank beer every Friday and for 25 years, you know, and it's like he moved to Nashville and it's like he doesn't know anybody,
00:15:23.000So I think he struggles with that a lot, which, you know, is tough for me, too, because I don't want him to, like, not be living his best life either.
00:15:32.000It's like I love that he's close to, you know, my son and my son's close to his grandparents, but I also want them to, like, enjoy their life.
00:16:56.000I feel like it's almost like if you're saying that, you're taking ownership that that's your home now.
00:17:02.000Whether you've been there five years or 50 years, when you say things like that, it really shows that you feel some sort of ownership to that place.
00:17:11.000And maybe that's the place that you want to be or you feel like is home.
00:17:29.000I mean, I can imagine, you know, some of the guys that, you know, I love listening to that, you know, were in Nashville in the 60s and 70s.
00:17:39.000Like, what would they think of it now?
00:17:53.000There is still a very gritty scene, and there always has been, right?
00:17:59.000So you've got Black Keys type kind of thing going on in East Nashville.
00:18:08.000There's so many bands that have come out of East Nashville that are not part of the mainstream Nashville thing, and that community still really exists.
00:18:16.000And a lot of, I think, artists, country artists that people love that would kind of, even two or three years ago, have been considered...
00:18:34.000There's all these people on the internet that are like, well, Luke Combs, he ain't a real country singer, you know what I mean?
00:18:40.000Because he's not Sturgill Simpson or whatever it is, right?
00:18:45.000There's always these people who are trying to discredit you.
00:18:48.000But there's definitely these two different sects of mainstream and non-mainstream that exist in Nashville.
00:18:55.000And there's people that are trying to chase kind of those things separately.
00:19:01.000And sometimes when popularity on the not chasing that goes through the roof, then it kind of can transition into the major labels are like, well, maybe we should sniff around this guy.
00:19:15.000I didn't move to Nashville to necessarily be like, I'm going to be a country artist.
00:19:21.000I just wanted to do music for a living in any way.
00:19:25.000I worked a bunch of jobs in high school and college and I went to college for five years, didn't graduate, which I'm sure my parents loved.
00:19:35.000I was 21 hours away from getting my degree, and I was like, I'm going to do music.
00:19:42.000Sweeping floors in a studio would have been great to me.
00:19:47.000Because I would be around music, I'd be trying to write music, publishing.
00:19:51.000I mean, realistically, I thought to myself, especially at the time I moved to town, it's like, dude, everybody that was doing music when I moved to town was hot, dude.
00:21:10.000He's got some fucking bangers, that guy.
00:21:12.000I was sitting in a box with Adele at the Super Bowl, and he sang that thing, and she was watching, and like two lines in, she just goes, holy shit.
00:24:24.000But I remember when Sirianni came on on the big jumbo screen in there with the tears coming down, I was like, this is like, this will never be a moment like this again.
00:24:33.000Like, I'll never be present for a moment like that again.
00:26:38.000And so I was like, well, I'll do the one semester chorus and then I'll do gym or whatever, you know?
00:26:43.000Because, like, I like it, but I don't want to take it that serious, right?
00:26:46.000So I do my first semester, I'm in chorus, and my teacher, Ms. Rayburn, she comes up to me, like, last week of school, and she's like, will you please change your elective and be in advanced chorus with me?
00:27:00.000And I was like, yeah, I mean, if you really want me to.
00:28:59.000Her husband was actually the band teacher.
00:29:02.000He taught advanced placement music theory, which was a new class my senior year.
00:29:06.000I took that class and got a D. Because it was like all these, the kids that were the best at band and the best at chorus were who was in that class.
00:29:15.000There was only like eight students in the class.
00:29:17.000And all it is was advanced, like here's the notes, here's this.
00:29:21.000I tried out for Allstate Chorus three years in high school and didn't make it because you had to be able to read.
00:29:26.000You had to do a sight singing audition, which is where they would hand you a piece of sheet music and you had to sing it just by reading the notes.
00:29:37.000So it was a combination of what your voice sounded like and your ability to keep up with the Allstate choir teacher, whoever that was picked out to be.
00:29:46.000And I never made it because I couldn't read the music.
00:30:11.000But it just doesn't it's just such to me.
