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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
2:03 - Identity
6:01 - Music production
18:52 - Spotify
23:34 - Experimental music
26:09 - Vision of future
38:42 - Motherhood
54:50 - Consciousness
1:09:40 - Love
1:15:31 - Metaverse
1:28:13 - Technology and bureaucracy
1:32:11 - Mortality
1:40:36 - Understanding evil
1:44:34 - Last person on Earth
1:47:12 - Dan Carlin
1:49:42 - Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
1:56:07 - Coolest human invention
1:57:28 - Advice for young people
2:00:40 - Meaning of life

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Like our brains are fundamentally changed.

Everyone who grew up with electronics, we are fundamentally different from previous, from homo sapiens.

I think we have evolved into homo techno, which is like essentially a new species.

Previous technologies, I mean, may have even been more profound and moved us to a certain degree, but I think the computers are what make us homo-techno.

I think this is what, it's a brain augmentation.

Like the computers accelerate the degree to which all the other technologies can also be accelerated.

Would you classify yourself as a homo sapien or a homo techno?

So you're 1 of the earliest of the species.

The following is a conversation with Grimes, an artist, musician, songwriter, producer, director, and a fascinating human being who thinks a lot about both the history and the future of human civilization, studying the dark periods of our past to help form an optimistic vision of our future.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

This microphone, Cloudlifter, is what Michael Jackson used.

And that, yeah, it's an incredible microphone.

Like, sometimes it's easier to record vocals if you're just in a room and like the music's playing and you just want to like feel it.

So I think It's like a good mic for like just vibing out and just getting a real good vocal take.

Anyway, this is the Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones microphone.

1 of your names, at least in this space and time, is C, like the letter C.

And you told me that C means a lot of things.

It's the speed of light, it's the render rate of the universe, it's yes in Spanish, it's the crescent moon, And it happens to be my favorite programming language because it basically runs the world, but it's also powerful, fast, and it's dangerous because you can mess things up really bad with it because of all the pointers.

But anyway, which of these associations with the name C is the coolest to you?

I mean, to me, the coolest is the speed of light, obviously.

Or, the speed of light, when I say render rate of the universe, I think I mean the speed of light, because essentially that's what we're rendering at.

See, I think we'll know if we're in a simulation if the speed of light changes, because if they can improve their render speed, then.

It's already pretty good, but if it improves, then we'll know, you know, we can probably be like, okay, they've updated or upgraded.

What's fast enough for us humans, because it seems like, it seems immediate.

There's no delay, there's no latency in terms of like us humans on earth interacting with things.

But if you're like, like intergalactic species operating on a much larger scale, then you're gonna start noticing some weird stuff, or if you can operate in like around a black hole, then you're gonna start to see some render issues.

You can't go faster than the speed of light, correct?

So it really limits our ability, or one's ability to travel space.

Theoretically you can, you have wormholes.

So there's nothing in general relativity that precludes faster than speed of light to travel, but it just seems you're gonna have to do some really funky stuff with very heavy things that have like Weirdnesses that have basically tears in space-time.

Do you think of yourself as multiple people?

Do you know, like, this morning, were you a different person than you are tonight?

We are, I should say, recording this basically at midnight, which is awesome.

Anyway, are you the same person you were in the morning and the evening?

Or are you just a giant mystery to yourself?

Okay, these are really intense questions, but.

Because I ask this myself, like look in the mirror, who are you?

People tell you to just be yourself, but what does that even mean?

I mean, I think my personality changes with everyone I talk to.

So I have a very inconsistent personality.

Person to person, so the interaction, your personality materializes.

Or my mood, like I'll go from being like a megalomaniac to being like, you know, just like a total hermit who is very shy.

So some combinatorial combination of your mood and the person you're interacting with.

Yeah, mood and people I'm interacting with.

But I think everyone's like that, maybe not.

Well, Not everybody acknowledges it and able to introspect it.

Who brings out, what kind of person, what kind of mood brings out the best in you?

Like my best friends, like people who I can, When I'm like super confident and I know that they're gonna understand everything I'm saying, so like my best friends, then...

When I can start being really funny, that's always my peak mode.

