In short
```markdown The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Podcast Overview
- Host: Steven Bartlett
- Description: Steven shares his journey from a broke dropout to a successful entrepreneur and provides an unfiltered look into the lives of influential people, experts, and thinkers through his podcast.
Episode
will.i.am Opens Up
- Guest: William James Adams Jr. (will.i.am)
- Topics Discussed:
- Childhood experiences in East LA
- Journey into music and formation of the Black Eyed Peas
- Creativity and its role in his life
- Perspectives on fatherhood, hard work, and creativity
- Use of music for problem-solving
- Predictions about AI and technological advancements
Key Discussions
Early Life and Education
- Growing Up in East LA: will.i.am shares how his upbringing in an impoverished area shaped his creativity and resilience. His mother's creativity and determination were significant influences.
- Realization of Poverty: He recounts the awakening moment of realizing his family's financial status during a school charity event.
Music and Creativity
- Creativity as Currency: Describes creativity as his superpower and currency throughout his life.
- Formative Years: Talks about creating music from a young age and handing demos to influential people.
- Process and Influence: Discusses the impact of artists like Prince and Stevie Wonder on his creative development.
Perspectives on Creativity and Work
- Hard Work and Creativity: will.i.am views hard work as relative and creativity as an essential part of life.
- Failure and Creativity Goals: He emphasizes the importance of not fearing failure and suggests that true creativity comes from a place of authenticity and expression.
Personal Life and Relationships
- Fatherhood and Relationships: Reflects on his desire to have children and how his perspective on family has evolved over the years.
- Challenges with ADHD: Talks about how ADHD influences his constant thinking and how he manages it.
AI and Technology
- Future with AI: Predicts the disruptive potential of AI in various industries and highlights its role as a tool for solving problems.
- FYI App: Introduces his AI-powered app designed to enhance communication and data security.
Reflections and Insights
- Living in the Future: will.i.am shares his mindset of always looking 10 years ahead to ensure continued growth and success.
- Importance of Passing on Knowledge: Expresses a strong desire to pass on knowledge to future generations.
- Optimism for Humanity: Advocates for using technology to build a better, more empathetic future.
Closing Thoughts
- Superpower: If he were a superhero, his power would be to harmonize particles, reflecting his desire for universal harmony and love.
- Gratitude and Admiration: Steven Bartlett expresses admiration for will.i.am's creative achievements and his approach to life challenges.
Contact and Further Resources
- Follow will.i.am:
- [Instagram](https://bit.ly/3rOB3yk)
- [Twitter](https://bit.ly/44DkrYF)
- [TikTok](https://bit.ly/3rPzOyG)
- Follow Steven Bartlett:
- [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/steven)
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenbartlett-123)
Sponsors
- NetSuite: Discussion on the benefits of using NetSuite for business efficiency and growth.
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Thank you for joining this episode of The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett. Stay tuned for more insightful conversations with influential thinkers and creators from around the world. ```
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00We've been set up to fail. AI didn't do that, people did that. Now here's a tool for us to solve our problems ourselves now. Here we go. We love AI, I'm trying to beat you! Yeah, producer, singer, rapper, this man does it all. Seven -time Grammy winner, one of the industry's biggest names. Man, that's... Glirical! And we started the Black Eyed Peas. No one believed in us? Now we're playing Super Bowl's World Cup, Grammys. You have to be hyper -creative. You can't grow anything without it. There's a cost of creativity, right? What's it like to be a new head? I'm always thinking, analyzing everything.
0:37Get it, get it, go, go, make it, make it... That's not good, that's not healthy. Why? You make errors, you hurt people. I remember I got into like a dark period when I felt something that I've never felt before. This is like... distortion. People want you to fail. But the anxiety comes when you're worried about what people think. When it's things that are happening that you didn't control. You have to be optimistic. You have to arm yourself with optimism and purpose. That's what it's about. That path was the hardest path in my life.
1:23The End This is a window into the mind of a creative, a divergent, an entrepreneur, artist, and visionary. Someone we all know. But at the same time, someone we don't really know at all. If you're a creative, an artist, an entrepreneur, or someone with big ideas for the future, or just someone that's struggling to balance your professional ambitions with your personal pursuits, this conversation was meant to find you. Enjoy.
2:03Well, I am fascinated with people. That is why I started doing this many years ago. Because I have... I've come to learn about myself that I have a real desire to understand people. Because from that, I think I can understand myself. Because I think at the foundational level, we're all quite similar as human beings. Because we're all related if we go back far enough. So in a pursuit to understand you, I guess my first question is, what is the context of Will? I need to know to understand the man that sat here in front of me today. The earliest context. The kind of kitchen that Will was conceived in, was cooked in at the earliest age.
2:43You write songs? No, I don't. I write a lot, but I don't write songs. Because I get interviewed a lot, but very rarely do you get interviewed by wordsmiths. The kitchen I was stood in, I cooked in, it's pretty... I like the visual of that, because the chef would be my mom. And the kitchen will be the ghettos of East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights specifically. And that was encouragement, acknowledgement of our individual, when I say hour, my family, like we all have our little superpower. And my superpower was creativity. And creativity has always been my currency when I had no money. I clearly was like, oh, look, my Allah, but I made.
3:36Willie, that's really good. You really like that, Ma? Yeah. And she would... encouragement goes a long way. And in that type of encouragement from my mom that helped create, self -believe, fearlessness to express, to share, to go in class and solve problems or raise my hand. I got the answer to that. That's really what fueled me, my mom. Let Willie solve it. What will he try to fix that? You know, this radio is broken. Try to fix it. That type of stuff. My mom... Salute. Did she know that you were creative? Or was she just putting wind in whatever sail you'd pulled up? My mom was creative. My mom still is creative.
4:24She had her sewing machine. She would make her clothes to go to school. That's why most of the clothes I make are still, you know, one -offs, two -offs. I like wearing things that no one has because that's how I grew up. We would go to the thrift store by dollar clothes or 50 cent shirts. There will always be too big for me and my mom would fix them and turn old into new. That's how we lived, you know. Willie, go to the store, take this food stamp, buy me a 25 cents bubble gum, get 75 cents back. And then you go to different stores, do the same thing. So now my mom has coins that she could go and buy other things with food stamps.
5:10Because with food stamps, you only could buy food. You can't buy needles, you can't buy thread, you can't buy fabric, you can't buy appliances, you only could buy food. So take this dollar, give me 25 cents gum, which is food. 75 cents chains back, go to different stores and do that. Now let's go and buy other things. And so she'll buy those other things and she'll make stuff for us. So my mom has always been like super ultra creative. So my mom is my biggest info. I've heard you refer to her as being your mom and your dad in your household. So when you grew up in a household where there's only the mom.
