Durand Bernarr: Never Straight, Always Forward

FanDuel is now available everywhere in the U.S. So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are. Including these places. Make this your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Age and location restrictions apply. Product availability varies by market. See FanDuel.com for eligibility. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Celebrating Black History Month and Pride Month for the rest of your life, huh? For the rest. I haven't been called a n***a by any white people, but I've been called plenty of sissies and f***s by other boys who look just like me. The heterosexual homies damn near in tears. Like, I am that n***a, but I also feel like a bad b***h too. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's just. And a knockout like Tyson Fury on a highway quick pass in a hurry because I'm trying to go to sleep at the end of the day. You can be grateful and still unhappy. Pick the horns from the tree. Peel the layers back on the world. Strange fruit. They still swing your bodies in A to L. You know it's solid when they got Don Lemon inside a cell. Divided by black and white like Karl Lagerfeld. For the dollar bills. Forced to produce for corporate suits. Blood on that orange like O.J. Seuss and Juice. Presidents assemble troops for a slice of the pie. Wonder if Stevie see the bombs or. I'll drop it to the one that I actually need to watch. I got it. Seven is the five. Got my fur coat. Don't tell no dress to the night. Shame cause I'd rather be home with you. I'm sending this to you. That's your note. I'd rather be home with you. Look, I'm going to be your backup singer. See? Yo, I'm up. Got it? Yeah. Take one, comment mark. See, this extended intro was so hard, though. Because Donna Summer was the inspiration. Don't you miss when someone was used to have, like, lengthy instrumental sections? They don't do that no more because, you know, it's all about the stream. Instant gratification. Oh. Headbutt Shay. Headbutt Shay is on them. Well, you know, I got up. Well, I'm sorry. I didn't get up. My body woke me up at four o'clock this morning after going to sleep after midnight. So. Oh, word. Yes. I can't do all that. But this song, this song was about not doing that. Exactly. How did they end up getting me to do the exact thing that I was talking about not doing? Hell. That was funny. And the string. Oh, yeah. The strings throughout this whole album were gorgeous, though. Absolutely. Excuse me? Woo. Y'all did that. It sounded like money. Now you know I'm leaving early if I came on time. Got the lights turned on. French 75. Got my fur coat on and I'm dressed to the nine. What a shame I'd rather be home with you. I said, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Sing, ladies. I'm ladies. Can I be stoned up? And if it's no good still, I'd rather be home with you. My location on You Got Yours off. That feels inequitable. I'm in a club and these girls half naked. I'd rather be ass naked with you. I'm the shit, but I can't fertilize her. This ain't no Frank in the Lou. She want to get planked in the noodle. Child, I ain't just no regular dude. I don't want to be on your Snapchat story. Rando's like, you want to drink? Drink champ, DJ, FN and North Shox for the girls like me. I ain't mad at you, no judge, no jury. I'm finna knock out like Tyson Fury. On the highway, quick pass in a hurry, cause I'm trying to go to sleep at the end of the day. Let's not. Let's not fantasize. Let's make. Let's make that a love. Oh, yeah. Let's. Let's make this a night. Hey. When you want, it's where I want to be. Got the lights down low, French '75. Got my fur coat on and I'm dressed to the nines. What a shame, I'd rather be home. Ooh, parks! See, remember we had that other "ah, ah, ah" part that we didn't put in, man. That "ah." That's right. That's right. ♪ Yo, the vase turned up, yeah ♪ ♪ And the vase feel good still ♪ ♪ I'd rather be home with you ♪ ♪ You ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ Oh, yeah. Round of applause for us, man. There we go. Y'all hear it? Yeah, where's the applause at? Okay, thank y'all for singing live, sweating like a horned turd. My God, thank you for joining me, man. Thank you for having me. My guest today, celebrating Black History Month and Pride Month for the rest of your life, huh? Oh, the rest. The Grammy Award-winning Duran Bernard. Ah. There we go. Hey, you had to switch your number up on him, huh? I did. Your shit went green. I tried to text you, nigga. I forgot. There are so many folks I need to just hit up, and then there's folks that I don't need to hit up. Of course, man. I saw you saying something recently where you were like, "I've reached the point I don't want to be acknowledged or spoken to in public, especially touched, overstimulated, beyond capacity. Please let me be. Resist the urge to make this about you. Please." My question was like, how do you protect your peace and your space with everyone in your face? Like, how do you deal with it? When I really want to protect it, I just stay in the house. Homesick. That's how you do it, because it's—nah, we can go ahead and take this off so they