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Foreign I'm Dan Runcy. Welcome to trapital. Today we're gonna break down an idea that I keep coming back to. Find your interstellar in 2014, when the interstellar movie came out, it was a commercial success at the box office, it grossed $681 million in its initial run. People talked about it and it had the Christopher Nolan machine behind it, who was fresh off of the success of the Dark Knight, the Dark Knight Prizes and Inception. But if anyone tries to revise history and tell you that Interstellar was this undeniable masterpiece and seen as a masterpiece from the jump, they're not telling you the truth. When Interstellar released, the reception was quite mixed. The Rotten Tomatoes were around 70, 71, 72% for the critics rating. It was nominated for a few Academy Awards, but mostly in the technical categories. If anything, the space movie at the time that had much more critical acclaim was Gravity, which had come out the year before and at the time did even better at the box office. And with the Academy Awards, I have some exciting news for you. Our Trapital Summit is back for year three on Tuesday, September 15th. Some rooms matter more than others, and this is one of them we built this summer for the people who are shaping what's next across music, media, technology and capital. Your founders, executives, investors and operators. The people making decisions, asking sharper questions and building where culture and business are headed. This is not about packing a room for the sake of it. It is about bringing together the right people for the right conversations at the right time. If you care about where the business of culture, entertainment, technology is going to, this is a room you want to be in. Our tickets for the Trapital Summit go live on Thursday, April 30. We'll see you there in Los Angeles in September. Can't wait. At the time, Interstellar was appreciated as a great craft and a big swing, but not what a lot of people wanted to see from Christopher Nolan, especially given what he pulled off with the Dark Knight, what he pulled off with inception. But now, 10 plus years later, Interstellar is seen as one of the defining movies not only of Nolan's career, but of the 21st century. The IMAX re releases. The father's daughter story connects with people in a new way. The epic score from Hans Zimmer. There is so much there that people appreciated about the big swing that he took that was much more mixed back in 2014. To be clear, the movie didn't change, but the audience's interpretation of the movie changed. And that's what we're going to unpack the this can happen in movies, music, TV shows, books, you name it. But to be clear, it doesn't happen everything. Not just because something got a mixed review in the 2000s or 90s or people were polarized about it, means that it's a classic today. Not every flop has its day. Sometimes the market was right in terms of what the read was, but that point right there. Let's dig into that. What separates the work that was polarizing at the time, but it ages into greatness compared to the work that was polarizing at the time, that stays polarizing or just fades away? I think there's four main buckets here. The first bucket is work that was misunderstood when it first came out. Frankly, people just didn't really know what to do with it or how to interpret it for a various number of reasons. The second it may have been too small at first, it hit the right people that were interested in it, but it didn't quite have that crossover moment so that enough people could see, hear or experience the thing. Third, the thing became bigger later than it was in the moment. It was popular at the time, but the long tail cultural life made it a much bigger thing than the initial moment may have suggested. And the fourth the thing may have just been ahead of the market. The later trends that happen in society and culture made that work look more prophetic over time because of what says about our society. If you look across media, culture, entertainment, you will find plenty of examples like this, especially today in the content streaming and algorithm world. I look at a song like Michael Jackson's Chicago, a song that wasn't released up until his post Humus Escape album, but even then it really didn't catch on until years recently because of streaming and then even more recently because of the success of the Michael Jackson biopic. There's also songs like Taylor Swift's Cruel Summer came out in 2019 under her lover album, but really didn't blow up until 2023 four years later. Another example, the 2004 song from the Killers, Mr. Brightside. Don't get me wrong, when this song came out in 2004 it was popular like a number of indie rock songs from the mid-2000s were like Franz Ferdinand's Take Me out or Jet Are youe Gonna Be My Girl? All American Rejects Move Along. There was a whole these songs. But over time the killers, especially Mr. Brightside became more and more popular over time. It is now one of the most popular and streamed songs on Spotify from the 2000s and it is A staple at weddings, karaoke, music festivals, bars, you name it, this song will likely live on past the band itself. There's also a case to be made that the band itself, Queen, is a great example of this. You go back to the late 70s and early 80s. The Queen was popular, but Queen was not at the level in that moment that Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna or Bruce Springsteen were, especially when we're talking about the levels of popularity and pop culture. But today, retrospectively, Queen is right there, if not exceeding some of those names I mentioned. When you look at how much their music is streamed, especially given the power of their biopic or the connections they've had in other IP in films and movies arenas year after year, whether it's Mighty Ducks, Wayne's World, or the Bohemian Rhapsody bio biopic itself. Another great example Here is the 1999 TV show Freaks and Geeks. They only had one season, the ratings were low, but the critical acclaim for the show was quite high at the time. But the people who watched it knew