5:52Every father's day, happy father's day, mom. Thank you, Willie, and happy mother's day, mom. In those contexts, it's easy for a kid to go one of two ways, though. And I think that's what people often don't realize is when you're in a context where outside of the house, there's a lot of temptations either way. But inside the house, it takes a really, really strong mother of she is a single mother to make sure she creates her own universe so that those kids can end up in a different place. And that's what I've kind of read from a lot of the stories of your mother is that rigor and discipline and those values.
6:26Yeah, there was a, we had this next door neighbor in the projects and she couldn't read her right. And then people used to make fun of her. And my mom was like, now if we all went to Japan and we had to go out there and survive. Are we not smart? Yes, we're smart. Could we survive out there? Yes, we could. Can we raise kids and raise families to go out and do awesome things in Japan? In Japan? Yes, we could. But we will all go to Japan not being able to read or write. So the stigma that we put on folks that can't read or write, could they read people? Yep. Can they write a path to raise folks to go out into the world to do awesome things?
7:18Yes. So we value, my mom always valued humanity at its purist and people's intents and the things they wanted to accomplish before like, you know, cliche setbacks or. And it was awesome that we were raising on Mexican neighborhood. Right. So most people didn't read it right. And which was beautiful. It was beautiful, you know, I love being raised in East LA. And we've, we've, we've fed, we've fitted in. Is that right? Fitted in? Because I was going to say fat in. Just like pass into fit. Yeah. There goes, there goes read it right for me. No, I'm joking. What was your, your, your self, your self story at that age?
8:10Like what did Will think of? Well, who did you think you are and where did you think you were going in life when you were like 14? Oh, 14, it was set. Yeah. 14 I wanted to do music. I had these wraps that I used to write and I had these demos that I used to make and I would go to school and I would give my demos to my. My friends. And one of my friends, his name is Stefan Gordy. His dad was Barry Gordy from Motown. And I'm like, yo, give this to your dad. Check out my demo. My sister had Teddy Rexman. It's like this little teddy bear. I had a cassette and it's belly. And my mom gave that to my sister for Christmas.
8:48And for me, she gave me like a boom box. It too played the cassettes. And she got herself a stereo. And that stereo had two cassettes and came with headphones. And so I got my mom's records and I had a record player and two tape deaths and a headphone. And I don't know what told me to take the headphone, put it in the microphone, Jack. Take my sister's Barbie Rocker's tape, put tape over the left side of the cassette tape record over it. Get my mom's record, play the favorite part, press unpause record, pause it when my favorite part was over. Play it again and make a loop. Put the tape and the play, put another sister's, my sister's Teddy Rexman tape, put it in there.
9:43Do the same thing record over it. Now press play on my loop for three minutes and wrap over it. Take the Teddy Rexman tape with my newly formed song over loop stereo loops. Put it in Teddy Rexman, press play and make Teddy Rexman wrap. So my mom was like, you did that boy. I'm like, yeah, my look. She was like, you should take that to class for show and tell. They were like, wow, William. At that point in time, I was William. Wow, William, that's really cool. You did that. Yeah, I did that. The song was whatever for a 10 -year -old.
10:26So you graduate sixth grade at 12. So from 10, 11, 12, it was clearer that my elementary school, I had like a different level of creativity. So when I went to junior high school, it was clear what my superpower was. I was creative and I wanted to express myself in that realm. Were you confident, however you define that? I guess what I mean by confident is like securing oneself and confident in their abilities and social.
11:22Review. Well, how do you say these difficult times? Pray for your true love and your victory? Yeah, I do. Of course you feel like age. And thoughts about my students because my task is to see why I'm good at school. through the cupboards and give canned foods and box foods from a homework assignment tomorrow. She's like, well, you ain't going to school with no food. Like mom, but I'm gonna fail the class. I'm gonna get a fail on my grade. I have to turn this in. Well, I guess you're gonna get a fail because you ain't leaving this house with no food. So I go to school empty handed. I don't complete this assignment.
12:01Then I see the rich white kids coming up the corridor. I'm like, hey, what's up, brant? What up, brad, what you guys doing here? Yeah, we came here to bring the food to the poor family. I'm like, oh, really? So I start walking with them. And we go to my house. Make way that food for us. We qualified and the school gave us that food. And that's when I realized we were poor. So I go back to school and they made fun of me for a couple of days. William, he's, William's poor. We dropped the food off in his house. This one girl comes up to me. She's like, William, are you poor? How can you be poor if you always were suits to school?
12:48Because my mom needs to make us wear suits. So it wasn't like a uniform school. It was like dressed the way you want to dress. But my mom put me in suits every day. And so the kids were like, why do you always wear suits to school? How could you be poor? And my mom would say, you ain't going to school with no play clothes. You ain't going to school to play. You want to school to learn. So you put on these. Like you go to church to learn about God. You're going to church to learn about life. And so put this suit on. So although there were like four or five people that were saying I was the poor kid that got the food.
13:25But then the rest of the kids were like, no, William's not poor. Look, if you always wear suits to school, you guys are lying. That became my cloth to express yourself. Because that drape, that attire separated me from the gang, separated me from your poor, you're not, you're part of the have -nots. And expression just wanted to express, sometimes my mom used to say, well, what are you doing? Nothing, get your butt over here. What's wrong, mom? What did I say about saying the word nothing? Even if you sit in there breathing, say I'm breathing, or you're thinking about something, you don't got no business saying you doing nothing.
14:09So we would have to say what we were doing. We couldn't say nothing. Because you're never doing nothing. Even if you're breathing, even if you're heart speeding, whatever you're thinking of. What you're thinking about, nothing, well, you need to be start thinking about something. We could, she didn't settle for that. So let's talk about creativity then, because this is what you're really, I mean, this is one of the many things you're really, really known for. So is it possible to become more creative? And how does that happen? Okay, let's say it's 1983. Yeah. Let's go to the past now. I was minus nine.
14:47Or if you're 1993. Okay, I was one. If you're in 1993 in your musician, the way to be more creative is to look at prints. Look at prints. Because prints was like the ultimate creative force. And the way prints became creative, is he looked at Stevie Wonder. He's like, wait, he plays the keyboards, the drums, the bass, he writes the songs. Okay, and Stevie Wonder was ultra creative because he looked at Marvin Gaye. He looked at Ray Charles, but looking from a different perspective, obviously because Stevie Wonder can't see. But he felt he was inspired by, he was motivated by. So if you want to be creative, more creative, you have to want compete.