can see how tired I am of this shit. It is an adjustment when you are a people person, and you love people, but then people can people. And as the beautiful Jasmine Crockett shared with me, she said, "It is a gift and a curse to be so lonely." It is a gift and a curse to be so loved. And I'm just navigating through that, you know, because at first it was contained. You know, it was, you know, your community and your tribe, you know, they know you're amazing. But then when the world catches on, it's a different thing. And you can sometimes find yourself just being tugged at in so many different directions, wanting to say yes, wanting to, you know, be there for people, wanting to be everywhere. Everything for everybody all at once. And it's not possible without a crash out and a burnout. Yeah, man, I feel like I oscillate, you know, at times between dealing with fame and a forever paradigm of gratitude. Like, that's where I try to get to. You know what I mean? I'd be like, I'm very grateful that, you know what I'm saying, you want to, like, take a picture with me while I'm, like, in two days. In two different socks and, like, at the grocery store, you know what I mean, with a dirty wife beater on. I'm grateful for that, you know what I mean? But also, like, here I might be with my son, with my family, you know. And I think about celebrity in the way that I was saying this about the Meg Stallion thing recently was that I often have found I hear people say, oh, well, she is a public person. She has invited certain criticisms to her. Not her to make it about her, but to say public people invite scrutiny because they've ascended to a space of visibility for one reason or another. And obviously, it's profitable, you know. There's that dimension to it. But also, it minimizes the humanity of the artist in the eyes of much of the public. Mm-hmm. Because they think. That you're in a space of visibility or wealth or however they play it that, like, your space is not your own anymore. That it belongs to them. That. So, one thing, you can be grateful and still unhappy. Mm-hmm. Let me say that again. You can be grateful for the home that you have over, you know, the roof that you have over your head. But there could be calamity and abuse going on in the home as well. So, that's one. The other thing is I think a lot of times when we put ourselves out there, especially when we're very personable, people feel entitled to you and your body and your time. Mm-hmm. And your space. When the only thing that you're entitled to is the art that I put out. Not me, the person. Word. And I think sometimes they associate the art with who I am. Mm-hmm. And that's a separate thing. That's something that I do. Mm-hmm. But it's not who I am. That's the huge paradigm shift though anyway. Because. Yeah. As artists, we have a tendency so often to make what we do the central tenet of our identity. But I've seen that in my life destroy my fucking mental health. Hand me my phone. Because I got a note. So this is what I want to talk about. Come on. So first and foremost, just because I'm not a fan of your work or I don't like your shit doesn't mean I'm hating. It just means I'm not your target audience. And one thing that I've discovered is a lot of times people will equate who they are with what they do. So when you don't like what it is that they do, they take that as a personal dig. When in reality, for me, it's not about what you do. It's who you are as a person. And that's what I'm supporting. Man, Common had this bar. He said, if I don't like it, I don't like it. That don't mean that I'm hating. But we at this time now, though, where it's like everyone has. Everyone has. A voice like the ability to capture attention is democratized in such a way that it's like it's it's inspired. Much putting around weak, though, because you like, man, if I say something about this, everybody going to see, you know, and that and I'm going to be called a hater because I don't like the shit. I mean, but I'm with you. Well, everything. Well, everything doesn't need to be said. Everything doesn't need a public opinion. Now, if you come and ask me or you give it to me and say, hey. What do you think? And then I'm like, well, I don't think this is how you deal with that, though. When they play you weak. Like, what's your response? Because because me, I don't tell the truth at all. I look for now one small thing. I'd be like, oh, yeah, the hi-hat. That was a nice. See, I had in that. So I and this is something I need to. So, you know, I started doing stand up and I told a story about the time that, you know, and I get I will have gotten tracks sent to me or, you know, projects. And, you know, just to get. Get an opinion. But if I can't find anything, you know, sometimes I'll be like, all right, now, come on, artwork. Yeah, for sure. You know, all right. All right. Color palette. All right. That's eating, babe. OK, it's the font for me. OK, me too. Me too. Come on, sequence. OK, listen, if you sounded like yourself, because what do you want me to say? That's how I do it. That's how I do it. I'm going to try to find something. I was doing this whole thing where I was. Rating