Saturday, November 18, 2017

Rapper Biz Markie is a Hardcore Gold Bug


I am not exactly sure who Biz Markie is. I don't listen to a lot of music, but James Altucher seems to think he is big, good for Biz.

Altucher interviewed him and this is part of the exchange that went down as told by Altucher:
 I was interviewing rap LEGEND Biz Markie, my hero. And I
kind of wanted to be his best friend.
I’ve been obsessed with him for 25 years. He was a legend when I was a kid and I wanted to talk to a living legend.
People sometimes ask me, “how can I start a podcast/business/whatever without your connections?”
I have no connections. I had to reach out. A friend’s lawyer’s son is friends with Biz Markie’s manager. They all reached out for me.
Then no less than 20 emails and phone calls later I got the news: he MIGHT call in at 2pm. So I waited and he called.
I’ve had plenty of times like this where the person didn’t call and no interview happened.
I know his whole career inside out. I wanted to find out what happened. Was he a one-hit guy? Did he resent the hundreds of millions that rappers made later on? How did he reinvent himself to succeed in other careers.
I was so excited. I took a nap beforehand. I watched every interview I could find with him. I danced to all his videos. I even watched him on “Men in Black” and “Sponge Bob Square Pants” and I listened to his segments on various albums dating from 1985 to the Beastie Boys in the 90s.
My ex-wife kept saying, “Can we please stop listening over and over to ‘Just a Friend’?” And I had an excuse, “but I have to prepare.”
When it happened I felt like the most unprepared schoolboy trying to interview the President of the United States and saying things like “did you always want to be President?”
But I did learn some things that were fascinating.
A) HOW HARD YOU HAVE TO WORK. 
He told me he wanted to be a rapper in 1977 but no group would have him. “I had to get good first.”
I asked him what that meant. “Practice.” How much practice? “Six to ten hours A DAY!”
Six to ten hours a day of practice a day. A DAY. To be a good rapper.
B) HOW MANY YEARS DO YOU HAVE TO PRACTICE?
In 1977 he started. “By 1983 I made the first dollar by rapping at a party but it wasn’t until I had an album out a few years later I was making real money.”
He then did some beatboxing on the interview to describe what it was. I wanted to know how much money he made when he said he made “real wealth” but he wouldn’t tell me.
I said what was it like when everyone knew who he was after “Just a Friend” but he said he had big hits before that. I asked how he met the Beastie Boys, he said they were playing basketball together and it was “a lot of laughs”. He did three albums with the Beastie Boys.
He told me he invested in gold in 1990 and he still has it.
C) WHY DID YOU INVEST IN GOLD? 
“Because it never goes down,” he said. I said, but it went down from 1980 to 1990. He said, “I bought in 1990.” And that was that. Good investors hold forever.

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