The Michael Knowles Show - Michael Knowles & Tom MacDonald ｜ Music Video REACTION

00:00:00.000 You all know that I am a hip-hop maven, probably the pop culture voice of our generation.

00:00:05.580 And there's a new song out that I really wanted to listen to, watch for the first time, and

00:00:11.600 review in real time. The song is by an artist named Tom McDonald. You might be familiar with

00:00:18.000 him. I realized now I've reviewed six of his songs, Fake Woke, In God We Trust, Brainwash,

00:00:25.700 New World Order, Snowflakes, and America. And Tom has been insanely popular, but the gatekeepers

00:00:33.120 who control the lists and the charts and all that kind of stuff, they try to suppress it,

00:00:37.380 which I'll get to a little bit later. I mean, he's got a new song out. It's called Names.

00:00:42.020 It just came out. It's got 2.3 million views in just the first few days. And I thought,

00:00:48.440 you know, I've done so many of these songs, and I assume I am 100% correct in my interpretation

00:00:54.720 of every single moment. But just in case, just to maybe add a little bit of color here,

00:01:00.820 I figured it was time we brought on Tom himself. Tom, thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:01:06.640 Hey, thanks for having me, man.

00:01:08.200 So I'm going to need you to gut check me here a little bit. You know, if I go off the rails a

00:01:13.700 little bit, if I'm misinterpreting something, I think for the seventh song, you know, that's a great,

00:01:20.020 that's a perfect number. I want to hear it from the horse's mouth. So without further ado,

00:01:25.320 let's play Names.

00:01:25.920 They're going to try to call you names, label you with things till you're ashamed. You're a sexist 0.99

00:01:32.540 or a racist, white supremacist or gay. They'll attack your reputation, claim that you're the 1.00

00:01:36.600 one to blame, and try to make you hate yourself for ways that you behave. They're just names.

00:01:41.220 Embrace them and they'll never cause you pain. They're just words that another person thought

00:01:44.980 up in they brain. They're just names. They do not define you. That's insane. And they'll just call

00:01:49.280 you something different if you change.

00:01:50.980 Call me racist. I don't make no BLM donations. I can stand with black folks without a branding

00:01:56.360 corporation. All this systemic prejudice. 0.71

00:01:58.860 So two things I want to get to there. I'll get to the second one first. You tie BLM to corporations.

00:02:09.900 And I love that because the way that BLM presents itself, that it's the counterculture,

00:02:15.880 it's just the natural voice of the people speaking up against institutionalized power.

00:02:21.480 But then when you look at it for two seconds, you realize, wait a second, all the most powerful

00:02:25.360 institutions in the country, especially the corporations, they're the ones bankrolling BLM. 0.78

00:02:30.940 I think distorting, like the line says, I can stand with black folks without donating to a 1.00

00:02:38.080 branded to a corporation. And I think that for, you know, I think it started off innocent

00:02:46.180 enough and it had sort of like a sentiment behind it that a lot of people sort of co-signed

00:02:51.960 at the time. And the further down that road we got, the more pressure there was to go to

00:02:58.800 a protest, donate money, do this, do that, put this on your Instagram. And if you don't

00:03:03.260 do these things, then you're a racist. And it's just, it got, you know, it's just, look,

00:03:08.880 I don't have to donate to BLM. And I think that a lot of the people that have donated to BLM

00:03:14.980 now were two years removed from its inception, probably regret the fact that they did with

00:03:21.980 all of the things that have sort of come out about that movement over the past couple of

00:03:25.740 years. So, you know, that one to me is like pretty self-explanatory. I can stand with

00:03:32.040 black folks. I can stand with people who feel like they're marginalized without fueling a

00:03:38.980 corporate machine, you know?

00:03:40.000 And frankly, the more you fuel the corporate machine, probably the less you're standing with

00:03:45.740 people who would say are, call themselves marginalized or oppressed or something like

00:03:49.940 that. I mean, you look, BLM raised what, $90 million. How much of that money went to George

00:03:56.680 Floyd's intimates? How much money of that went to people who were, well, there were a lot of George

00:04:03.020 Floyd family members who came out of the woodwork. He probably never even met them. There were a lot

00:04:06.660 of race hustlers and professional politicians and activists who made a lot of money. Patrice

00:04:11.440 Cullors bought a lot of nice houses in California with that money. But how much of that money actually

00:04:15.940 went to the marginalized and the oppressed? Not a red scent of it, not at all. And I really like

00:04:20.300 that first line of the song too. You say, look, there are all these names that people throw at us

00:04:25.120 and you use all the names that they throw at the right wingers, homophobic, racist,

00:04:29.980 this phobic, this phobic. But then, and you say, or gay. And I like that too, because gay 1.00

00:04:35.420 is a line that, well, it's not even really partisan. It's just the sort of thing you call

00:04:42.160 someone when you're in third grade. You're like, oh man, you're so gay. That's so dumb. That's so 1.00

00:04:45.740 stupid. And so that's one that it kind of cuts against the idea that you're just putting out right 1.00

00:04:50.420 wing propaganda. Well, absolutely. That was the point. That was the point. And I, and I also knew

00:04:56.080 like, uh, I knew what I was asking for by doing that too, because there was a lot of people who

00:05:00.000 stood up and said like, uh, you're homophobic because you said gay, uh, in the context of all

00:05:07.980 of these other horrible names that you used. And to me, it's just like the whole point of using that 0.77

00:05:14.640 word where I used it just went so far over so many people's heads. They're so, uh, obsessed with

00:05:23.120 having something to be angry about that instead of for two seconds, sitting back for a minute and

00:05:28.860 being like, okay, why, why did he use that word there? Instead of having the conversation or asking

00:05:36.480 the question, it's just immediate attack, attack, attack. People calling me homophobic, which is

00:05:41.200 essentially what the song's about, the names that people call you. So it's just, yeah.

00:05:45.640 I had a debate once with, uh, not, not that long ago with a friend of mine, uh, who is definitely a

00:05:50.900 little bit light in the loafers, you know, he's not exactly into the chicks. And we were having this

00:05:55.180 whole discussion about whether or not science is fake and gay. And it, it occurred to me, you know,

00:06:00.900 someone would probably come in if they overheard that conversation and say, you're, you guys are

00:06:05.000 homophobic. And, you know, it'd be of course up to their ignorance that, uh, this guy is, uh, he's the 0.91

00:06:10.820 first part of that word. It's not, you know, not the, there's no phobia going on at all. Okay.

00:06:14.940 Let's keep going. 0.90

00:06:17.260 If you live in this nation, you privilege black or Caucasian call me transphobic, but I support you

00:06:23.300 in your policies. I just can't ignore the very basics of biology. All I see is men and women

00:06:28.440 trying to live in harmony, not a hundred genders that you want to be call me snowflake. Cause I'm

00:06:34.100 offended. I ain't stone faced social justice warriors, destroying us with what ways mad because

00:06:39.020 they voted for the POTUS with the most hate. Man, I miss the old days. Call me loser. Call me bigot.

00:06:45.200 Call me stupid. Call me bitter. Call me ugly. Call me cracker. Call me doucher. Call me triggered. 1.00

00:06:49.400 You can call me what you want. Cause at the end of the day, man, they're just names.

00:06:54.340 Go ahead and call us names, dog.

00:06:56.860 Let's put a pause there. The, the, the transgender aspect of this, I think is really interesting 0.96

00:07:04.000 because the whole thesis of the song is it really doesn't matter what you call me. I know that those

00:07:10.640 things aren't fair or true. And so whatever, call me whatever you want. I'm rubber, you're glue.