15:42You have to be super analytical on yourself and who you're competing against. You have to be elevated. You have to take yourself more, you are now and position yourself and see the terrain. You have to be curious, humble, and a predator all at the same time. If you do all those things, to be ultra hyper creative. You have to be humble to where you walk in the room and you attract, because nobody wants to freaking sin perspectives to a dick, to a arrogant ass. At some point in time, if you're too arrogant, people stop sinning your information. People don't, they want to see you, they want you to fail.
16:34And they start sinning your information for you to fail when you're arrogant. So you gotta get rid of that, be humble. You have to be a predator, you have to walk into a room, ready to eat.
16:51But you can't eat everything. Because then you have to be selective on what you eat. What about hard work? Hard work, hard work is relative because to some, well this is not hard work, this is just what I do. My pinky to my lung, my pinky thinks my lung is working hard. Because I have to tell my pinky when to move my mind. My mind ain't have, has no control over my lungs. My lungs are working involuntarily. If I tell my lungs to stop, I could do that. But then it's gonna kick in on its owner. My heart's even more involuntary. I can't will, like, okay, stop, stop now. You've been beaten for 48 years.
17:40I mean, you need to take a break. It's what it does. You cannot, yeah, you can meditate, you can slow your heart rate down, but you can't make it stop, bro. So hard work is relative to what's organ or who or what environment you're working in. And then there's tools. What tools do you need to be hyper creative? You need to humble heart, you need to fierce, competitive predator type of vibe as well. You have to be disciplined because you can't eat everything. You have to be elevated, you have to see everything. And you have to be magnetic, you have to attract everything. What about failure and then also the goals of creativity?
18:24Because I think the two things are kind of linked. So fear failure and then what is the goal of creativity? Because if I set myself, I've just started learning to DJ about a year ago, and if my goal is to become the biggest DJ in the world, that might make me fearful. It's a huge mountain to climb, and that might make me scared of failure, so I might not start. But real creatives seem to, from what I've observed, they don't seem to really give much of a fuck about the outcome as much as other people do. And so what is the right goal for creativity and how does what role does fear and failure play in being a good creative?
18:58The reason why you're fearful is because you're worried about what people think. It's true. And if you're worried about what people think, then maybe true creative is not what you are. You just got the costume of creative on. Because creativity, when you're creating, and it's like a rinse, whether the rinse a sponge absorbs, and eventually you got to rinse it out, so it can absorb more. Do you think a sponge is like, Oh man, I don't want people to judge how I'm rinsing myself out or I'm gonna make a mess. You say a sponge ain't thinking about that. People are like, are you talking about sponge ball?
19:41Will, like no, bro, I'm talking about just like the metaphor of absorbing and rinsing, or let's say vomiting. It's powerful. You can't control it. And that's creativity. And some people would be like, yeah, that's right. Will, the stuff you make is like vomit. You make me, no. If that's what you think, I don't care. I have to let it out. It's like shitting. Now, people could say, yeah, will I am? Your shit is like shit. But I'm gonna ask you, which farmer does not need manure to grow and cultivate? You need it. You cannot farm without it. You can't grow anything without it. It's like cycles of life and creativity is that.
20:34The more, the more when you start worried about people's opinion, then you definitely by default are not a creative. You're doing it for the wrong reasons. What is the right reasons? To let it out, to rinse yourself. It's like you absorb your rins. Nothing you've said is about the impact it then has on the world or others. Well, no, that's a different tool. Right. And then once you, once you really, once you master it like I absorbed irons and that becomes therapeutic and you see and how that helps you, then you're like, wow, wait, if it's helping me, well, then I can be strategic and I could do something to help others.
21:21First, it has to help you. You make sense of the world and whatever it is you're doing, whether you're painting, you're cooking, you're teaching, you're tutoring, you're making songs, you're making dance, you're writing films, you're doing journals, whatever it is you're doing, you would have absorbed the world and rinsed and contributed in some way that brings progress to yourself and others. Relationships. What role do you think? Because I didn't get into relationships and I was like really into like 28. Again, I thought it was a hindrance on my chances of professional success and then at some point I felt lonely.
22:02I didn't know what loneliness really was but I just could feel something. What's the point? You know? When you have this mission, I'm a mission driven. I'm like, what are we trying to accomplish? What am I trying to accomplish? Ten years from now. It's about five year plan, it's my 10 year plan. How did I do my last five year tenure? And if there's someone that can help you, that you could relate to, to help you ship this vision from the, in your mind, to the future. I have a different understanding of relationship. It's like because you want to relate with someone that you could ship things with.
22:58Whether you're shipping in a PCU to the future, or you're shipping a PCU to the future. And if you could relate to that person and help you on your journey, that's awesome. It all depends on what you're shipping. What's it like to be in your head? I know that's hard because you've never been in someone else's but you know, you probably figure it out from conversations that you think in a different way. Yeah, so thinking a lot, I think a lot. I'm always thinking. Not about nothing. I'm always thinking about something. Like, it's very rare that I'm just sitting around like, oh wow, look at that chandelier.
23:43I'm thinking like, I wonder how they made, I wonder how much that way, what am I true, is that? Like, I'm always thinking and analyzing everything. I'm like a scanner every time, every moment. And that can be overbearing to someone during the relationship. That could close them up. That can like, wait, wait, that's not good. That's not healthy. And I realized that took a long time for me to realize that where I got to turn that off. I didn't know there was an off switch. Is that one? No, there's not an off switch. It's going to start. But there is like a volume knob. Volume knob, okay.
24:38But I don't know how to not, like, wait, that, say that again. I don't know how to just take, especially with somebody you're in a relationship with. I don't know how to take like, oh, we're just, we're just at the beach the whole time. You don't want to go down to explore to see how deep this ocean is. You just want to chill here on the beach. Like, yo, listen, let's go down to the, let's go to try to find the crevices. Let's go down deep, deep, deep, deep. And they're saying, no, let's just some babe. It's just stay on the beach. And that's cool. If I'm not a beach guy, I'm a deep diver. I'm a freaking, I like the abyss.