But it's like, yeah, it takes a lot to get there.

You've talked about constraints and limits.

Do those help you out as an artist or as a human being or do they get in the way?

So in creating music, in creating art, in living life, Do you like the constraints that this world puts on you?

If constraints are moving, then you're good.

Like it's like, It's like as we are progressing with technology, we're changing the constraints of artistic creation.

Making video and music and stuff is getting a lot cheaper.

There's constantly new technology and new software that's making it faster and easier.

We have so much more freedom than we had in the 70s, like when Michael Jackson, you know, when they recorded Thriller with this microphone, like they had to use a mixing desk and all this stuff.

And like probably even getting a studio is probably really expensive and you have to be a really good singer and you have to know how to use like the mixing desk and everything.

And now I can just, you know, make, I've made a whole album on this computer.

I have a lot more freedom, but then I'm also constrained in different ways because there's like literally millions more artists.

It's just like, I also, I didn't learn music.

So I, I don't know anything about actual music.

So I'm really kind of just like messing around and like trying things out.

Well, yeah, I mean, but the nature of music is changing.

So you're saying you don't know actual music, what music is changing.

Music is becoming, you've talked about this, is becoming, it's like merging with technology.

It's becoming something more than just like the notes on a piano.

It's becoming some weird composition that requires engineering skills, programming skills, some kind of human-robot interaction skills, and still some of the same things that Michael Jackson had, which is like a good ear for a good sense of taste of what's good and not the final thing, what is put together.

Like you're allowed, you're enabled, empowered with a laptop to layer stuff, to start layering insane amounts of stuff.

I do think music production is a really underrated art form.

I feel like people really don't appreciate it.

When I look at publishing splits, the way that people pay producers and stuff, It's super, producers are just deeply underrated.

Like so many of the songs that are popular right now or for the last 20 years, like part of the reason they're popular is because the production is really interesting or really sick or really cool.

And it's like, I don't think listeners, like people just don't really understand what music production is.

It's not, it's sort of like this weird discombobulated art form.

It's not like a formal, because it's so new, there isn't like a formal training path for it.

Like it's like almost everyone I know who's good at production, like I didn't go to musical school or anything.

Like the music producers you know, is there some commonalities that tie them together?

Or are they all just different kinds of weirdos?

Yeah, I mean, Rick Rubin is like literally 1 of the gods of music production.

Like he's 1 of the people who first, you know, who like made music production, you know, made the production as important as the actual lyrics or the notes.

But the thing he does, which is interesting, I don't know if you can speak to that, but he's hanging out with them.

He seems to just sit there in silence, close his eyes and listen.

And that nothing somehow gives you freedom to be the best version of yourself.

So that's music production somehow too, which is like encouraging you to do less, to simplify, to like push towards minimalism.

I mean, I guess, I mean, I work differently from Rick Rubin because Rick Rubin produces for other artists, whereas like I mostly produce for myself.

I also think Rick Rubin, he's in that, I would say, advanced category of producer where you've earned your, you can have an engineer and stuff and people do the stuff for you.

So You're the engineer, the producer, and the artist.

Yeah, I guess I would say I'm in the era, like the post-Rick Rubin era.

Like I come from the kind of like Skrillex school of thought, which is like where you're you are.

Yeah, the engineer, producer, artist, like, I mean, lately, sometimes I'll work with a producer now I'm gently sort of delicately starting to collaborate a bit more.

But like, I think I'm kind of from the, whatever, 2010s explosion of things where everything became available on the computer and you kind of got this lone wizard energy thing going.

Is the loneliness somehow an engine of creativity?

Like, so most of your stuff, most of your creative quote unquote genius in quotes is in the privacy of your mind?

Yes, well, it was, but here's the thing, I was talking to Daniel Eck and he said, he's like, most artists, they have about 10 years, like 10 good years, and then they usually stop making their vital shit.

And I feel like I'm sort of nearing the end of my 10 years on my own.

Now I'm in the process of becoming somebody else and reinventing.

When I work with other people, because I've never worked with other people, I find that I make, like that I'm exceptionally rejuvenated and making like some of the most vital work I've ever made.

