Celebrities are dead and niche micro e-celebs have killed them.
The Great British Interview Series will review the mindset, beliefs & work of the key people operating outside of the system.
In this instalment, I have a conversation with Al Dawg about grifting, writing, and his new book Hip-Hop Hypnosis.
If you can judge a man by his fruits, you can judge a podcaster by his guests.
And Al Dawg has a knack of interviewing the next big thing, about 2 or 3 years before they blow up. He had Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes on his YouTube show back in 2018, which was charmingly called America’s #1 Chadcast. The show ended a long time ago, and Al has moved on. He reached the peak of the guest grift a very long time ago and is now focused on writing comedy books and building a direct connection with his audience.
It’s a pleasure to have him as the inaugural guest on The Great British Interview.
UK Rappers Are Satanic – An Interview with Al Dawg
The Great British Bloke: Al, tell us about your early life and how you got involved with our disproportionally influential corner of the internet.
Al Dawg: Growing up I wanted to go pro. I didn’t think there was any other option. I was typically one of the best players on every team I played on, it didn’t matter which sport.
Out of college I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I thought it was time to sell out, get a suit and tie job, and just grift some job. Then I got kind of bummed out and asked myself, if I could do anything, what would I do? I figured, if I could do anything, I would start a Libertarian hip-hop sports blog, so that’s what I did. I was in and out of sales gigs at the time and used whatever money I had to front my own operation. This is when I started really writing, and doing videos. Eventually, Cartoon frogs on twitter charmed me out of hip-hop/sports culture in the Summer of 2015. They had such an uninhibited approach toward humour, everything else seemed dull.
The following story sounds insane, but I can assure you this is all real. The Libertarian hip-hop sports blog led me to a paid internship with Mike Cernovich in early 2017. He had some show on YouTube and everyday he wanted the top 5 news stories, and a report on them, something like that. I was a security guard at the time. I was looking for an opportunity. I applied for the internship and got it. So I did that for a while and then eventually Mike hosted a party in D.C. where this guy Dr. Shiva announced his candidacy for Senate against Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts. Immediately, I saw the narrative of The Real Indian vs. The Fake Indian. I started contacting Dr. Shiva through twitter and eventually landed an interview.
I landed the gig and for the better half of 2017, I was driving around a Real Indian vs. Fake Indian bus around Massachusetts.
The Inventor of Email was an awesome guy to learn from and this opportunity wouldn’t have been possible without starting the blog back in 2015. I got sick of politics and went back to construction. In early 2018, I started America’s #1 Chadcast.
The Chadcast lasted about a year before it imploded.
The Great British Bloke: That’s wild, are you working full time as a writer now?
Al Dawg: No, not at the moment, but with each book I sell, the more time I buy. I’m fighting against the clock right now and we’re in the 4th quarter. If need be, I’ll temporarily go back to construction or landscaping. Right now, I’m focused on selling books.
If I’m not making sales on the Internet, I go out and get them. I cold-approach people with a book in hand, ask them if they’ve read any good books lately, I tell them about my book, and I sell them on the spot.
I don’t want to be one of these authors that’s online all day. Now I have a published book. It’s up to me to go out and sell it.
The Great British Bloke: Do you self-publish?
Al Dawg: The Sharter is not self-published, it’s published on Trineday Publishing. I wanted to separate myself from other authors in this space, so I went the published route.
The Great British Bloke: You describe yourself as the eternal athlete, but now it appears that you’re laser focused on writing. How did your priorities shift?
Al Dawg: They haven’t. I am an eternal athlete, for life. Here’s what I mean: I can’t write unless I beat the shit out of myself physically. Construction and Landscaping? Those are athletic jobs. I’ve chosen physical jobs for most of my 20s and early 30s because I require a high-level of exercise, in order to increase my artistic output.
If I’m not working, I go to the gym, play basketball, or do barefoot sprints on grass. In order for me to do mental activities such as writing or reading, I HAVE to be physically tired. The mind/body connection is IMPERATIVE to the writing process. So, to answer your question, my priorities haven’t shifted, they’ve become aligned.
The Great British Bloke: You’re releasing your new book today, The Sharter: A Millenial Journey Out of Hip-hop Hypnosis – what’s it about?
Al Dawg: It’s about a group of millennial friends who grow up as hip-hop fans. There are famous rappers killing each other, evil record executives, podcasters, and a pair of cops hellbent on taking justice into their own hands. All of these plots are intertwined in a comedy-crime-classic.
The Great British Bloke: What was the inspiration for it?
