We Found the Secret Album That the NBA's Best Executive Doesn't Want You to Hear
How did the shadowy general manager of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Sam Presti, become an urban legend? In a special NBA Finals edition of Share & Tell, Pablo unearths a treasure buried by its own elaborate design… then dances into The Jazz Rabbit Hole with Wyatt Cenac and a special mystery guest.
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Speaker 24 I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738, Accord Royale.
Speaker 27 Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities.
Speaker 28 Please drink responsibly because today we're going to find out what this sound is.
Speaker 33 Right after this ad.
Speaker 34 Do not open what's in front of you yet.
Speaker 35 Is it a very angry letter from Stephen A. Smith?
Speaker 38 It's just him being like, how dare you not believe that I could be serious about running for president?
Speaker 31 I can say that it is not that, although I can't rule out the fact that he might say that to you at one point.
Speaker 35 All right, now I'm even more curious.
Speaker 31 The extent to which I've told you that we're doing a kind of different share and tell today in which it's just you.
Speaker 35
You just said, hey, come do the show. No other details.
So yeah,
Speaker 43 batter up.
Speaker 41 Yeah, and now you got this thing in front of you.
Speaker 35 With my name on it, yeah.
Speaker 39 It has your name on it.
Speaker 31 It's very expertly wrapped as always.
Speaker 23 This is our NBA Finals coverage.
Speaker 44 All right.
Speaker 45 Welcome.
Speaker 31 But my first real question for you, Wyatt, is whether you know anything about the executive in charge of the Oklahoma City Thunder, a guy by the name Sam Presti.
Speaker 40 Of Sam Presti.
Speaker 39 What else do you know about this man?
Speaker 35
He was from the Spurs organization. Yes.
And then got the job in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 35 And his first name is Sam.
Speaker 22 That's kind of how it goes, I think, in general with Sam Presty, who, by the way, this year did win the NBA's Executive of the Year Award.
Speaker 25 His team is in the NBA Finals, obviously.
Speaker 31 They're playing the Pacers right now, the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Speaker 42 And he is, I think to the point of you not knowing much beyond what you gave me, extraordinarily private.
Speaker 54 He is very secretive.
Speaker 45 We don't know a lot about him by design.
Speaker 55 I want to look on national television and apologize to that man for any questions I've had about how exceptional he is as an executive.
Speaker 56 I'm dead serious.
Speaker 57 I don't apologize often.
Speaker 58 Yeah,
Speaker 58 but Sam Presti on national television, I'm going to say this.
Speaker 58
I, Stephen A. Smith, owe this man an apology.
I don't give a damn about the championships right now. I can't win.
I'm a Knicks fan.
Speaker 59 I can tell you this: to have 15 picks, to have that roster, to have them this young playing at this level.
Speaker 58 This man
Speaker 26 is
Speaker 58 the man is a special executive.
Speaker 60 And all of this means for people who just aren't familiar
Speaker 49 that they overcame the loss of the three consecutive MVPs that Sam Presti drafted in his first three drafts.
Speaker 42 He took Kevin Durant, then Russell Westbrook, then James Hardin in his first three seasons as the GM.
Speaker 31 And in fact, while those three MVPs left Oklahoma City for bigger markets, Sam Presti, who has had a ton of incoming interest from other bigger markets, he never did, obviously.
Speaker 65 He never left.
Speaker 66 And so what he did was he stockpiled his alien draft picks.
Speaker 42 He traded for Shea Gildis-Alexander, the season's MVP, which is impressive in its own right, 168 games.
Speaker 38 He got a city that pretty much nobody wants to willingly play for back to the finals.
Speaker 67 And the secrecy of him.
Speaker 67 The secrecy of this organization, which has been a bit of a black box, has been this way for so long that there is one story from Grantland years ago in which a reporter for Fox Sports said, quote, when it comes to getting a one-on-one interview, it would be easier to get access to the leader of ISIS,
Speaker 63 end quote.
Speaker 35 Didn't ISIS, didn't they have social media for a while? Imagine if that's your job as, yeah, I'm the social media manager for ISIS.
Speaker 45 My real passion is making music, but
Speaker 51 my day job, I am
Speaker 31 managing the ISIS social feeds.
Speaker 35 We've got some pretty fun TikToks.
Speaker 46 All of this is to say, and I want you to be aware of this before we proceed any further. All right.
Speaker 60 That Sam Presti did not want me to do this episode with you, Wyatt.
Speaker 35 Specifically because of me?
Speaker 62 Well, that part I can't necessarily isolate.
Speaker 35 But in general.
Speaker 73 Yeah, he doesn't want this to happen.
Speaker 45 Okay.
Speaker 48 He's also very media fluent.
Speaker 41 And I say that because one thing I can report is that a little over a decade ago, he actually explored hiring our extremely plugged in buddy Brian Winhorst away from ESPN to work as an information guy for the Thunder.
Speaker 22 And the question of like, why would he do that?
Speaker 51 Why would he do that?
Speaker 54 It's because we got to put up
Speaker 72 our Windhorse fingers. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 31 The reason that Zam Presty considered hiring Brian Winhorst to kick the tires on hiring him away from ESPN is that information to Sam Presti is currency. It is an edge, a competitive advantage.
Speaker 53 And you don't surrender that information.
Speaker 25 And so Sam Presty never speaks to the media on the the record during the season.
Speaker 31 He actually, in a very careful way, does it precisely twice a year.
Speaker 42
He speaks once in the preseason and once after the finals are over. And he just talks basketball.
That is his entire allotment of public exposure.
Speaker 42 And so what I started doing in lieu of a sit-down with Sam Presty, him being the third chair with us on this episode of Share and Tell.
Speaker 24 Right, yeah.
Speaker 35 We should have still just had a chair.
Speaker 25 Instead, what I started doing was I was just grinding Sam Presti press conference archival video, looking for the thing that he seems to be trying to hide.
Speaker 69 And what I found was something interesting.
Speaker 37 Okay.
Speaker 31 Because back in 2012, which was the last year that the Thunder win the NBA Finals,
Speaker 21 Sam Presty, perhaps not coincidentally, showed up at his annual preseason press conference that fall.
Speaker 54 a little more loose than usual, even a little more confident, you might say.
