The Sway Interview ❗️

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to effective immediately, I'm DJ Hebb. [00:00:06] Speaker B: What up, world? [00:00:06] Speaker C: It's your favorite home girl. [00:00:07] Speaker A: Gina views now. I just wanted to bring. We caught this guy, man. [00:00:12] Speaker C: Another man just wandering around the station. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Yeah, just whistling, just whistling. [00:00:17] Speaker A: I just wanted to bring you in here, man. Ladies and gentlemen, radio hall of famer, my big brother, sway. [00:00:22] Speaker B: Hey, man, what up? Hey. Hey, good to see you, brother. [00:00:25] Speaker A: Listen, I just wanted to bring you in here really quickly because I don't want to. [00:00:29] Speaker B: Hold up, man. Before you start on what you about to do, man. It's good to see you. You ignored that when I ignored that. [00:00:34] Speaker A: Cause I just want to give you a flowers, bro. [00:00:35] Speaker B: Okay. [00:00:36] Speaker A: We in this building because of you. [00:00:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:00:38] Speaker A: You know what I mean? And I just wanted to say, you know, publicly, I mean, we talk. But I just want to say as a black man. A black man. Thank you, bro. Like you really, for me. I'll let Gina get hers off before me. Specifically. Ever since I got introduced to you, I think with Nikki, like, this has got to be over ten years ago. And then also. Devi. Shout out to Devi Brown. [00:01:00] Speaker B: Debbie. [00:01:00] Speaker A: Dev, ever since we've met, you have been nothing but gracious and embracive and respectful and uplifting and empowering, and not even just to me, but to my entire team. So I just wanna say thank you, bro. [00:01:14] Speaker B: Oh, man. Thank you, man. I appreciate that. [00:01:17] Speaker A: And Gina, you know she was crying earlier when she saw you. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah, Gina always cried. I don't know if it really means anything. I thought she cared. She just cries. I didn't know if it had any emotion attached to it. [00:01:27] Speaker C: It's like two birds with 1 st with me. One of my goals and dreams, since I was a little girl, to be on the radio, and then one of my dreams was to meet you. [00:01:34] Speaker B: Wow. [00:01:34] Speaker C: And you made two things happen. So I really appreciate you. [00:01:38] Speaker B: I'm one of your dreams, Gina. [00:01:39] Speaker A: Trying not to cry. [00:01:40] Speaker B: Wow. I'm trying not to cry. [00:01:42] Speaker C: I cry earlier. [00:01:44] Speaker B: Wow. I don't even know what to say to that here. You know, you don't see me doing a lot of interviews on the mic. [00:01:51] Speaker A: No, I know you don't talk. I'm not going to do that to you. [00:01:55] Speaker B: With you, though. And regardless of why I don't do that, I just wanna say that your energy and what you possess, your talent, is necessary. My movements have always been about the community and then the culture. And I seek certain things, I feel certain things through individuals. I knew it was important for you to be on the mic. I like the way you get down the balance you bring. I don't even have to agree with everything you say, but I like that you say it, you know what I mean? I haven't really heard much. I don't agree with one or two things, but, no, I really appreciate it, man. I haven't really learned how to accept the flowers and that sort of thing yet, because I still feel like I'm on mission. And it's the same mission I started with in the beginning with my partner, tech, and I, which really came from being artists and going through everything that some of the artists you have been on your show. Like, reason different folks have gone through different adversities. And we did it at a time when we didn't have the resources and we had to utilize our mind power, you know, we had to work at pizza shops and ups and furniture stores and wash dishes at Creole restaurants in the bay, and tech getting robbed from pizzas, and we. Just to save money to get in the studio, you know? And that's our beginnings. That's me in Oakland trying to figure out. Figure out a dream. And along the way, there were 95% of people we approached for guidance, advice, a hand, closed that door, turned their back or ignored us. And it was those 5% of people that said, well, we'll give you a shot, or we'll hear you out, or we'll open the door, we'll lead you to the water. You got to drink it. That's all we asked for. And I realized those 5% were the most important people in our career trajectory. Always wanted to be on the side of the 5%. Me too. You know what I mean? And so, meeting you through Nikki jeezy. Who? Nikki. I wanna say I met Nikki through Devi. [00:03:59] Speaker A: Word. [00:03:59] Speaker B: Through Devi Brown. Devi Dev introduced me to Nikki this at a time when, kinda like with you all, I saw talent and Debbie, and she was going through a transition time in her life and invited her to be a part of this show, the morning show, SiriusXM. And we moved her to New York, and that led to her working on MTV and then other things she started branching off into