#240: John Monopoly

A Waste Of Time with ItsTheReal

ItsTheReal

Music

4.8 • 817 Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2019

⏱️ 92 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on A Waste of Time with ItsTheReal, we went out to LA to sit down with the legend himself, John Monopoly, to talk about being the at the epicenter of the Chicago music scene for almost thirty years! Known most notably for his work as Kanye West's manager, we talk about his upbringing in Chicago's Johnson family, his early Soul Train memories, going to grade school with Common and No I.D., promoting shows and making beats and getting money in high school, meeting Kanye back in 1990, why he decamped for Atlanta and why he returned home and what Jay Boogie means to the city. We discuss Mnop meeting his cousin Don C and how they took over the night life scene in the Windy City, how they got The Beatnuts to town, the story behind bringing Jay-Z and Foxy Brown to the Chi, and of course, the city's most notorious party celebrating the hottest rapper on the scene, Da Brat. John goes into detail about trying to break the Go Getters and Kanye West records, attending the Mixshow Power Summit, making and maintaining relationships, how Chris Lighty recruited Mnop to work at Violator Management, and what it felt like to leave Chicago for New York. We reminisce on Kanye's chaining day, how he got the news of Kanye's car crash, the initial struggles of Through the Wire on the radio, how Syleena Johnson ended up on All Falls Down, the highs of The College Dropout and The Grammys and ultimately what led to his parting ways with Ye in 2008. We discuss John's work with Valee, Z Money, Virgil Abloh, Hitmaka FKA Young Berg, Dreezy, King Louie, his nephew London on Da Track, Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliott, Dirtbag, Cool & Dre, G.O.O.D. Music, Mona Scott, Todd Moscowitz, Puffy, Cam'ron and Jim Jones, his being diagnosed as bipolar, the value in discussing mental health, and much, much more! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Jeff. Hey, Eric. How are you? I'm pretty good. How are you? Doing well, thank you.
0:03.6	Some of you out there may know we've been in Los Angeles for almost a week now. And Jeff,
0:08.5	I just sort of wanted to sum up our time out here in a little game of overrated or underrated.
0:14.4	Ready? Okay. Okay. Uber's out here. Uber's out here. What a mixed bag. All right.
0:21.1	I'm going to say underrated.
0:24.8	And I'm going to, I'm going to say that because certain drivers we really connected with
0:29.1	and got to hear their whole life story.
0:31.1	You know, the guy from El Salvador, shout to Carlos, who was like the most wonderful person.
0:35.1	You gave him a huge, huge tip.
0:36.5	I did because he sends all
0:38.3	of his money back home and has seen his money go towards his children's uh time at university
0:44.2	and they turned into a cardiologist and a communications major and he's just putting a lot of
0:51.0	good into the world and i wanted to support that yeah and then on the other end of that, I would also say that the guy who almost got into two accidents, got a head of lettuce thrown at the car, got into a screaming match with another driver's thrown up.
1:07.8	Yeah, spit out the window.
1:09.2	Possibly racist.
1:10.6	Blasted corn in the car. Yeah, I would say for that, it's, you know, a story. And it's, uh, so that's sort of underrated. Okay. Also, would have been way overrated had we actually, um, been involved in a race war. Right. Okay. Los Angeles weather this week, overrated or underrated? I mean, the clouds have been very present. Yeah. The rain has been very present. Yeah. So I would say, um, I mean, the changing weather, I guess is, listen, it's better than New York right now. Okay, okay, okay. Underrated. Underrated. Underrated, even though it's shitty every day. Yeah. seeing our friends out here, Jeff. Overrated, underrated. Overrated. Big time.
1:47.1	Yeah.
1:47.4	Get them out of here. Underrated, even though it's raining every day. Seeing our friends out here, Jeff, overrated, underrated.
1:45.7	Overrated.
1:46.4	Big time. Yeah, get them out of here. Big time. All I want to do is sit in my hotel room. No, it was great to see everybody. Yeah, it was really nice. Shout to Woz, Nod, and Marcia. Abigail. Yeah, let's talk about. Jeremy Corellis. Amina and Zara and Alex.
2:00.9	Angelo.
2:01.7	Good to catch up with everyone.
	...

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