00:30:13.000It's such an instinctual thing You know and so I was in an acapella group my freshman year college for a year I enjoyed that, but again, it was just like an after-school kind of activity thing with other people in college,
00:34:39.000I love those stories because it gives other people hope, too.
00:34:43.000I guarantee you there's someone listening out there that's in that same state that you were in when you were 21. They're like, what the fuck am I doing?
00:43:29.000And as I fell in love with it as my curse because my career was taken off at the same time, right?
00:43:35.000And so life became more and more and more hectic and it became this cathartic experience of like being able to process some of what was happening to me and And just enjoying that hunting was the opposite of everything else I was doing in my life.
00:43:51.000It was like this pursuit of this thing that was so pure.
00:43:57.000I'm in control of what's going on out here.
00:44:02.000Obviously not the animal, but just being here and being present and not having my phone and not worrying about posting an Instagram or whatever it is.
00:44:43.000So then I turn on, I see this show Meat Eater on Outdoor Channel, and I'm watching it, and I see the intro where it's like, I'm Steven Rinella, and hunting's not just about the pursuit of an animal, and I was like, okay, that's different than all the other shows that I've seen.
00:44:59.000So I watched it, and then there's this mega-intelligent cat on there.
00:45:20.000Taking in information and learning things and so I think I kind of inherited that from him and so then I became kind of Obsessed with like this show this meteor show so I started watching an outdoor channel and then it comes on Netflix this new the new kind of version that comes on Netflix and I'm like Dude,
00:49:34.000So it's just like, well, if you've got to get it out and you've got to drag it, it weighs three times as much as it did before you shot it.
00:52:18.000Because he's the kind of guy that's so well-read and so articulate that he can have a conversation with someone who has a completely opposite opinion of what hunting is.
00:52:27.000And at the end of it, they come away with just a much more comprehensive perspective of what it's about and what conservation's about and why he loves hunting.
00:53:05.000Because you basically set up, you have to have an arrow knocked, and you're fucking, you're released on the clip, because they come running in.
00:53:13.000Because it was in the middle of the rut, so you just clack and clack, you take the fake antlers and you rack them, and then these deer just come sprinting in, full clip, looking to fight and fuck.
00:53:25.000Dude, I've tried it a million times, right?
00:54:12.000The things that are supposed to happen often don't, I find.
00:54:16.000You know, like you're thinking, this is gonna be, you know, I'm hunting the wind, I got the stand, I got the access, I got the wind, I got the spot, I got the stand.
00:54:26.000You know, like in Tennessee, you can't hunt over bait, so it's like, you plant the food plot, you know, it's knee-high by July, and the corn, and it's like, you got it, everything's right.
00:56:34.000You know, we got five days to be out there.
00:56:36.000And we were thinking, we're going to be going home early, dude.
00:56:39.000Like, we're going to be here the first night we're going to tag out and be, like, trying to spend two days just hanging out, you know, or something.
00:56:46.000And so about the third day, we're like, well, let's all switch.
00:56:49.000We'd all been in the same spots, you know, different stands, because they had a few different leases kind of around this area of Oklahoma, so we were all going to different spots.
00:56:57.000And I'm like, well, let's all switch up, right?
00:57:00.000So I get in this tree in the afternoon.
00:57:28.000But the wind's perfect for where I'm hunting at, right?
00:57:30.000Because it's kind of like this grove of like cedars, you know, and that's where all the deer are because everything else is just ag fields around.
01:00:43.000And there's like, if you can imagine, there's this wheatgrass on the fence row right there that's grown up probably four foot, five foot maybe.
01:00:53.000And there's a gap in it where there's a fence.
01:00:56.000And probably six feet, there's another gap where there's a fence.
01:00:59.000So it's all grass the whole way around, except for where those two fences are.
01:01:03.000So I watch every doe pile past the first fence, past the second fence.
01:02:20.000So we're looking, we look down the fence and this property line right there is like, so it's like this fence, we have access to this fence here.
01:02:30.000There's an adjacent fence right here that's not That they don't have access on.
01:03:58.000I remember the scene in Always Sunny where they're trying to do a podcast and nobody's saying anything and Danny DeVito just goes, dead air!
01:04:07.000That always rings in my head when I'm doing an interview for some reason.
01:05:55.000He's got some big fucking deer on that lease too.
01:05:58.000We just had a friend that put us on to this guy and he was like, man, this guy's great and he knows his stuff and he's eager and He's excited to have you all down.
01:06:38.000That's the biggest deer you'll ever see.
01:06:40.000Yeah, the obsession that people have with cultivating land developed specifically to encourage white-tailed deer to move there.
01:06:49.000I mean, there's a whole industry behind it where people buy enormous plots of land and hire people to do land management just to set it up for deer.
01:07:17.000It's like not knowing what's going to walk out is that almost the exciting part for me.
01:07:22.000Yeah, it's the wildness, the fact that you're engaging with a wild animal.
01:07:27.000Yeah, the people that, they feed them with feeders, and they have a high fence, and it's only 500 acres, you know, where they all are, they can't get out.
01:07:37.000Right, so do you want to shoot Ricky, or Johnny, or Greg, or which one, and they just go, and they're like, that's Greg's whistle, he'll come out on that one, you know.
01:07:47.000Well, they literally hear the feeders going off when they come in.
01:09:02.000We were talking before that Derek Wolf, who was in the fucking Super Bowl, and they asked him, What is better, sacking Tom Brady or shooting an elk?
01:09:14.000And he's like, sacking Tom Brady's pretty fucking cool, but it's not even close.
01:11:33.000They want to get someone who's some sort of a professional.
01:11:36.000He lost that argument and then as time went on and he became more prominent and famous, then he was able to acquire the rights through Meat Eater and then re-release it, which is excellent.
01:13:20.000I remember him telling, like, they were telling us that part and he was, yeah, I hit this bear and, you know, everybody's kind of laughing and he's laughing and stuff.
01:13:27.000And then, like, right when the story stops, he looks at me and goes, I think about it every day.
01:14:04.000To go from riding a grizzly bear's back to packing out cocaine with mules, these drug mules that are taking it in backpacks through the jungle.
01:14:26.000Yeah, because someone comes along and catches them and they're interacting with reporters and they just say, you're going to kill these fucking people in front of us.
01:15:30.000That's not scratching the itch for you.
01:15:32.000No, she's trying to figure things out and then expose people to information that's otherwise unavailable.
01:15:39.000You know, she found that there was LA cops that were selling drugs to the Mexican cartel, excuse me, they were selling guns to the Mexican cartels.
01:15:48.000So they would confiscate guns from criminals and then they would fill up a trunk with AKs and ARs and pistols and then they would drive to Mexico because to get into Mexico is easy.
01:16:02.000Coming to America is where it's difficult and they check you.
01:16:04.000But get into Mexico, you just drive right through.
01:16:06.000So they were driving right through with trunkfuls of confiscated weapons and they delivered them to the cartels.
01:16:33.000It's wild that we think about all the different things, the conflicts that are happening overseas, when one of the most wild conflicts is happening right south of our border, and you could literally walk over there.
01:18:45.000It's like our idea that we're gonna, you know, keep people safe by making drugs illegal is propping up an illegal enterprise worth Untold billions of dollars just south of us.
01:20:39.000I mean, most of the time they leave those people alone because there's a lot of revenue and tourism and they don't want to fuck that up and they also don't want to bring heat down on them, which is what happened when these Americans got kidnapped.
01:20:50.000All of a sudden the world is aware and that can be very dangerous for them.
01:24:22.000It's like a little, the roads are like sand roads, dude.
01:24:27.000And when I say the houses are like, like you think of a beach house, right?
01:24:31.000It's like there's the beach, there's the house, and there's like the dunes, and then like you walk through the dunes, and there's the beach.
01:26:54.000My buddy Dan, he goes, so we start talking to these people, and they're like, yeah, we're retired, and our kids are in college, and we come down here and live just for the summer or whatever, winter or whatever, and stay down here.
01:28:01.000We go in there, dude, and it's like just this kind of old, like, cool-ass biker guy and his wife, dude, and just rolls this one up, dude, and we rip with these folks, and we're walking with him and talking, and he's like, yeah, you guys like country music?
01:28:15.000You know, my buddy Dan says that, and he's like, yeah, but I don't like any of them new guys.
01:28:20.000You know, they're all sissies or whatever kind of thing, you know, and My buddy Dan's like, yeah, there's a couple guys that are pretty good, though, and stuff.
01:28:29.000So we get in there, hang out with them, and we tell them we're riding ATVs the next day.
01:28:32.000And they're like, well, we'll show you guys around.