like people's music. I was having people send me music. It was like a live stream thing and I would give them feedback and I had to quit eventually because I was like, it was low key killing my spirit to listen to so much bad music and try to find small, minute, insignificant details to compliment them on. And then when I when the switch flipped and one day I was like, man, I'm going to just tell these truth, you know what I mean? So I'm cut off after like three seconds. I'm like, oh, yeah, that makes terrible. Your voice. I mean, I'm cutting off. And it's like, man, I waited for six hours for you to listen to my music. And then I rather you wait six hours to spend 16 years pouring into something that is not your collar. That ain't going. Yeah, like your friends lie to you. They're laughing at you behind your back. I'm not going to do that to you because I don't want to embarrass you. Man, what a cat. Cat Williams says, though, or maybe it was maybe it was Dave Chappelle. It was in a it was in a racy context, but he was like. If this thing killed your dream of being an artist, I dare say you never had a dream. You know what I'm saying? I mean, even when I was talking, you know, yeah, telling the truth about some of this music. I was like, if you quit because of what I said, then you must not love this. This must not be for you. Yes. You know, people's people's negative opinions. They have some power. They have some power to impact me. But there's no one's opinion that can steer me off of the path that's meant for me. Not that you mentioned. Not that you mentioned that. Yeah. Oof. Yes. Every time I walked out the house just trying to be myself, that was an issue for somebody. So, I mean, if that was the case, I would have stayed my black ass in the house. Fan Duel is now available everywhere in the U.S. So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are, including these places. Georgia, Houston, Cleveland, Minnesota, Buffalo, Lincoln, Chi-Town, Arizona. This year's most rewarding season ever with Fan Duel. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Man, that was something I want to talk to you about, man. I saw you rock at the Ebony Power Joint like a year or something ago. And that was the first time I saw you. Remember where Usher saw me? I don't know where Usher was. I left after you. Where was that? It was Ebony Power. Yeah, that was when Usher was there. It was hard, though. That was the first time I saw you do Mango Butter, I'm That Bitch. And I'm That Bitch. And I'm That Bitch. I was like, oof, that's the hardest shit. Like a mastery of the masculine and the feminine. What is your position on gender fluidity? How do you see the whole matrix of this shit? I feel like that song is a thesis of that. It is, because we are everything all at once. So a lot of times, people want to label things so that they can understand. That's not for me to understand. That's for you to grasp. But again, as I say, a lot of this stuff isn't meant for us to understand. It's meant for us to experience it. Are you enjoying yourself or not? So it was just putting a theme song and a soundtrack to it. Because I've had the heterosexual homies come to me damn near in tears. Like, yeah. I feel so seen, bro, because I am that nigga, but I also feel like a bad bitch, too. Like, it's just, oh. Well, I love that for you. You feel seen. Sometimes you got to have a bad bitch day. I mean, that's why when Lil B came out, like, I'm a pretty bitch. Like, I just, we felt that. And I think it's a mindset. Like, when people say things like that, I'm not thinking. Or even A$AP Rocky with the, you know, it's the pretty motherfucker. I feel like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, but again, I feel like that's a mindset. It's how you feel. I don't think anyone's saying, I'm a woman or I'm this. A bad bitch is a, that's a mindset. It's a feeling. Tell me about the term queer. I feel like it has evolved in prominence in recent times. I feel like I'm starting to abandon that label. And I was only saying that because it put me under an umbrella that was connected to the community while also not boxing me into certain practices. But I got to find out who made that word up because I need to find something else. So you kind of feel like the term queer is running its course to a degree. It is. A lot of these labels are wearing. Whether it's personally, whether it's musically, it's all something that people are trying to grasp to understand instead of just experience the shit. It's, it's, I get representation and that, that's fine. But as far as the labels of it all. Yeah, the labels can be limitation as well. The ways that labels like ebb and flow and, and evolve, you know what I'm saying? Like, I have a lot of like vivid memories. As a child of the ways that, um, gender and sexuality were violently enforced. Like the, those social constructs were violently enforced as pure reality, third grade, man. I remember, um, I had a teacher. He was my favorite teacher, Mr. Brady, Mr. Brady, man, having a black, having a black teacher, you know, as a, um, as a black kid, like it was transformed. It was a formative experience. All my