Bill Simmons Has No Idea Who Post Malone Is

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By all means, Bill Simmons is one of the coolest guys around. In sports media, he’s a legend — a bonafide hero to thousands of young bloggers, podcasters, and site-runners. Hell, even old bloggers, podcasters, and site-runners. What he’s not, however, is a hip-hop junkie. For whatever reason, I wasn’t totally aware of this. I assumed that, since he ran The Ringer, he was also a hip-hop head. As it turns out, he’s not…and he’s not really sure who Post Malone is. Picture your dad talking about Post Malone and you can paint the picture.

It all came to light when he was promoting a new show on The Bill Simmons Podcast. The new show, On Shuffle, is a music podcast (hosted by Micah Peters) that used Post Malone as the centerpiece for its first episode: “Why is Post Malone Dominating the Charts?”.

Simmons, always one to promote The Ringer’s content, used the first few minutes of his show to plug On Shuffle. From there, he fumbled through 45 seconds of radio gold.

Here’s the transcript from The Bill Simmons Podcast:

(edited and condensed)

Simmons: We launched our new music podcast yesterday. It’s called On Shuffle, it is hosted by Micah Peters. They talk about a whole bunch of things, they argue about stuff. The Korean Iverson Donnie Kwak came on yesterday to argue with Micah Peters about some rapper that I’ve always…is he even a rapper? What’s that guy?…Malone?

Nephew Kyle (I think): Post Malone.

Simmons: POST MALONE!

Nephew Kyle (I think): He’s got an interesting story, that one.

Simmons: There’s already a backlash to Post Malone and he hasn’t even blown up yet. Uhh, Lindsey Zoladz also wrote about him today…the Mailman, Post Malone.

So obviously, the most notably out-of-touch thing he said is that Post Malone hasn’t blown up yet. I mean, the guy has 9.3 million followers on Instagram and the whole reason for the On Shuffle episode was based off the fact that Malone is dominating the charts. As a 48-year-old dude, you can’t blame him. I’m sure my dad — what up, Tommy P? — doesn’t know who Posty is, either. I guess it was just a surprise to me because I always grouped Simmons in with the rest of The Ringer staff. Then, when you think about it you realize the people he hires are half his age. But you could also argue that, as the face of a huge culture site (six million uniques per month), he should know who he is. Either way, it was funny to listen to. The 45-seconds of Bill Simmons-Post Malone chatter sounded exactly how it would if you were talking to an elder member of your family…and it was solid because of it.

To be fair, I couldn’t tell you much about the new Peep and Pump rappers out there. For us Millennial folk, there is only one Lil’ that will ever matter…and that’s Weezy.

You can listen to the entire episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast below:

You can read the Lindsay Zoladz article here.