a rapper with your kind of skin tone?

- What are you tryin' to say?

- Can we open?

- You can open.

What's up?

- I don't recognize you.

- Do you know who I am?

- No.

- Are you?

- Ryan Gosling.

[laughter]

- Wow-ow.

- What is your job?

- I am a musician.

- Have you ever done a stage dive?

- I've done many stage dives.

- How many hours a week do you work?

- Who's to say how much work really tour is?

You're really only on stage for like,

an hour and a half a night.

- And plus you're already just

restating the songs that you already made.

- Right, is that even work in the first place?

Question mark. We don't know.

- Is there like song that you get like tired of singing?

- Yes, it's a song called Thrift Shop.

[Laughter]

- What school do you guys go to?

- What's your favorite song?

- Uh, McCleur.

I got to McCleur and he goes to Hamilton.

- You guys go to different schools.

- Yeah.

- Man back in the day,

McCleur and Hamilton use to be kinda bad schools.

- Oh, McCleur sucks.

- Does it?

- Yes.

- That's where I probably started to do drugs,

was with McCleur kids man.

[Laughter]

Like actually for real.

I went to a McCleur party, in seventh grade,

and I think that was it.

- Why do you always use your hands when you talk, like well?

- I rap, so like I.

- Told ya!

You do it.

- No I'm showing you, this is like exaggerated,

but like yeah, I rap.

- Have you been recognized?

- I got recognized on the way over here.

I was in Barnes and Nobel, someone stops me and says

"Has anyone ever told you, that you look

a lot like Macklemore?"

So, normally I just say no, but today I said yes.

And she said, "I mean obviously you're not him."

And in my mind I'm like, does she think I look older?

I was thinking the other day that should

keep a wig in my glove compartment of my car.

I'm thinking like a brown kinda shag,

maybe a weird hat, some sunglasses,

I don't know.

[laughter]

- When you wrote the song White Privilege,

did you actually mean what you were saying?

- Yeah, absolutely.

The first version of White Privilege

I wrote when I was in college.

It was 2005, so thirteen.

- That was three years before I was born.

- Yeah, so it was thirteen years ago.

Long time ago, and I was observing a change in culture.

It was an observation.

It was questioning what's my place in this culture,

and processing it through a song.

- One of my favorite songs is the Immigrant Song.

- Who sings that?

- Led Zeppelin.

- Mmm.

- How do you not know that?

- Cause I listen to rap dude.

- Since you're a rapper, like you feel like

there's booze around you a lot, or?

- Yeah, everywhere I go there's just a bottle Ciroc vodka.

No, I'm just kidding.

- Okay good.

- There is definitely a lot of alcohol

in the music industry in general,

but it's been a really long time

since I've had a drink of alcohol.

- That's pretty good.

- Yeah.

I think that what separates me from a normal person,

is that when I put a drink or a drug into my body,

it's like I have an allergic reaction to it,

and I can't get enough of it.

So for me, any drug is a bad drug for me.

- Where you on drugs once?

- I was.

- Mmm.

- Oof, yeah. It's a long road back.

- Yeah.

- Well Tommy, you wouldn't know.

- Well yeah I wouldn't know,

but I read all the like pamphlets they give us in school.

Don't do drugs kids, which is probably accurate.

- And you've listened.

- Yeah.

- Good.

- Can you still write music when you take drugs?

- Music that's not very good, yes.

- What's the most recent time you've had a relapse?

- Two years ago, it was bad, this is bad.

- Okay.

- No it's fine, we can go there.

- No, no, no, if you don't want to.

- No it's fine.

There was a photo shoot, for People Magazine.

I was told that we were going to be a like,

50 sexiest people.

- Nice.

- It turns out, it was like 50 sexiest like animal hunters.

- You hunt, do you hunt?

- Which is like a big difference.

- Yeah.

- Um, yeah.

- Yeah, like great.

So I was very high, I think I passed out at some point.

- Oh geez.

- It was all bad.

Anyway, that was the last time.

- What would you say your favorite drink is now?

- You know what I really enjoy,

is a fine chilled bottle of Martinelli's.

- That's delicious, the apple cider?

- Yeah man. - Pretty good.

- Do you still have the same passion for music

from when you started?

- I'm having to think about it, so I would say probably not.

I don't know, it's a tough question.

I feel like I'm kind of in a transition point in my life,

I wanna be a good dad.

- Do you have kids?

- I do.

- How many?

- Two kids.

You guys wanna see a picture of my daughter?

- Okay.

- That's my new baby.

- Do you think you're a good role model to your fans?

- It depends on the song.

What I try to embody with my music is being myself.

There's good versions of me,

and then there's the other person.

I have kind of this, yin and yang type of thing

to my personality.

So, depending on the song, you might get either version.

It's true to who I am, and other people

can relate to it too.

We're not perfect,

there's days where you're probably a great kid,

and there's day where sometimes your parents are like

"Oh my God."

Maybe. Maybe you're just great all the time, I don't know.

- Thank you.

- Are you?

- Kind of.

- See what I'm saying, see what I'm saying?

- Do you guys have any ideas in terms of

song, or songs, or album, or concepts, or any sort of idea

that I should put in to my music?

- Honestly no, cause like you've been

doing pretty good by yourself.

- Your albums are great.

- Good job Tom.

- We like them.

- I love you guys.

We'll thank you guys.

- You wanna sing Marmalade?

- Can I hear you do it?

- Okay.

Ain't nobody get up in my car today.

- Aye.

- Back seat feeling like a charter plane.

- Aye.

- I be riding through the town,

my music up.

Windows down yeah you can hear me now.

I turn it up.

- Up.

- I need that bass.

- Bass!

- And my chain so bright can't see my face.

I be riding through the town, town, town,

I be riding through the town, town, town.

Yeah, I'm done.

[laughter and clapping]

- Yo that was very good.

That was very, I'm very impressed.

- I'm sweating.