Jacob Szymanski

And there's sort of like a separation, like a distance between hip hop culture and like the mecca of hip hop, if you will.

Can you talk a little bit about what that experience was like going down to Detroit to go and see your cousin there?

Right, because a lot of the stories that you tell are from the 90s and the early 2000s.

And you were talking about going to get that album, to get the album Doggystyle by Snoop Dogg.

And you saw that years after the fact that it came out.

Because at the time, the difference between Toronto and California, that felt really far.

That's not the case anymore, is it?

Now, the funny thing is, because things feel closer, it also makes cultures feel a little closer, too.

Because when you're more insular, when you feel like you're far from everything, cultures tend to accentuate themselves.

Yeah.

And so with globalization, would you think that that would mean that there would be more similarities, fewer differences between black Americans and black Canadians nowadays?

Yes.

One more question.

You narrated the audiobook, which is really cool.

That's not easy, though.

And I know that publishers and audiobook producers sometimes get a little nervous when an author wants to narrate their audiobooks.

Although that has become somewhat standard for memoirs.

What was the experience like for you narrating the audiobook?

It can be really stressful to have to read something where everything is articulated perfectly, but also every word is spoken out exactly like it's written on the page too.

It's a lot harder than it sounds.