Speaker 74 I like,
Speaker 37 which
Speaker 74 many people in here probably don't really care about but i'll say it anyway because i'm interested in it um uh i like watching uh i like music documentaries
Speaker 74 vh1 has this this series called classic albums has anyone ever seen this
Speaker 74 It's like I'm totally hooked if you know where to if you know where to find the actuals like set of them Let me know can't find them So I do much of most of my viewing on YouTube
Speaker 74 But they've got like all these it basically takes you back through how the albums were made. So like Pink Floyd the Wall, Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt, that was really good.
Speaker 74 Steely Dan Asia. And you go back like the producer and you hear what they were thinking and the artists themselves, what they were thinking when they were doing the actual recording.
Speaker 74 It's fascinating. I think it's really, really good.
Speaker 39 Sam Presti, to continue the scouting report, he did play basketball at Emerson.
Speaker 45 And that video, by the way, had 28 views on YouTube.
Speaker 31 For those who want to go check it out.
Speaker 25 And part of what I learned as the 28th person to see this video is just that his genuine and to this point, generally undisclosed non-basketball passion does happen to be music.
Speaker 74 Other thing that I thought was interesting,
Speaker 74 or for me personally, I share with everybody since we're on this weird kick.
Speaker 74 And everybody knows I'm like really open about all this stuff.
Speaker 74 You catch me on a good day.
Speaker 45 And at one point,
Speaker 60 Sam Fresni has asked, actually, which music documentaries about which particular albums
Speaker 42 he might like to see.
Speaker 74 Pretty much anything by James Brown, I would be fascinated by.
Speaker 74 You know, just to see the like, just kind of how he guided the bands, because the bands were just so tight and so well put together. I'd be fascinated by
Speaker 74 that.
Speaker 74 Kind of blue by Miles Davis.
Speaker 74 You know, to see that history basically coming together,
Speaker 74 that would be awesome. So I'll stop there,
Speaker 74 but I can go on.
Speaker 35 When he said Miles Davis kind of blew, it's interesting that he said just that album and not maybe a more expansive Miles Davis.
Speaker 52 Well, now I think it's clear probably why I invited you here.
Speaker 77 Sure, yeah.
Speaker 31 Because you, beyond being a person with an actual expansive record collection,
Speaker 24 you are a bit of a musicologist.
Speaker 42 You would do listening parties basically on your social channels.
Speaker 45 Oh, during the pandemic. During the pandemic.
Speaker 23 And so, yeah, like I am not that guy.
Speaker 66 But what I did in lieu of my musical knowledge is continue to just fall down the rabbit hole on this.
Speaker 47 I went to the dark corners of YouTube and Twitter and Reddit.
Speaker 33 trying to just like look into Sam Presty and his love of music. Yeah.
Speaker 35 And did you find like a Discogs account for him?
Speaker 70 Well, you know, multiple friends of his in the NBA told me that they knew nothing about this period.
Speaker 21 But in lieu of a Discogs account or anything like that,
Speaker 21 I found somebody who did know something about this topic.
Speaker 78
Hi, my name is Dara Mirzai. I'm an attorney.
I've been an Oklahoma City fan since the day they moved in OKC. I was born and raised in Oklahoma.
Speaker 31 And what you should know, Wyatt, about Dara is that he's an Oklahoma native, Thunder Super fan.
Speaker 61 And I found him while digging through Reddit.
Speaker 46 And Dara, like you,
Speaker 53 also loves music, not unlike Sam Presti, it seems.
Speaker 22 And in fact, like you, Dara does love digging through crates.
Speaker 78 So about seven or eight years ago, I was on vacation around the Boston area, and we were visiting. some music shops or whatever was left of them.
Speaker 78 And we went into one and they had this extensive discount bin of CDs, which is full of a bunch of CDs of bands no one's ever heard of.
Speaker 78 And so I was looking through them and all of a sudden I stumbled across one and I thought, oh, this is funny. This guy has the same name as the Thunder GM.
Speaker 78
I picked it up and it was obviously a really old CD. And so I figured it was some local musician.
from 20 years ago. And so I just bought it.
I mean, I've bought CDs for worse reasons before.
Speaker 78 About a week or two later, I finally put the CD in just to hear what it was like.
Speaker 78
And I thought it was going to be like an acoustic album or whatever. And all of a sudden, 20 seconds in, the guy starts talking.
I'm like, I've heard this voice.
Speaker 78 Like, this is definitely Sam Presty's voice.
Speaker 31 And so, Wyatt, what I'd like you to do now is please open the package in front of you.
Speaker 41 And describe it for those not watching on YouTube, please.
Speaker 26 All right.
Speaker 70 Because what you are doing, what you have in your hands, is what Dara himself was holding almost a decade ago now when he was looking very closely at this strange found object.
Speaker 35 It is a
Speaker 26 CD cover.
Speaker 35 It says Sam Presti.
Speaker 35 The title of the album is Milk Money.
Speaker 35 There's a picture of... what appears to be a young Sam Presti in
Speaker 35 shorts of the time. This feels very much, I would say, mid-90s,
Speaker 35 where the shorts are going way past the knee because
Speaker 35 that was a time in life where men felt they had to cover up their knees.
Speaker 21 So the black and white photo that's kind of like artistically shot, right?
Speaker 41 Like the foreground woman is out of focus.
Speaker 66 The text is like the sans serif, like red.
Speaker 52 Yeah.
Speaker 21 You know, it's like a highbrow kind of aesthetic.
Speaker 35 There's someone else who could look at this and say, oh, this is the design style of like seven
Speaker 35 like indie backpack hip-hop albums of the time.
Speaker 21 Right. And of that time, it turns out, is Sam Presti.
Speaker 72 He was a drummer at Emerson College.
Speaker 66 And the voice that Dara heard when he was listening to this thing on loop and started googling all these search terms, it didn't exist anywhere else on the internet.
Speaker 21 Yeah. No one had posted this.
Speaker 25 There was no audio of this music anywhere else.
Speaker 51 And there still isn't, by the way.
Speaker 78
So a couple of years ago, I actually tried to put it on YouTube. I just thought it'd be fun.
I wasn't trying to make any money off of it.
Speaker 78 And I put online just Sam Presty Milk Money, nothing like Thunder GM's hidden rap album.
Speaker 78 And I put online and got a couple of views. And then a couple of days later, I kind of just started getting some messages of just
Speaker 78
some people asking me to. sort of take it down.
So eventually I did.
Speaker 24 Who asked you to take it down?
Speaker 44 So I don't know who they were, but
Speaker 78 they were just complaining like, hey, should this really be out there? This was kind of something he did when he was young. And I sort of started talking to them.