So, because I think another human brain is like 1 of the best tools you can possibly find.

It's like, if a tool is like, you know, whatever HP plus 1 or like adds some like stats to your character, like another human brain will like square it instead of just like

We should also mention we're playing tavern music before this, which I love, which I first, I think

I first- You had to stop the tavern music.

They probably would, but it makes me, it reminds me like of a video game, like a role-playing video game where you have experience points.

There's something really joyful about wandering places like Elder Scrolls, like Skyrim, just exploring these landscapes in another world, and then you get experience points, and you can work on different skills, and somehow you progress in life.

It doesn't have some of the messy complexities of life.

And there's usually a bad guy you can fight in Skyrim, it's dragons and so on.

I'm sure in Elden Ring, there's a bunch of monsters you can fight.

I feel like Elden Ring, I feel like this is a good analogy to music production though, because it's like, I feel like the engineers and the people creating these open worlds are, it's sort of like similar to people, to music producers, whereas it's like this, this hidden archetype that like no 1 really understands what they do and no 1 really knows who they are, but they're like, it's like the artist engineer, because it's like, it's both art and fairly complex engineering.

Well, you're saying they don't get enough credit.

Aren't you kind of changing that by becoming the person doing everything?

Well, I mean, others have gone before me.

I'm not, you know, there's like Timbaland and Skrillex and there's all these people that are like, you know, very famous for this.

But I just think the general, I think people get confused about what it is and just don't really know what it is per se.

And it's just when I see a song, like when there's like a hit song, like I'm just trying to think of like just going for like even just a basic pop hit, like Rules by Dua Lipa or something.

The production on that is actually like really crazy.

I mean the song is also great, but it's like the production is exceptionally memorable.

Like, you know, And it's just like no 1, I don't even know who produced that song.

It just like, isn't part of like the rhetoric of how we discuss the creation of art.

We just sort of like, don't consider the music producer.

Because I think the music producer used to be more just simply recording things.

Yeah, that's interesting, because when you think about movies, we talk about the actor and the actresses, but we also talk about the director.

And we don't talk about that with the music as often.

The Beatles music producer was 1 of the first people introducing crazy sound design into pop music.

I forget his name, but, you know, like he was doing all the weird stuff like dropping pianos and like, yeah.

Oh, to get the, yeah, yeah, yeah, to get the sound, to get the authentic sound.

You think those, where did they fit into how important they are?

I was heartbroken to learn that Elvis didn't write his songs.

but- But here's the thing, I feel like there's this desire for authenticity.

I used to be really mad when people wouldn't write or produce their music, and I'd be like, that's fake.

And then I realized, There's all this weird bitterness and agroness in art about authenticity.

But I had this kind of weird realization recently where I started thinking that art is sort of a decentralized collective thing.

Like art is kind of a conversation with all the artists that have ever lived before you.

You know, like it's like, you're really just sort of, it's not like anyone's reinventing the wheel here, like you're kind of just taking, you know, thousands of years of art and like running it through your own little algorithm and then like making your like your interpretation of it.

You just joined the conversation with all the other artists that came before.

Like, and it's like, I feel like everyone's always like, there's always copyright and IP and this and that, or authenticity.

And it's just like, I think we need to stop seeing this as this like egotistical thing of like, oh, the creative genius, the lone creative genius or this or that, because it's like, I think art isn't, shouldn't be about that.

I think art is something that sort of brings humanity together.

And it's also, art is also kind of the collective memory of humans.

It's like, we don't, like, we don't give a fuck about whatever ancient Egypt, like how much grain got sent that day and sending the records and like, you know, like who went where and how many shields needed to be produced for this.

And it's like, you know, it's like in our day-to-day life, there's all this stuff that seems more important than art because it helps us function and survive.

But when all this is gone, like the only thing that's really gonna be left is the art.

A good compression of human history is the art we've generated across the different centuries, the different millennia.

When the aliens come, they're gonna find the hieroglyphics and the pyramids.

They might find like the engineering marvels, the bridges, the rockets, the-

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Grimes: Music, AI, and the Future of Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #281