Dah, dah, dah, dah. On this episode, it's 21 questions, baby.

Number one: Describe your Mindset in three words.

Uh, number two: One day, you decide to become a cult leader. What kind of cult would you create?

The cult I would create is a cult I've been creating and that is the troglodyte massive where we run and we're neanderthals, we walk around barefoot and we do what we want to do. Now the cult we are creating is a cult where being yourself is welcomed and you feel like you're part of a family, you're part of something bigger than yourself.

It's something where no one is judged and you come and you meet like-minded people.

And who knows? They could be friends for life.

Three: What is one of your most awkward memories?

I was kissing a girl, but before I kissed the girl, we both drank red wine and I'd never drank it before. And I threw up while kissing her.

And she looked at me like I was a madman, but she kissed me again after, which wasn't nice. But, you know, still, still loving.

Four: What's the worst version of hell you can imagine?

Teletubbies dancing around for an eternity.

Five: What's the best version of heaven you can imagine?

Uh, Bob Marley on some weed and Stevie Wonder playing, "They Won't Go Where I Go" and "Songs are the Key of Life."

Um, six: What's your best piece of dating or relationship advice?

Bloody hell, mate. Dating, nowadays, offer to split the bill. But really pay before you offer.

So it's already done. It's a done deal. Badabing badaboom. Relationship advice: give each other space when needed, cause nobody likes an angry relationship.

Number seven: what is your zombie apocalypse survival philosophy?

Dog eat dog, baby. If someone's holding you back, push them, feed them to the wolves.

You can't, you can’t, you can't be. Listen. Jeez.

You can't be out here, like, just letting someone hold you back. If they’re slow, then you're dead, goodbye.

Number eight: What would be the title of a movie of your life?

Number nine: What is one of the best failures or losses of your life?

When I was, I think, like, six or seven, I remember I had all six pieces or it was, I don’t know how many pieces of the main boss of Yu-Gi-Oh!. It was, like, the card that when you put them all together, it’s the ultimate, can’t be beaten.

I went with my Yu-Gi-Oh! cards with my mates and we went on a walk and we were going out and we were exploring the ends and I’m like, yeah, like, I’ve never gotten this far. And there was all these older kids, one kid called Tony.

And they were all playing. Essentially, it’s, like, my card against your card.

Whoever wins takes the card. I’m just winging out cards.

I come like, yeah, like, thinking this does this, but not knowing any of the rules or anything. And this guy just took all my shit.

Like, literally out of manipulation, like, of a little kid. I remember being mad upset. I’d been cheated.

I think that was a big life lesson from young. Cause I thought, ‘I ain’t never letting anyone rob my fucking cards again.’

Without that, I probably wouldn't be where I am, so, yeah, fuck it.

Number 10: Drop the hardest hitting motivational quote you can muster.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Bitch.

11: What's a controversial opinion you have?

Hmm. COVID-19's a fucking conspiracy, but I still got the vaccine. So I'm a dickhead.

Number 12: What did you think was true in the past that you no longer believe?

Ah, my cousin told me that someone in Linkin Park shot a rocket launcher at someone else's house, so then, in Linkin Park, so then he won't be in the band anymore.

Well, that wasn't true. I did believe it.

13: If all humanity were to go extinct and you could preserve only one work of art, what would it be and why?

Ooh. I would get rid of the Mona Lisa straight away.

Pizza, cause that's a work of art. Like, you can't beat pizza.

Honestly, that should be, that should be framed and put in the Louvre.

Number 14: When was the last time you were angry or bitter? What happened and how did you deal with it?

When I was in Mexico, because I was throwing up and I dreamt of going to Mexico. And I was throwing up and I had diarrhea and then my fucking tour manager's like, "We've got to do sound check."

And I'm like, “What a stupid idea that is.”

And I thought I was dying and I was like, “Why the fuck am I even here?”

Then I done the show anyway. Felt like death, then he got me a flight back to home.

Missed my connecting flight. So then I was stuck in Dallas.

And I was bitter, but what did I do? I went and I got chicken wings and then I went and watched Ghostbusters.

And that shit. Ghostbusters was trash, but it was funny cause of how trash

15: What's one of the most out of character things you've ever done?

I went to an art show the other day and I told a woman I liked her dress when I hated it and I wouldn't ever do that, but I found it humorous cause she said, "Oh, thank you. I love what you're wearing too."

16: What will people in the future think was really stupid or crazy about how people think today?

Fucking everything, just people, innit. Like, I imagine they would be, like, as if they wore them clothes, like, how we do.

It'd just be the same loop. Cause things come in cycles.

Oh, and they'll think, “Why was Donald Trump president? “

17: Please take thirty seconds to share with us an impromptu performance. Any type of performance is cool: singing, poetry, acting.