Speaker 78 And I don't have any approved of it, but it felt like it was someone who kind of might have known Sam or was in their camp and just like, I'm not really sure if we want that out there.
Speaker 78
And so, you know, I was, I was just like, okay, I don't want to mess with anyone. I'll just take it down.
I don't want to cause any problems.
Speaker 30 You don't want to be at war with your favorite basketball team over this CD that you found in a crate.
Speaker 78 Yeah, and at the time, I was traveling back to Guilma City a lot. I didn't want to get banned from Thunder Games or anything either.
Speaker 40 Yeah, I will say that banned for posting Thunder GM's hidden rap album would be an incredible headline.
Speaker 43 That would, yeah.
Speaker 35 I'm looking on the back here, and this is all accurate here, the sort of back production credits.
Speaker 72 I believe so.
Speaker 35 Because it says this was put out on Relativity Records.
Speaker 43 Is that like...
Speaker 31 What does this mean to you?
Speaker 35 3.6 Mafia was on relativity.
Speaker 35 Common was on relativity.
Speaker 25 It raises the question of like
Speaker 31 why Sam Presty does not want this on the internet? Because presumably, like the question is, is it actually so embarrassing that you would want this scrubbed?
Speaker 45 Right.
Speaker 25 Right.
Speaker 69 And so what I can tell you is that even though Sam Presti did not want me to do this episode with you, I have done now significantly more than merely acquire this copy of the album Milk Money that he released.
Speaker 42 An album, by the way, that his longtime PR person, Matt Tumbleson with the Thunder, has never heard before.
Speaker 46 Okay.
Speaker 47 I am told.
Speaker 25 What we're kind of doing in this episode, Wyatt, is making our own version of one of Sam Presti's favorite things.
Speaker 70 We're going to make the Milk Money music documentary.
Speaker 35 Also, one other thing in the production, you said the chap we were talking to, his name was Dara. Yeah.
Speaker 35 So this is written and produced by Sam Presti under Relativity Records and Dara's Dream Publishing. It's Sam Presti's nightmare, but it seems like it's Dara's dream.
Speaker 35 It's third down.
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Speaker 50 So I, at this point, I just want to turn your attention to some of the band members involved in the production of this album because, again, Super Thunder fan, Dara, randomly unearthed this thing in that discount CD bin in Boston.
Speaker 21 And it turns out that Milk Money was more than merely Sam Presti's musical debut.
Speaker 81
Hey, everybody. My name is Mike Tucker.
I'm a professional saxophonist. I'm a Grammy-nominated saxophonist who teaches at Berkeley College of Music.
I'm a professor there.
Speaker 81 And I also tour regularly with trumpet player Arturo Sandoval.
Speaker 83 At the risk of...
Speaker 41 ruining this interview already.
Speaker 47 Do you have your sax nearby, Mike?
Speaker 35
I feel like people meet a comedian and they're like, tell me a joke. And it's like, no.
Or if you meet a dentist and it's like, hey, take a look at this tooth. No.
Speaker 35 But saxophone player, hey, do you happen to be strapped right now? Of course, I'm a saxophone player.
Speaker 45 I'm always strapped.
Speaker 31 For the record, your Grammy-nominated saxophone is Mike Tucker.
Speaker 40 Yeah.
Speaker 68 Was ready on all sorts of fronts.
Speaker 60 I mean, when I asked him, do you remember meeting Sam Presty, who was again playing D3 basketball at Emerson at the time?
Speaker 31 Yeah.
Speaker 70 He did not hesitate.
Speaker 81 So the first time I met Sam was actually at a rehearsal for this, for this recording when I was a junior in high school. But Sam, you know, he definitely made a real impression on me.
Speaker 81 My friend, Matt Morin, he was a pianist. He doesn't play anymore, but we both were playing together.
Speaker 81 And Matt went to Conquered Carlisle High School, which Sam attended.
Speaker 84 Yeah, so my name is Matthew Morin, and I used to be a musician, a jazz musician, a jazz pianist. And then I became an ethnomusicologist and a professor.
Speaker 84 And now I'm a dean at a community college in California, Santa College. So Sam.
Speaker 84 and I went to the same high school. He was a year ahead of me,
Speaker 84 and he was definitely one of the cool kids. There was a band room and we were really dorky, right? Like we were like losers and
Speaker 84 we hid in the band room. Like we would eat our lunch in there and he totally would come and listen,
Speaker 84 you know, and it wasn't fake. He really did.
Speaker 84 Like he was like, he looked up to us as these dorky kids as like, you know, like a really like popular basketball guy with a girlfriend and all this other stuff, you know, that we looked up to.
Speaker 84 That was like, that was the best, you know, that was the best.
Speaker 84 And I think it actually did a lot for our self-confidence that we probably never admitted to ourselves that then he asked us to be on this album.
Speaker 81 Basically, like his concept was like he didn't want to do anything like specifically jazz or hip-hop, but he was into both.
Speaker 81 So like, you know, when we recorded, we recorded a couple jazz tunes but then there were a couple like kind of like spoken word kind of rap things in there too i actually just the other day when you guys contacted me for this interview i had to i hadn't listened to the album since we recorded it basically you know oh wow wow wow but i listened back to it uh yesterday and um it was like probably in like 1996 or seven that we recorded it so it was like at a time where like hip-hop artists were collaborating with jazz musicians Are you a basketball fan?
Speaker 81 I mean, man, like I'm not
Speaker 81 at all.
Speaker 25 But why, this era, dare I say, might be very familiar to you.
Speaker 26 Yeah.
Speaker 35 Like he was saying, there was a big
Speaker 35 connection between jazz and hip-hop, whether you were talking about...
Speaker 35 Tribe Call Quest, but also thinking about Guru was putting out the Jazz Mataz albums and diggable planets and so there was this this thing that was happening around that time i think that predates cornell west's rap album oh god which is a thing that exists that's right yeah you're talking about uh
Speaker 41 noted Matrix Cinematic Universe cast member, Cornell West.
Speaker 35 Yeah, you might know him from the Matrix.
Speaker 38 Nothing else, just the Matrix.
Speaker 60 But again, conscious hip-hop, right?
Speaker 61 Yes. Was was the brand all of which is to say that track one of milk money the introduction
Speaker 66 sounded like this
Speaker 88 music transcends race religion sex it transcends all of that it's a reflection of the human heart
Speaker 57 if somebody can describe what that for you you know if you say what it means you take what it means you'll flip
Speaker 57 I mean flip for real.