as well. Man, I just love my people, bro. You know, and I love what's good and right about our people. I don't want to use my platforms to tear our people down, exploit them or any of that. It's enough of that. That happens. And I'm not knocking. Yeah, fucking. I'm knocking people's shit. But my goal is always to find those folks who are gonna make our lives, our culture, our community, better through this culture and see what I could do to assist them. And that's what this has been. I just been very blessed over the decades to be able to do it for so many people. And I think that's been the key to my personal longevity. King Tech, my partner, people don't know him. He and I, anything I do, he does. So this has been our mentality for years. This is why I don't get caught up in the frivolous conversations. I can't get distracted by things that I talked about 1520 years ago. [00:05:21] Speaker A: Stay on the mission. [00:05:22] Speaker B: I got to stay on my mission. I don't mind if other folks got still talk about those things because it's new to them and they're discovering, and that's cool. But people who, from my generation, we have to find ways to become bridges, we have to find ways to become allies and resources for those who are coming up. And that's my mission. That's my role. At the same time, keep our shit tight, make sure the product that we put now is a certain level of quality, a certain level of abundance. And that's. I think that's what the mission has been with Gina views. There aren't enough black women in the culture that hold powerful positions who could speak out loud like she does, who speaks out as honestly as she does. And that represents a part of our community that doesn't get the mic. You know, when she does the geniverse ciphers and you hear some of these Milan, and you hear te spokes and you hear some of these women that are spitting their stories, you ain't heard these stories. Right, right. And these stories need to be heard. And that's what my platforms are for, for people, for our people to be heard. If you trace back the origins of this culture, it was created because disenfranchised people didn't have outlets, they didn't have places, we wasn't seeing them on tv, we didn't hear our opinions, you know, and people revolted and rebelled against that and formed what they called a subculture. But it was already our culture, right. And that allowed us. Now we don't have to go to CNN or all these other networks to speak. We could come right here, effective immediately, right here, and speak right here on these platforms. And even if it ain't on this platform that we got, we got it on. It's his own thing. [00:07:03] Speaker A: Facts. [00:07:04] Speaker B: You know, SiriusXM should be happy. SiriusXM should be overjoyed and appreciative to have, effective immediately here on this channel. So we been working on that for a long time, you know, and both you guys are stars. And, hey, man, I'm proud you consider me a brother, man. So I got your back, and we gonna win together, homie. You know, we both in the Olympics. We gonna cross these lines together. We got a lot of winning to do, and I feel great about it, man. And Gina views you a star. All these women you brought around. [00:07:39] Speaker C: Thank you. [00:07:40] Speaker B: That's incredible what you did with the Genovese, the ciphers that you've been doing. That's incredible. [00:07:47] Speaker C: Thank you. And thank you for trusting my music ear. [00:07:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:54] Speaker C: I said, sway, I do these ciphers. He said, well, bring them on over. I appreciate you for trusting me. [00:07:59] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I give you a shot to fuck up. That's it. If you don't, we keep moving. Keep it going. We keep it going. You didn't do it. So, you know. But I do, as I do, have high expectations. I've seen this business on the highest levels when it comes to broadcast journalism, you know, and everything has its pockets. I'm not talking podcasting or radio or. I mean, on every level. I've seen what this business could be. I tried to perform on the highest level, whether we sitting in the United nations, moderating panel discussions with Jay Z about water, free water wells in Africa, whether I'm sitting across from President Obama in the White House, or whether I'm sitting next to pimp c, you know, in jail, in a prison cell, having a conversation, or sitting next to Pac or big or whoever it is really alleged. I've been around Gina buse. I've seen a few things. [00:08:54] Speaker C: The resume is remarkable. [00:08:57] Speaker B: Damn it. This is dumb resume. Stupid. But, you know, we just keep. We. You know, I've seen her on the highest level, and when I see it, I get excited. Y'all see how excited I get with y'all? Cause I know I feel like I could. I could play in the medals and dance in the tundra with people who are on the same frequency. You know, it's like this thing is our playground, right? And we. We're allowed to be free and say what we do, knowing that what we do and say is nourishment. It's empowerment. You know, when you speak and you're speaking in a voice that nobody else has in a long time, and you're not just speaking on the surface. It's layered thought, perspective, history, all of this historic value, personal. How you relate personally to some of these moments you speak on is why you sound so, vanguard on the mic, you love this shit. [00:09:51] Speaker A: I love it. [00:09:52] Speaker B: And I came up loving this. I love it. You know what I mean? And I have to love everything about it, the good and the bad, in order to officially say I love it. But in the meantime, I'm definitely using my platforms for effective immediately and platforms like it and the two of y'all. So thank you for receiving me. You know, me and tech been in LA. I know you didn't ask me all this shit head, but I'm gonna go ahead and give it to you. [00:10:15] Speaker A: I appreciate it. [00:10:16] Speaker B: All right. Me and tech came to LA full time in 93. Gina, I'm not sure if you were born yet. [00:10:27] Speaker C: I was about to pop out that thing. [00:10:29] Speaker B: You were about to pop out? Okay. It was right before that, right before the world changed and you popped out. Me and Keene Tech came to LA to do what we did in the bay. You know, we bought a home out here in 1995 and have been paying taxes in LA. Tech raised his family here. And in around 2000, I had to move to New York to go do MTV. And I've been in New York ever since. But we still got this home. And even back then, this is what our mission was. Back then, though, the artists and the people we were putting on were biggie, you know, the Fujis, Wu Tang clan, you know, Nas, all of these different folks. We never really tell our story, so folks don't have. Really know the impact we made when we came to LA. Turned this shit up. You know, it was. We shook it up, you know, we shook it up. And in doing so, it just kind of made. Helped make the competition, make the culture that much more better. When you got Mike Nardone and King Emms on the air, you got Eazy E. We used to come on after Easy E with west side ready on Julio G. Shout out to Julio G. You had the Baker boys on the other side. You know, you had choc and c minuse on the other side. Big boy at that time, I think, was doing nights on the other side, and everybody was just jousting and fighting to be the dopest, you know? And here we are, in our mind. We are the dopest. You know, there is no big three. It's just swaying. T e c h. [00:12:06] Speaker A: He's a hyena. [00:12:10] Speaker B: Was none of that shit. So Brian Sampson, to tell you. He was there. Brian, come in the room. We fucking. Ryan was there. Brian Sampson works over at Empire. But Brian Sampson was the. Was the first. The swaying tech record was the first record he ever. That's the first record he ever promoted, you know, and he could tell you a little bit about the. Yeah, come on, man. Come over here, man. Quit acting. Nobody really want to hear from you anyway, man. Okay. This is Brian Sampson. But I was just telling him, Brian. [00:12:45] Speaker D: Was older than me, by the way. [00:12:46] Speaker B: Okay. All right. Brian. Brian was. We were the first artists he ever promoted, and so he saw what happened in the bay. And then when we got business minded and turned our show into syndication, which no one else was doing at that time, and we had all those 30 plus stations in five different countries, I mean, five different continents, and not really knowing how many countries we covered until we went to Japan and found people who were copying our dvd's that we put out back then when nobody had the dvd's or the. And copying our freestyle mixtapes that were going platinum on the underground, the wake up show, freestyle tape. But he was there when we first came to LA. You remember that? [00:13:34] Speaker A: I remember the fact that, yeah, you gotta talk. [00:13:36] Speaker B: You gotta get on the mic, though. [00:13:37] Speaker D: I remember the fact that we had to do. We had to pull vinyl out of the trunk. So I lived in San Francisco, he lived in Oakland. He never would drive into San Francisco. I had to pick him up and drive back into the city and drop all the vinyl off everywhere. Trying to go to all the college radio stations around the Bay Area. And this is all pre social media. And his hustle and Tex hustle. Washington was, like, deep, and we didn't even know the game. [00:14:03] Speaker B: We didn't know the game, but we had a vision. We had a vision, and we knew that the culture will be the key. You know, right now, we talk about generational wealth and different ways that we could accomplish that in our community. We knew the culture at that time, with some people say selling weed, cannabis industry, might be a key to generational wealth. At that time. Hip hop. [00:14:24] Speaker A: Hip hop was it. [00:14:25] Speaker B: That was it, you know, because the basketball dreams wasn't realistic to us. The major, you know, sports and all of that. It was hip hop. And we had Rodney Yeoh on the show, who talked about at that time when him and Joe Cooley came out in the late eighties, that they use independent distributors to get the money, to get the direct money from the wholesale, you know, and that's what we did. We used independent distributors. We might sell 4500 cassette tapes, but we were selling them at six and $7 a bop. So you could do the math on that. Teenagers, you know, starting to collect checks like that. [00:15:03] Speaker A: You rich? [00:15:04] Speaker B: Not at all, I'm wealthy in knowledge and wisdom and experience, but I'm not broke. [00:15:12] Speaker C: Sound rich to me. [00:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah, okay, Gina. Gina never pays. When we go to lunch, too. I just gonna put that out there. Just wanna put that out there. I know. Last breakfast, she came in late. Remember that shit you walked in, it was like, damn, breakfast almost over. Gina, you know, but let me say this. We've done exceptionally well, right? And we've been smart. We bought a house in 95. People weren't buying houses in 95. That's an investment. You know that equity became a life force, a life source from us. These are the conversations a lot of folks don't have. You know, you hear that, you see the change and you hear about the houses, but the ups and downs, the ebb and flows of the business is a little different. You know, it's shit. And we bought the house in 95. By 99, when we walked away from the beat, we were two weeks away from not being able to pay the mortgage. [00:16:04] Speaker A: Damn. [00:16:05] Speaker B: MTV came along. Wow. You see what I mean? But if you look at it, it look like, man, these dudes swaying, tech, popping, and we were popping. We just didn't have no money, bro. [00:16:17] Speaker A: I like the thing, first of all, thank you for that. That. You know what I mean? But second of all, like, I think it's so many people, even in this room, but people that's looking at this all over the world, listening to this on hip hop nation, can really relate to that. [00:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:32] Speaker A: Because it's a lot of us dealing with that at the moment. And so, you know, thank you for sharing that. [00:16:37] Speaker B: Yeah, man. [00:16:37] Speaker C: It's important to know the real story, because a lot of people, they see things on social media and think that from the outside looking in, that it's better than it actually is. And we need to know that our legends also have struggle stories. [00:16:50] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely, man. When I went to MTV, that was after three times of telling them no, right? And him, and I know you, him, and I got to a point where money was scarce. And I remember the first offer they made me, and I don't think I ever said this, it was like, $99,000, right? And motherfuckers love 99. That ain't nothing. I was like, $99,000? Are you kidding me? That's something. [00:17:18] Speaker A: Hell, yeah. I'll take it right now. [00:17:20] Speaker B: Right now. 99. I'll take it. Come on. Watch what I do with 99. Cause after the taxes and stuff. [00:17:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it's bust down. [00:17:27] Speaker B: It's bust down. And it's him and I. I wasn't caring about the money. The opportunity is the opportunity. You here on this platform, this platform ain't gonna make you rich at all. All right? But the opportunity and exposure you're gonna get from it, if that's where you want it, you could definitely. You're gonna get it right every single time. The metrics you're about to start building, the analytics that's gonna follow all of this, you're gonna get it. That's gonna build your brand equity. Your brands are solid as fuck. It's just now it's just time for more people to see it. Took that job with them, did that year contract, that year contract turned into 24 years or 21 years. I worked with MTV and the contracts got bigger and better every time. So it works itself out, you know, but yeah, that's a little bit about it, man. I ain't gonna good at. The bottom line is Gina views doesn't buy dinner. [00:18:23] Speaker A: Listen, bro, that's the moral of the story, Samson, thank you, but I. No, for real, though. You always been, you know, like, whenever somebody hits you, whenever we call on you, you there. And I think I speak for both of us. Like, I mean, we, you know, we hit you. I be hitting you random times. [00:18:39] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I be. [00:18:41] Speaker A: I forget about the time difference. A lot of times I don't give a fuck. I don't give a fuck about it. You know what I'm saying? But thank you, bro. For real. [00:18:50] Speaker B: Also, I love, man, and I love what y'all doing. You guys are the truth. You guys got the sauce. This is it. You are the bar. [00:18:57] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:18:58] Speaker B: You are the bar. I'm saying that y'all, the bar. Ain't nothing real like this. Most of it is little calculated and agenda. It got agenda. People gotta say shit to get their metrics up. Y'all say shit cause it's what you feel and the audience can tell the difference, right? I know I can. So thank you for having me on. Effective immediately, I'm gonna be leaving effectively. [00:19:17] Speaker A: I don't have an outro for that. Sway the legend, bro. Thank you. [00:19:20] Speaker B: Thank you, brother. Our channel.