that they're watching something special. But the key thing is this. The show grew in its lore because of the people that were attached to it. That whole Judd Apatow circle of him, Seth Rogen, Jason Siegel, Linda Cardellini, James Franco, that whole orbit of people went on to continue to do movies together throughout the 2000s and truly defined a style of comedy. And Freaks and Geeks is the origin text for them. So it grows in popularity over time. Those are all great examples, but I gotta give you some personal ones too. So here's my top five number five Kanye West's 2013 album Yeezus a bit misunderstood at first, to say the least. It was so raw, it was so industrial and it was so aggressive sounding. And especially after Kanye coming off of my beautiful dark twisted fantasy masterpiece, Watch the Throne, Beloved, and even some of the songs that were hits from the cruel summer soundtrack, like Mercy and Click, were huge. So a lot of people wanted to see more of that from Ye. But instead he gives you this album that had no radio singles, just giving it to you straight. 10 tracks. But over time, even though it may have seemed a bit divisive and unclear where ye was going, this album does become one of the definitive text for hip hop for the rest of the decade. You hear it in Travis Scott, who himself worked on this album with Ye, and you look at any of Travis Scott's albums after this, like Rodeo, Birds in The Trap, Sing, McKnight, AstroWorld, you could hear that Yeezus sound carry through. You can see it with someone like Playboi Carti as well. This did become some of that definitive sound. Yabe may come up again in my top five here. And this is why he is often ahead of the curve in terms of what he's doing, not just giving you more of what you expect from him. Number four is Jay Z's debut album from 1996, Reasonable Doubt. This one's different. At the time, this was a great debut piece of work from a very talented rapper from Brooklyn, 26 years old, doing his thing. Let's see what he comes up with Next. Peaked at 23 on the Billboard charts. Not as high that year as the Nutty professor soundtrack. Not as high that year as Shaquille o' Neal's album. Again, I'm sharing these numbers because they matter in terms of the reception, because that is what it was like in 1996. Again, it wasn't about the work itself. It was about the expectation and what our familiarity was with this person. But what happens after 1996? J becomes J. Volume 2 makes him a superstar. The blueprint is the coronation in just a few years that shapes how people view his debut album, Reasonable Doubt. The career and business, the longevity, his marriage to Beyonce, how important of a figure he is in business. For someone that is entering Jay Z lore now, this is the guy that people would pass up $500,000 to sit across from dinner. That is a very different lens to listen to this 1996 album than at the height of the east coast coast beef. And you have that going on. Oh, let me go check out this work from this Jay Z guy. And even if you were a big hip hop fan in 1996, a Big east coast hip hop fan, your attention is probably with the beef between Bad Boy and Death Row Records. You're probably listening more to Biggie. Maybe you'll listen to some nods. But you're also paying attention to what's happening with Tupac, Snoop Dogg, and everyone on the west coast too. So Jay Z's origin text needed some time to get to where it did. That's Reasonable Doubt. Let's go to number three, switching gears to tv. One of my favorite TV shows of all time, the Wire. This is not a situation where critics hated the Wire. A lot of critics loved it at the time. To be clear, not enough critics loved it for it to win the Emmys and other awards that it likely deserved. But there still was a scale issue. Despite the fact that this show was on hbo, it wasn't watched as much as. And it had to fight for its role year after year. In terms of getting canceled, it still did get five seasons, which is a very respectable length for any TV show. But what happens for the Wire after its finale is what increases the lore. The Wire itself ends in the late 2000s. But then in the years after the Wire ends, we have the culture of people watching more DVDs, writing their blogs, talking about the importance, ranking the characters. I remember reading some of those and saying that, okay, I'm glad I'm not alone discovering and learning about this show and how intertwined it actually is. And now you have college courses that are taught about the show. And that doesn't seem to be a unique thing at all, because people understand how important this TV show is. Even certain seasons within the Wire can get an appraisal over time. Fifteen years ago, I knew a lot of people that hated on season two of the Wire. They thought it was too slow, too boring. They wanted to see more of the gangster and the police in town tension that season one gave them. But over time and new things happening in our culture, even season two got a bit more appreciation and understanding from people. That's what can happen when we reevaluate these texts. Number two, Scarface. When this movie first came out, critics saw a lot of excess, too much violence. Why is it so vulgar? They saw style over substance, especially given the quality that we've seen in gangster movies. But this might be the best version of culture truly taking new ownership over work. Because hip hop saw it. Tony Montana became a symbol for what they were struggling with. And you saw it in the posters, the quotes, the references. I had a Scarface poster in my dorm room in college. And this is a big part of it. I saw it in MTV Cribs. You heard it in the rap lyrics as well. What connected people to it? There was that immigrant ambition, the fact that you might be a bit more braggadocious, but you gotta fake it till you make it. The whole anti hero mythology. And the movie became bigger 15, 20 years later because of hip hop culture elevating it to that level that we're talking about. When Scarface was celebrating its 20th anniversary in the early 2000s, I swear, if someone could capture the stats for how many T shirts were sold or Scarface