I'm t T and I'm Zakiah and this is Dope Labs. Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship. The Grammys are in a week on February first. Who do you think is taking home like Best New Artist? No, I don't want anybody I like to take on Best New Artists. I want them to have like Album of the Year. I hear you, I hear you. Our boy Leon Thomas. You yes, you've mentioned him a few times
on the show. He's up for Best New Artists. He is not new to us, you know, right, And that made me start thinking, like how does all of this work?
You know what I mean?
Because you've been talking about Leon Thomas for a long time, and I remember Leon Thomas from like Victorious, you know, like the Disney channelist stuff like that, and so I'm like, he's not new, but the Grammys are saying he's new, and so that makes me question a lot of things that comes to these awards ceremonies. Yes, you know, I think it's time we lift the curtain and say what's going on with the awards. The Grammys specifically let's jump
into the recitation. So what do we know? I know, the Grammys and low key, a lot of awards shows feel like they are removed from what I personally am feeling. You talked about. Leon Thompson doesn't feel like a new artist to me, but he's up for new artists there, and I feel like when it comes to that kind of stuff, the only award I really trust to be for the people and by the people is a Teen
Choice Awards at Nickelodeon. Okay, that's it. They always get it right and they get into the slime just right.
Okay, Oh my gosh.
So there are a lot of huge artists that are highly decorated and get a lot of Grammy Awards, but then there's also like this other murky side where there's snubs, and the snubs you feel impersonal and I don't know how this works out. I'm like, who, wait before we start jumping into the questions. Let's okay, let's figure out what we want to know. And so my very first question is who are these people? Who is the academy?
It feels very like Illuminati, but it's not because I think you can find out who's a part of the Academy. We just never see these people, and so who are they? How are they chosing? I like to take the Academy. Who is that? How do they choose the nominees? Yeah, and how do they decide who goes into what category? You know, we talked with cold before kol Kushna about genre and categories, and new categories are popping up every year. How do they decide? Yeah, somebody like Doci, it's hard
to put her in just rap. She does, she does singing, she does rap, she does pop like, she does a lot of different types of music within her music. And so I don't know how they make those decisions. And so that's when we start to get into snubs, and the snubs are feeling personal, and I begin upset and I will turn the TV off. I don't care where we are in the award show. If the person who I feel like should get it doesn't get I'm like, man,
and that's why I'm not watching with you. You need to learn to control your emotions.
Leave the TV on, turn the TV off, turn the TV off, turn the TV off, turn the TV off. To answer all of our burning questions, because you can see we have a lot we reached out to Sydney Madden.
Hi, my name is Sidney Madden. I'm a music and cultural critic for the.
People like me, like Zukiya, who only see the red carpet? Can you can you explain what the Recording Academy is, who are they and what the Grammys represent.
The Recording Academy and the Grammys were created back in nineteen fifty eight, and it was an award created to recognize professionals, musicians and people working in the music industry, almost as an alternative because their qualifications wouldn't allow them to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It's very much an accolade that has come to have more meaning as time has gone on, but it's definitely
on the pomp and circumstance type beat. It is an achievement unlike any other in the music industry because it touts itself as the only award that is purely peer voted. There are other award shows all throughout the year when it comes to music and entertainment.
So if you think about the.
Mtvvmas, the BET Awards, or the American Music Awards, those are awards based on streams or commercial numbers, selling numbers, or just pop culture relevance and a publications co sign of an artist. But the are fashioned as the only, or I should say one of the only, because now we have the Latin Grammys and the CMA.
Is the Country Music Awards.
It really just marks the top of the mountaintop in the music industry because you have all of these people, all of these voting members of the Recording Academy, going into their specific genre and giving you an official co sign of your art.
That you submit.
So it just has this relevance and reverberation in culture because it is supposed to be the pinnacle of peer reviewed art and recognition.
That's interesting. We have something like that in science, whereas peer reviewed I.
Was gonna say, I was lucky, gonna say, there's very few things that can eclipse the Grammys. And if you think about it, it's like, yeah, maybe we'ren't winning a Pulitzer, which one of our Grammy nominees that we're going to talk about this year has already been.
But he hasn't one album of the air, but he's won a Pulitzer.
