Mac Miller - Music

I am a freelance writer. Sure, there are other names for what people like me do, and the titles I have change from magazine to magazine (editorial contributor, staff writer, unpaid fool) but I basically do the jobs other writers don't have the time to do, so I handle a lot of last instant, messy problems that I am expected to handle with perfection and aplomb. 

Culture Magazine is based on medical cannabis. That is what the magazine is about. If I interview you, we are going to talk about the devil's tobacco. You can say you hate it or love it, but we gotta talk about it. If you were being interviewed by Cannibal Massacre Monthly you'd eventually have to talk about slaughtering people and eating them, even if you were a pop artist, or a truck driver from Pittsburgh. 

Sometimes when you have to interview people you have to talk to Those In Between. These are the people who the artist thinks is helping them, but they are just sort of, well, in between me and the artist. Often times they think they are doing a good job, but they screw up a lot when it comes to my business. Here is why.

My job is to interview an artist and get the best things they have to say about their work, their art, their soul and the world they live in. The more questions I ask, the more time they have to say, the better it gets. Those In Between, though, love to jump in and meddle. They suddenly tell you not to talk about certain topics at the last instant, or they cut the interview short because their artist is actually a masked superhero, and somewhere nearby a 747 is about to crash so it is time for them to stop talking about their careers and jump into a costume and save human lives.

This just makes the artist look lame. Not a lot of people being interviewed are ready to rock right away. You introduce the topic, go back and forth, and eventually there are words, sentences and paragraphs. If all is well, we wrap up the interview within the right amount of time and the artist has been able to talk about everything relevant to making him famous and earning more money.

Those In Between can mess this process up. As I got ready to talk to Mac Miller, suddenly his representative got on the phone and told me that Mac Miller could not talk about cannabis. At all. No mention of it whatsoever. I agreed and talked to the artist. In his defence, the young musician was very friendly and even seemed unhappy about not talking about cannabis. Right when we were about to get to a few other questions, the representative jumped on and said the interview was over. Then they both hung up.

Needless to say, the editor was annoyed. "He didn't talk about cannabis. What are we going to do?" As irate as he was, the editor couldn't blame me. We both knew what happened, and that was the music business. We got screwed, Mac Miller looked odd, and the entire article was in danger. Thankfully, the editor and I found many, many quotes where Mac Miller basically talks about the stuff the way starving men speak of massive deli sandwiches. The relevant quotes were placed at the bottom of the article, and everyone was happy...especially me, since I still got paid. 

The music Mac Miller makes has the seriously cool spirit only the city streets can create. I’m pretty sure that if you lacked a proper electrical source you could keep everything in your refrigerator chilled by plugging it in to Mac Miller’s latest album, Watching Movies with the Sound Off, an audio joy ride full of spine-vibrating bass, dry ice-nice lyrics and the kind of beats that can make driving fast easy.

Born Malcolm James McCormick in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the young hip hop artist released But My Mackin’ Ain’t Easy in 2007 when he was only 15. Early on the tyro signed up with Rostrum Records and released a series of mix tapes that proved that the powerhouse from Penn state had the potential to easily knock down other hip hop heavyweights with stunning grooves and hard-hitting lines that belied his youth and revealed and man who knew how to make music.

On November 8, 2011, Mac Miller unveiled his first LP, Blue Slide Park, a certified gold album that hasn’t stopped being awesome ever since it hit the Internet. His second LP, Watching Movies with the Sound Off, released just a few years later on June 18, 2013, has taken his career to a whole new creative stratosphere.

Culture Magazine was fortunate enough to talk to Mac Miller in between performances about life in the successful lane. When asked about what’s next, though, he keeps it humble. “Well I think it’s about not getting too big too quick. That’s the key. I’m taking things step by step.” The artist has seen a lot of new talent burn out fast, so he doesn’t want to be another sad story. “Everyone wants to go straight from point A to Z, not realizing that everything in between is just as important,” he says.

To Mac Miller, the “everything in between” is life. Older and good at the game, he’s in no hurry to blast through existence when there’s so much to still live. “A lot of people see an artist as a person that’s always happy, always positive, but there are a lot of ups and downs in this world. There are a lot of valleys. Sometimes things aren’t awesome, but you have to go through every step of it.”

He’s proud of the success of his newest LP, although Mac Miller admits he made it mostly to relax from the pressure of creating the first one. “I think this album came to me at a point when I didn’t want to accomplish anything. The first album had to be big. I wanted to really accomplish something,” he says.

Maybe that’s why even the more introspective tracks, like “I Am Who Am (Killin’ Time)” or “Avian” still resound with a relaxed sense of cool. “I did Watching Movies with the Sound Off mostly for fun,” Mac Miller says. “I was just trying to create an album that had more purpose to it than just trying to be successful.”

With the mileage behind him and his future before him, what’s Mac Miller’s advice to anyone trying to make it in the industry? “I would tell them to not listen to anyone. You have to trust yourself, with every decision,” the young man says. “You are going to go through life surrounded by people who are going to tell you things like they really know who you are, but you have to know yourself.”

www.macmillerwebsite.com

Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja - Film

Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja is a 2011 documentary that details the thrilling life and times of the cannabis smugglers operating throughout Miami, Florida during the 1970’s. Amongst the dealers and smugglers featured in the documentary is Robert Platshorn, a.k.a. “Bobby Tuna,” a man responsible for transporting millions of dollars worth of contraband from South America to South Florida using everything from yachts to DC-3’s to do so.

Platshorn and a majority of his business associates were eventually arrested in 1978 during a highly-publicized series of raids as part of a joint FBI/DEA operation that targeted a majority of the smugglers operating throughout South Florida. Demonized by the authorities and media as “The Black Tuna Gang,” Platshorn and the rest of his cohorts were declared to be the most sophisticated organized crime syndicate the government had ever encountered, and were eventually found guilty. He was sentenced to 64 years, the largest amount ever handed down for smuggling cannabis.