merchandise, I bet they sold just as much money from the merchandise that they did from the initial box office when that film came out. And the number one example, back to Kanye west, where my list started, his album, 808s and Heartbreaks. This album comes out in 2008 Kanye is fresh off of Graduation. He was in stadium yay mode. Stronger was huge. All of the hits from that album were huge. And a lot of people probably weren't expecting an album to come out that soon. And if anything, they wanted to hear more of that Graduation stadium yay sound. But instead we got this autotuned album that sounded a bit colder, less rapping, more singing, a bit more grief and sorrow and just vulnerability in the themes. And at the time, a lot of people had polarizing feelings about it. I know at the time I said, you know what, I just want to continue playing Graduation. I don't want to listen to this right now. But if you listen to a lot of modern rap and R and B, especially throughout the 2010s, it's impossible not to hear that 808 sound. You listen to Drake so far gone, you listen to the Weeknd's trilogy of mixtapes and even his work. Afterward, you look at Future and anything he did from a singing perspective. You look at Juice, wrld, the list goes on. That emo rap, the melodic flow, the sad flow. Sure, there were a lot of people that were critiquing Auto Use at the time, which also made the reception to 808s and heartbreaks even stronger. Remember Jay Z's death of auto Tunes song? Or Nas saying that hip hop was dead? There was a lot of hate about anyone even using this. So here you have one of the most popular rappers in the world leaning all the way in. But this is what we're talking about, because 808s didn't just age well, it truly became the infrastructure for a lot of music. So how does this happen? Why does this happen? A few things need to be true. First, there needs to be a distinct point of view there. Even if it's polarizing, something needs to be said because things that are just fine don't get reappraised, don't get looked at with a brighter lens over time. This isn't a, to quote the Wire, this isn't a stringer bell 40 degree day type of situation where it's just forgettable. Nothing remarkable happens. It needs to have some people that at least see a vision there so that there's enough to revisit over time. Second, tying back to that point, the initial reception has to be incomplete in some way. Maybe it was the wrong audience that caught onto it first because of how it was marketed. Maybe the marketing itself was just a bit jumbled. Maybe people judged it based on what they expected the creator to do. Last, and not as a standalone piece of art. This goes back to the Kanye west graduation in 808's thing, or even Christopher Nolan and Interstellar compared to Inception. Sometimes it's also just discovery based on the platform that is being used. Third, a smaller group of people need to love this thing intensely, whether it's a community on letterboxd, or teenagers that dig something more than adults do, or a particular race or subgenre or culture that really gravitate to it and connect with it in a way that the mainstream doesn't. Fourth, the criticism needs to be about the expectations surrounding the body of work and not the body of work itself. This ties back a bit into the second point, but this is the type of criticism that can age poorly, that frankly allows the body of work itself to age much better. But to be clear, this is very different from the criticism being the songs aren't there, the writing isn't good, this lacked any depth, and that type of stuff, frankly is harder to overcome. Let's take a break for our chart metric stat of the week. Michael Jackson's song Chicago might be one of the most unique examples of finding your Interstellar this song was recorded for Michael Jackson's 2001 album Invincible. It didn't end up making the cut. It was actually titled A different name. It was called she Was Lovin Me. But it didn't make the cut and it doesn't resurface until Michael Jackson's posthumous album Escape in 2014. They took his vocals, they put a Timberland beat on it, and they made it a new song. But it really doesn't have a new life until nine years later in 2023 when a sped up version of it on TikTok ends up making the rounds. It becomes popular and then boom, with the biopic now doing what it's doing. This song again wasn't even featured in the biopic, but currently on Spotify, it is the third most streamed song on a daily basis in Michael Jackson's discography. Only Billie Jean and Beat it are getting more daily streams. It just edges out human nature and don't stop till you get enough. Truly a unique example. Variety wrote a great piece breaking down the history of this song. I recommend you to go check it out. And again, just another unique example of finding your interstellar. Let's get back to the episode Reason number five Another big one. There needs to be some type of rediscovery engine that was different from how the film or the body of work was first received for the Wire. Yes it debuted on HBO at first through people getting their premium cable subscriptions in the 2000s. But it lives on because of the DVDs, the blogs and the streaming culture. Because even the people that we have polarizing thoughts on some of their work, that doesn't mean that all of their work will get that reappraisal, even if we have respect for that person. I don't think Jay Z's Kingdom Come is going to become some grand album that we all look at sometime down the road. There is a reason that when Jay Z had his concert at Yankee Stadium, he had one to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Reasonable Doubt, the 25th anniversary of the Blueprint. But there was not one to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Kingdom Come. That concert instead was called Extra Innings. And there is a reason for that. I do not think that Justin Timberlake's man of the woods is going to become this album. We all missed. He took a swing. The swing did not hit. But just because you take a big swing does not mean that it stays with in that same type of way. But here's the thing that I