25:29I like to be like, yo, look what in the what? Look at that. I like that. I like to freaking explore. I like to research. I like to explain my good way. This doesn't make any sense at all. Let's try to make sense of it all. Let's try to make sense of it. Like, I like that. I love that. You have ADHD, right? You've referred to it as the gift of ADHD. It's funny because I'm trying to figure out your relationship with stillness and silence. Doesn't seem, I mean, from what you've said, we're assuming that an electron and a proton and a neutron all have the same tasks and goals. So the electron that I am, the concept of stillness and silence, is you have no purpose.
26:21Because the whole purpose of an electron is to do that. It's a cost to that. That seems exhausting. Cost to that, if you're coming from the perspective of the proton looking at the electron, whizz around it. But you got to know who you are in the equation. I'm the electron. That's cool. You kick it there, neutron state. It's cool. You still. But the proton has something the electron doesn't have. And the proton, and the electron has something the protein doesn't. Protein doesn't have. But they're not supposed to do the same thing. And they both have costs and like, they have a good, like a light side and a dot, or a cost and a gift.
26:55Do they? So I think of like, I've been, I'm, I would say, I'm more whizzing around electron generally. So I'm just playing devil's advocate here because when I've, when I've come into my girlfriend's proton world where things maybe are a little bit stiller, there has been gifts to that. There's been gifts to that. And I hear everything you're saying about to be in a relationship. You need to be able to lay on the beach. I can't lay on the beach. But I know that's what my girlfriend wants of me. She wants me to be present with her and not to think about the future and to think about where we are right now.
27:24Yeah, but there's a way to do it from an electron perspective.
27:30It's to really look at the word relationship and relate. Even though you can't relate, you have to have empathy, understanding of what their contribution is and support. And, and be there. So from the perspective of the electron, it is still for the electron. You think the electron's like, man, I'm tired. I'm tired of, of wasn't around you the whole time. That's not what, what's going on in the electron's mind. To the electron, I'm still and I am still going around. It's all the perspective of the word still. There's still and then there's constant still. Which still are you? Are you the one that's still and you're just like steel, STE EL and you're steel?
28:29Or are you still? And that is still moving. Still at, no matter how you look at it, it's still still. Because from the perspective and the empathy of the electron moving, it is still. From the POV of what it, who's viewing it, it's moving. But to the electron, I am still and I will still be moving and gravitating around you. And I could still think and add to your life as I do the things that I do to add to life. But the moment you stop doing what you're doing, then it's no longer a relationship. Because they can't relate to what you're doing and what you're adding. And now you're conforming and changing.
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29:20When maybe that's not what you're supposed to do. Or maybe you weren't candid and forthcoming enough to make true understanding, to stand under the circumference and know the ledge of what it is you do together. You speak of almost like a recent epiphany when you say like realizing that there was this off button, even though you don't think the off -bent's necessarily there. Where did you sit now with the concept of finding a life partner and getting married and having kids and all that stuff? Is there work to be done? Is it finding the right person or is it an inward piece of work that needs to be done in your view?
30:01And is it something you want? I want to have kids. I'm going to be an awesome dad. If you were to ask me this 10 years ago, I would have a different answer. Really? Why is it changed? And what is it now? What was it then? That you don't do a family until you completed the ultimate. What my version of ultimate? My version of ultimate is to be able to be of assistance and help and provide and service folks that resemble the lifestyle that I lived, the hardships that I lived without having to ever raise money ever again. Ten years ago? Yeah, yeah. What I know now? I would have had a kid. You would have had a kid 10 years ago?
31:03If I'd know what I know now, yes. Why? I was moving too fast and I thought the only way to get up the mountain is to move the way I moved when I was at the foot hill to get to the middle of the mountain. And now that I'm up the mountain, you're thinking that I'm doing, I'm going to do it by myself still.
31:28And the purpose of me getting up the mountain was to take care of my mom. That was my motivation. That was my gas. That was my electricity. That was my energy. As to take care of my family, hunter gatherer to go out and bring back to the village. I didn't know what I didn't know then. Now that I know what I'd be able to get up to mountain with family and offspring to take the information that I have and pass it on. I have knowledge here. I have knowledge of my DNA. Who do I pass it to?
32:07If something were to happen to me. It's like different type of knowledge that you just don't say to someone. It's in me. It stored it to me. Somebody gave me this. Your mom. And my grandma. And my grandma's grandma. And my grandma was grandma. That person had a different life. A grandma was born in 1920. My grandma's grandma was born in 18 something. That means that happened. Wow. That person was working in the field and somebody's factory and some unknown company. But in America, just called it slavery. That wasn't that long ago. So, but that information was passed on to me, passed on to me, resilience, tolerance, hope, living in a different world.
32:56So your offspring can have a different life. I'm a recipient of that. But when you're hustling and bustling, you think that, oh, no, I got to wait to the ultimate. Was I wrong? Now that I could look back at my, he was wrong. But I was right, but still wrong. Would I be a, would I be further along in my journey? A little bit more organized? Yes. Why? Because something would have forced me to be organized. It's not just for myself now. Even though it was never for myself, it was always for my mom and my family. I would have had even more regiment. I would have had even more streamlined aerodynamics so that could, you know, cut through corners.
33:57And make tight returns, keep the downwinds. It would be a little bit more aerodynamic. So, yeah, nothing will stop you if you have kids probably just going to motivate you more, but I couldn't see that back then. But I'm going to be an awesome dad when I'm a dad. But I want to be a full -time dad. And I realize that I don't have to be the the the the the the juggler anymore. Before I had to do it all because the one really believed. And so I always had to prove I had to like be the creative understand business, sit in the business meetings, co -manage, come up with the artwork, execute the artwork, learn Illustrator, learn Photoshop, do the album artwork, hand it off to somebody else to fine tune what you sketched up, plan the tour with your manate.
35:05Like I had to do it all, but probably because a part of me didn't trust that someone cared as much as I cared. But now, I don't have to do it like that anymore. I've got to a point where now I could assemble teams and fun teams. Now, I'm the finance here. I don't have to worry about somebody's financing me. That's a different that's like that's an exhale. And so, but that exhale, when I'm a dad, I could be a I could be a full -time dad as my understanding of full -time, which I'll still be I'll still be working. Just not working the way I'm working now. I don't know I don't I don't want to work the way I used to work.
35:59Not anymore. Not anymore. I was a proton for the planet and then just going around the planet. The longest I've been home since 1998 was all of the majority of 2002 and then the majority of 2020, like everyone else. Outside of those two years, the longest that I've been in one place. It's been two months since 1998. I've got to go over two months, so you later be back two weeks. I've got to go and I've been doing that since I don't want to do that anymore. So, you're speaking to a change perspective and I'm wondering because for me in my life, there had to be a symptom. There had to be something I noticed where I go, do you know what?
