More from blankSLATE with SaVon
Nobody's off limits anymore, and the first name that comes to mind when SaVon thinks of untouchable is Jay-Z. This episode walks the straight-line path that got hip hop here — Me Too, R. Kelly, Diddy, and finally Drake and Kendrick — and lands on why the culture is now openly questioning a man who spent 30 years controlling the narrative without ever having to say a word. SaVon and Yassy also get into the Akademiks and Charlamagne proxy war, Jay-Z's quiet exits from Tidal and the Brooklyn Nets, and the Beyoncé brand symmetry that made both of them untouchable in the first place. Ad-free and early on Patreon: patreon.com/blankSLATEHQ
Trauma bonding built this friendship, and now it's building a segment. Yassy makes her first crossover onto the Radio side, and before we even touch current events, we're going all the way back — how she actually linked with Akademiks (email, not a tweet, and yes, there's an Applebee's involved), what nobody knows about her radio dreams before blankSLATE, and why LA burned both of us out in almost identical ways. Then we get into it: Yassy's Mount Rushmore of white people, my rebuttal list, a genuinely humbling Mount Rushmore trivia round, and a teaser for the hip-hop Mount Rushmore conversation we're clearly going to have to finish another time. Join blankSLATE on Patreon — ad-free, early access, and help shape the show. You've got the floor: patreon.com/blankSLATEHQ
There used to be a line between watching entertainment and being used by it. This episode makes the case that the line is gone and that the audience became the experiment without ever agreeing to it. SaVon and Yassy use Love Island, the Verzuz stage, and the long-running Tyler Perry and 50 Cent debate as entry points into a larger conversation about engineered attention, reaction turned into profit, and a culture that quietly turned its audience into the product. Three pillars that look unrelated on the surface, running the same play underneath. The experiment isn't whether the entertainment works. It's whether anyone watching will ever do something it didn't already predict.
There used to be such a thing as monoculture — one moment everyone was tapped into at the same time. Michael Jackson was the last person to truly have it, and this episode makes the case for why the world will never make another. Everybody throws his name around — Kanye, Beyoncé, Chris Brown, Usher, even Taylor Swift — but SaVon and Yassy, joined by Karl aka FilmGawd, break down the seven buckets that made Michael Jackson untouchable, why the biopic worked for casuals but lost the real fans, and a Mount Rushmore of the artists who get closest — knowing none of them actually reach him. The thesis: universal fame is structurally over, and he was the last of it. Become a member of blankSLATE on Patreon — ad-free listening, early access, and a direct hand in shaping the show. Join here: https://www.patreon.com/blankslatehq
SaVon breaks down exactly when the contract was signed, when payment was due, and why the "life happened" excuse doesn't hold up. This is the full story, for the last time.