Al Dawg: I used to be a huge fan of hip-hop. Around 2015-2016 (thanks to the cartoon frogs on twitter) I started to snap out of hip-hop hypnosis.
By 2017-2018 I found most of the “music” intolerable. I still studied the culture as an anthropologist. All the deaths, beefs, and regional tribal warfare being an interesting field of research.
Around 2020, I became so disgusted with the entire genre I decided to make the book a satire.
It’s absolutely insane that our generation has been listening to hip-hop for decades. It’s the most hardcore psychological operation in the game. It probably took a hundred years of social engineering for us to reach this point.
Granted, I’ll still throw on a nostalgic tune once in a while.I’m just as susceptible to a catchy chorus, or good beat as anybody, but it’s just not the same.
I do believe society is at the end of a cycle and ‘The Sharter’ is the necessary soil to start something new. Manure is a necessary part of farming.
The Great British Bloke: Enjoyed reading it this weekend. I particularly liked how the owner of the record label was called Bryan Turdman. A fitting name indeed. What’s the response been like to the book?
Al Dawg: I got guys messaging me telling me they had to leave the room because they were laughing so hard, or that this was the first time they enjoyed reading in years. I’ve been saying this is the book the year, and I know as more people read it, they’ll be saying the same.
The Great British Bloke: What are your thoughts on Kanye’s recent behaviour? Is that the ultimate journey out of Hip-hop hypnosis?
Al Dawg: I think Kanye West is a true artist. I think he’s a victor that has graduated from hip-hop hypnosis. His story is the ultimate journey out, yes. I remember Eminem had a line about how he’d rather put out a gospel record, jokingly. Welp, Kanye actually did it, the Jesus is King album, and it’s awesome.
The Great British Bloke: Hip-hop hypnosis has provided the ultimate proof that the ‘slippery slope’ is not a fallacy. But instead, it’s a definable, observable, repeatable predictive model. In 30 years UK rappers have gone from subtle drug references, to brain dead murderers with face tattoos, mumbling about shagging the devil. Is hip-hop finished? Can it get any more degenerate than it already is?
Al Dawg: It can and will get more degenerate. I was recently watching a short documentary on the Bronx drill scene and I came to a few realisations. The “music” doesn’t have that much to do with music. It’s more about localised tribal conflict. The music is a side effect. Most of the drill videos posted on YouTube aren’t about making good art, or “making it” in the music industry, or even getting out of the ghetto. It’s about taunting the opposition from rival gangs.
UK Rappers are the same. They’re engaged in tribalistic war music. Sometimes a viral video is a side effect, and sure, after a few videos an “artist” might become well-known, even famous, or well-paid. The vast majority of these “artists” aren’t making a living doing music.
The Great British Bloke: What does your writing process look like? Do you ever get writer’s block?
Writing is a continuous process that occurs all day, everyday. A writer must have his sword, or pen on with him at all times. I write notes and ideas sporadically, and email them to myself, to be later compiled into various word documents. The notes become paragraphs, that become chapters, and eventually, books.
Here’s the thing to know as a writer. If you have a block, think of it as a dam. Just know that once the dam is broken, a flood is coming.
A true writer can’t not write. It’s just part of who they are. It’s unchangeable.
The Great British Bloke: Does the pressure of monetising your artwork detract from the joy you experience creating it?
No. When you focus on money you don’t make the best shit. When you focus on making the best shit you make money. In the case of The Sharter, this is literally true. I have the book of the year.
The Great British Bloke: What’s your approach towards sales?
Most authors don’t understand that they are in sales. They are salesmen the moment the book is published, whether they like it or not. People often say “congratulations” when you write a book and my response to that is; “Congratulations for what?”
If you write a book, nobody cares. That’s the cold, hard reality of it. It’s on the author to go out and sell it.
The Great British Bloke: Another interesting thing about you is that you’re uniquely placed to talk about the Andrew Tate phenomenon. In fact, due to the negligence and wilful ignorance of the sneaky media, you are probably one of the leading journalists in the world on the topic of his arrest. What’s your view on him and his situation?
I first became familiar with Andrew when I saw an interview with him and Paul Joseph Watson in the 2017-18 era. I thought, “Wow, this guy seems pretty cool.”
At the time, I had a podcast on YouTube going. I was on the guest-oriented grift where the guests supply the content, and the host just asks questions and lets them talk.
I figured Tristan would be a great guest since Andrew was suspended from twitter and I didn’t know how else to get in touch with him. After messaging Tristan and telling him we did X amount of viewers on the last show and he agreed to come on as guest. After a few reschedules, I logged into Zoom to greet Tristan and I was surprised by a Cobra. The Tristan account I was talking to was Andrew the entire time. A historic episode of America’s #1 Chadcast commenced.