So very interesting. I noticed you were saying, like Academy members first of all, I think it's great because you gave us that history. There's an understanding of like the Grimmers weren't always the only game in town and now they're at the top. But when we talk about that peer review, who are like the Academy members and what do you have to do to get into that field? Like who says like, okay, we deem you worthy to be an Academy member or can you or do you apply?
Yeah, there's definitely tears in the Recording Academy and to be an Academy member. You can be an Academy member, but that doesn't mean you get to vote on the Grammys. To be a voting member in the Recording Academy, you have to be a music maker. So you have to be an artist yourself, a songwriter, an engineer, a record exect,
a manager. You have to be someone who works in the music industry very actively, who opts into Recording Academy activities and buys into the Recording Academy all year round, and I mean like buying culturally. And I think there is a dues process that goes along with it as well. But you have to be an active member in good standing and you have to be someone who touches music at some point, you have to be someone who creates music and puts it out in the world or has a hand in it.
That's really interesting because I thought it would be like a bunch of like old folks, because sometimes the people who win, I'm like, who does that hurt?
That was low key a problem for a long time, and that was a big critique of the Grammys. Like a long running critique of the Grammy Awards is that it's often behind the times.
Of what is actually covering, which is the music industry.
So someone like Chance the rapper being the first person to ever be nominated off a mixtape when we know in hip hop mixtapes have been around since like the inception of the whole art former culture and genre. Or I'm reminded of when the former CEO of the Recording Academy, Neil Portneau said in twenty eighteen, women aren't getting nominated enough for the Grammys because women need to quote unquote step up in creating their music, which.
Is ridiculous, I mean sexist.
Number one and just wrong because pop women in pop and R and B ran the twenty tens, and he said that in twenty eighteen, and he got a lot of flak for that. I know, artists like Mariana Grande called him out very explicitly for the sexist overtones of that statement. And I think there has been a conscious effort and a shift to diversify the voting pool in the last few years. Neil is not no longer the CEO,
and the new CEO is a black man. There's new black music coalitions that work within the Recording Academy, and there's been a push to get younger, more diversified people in the voting pool. Because what happens with the process of even being nominated is you, as an artist or a label or a management company, you submit for nominations right, and then it goes through whole checks and balances process where people who are considered genre experts they have to
decide if you're submitting in the correct genre. And so if the genre experts who are doing these checks and balances aren't really someone who has their finger on the pulse of what's happening in that genre contemporarily, that's why a lot of stuff gets filtered through the wrong ways, and that's why a lot of things sometimes fall through
the cracks and become ineligible. But I think with diversifying the voting pool in the last few years, we've started to see somewhat of a shift in the categories and ultimately in who wins.
That's so interesting. Yeah, because I used to think ineligibility. I was like, oh, they must have had too many samples, like that is all I thought before.
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean it's not really I should say, like, as a disclaimer, I'm not a voting member of the Academy, so I'm just saying this from a purely reported point of view.
I know, for example, this year, there's going to be like.
Ninety five categories being voted on, and two of the new categories being introduced this year are Best Traditional Country Album and Best Album Cover. So you can see how the Recording Academy is starting to evolve with things that hold so much cultural capital and cultural residence in these specific genres. But also you can see where these delineations
are being made. After Beyonce finally one Album of the Year for Cowboy Carter last year, they're starting to be even more specifications in what is considered a traditional country album and a contemporary country album and you see those goalposts being moved very often in the face of a big industry shaking win like Beyonce had last year after so many years of not getting AOTY.
When you said that new category for traditional Country, that's exactly what popped into my head. I was like, this feels like a direct response to Cowboy Carter, which is so unfortunate because I mean, they're saying the quiet part are aloud essentially, and it's really disheartening because that was a country album. I don't understand what the problem is.
She's from Texas, like, she knows this music, she has the co sign of some of the country music greats on her album, and it just seems like the industry itself is pushing back on that.
When she finally won for Cowboy Carter in twenty twenty five, first of all, it was a direct response to Jay Z calling out the Recording Academy in their own house in twenty twenty four saying, this is one of the greatest artists of our whole lifetime and she's never one Album of the Year.
World year, so even by your holy mestrige, that doesn't work.
And she finally won, it felt like a bit of a bitter sweet moment because it really should have been for self titled. It really should have been for lemonade. It really really really should have been for lemonade.
But now the fact that.