00:07:15.660 You know, it bounces off of me and it's no big deal. But I think it was a little more poetic than

00:07:21.540 that. It was a little more poetic. Yeah. It's, it was like when George W. Bush, he said, fool me once,

00:07:25.740 shame on you. Fool me twice. Uh, the point is you're not going to fool me again. But you know, the,

00:07:29.720 but it, the, the flip side of the names issue is obviously transgenderism because the, the

00:07:37.780 transgender debate is all about names, whether or not I am forced to call a dude who thinks he's a

00:07:44.620 woman, she and her and use some fake woman's name instead of his actual name. The, the flip side of 1.00

00:07:52.360 this is that the transgender argument says, if you do not call me the names that I demand that you call

00:07:58.900 me, if you do not constantly affirm whatever delusion I've got, you are destroying my existence.

00:08:05.020 You might as well kill me that the, the names you call me are the most important things in my life.

00:08:09.520 And you think, well, you're, you've just flipped it 180 degrees from, from reality, from the I am

00:08:15.100 rubber and you are glue. Right. So yeah, that's, that's pretty much that, that line in the song that

00:08:21.180 was, uh, uh, call me transphobic. Um, I support you in your policies. I just can't ignore the very 1.00

00:08:27.760 basics of biology. Like to me, like that whole thing is just that, like, I don't have any problem,

00:08:34.560 uh, with trans people or people that want to define their, their own genders and live in that world and 0.68

00:08:42.260 do that whole thing. It's just at some point along the way here, I have to draw the line somewhere and

00:08:49.380 say, Hey, like here is where I stopped participating in the charade that you guys are like, I like it,

00:08:57.940 it inevitably it comes to an end somewhere. So for me, that's like, if you want to go do that

00:09:05.840 over there and go do your thing, fine. I'm going to, I'm going to do my thing over here. I'm not

00:09:10.400 going to interfere with you guys. Don't interfere with me. Don't force me to, when you start saying

00:09:16.320 things like if you misgender somebody, it's a crime, it's against the law to misgender somebody

00:09:21.340 or words are actual violence. When you start saying things like this, that's a slippery slope,

00:09:26.760 man. Like you're going to end up in a real gnarly situation when, when, when misgendering somebody

00:09:34.060 becomes a crime. Right. And ironic of course, because the only people misgendering anyone are the,

00:09:39.920 are the people who want, they want us to call the men, the women and vice versa. So right. 0.94

00:09:44.800 Then things do get very gnarly. All right, keep going.

00:09:47.920 Do your thing. We ain't tripping cause we heard it all before. Give a damn about the names.

00:09:53.300 Dog, we feel no pain. Your words ain't going to hurt us anymore. Go ahead and call us names.

00:09:59.100 Dog, do your thing. Y'all are tripping, but I hope you find the Lord. Give a damn about the names.

00:10:04.620 Dog, we feel no shame. Call us anything you want, I'm getting bored. 0.96

00:10:08.380 They gon' try to call you names. Label you with things till you're ashamed. Repeat it till you

00:10:15.780 really start believing what they say. They gon' stamp it on your forehead and scream it till you

00:10:20.040 break. They love to say they woke, they not awake. They're just names. Afraid of anyone who ain't the 0.99

00:10:25.780 same. So they classify your thoughts as controversial, not okay. Then they cancel you till everything you

00:10:30.640 have all gets erased. They're trying to tell the world you bad. They're just names. Call me

00:10:34.760 conservative or liberal. Let's pause it right there. So I love that line, you know, say whatever you

00:10:40.640 want. I just hope you find the Lord. You know, I'm getting bored of this, but I really love that.