Some of my friends asked, “Who the hell was that guy?” and things of that nature, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. It was just another show to me, another step.
We didn’t really stay in touch until the Winter of 2022. He got into an absurd twitter beef with some dude and he threatened to end the guy’s bloodline. I would write funny jokes about it, and send them to him. He’d enjoy them and send them to his buddies. That was the extent of our friendship.
In the Summer of 2022, things started to change in a big way. We witnessed Andrew Tate experience one of the most meteoric rises in fame in Internet history. It was also during this time that comedian Owen Benjamin started talking about how Andrew Tate was gonna go down for sex trafficking. At first, I thought he was being hyperbolic. I never thought much about Tate’s webcam business. And thought the Tate’s had moved on from it and didn’t quite understand the direct correlations between the webcam industry and sex trafficking.
I always saw Andrew as just some other dude, one of the bros, and now I was seeing young men attempt to replicate his practices in order to “escape the matrix.” This is when my perspective started to shift, slowly.
Is he an example of Hip-hop Hypnosis?
Tate is a prototypical example of hip-hop hypnosis. The crux of hip-hop hypnosis is seeking to replicate a music video with your lifestyle. That’s what he did, and that’s what you see others infected with the toddler mindset seek to replicate.
He combined the UK rappers lifestyle and elements of WWF, with 2015 red pill manosphere talking points. It worked.
A huge moment in the rise of Tateistan was his DJ Akademiks interview where he officially made the crossover into the hip-hop world which embraced him. (Akademiks is this fat kid YouTuber with a large audience).
Nonetheless, seeing a clip of Tate somewhere around Greece Eastern being swarmed by fans inspired me to launch Grifters University, which is now available on the Al Dawg Hour Substack.
I ain’t in a hurry, hurry, those the only things that imma marry marry yeah”
The Great British Bloke: Can you learn the art of grifting or is it something you’re born with?
Al Dawg: Ha, well that’s an interesting question. For me personally, with grifting, it’s about being next-level honest with my audience and readers. Basically, everybody is grifting in some sense. It’s comparable to the word ‘grind.’ In 2008-2009 people were ‘on their grind’ and now people are ‘on their grift.’ Who’s being honest about it? The Dean of Grifters University, that’s who.
There are levels to the Grift, all the way up to the military industrial complex defence contractor level. Most international conflicts are grifts. Most political campaigns are grifts. 99% of celebrities are grifters. Most employees, whether they admit it or not, are grifters. Have you ever seen anybody “work from home” for a corporation? How is that not a grift? So for me, it’s about two things: being honest, being hilarious, and providing myself creative space.
Call somebody a grifter online and watch them recoil. Watch them deflect, project, and angrily call out others. What are they hiding? They’re a grifter, and they refuse to admit it. Being honest would cancel their grift.
Somebody calls me a grifter and how do I react? I encourage them to fill out an application to Grifters University where I am the Dean and founder. Grifters U is the only place where students graduate with no cap. A place where you can lift your grift, even if you’re on a cliff. Everything I know, for you, at Grifters U.
Also, if you think about it, using the term unabashedly is next-level artistic integrity.
It’s certainly a strange time to be alive, what’s your attitude to the future?
Al Dawg: Everything is as it should be and I feel great about the future. I advise people to think long-term, multigenerational.
And what are your thoughts about what’s in store?
The continued emergence of what’s real and tangible and the continued demise of things that are fake and temporary.
The Great British Bloke: Amen, this has been really interesting Al. Who are your favourite authors/creators?
Authors: E. Michael Jones, Michael Hoffman, and Paul Town.
Livestreamers: Owen Benjamin
Audio Podcast: Al Dawg Hour, Crrow777 Radio
YouTube Channels: Old World Florida
The Great British Bloke: What’s next for you, are you working on any new projects?
Al Dawg: Most time I have is dedicated to launching a second book this Fall about a surfer who joins an old money secret society.
I’m doing the Al Dawg Hour Audio show 1-2x per month. I’m uploading INSANE exclusive video content to my substack that’s been in the vault for years, completely unavailable to the public.
What do I work towards? A livestream studio with 3-5 books published.
The Great British Bloke: It’s been a pleasure to chat Al, thanks for your time.
Gents, if you would like to purchase Hip-hop Hypnosis.
You can, it’s available now.
Pick up an autographed copy here or buy it on Amazon here.
You can see a free preview of the book below and you can stay in contact with Al Dawg on social media here.