She has that long sought after accolade to her name, a lot of people were like, Okay, well now she
can rest, what could she do next? And I'm like, we're still not actorly till out, first of all, And secondly, it's kind of the idea that she once after so long that goes back to the point I was saying before of sometimes the voting members being behind and not really having their finger on the pulse of what's happening in their genres and what's happening in these fan bases, and what this music is doing to move whole communities,
whole countries. With this usic is doing to shine a light on people who never have felt empowered in these spaces before, right like what Cowboy Carter did to empower black people who love country but never felt welcome in
the country space. Ironically, because country is a black and indigenous art form like so many other things in the United States of America, So shining a light on that disparity, shining a light on the irony and the racism baked into a whole genre over time, but also low key doing some things that let's say like play by the rules, having that Dolly part and co sign, having that Willie
Nelson be the DJ, be the smoked out DJ. Those are all very by the book moves that not only made it this stamp of the flag and this dissertation of a body of work, but also showed like, see, these are the greats.
And they say, I'm undeniable. So what you gonna say? You know?
And I think in her winning for Cowboy Carter after all of this time, if we are not explicit and distinct and even repetitive, listen a hit dog will holler, there's a possibility that it can now become revisionist history that she wasn't denied that accolade for so long on a prejudice of her not playing by the rules according to the music industry standards.
You know what I'm saying.
I think about that a lot when we're getting into this year's nominees, with Kendrick Lamar being going into the ceremony being the most nominated artist again, I mean that's not an anomaly for him. Every time he drops an album, he comes through the next year being one of the most nominated artists, if not the most nominated. You know, if Taylor Swift and him don't drop the same year,
he's going to be the most nominated. I think he's actually the only solo artist to have every single one of his five consecutive albums be nominated for Album of the Year, but he's never won it. And going back to what I said earlier, this man got a Politzer Prize.
But I've never won an Album of the Year.
It's just those anomalies and those quiet laugh to keep from crying type ironies that are baked into the Awards show every year that I'm always on the lookout for. I think it's gonna happen very much again with the storyline of Bad Bunny and dba's photos.
I think it's going to happen with.
I pause to say it, but kind of like Redemption arc of Justin Bieber and him being experimental and unabashed in his R and B and like almost indie rock space. But that goes into everything I'm saying. The Grammys represent playing the long game in the music industry. That's, you know, if you want to go really macro and broad spectrum with it. The person who when the Grammy is not necessarily the person who makes the album or who makes.
The song or the art that moves the culture.
It's the person and the machine around them who play the game, who are very strategic and methodical and scientific about telling the story that goes along.
With the music.
The idea that this is one night when everybody is just tuning in and you can get put onto some new music, you can learn about new artists. It's one night if you're not consciously looking at music the music industry all year long.
But for anyone who's ever putting out an.
Album, whether that's on a major label or an indie distribution deal, or you're one hundred percent just indie yourself, if a label wants to go for the Grammy, they are baking that Grammy strategy and that campaign to get you a Grammy. They're baking that into the role out plan before the public ever even hears the music.
It's that methodical.
I think this is such a good point because when you just tune in, it feels like an upset when you're like, this album was everywhere in my community. Everybody was talking about it. Everybody was saving up to go to the concerts and to see the tour. And then you see it that it doesn't get recognized, but you've just outlined that it's not just was it on the tip of everybody's tongue? Was everybody reciting these lyrics? Was
it a hashtag all over? You know, you're telling us kind of you're peeling the curtain back a little bit and showing us like that there are campaigns that already. I'm like, that introduces to me so much bias, because who can campaign? What does a campaign even look like?
Money?
Money, money, and connects, money connects power.
It's very similar to Hollywood.
I think about, like what's happening with Sinners right now? We know that Sinners was the movie of twenty twenty five.
We all know that.
That's not hyperbolieve like it was a box office smash, was a cult phenomenon. It's gonna go down as a cult classic. It's inspired academic studies.
It's inspired so many people.
