Blake, tell me about the stems.

So stems are basically the ingredients to a recorded song.

It's all the elements you hear together, the drums, bass, the vocals.

It's all of those, but they're completely isolated.

The stems for popular songs are incredibly rare and really hard to get.

Because if you have the stems, it's like having an x-ray of the song.

You can see everything, you can hear everything, and you can change anything if you really want to.

Okay, understood, but how did you get them?

Well, about 10 years ago, a friend of mine came over and he brought a hard drive with five songs on it,

all in stems. One of them was the BGs staying alive. And I also got side two of Sarge and Pepper,

but the one that really stands out in my mind was Queen and David Bowie under pressure. I will

never forget the first time I hit play on the isolated vocals. It was like being in the room

with Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. It sent shivers down my spine, and it changed the way I heard music.

After that, I became a part of this sort of secret underground network

of producers and musicians who trade stems.

And over the years, I've amassed a collection of more than a thousand of them.

Wow, so you really have your hands on the holy grail of popular music.

It's a little like that, but it's a hard drive, not a cup.

Hi, I'm actor, writer, and sometimes DJ Diallo-Riddle.

And I'm Blake Robin, aka producer and songwriter Luxury.

You may know me as the guy who whispers interpellation on TikTok.

Luxury and I became friends during the pandemic.

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