01:29:01.000We're taking tequila shots like smoking J's with these old folks.
01:29:05.000And he's like, dude, imagine if these people were in their 20s, and they were hanging out with George Strait, dude, and it was their grandparents hanging out with George Strait, and they didn't know that it was George Strait or whatever.
01:29:17.000And I was like, dude, I'm not George Strait, though, dude.
01:38:30.000I was born in 67. And I feel like there's something about that, about going to high school, like when those cars had, you know, like you could kind of acquire those cars when you're 18. And it was, you know, because they weren't really that valuable back then, oddly enough.
01:38:55.000And it was just, there's something about that era that, to me, symbolizes the shift in American culture.
01:39:01.000The American culture that shifted from the music and the culture of the 1950s to the 1960s.
01:39:07.000The Vietnam War and just the change of the society.
01:39:10.000The zeitgeist shifted and the drugs and the rebelliousness and the hippie movement and the anti-war movement and just the rock and roll was undeniable.
01:39:35.000It wasn't like, no one was thinking about it in that sense at that time.
01:39:39.000And maybe I'm insane for thinking that, but it just, it feels like that someone who wasn't even born then, who goes back and listens to that music, it has this like, Grit to it that just doesn't exist much.
01:41:34.000Just to relax, dude, or have a great time with my buddies, dude, and it's like, I hate that I can't enjoy it anymore because I see other people enjoy it.
01:41:44.000I know, but it gets to this point where the good outweighs the bad, dude.
01:41:49.000Even if I'm with the right people, though, it becomes this thing where it's like, I suffer from really bad, really, really, really bad OCD. Like, horrible.
01:42:00.000Okay, so it's like this weird, almost like not even like necessarily probably considered like a legit, I guess newer would be considered form.
01:42:12.000And newer in medical terms because like the 80s is when like the first people were kind of exploring this type.
01:42:17.000It would be called like purely obsessional OCD, which is like, okay, so you think when I say OCD, what do you think of?
01:42:25.000Washing your hands too many times, touching things before you leave, like you have to touch things three times.
01:42:31.000Like Howard Stern style OCD. Right, like you're like everything's gonna be like this, or straight, or like everything's gonna be right, right?
01:42:38.000So my thing is, pure OCD is right where there's these unanswered questions in your mind that can never be answered.
01:42:49.000And the ritual is trying to find an answer.
01:46:05.000I had a friend who was, he had that, and he would get these thoughts that he couldn't stop, and he didn't know why, and he would have panic attacks.
01:46:13.000And he's a comic, and he was doing warm-up for the Cosby Show.
01:46:19.000You know, warm-up is, you're kind of like telling kind of mild jokes, and you're explaining the scene, and you're just keeping everybody engaged, because the process of filming a television show is pretty, it's pretty arduous.
01:46:31.000Yeah, there's a lot going on, you know, and sometimes there's downtime.
01:46:35.000And during that downtime, he would, you know, do kind of stand-up for the crowd and work.
01:46:39.000And he gets this thought in his head that says, don't say the N-word.
01:48:24.000If you had a thought of, I'm going to reach across this table and just deck you one, and I don't want to, and I'm afraid of that, but if I go, you know what?
01:48:34.000I could, and I have to be okay with that.
01:50:02.000Then you get addicted to the reassurance seeking, which then makes the thoughts come more and more and more and more because you're giving them attention.
01:53:29.000I always wonder with people that have things like that that are also great artists, I always wonder if there's something that contributes to the depth of your art.
01:55:31.000Yeah, or like anything that was left of like my positive life at that point.
01:55:36.000Yeah, I've heard people talk about Zoloft specifically in that regard, where it just like it numbs them or nothing bothers them, but nothing excites them either.
01:55:51.000And I think in some ways, I mean, it's probably something nuts to say this, but I think in some ways my brain is kind of like that anyways now.
01:55:59.000And I think that may be an effect of the disorder that I've had.
01:56:04.000Like, nothing really gets me through the roof excited.
01:56:17.000And I feel like it's a subconscious, like, almost defense mechanism of, like, having gone through, like, just these different things of that.
01:56:26.000And that's bothered me a lot over the course of my career, too, because I... Sometimes I feel really guilty about not feeling the way I feel like I should feel about certain things.
01:56:56.000I watch my colleagues do and I wonder...