To even get into screenwriting because of the ascension of Ryan Coogler and his evolution from going from small budgets to Marvel Movies to now owning his voice and his artistry outright with it, right, like we know what it is right that is undeniable, and yet you're going to see over and over the kind of like the disappointment and it be passed over for other movies that came out this year, that came out on a bigger studio, or had a bigger budget, or just have the right people,
the right agents, the right lobbyists, honestly, Like that's what it is like. You're lobbying for these awards every single time you have the right people in your corner. I think of a lot about how honestly, it's like a pattern that happens in Hollywood a lot like a Nora, for example, the studio behind a Nora, they spent more money campaigning for Mikey Madden listen, to get that oscar and to sweep the award show then it even costs
to make the movie, you know what I mean. It's all like people kind of in the movie business, like you big that into post production, the marketing of it, the schmoozing that has to happen, the campaigning that has to happen to get an Oscar is that behind the scenes work that so many people who are just a casual moviegoer or just a casual music listener they never see.
But it's very methodical, and there are people whose whole job it is to just tap in and check in with Recording Academy members and see, like start conversations and keep conversations going about the validity of the album, about the artistic vision, about the technical proficiency on display, about the production value, all of these things. It's a strategy. It's very political.
We were talking about the Grammys and now you're talking more like movies and like the Academy Awards, And this is something that means a Keia actually talked about like I think yesterday the day before when Tianna Taylor won the Golden Globe for one battle and after another, and we're also proud of her, but then you think of this machine and then people saying, oh, she wasn't really that good. It's like there's this tension there where it's like we want the recognition and so how are we
supposed to feel about this Tiana Taylor Golden Globe? Was it the right person? Was it the machine?
The role?
Yeah?
Yeah, Yo, don't even get me started on that, because the two truths can exist at the same time. Tianna Taylor, we know, we followed her career. This is definitely a crowning moment for her. That is kicking the door of Hollywood in for her. But we know what she's been capable of from jump. Really, if we don't talk about real art, she should have won something for one thousand and one, Yeah, twenty twenty four, Yes, like that's really
what it should have been. But that portrayal of black womanhood and perseverance and resilience and quiet beauty and just strength, they don't, like, that's not really what be rising to the top in Hollywood. And that's that's the disparity of it. It's like, yeah, she's gonna play this over sex, gunslinging Trader and she's honestly like the super nova in the movie.
She's she's not even in majority of the movie. And you know, the script is written.
Written by white guy, so obviously he's not going to be able to have the dimension of the character that you want. But so the true truths can't exist. She can absolutely deserve the Golden Globe and this crowning moment in her career and this arrival in a new space.
But for us who've always known her and who've always known her as.
A champion of black womanhood, it can also feel very tenuous because we know what she's capable of, we know what she represents she we know who she talks to. I think that's why she I think that's why she said that in her acceptance speech.
But it is a very classic pattern in.
Hollywood that the black roles that actually win the biggest awards are the roles that showcase abuse, or are pandering or very stereotypical. I think you think of Lupita Niango and Twelve Years a Slave. You think of Halle Berry, who's literally the only black women in the history of the entire Academy Awards to win the Oscar, and she went it for Monsters Ball, not like Dorothy Dandres.
You know what I'm saying. It's a classic pattern.
Same thing for Denzel, Like Denzel winning for Training Day Again, he was the villain.
He wasn't that complex in that movie.
He acted the hell out of the role and we remember him for it, But there are so many other roles he's chosen over the years in his filmography that represent us and our versatility, our beauty, our strength.
But like that's not what Holly is about.
You know, there has to be a payoff, right for people to spend this much money on the art, for people to spend this much money on the campaigning, more money on the campaigning than the art. Sometimes, like you just told us about what's the payoff? When you win an award like a Grammy.
A Grammy is special for a few reasons. Like I said before, it's the.
Only award as a musician that you can tell that really says. It's peer reviewed and peer voted, and it's like recognized by a jury of your peers of your excellence in your artistry, like the master of your artistry. So that's why it hits a little different, because it's like people you know who work within your spaces all the time are giving you that co sign and giving you that recognition. And secondly, it's one of the most
recognizable awards internationally. So like I was saying before, you can win You can win a BET award, you could win a VMA, but those are based on the publications themselves or the networks themselves, and they still exist in a smaller cultural bubble. A Grammy exceeds all that.
I think.
For example, last year, one of the big breakout stars.
Was Chapel Roone.
Right, you think about it, like a lot of people didn't even know who Chapelerone was until she won that Grammy. Right, this is when you got to remember, like we all do live in our own feedback loops, because I knew who chapelone was twenty nineteen, but I also work I worked at MPR, right like that, the it was my job to know these things, right, And then she had a tiny desk that went a little viral. But again
it's still little pockets, it's still little bubbles. All of a sudden, if you want a Grammy, you could be on a you could be on the cover of a magazine and somebody like who would never have heard of her before, is now gonna hurt. It's a platform and a level of promotion that is.
Unlike anything else.
You don't win a cash prize, but it's one of the biggest stages you're ever going to be on.
Right, similar to the super Bowl.
You don't get paid to do the super Bowl, but the payoff tenfold is you get to save for the rest of your life. You are a Grammy winner, you are a Super Bowl halftime performer.
It's one of those accolades.
That like, it'll never get it'll never get old, it'll always ring bells, that.
Gramophone will never lose its tarnish.
It's gonna hold value well after the years of you.
Being on the top of the charts or whatever it may be.
It solidifies you as as a great in your as a legend. And I say that kind of with the asterisks in a caveat, because to me, it's not the only thing that can solidify you as a legend and as a culture shifter. I always think about how Bob Marley, who is one of the biggest artists of any time,
not our time, not our generation, past generations. I've traveled all over the world and I say, I'm Jamaican, and I'm like, oh, Bob Marley, Like that's what it is and what he did for the entire genre of reggae, Like we're going to be feeling those reverberations for the rest of our lives and well after. You know, he didn't win a Grammy in his lifetime, so it's not the only marker of success. It's not the only thing
that stamps to you as an icon. But for people again who are casual listeners, it is really that stamp of approval that is gonna just put you over the top. It really matters about what you do after it, like that level of ascension that you work towards after the Grammy to keep that spot and to keep that prevalence. But it's so much about I think that is so much about your own artistic stretching and your own aspiration to keep climbing and doing more.
After that, you're able to see the cracks in the Grammys that the casual viewer might not end in the music industry as a whole. So for you, if you were designing like the sid Man Grammys, how's it looking? What's different or is it the same?
Oh my gosh, that is such a hard question. Okay.
The big critique I have is that the Grammys move a lot slower than the culture does, and in erecting their icons, in signaling who's actually shifting things, who's actually moving the needle when it comes to music and evolution and pushing envelopes. It's kind of like when news breaks in the first place you're looking is TikTok or x or Instagram.
We're looking in the palm of our hands.
And then hours and hours later we're going to see it on the eleven o'clock news. That's how it feels a lot of times with the Grammys, accepted things a bit more because you know, we care so much about our fandoms. You know, the music is so important to us. It's the soundtrack of our lives. So the category, for example,
the category is Best New Artists. I always watch that one and I gotta take it with a grain of salt because the only precursor to being a Best New Artist is you never have to have been nominated for
Grammy before. So there's artists in that cat Yeah, Like that's the So everyone in the Best New Artists category this year and every other year, it's like we might have known about them for us like huge fandoms, but they finally when they finally like break in the industry and they have a moment, then they are nominated for the Grammy. And it's like, if you're nominated in Best New Artists, now you could be dominating all those other categories.
So the only requirement to be in Best New Artists is you.
You have never been nominated for a Grammy before.
So people in the past, like Sabrina Carpenter, she was nominated for Best New Artists in last year's ceremony when she had dropped four or five albums at this point. Going into this year's ceremony, Olivia Dean. This is her sophomore album and it blew up and it really helped her crossover and explode in the American market this year.
But if you are a super fan of British soul, British R and B, like she's been in the rotation a lot, I guess one thing I would change is I would get rid of Besting Artist because honestly, what even makes an artist new anymore? There's so much music
being uploaded to streaming services all the time. The bar for discovery is a forever moving target, right, So that idea that you're now new because the Grammy's finally heard of you because the industry started to move their bells and whistles for you, I would definitely get rid of that.
I did want to talk a little bit about out your hopes for winners in the Grammys this year. Like some of your I don't want to say predictions, more so who you feel like should be getting that Grammy for a Record of the Year. Who do you think should win?
Okay, let me look it up.
So that's DTMF, Bad Bunny, Man Child, Sabrina Carpenter, Anxiety, Dochi, Wildflower, Billie Eilish, Abracadabra, Lady Gaga, Luther, Kendrick, Kumar with Sizza, the Subway, Chapelerone and apt Rose and Bruno Mars. There's so many nominees, my goodness.