00:10:46.000 And I wonder, I don't even know if this was a conscious choice, but that little line in there

00:10:51.380 then brought up this image for me when you get to that next verse where you say, look, they're going

00:10:57.500 to call you names and they're going to cancel you and they're going to come after you and they're

00:11:00.480 going to try to destroy your life. And they're really going to, they're really, really going to

00:11:04.240 hit you. It actually, this is going to sound like I'm being hyperbolic here or making a stretch,

00:11:11.620 but go with me. It sounded, it brought up this image to me of the trial of Christ. It brought up

00:11:18.360 this image to me of the passion of Christ where he goes, he's brought up on trial and they say,

00:11:23.020 they accuse you of this. They say you're a blasphemer. They say you did this and you said this and

00:11:27.380 you do this and you just, and Jesus just remains silent during all of that. And when people ask

00:11:33.460 him direct questions, did you, are you the King of the Jews? He says, well, you say that I am. 0.85

00:11:37.320 That's what you say. I don't, you know, you tell me you're the one who says it. And I don't,

00:11:43.200 I don't know. I mean, the timing of those two lyrics seems, uh, if it wasn't intentional,

00:11:50.160 it certainly works. Well, yeah, I can tell you for sure that, um, uh, the, the timing of the video

00:11:56.760 versus the lyrics wasn't intentional, but to me, the overall, uh, throughout the whole video,

00:12:02.180 I think sort of what you're explaining. Um, I was crucified on that billboard, uh, to me,

00:12:12.220 like all of those billboard scenes, those were like very biblical and we're, we're supposed to be a

00:12:17.920 reference to sort of, um, uh, to Jesus. You're crucified on this billboard. There's all these

00:12:24.100 names written up on the billboard that people say that you are, all the arrows are pointing at you.

00:12:29.380 And to me, it's just the whole sort of sentiment of the song is like, okay, if you, if you say I am,

00:12:36.020 then, then fine. Yeah. Say whatever you say, you, you can't write. No, there's a, there's a line in,

00:12:44.940 I think it's the memoirs of Frederick Douglass where he, he describes being, uh, insulted and

00:12:54.160 degraded and all, you know, all of these terrible lines are thrown at him. And he says, you're

00:12:58.780 actually not degrading me. You, you can't degrade me by calling me names and telling me to go different

00:13:04.660 places. And you just don't have the power to do that. I can degrade myself in how I react to you,

00:13:11.200 but you just throwing all that bile at me, you can't take away my dignity.

00:13:18.480 Absolutely. And I think that there's definitely something to be said for, um, you can take all of

00:13:24.580 the ridicule and, uh, humiliation and embarrassment and anger and frustration. And you can take all of

00:13:33.900 these things that people throw at you in life, especially in the last few years. Um, I,

00:13:41.040 I feel like you can take all that stuff and you can turn it to power. Um, you can use that stuff

00:13:46.240 as fuel. Um, and I think that when you have the opportunity to put those types of things in a music

00:13:54.620 video, it's almost like holding up a giant mirror and all of those people that are calling you those

00:14:00.660 names and throwing that hatred and, um, just spewing that sort of like rhetoric at you. I feel like they

00:14:06.780 have to like look in the mirror when they see it, uh, in visual form in a music video. I think it

00:14:12.580 causes a lot of like sort of self-examination from these people. And I mean, I, if one of those

00:14:20.740 people sees that music video and thinks, Oh my God, he's right. I've been being an asshole. I feel like 1.00

00:14:28.860 that's accomplished. Right. Of course. And, and the, the, uh, crucifixion imagery is, is really apt

00:14:35.720 because there is this Christian idea that suffer. It's at least a Catholic idea. And in particular,

00:14:41.100 the Catholics have this, uh, this sense that suffering is sanctifying that suffering, or at 0.82

00:14:47.960 least it can be sanctifying that when people are doing all sorts of terrible things to you and

00:14:51.560 they're inconveniencing you and they're calling you names and they're attacking you that we should

00:14:55.740 kiss it up to God, that you, you kind of take that on you. It binds you in a way to, to Christ and you

00:15:02.320 say, okay, I'm not, I'm not going to complain about it. I'm not going to whine and scream and I'm not

00:15:07.280 going to debase myself. You, you call me all those things. Okay. You said it. You said it. What can I

00:15:12.980 say? I'm not, I'm not going to degrade myself here. Let's keep going.