01:57:00.000When I watch it, like, I watch someone win an award, like, Male Vocalist of the Year or at the CMAs or whatever, and go up and accept the award, and they're, like, almost in tears.
01:58:12.000And I feel like I miss out on a lot because of this disorder, because of the way my brain works or the way that it's defended itself or something.
01:58:25.000And there's probably a bunch of science that says I'm dumb or that I'm just like an emotionless weirdo.
01:58:31.000I feel like I've been robbed of that, of all these things.
01:58:36.000And maybe they all just seem trivial because of all the shit that I dealt with for so long with it, like the battles that have fallen inside my own head.
01:58:58.000I can imagine it, but I can't imagine living with it like you've lived with it and the steps you've taken to sort of get your mind into this place.
02:00:42.000And the next year, somebody else wins it, and they get up, dude, and they're pouring the tears, dude, and they're, like, having this big, like, emotional outburst about winning this thing and how much it means to them.
02:00:56.000And then you're going, why didn't I do that?
02:01:00.000Why didn't I feel that, like, rush, like, was I robbed of that rush of emotion?
02:01:05.000Like, I often wonder that about myself.
02:01:08.000Like, when I see my colleagues win things that I've even won, And they can barely even talk to get through the tears.
02:01:14.000And I'm up there like, hey man, this is so great.
02:01:18.000I love my wife and my team and everything's great.
02:03:19.000This fucking untold how many people, million people that are into what you're doing.
02:03:24.000Like, what you got to do is get back to work.
02:03:27.000Like, I have a massive responsibility to continue to create and to do the best I can, whether it's with podcasting, Or whether it's with doing stand-up or whether it's doing UFC commentary.
02:03:39.000I have like this massive responsibility to just do the best I can.
02:03:43.000So that's all I think about is like the thing that I can control.
02:03:47.000You become obsessed with the result as in the sense of like...
02:04:43.000It's like I know that I'm the person who's in front of the keyboard who came up with these ideas and who write it down wrote it on my phone and I'm the dude who's pacing around the green room trying to figure out which way to set it up and Should I chop this part out or let me just get the bullet points and then just talk to these people and tell them what I think about this thing and the comedy is gonna come out of that.
02:05:23.000As long as I'm honest about my approach and as long as I'm like, what the fuck?
02:05:27.000If I think it's funny and I start thinking Like, about what's funny about it, then the thing is just figuring out a way to get that into people's minds the smoothest, cleanest, funniest, sneakiest way.
02:05:43.000You know and it's a process so the process is what's very exciting because the beginning is Usually a little clunky because you're not exactly sure how you're gonna say it and maybe I said it right last night But I forgot how to say it right tonight and I fucked it up and then I have to live with that and then the next day I have to start all over again and then I go over the notes and I go over the fucking recordings and But it's always the thing.
02:08:10.000And you see them, dude, I've had many, many, many nights where it's like, I have one song in particular that's called Even Though I'm Leaving, and it's a song that essentially starts out with a dad talking to his son, saying like, oh man, you're scared of the,
02:08:26.000I know there's not any monsters under the bed kind of thing.
02:08:29.000Like, I'm just down the hall, you know, even though I'm leaving, I'm not going nowhere, right?
02:08:32.000And the next verse is, then it's the son, and he's going off to war, right?
02:08:38.000And the hook changes to, you know, even though you're leaving, I'm not going nowhere.
02:08:43.000You know, I'll be here when you get back, kind of thing.
02:08:45.000And then the last verse is the dad passing away.
02:08:50.000And it's like, hey man, like, even though I'm leaving, I'm not going anywhere, you know?
02:08:55.000And like, There's been many nights where, like, you see that person that's connected with that, like, that's lost their dad, right?
02:09:03.000And they're there, and they're right in your face, man.
02:09:05.000And they're just like, there's three or four people on them.
02:13:51.000It's like there's a team, and I'm sure you have a team of folks that propel your success because there's not enough time in 10 lives to do all the things that's necessary for your stuff to go on or my stuff to go on.
02:14:06.000Like, there's so many folks involved in that, you know?
02:14:11.000I'm just—I'm really grateful for, like, having an, like, awesome group of people to, like, work with that, like, don't just tell me yes to everything and, like, that are willing to challenge me on things and, like, say, hey, man, is this the right decision?