A lot of nominees.
The nominee ballads have gotten bigger over the years, and even like I said at the top, this year is going to be ninety five categories.
That's the most categories it's ever been. It's very stacked up this year.
I okay, who who should win versus who probably will win? Y'all don't make bets off me.
Okay.
I think who should win is Bad Bunny. I think who's likely to win is Billie Eilish, Kendrick or Lady Gaga. Because one, you could say number one, Billy Eilish is a Grammys darling right her and Phineas they're locked in as songwriters. So it's like going back to the argument we said before. Once you win, they keep you winning, right, Lady Gaga, this album, the myth making and the storytelling around this album was very big all year, and like
I said, she had a huge headlining tour. Kendrick Kendrick is going into the Grammys as the most nominated act, and I think this collab with Sizza is one of the most pop leaning but also true to form collabse he ever done. It's like the perfect mix of airplay but still keeping his artistry and keeping what makes him, keeping that sauce intact. But Bad Bunny, Bad Bunny as a record, all the songs as an album, just what it.
Did culturally this year.
I just first of all, I love when an artist finally gets in that flow state and accomplishes what they've been trying to do.
For a really long time.
Like Bad Bunny in the Reggaetone space has evolved the space so much. He has never compromised promoting his culture. He never started to try and sing in English to cross over. He continuously has put on for Puerto Rico and the West Indian diaspora. So what he did in this album to kind of champion so many of the genres that have come out of Puerto Rico, the cultural currency,
just like the richness of his culture. And also call the fact that there's so much displacement and gentrification happening on his island in very rapid secession and the aftermath of Hurricane Maria all the way till now, and the fact that again he's about to perform at the super Bowl. He had this insane record breaking residency in Puerto Rico
that stimulated the economy of his island. On purpose, he made the cognizant effort to not tour in the US after so many years of touring in the US for a few different reasons, one of the reasons being he didn't want it to he didn't want it to be a hotbed for no ice raids.
The fact that this is one of the biggest.
Albums coming out of the US at the same time that these ice raids and this crackdown on the Latin community in the US has reaching its boiling point.
Like that dichotomy is historic.
This is what I'm talking about when it's like these are culture shifting moments. You know, He's made such a nod to show respect to his elders, to his cultural lineage.
All the music that's coming out of Puerto Rico.
He sharpened that line between the New Yorrican like New York Puerto Rico pipeline. He's invigorated so many people's interests in Puerto Rican culture. He stimulated the economy, like these are things that are actually gonna eclipse the Grammys the.
One night of the Grammys.
But it would be amazing to have the icing on the top to win the Grammy, to like to have that be part of the run. It's not the album with the most socio political and cultural impact or that makes the biggest ripple. That's not always the one that does win for Record of the Year, Song of the Year album.
But in my opinion, that's who should win.
If we're really making it about the artistry and the power of what music can do, that's who should win.
I like the reasoning, and honestly, this lab has illuminated so much for me. It helped me get out of my own feelings. I was never at the p like utt where I wanted to turn the TV off, but I have been disappointed in the past. But I think I have a little bit more context now, absolutely, and it what Sidney, what you were able to do during this lab was really show that there is a science
to awards. There's a science to all of these big awards that are given out, and that's something that we all just need to keep in mind as we are not only consuming music, to not let these awards make us feel like, oh, if our person doesn't get this award, then that means something about how good they are. It doesn't mean a thing because, like you were saying, Sydney is not really based on the fans. It's based off
of the academy. These people who you know, work in the music industry, and so you know, you got to just take all of these awards with a grain of salt. Respect to the Grammys, but we're sprinkling salt on top of you. Season it up. You can find us on X and Instagram at Dope Labs podcast. You can find me tt on X, Threads and Instagram at dr Underscore t Sho, and you can find zakiya at Ze said so. Dope Labs is a production of Lemonada Media. Our supervising
producer is Keegan Zemma. Dope Labs is sound designed, edited, and mixed by James sparber Lemonada's Senior Vice President of Content and Production is Jackie Danziger. Executive producer from iHeart Podcast is Katrino. Norvil Marketing lead is Alison Kanter. Original music composed and produced by Taka Yatsuzawa and Alex suki Ura, with additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Labs is executive produced by us T T Show Dia and Zakiah Wattley.