00:15:17.600 Me conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat. I'm somewhere in the middle, but y'all don't know what

00:15:22.680 to do with that. The system got you so obsessed with classifying right or left. You never call

00:15:26.980 a person human. Call them names instead. Call me sexist. I love that. Pause that here. So now

00:15:31.720 you're addressing something that I know there's been a lot written about you when it comes to

00:15:36.460 your politics. Are you right wing? Are you left wing? Are you, you certainly kind of, you look in

00:15:43.940 some ways a little more left wing, you know, you got, you got some tattoos, you got, you know,

00:15:48.420 you're not wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and an ill fitting tie or something like that.

00:15:52.080 But in some ways you also look more right wing. You don't look like some shrimpy kind of, you know,

00:15:58.420 hipster at a cafe eating avocado toast or something like that. So I, even when you look at you, you say,

00:16:04.720 I don't know if you're left or right. And then the libs have accused you of basically just grifting

00:16:10.180 and saying that you're just going to make a quick buck by, by sounding right wing. But the libs also

00:16:16.140 attack you constantly for your song. So I don't know. They're not exactly straight on their story.

00:16:20.080 So what is it? You say in the video, I'm not exactly left. I'm not exactly right. I'm not

00:16:23.580 a Republican. I'm not. So what is it? Yeah. Um, I feel like I'm definitely, uh, I like to consider

00:16:30.060 myself a free thinker. And I think that, that, that more often than not, um, that causes me to land

00:16:38.380 slightly right of center, uh, to be completely honest. I think that the people on the right side of the

00:16:43.640 spectrum, um, I think they have sort of the best idea of what's going on in the world right now.

00:16:50.280 Uh, I think they have sort of the best ideas on how to move forward to make things better. Um,

00:16:56.800 and I think that's probably a big part of the reason why they've been beaten down and humiliated

00:17:03.820 and canceled and silenced and censored and bullied, uh, by the, the, the left wing media. And to me,

00:17:11.380 it's like, I grew up, I grew up as a loner my whole life. Uh, I hung up on myself. I was always

00:17:19.200 kind of like a weird kid and I was a skateboarder and got piercings and got tattoos and, and, and,

00:17:26.080 you know, I was the underdog as a kid. And, and, and you think that like, uh, when you're bullied

00:17:35.200 as a kid, Oh, well, one day I'm going to grow up and nobody's going to bully me anymore. And then you

00:17:40.420 grow up and the bullies get bigger and me louder and more intense. And to me, that is the liberal

00:17:50.040 media and the left side of the spectrum right now. So I tend to stand a little right of center with

00:17:57.720 the people who are getting bullied because I identify with that. Just unpopular opinions are

00:18:05.940 as valuable, if not more valuable than whatever the mainstream narrative is at the time.

00:18:12.400 So, well, it actually, it kind of gets back to the religious imagery in the, in the music video,

00:18:19.360 which is, uh, you know, sometimes people will complain. They'll write into the show and they'll

00:18:24.160 say, Michael, I just want to speak the truth, but people keep attacking me for speaking the truth.

00:18:29.460 I say, uh-huh. Yeah. What, uh, do you remember what they did to Socrates? Uh, remember what they

00:18:35.120 did to our Lord and savior, who is the truth himself? Remember what they did to, uh, pretty 1.00

00:18:40.660 much everyone who's ever spoken the truth, uh, ever in all of human history? Like, if that's not the,

00:18:46.040 the age old story of good versus evil, man, like, you know, when you, when you try to do something

00:18:52.980 good, when you try to do something righteous, uh, when you try to do something pure, that's when the

00:18:58.880 demons and the evil and the badness come out of the woodwork. It's just the way that it is.

00:19:02.520 Yep. Yeah, that's true. You can, you can count on that. All right, let's keep going.

00:19:05.820 Call me sexist. Men run the world cause they're aggressive. But behind every man, there's a woman 1.00

00:19:10.600 just as successful. We will never be equal in every way that ain't helpful. Our differences are why

00:19:15.840 we're great together. Call me white devil. I know you think the system favors me. My privilege is 0.95

00:19:21.180 residual benefits from the slavery. Subconscious prejudice embedded in the system made for me.

00:19:26.120 Don't mean I never struggled to survive. I guess we ain't agree. Ignorant and jaded. Call me dumb,

00:19:30.800 uneducated. Call me idiot or redneck or delusional or crazy. Call me anything society has taught you 1.00

00:19:36.460 to say. Cause at the end of the day, they're just names. Go ahead and call us names, dog. Do your thing.

00:19:42.820 We ain't tripping cause we heard it all before. Give a damn about the names, dog. We feel no pain. 0.99

00:19:48.620 Your words ain't gonna hurt us anymore. Go ahead and call us names, dog. Do your thing. 0.89

00:19:54.140 Y'all are tripping but I hope you find the Lord. Give a damn about the names, dog. We feel no shame. 0.99

00:19:59.820 Call us anything you want, I'm getting bored.

00:20:01.860 Your sticks and your stone. Might break my bones, but your words don't hurt. So give me your words.

00:20:14.820 Stupid loser, ugly poser, moron, liar, crazy loner. Go ahead and call us names. 1.00

00:20:27.440 I really like that. The stupid loser, poser, all that because it opens up with racist, sexist, 1.00

00:20:38.300 homophobic, all these words that actually are thrown at people in their adult lives. 1.00

00:20:43.580 And you tie it in or later on in the song with the kind of the same taunts that you get when you're in

00:20:51.540 second grade. And there's no difference. I mean, you say the bullies don't go away. They only get

00:20:58.020 bigger. They give you a swirly when you're in second grade and then they try to kill your job

00:21:01.980 and kick you out of school or your place of employment when you get older. And it's just

00:21:07.380 as mean-spirited. It's really more mean-spirited. I mean, there's nothing worse that you can be called

00:21:11.740 in today's society than racist. So, okay, you're gonna do that. You're gonna come at me. Fine,

00:21:15.960 just call me a big, dumb, ugly loser like you would do in second grade and at least be honest 1.00

00:21:21.080 about it. Totally. Well, that was sort of the, you know, and we started off that bridge section 1.00

00:21:28.360 with your sticks and your stones, which is sort of like the I'm rubber, you're glue thing.

00:21:33.500 It starts off with this very like adult, grown-up version of like what these bullies are. And over

00:21:41.820 the course of the three minutes, it sort of degenerates into you loser, ugly, stupid, 1.00

00:21:49.020 moron. Like it sort of degenerates. And to me though, that's the whole thing unraveling and 1.00

00:21:55.220 falling apart and destroying itself from within until you're left with nothing but second grade

00:22:01.180 insults that we've all heard before, you know? That's right. And that actually do bounce off of

00:22:06.140 me and stick to you when you jerks throw them at me. Absolutely. All right, let's keep going. 0.99

00:22:09.740 Go ahead and call us names, dog. Do your thing. We ain't tripping because we heard it all before.

00:22:15.620 Give a damn about the names, dog. I just love that the guy that's calling you those names just 0.65

00:22:20.240 is the guy I described in the coffee shop with the avocado toast. I didn't know that. I haven't

00:22:25.280 seen the video yet, but that's really, that's really excellent. That's artistry. Okay, keep going.

00:22:29.780 Talk about the names, dog. We feel no pain. Your words ain't gonna hurt us anymore. Go ahead and

00:22:36.120 call us names, dog. Do your thing. Y'all are tripping, but I hope you find the Lord. Give a

00:22:41.400 damn about the names, dog. We feel no shame. Call us anything you want. I'm getting bored. 0.97

00:22:46.660 Cool. Yeah. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. So before I let you go, Tom, this is very, this is very cool.

