Active Recall!

Some notes from David Perell interviewing Logic.

“I don’t listen to rap”

A big theme from this is that Logic is interested in far more than just hip-hop. He’s taken the approach that many other 30-somethings do: just keep listening to what you used to listen to—for him this is stuff like “Midnight Marauders” by a Tribe Called Quest.

“Hip hop was my everything. Now my son is my everything. My well-being. My wife.”

When he was rapping, recording, touring full time, he was really going at it. It was everything. All he thought of. It consumed him. Feedback hurt. And he wasn’t happy.

Now he has different priorities. When people tell him “Oh I miss the old you the old you cared about rap more”… they’re right. He’s more focused on his family and having fun with creative work that brings him joy. The old way made him rich and famous. And very unhappy.

“The competition mentality… I don’t like that.”

This probably differs from most rappers. Especially most pre-internet rappers. The industry was fueled by beef and battles. That’s still part of the culture as well.

Logic doesn’t look at it as competition. While he’ll think along the lines of Oh that’s nice but I want to try to do something better, he’s not thinking that someone else winning means that he’s losing. There’s not a limited pie to go around.

“I’m one of the best rappers”

He is absolutely confident in his skill. And he knows the amount of work that he’s put in. He talks about this in the context of trying out new types of music, having different interests. He says he wants to try something he’s not good at because it’s interesting to learn something new. To be challenged. He can rap already. He’s proven that.

“Lord Subliminal” Yes.

Everyone had bad usernames when they were younger. Lord Subliminal was one of his on a rap site. He used to write raps on Spoken vs. Written. He talks about how weird this was where you’re just typing out battle raps.

(I used to do dabble in this on probably some sub forum on Rhyme Arena or some lesser known forums in the early 2000s—good times!

“Stay off the internet.”

That’s the secret.

Get out of your own head.

He talks about turning all the noise off in the past few years. By turning that down, he’s found he’s finally able to focus and be more creative.

Getting feedback on the internet is different for celebrities in a way that is probably hard to feel if you’re not one. People say your wife is ugly, your baby should die.

And when it comes to creative feedback, at a certain level you will never release something that people universally love.

At a certain point, you can’t get constructive feedback so you just need to turn it off.

“I make stuff for people that like the stuff I make.”

That might not be the best mindset for someone brand new to something because your stuff is probably bad.

But once you have an audience, it might be more sustainable to just make stuff for people that like your stuff. Why convert haters when you can find the people who would love your work?

“I love everything about making it except releasing it.”

Logic absolutely loves making music. The creative process is always going to be a part of his life. What he doesn’t look forward to is releasing it, for the above feedback reasons.

Last thing: if you want to get good at freestyling, read the dictionary and thesaurus over and over and over.

Shane Parish: “What’s one habit you’ve changed recently that has had a profound impact on you?”

Ed Latimore: “This is really silly, but it’s true: I wash the dishes as soon as I’m done eating.”

I just finished unpacking. I started unpacking pretty much right when we got home from the airport, after a 12-day trip. Our flight was delayed 4 times and we arrived around midnight.

I’m exhausted but I kind of new it would take some time to wind down and actually fall asleep.

Luggage can be a weird psychological anchor if you don’t unpack. It took me a week to unpack on our last trip. The bags just sit there and remind you that you’re lazy over and over throughout the day.

Like dishes, unpacking is one of those things that you have to do anyway.

And it’s not like email where replying creates more responses to reply to, in an infinite loop. Unpacking does differ a bit from dishes, which you could make reasonable efficiency argument for: you can do them when there are more than a few in the sink.

You can actually finish packing completely. All the more reason to do it as soon as possible.

“You don’t need more money. You don’t need more free time. You can always do it.

Play is a state of mind–it’s a way to approach the world.

Whether your world is a frightening prison or a loving playground is entirely up to you.”

— Play It Away: A Workaholic’s Cure for Anxiety by Charlie Hoehn

While reading Oliver Burkeman’s “Four-Thousand Weeks”, I’ve been thinking a lot about time. I have enough money and even enough time. I’m not balling out or on sabbatical with weeks of time free. And that’s the point. Enough of each isn’t an unreachable number for many people.

Knowing how to spend it is another thing. Burkeman points out the oddness of looking at time as a thing to spend in the first place.

Before, time was just the medium in which life unfolded, the stuff that life was made of. Afterward, once “time” and “life” had been separated in most people’s minds, time became a thing that you used—and it’s this shift that serves as the precondition for all the uniquely modern ways in which we struggle with time today. Once time is a resource to be used, you start to feel pressure, whether from external forces or from yourself, to use it well, and to berate yourself when you feel you’ve wasted it.

Working out seems a worthy cause, because it makes the rest of the time better. And, hey, maybe it’ll get you a few hundred or thousand more weeks. Working out is also nice because it’s easily compartmentalized in a day (you can very much completely finish a work out) but it can be an obviously infinite game that you aren’t constantly looking to finish. Even if you could get a six-pack in six weeks, you’d need to work to keep it.

Other things aren’t as obviously infinite.

You think you can play after you’ve finished all your work. That made sense in elementary school when you could finish all your work. It makes less sense with knowledge work.

I have a few friends who are nurses, and they can’t exactly bring their work home with them. They do seem to enjoy their long stretches of time off a little more than friends in tech. Who take a few days of vacation to phase shift into relaxation, if they ever do at all.

In any case, you shouldn’t wait for a vacation to play.

I’m coming to the same conclusion I come to just about every year:

• I should play video games/computer games with close friends in other cities, especially because a lot of us have Oculus Quests
• I should lean into effortful fun to meet up with friends where I live
• I should do the very scary thing of making new friends where I live
• (And I should get back to podcasting with Wally, because creating with friends leads to the best creations and the best friendships)

You probably have time in your life now to play. Maybe you don’t have the people, but they’re worth finding as well.

You have enough.