How you doing, lads? I ain't seen you in awhile.

Well, mate, I've been uptown and I have been doing my fucking thing. Like, what’s, how's it going lads? Was it cracking?

Was it all nice and sound? Well, you know, I was getting on with my every fucking day life and someone called Bob got in my fucking way.

So I had to push him over. Well, well, well, you lads, I was fucking shopping, saw him and ran him over with my fucking trolley and said goodbye, lads.

One of them asked him what he's been up to and he was, like, shopping and then someone got in his way, so he pushed him over and ran him over with a trolley.

18: What's a lesson that has taken the longest for you to learn?

Stop making assumptions based on what you believe people would do because you never fucking know.

It's that thing that upsets your stomach. It's them butterflies you get when you meet that special somebody.

It's, it’s just a feeling and it can't be described in words, you either felt it or you haven't. And if you haven't felt it, you, you just gotta wait till you do and when you do, hold on to it.

Make love, make babies. Don't make babies, but you know what the metaphor of making babies.

20: Take a moment to record a message for yourself to hear one year from now.

You made it, you fucking made it. Another year's gone by.

Pat yourself on the back. Fucking good on your kid.

Go have a milkshake. Enjoy it, enjoy life.

Uh, it was a good one, innit? You like that?

Bonus. What do you want your legacy to be?

I came. I fucked shit up and I left. Bitches.

I want my legacy to be something that when my son's old enough, he can say, “Dad, why the fuck did you do that?” And I can say, “Son, I don't fucking know.”

Learn about slowthai as he answers a list of random questions.

21 Questions with slowthai

Well y'all, it’s slowthai, the slow guy, the gardener from the Garden of Eden coming in, you know what I'm saying?

Flipping the script, doing different shit, keeping it in, fucking your bitch. Nah. I ain't doing that.

What I want people to do today is stop having an opinion on stuff you can't even have an opinion on.

I can talk on the opinion of beans because for 26 years, I've been eating beans on toast. So I have enough knowledge of beans to tell you what fava beans or other beans, you know what I'm saying?

But me talking about something without knowledge or an understanding is pointless. I ain't even adding nothing to a discussion. It's just my pointless opinion.

So if you go and you tried Cadbury's chocolate in America, right? You haven't been to the Cadbury's factory in the UK.

You don’t know the flavor because the sweeteners are different out here. You see, America bought Cadbury's, but Cadbury’s is British and British chocolate is better than American.

So if I went on holiday and I went to Tenor Reef, and all I seen was, oh yeah, they got black sand. Oh yeah, they got a couple birds.

I ain't even understanding the culture or the place or the Canary Islands as a whole. I can tell you, yeah, it was all right.

And the sun was nice, but I was there for three days. What understanding do I have?

You go to Morocco, you get a Moroccan rug. Wow, you got a Moroccan rug.

We've all got Moroccan rugs now. Did you see how the man hand stitched the Moroccan rug?

Do you see the stress that went through it? Do you see how he washed it and cleansed it?

And it might have been all dusty and all this stuff and it's hand washed and rolled up and then shipped over to you? No, you just know how much you paid for it.

If you go to Thailand and you go into the jungle and you really see how they’re living when they're going out and they're farming coconut. So they're doing this or that, even that, even my understanding of what they do in the jungle in Thailand is so minute, I can't have an opinion.

I've been there three times, you know? I mean, I went to Bangkok.

I’ve seen a woman shoot a ping pong ball out of somewhere she shouldn't have. That doesn't mean that's the basis of what Thailand’s about.

You need to go there three more times, five more times. You need to go and at least learn more than ‘khop khun kap,’ saying ‘thank you,’ and ‘hello’ to even have an opinion.

If you've lived somewhere for multiple years and you've explored enough and you've took in the culture and you've had conversations with the locals and you've even lived with the locals and gone to work with the locals and you've not just took what you know and enforced it on them, you've actually put yourself in their situation and lived with them, then I think you start to have an understanding, to have an opinion of a place.

It takes, I don't know, a lifetime. That's why people spend lifetimes studying cultures.

So until you have an understanding of certain things, stop giving pointless opinions or try and go and educate yourself on it. So then when you have a discussion about it, you at least have the information.

slowthai shares his frustrations around those that pass judgment without knowing the facts.

Pointless Opinions

I'm here to prune your leaves. Right now, I just want you to know, in life, the only limitation is your imagination and you have to believe in yourself and you have to stand for something and you have to focus on growing and putting yourself in uncomfortable situations to really get to the next level.

If you’re a tree and you have all these dead leaves attached to you and you don't prune them and cut them off, you're wasting nutrients. You'll never be able to grow.