Speaker 32 Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Well, yeah,
Speaker 32 that's what I tried to do is, you know, because I had all the music in my head that I wanted to do, but I had to track everybody down.
Speaker 32 You know, so the only way I knew how to do it was just get to people that were close to me that I thought could carry out, you know, and kind of expand on the things that I was thinking about.
Speaker 32 So I went and I got Mark Panaski. from way back, Dave Wolfberg from way back, and uh,
Speaker 32 you know, Jason Reese, Chris Hawes both came in and did some hornwork on it for me.
Speaker 32 I got Matt Moore and Mike Tucker just killing them,
Speaker 32 James Blackwell doing some cuts, got Matt Beinfrest up from Jersey with his man Islow up from Philly to flow over track that we did.
Speaker 32 You know, and it's it's tough because I didn't want to overstep my boundaries because I'm not a hip-hop purist.
Speaker 32 I'm not a jazz purist by any means, you know, but it's music that I love and it's stuff that I wanted to do. so
Speaker 40 and it's a challenge what are you thinking as you listen to track one of milk money for the first time the first thing i'm thinking is
Speaker 35 there's a real humility that he has that i i i feel like i want to commend him for as both saying
Speaker 35 he is someone who appreciates his music but does not consider himself an aficionado
Speaker 35 the other thing that stands out to me as i was listening to it there was that that horn,
Speaker 35 that sort of horn riff that I couldn't place, but I recognized it. And
Speaker 35 I'm still having trouble recognizing it. I feel like maybe it was from
Speaker 35
a guru jazzmataz album. I'm not 100% sure.
But then there was this audio collage of things that were happening. There was
Speaker 35 a piece from the roots from Proceed.
Speaker 35 There was something from, you could hear Q-Tip in there. And so
Speaker 35 the thing that was teed up earlier where I was mentioning
Speaker 35 this moment in time and the roots and a tribe and digible planets and all this stuff, it is, yes, it's, he and I were drinking.
Speaker 26
You nailed it. We were drinking the same water.
Yeah. Yes.
Yeah.
Speaker 35 This is, this is, I know you, Sam.
Speaker 60 He could not be
Speaker 52 more clearly a fan of a tribe called quest.
Speaker 79 Yeah.
Speaker 37 Yeah.
Speaker 84 And that got Matt thinking i'll just say that the hip-hop influences were his like he was really i think down that road he was picking the genre that had
Speaker 84 less cachet and less like marketability um and because instead he wanted to lean into the harder thing because it really was his creation it wasn't like mike and i were calling the shots because if we were calling the shots it would have been straight ahead jazz every single track and probably nothing but like up tempo And there is a really strong parallel to what he does right now.
Speaker 31 And so that whole thing about like Sam Presty on this quest to win a title in Oklahoma City, which has less cachet, less marketability, again, no star players, demand trades there or sign there as free agents.
Speaker 41 The TV ratings also compared to the larger markets, obviously worse.
Speaker 35 If Sam Presti were in a larger market, if he were in New York,
Speaker 35 I don't know that he has
Speaker 35 the cachet
Speaker 35 to say,
Speaker 72 hey, I want to stockpile draft picks.
Speaker 35 I want to basically
Speaker 35 go into the basement for a little while and tinker. And when you think about, you know,
Speaker 35 that sort of world of indie or backpack conscious hip-hop, whatever you want to call it, I feel like for so much of that, it was,
Speaker 35 okay, yeah, you're going into the basement and you're just tinkering.
Speaker 73 And I think that exact argument might be embodied in the title of what turns out to be the album's fourth track, which is an original song, titled Nothing to Lose.
Speaker 32
Freeloading. Yo, here and going.
This mother nature's sad song. That's why when we alive, we gotta strive and keep on.
So shifting the drive now, put your minds in it.
Speaker 32 Life's lesson, chapter one, slice to a section from the pod graph, a word graph, a mic dress, an asset, an incline, slipped in the vinyl rule, the zoo, the paragraphs, the polar caps in the loose, lay back, lounge core depth, nothing to lose.
Speaker 32
And it reminiscing blissing as I shifted the crews. On paying dues ain't about aggression.
Well, how you dressing is progression of mind that can't be learned in one session.
Speaker 32 That's why confession to the self is harder than line.
Speaker 32 Trying tribulation, trying alert, panical sirens, properties of steels, iron fire, fly towards the back, life and peed, crazy copper feed, blood drenched the map.
Speaker 32
Ask yourself while stamina swing low on the tube through the grassy dew. Situation thicket in glue, snares allopresty, test me.
Feel that the chemistry, don't rap, distill that, extracting them.
Speaker 60 I should just say that he rented a place in New Hampshire himself.
Speaker 39 He donated all of the proceeds from Milk Money.
Speaker 33 And also this live concert that the band performed in, according to Mike Tucker, the saxophonist.
Speaker 60 He donated all of the proceeds from this concert in front of like 300, 400 people in Boston to charity.
Speaker 45 Oh, wow. Yeah.
Speaker 77 And so the charity, all the proceeds went to the Extraordinary Needs Fund at Boston Children's Hospital.
Speaker 45 Oh, wow.
Speaker 77 I find it hard to
Speaker 45 poke any holes in that part of this.
Speaker 41 And then they produced another album together, actually, whose artwork has been floating around the NBA Dork Web.
Speaker 25 The album is called All Things Considered.
Speaker 22 It's a black and white photo of Sam Fresti.
Speaker 35 That's him in the far background.
Speaker 41 Yeah, so he's like this Waldo character who is just in the back with a chessboard in front of him.
Speaker 39 And again, the metaphors kind of speak for themselves at this point.
Speaker 45 But
Speaker 31 yeah, a guy who had become known for his decision-making is sort of like trying to hide in the background of his own follow-up album cover to Milk money
Speaker 35 and
Speaker 51 time for this band uh was short by the way ultimately like everybody after these albums came out and then disappeared uh
Speaker 84 everyone went off in their own directions mike and matt and sam did not stay close no there's no i mean there really is no relationship but it wasn't like out of disrespect it was just like we could we didn't have the album so like you sending me that was like awesome i was like this is
Speaker 81 this is crazy and I had no idea about his career, to be perfectly honest, because like, I'm not like a sports person.