36:57I'm doing something not right here. So, for me, I talked about it being that kind of almost this feeling of loneliness that I didn't realize was the feeling of loneliness. It was this emptiness in my chest. When you go to the office seven days a week and then you look at your phone and go, who are my friends? Who is my partner? Like, tuning out of survival mode, tuning out of that, and tuning into thrive. How do I thrive as a human being is what made me shift. So, really, I'm curious about the symptoms that you noticed in your life that made you go, I don't want to do that anymore. I never had that.
37:28Really? What do you explain? No. I had my best friends that I grew up with and we lived our dream to the highest level. Imaginable. Kids that were broke. Apple, my best friend who came from the Philippines, who I started black, I peed with. He comes from a province in the Philippines where he pumped water out the ground. He washes clothes on the riverbed. He farmed rice with his pet bison. He did, he experienced a different level of poverty. Taboo, single mom, his dad was in the gangs. And we started the black eyed peas and we lived the what? Wait, how do we do this guys? No one believed in us?
38:20Now we're playing Super Bowl's World Cups, multiple Grammys, taking care of our families. No bro, like this is the biggest blessing. One could imagine loneliness. How can I be lonely? I'm with my best friends. So why change? Because I live 10 years from now. I've always seen 10 years from now. Always. I don't know what it was, but when I was 13, I'm like, wow, I'm gonna buy you a house. How do I want to buy my mom house? Little off, I was 26. I wanted to do it. Why, I still did it. Then 10 years from there, I was like, my, how about everyone else in the, we still, the hour ants or uncles or my grandma were still in the projects.
39:14We're still going back to the projects on holidays. We need to do a whole accident. We're like, that's what you want to do. So we moved everybody out. And when I got everyone else out, I'm like, well, I got to go back to the neighborhood because there's people that we grew up with. And they have kids now. Start a robotics program there. Start a computer science program there so that when they, and a college prep program so that when they graduate college, they have skills that are needed. Not just same kids to college, so that when they graduate, they have debt and a diploma. So we did that. And there's purpose.
39:53So I want to be purposeful. So if I could see 10 years from now, okay, at some point in time, my 10 year looking around the corner, one day I'll be 70, one day I'll be Tom Jones, age, I'll be 80. And what I just stop. I don't pass it on. That's what happens here. No, that's not responsible. You know, that's not responsible thing to do. So you got to pass on knowledge. You got to pass on gifts. For me, it's a gift. The little kid on the bike. You know, have good intentions. I want to, it's all for the good.
40:56And I want to, I want to pass it on. You said you're living 10 years in the future or five years in the future. There must be a cost to that. When people talk, you know, spiritual people talk about what pieces and happiness is, they talk about presence. You strike me as someone from what you've said, that is my struggle with the concept of being present when you're five years in the future. And this kind of leads into a point where people talk about the tortured creative. That is like very, you know, cognitively active. How does, how does one square being a creative, that's living five years in the future with peace, happiness, presence, and calm.
41:36And what's your story in that regard? Like I said, we're assuming that proton, a neutron, an electron all should have the same role to make an atom. And actuality, they all have different roles. And the moment an electron acts like a proton, then an atom's not an atom anymore. So I got out of my predicament because I didn't live in my current reality. Had I lived in my current reality, I would still be in my reality that was constructed for me. So I had to live in this realm that was dreamt of. And my whole premise was to manifest that dream with strategy. So I had to, I had to live as if it was real.
42:37I had to live I already moved my mom out the projects. I had to live like this gang doesn't want me. I'm no use for this gang. Why even get initiated and be and live that gang life. Let me just keep wearing these suits because these suits that my mom made me as my attire for the world that I'm going to be living in. You have to live, if you live in some place that you know that you don't belong, you know you don't belong there. Why are you stuck in that? So in my mind, I have to have always been that way. Unfortunately, I can't change how my makeup is. So I'm constantly, if it got me out of that, it's going to get me out of this.
43:24And where we are right now, my native people that live in communities that reflect where I come from are still in some version of that. So in 2008, I started my foundation, started with 65 students. And my gut was like, yo, let me surround them with robotics and computer science skill sets. So I went out in the world, absorbed these skillsets, these tools, Jack Dangerman from Ezri, Matt Dean Kamin from Deca and first robotics, Matt Lorraine Powell jobs from College Track. My vision was to take these three independent entities to take them together to make a cluster, to give a new type of project based learning to kids.
44:1065 kids. That's 65 kids from 2008 to now. Now we serve almost 15 ,000 students in Los Angeles. We've sent kids to Dartmouth to Brown to Stanford to Georgetown. Because in 2008, I was living right now. I knew that because the way technology was going, that kids in the inner cities are going to be super conflicted with the way the world's going and the amount of jobs that are going to disappear. I thought I was just going to be like blue collar jobs. I think it's going to be white collar jobs. I don't think kids in the suburbs were going to be impacted by this new digital age. We've seen the last one, but this generative stuff?
45:03Yo, bro. Thank God we were doing what we're doing. Amazing engineers out of the inner cities of LA. Now we want to scale that. So 2030, yeah, I'm living there right now because it's still work to do. I was listening to one of your songs before you arrived here. It was very curious. What's wrong with my hands? Man, that's just lyrical. I think this one was called Be Nice. Oh, yeah, it's called Be Nice. When I started thinking looking into the song, looking about what you'd said around that song, you said, I was on a dip in the low part of a roller coaster. And you wrote that song because it helped you to change your vibration, but also to help other people change their vibrations.
45:56The dip on the low part of a roller coaster. What are the things in your life that have caused that dip in the low part of the roller coaster? I think men, but particularly black men, we don't always talk about our mental health or the dip in the low part of the roller coaster. So I was super. I thought it was wonderful that you made a song about that, but also you were speaking so openly about that. I was reflected on my 1993 18 year old. So that path was the hardest path that I've been my life. 18. 18 was the hardest because it was 30 years ago. This time, 30 years ago, it was March when I had I go.
46:50It was March of 1993 when I felt something that I've never felt before. Just like the distortion, I felt that's the perfect word for it. DisEs. And diseas vibrationally is diseas, like a disease on a vibrational level. Like the word disease, there's really diseas of molecular cellular where you're vibrating.