There's a story that Charles Bronson told Tom Hardy, and it's about a boy who was drowning in the Oxford floods. His foot got caught in a drain, water was rising and rising and the firemen come and they tried freeing the boy's foot.

And eventually, the boy drowned and Charles Bronson said, “You know why that wouldn’t happen to me? Because I would have told him to cut the foot off.”

Sometimes in life, you have to cut little pieces of yourself away to fully grow and be free.

One foot I cut off was all the negative people that told me I couldn't do shit or didn't believe in me or laughed at me when I said, “This is what I'm going to do and I know I'm going to do it.”

In life, you have constantly people in your ears saying, ha ha, laughing it off, laughing it off. You either get discouraged by it or you use them voices that will always be in the back of your head to prove them wrong.

The biggest thing for me was proving every single person that said I couldn't amount to nothing, wrong. Every teacher that said I'll just be a good for nothing, everyone thought I’d just end up being a drug dealer and in jail.

For real, though. Don’t let the fucking bearers of bad news ruin your day.

Don’t let the bastards drag you down. Cause life’s too short.

Do what you've got to do to get to where you want to be and be who you want to be. Cause you can do it.

I did it. Do you, booboo, but don't be afraid of change cause change is when great things happen.

The only limitation in life is your imagination.

Stand for Something

Yo, it's slowthai. And I'm here to tell you how to be happy when you’re sad.

You see, me, I'm a pretty sad person on the best of days, but when them days really get bad, I get real sad.

And when I get real sad, you know what I do?

I get out of my seat. I get out of the house, I go on a walk.

I might go and scream into a pillow, but most of all, I eat something I enjoy, and I put on some music I like listening to. I do whatever it is to take my mind off that situation for five minutes.

Then I try and think of what's made me feel that way. Often, it could be because you might have got drunk.

You might be hung over, or you're generally a sad person like myself. But there's no point in sitting there, stewing in sadness.

Go out and do something. Get up, get out of bed, open the curtains, go downstairs, write on a piece of paper something you're happy for, something you're grateful for.

Get fresh air. I would say exercise, but I don't exercise that often.

But exercise is great for the mind, body, and spirit.  And just call someone who makes you laugh.

If not, maybe I shouldn't say this, but put on some Dave Chappelle. If that don't work for you, find a comedian or read a book or go and buy a pet and take care of yourself, have a routine.

Fuck it. It sounds like I'm reading things out a textbook, but it's pretty textbook.

Just get out of the house, get up, get out of bed, clean your ass, shower. Don't wallow in the sadness.

Honestly, I'm telling you cause wallow like, if you keep wallowing, it's just going to, you're just going to feel the same fucking way.

Don't drink. Don't do drugs if you’re sad.

They don't make it better. They intensify the sadness and then it's fucked.

Get up, man, I'm saying this cause I'm speaking to you and you can hear me right now. Get the fuck up.

Go outside. Breathe in deeply and then exhale.

Fucking hell, do something now, just do something. A happy life, yeah, is ups and fucking downs.

You ain't gonna be happy 24 fucking 7. You gotta feel shitty to feel good.

And without the shitty moments, there won't be no good moments. It’s peaks and valleys.

So you can be flying high one day. But the next day, on the Monday of blues, you'll be feeling down.

It's a fucking dream world to think there's a happy life forever. There’s happy moments and you embrace the moments and enjoy them.

It could be anything, but just hold onto it, man.

Thank, thank you for listening, thank you, now.

Know what triggers your sadness and find things that will take you to a happier place.

Happiness

Why queasy, it's slow-teesy. It's slowthai, right?

Flying high as a motherfucking car in the sky, right? Get your mind right.

This is my five movies. The first one being Submarine written by Richard Ayode who's also in the IT crowd.

It’s probably my favorite movie. And the story is about a boy named Oliver who falls in love with a girl and they're in school and they're going through the trouble and the girl's so awkward and she has eczema on her hands.

It's a love story that's awkward and dry, but at the same time, beautiful. I think the film’s actually soundtracked by Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys.

The soundtrack is amazing. The songs are crazy.

There's one called “Glass in the park.” And then he's got another lyric that like, “If you're trying to get to heaven in a hurry, and the queue was shorter than you thought it would be, and the doorman says you need to get a wristband.”

That's some of the greatest songwriting ever.

Number two. Snatch by Guy Ritchie, which is a film that will give you a great understanding of Britain in the nineties. And a lot of groups that make up the country.

Number three. Trainspotting directed by Danny Boyle is about junkies’ life in Scotland. Another element of British culture, another element that’s close to my heart because I grew up around a lot of junkies.

