Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessean and MAGA Rapper Bryson Gray in studio to talk about his “Let’s Go Brandon” song reaching the top of the music charts and his new release “Thanks, YouTube.”
Leahy: Well, there it is. I’m kind of grooving out to that. I don’t know if that’s the right term. What do you say when you like a rap song? Groove out to it?
Gray: That’s lit.
Leahy: That is lit! I can see it. You’re looking lit. Here you go. And you’re smiling. You’re loving that song. There are, like, seven or eight of these versions out there.
People want you to say, hey, get a clean version of it out there, because that’s really what that chant is about. How did you go about deciding to write it because it’s very cleverly written?
Gray: I wanted to reflect on how I’m feeling personally about the Biden administration and how a lot of us are. When I make music to reflect what I’m feeling, I want it to be rugged. I want it to sound sort of like…
Leahy: Rugged? Rugged?
Gray: Rugged, like grimey. You know what I’m saying?
Leahy: Grimey. I’m building my vocabulary up here. (Gray laughs) What is grimy?
Gray: You go downtown, you see the graffiti on the wall – that kind of feeling.
Leahy: Like the feeling of real?
Gray: Yes. Upset. Ready to fight back.
Leahy: You want a rugged and grimy version of how you Bryson Gray feel about the Biden administration? That’s what you’re going for.
Gray: All without cursing. (Laughs)
Leahy: All without cursing. This is really quite an accomplishment.
Gray: Yes. So I did that. And I called Tyson James because he’s one of my closest friends in the conservative rap industry. I said, Please get on it. And then Chandler. I put Chandler Crump on it because he’s 17, and he wanted to do one with me a week earlier, two weeks earlier. And I said I wasn’t going to do it. I was like, if I didn’t put him on it, that would be messed up.
Leahy: So you’ve got this community of kind of conservative rappers out there.
Gray: Yes.
Leahy: You’re sort of the leader of the pack, right? I would guess.
Gray: I sort of grandfathered the movement.
Leahy: Yeah. Where are they based?
Gray: Tyson is close to Seattle, Washington. And Chandler Crump is in Atlanta.
Leahy: And so how do you coordinate this?
Gray: They got studios. I own a studio. We just recorded it and send it to them. They record and Send it back. And then I put it together.
Leahy: So you did the final edits on it.
Gray: Usually I send it off because I’m decent at mixing, but I mixed “Let’s Go Brandon.” My two biggest songs are “Let’s Go, Brandon” and “Trump Is Your President.” And I mixed and mastered both of those. I’m proud of that.
Leahy: I think that would be what you might call a clue about how you do mixing going forward, right?
Gray: Yes sir.
Leahy: Because you got the feel for it.
Gray: There are certain things I’ll be wanting to do, but I can’t. So sometimes I’ll still pay an engineer to do certain things. But Let’s Go Brandon, I was like, oh, no, this is right. This is the one. I got it.
Leahy: And you have the feeling that this was going to go, right, didn’t you?
Gray: No. The opposite.
Leahy: Oh, you didn’t?
Gray: No. Because I didn’t use the chant. I didn’t make it sound like Sunshine and rainbows. No, I did not think this is going to go viral.
Leahy: Really? So the market surprises you.
Gray: Yes. I told Tyson James, I said this probably won’t go viral, but just in case it does.
Leahy: You felt the obligation to get it out there, right?
Gray: Yeah. Because I liked it. (Laughs)
Leahy: This is a shock because there is one rap performer that I like. Do you know what his name is?
Gray: Who is it?
Leahy: Bryson Gray. (Laughter)
Gray: Oh, let’s go!
Leahy: I’m not a rap guy at all. Not even close. But I like your stuff. I really genuinely like it because it’s very clever, right? It’s clever. It’s very clever. I like that about it.
Gray: Thank you. It’s just me expressing myself through music, which I thought was a free speech place. But the song got banned by YouTube, which made it go viral.
Leahy: Is that what made it go viral? So the weenies at YouTube decide oh, this is bad because it’s good, right? (Laughter)
Gray: Yes, sir.
Leahy: And so they ban it. Is it still banned on YouTube?
Gray: Yeah. A bunch of patriots re-uploaded it and risked their channels, but YouTube finds them. (Leahy chuckles)
Leahy: Do they realize that if they banned your song, it’s going to help you go viral?
Gray: I don’t think they realize that which is why the song I’m releasing today is called Thanks, YouTube.
Leahy: You’re kidding me. So you’re releasing a song today. You are in their face.
Gray: (Laughs) Somebody got to do it.
Leahy: I love it. Thanks, YouTube. (Laughs)
Gray: Yes, sir. That’s what it’s called.
Leahy: This is too much fun. Can you give us a preview? What are some elements of it? What’s the message in Thanks, YouTube besides,
“Thanks, YouTube.”
Gray: I said YouTube banned my song, but now they got a cope when number one and name got to say, I’m selling dope and we like them. I forgot the rest.
Leahy: Ok. That’s it. I got it. So again, you are distinctive in the marketplace.
Gray: Yes, because I think a lot of people, especially conservatives, I find when we get canceled and things like that, we tend to sort of back away and shy away.
Leahy: You go *whine* “Don’t be so mean to me!”
Gray: Yeah, me I’m like, do it again, please. (Laughter)
Leahy: But what are the elements of making it number one on iTunes? How does that happen?
Gray: Pure sales. So people got to spend that dollar. So you have streaming. You have sales. A lot of people stream now, which is why the Billboards were so confused on how we made it to the Top 40 on the Hot 100. But that is because over 50,000 people within a span of seven days bought the song.
Leahy: Whoa. Hold up. They all paid you a buck?
Gray: Not me, but iTunes. They paid iTunes.
Leahy: But you get some of that.
Gray: Yes, like, 70 percent.
Leahy: Yeah, well, dude, that’s very good.
Gray: Yes, it’s insane. I didn’t think it was going to go viral. So when all the places started picking it up and I was like, it beat Adele because she did 27,000 that week peer sales, and we like, doubled hers.
Leahy: Wow.
Gray: Yes, it’s insane.
Leahy: So do you think that YouTube is going to have a similar pattern or what do you think?
Gray: Let’s go, Brandon is a trend. The bigger the trend, obviously, the bigger the song. But I hope so.
Leahy: Are you going to send me the link to this so I can promote it.
Gray: Of course.
Leahy: I’m going to do a story on it and we’re going to send it all through every conservative news outlet that I know we’re going to promote Thanks, YouTube.
Gray: Let’s go!
Leahy: Let’s Go Bryson! (Laughter) Too much fun. I don’t know. We got to bring a cake in here and celebrate this.
Gray: Let’s do it.
Leahy: The great success of your song, Let’s Go Brandon.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
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