02:14:25.000Or I don't love this song or, like— Why would we do this thing?
02:14:32.000I've always tried to keep it this open thing of me and people that work with me can talk about things and have discussions that a lot of people, I think, Sometimes lose that.
02:14:48.000They become so shielded in the idea of celebrity, which is like they got a security guy, so nobody on their team, like they might not even know this guy that works for them at all.
02:14:59.000They don't even know that guy's name and he's worked for him for five or six years at all.
02:15:55.000To keep from being captured by celebrity and stardom.
02:16:01.000Because a lot of people do because it's a shield.
02:16:03.000You put that shield up to shield you from the thoughts of uncertainty and insecurity and whether or not you're worthy and whether or not you can keep doing it.
02:16:13.000With a lot of people, it's like you start doing it, but can I keep doing it?
02:17:49.000And we've seen it many many many many times with rock stars with movie stars It's just the the thing that you have given into is so overwhelmingly odd and So few people experience and it just does not resonate with any normal human emotions It's so strange that everybody knows who you are and you don't know who they are and you just this is the life you live but it's up to you and Because you're the rare traveler that's gone down that road that far,
02:18:47.000Someone who's just a normal person who just, by some strange circumstance, the rarest of rare moments in life, you wind up being that person.
02:18:57.000I just think about, it's like, I can't tell you how many beers I shotgunned in college, and now I can shotgun a beer and 50,000 or 60,000 people are stoked about it.
02:22:40.000Well, he was the guy that launched the UFC, really, because for him as the biggest star, for him, because he was such a destroyer, he'd just like seek and destroy style.
02:22:55.000And just, like, the him and Randy trilogy, dude, the him and Tito thing, it was like, those were the...
02:23:03.000And I remember watching, like, Stephen Bonner, Forrest Griffin, like, that was just a war bloodbath, like, and I just became, like, obsessed.
02:25:45.000And he lost to Colby Covington, but I feel like Colby Covington, if it wasn't for Kamaru Usman, would be the welterweight champion of the world.
02:27:15.000Eventually, they had a rematch and he beat Matt up in front of The fans in Canada, and it was an insane event.
02:27:22.000He's an all-time great, and I love him to death, but I feel like if I look at the level of competition he faced and the level of competition Kamaru faced and what Kamaru did to those people, you gotta understand, Kamaru, when he was coming up, no one would speak his name.
02:29:05.000And Cyril looked kind of unbeatable up until the Francis fight.
02:29:09.000Well, the Francis fight exposed one aspect of his game that you're never going to beat John in, and that's the wrestling.
02:29:15.000And then everybody said, well, he didn't know that Francis was going to wrestle him, given.
02:29:20.000Francis is not the caliber of wrestler, or even in the realm of Jon Jones.
02:29:24.000Jon Jones has been wrestling since he was 12 years old.
02:29:26.000He took down Daniel Cormier, who's an Olympic-level wrestler.
02:29:30.000There is not a guy in the world that can say that...
02:29:37.000You could start wrestling at 29 years old.
02:29:41.000I mean, you'd have to be the freakiest of freak athletes to be able to compete with that guy to start wrestling when Cyril Gaunt started wrestling.
02:29:52.000So I think what I was thinking is, and when I bring up Jon Jones, is I remember the first Jon Jones fight I watched was when he got DQ'd against Matt Hamill from the 12-6 elbows, right?
02:30:07.000That was my first experience with him.
02:30:09.000The next thing I feel like I remember, and I may have seen some of his fights in between then, but is when he beat up this guy that was trying to rob this lady the night of a fight.
02:30:23.000That was the day he fought for the title.
02:30:39.000And this is going to be just kind of...
02:30:42.000I'm interested in your take on this because I watched it happen with Jon Jones, and I feel like I watched it happen with Kamaru as well, where it was like...
02:30:51.000Jon and Kamaru, as they came up, right, it's like Jon does this thing where he stops this robber and he wins the belt.
02:30:59.000He beats Shogun, who is this kind of like, you know, him and Lyoto were these kind of like, unfigureoutable guys, to me as a fan at that time, right?
02:31:07.000Like, guys like, how do you beat Lyoto Machida?
02:31:09.000You can't figure, because you can't even touch the guy, right, at that time.
02:31:13.000And they were, like, inherently these, like, good guys that everybody was rooting for.