teachers for the most part were all white. And I remember the homie came to me cause I was standing there, you know, with my hand like this. And he was like, you don't stand with your hand like that. That's why they say Mr. Brady is gay, you know? And I'm like, trying to wrap my head around how to, how the fuck I'm standing is a way for you to demean them. The best teacher, the only teacher that saw me cause white teachers all through my life. It's like they, they fucking, uh, they assumed that I was, that I was a problem, you know what I mean? And, and that, that, um, I was, I was negative. Whereas this, this one teacher, he was the only person that saw me and somehow he was, he was demeaned in, in that way. And I just couldn't wrap my head around it. To what do you ascribe the, uh, deep seated homophobia in the black community? Of course it exists everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. But particularly. Particularly in our community, what's your perspective on, on the, uh, in the black community, people will protect a predator before they shed any light and have compassion for someone that's gay. They will absolutely protect the weird ass uncle that comes around that they got the, you know, the girls got the cover up when they come over, et cetera. It's they would, they would rather someone be a murderer over that. I think they're holding on, they're holding on to what scripture has said about it and what religion has said about it. Um, and that's the only thing they can, they can hold on to. I feel like if they, that wasn't even a thing, um, it's like, well, where, where's your, where's your hatred coming from? You know, but a lot of it comes, but for me, a lot of it comes from repression. You're hating from outside the club because you see someone else living a life that you were told you're not supposed to live. And if you live that way, then these things, which are not good, are going to happen to you. And then you see somebody like me being very much myself. And you said never straight, never straight forward. So forward, you know, never straight. I love that. That's my bar. Shout out to my barber said that. Um, but yeah, that's, that's where I've always kind of viewed it, especially being on that, being on the outside of, of the things that I haven't been able to navigate through life, um, with the privilege of being unclockable. Right. You know, so I've always had to be on defense and, you know, I haven't been called, um, a n***a by any white people, but I've been called plenty of sissies and f***s by other boys who look just like me. So yeah, to, to unlearn, to even be on, not on, on the defense from your own people is a little interesting sometimes. Um, but growing up and getting out of certain environments that you're in and going to places where you can be your most productive self. Also, it helps me. I'll be thinking about the colonizer in your mind and, uh, you know, in, in Africa, many African nations are rampantly homophobic and it's codified into law, but we got that from our colonial masters. Like there are clear records of the Angolan court of Queen and Zinga and same sex relationships in there. There's clear, uh, literary evidence in a con culture of my culture. Of Kojo Bessia, a man with female characteristics that didn't have a negative connotation to it. And yet in all of the ways that we've shared our colonial masters, we've held on to the poisons and the sicknesses that they gave us. And we've tricked our motherf***er self into thinking we came up with this. Like I literally have heard so often in the context of African revolutions and liberation. Uh, there's no time to worry about. The humanity of LGBTQ people, because right now we have to worry about these other priorities that are in front and, and other times being like, there are no gay people in, uh, you know what I'm saying? And in like, I remember the first time I went to Ghana and I was, I didn't know you'd been to Ghana. I have just one time. This was right before they made being myself illegal. Right before. But, um, I remember. Asking someone who was from there. Um, so what's the scene like here? It, can you like, are we cool to kind of like, and it was more along the lines of, well, you can be yourself, just not too much of yourself. Like don't stick out, you know, keep that shit over here and you may be safe. I'm like, that doesn't make me feel secure at all. Yeah, no, I've gone. Stay inside music of the black church. So I think about the music of the black church as being the seed from which all the pop music has grown and gospel music being the DNA of rock and roll music and inside of house music and all of the ubiquitous forms of pop music. And yet it would seem that so many of those contributions are the contributions of queer people. And I'll be in the church and the choir director, always queer, always talented, always brilliant. I mean, ain't no straight man. Fender bitch. And yet it feels like the contributions are often the, they're, uh, they're hidden or how do you rationalize the, the, the contradictions within that? Cause I know that the church is such a foundational piece of, of everything