I also have a lot of references towards the movie in my music. It follows one smackhead being Ewan McGregor. And he's deep in it.

When he goes into the toilet, it’s one of the most iconic scenes and shots in film, hands down.

Number four. Where The Wild Things Are. It's like a children's movie, but, like, we’re all children basically.

So we should all absorb and take it in. It's about a boy and he ends up stranded on an island.

And when he gets to the island, there's all the wild things. They're gonna eat him and he's like, “Oh my God, I've got powers.”

And they believe him, but he doesn't have powers. And he goes through, builds relationships with them.

And the soundtrack to this, I think soundtracks are what draw me to it. And it's, like, just the whole, the fun of it being the kid and, like, the emotions of a kid and what you go through.

Just watch it because it's something that will fill you with joy.

Number five is Royal Tenenbaums directed by Wes Anderson. And there's a scene where they're playing Elliot Smith where he shaves his head.

I dunno, it just sums up being in that dark place in the best possible way. I won't explain the shock cause it's so much more special when you watch it because the ups and downs of the movie, but it's probably the most beautiful but saddening thing.

Like, “Needle In The Hay,” the song is just so fitting for the scene.

Anyway, slowthai has five cinema selections that you should watch before you die. Cry, smile, live life.

My Favorite Films

Yo, it’s slowthai. I'm going to explain how to make a song.

So first off, here, you get a microphone, you plug it in, yeah. You're plugging baby, like, muse.

It doesn't have to be a studio, record through Apple headphones, in the mic slow, or even the mic on your computer. Just record with headphones on and you don't need anything.

The proof's in the pudding. There's a million kids out there doing it.

Throw in an instrument or say sprinkle a bit of magic dust on there.

And then you just do random shit until something good happens. Literally, just be free.

But most of all, don't think about it. Cause the more you think about it, the less real it's gonna be.

If it comes straight from your mind, that's the realest thing cause it's what's true.

It's what you're living. It's how you're feeling.

So when I made a song with Mura Masa, called “Deal Wiv It,” I went there and we wrote a song and the song was shit. And we were like, uh, I looked at him and I think he looked at me and I could see in his eyes, he thought it was shit, and I thought it was shit, but we didn't stop.

We were like, “You know what? Let's make another one.”

And he said to me, “Just get on the mic and just talk, just talk gibberish.”

Right? So for 20 minutes, I was just chatting the most random shit.

I was talking about wake up in the morning.

There's a postman delivering mail. I look at the mail, it didn't have my name on it, must be for the wrong address.

You know what? I had to look in the mirror and say, “Fucking deal with it.”

I walked back upstairs. I grabbed a cigarette.

I ain't going outside to smoke. I smoke in my house.

Deal with it. And this went on and on for 20 minutes.

And I think he looked at me and I turned around and looked at him and he said, “I think we got it.”

And he was like, “We've got, we've got it, we've got it.”

I left. He sent me this song and it was “Deal Wiv It.”

Easy as pie, pudding, sweet, delivered, signed, sealed, delivered.

There's no right process. That's one thing I want to say.

Everyone's individual to how they create. There's no right or wrong way to do it, but as long as you're trying, it's the trying that matters.

It's the actual putting in time and sitting there and you could, you could fart and make a beat out of it. That, if that's how it works for you, that's how it works for you.

But just try and don't stop. Cause you never know.

Every wasted moment is a wasted opportunity to think of something. So just do it.

There’s no right or wrong way. Find out how slowthai does it.

How to Make a Song

I'm here to remind you to look around you.

The thing that makes me feel like a kid again, it's moments of joy, like, just not taking life seriously and just enjoying it for the moment, enjoying the company, not caring about what anything in the outside world thinks.

Growing up, I felt like I had to go through these phases and put up a guard and like, I felt like I was always being analyzed, but now I don't actually give a fuck.

Now, it's more time to get back to the child that I would try getting to grow up too fast. We don't hold on to that kid inside us and we kill it.

From the moment we're born, we're taught how to grow up and we're taught how to abandon this thing that's in us, that's in us to create and in us to explore and it's like that thing Pablo Picasso's says, it took him a lifetime to learn how to paint like a child.

Having a son now, I think the hardest thing is to not, like, stamp out that child, like, give him time to blossom as a child and really revel in that moment and be a child for as long as possible, as long as you can.

It's hard because society and schools and you're taught this is how you got to be. And you got to get a job and never just experiencing life and being a kid for as long as possible.

It's all about being serious and finances. And what are you going to be when you're older?

slowthai thinks society and school force us to grow up too quickly.

slowthai

Intro

Northampton's Child

Mommy's Boy

The Maddest Stories

F*ck the Internet

The Hate You Have Will Fade

A Beautiful Little Alien

Outro

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