02:31:19.000And then both of them became these, like, epically long-range champions that then became sort of like villains.
02:31:48.000But just as a cash watcher, I went from going, I'm rooting for this guy, to then it'd be like the way he talks about himself, and I feel like Jon Jones was the same way to me, is they became this really...
02:32:03.000And then Jon got in all this kind of turmoil-y stuff, like...
02:32:07.000Well, I don't think you can compare the two.
02:33:06.000There's human beings that have different temperament and different minds and different mentality and a ruthless competitive drive that's almost terrifying to the ordinary person.
02:33:21.000Jon Jones is a bad guy who's trying to be a good guy.
02:33:26.000But that guy, if we were living a thousand years ago, he would be on a horse with the biggest battle axe, wading in the back, hacking heads off, and everybody would be running.
02:34:56.000Yeah, Khabib is in the conversation, but Mighty Mouse is in that conversation too.
02:35:01.000Mighty Mouse to me, if you want to look at like a technical expression of the greatness of martial arts, he's as good as anybody's ever done it.
02:35:09.000When Mighty Mouse was the flyweight champion.
02:35:11.000And the only problem is, besides Cejudo and a couple other guys like Benavidez, he was not dealing with guys that were of the caliber of the guys that Jon Jones was facing.
02:35:39.000And when Jon Jones talks about fights though, when I had him on the podcast, one of the things that he talked about Some people don't really watch tape or they only watch a little bit.
02:35:55.000He gets in his mind how when you throw that left kick, you make this little step with your right foot.
02:36:02.000You might do this thing when you shoot for a takedown where you keep your head on one side every time.
02:36:10.000You might do this thing where when someone throws a right hand, you always lean to the left.
02:36:15.000John Jones picked up that tendency, and that's how he knocked out Daniel Cormier.
02:36:19.000He knew Daniel Cormier has a tendency to duck towards his right side because he goes for that single on the left leg, and John caught him with the perfect head kick.
02:36:33.000He set it up just like Leon Edwards set up that head kick on Kamaru.
02:36:37.000There's a beauty of that that's just, man, in the middle of chaos and anxiety and fear and the fucking fog of war, you figure out a way to connect with this thing that you saw in tape and in training and in preparation.
02:36:53.000So it's with John, it's not an accident that he's the GOAT. Even with his lack of training, even with his, even with the, it's just like he's so fucking talented that he almost needs another John Jones to make him compete the way he would, the way,
02:37:08.000make him train the way a lot of these other guys do.
02:37:11.000Like he's so good, he can beat those guys without being challenged by someone like him.
02:38:19.000I mean, he had a hard time with Dominic Reyes, and Dominic Reyes is not nearly the striker that Cyril Ghosn is.
02:38:26.000And then the day of the fight, I don't know what it is, man.
02:38:30.000I think John's gonna run right through this dude.
02:38:32.000I just, the day of the fight, I just had this feeling.
02:38:36.000I just have a feeling that John is just going to express his greatness tonight.
02:38:40.000Like, all those years out, all the doubts, all the chaos, all the personal problems, and the drugs, and the partying, and all the mess.
02:38:49.000I think this is going to bring out the very best in John.
02:38:52.000Because I think guys like him, I think one of the things that was happening with the Dominic Reyes fight and the first Alexander Gustafson fight, I think he was so dominant that he was playing with his food.
02:39:02.000I don't think he was fully engaged in the fear of facing these men.
02:39:11.000I don't think they presented the challenge that he requires to reach the level that we know he's capable of reaching, but I think Cyril Gunn did provide that challenge.
02:39:20.000And I think he knew that going up to heavyweight and winning the title and just winning it easily the way he did...
02:39:52.000But I think John is done with starving himself and depleting his body to make 205. And now that he's the heavyweight champion, I think he beats all the best heavyweights that are available.
02:40:03.000And then he goes down in history as number one.
02:41:56.000He thought he needed cardio because he beat him with cardio in the first fight.
02:42:00.000He beat him with his durability because he got caught with some big shots and then took him down and then outworked him.
02:42:07.000Francis went all out to try to knock Stipe out and when he couldn't, Stipe dominated him.
02:42:12.000It was one of the best victories of Stipe's illustrious career.
02:42:17.000But I think that Going into the second fight, he had that sort of same approach, but this time he reached a patient Francis.