28 years later Platshorn was out of prison and author of “The Black Tuna Diaries,” his own enlightening account of the time he spent as a smuggler in South Florida and the subsequent, highly publicized, arrest and trial. He’s also a cannabis legalization advocate, published author, director for NORML and the lead spokesperson for “The Silver Tour,” dedicated to informing older members of the voting public about how cannabis legalization can positively affect them.

After Proposition 19 was voted down in California back in 2010, Platshorn researched the facts to figure out why. “I looked at the exit polls,” he says, “but despite all of the bullshit about how the growers and dispensaries didn’t want it, it didn’t matter, they didn’t vote.” Platshorn noticed that seniors voted 65% against Proposition 19, mostly because of fear or misinformation. “There was only one group talking to seniors and that was the beer lobby in California. They scared seniors by saying there would be stoners and drunks on the road,” he says.

Platshorn’s background in journalism prepared him for the first step, which was equipping his target audience with the facts they needed to know about medicinal cannabis. “Most seniors weren’t really talking about marijuana. They didn’t even know it was good for multiple sclerosis or so much else.” He started his tour out in Florida, but it wasn’t easy. “There wasn’t even a senior community that would let me talk to them. I would call them up and offer to bring a doctor or a nurse, but they just said no.”

After reading about how doctors in Israel had studied the benefits of cannabis to the point that many modern rabbis had declared the plant kosher for people of the Jewish faith, Platshorn approached temples across the state to discuss it. ”Pretty soon I had rabbis all over asking me to talk about my message. Many of the temples I spoke to have a lot of seniors. Those shows cost me $1,500-$2,000 to put on, but we are a 501c3, tax exempt.” 

He’s quick to point out that his work is entirely free of charge. “I’ve never made a penny.” Seniors were also interested in cannabis is because it is an affordable alternative to mainstream pharmaceuticals. “When they found out that they didn’t need Ambien or Lunesta, and that they could smoke cannabis instead, this really surprised them.” The people Platshorn speaks to are also interested in how cannabis can be used to treat other mental disorders. “They are terrified of Alzheimer’s,” he says. “I’ve got a lot of calls from senior communities about that.”

www.mmjconference.com

www.thesilvertour.org

http://www.magpictures.com/squaregrouper/

Pablo Francisco - Comedy

The comedic style of Pablo Francisco is an ever-evolving cavalcade of celebrity impressions, incisive observations and absurd juxtapositions that has entertained incredible amounts of people all over the planet. Francisco’s recent tour across Europe resulted in sold out shows from the famous Troxy in London to Amsterdam’s legendary Milky Way. Before that the star toured Australia and performed at the South African Comedy Festival. While some comics are going places, Francisco has already been there.

In spite of his talent, genius and continuing fame and fortune, the comedian known as Pablo Francisco still stays humble. “This is just a hobby that became a career,” he says. 

“Performing over in Europe is just like performing everywhere else, it’s just that they speak several languages.” More than a decade after making his mark with pitch-perfect renditions of Al Pacino, Arnold Schwarzenegger and even Danny Glover, Francisco admits his success still surprises him. “I still feel like I’m just some YouTube karaoke star that got famous.”

Despite all the success Francisco admits that for a stand-up comic the fear of going up on stage alone with nothing but a mic stand to protect you from a mob of screaming fans demanding nothing but something to laugh at never goes away. “The fear is a good thing. It’s an adrenaline rush,” he says. “I’ve realized that at this point it is always going to feel like I’m going up for the first time, except now I’m eager to go up on stage. I can’t wait to show the audience something new I’ve been working on to impress them.”

Francisco made a name for himself early on by doing pitch-perfect impersonations of famous stars and celebrities. Part of his success is the fact that when someone big does something stupid, he’s there to capitalize because of his ability to sound like the target, whereas other comics are stuck with observational humor. “Believe me; Arnold Schwarzenegger knows how to stay in the news, so I have to keep doing a lot of those voices,” Francisco says.

“Like Justin Bieber. He’s marinating himself like he’s some sort of stud. I love him, he’s a good kid, but when you put something as obviously funny as that in my face I have to make fun of you,” he says. Any good stand-up comic will tell you that the joke usually isn’t funny unless there is a body lying on the floor because it was a target. “I’m a millionaire too, but I’ll make fun of you whether you are Angelina Jolie or Jon Bon Jovi, he says, his voice morphing into an impression of the rock singer. “It doesn’t matter if you make it or not,” he sings.

Francisco is a veteran of television, including his Comedy Central specials “They Put It Out There,” “Bits and Pieces,” and “Ouch,” and has also performed on “Mind of Mencia,” “Mad TV” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” but chances are that very soon he’s going to be the star of his own television show. “I’ve been working on a show with Steve Kramer. It’s a cartoon show. We even met with the producers of ‘The Family Guy.’” For a natural impersonator like Francisco, an animated series that’s as funny as it is controversial would be the logical choice.

Like any comedian, Francisco has thousands of Twitter followers and stays current on Facebook and YouTube. “I make sure there is always some good advice to take home from it. Like, if you want to be a popular at a bar, just pretend to be a little gay,” he says. “Joe Rogan is like that, his podcasts have good information.”

I just don’t understand how some people get way too personal with their own tweets. “There are some people who will follow anyone, like Gary Busey, he says, slipping into another dead-on impersonation. “Hi everyone, here’s a picture of a sandwich. I’m going to eat it. Now I’m eating French Fries,” he says. “It’s like thousands of people across America are going out on a date with him.”

www.pablofrancisco.com