you do. And you, your human, your humanity. Yes. The humor, all that, the characteristics. Uh, I think I have been able to, first and foremost, um, church is a place of artists development for a lot of people, all the hardest musicians, everybody that, you know, that is like really solid in their work that we grew up listening to that raised us. They were raised in church. Somebody was playing an instrument. Somebody, or not even that you also have, um, there was musical education in schools. Like we had app, well, I w I was homeschooled, but you, I heard, you know, they had app school programs and things like that and, you know, talent shows and whatnot. So you had things that you were able to be in to prep you for that. We don't have that as prevalent because the decline of the. What's the word? The attendance of church. Now it was like, people are deprogramming. So it was kind of like, we don't, we don't need that. Even though people would like a place of worship, kind of like how, when Kanye started the Sunday service, Sunday service, people were saying, we just want somewhere where we can just fellowship and sing without all the extra drama. Is there a place? Not sure, but that's what people genuinely desire, which they can just come to a, to Ram and our concert. You can get all your church there without. The corruption. I was going to say though, like, that's one thing that struck me about your performance at Ebony was like, uh, the, the mastery that comes from being a church musician, like there's, there's a, there's a grand mastery in that. And, um, and it made me think about Prince. Like when I saw you rocking that day, I was like, this is a manifestation of, of, of Prince's spirit. Y'all know he want to play Prince. Anybody? Uh, for sure. I do know that, you know, he's too tall, right? That's what you told me. You are too tall. That's not something I often hear. You don't hear that you're too tall in life and life, right? How tall are you? Hey, you know, it depends on the day to share, uh, uh, D'Angelo to D'Angelo was a manifestation of Prince in a lot of ways, man, I got this theory. I want to see what you think. Okay. So there's a D'Angelo. So that we all know lady that I believe this outro section of lady is taken from the outro section of a Prince record called still waiting from the Prince self-titled album. Oh, the one that, uh, that had, uh, I want to be your love. Yes. Oh, I want to hear what you think. Okay. So that's what you call an interpolation, right? It's a hard interpolation, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Low key. I kind of feel like in, in ways, um, your album cover has notes of interpolation in that you've joined a long line of, uh, legendary R and B niggas leaning on be leaning niggas Teddy Lionel, Michael, I'm forgetting somebody else. See, I want to, I want to, I want to have you tell me rank these, uh, these R and B leans. It's like a process of elimination. Okay. Luther or Michael? And see, see, in my mind, I will go, I will go Luther because Luther got the yellow on him. Then we go on Luther, Luther, Luther or Teddy. And then they got like a karate. I know. Like Teddy got the, got the leg up here. He was strong. Stretch him. I identify with the leg of Teddy versus Luke, but Luther for the color. But if we're going off the leg, the physical, yes. So then Teddy or Teddy or Lionel, I'm gonna go with Teddy because we were all leaning on the left. There was a lot. And then Lionel was leaning on the right. So we stay Teddy, stay Teddy. And the last one would probably be Teddy or Michael. I'm gonna go with Michael because he had the glow. Let's show. Michael's the final boss of R and B lean. He's the final boss. What are we talking about here? The final boss period. Yeah. The absolute final boss. He should have been alive to see us. You seen that, that performance where he's like, on that raised platform and he's like, "Well, what about the oceans?" and the children and the rain. It felt like, yo, he was just another echelon. I literally was just thinking about Earth's song not too long ago. Like, he really was. Michael really cared about people and the state of the world. Like, his empathy was so palpable that it was. I don't know if you knew, he did a song dedicated to Palestine back in, like, the 90s, but they never put it out. What? What's the song called? I don't know. I just know it was Dear Palestine, something like that. But he has a. When you type in Michael Jackson's Palestine song, something in there. I know they got some kind of demo somewhere, but it was there. And they said, absolutely not. Listen, a lot of. Palestine Don't Cry is an unreleased, unrecorded song written by Michael Jackson in 93. 93? And he wrote the motherfucker on a British Airways plane while returning. While returning from a concert in Tel Aviv. How. Damn, that nigga Michael was too real for TV. I'm saying. He was too motherfucking real for TV. Too real. Yeah. And he really didn't get no fucking. He was tapped in. He was like, I will buy. Buying somebody's. Buying somebody's masters and, like, saying. Y'all want to hate? They don't even worry about that, man. That's some gangster shit. I'm going to go ahead and buy your shit, man. You going to give them to me? No. This is business. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I've been everywhere, man. I've been to Georgia, Houston, Cleveland, Minnesota, Buffalo, Lincoln, Chi-Town, Arizona. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Man, on the new album. Sugar Family. That's a funny-ass concept. You ever had a sugar daddy? I. I haven't. Well. Ha, ha, ha, ha. No. No. I mean. No. Let alone a sugar daddy. Auntie. Auntie. But, like, everybody got all hands on deck, bro. Like, when you. Anytime you order your Uber, comfort, not even Uber Black, but you order your Uber Comfort, and your sugar daddy is in the driver's seat. What are you doing here? Yeah, times is hard. The invite for the album, that was so tough. We gotta send love to you for that. The invite for your sessions was like nothing I've ever experienced. I've never been invited by formal invitation to take part in an album, but I loved. I loved that. That angle, because it was. It was making it an event. It was placing value and intention on it. Oh, snap. Oh, my God. All good. That seat said, "Psych." In your Grammy speech, man, you said all your personalities were weeping with joy. How many you got? Do them niggas got names and shit? Um. Well, they're. Parts of me. I still need to figure out who my emotional self. what his name is. It might just be Duran, but we have my. So my therapist asked me, "How old are you spiritually, mentally, and emotionally?" So just for the sake of answering the question, spiritually, I'm about six years old. That is the purest form of me. Everything is very simple with him. If it makes you happy, do it. If it doesn't, don't. My emotional self is. Duran. Duran. Duran. Duran. Duran. Duran. Duran. Duran. Duran. Duran. Duran. Duran. Duran. Duran. Duran. And that started. I think he started like around 25, because that's when your brain fully develops. So ultimately, I only have. 13 years of adult life experience? Biologically. Yes. And then there's my inner old man, Rufus. Yes. He. He's. He don't play. He don't pussyfoot around. He ain't here for the footwear. He ain't here for the foolishness. You know, tearing it up over there. So yeah. That's. That's. Those are my three personalities. So they were. They were all very just overjoyed that, again, I can be on this platform, be on this stage, being myself. Having my parents there. Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. I. I was working on ideas for this. And I was thinking about what you said, about 20 plus years, and it made me have to have a real conversation with myself in my car yesterday. And like, look at myself in my rear view mirror, try not to crash. And I was like, talking to myself, I was like, "Yo, when are you going to be honest and real about how long you been doing this?" And it's like kind of making me emotional because music means so fucking much to me. Yeah. And I've been doing other things recently. But like, when I heard you say that. It did something for me because oftentimes I try to start my clock of when I started making music, when I started seeing success. I'd be like, "Oh yeah, my first mixtape that had some success was in 2013." Hearing you say 20 plus years and seeing the fruits of your labor be rewarded in that way, it's like, "Yo, be real with yourself, man. You've been doing music seriously since you were 15 years old." I've been doing music seriously for 18 years. And. But that moment, when you got on that stage and you said, "This is 20 plus years of work," it gave me a certain emotional hope because I was like, "Yo, it's time to accept the emotional investment, the labor that's been put into this." The effort. And the fucking clock is never. You're never out of time. As long as you keep doing it, you're never out of time. Were there times in that 20 plus years when you thought, "Damn, I'm out of time." Not I'm out of time, but definitely what do I need to do so that I can get my foot in the door? It was one of those. Mm-hmm. I felt like being myself wasn't. sufficient enough. Mm-hmm. So I needed to just create a different persona, sing about other people's experiences, not my own. What do I need to do? But no, there wasn't anything where I felt like I'm running out of time. As long as you've got activity in your limbs and breath in your body, there's always time. There's always time. And I tell people this all the time, and I need to tell myself this, is that it's only over when you quit, man. Yeah. The difference between a success and a story that no one's ever heard is persistence and an ability to have the emotional regulation to keep on going through rejection. I saw that the other day online and I was like, "This is deep." It was like the fucking differentiating factor between successful artists and those that don't make it. It's very often not talent, not skill, but the ability to emotionally regulate through rejection, through not seeing it the way that you thought it would be. Well, as I've been calling this, this is glamorized customer service. At the core of this, I am a servant. I am here to be of service. Mm-hmm. So when we talk about what success looks like, that is very different for everybody else. I was already successful way before the Grammy. For sure that. I was successful when I was able to be stable on my own and not have to depend on my parents for any assistance other than just the emotional support that I've been getting from them. But no, that was success for me. Them being able to be like, "Wow. You did good for yourself," even though I'm in my studio apartment, still I'm able to sustain on my own. Shout out to the studio apartment. Yeah. But I'm comfortable. And I'm not trying to keep up with the Jones. I'm not trying to stretch myself beyond what is absolutely necessary so that I can feel like I'm enjoying myself. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And definitions of success. They ebb and flow. They change. They evolve. What's your definition of success right now? I think right now my definition of success is agency, is the ability to make decisions that represent all of me. Discipline has a lot to do with my definition of success. Joy is paramount in my definition of success. There have been times when monetarily, financially, I was far more successful than I am now. But spiritually, I was Poe. Yeah. I was dead broke spiritually. Yeah. Yeah. I had a lot of bread. But I didn't feel successful. Ain't had no jam. Get up. This jam needs bread. No jam. No sweetness. Literally, like mentally, even when we talk about how one relates with fans, I talk to people all the time who are like, man, I met you back then. I seen you on the, you know, on the plane and I was like so excited and I wanted to. And then you just scowled at me, you know, and I was like, I was like, damn, man. But I was going through shit like I used to be on the plane and I was so depressed that I'd be in first class and I'd just be like, man, I pray this plane crash. That's just like I hope this motherfucker crash. Damn, everybody else, everybody else going with you. You can just let. No, that's fucked up. You can just crash by yourself. I'm just OK. All right. That's fucked up. No, I hear you. And I think I'm at least for me, because people have watched me grow up on on on YouTube, I feel like it is my. It is my due diligence, at least sometimes to let people know where we are updated. A lot of times we update ourselves. We don't update the people around us. And so now they don't know how to interact with us. They don't know what's OK, what's not OK. And I want to make sure that I'm being as kind in my delivery as well as as well as firm, because sometimes people only know firmness, you know. And but I still want people to I still want people to have a. Positive, you know, and delightful experience with me, for sure. I would like for to have more positive experiences than not. But that totally depends on a where I am in my mind and then how you are coming at me. And I'll put your hands all over. You ain't got to put your hands on me. You ain't got to. And it really be the ladies. Ladies, let me talk to you real quick. Y'all talking about some. I know you ain't finna not give me no hug. Y'all sound crazy. Y'all are sounding just like you with the way my very much. Oh, the baby. And I'm like, ma'am, do you hear yourself? And then I have to remind them. Do you know if a man said this to you that you don't know? Do you know how jarring that would be? Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm a human being. So I'm teaching in real time. This is how we can communicate with one another. And it'd be a positive experience. And it doesn't have to for me to have to hold in something, because a lot of times when niggas just. Help themselves to my fucking body. I am holding in shit. That's that autoimmune disease shit where it's like you should be cussing somebody out instead of holding it in. And so now I got the. Thank you. So I want to get out of that so that I'm not damaging my own nervous system while also not making it seem like Duran is being rude or Duran is being a dick. No, Duran has boundaries. And I love you. And I. I can acknowledge you. We can acknowledge one another without you doing that. Ask first. It's always ask because I'm a hugger. But don't assume because first of all, I'm a mighty man of five. Eight. OK, I've never seen a buck. Fifty. Do not. You look like you can fight. Listen. That's how you fight. Listen, my wrist might be soft, but I wear bangs. So. It's just I want I just want that's why when I made the post, I just wanted people to know I love y'all. I see y'all. I just need y'all to be cool. I know everybody ain't gonna be cool, but for those who genuinely love me, y'all been rocking with me. Just respect that ain't no wrong with it in acknowledgment. But let's not get ahead of ourselves to where now I'm feeling violated because you decided that it was cool to molest Duran. But. Sir. Hey. I'm sure. Hello. And that's where we're going to wrap it up. Yes, sir. Thank you, man. For sure. For sure. So you figured out how to use that chair. I ain't sat in that chair yet. Can I take this home with me? Because I just feel like it's. The lead. I can. You figured out how to use that chair. You figured out how to use that chair.