Speaker 56 And then like, I get a random call.
Speaker 81 It's like, hey, man, this is like George from
Speaker 81
Oklahoma City Thunder. I work with the Thunder for Sam Presti.
Sam's going to be in town like next week and he'd love to like meet up with you, just wondering what your schedule is.
Speaker 81
And I was like, Oklahoma City. I was like, is that a college team? Is that, I know Sam's like doing basketball.
And then we reconnected.
Speaker 81 And when he came to Boston, he, he, we met up at a a club that I was playing at.
Speaker 81 He was telling me how like has always had a very long vision and he'd just see like talented players who might not be like the the superstar, but he could see something in them and see how he was going to develop that.
Speaker 81 He made all of his players take a financial management and awareness course. He was like, yeah, man, you know, everything's so expensive.
Speaker 81
You know, a gallon of milk is like, you know, so he's still, and he's, you know, Sam grew up in a, in a working class family. Like his, he grew up with a single mother.
His mom was a nurse.
Speaker 81 You know, he really worked hard for everything he's got.
Speaker 23 You just told a story before about Sam talking about like the price of milk.
Speaker 33 That's actually hilarious. Yeah.
Speaker 52 And the album's name is Milk Money.
Speaker 41 But not unlike Sam Presti in the Milk Money era, I also had a vision.
Speaker 31 And I decided to not give this up.
Speaker 63 And I tumbled further and further down the Sam Presti jazz rabbit hole, listening to the eight tracks on Milk Money on like a truly disturbingly endless loop.
Speaker 35 The jazz rabbit hole sounds like that sounds like the music show I need to make.
Speaker 36 It really does.
Speaker 35 Hey, everybody, welcome to the jazz rabbit hole. It's your host, Wyatt Sanak.
Speaker 35 Tonight, we're going to go down the rabbit hole of the CTI record label. That's right, you're listening to the jazz rabbit hole with Wyatt Sanak.
Speaker 66 And on tonight's show, my guest Pablo Torre is going to text Thunder Guard Alex Caruso at 1.15 a.m.,
Speaker 24 the night before game two of the NBA Finals, to ask if he knew about his boss's jazz rap albums.
Speaker 64 And he will not respond.
Speaker 71 I'm sorry to Alex Caruso, by the way.
Speaker 31 Like, I get it, it's just, I just couldn't. I was like, again, I'm a dog with a bone on this thing.
Speaker 35 Did you go to Alex Caruso because you thought that maybe somewhere in Alex Caruso is a
Speaker 35 20-something white rapper. It's interesting you went to him and
Speaker 35 not Isaiah Hartenstein.
Speaker 63 Didn't want to profile in any particular way.
Speaker 46 Sure. Just felt very important that I consult Alex Caruso specifically.
Speaker 21 But I didn't give up.
Speaker 50 I continued to scour the internet to find anybody, musicians particularly, that Sam Presti might actually have stayed in touch with because I wanted to know what happened to that guy
Speaker 70 who got buried by his own design.
Speaker 72 And I spotted another name, a name that I do think Wyatt you would recognize as, again, a musicologist, an expert in this particular era.
Speaker 49 And this mystery guest did, in fact, respond to my request for comment by agreeing to an interview.
Speaker 31 And we're going to meet that person, Wyatt,
Speaker 35 after the break on the jazz rabbit hole
Speaker 35 with my special guest, Pablo Torre.
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Speaker 22 You're vaguely familiar with what I do, I guess.
Speaker 85 Yes, I found out.
Speaker 51 Yes, amazing. Amazing.
Speaker 39 When I cold tweeted you, I was like, I had the desperation of a man at the bottom of a rabbit hole.
Speaker 54 I don't know if you could smell that on me.
Speaker 57 Oh man, it was too early for that.
Speaker 85 I was like, damn, it's 6:30.
Speaker 34 Yeah, I was in the bathroom when I tweeted Branford Marsalis for the record.
Speaker 85 Hey, it works.
Speaker 54 Could you introduce yourself?
Speaker 85 My name is Branford Marsalis.
Speaker 31 I play music.
Speaker 57 Oh, come on.
Speaker 33 That's it?
Speaker 57 Bruh.
Speaker 85 I'm a musician. That's it.
Speaker 39 Multi-Grammy winner.
Speaker 61 Doing the right thing. Saxophonist.
Speaker 73 Fight the power. Public enemy in 89.
Speaker 85 None of that. None of that.
Speaker 23 Branford.
Speaker 85 You know, it's like Sam.
Speaker 62 It's like Sam.
Speaker 36 So whether or not you realize this, there are a zillion ways that you may have already heard the legendary tenor saxophone of 64-year-old Branford Marsalis, who, beyond all the other stuff I already mentioned, has played with Miles Davis and Sting and The Grateful Dead and the Tonight Show Band, among many, many others.
Speaker 27 But I also remember Branford, maybe most vividly, from his cameo on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air in 1994.
Speaker 6 Why don't you put that down and come sit next to me?
Speaker 85 Oh my god, 30 years ago now. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 91 How's that? Everything cool?
Speaker 45 It worked perfect, Branford. Good.
Speaker 28 Good. I'm glad you liked it.
Speaker 85 So look,
Speaker 85 I'm off like a dirty shirt.
Speaker 44 Hey, peace with two fingers, man.
Speaker 85 I can hide behind the couch and play.
Speaker 86 Yeah, sure, I can do that.
Speaker 67 But the reason Branford Marsalis is friends with Sam Presti, it turns out, goes a lot deeper than jazz and rap.
Speaker 86 I mean, first of all, it is entertainment at the end of the day.
Speaker 20 But
Speaker 85 there are people in this profession who genuinely love what they do.
Speaker 85 And then there are other people who genuinely love the attention that can be generated for them because of what it is that they do.
Speaker 85
When I'm meeting other musicians, I never lead off with how many records I've sold. I know people who do.
Hey, man, how many units did you sell? I mean, are you serious?
Speaker 59 I mean, that's the conversation because, you know, I'm from New Orleans.
Speaker 86 I'm a country boy.
Speaker 85 But New York is a city for very ambitious people.
Speaker 85 And so I would say, so how you doing, bro?
Speaker 86 How you doing?
Speaker 85 And then they would proceed to tell me every gig that they have that month.
Speaker 86 And then I would say, well, that's cool, but I didn't really ask you what you were doing.
Speaker 26 I asked you how you're doing.
