Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here. Do I look tired? I am tired. I'm pretty freaking tired. Yeah, I'm tired today, and I'm aggravated. I don't even want to fool around or be silly because what we're talking about in this video is frankly ridiculous and beyond the pale.

Enter one Mr. DJ Akademiks, who we have talked about and also referenced and played off of in a silly way on this channel before, imitating his GIF-based video and editing style as he comments on various goings-on in the hip-hop industry.

If you're unfamiliar, though, I don't see how you could be at this point, if you're a hardcore viewer of a music review channel or rather a music industry commentary channel, Akademiks' platform for years now has been huge, frankly. He's considered to be maybe the most influential voice in hip hop journalism today. Now, he may have gone about building that rep in a way that I don't necessarily vibe with or respect, but he built it.

What I'm trying to say here is that it's been a long time since Akademiks has done anything in my view that could genuinely be considered journalism, as I feel like the way he operates in the music industry these days is just him doing anything that he can to basically align himself with whoever is the most powerful, the most influential, just generally building his profile by currying the favor of others, which is how, if you remember, he ended up getting so tied up in this recent Kendrick Lamar in Drake beef because he's essentially reduced himself to being Drake's mouthpiece at this point. Literally anything, any news, any narrative, Drake needs to get out there into the wider world, usually comes by way of Akademiks these days. That's another story for another day, though.

What we're talking about now is something much weirder and much more serious because this is just beyond any potential conflict of interest in the music industry. No, what we're talking about today is just pure fucking insanity and depravity. As recently, footage has been spread all across social media of Akademiks talking to a 15-year-old boy, a fellow streamer and content creator, which that in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad or harmful thing. I mean, content creation and music continues to be still to this day, very much a young person's game.

If you are someone who operates in the social media industry and you've got a bit of a legacy career behind you, eventually you are going to cross paths with some younger people. But in the instances in which you find yourself in those contexts, especially when you're dealing with individuals who are less than half your age, it is upon you the very much adult in that situation, to conduct yourself with respect and dignity and not do something like, I don't know, start engaging the kid about his sex life.

Yeah. What the fuck? I don't even to say. This is crazy. And what's even more insane about the footage are the defenses that I have seen of it or just people generally turning a blind eye or people honestly just tuning out at this point because Akademiks in so many scenarios, be it with the Kendrick and Drake stuff, be it with the Megan Thee Stallion, Tory Lanez stuff, has proven himself to be such utter trash. Nothing is really surprising to anyone at this point, and the only people left in his audience are essentially there because he's trash. Him being trash is a feature, not a bug.

Look, I'll admit, I don't understand the full context of how these conversations that you're seeing here came to be. But honestly, it doesn't fucking matter. It doesn't fucking matter. What's even funnier is in one of these clips, Akademiks is asking him about his potential sexual interest in a girl who is, I guess, 18 or older than 18. And this kid says no, because that age gap would be grooming or it would be statutory. Again, this kid is less than half than Akademiks' age, and he's got more fucking sense than Akademiks does.

And again, the excuses, the defenses that I have seen have been just crazy talking about, 'Oh, he's just joking and being silly. It's not serious,' so on and so forth. I'm sorry. What's the joke here? What's the joke? If there's anything I fucking hate about the evolution of humor in the Internet age over the past 10, 15 years, it's the complete and utter death of irony because nobody uses irony anymore to be ironic, actually. No, irony is always employed in order to voice opinions and sentiments that you would be in hot water for voicing if you just genuinely express them. So instead, we just shroud them in like, 'Oh, I don't really mean it, but what if you did this or what if this happened? Would you do X or Y or Z? Of course, you wouldn't. Unless...?'

Look, this video, what it's about, and the clips that have been incorporated here, it's all very what you see is what you get because, frankly, there is no excuse for this behavior. There's no excuse for these conversations. There's no excuse for this engagement. Also, keep in mind, Akademiks is like, openly transphobic and has even posted on Twitter that we got to keep stuff like transness and trans identity out of hip hop.

But apparently, what's cool and what's legit and what gets a pass is having sexual conversations with children. Yeah, that's fine. That's cool. Trans people, boo, bad, bad, bad, that's the worst. Yeah, instead, let's just jokingly pressure a 15-year-old boy into talking about whether or not he would screw your male friend. Yeah, that's real cool. That's awesome. That's like real dope.

Again, I'm disgusted. I'm mortified. I don't really know what else there is to say. There's just no reason for this. It's disgusting, and it's especially brazen and worrying in an age where in politics, in music, there are just PDF file allegations abound, going in every direction. But while that paradigm that I just discussed is very much the case, sadly, also, we very much live in an age of society where frankly, I think our biggest problem is that we just don't have any fucking shame anymore.

People act upon and speak upon every single stupid, fucking, disgusting, vile, just ridiculous idea that pops into their dumb ass head There's no check, there's no balance, there's no second guess, there's no what if. It's all action and no remorse. As a result, you have complete fucking freaks like this doing the unthinkable and taking advantage of a young mind at a distance in the weirdest, most gross way possible. This is just gross, gross, gross, gross, gross. If there's anything that shouldn't be in hip hop, it's fucking this.

All right, I'm going to leave that there because I don't want it to go anywhere else. Let me know what you think down in the comments about all this. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano. This freaking crap, no.