47:35There's no harmony or sense of your vibration in the field. I'm going to know how you look at it. And in this case, you have a vibration in thought. And I was vibrating off. And when you're vibrating off, you're dark. You're vibrating off, you panic, angst, your hyper -attention, your hyper activity is off tilt. And so from March till about August was a very, very, very turbulent time for me when I was 18. And there's nothing wrong with being emotional. And when you're creative, you're always sensitive, like you're hyper -sensitive. That's a part of creativity. Like you feel too much. And I feel too much.
48:31I empathize, hardcore. I'm the guy in the elevator that talks to strangers. I'm the guy that's like, I was walking down the street, came out of Tesco, so I was like, well, I am. I'm like, hey, what's up? I don't mean to bug you. Am I as cool? Straight up conversation for like 30 minutes with random strangers. I like that because I don't, I don't ever want to ignore folks that I could shed light on or they could shed light to me. You never know with little nuggets that you give or receive.
49:14So that song, that lyric was just remembering, reminding myself of like what that period was like for me. It was a very, very like coming of age. And I didn't have a man in my life, a father in my life to guide me through that. My mom did that, which probably made me even ultra feminine, which is no, I don't shame of being super feminine. You know, I remember in the 90s, we don't have the support in the LGBT community like now that we did them. So growing up in the 90s, we're like, are you gay? Like a lot of people question if I was, because I was feminine. I'm still feminine. I sit the way I sit, I act the way I act, my mannerisms or my moms.
50:13But it was a, it was a very, and I'm strong with my, my femininity. I think it's a superpower. But that, when you know who you are, when you, when you love who you are, how you are, how you vibe. That's what it's about. I like girls. Never was attracted to men. I'm attracted to females. But I'm feminine. Well, of course that chapter in your life. Do you know what? That, that, that dark chapter in your life was there a clear cause of distortion is a better word. Distortion that chapter in your life where you had distortion. What weed weed. Okay. Yeah, it was the, it's chemicals. You said shame and guilt as well.
51:06You said use those words. Yeah, I was shameful because I did something that I knew hurt my mom. Right. You know, like you were smoking and at her head hanging low, like, did I do a, what is my son out there doing? You know, but trouble is he getting into what is it going to lead to? I saw her panic. I felt her panic. I felt her worry. I felt her concern. Do you still, do you still have, have you had moments of distortion since? It's usually when you make errors, you hurt people indirectly, clumsily irresponsible. When you, when you let people down that you love, when I let people down that I love, I distort.
51:56Is distortion different from depression and your definition? Is there a difference? Oh, yeah, big difference. Distortion leads to depression.
52:09Like, let's take this water, right? And this metal cup. If I fill it up to the top, and I don't move this table, the water is still. No matter how I fill it up, it could be straight to the top. If you don't interrupt the table, the water is not going to spill. Distortion is when I start to shake the table. And if I shake the table fast enough, it could shatter the glass. It could crack it. If I shake this at the right frequency, that doesn't disrupt the table, but can mess up the object. Shattering the glass or obstructing with the form of this is depression. Shaking the table, causing it to spill is distortion.
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53:43We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors. Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future -proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to NetSuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. That's NetSuite .com slash Bartlett. Have you experienced anxiety before? A lot of creative speak to anxiety. And when you're thinking about that, it's shaking table. It made me feel like it gave me that thing that I could liken it to was anxiety.
54:18Unfortunately, it comes with the territory of futurist futurism. You are experiencing something that hasn't happened yet. Because your imagination has already created plausible, like, realistic scenarios. And you're already filling the emotion. So that unfortunately comes with the territory of having a hyper -imagination and living over there. Doesn't that mean that you live in anxiety then? No. If you live in the future. Because once you're aware of that, then you know that's what it is. It's like the difference between the shower and the rain. People run in the rain and stand in the shower. It's a difference between bikinis and draws.
55:22People go to the beach when nothing on, but get afraid when you see them in their underwear. Expectations, right? It's expectations. It's like once you're aware of you getting wet, you ain't tripping. Once you're aware that you're going to the beach with nothing on, you're not tripping. So once I'm aware that I'm thinking over there, I don't have to have emotions there. So the moment I start having emotion for future casting, then I'm doing it wrong. The anxiety comes when it's things that are happening that you didn't control. And you're now having emotions because your imagination is now thinking of the outcomes of things that are out of your control.
56:13Now when you're future casting and you're seeing stuff, you are controlling looking around the corner. I am purposely looking there and then putting my imagination to work on thinking, what do I have to do now? Strategically, between now 510. FYI, FYI is Will's brand new app, which is launched now. And the whole purpose of FYI is to help create organized cloud -breaking and communicate in one place rather than having all of these different communication channels and digital assets spread across all of these different products that we might use today. I had this problem last night. I was on Monday over here to do list over here.
56:47I want Google Clouds over here, Google Sheets here. And when I opened up FYI this morning, I can see from where we're on the roadmap looking into the future, having all of that in one space, with AI as kind of the agent to power a lot of the knowledge work, I guess, is a really special combination. FYI is now available on the app store. I got it this morning. Everybody should go and check it out. And I'm really excited if you're starting here, what the roadmap looks forward for the future, because I can see the mission. So FYI .AI is like, we're at 1 .0. 4 .0? Do you understand how awesome of a platform FYI is going to be?
57:26It's also equipped with elliptical curve cryptography methodologies, because during COVID, NFTs and blockchain told us that protect your assets. And here's a key. But why is it the same type of key architecture and product structure? I commit not for my data on messengers. Why am I not giving a key to our own my digital assets when my digital assets are the data itself? Why is it just for NFTs and crypto? So on FYI, yes, there's messengers that are encrypted into in, but where's the key? If you're not issued a key, that the company itself doesn't have. We ensure that your data and your stuff is your stuff.
58:15What is yours is yours. How you speak is how you speak. And when it comes to AI and mimic machines, none of us own our face and none of us own our voice. I own the publishing to my songs. You could copyright and you could create NDAs to protect your IP. But when it comes to you, every human being walking in the age of AI, who owns our essence and our likeness? Then why aren't we talking about that enough? The Drake AI's, yeah, it was a buzz and it's still going to continue to buzz. But shouldn't Drake own his likeness and his essence? Why is that legal? Why is it legal that Biggie Smalls is wrapping a two -pock first that was actually about him?
59:06Why? I can't take a Nike swoosh. Nike owns a swoosh, but I don't own my face and my voice. Beyonce don't own her face and her voice, but Adidas own stripes. Something's not right for people. So as FYI grows, that encryption key, 1 .0 versus 5 .0, the vision that we have, what we want to go, how we need the community to help us get there, I want to build the People's Tool. I want to build the company that where people own their data. 100 % of it. I am not my identity to my driver's license and my social security number and my passport. I'm my data, I'm my searches, I am my freaking spell check, I am my voice, I am my facial unlocked with the machine.