Speaker 85 My passion is for the thing,
Speaker 86 not for the notoriety.
Speaker 93 And that, to be clear, is also the sort of New Yorker and podcaster that I personally would like to be.
Speaker 67 Which brings us back to basketball and jazz, these two institutions that are often compared to each other and happen to be colliding right now as the Oklahoma City Thunder, built by Sam Presti and the Indiana Pacers, coached by Rick Carlisle, are quietly making their case for a very jazz-inflected championship, even more than if the actual Utah Jazz had made it.
Speaker 85 In music,
Speaker 85 there's the visible part, like the solo, people see the solo or the singer, but then there's the invisible part, and that's when the musicians have to use their skills to support a person who is in the front.
Speaker 85 Now, that is called comping, C-O-M-P-I-N-G.
Speaker 85
Piano players do it, guitar players do it. Sometimes the horns do it, but it's like in horn parts.
The horn parts support the singer that's comping.
Speaker 85 Thanks to Bruce Hornsby, I have a sometimes physical chat, but a lot of texting between
Speaker 57 Rick Carlisle and myself.
Speaker 85
So after game one against the Knicks, I wrote Rick and said, man, I've never seen anything like that. You know, your kids are amazing.
And he writes back and says, you really like these guys.
Speaker 85 They love comping as much as they love soloing. And I was like, this is the hippest dude on the damn planet.
Speaker 85 That's just not something you're going to see
Speaker 85 in a conversation with somebody outside of the music business. But he's a smart cat, man.
Speaker 56 He always has been.
Speaker 73 And so I'm finding out so much already, which is to say that the NBA finals of the year 2025 AD are also the Branford Marsalis Finals because you have this weigh-in to both sides.
Speaker 61 Yeah, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 54 But this is the scent I've been tracking is that you had a connection to Sam Presti because of the research and the amount of just rabbit hole diving I've been doing.
Speaker 73 I didn't realize that you also knew Rick Carlisle.
Speaker 85 Yeah, Sam's a jazz fan and Rick is a music fan, but Sam's, he's a music fan too. He's a jazz fan and we
Speaker 59 struck up conversations and he's he's also talked to Wenton about jazz and the relationship between team building
Speaker 85 like building a team is very similar to building a band.
Speaker 85 You have to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each player
Speaker 85 and you have to set up a construct so that you challenge the musicians to eliminate their weaknesses, where
Speaker 85 the impulse will always be to double down on one's strengths.
Speaker 85 Because it is certainly much easier to enforce what you already know than to go through the painstaking reality of addressing the things you're not very adept at.
Speaker 85 And it's pretty amazing when you look at both of those teams and how they've been constructed.
Speaker 85 We keep inventing ever since LeBron went to Miami, the big three.
Speaker 44 They don't really have a big three.
Speaker 23 No, that's the other story of this finals beyond the jazz is literally this.
Speaker 44 They're teams.
Speaker 45 Correct.
Speaker 85 Because even though Shay is the MVP, he doesn't have the persona where he's like, I'm the straw that stirs the drink.
Speaker 21 he's not on that vibe the big three thing was the basic math it was top heavy right and what you're seeing in a way that i didn't consider actually until you articulated it was the way in which jazz as a metaphor is actually even more meaningful because jazz as a metaphor historically in my understanding had always been basketball is free-flowing improvisational
Speaker 54 all of the sort of like flowery language.
Speaker 22 You're talking about something interesting, more interesting than that to me.
Speaker 73 You're talking about guys need to get a f ⁇ ing hold of their ego and sublimate themselves for the greater mission.
Speaker 63 Absolutely.
Speaker 85 And it's free-flowing as long as everybody understands what the construct is and what the rules are.
Speaker 85
And Jazz, you have a basic chord. It's the same chord you hear all the time, like G7.
Every song has a G7.
Speaker 85 And then there are notes above that where you can extend the harmony and piano players just doing that.
Speaker 86 And I'm like, why are you doing that?
Speaker 85 He goes, well, man, it's in the harmony.
Speaker 59 I said, but it's not in the song, bro.
Speaker 85
Harmonically, it's correct. Musically, that was some dumb shit you just played.
And
Speaker 85 they tend to be pissed off when you say it because they only know how to play one way.
Speaker 52 By the way, now I get why you and Rick Carlisle get along.
Speaker 45 I get it.
Speaker 52 I know enough about Rick to know how you guys may be bonding.
Speaker 85 Man, he's smart as hell, and he don't care.
Speaker 79 I love him.
Speaker 39 He's brilliant, and he does not care.
Speaker 83 Those are the two scouting reports I often get on Coach Carlisle.
Speaker 37 Love it.
Speaker 54 What kind of a critic are you?
Speaker 85
I'm the worst. They ask my colleagues.
They hate when I show up, but I've learned to keep my mouth closed. So they like me more now.
But, you know, they used to come and say, well, what do you think?
Speaker 85 And I'd tell them, and then they'd be like, man, you're an asshole.
Speaker 45 Get out of here.
Speaker 85 But if you ever went to a string quartet concert and watched, they are making constant communication. with one another.
Speaker 85 It's like if you watch the NFL Combine and they say, this guy can run the 40 in 4.2 seconds. That's amazing.
Speaker 59 And his vertical leap is 4.
Speaker 44 Can he play football?
Speaker 85 And that's the music thing. It's like, man, can you play music?
Speaker 56 It's great that you can play the hell out of the saxophone.
Speaker 85 There's a lot of saxophone players who play saxophone better than me.
Speaker 86 I'm not trying to be humble.
Speaker 85 I know this to be true, but I play music better than them. So
Speaker 85 I win.
Speaker 62 It's part of why Sam Presti is fascinating, because Sam Presty, beyond his discretion and privacy, which is now very well known, I actually am curious as to your read of him as just a guy that you had never met before.
Speaker 85
Sam loves his job, first and foremost. He doesn't love what it brings him.
He loves that job. And the thing I love about him is, if you didn't know what he did, you wouldn't know what he does.
Speaker 85
He wouldn't introduce it. He'd never bring it up.
That's my kind of dude right there. They were coming to New Orleans.
to beat up on my lowly pelicans.
Speaker 85
The play-by-play announcer, Joel Myers, is a buddy of mine, also a big big jazz fan. And we spend a lot of time talking about records.
And we were going to meet for dinner.
Speaker 85 And Sam found out and said, hey, man, I'm coming to dinner with y'all.
Speaker 57 I'm like, wow.
Speaker 85 Don't you have more pressing matters to do, like what you're doing now? And, you know, and he was in New Orleans and he came through and it was great.
Speaker 85 And we had a meal and we talked about nothing about basketball. And
Speaker 85 there's nothing else to the story.
Speaker 71 What is your scouting report on Sam, the musician, as you've come to understand it?
Speaker 85 He's never never come in and sit in with us, so there's no way to judge. I mean, I just know he's a big fan of the music.
Speaker 80 I didn't even know he played drums. Perfect example.
Speaker 59 He never brought it up.
Speaker 86 He never brought it up.
Speaker 26 That's wild.
Speaker 85 Had no idea.
Speaker 66 Okay, so I'm going to do something,
Speaker 52 Granford, because what I've been doing at the bottom of this rabbit hole, maybe you now know where this is going.
Speaker 86 I don't know yet.
Speaker 20 Okay.
Speaker 47 So I've been scouring the earth and the internet.
Speaker 85 Oh, you found something.
Speaker 29 I just want to play you something yeah man and again
Speaker 68 you're you
Speaker 48 unvarnished nightmare critic for anyone who sees you in the audience i'm gonna play you something all right and i just like us to both listen and then we can discuss so would you mind no i would not mind sam i'm a rip you bro i'm ripping you man
Speaker 85 gotta do it
Speaker 65 So, I just need to acknowledge here, as a human being who makes things, how absolutely terrifying what I'm about to do must be for Mike Tucker and Matt Morin and Sam Presti and the rappers in that recording studio in New Hampshire in the mid-90s.
Speaker 34 Because asking one of the greatest living musicians to critique the long-forgotten music that you had made before you were legally allowed to rent a car is kind of a nightmare, I must admit.
Speaker 67 Especially if you are an extraordinarily private NBA executive who never wanted anybody to hear this.
Speaker 65 And especially when Branford Marsalis' self-scouting report as a critic, once again, is this.
Speaker 85 I'm the worst asking my colleagues.
Speaker 86 They hate when I show up.
Speaker 47 But
Speaker 23 it is time for Branford Marsalis to find out.
Speaker 39 The album is called Milk Money.
Speaker 53 Sam Presti is the artist, and this is the introductory track.
Speaker 37 Excellent.
Speaker 88 Music transcends race, religion, sex.
Speaker 87 It transcends all of that.
Speaker 88 It's a reflection of the human heart.
Speaker 45 I mean, that was like some buddy rich.
Speaker 19 He was just firing, going all over.
Speaker 26 So he can play.
Speaker 32 Yeah,
Speaker 32 that's what I tried to do is, you know, because I had all the music in my head that I wanted to do, but I had to track everybody down.
Speaker 32 You know, so what I only way I knew how to do it was just get the people that were close to me that I thought could carry out, you know,
Speaker 32 and kind of expand on the things that I was thinking about. So I went and I got Mark Pananski from way back, Dave Wolfer from way back.
Speaker 51 What's running through your mind?
Speaker 85 Sam understands what the job is and he keeps the beat,
Speaker 86 but there's a few guys that
Speaker 85 play that groove and add extra things,
Speaker 85 really nerdy extra things, like playing
Speaker 85 parts on upbeats or playing against because it calls attention to them in a certain way.
Speaker 86 And all the musicians go, woo!
Speaker 85 You know, so, and every time I hear it, I'm like, Why are they doing that? Just play the gig, bro.
Speaker 32 James Blackbrook doing some cuts.
Speaker 32 Got Matt Beinfrast up from Jersey with his man Islo up from Philly. It's a flow over track that we did, you know.
Speaker 32 And it's tough because I didn't want to overstep my boundaries because I'm not a hip-hop purist. I'm not a jazz purist.
Speaker 85 It's more RB,
Speaker 85 but it has solos and it uses interesting chord structures. So it falls more in line with jazz than anything else.
Speaker 57 But the uh,
Speaker 85 you know, the trumpet player was clearly has been checking out Miles because he has the muted trumpet and he's playing it the way Miles plays it.
Speaker 82 I just love the fact that Sam can keep a groove.
Speaker 85 That sounds like the 90s, the 90s vibe.
Speaker 47 I demanded to mention that you played Saxon Flight the Power.
Speaker 86 Oh, yeah, I was, you know, that was Spike Lee's idea.
Speaker 85 And Spike called me. We We were neighbors.
Speaker 44 In Fort Green?
Speaker 26 Yeah.
Speaker 85
I think the most important part of it for him is that we were friends and neighbors before he became famous. And he said, I want you to play on this song with Public Enemy.
I'm like, you kidding?
Speaker 86 Okay, great.
Speaker 27 It's going to be great.
Speaker 59 It's going to be great. It's going to fight the power.
Speaker 85 But it was Spike's idea.
Speaker 71 Man, I got two more tracks to play for you.
Speaker 78 If that's
Speaker 23 our next track in music class with Branford Marcellus, it's titled 16 Baltimore Ave.
Speaker 85 So, two songs, both by James Brown. One is called Cold Sweat, and the other one's called Super Bad.
Speaker 85 And it's kind of like a mashup of those two.
Speaker 85 The saxophone player was a big fan of Mike Brecker's.
Speaker 37 Michael Brecker was a guy that he used to play that.
Speaker 85 Way too many notes, though, for that groove.
Speaker 85 And when I first got to New York, I was more of an RB player than a jazz player. And there's a scale called the pentatonic scale.
Speaker 85
And that's all I could play was the pentatonic scale. And the first thing he played was the pentatonic scale.
And I went, oh, that's me.
Speaker 57 That's why I laughed.
Speaker 30 You're at the front of the class and this band now looks to you and they say, Professor, what did we just do here?
Speaker 34 You say.
Speaker 92 I would play records for them.
Speaker 85 They're more efficient ways to do what you're doing.
Speaker 86 And I would certainly play the James Brown records.
Speaker 85 There's an instrumental record that James Brown's band did.
Speaker 90 It was the JBs.
Speaker 85 That was the name of the record, the JBs. And they had a song called Pass the Peas on there.
Speaker 92 It was really great.
Speaker 85 And then there's another record that the trombonist Fred Wesley did called Fred Wesley and the Horny Horns.
Speaker 79 And
Speaker 85 they really do know how to play that style of music and still leave enough space for the music to breathe rather than flood the zone with flurries of 16th notes.