00:22:56.360 It's very trippy to review a song in front of the artist, because if that song had been terrible,

00:23:01.200 it would be very awkward for me. You know, I'd have to, I, because I don't, I can't lie. I'd have to be,

00:23:07.000 I'd have to try to be polite. Like, oh, I really like the costumes, you know, and the, but anyway.

00:23:13.100 Right. Because like I said, Michael, I'm a, I'm a big fan of what you do. So this would,

00:23:18.140 this could have been heartbreaking for me. Super awkward for you.

00:23:21.820 Yeah. It just ends up being a 10 minute video. I'm like, oh, well, anyway. So before I let you go

00:23:28.540 though, Tom, I, I do want to get to the sales numbers because you're, I know that your songs

00:23:36.160 have been extremely popular. I have been stopped in bars. I'm not kidding. I've been stopped in bars

00:23:42.800 around the country and people will come up to me. They say, Michael, so nice to meet you. And I

00:23:46.840 think, oh, great. They're going to talk about how much they love my show. They're going to say,

00:23:50.180 maybe they love my books or something like that. And they say, Michael, I'm not joking. This

00:23:55.160 actually happened to me. I said, Michael, Tom McDonald has a new song out. When are you going

00:23:58.820 to review that? That's my favorite content on your channel. So when are you guys say, you know,

00:24:02.020 like I'm, what am I? Tom McDonald's publicist over here. I got, but so I know your stuff

00:24:06.320 is very, very popular. The people who put the charts together, I noticed they sometimes leave

00:24:13.340 your name off of them. What's that about? Dude, uh, there, there's been a plethora of different

00:24:20.880 ways that we've sort of, uh, butted heads with, with the music industry and, and their reporting

00:24:26.880 systems and giving us the credit we deserve. So, you know, it's happened in a variety of different

00:24:31.420 ways. We, uh, uh, we had a video trending at like number five or something on YouTube, uh, a few

00:24:40.820 months ago. So if you went to my actual video on YouTube underneath the video, it says trending at

00:24:47.400 number five. And then you go over to the trending charts and the charts go two, three, four, six,

00:24:54.500 like five has been completely omitted from the charts. Um, and I just released a collaboration

00:25:00.940 album a few months ago with Adam Calhoun where, um, we did like 45,000 units or something. Um,

00:25:09.300 and, and, uh, that was, that, that was physical copies and the reporting system refused to count

00:25:19.640 our physical sales, which would have essentially like locked us in at the number one spot on the

00:25:25.220 albums charts. And we went back and forth with these people for weeks and weeks and weeks and

00:25:31.200 weeks. And we're like, we were at the point where we were like begging them. What can we do for you

00:25:37.820 guys? I just don't get it because it's, it seems to me, look, I don't, what do I know about selling

00:25:43.640 musical albums, but it seems to me it would be much harder to sell physical albums than it would

00:25:48.760 be to sell a digital download. And so you're, you're selling the physical units and what they just,

00:25:54.280 they just don't believe you. They think you're lying or something.

00:25:57.500 Yeah. And it got to the point where this is unprecedented and, uh, extremely dangerous,

00:26:05.080 uh, for me to do, but I offered them a username and a password so that they could sign in to the

00:26:12.720 back end of my commerce. Wow. And I, all of the units sold themselves and they wouldn't do it.

00:26:21.980 Wow. And we figure out why. So, but that's just, that's just, you know, the nature of the

00:26:28.200 entertainment industry, man. It's, uh, you know, it's, uh, incredibly, uh, it's an incredibly woke

00:26:34.020 sector of, of music is an incredibly woke sector of the entertainment business. And, um, and I don't,

00:26:41.660 I don't fit the mold. They want, uh, they want Britney Spears. They don't want Dennis Rodman.

00:26:47.240 You know what I mean? I guess that's probably true. I also, now that you've made that comparison,

00:26:54.380 I can't unsee it. I had never made that comparison before. So that's really frustrating,

00:27:01.160 but it is to be expected. They, the New York times did a similar thing when my book came out

00:27:05.780 last year, speechless. We sold, and it's even, it's much easier to track, uh, these things in,

00:27:11.720 in book sales. And we sold 40% over the number one New York times bestseller that week. And the

00:27:18.720 sales continued for in the following weeks, we sold, I think an order of magnitude more sale or

00:27:24.880 more copies than people lower down on the list. They wouldn't put it on the list anywhere. And

00:27:30.680 they're protected from that because, and they've said this in court, their bestseller list is editorial

00:27:36.940 content. So if they don't like a book or I assume the same principle holds, if someone doesn't like

00:27:41.380 a movie or a movie show or a TV show or a song or an album, they can just keep it off of the list.

00:27:49.100 And we were lucky that Publishers Weekly publishes a list that accurately reflects sales. So they put us

00:27:54.520 at the top of that one. But the, the cartels that, that are the gatekeepers to this kind of cultural

00:27:59.960 content, they don't, they don't want you to be getting the numbers that you are getting and you're

00:28:05.380 getting them anyway. And it makes it all sweeter. So Tom, for the, for the handful of people, maybe

00:28:10.700 who don't already subscribe to your stuff, where can they find you?

00:28:15.360 So on Instagram, I'm hangover gang on YouTube. It's youtube.com slash Tom McDonald official,

00:28:22.400 facebook.com slash Tom McDonald official, Twitter slash I am Tom McDonald. If you just put my name in

00:28:29.940 on any of these platforms, you'll find me and hundreds of thousands of people talking about me.

00:28:35.640 I'm really easy to, on the internet.

00:28:38.160 That's great. Absolutely. So you can head on over there, subscribe. Next, I'm going to start working

00:28:43.780 on my rapping abilities so that I can someday audition to be in one of these songs. Cause that

00:28:48.980 would be really trippy for me to review the song with me, you know, in it. I have, I have to say I'm not

00:28:54.320 the most fluent rapper yet, but if I keep listening, if we keep doing these reviews,

00:28:59.680 maybe I'll, maybe I'll be able to improve a little bit in the future.

00:29:02.520 So are you, are you planting the seed right now for, for, for Tom McDonald featuring Michael

00:29:07.240 Knowles? I am. Listen, I have very few specific career goals left, you know, that I really,

00:29:14.640 oh, I generally, I just kind of, I just kind of go with the flow, man. You know, I kind of see where

00:29:19.200 politics, but this one, this is up there. It is on the chart.

00:29:24.320 So we'll see, we'll see where it goes, you know, okay. Tom, absolutely fabulous. Well,

00:29:29.360 fabulous to really meet you for the, for the first time, actually talking beyond just, you know,

00:29:33.480 a DM here or there and a really great stuff. Keep it up. Keep pissing off all of the right people.

00:29:39.040 It's a real joy to watch them sputter and pull their hair out and rend their garments and

00:29:43.600 gnash their teeth. Thanks for coming on, man. Thanks, man. It was a total pleasure.

00:29:54.320 Thank you.

00:29:59.160 Thank you.

00:29:59.980 Thank you.

00:30:00.240 Thank you.

00:30:01.220 Thank you.

00:30:01.340 Thank you.

00:30:05.960 Thank you.

00:30:06.520 Thank you.

00:30:08.440 Thank you.

00:30:08.920 Thank you.

00:30:10.100 Thank you.

00:30:17.240 Thank you.

00:30:18.100 Thank you.

00:30:18.260 Thank you.

00:30:19.260 Thank you.

00:30:19.720 Thank you.

00:30:20.820 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - July 23, 2022

Michael Knowles & Tom MacDonald ｜ Music Video REACTION

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