59:56I am all that stuff. I'm my location on my address book. It could predict me, but why can't I have power of that? Why? Why? I could say I want to weigh 194 pounds by November 24th, 2024. I currently weigh 210 pounds. Which app would you like to use? You can't do that right now. There's no aspiration on GPS. And for aspiration on GPS, that means the system has to be mine. Not me have access to a system. I have a record deal because at one point in time, it was expensive to record. Now, recording is ubiquitous. Everybody could do it. So why do I have a record deal? So what is luxury when it comes to what's premium?
1:00:49What's the highest way of creating at some point in time, making films and recording music was the highest level of creating painting for the freaking for the for the for the monarchy or for the church was the highest level of creating. Now you could just do it on your phone, but the highest level of creating right now is build a models. The build models and compute expensive. So tomorrow people are going to be training their own models. It's an unheard of deal right now. We know the folks that are spinning out models of these companies. But soon, compute's going to come down and there's going to be new models that are going to be just as powerful as GPT.
1:01:39Some 15 year old right now is dreaming right now. When they're 25, that person is going to have his own model and his own company. And it's going to be morally sound for people in the communities because greed, not saying that the models right now are greedy. I'm not saying that, but watch what happens in 2023. We're going to be driven by love because the concept that we had and they're baking it off of with Terminator, that's not sustainable. That's not. That's fear. And if you're going to base it off of movies, then go Star Wars. Not Terminator. Star Wars. There's multiple models. There's multiple robots.
1:02:26They all speak different fucking languages. But there's Jedi's. And Jedi is a different. Yes, there was a dark force. Yes, there was sits, but there's fucking Jedi's. And if this is going to take us to where we are better humans to one another, then fucking bring it because we can't get any worse than we already are with one another. And I'm speaking that as a black person. We've seen what people can do to people. It can't get any more worse. So bring it. The optimism, bring it. Let's be better people. Let's love better. Let's empathize better. Let's freaking serve better. Let's care better. Right?
1:03:07Let's use the tool for that. Because if we're mimicking, that's what they're fearful of. People are fearful of what people do. Yeah. People are gripped by AI at the moment. They're terrified. They are excited. Where'd you sit? And if you're talking to those kids in the inner city about AI and what they need to know about it, what would you be saying? If I go to the inner city, I'm telling kids, hey, our whole entire life has been set up for us to fail. Our investment for education is, they undermined it our investment to where other neighborhoods are getting a bigger investment for education than us.
1:03:57The way they've zoned our communities, we have liquor stores next to check cashing, next to bad food, next to bad food. Our teachers are not being invested in to teach us the things that we need to learn. We have no financial literacy. So when we get our checks, we cash our checks, and then we spend it on bad stuff. Our understanding of money is to spend it to pay bills. We're not even taught to grow it. We've been set up to fail. AI didn't do that. People did that. Now, here's a tool for us to solve our problems ourselves now. Grab it while you can and we are now our own Calvary. Right? Because the people that are afraid are not the people here.
1:04:51We've already went through the worst and survived the worst conditions of life. Are these folks afraid? Oh, the ones that are responsible for our zoning, got it. Okay, cool. Now, let's build a better world. Let's educate ourselves with this tool. Let's understand that it is a tool. Let's understand that there's these biases there. Let's try to solve those biases. So that what is the ultimate dream? My ultimate dream is like, wow, we all know this wave. We see it coming. It could be good. Or it could be bad. It's going to be good when we're mindful of what our contributions are to prepare people for this wave.
1:05:38We have to prepare folks and we got to do information, inspiration, preparation, motivation and mentorship so that they can activate their creativity to unearth tomorrow's industries because this wave has got a topple. Yesterday's industry is today's industries. If you're a lawyer and you work at a law firm and you do redlining on contracts, that's not what you're doing in 2030. If you're at a accountant and you're counting, counting beans and penny pinching, that's not what you're doing in 2030. If you're a cashier at a retail, you're probably not doing that 2030. If you're a bus driver, Uber driver, a taxi driver, that's not what you're doing in 2030.
1:06:38Because you're seeing the construct of what tomorrow is now. You're dealing with machines that could go and pivot from subject to subject, go deep to subjects in ways that people can't. Writing songs, making pictures, mid -journeys, freaking crazy. It's the most amazing tool that ever like you, mid -journeys nuts. People that don't know mid -journeys a tool that uses text to create generative images of whatever you type in in seconds. So if you're a marketer, if you're like an artist that works for a brand, if you're an agency that works for brands, this technology is going to give super creatives agency.
1:07:24So why do they need agencies? Just the vast transformation and for hyper creatives that now they just need a new tool to help them like, oh, and just birth stuff, it's a new renaissance. The ultimate. It's the ultimate dream if you're preparing a section of the world whose problems have always been ignored to now go out and solve those problems with this tool. Are you using this tool to make songs? You know it's going to make better songs than you. It's Pac -Man right now. We are in freaking Super Mario Brothers. We even got the Call of Duty yet. This thing's going to make better songs than you Super.
1:08:21The song's out already. I've just talked about that in this podcast before that Drake song with the - No, but the Drake song still requires somebody to sing it. And then they layer a plugin over it to make it sound like Drake. Oh, I heard a song that didn't, I heard, yo, this new tech. It's out of here, but more importantly, I saw it in 2010. And my mind's I was like, oh, no, no, no, if I'm in this computer, that means it's computer. Wait, what? If I'm in the computer, making music, I'm not, I'm not a musician like Prince or Freaking Stevie Wonder, I make music because I can make the computer make music.
1:09:04And with machine learning, that means eventually the computer is going to remember how I made it to make music. And eventually just make it itself. Maybe even publish it itself. Maybe even not even tell you. No, no, no, no, no, like, say if you're making something on Adobe, you're also making Adobe smarter at creating records. So, you know, why does - why does Adobe eventually need the person hitting the buttons or with the ideas when it can learn from a million of those? And then it can also track the outcome. Does that become a smash hit? And it's going okay. So when they did this to me, you know, I mean, the film Oppenheimer's into cinema shortly.
1:09:45And the Oppenheimer was the guy who was in the World War was told to go out to make the nuclear bomb. And that is almost what I'm scared about in this current AI race where China or Russia or another country versus the US, they're all in a race to create the most powerful artificial intelligence system, but also to use it for the defensive purposes, but also attacking purposes, offensive purposes. And when an intelligence is 100 times smarter than the smartest human, that world is the world where I go. Do we realize what we're getting ourselves into? Is this another Oppenheimer moment where we create something that has the capabilities to destroy humanity?
1:10:26That's what I haven't figured out yet. But for everything that we create, a hammer, we don't make hammers. A hammer can kill how many, you know, a screwdriver, a vehicle, an airplane, electricity, lights, everything that we advance. The first caveman that found a freaking flame on a branch, imagine all the folks at some point in time when they first had a branch with flame on it, they're like, you can burn the village down. And some villages burn down. Burn down. Because that was the capacity of that weapon. The capacity of this weapon is it can think for itself and take down civilization. And that's the difference is like going from the hammer, which can probably take a couple people out, can't think for itself.
1:11:14And then you go right up to artificial intelligence where it has a propensity to be smarter than all of us. And, you know, if programmed with malicious intent, I like your optimism. Yeah, but at the same time, like, who's responsible for the people that are living in villages in Africa that are clearly living under an abundance of resources, but can't benefit from those, but is that AI? Did that? No, humans humans at that. So what you're saying is that it's not the AI that you're afraid of. 100 % yes, it's people. The people. It's the people. So maybe AI is to push us to love because we can't out logic logic.
1:12:00If will I am has it, that's what will happen. If Putin has it, I'm not sure.
1:12:07Like a hammer. Like if you would create something dope with a hammer, Putin might hit me with it. I would create something like MC Hammer. Yeah, exactly. Can't touch this. But yeah, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the person that's left this question for you, I think you know them. The question is, what would be your superpower if you were if you could be a superhero and why it feels quite so many ask me that. Yeah, I'll say it's recent aura. Oh, Rita, or that's she's my favorite.
1:12:43I love Rita, but she didn't know it was for you. Get the freak out. She just writes it in the book. I don't tell her who's coming next. Oh, wow. So usually I don't tell people who's written it, but I figured you might know her. So yeah, I've worked with her many years and recorded songs that we never released. But yeah, I love Rita. She was up there yesterday. She's awesome. It's going to sound super like cheesy or corny. I would be particle man. My superpower will be I could I can influence particles to vibrate harmoniously. Because that's the concept of love. It's when everything's vibrating harmoniously.
1:13:37And there's, uh, it'll be the ultimate superpower. Are you vibrating harmoniously right now in life and life at the moment? No.
1:13:55Because I feel too much. And when you feel it affects your vibration. And then it takes a while to make sense of what you're absorbing. You rinse out and you repeat. But in that process of absorb rinse repeat. You learn more about environments that you're in, people that you're around. And your curiosity, my curiosity, um, and search for knowledge. Like, why did I go to SIRN? I'm going to go next in two weeks. And then they send me emails all the time. Hey, Will, we're here. You're going to be in Geneva. You want to come down to SIRN. I'm just come see our, you know, advancements and learn more.
1:14:55I just like to know as much as possible. And when you, and my pursuit of knowing, um, cause of some distortion. Oh, there's nothing wrong with a little bit, Jimmy Hendrix. There's nothing wrong with a little bit of distortion. You can't just be consumed by it. Sorry, with amplification comes some distortion as you amplify. And to get the word out or to get the vibe out, you know, you just got to be aware of how you're amplified. Um, not turn up too loud or too fast. And that's, you know, double entendres on turn up. Um, but, uh, yeah. So no, I'm not, um, that would be a superpower is, but the name particle man's whack.
1:15:55Particle man. I can't say it. Yeah. So I'm a time. Yeah. But, um, yeah, vibration man. I was, I don't know, vibes man. I don't know. Yeah, um, super vibes. Yeah. Yeah, super vibes on a, on a particle level. That would be like soon as, as soon as a, as soon as a motherfucker wants to, fuck around and do some wild shit. He's like, zapping with some super vibes and change all to the particles because that's where we're all made of that down every molecule, every cell. Um, and if you could, and if you could put consciousness on a particle level, that's a, uh, it's a awesome sauce. Well, thank you.
1:16:42Um, in many respects, you are super vibes because you've created a lot of awesome stuff and you've brought, um, brought people's vibes into harmony. Certainly mine with your, with all that you've created with your art, with your creativity, walking through your studio, your office in Los Angeles was a real trip into a decade's time. It was a glimpse into the future in many respects. I remember looking at some of the stuff you'd created in there, the backpacks. And I remember all of these dope inventions that I saw in that space and to meet you, it kind of makes sense now when you talk about living in the future with that, of course, comes, um, a dish harmony, I think, like, and that's what you've, you've spoken to as well.
1:17:18I think a lot of creatives have that feeling of like, dis -ease. Um, I think it comes with wanting to bring about the future and that impatience that comes with all of that. I really do hope you find the, the personal harmony that you've spoke of, the, the, the next passing it on to somebody. I really do hope you find that because I think I do agree you'd make an absolutely incredible father. Oh, thanks. Because you're so, you're so lucky, you're so built on love, which I think is a real testament to your mother. Thank you. Thank you for being here today. It's a real honor to get to spend some time with you.
1:17:48You're someone that admired greatly for all of the creative reasons I've said, but also just as a human being.
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From the publisher
In this new episode Steven sits down with global superstar Will.i.am.
William James Adams Jr., better known by his stage name, Will.i.am began his music career in 1992 when he was only 17 years old and signed with ‘Ruthless Records’. In 1995, Will.i.am’s group ‘the Black Eyed Peas’ was officially formed and released their debut album in 1998. In 2001, Will.i.am released his debut solo album and 2 years later in 2003, the Black Eyed Peas released their third album, ‘Elephunk’. It was with this album that the band started to receive major global attention. Since then Will.i.am has worked as an activist, director of creative innovation at Intel, fashion designer, actor, and coach on ‘The Voice UK’.
In this conversation Will.i.am and Steven discuss topics, such as:
His childhood in East LA
Never having felt poor before he attended private school
How creativity is his currency
Getting a record deal at 17 years old
Why he is living in 2030
His tips to creativity
Why hard work is actually relative
His thoughts on fatherhood
How he uses music to help solve his problems
His prediction for a future with AI
You can download Will.i.am’s AI-powered messenger app, **‘**FYI’, here: https://bit.ly/3KoTakD
Follow Will.i.am:
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rOB3yk
Twitter: https://bit.ly/44DkrYF
TikTok: https://bit.ly/3rPzOyG
Follow me:
https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo
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