02:42:25.000This time Francis was, like, just looking to just nuke him.
02:42:28.000And he wasn't just running at him, he was using technique, and he was just far more evolved as a fighter than he was the first time they fought.
02:42:36.000And Francis just fucking annihilated him.
02:42:39.000And, you know, but the thing is, like, Stipe came into that fight light.
02:42:43.000And I think he was in, like, the 230s, if I remember correctly.
02:44:31.000Yeah, I feel like his last two fights, man, he...
02:44:34.000The problem is, if you fight in that style, though, if you fight in that style against Conor, you're coming straight forward towards Conor, that is Conor's wheelhouse.
02:44:44.000Conor's one of the greatest counter-strikers that's ever fought in the UFC. If you look at his fight with Eddie Alvarez, you look at his knockout victory over Jose Aldo, if you come at Conor and you give him a chance to time you, especially in the early rounds, he is fucking lethal.
02:45:31.000I would say I would want that person to take something.
02:45:35.000You would have to consult with an expert sports medicine doctor who would tell you, you want peptides, you want growth hormone, you want this, you want that.
02:45:44.000You want all these things you can't take when you're in USADA. You want testosterone, you want all these things.
02:45:49.000And you look at Connor after that leg break, he got fucking jacked.
02:46:19.000You're in your 30s, you're 35 or whatever Connor is, 34, and you've disrupted your hormones with exogenous hormones.
02:46:27.000Now your body has to get back to developing its own hormones.
02:46:32.000And generally speaking, when people take steroids, and I'm not saying you took steroids, but generally speaking, if someone takes steroids, Say if you take steroids for six months, you need a year to bounce back to normal hormone levels after that.
02:46:47.000Especially if you're doing it naturally.
02:46:49.000There's things you can take like HCG and clomiphene and all these different things that restart your body's production of testosterone.
02:46:58.000But you have to make sure that that's all done before you enter into the USADA testing pool.
02:47:05.000Then you have to be in the USADA testing pool for six full months before you're allowed to compete.
02:49:13.000In retrospect, I wish he'd never taken that fight with Poirier, because it seems like he had a hairline fracture already going into that fight.
02:51:00.000Forever, as weird as that sounds, right?
02:51:03.000So it's like proportionately to my, you know, until I stopped growing height-wise, you know, like once I got to where I'm at now, I was kind of like this size.
02:51:13.000Well, I think the real benefits of exercise is not just with the way you look and your body size.
02:51:22.000Especially when we're talking about all these issues about the mind and the creative mind playing tricks on you.
02:51:28.000For me, forcing myself to exercise every day is one of the main reasons why I stay sane through all the chaos that my life goes through.
02:51:38.000And I think that's the real benefit that a lot of people do.
02:51:42.000It's almost like the The benefit that you get physically is—that's great, but that's almost like a side effect of the benefit that you get for the mind.
02:53:42.000I know whatever I'm doing at that time is not enough.
02:53:46.000Well, you have to look at it like this.
02:53:48.000It's a process and you have to look at where you are in that process.
02:53:52.000Now you can be someone like Jamie who's thin and healthy and fit and his process that he decides he wants to improve his fitness is a different process than yours.
02:58:19.000I remember telling him, sitting out one night, having a whiskey, and I was like, Chris, man, look, I know I've accomplished so much doing music, and we're about to go on the stadium tour.
02:58:33.000This was just a few months ago, I think maybe December.
02:58:36.000Or January and I was like listen man like I've accomplished all these things and like I've won Entertainer of the Year twice now and and I've got you know 15 number one songs and all these insane accolades that I could have never imagined and like in some ways Because I love music and because I feel like I've been blessed with the voice I have and the talent I have,
02:59:04.000the voice and the talent I have, to me, doesn't feel earned.
02:59:44.000Statistically is a precursor for being a great musician.
02:59:48.000Not always, but for the most part, statistically speaking.
02:59:51.000And so, I don't want to come across as contrived or anything when I say this, but like, I feel like sometimes that I haven't done anything that's like hard to do.
03:00:05.000But that's also a part of your humility.
03:00:06.000That's part of what keeps you focused on your task.
03:00:17.000My physical fitness and my appearance and my size has always been something that I've struggled with from the time I was a child and like it's this mountain that I've always been standing at the bottom of trying to run up and inherently slipping down every time,