Speaker 85
But the rest of the band was very disciplined. I mean, Sam played the parts, he didn't really try to deviate.
The bass player stayed with it. The piano player,
Speaker 86 soloing leaves a little bit to be desired, but everybody, you know, it was, man, it was good.
Speaker 55 It was good. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 30 I got one more track for you.
Speaker 20 All right.
Speaker 51 This one, I think you may be familiar with.
Speaker 57 So now I feel like a cruel scientist.
Speaker 85 Yeah, I want to know. Yeah, I want to know what you think.
Speaker 44 Let me know what you think.
Speaker 22 I mean, look, so here's what I know, right?
Speaker 23 That's Coltrane.
Speaker 26 Yes.
Speaker 30 This is a standard.
Speaker 23 This is something that as I listen to it, I began to feel bad playing it for Branford Marcels.
Speaker 86 Wow.
Speaker 52 I'm imagining them in the box that I'm in, watching your face, and I began to just sweat a bit.
Speaker 41 So, because you're also, by the way, for people who are not familiar, of course, with what you have also done, rearranging that song, could you just fill us in?
Speaker 52 I'm demanding that you fill us in on like your familiarity with this song.
Speaker 57 Oh, yeah, well, it's a song I wouldn't play, first of all.
Speaker 30 Because
Speaker 57 it's just, yeah,
Speaker 57 it's like one of the running jokes we have in the group is that bands that lean towards rock and roll
Speaker 86 or RB
Speaker 85 Every time that they play what is considered a jazz tune
Speaker 85 It's always in a minor key.
Speaker 85 I don't know why
Speaker 85 but it's either Mr. PC or it's the Miles Davis song So What
Speaker 22 What about the drum solo in that one?
Speaker 85 Well, the thing that was most interesting about the drum solo is that that was called, that's the thing we call trading force.
Speaker 85
Like the, because the song is a 12-bar form. I'm trying to simplify it, and it's in 4-4.
So for you folks out there, if you count 1, 2, 3, 4, when you get to the next one, that's a new bar.
Speaker 85 So it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 2.
Speaker 85
3, 2, 3, 4, 4. And they were playing four bar phrases.
The saxophone player would play for four bars, and then Sam would play for four bars.
Speaker 85 Now, a lot of times when drummers would play that, they always make this big sample crash on the first beat that the saxophone starts to play again.
Speaker 85 I thought it was really cool that he didn't because the other way is just super cliche to me.
Speaker 85 And it was really cool that he didn't. He just went
Speaker 26 swinging.
Speaker 57 He was like, oh, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 86 That was a great idea. I mean, Sam, go ahead, man.
Speaker 56 We had to think it through.
Speaker 85
But it's good, man. I know he's going to be mad at you for playing this for me.
It's cool, man.
Speaker 85 I'm going to cop the record.
Speaker 86 Milk
Speaker 86 Milk Money.
Speaker 41 Yeah, it's going to.
Speaker 34 I might be the only supplier on the internet at this point, but I'm going to get you to die coffee, man.
Speaker 57 Bro, I know you now, so you got to hook me up.
Speaker 85 It's cool.
Speaker 93 But there is one more aspect near the end here that Branford brought up that I do think is worth mentioning.
Speaker 93 Because a story about an executive's secret former life as a drummer at a liberal arts college also relates to something that Branford and his late father, Ellis, the musician who most inspired Branford and his brother Wyndon,
Speaker 67 would talk about a lot.
Speaker 27 And it feels especially relevant today.
Speaker 37 The
Speaker 94 essential destruction
Speaker 78 of the liberal arts college in the United States was one of the worst things that he felt could ever happen because in the 1950s, there was no such thing as pre-law.
Speaker 78 So a lot of these lawyers were taking theater and reading Shakespeare. And it brings a whole different side out of you.
Speaker 78 But now it's like, you know, pre-law, law, pre-med, med.
Speaker 78 And then they say, oh, doctors don't really communicate like they like, like they, they used to. Well, they don't learn the stuff that they used to.
Speaker 78 They don't understand the value of poetry and the value of
Speaker 78 a liberal arts education. And liberal arts colleges are dwindling everywhere.
Speaker 78 The fact that Sam is an executive and he also had this music career where he was playing music, it's going to make him a better executive. You know, because everything you learn, you carry with you
Speaker 94 all of which reminds me of something something else that dara the thunder super fan the crate digger who found this physical used cd and enabled this entire episode had found out
Speaker 78 we always say like impress who we trust right he makes a trade he makes a draft pic we just sort of blindly believe it even if going into the daft we had no idea who this guy was But on the same sense, like, we don't know who he is as a person.
Speaker 78
Everything he says, it sounds like he's rehearsed it over 20 times. I like this album because it's sort of him personally, to a certain sense.
Like,
Speaker 78 I hate to say this, but I think like Daryl Maury, if this was him, he'd be like, should I re-release the deluxe edition or something?
Speaker 20 You know what I mean?
Speaker 78 This is some guy that he's been the only constant in this organization. But I don't think I've ever really seen him laugh at anything, you know?
Speaker 27 Yeah, and to be honest, I have no idea how the NBA's executive of the year, one of the best executives in all of sports, is gonna react once he hears this episode that he did not want to exist.
Speaker 94 And I have no idea about that because Sam Presty, as was entirely expected, did decline to comment.
Speaker 93 Which brings our music documentary here back to how we started.
Speaker 35 What'd you find out today, Pablo?
Speaker 31 I would like to tell someone that I know in real life, hey, do you have that sax on you?
Speaker 31 And to immediately be serenaded by.
Speaker 43 All right, well, you asked for it.
Speaker 31 That is so much better than I thought it would be.
Speaker 22 We've turned the tables on Sam Presty now.
Speaker 29 We have scouted the young Sam Presti.
Speaker 51
Oh, yeah. Thank you.
Thank you for doing that, Bramford.
Speaker 38 He's not mad at me.
Speaker 56 Well, I hope he's not mad at you, but it was a pleasure to do it.
Speaker 85 It was a pleasure to listen to the music and talk about my man.
Speaker 45 So that's cool.
Speaker 39 Yeah.
Speaker 41 Another line in your bio is that you're now officially a Pablo Torre finds out correspondent.
Speaker 85 I see that. I drag about.
Speaker 86 And I see that. That's the thing.
Speaker 85 I name drop that.
Speaker 85 Everything else now, but I name drop that.
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