Some Background On Barstool's Newest Hire, Million Dollaz Worth Of Game

Rone1/06/2020 8:00 PM

So you probably heard bits and pieces about Barstool's newest hire, Million Dollaz Worth Of Game. The podcasting duo, Gillie and Wallo, burst into our year end meeting, got announced by Dave on radio and were subsequently introduced in a blog featuring the video right above this text. It's been a limited doses of information, but the general vibe from Dave and Erika is that this is gonna be a huge signing. Let's look at some of the reasons why.

For people who haven't listened to MDWOG yet, Gillie da King (née Kid) is probably the more "household" name. Gillie got his start as a rapper in Philly, but even more so was an Internet 1.0 sensation. I remember watching his rap beef video blogs on YouTube when they came out. I looked back on those yesterday and they came out 13 YEARS AGO. The point being that even then, he was riding on the front of the wave of the internet, something that he's continued to do from Myspace to Instagram to podcasting and now to joining on with Barstool.

Gillie never had any nationally huge hits of his own, but if you know him from anything it's this hood classic.

And I feel comfortable calling it a hood classic because that video is shot in front of Max's in North Philly, the apex cross-section of the hood and a good cheesesteak. Gillie's respect factor always seemed to supersede the credit he got for rapping, which probably had something to do with his saga involving Lil Wayne.

Depending on who you want to believe, the story was that Gillie was ghostwriting for Wayne. Whether that entailed Gillie explicitly penning verses for Wayne or if it was a case of Weezy picking up game, slang, cadence and style from Gillie, the two were connected enough where Wayne was wearing Gillie's Major Figgas (a rap group that featured Gillie and, among others, a young rapper named Wal Lo) chain in his early videos.

Here is the now infamous video of Gillie telling his side of it.

Gillie went on to have other beefs like this one with Cassidy. Fast forward a decade later and Gillie has managed to maintain relevance in a huge way. It's a testament to his staying power, but also to his talent and his humor. Gillie went the path of rapping in his life, but if he had termed himself a comedian he would have been equally successful. Comments under his videos liken him to names like Richard Pryor and Bernie Mac, and he has that raw, in-your-face confrontational honesty that those two shared.

That and he's just an absolute content machine. Somehow I turned on notifications for every time that Gillie goes live and it seems to happen like 8 times a day, where Gillie is just chopping it up with someone on live, whether they be famous or just a random person who is overjoyed just to be talking to him.

He's managed to trickle into every part of the internet, as just last week he was beefing with battle rapper Tsu Surf. In other words, he's always putting some shit out on the internet for you to watch and it is always entertaining. Take this compilation of his IG stories from 2018. It's an hour long and it's just all enrapturing.

On the other side of the coin is Wallo. It's harder to give a detailed backstory on Wallo because, well, Wallo was in prison for 20 years. I'm not outing him or anything, in fact, when he came into our all-hands year end company meeting it was one of the first things that came out of his mouth. It's not a past that he tries to hide and it seems to have sculpted his character as a man in a lot of ways.

He talks at length about his experience in this DJ Drama interview.

And while Gillie might have a 20 year head start in building his online presence, Wallo is busting his ass to make up for lost time. Of the two, he is definitely the more outwardly energetic. When he came into Barstool's HQ, a lot of people seemed to think that he was the one with the big rapping background, simply because of how loud and bright his personality is.

He talked about his time in jail (armed robbery, NBD) on Barstool Breakfast this morning.

Their chemistry tho? Undeniable. Every clip of them feels funnier than the last. This is all just from the last week.

As far as how they came to Barstool in general? Honestly it all started with Buddha Ben leaving. I was looking for a replacement so I tried to hire my good friend Mike Obes (whose work you will see later this week in a Mummers video we are working on). My pal Mike Obes didn't want to come aboard full time just yet, but I set up a meeting with him and another pal, Frankie Santella, a mover and shaker who I knew from Philly. They came into the office and talked about things we could work on together and he mentioned the Million Dollaz Worth Of Game podcast with which he was affiliated. I gave a couple listens, died laughing, passed on the info to Mikey Podcasts, Jen, Dave, Erika and Gaz and things blossomed from there into New York meetings, Philly meetings, then eventual contracts.

Hopefully it starts a beautiful friendship.

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