kept coming back to with this whole exercise. What are the things that are coming out now or have came out recently that would get this same treatment 10, 15 years ago? The things that are polarizing today but could be beloved down the road? A few candidates. The first one that comes to mind is Babylon, Damien Chazelle's movie. A lot of people felt in the moment there was too much. It was too excessive, too much going on. Sound familiar? But here's the thing. Damien Chazelle is still young. I think he's around 40 years old, still critically acclaimed. He's won Best Director. He has had acclaimed movies like Whiplash and La La Land. And this movie may have not gotten the craft and the ambition that people saw in the moment, but could people have a different opinion about it over time? Another one. This is one that I really enjoy. The rehearsal. Nathan Fielder's HBO show often felt ridiculous, uncomfortable about what it was trying to simulate about our lives. But here's the thing. As AI becomes even more central in our lives, the simulation and performance aspects, seeking some type of authenticity, questioning what is real. There are certain aspects of Nathan Fielder's show that may look prophetic. I even found myself looking more at his prior work, like Nathan for your, when I wasn't necessarily doing that before. That's the type of reappraisal that we're talking about that is already happening with his work. Another one that I think of Jordan Peele's movie. Nope. I think this one could age well too. It was successful for sure, but it did not become the get out phenomenon that that movie was. But there are certain ideas with Nope. About surveillance spectacle and exploitation in Hollywood. Black creators and black image making. So many of those themes can ring true today. I got a couple others for you. I'll keep them quick. Drake's 2022 album. Honestly, nevermind that dance album. You remember, the one that people clowned Drake for saying, why are you doing this? Why are you just dropping these albums all the time? Are you just trying to milk your deal? Are you trying to just copy Beyonce? Because she had let me break my soul. What's going on here? Why can't you, Drake just give us more. Nothing was the same. Why can't you just give us another Take care of all these things sound very familiar. But the critiques, again had little to do with the album itself. But if you revisit that album, personally, I found that there's something there. The global dance sounds to it and there's just something that maybe could. To be clear, I'm still unsure, but could make it age better. Especially in a world where if Drake is able to make the comeback that he plans to do with his career and continue to have the success that he wants. Another rap album that came out that same year, 2022, from Drake's longtime nemesis is Kendrick Lamar's Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers. When this came out, it was a tough listen, a lot of uncomfortable tracks, some language that Kendrick Lamar got some backlash for using in the albums. And at the time, people wanted. Damn, people wanted Good Kid, Mad City. Why is Kendrick talking about this stuff? Why are we getting this type of album? But over time, could this be an album that we revisit in the future? Because there's some similar aspects here to the Christopher Nolan dynamic we talked about before. Interstellar's relevance ages even better over time because of the success that Nolan had with Oppenheimer, both critically and commercially. Kendrick Lamar had a huge moment in his career, the biggest moment in his career after this album came out, where 2024, he has the beef with Drake, he has the pop out, he performs at the super bowl, he wins record and song of the year at the Grammys, headlines a stadium tour. It's hard to compete with that. All of that can change how people look at Kendrick Lamar, how people look at the work of Kendrick Lamar and how people look at Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers. And to be fair, the Cultural climate in the United States in 2026 is a bit different than it was in 2022. And in all these examples, whether it's the works I just named that I predict can have a reappraisal decades down the road, or the examples that already have, this is that connective tissue. And this is important for the executives, the founders, the investors out there that are working in media and entertainment. Everyone's trying to find their own example of this thing. I was talking to a fund manager a couple days ago that invest in cultural IP that specifically looking for the long standing things and the through line here between these examples that I mentioned that could have this appraisal that I'm talking about decades from now that could be more loved than they are today, or the things from decades before that already have been. This is the type of pattern matching that the executives, the founders and the investors that work in this space are currently trying to do. So for the founders, executives, investors out there that are making these bets right now. That's why I shared the examples of things I think can have that potential in the future. But everyone's trying to find them or figure out which things that have that right now will still have that in the future. There's certain things that are out of the control, but here are the things that you can bet on if you are trying to look at it. Where is their actual depth of craft? Where is there a clarity for the point of view? You got to own the weirdness as well too. There's probably going to be certain things that may be a bit unique, some world building maybe. There could be issues with the entire body of work at the time. But are there memorable scenes? Are there a few phrases or things that can live on? Or is there a loyalty that lives with the niche before it goes to the masses? And can the work be preserved in a way so that it can be discovered later on? That's the type of thing that can make this work and be effective. An example that I often think about this is the Star wars movie prequels from the late 90s and the early 2000s. They were panned when they came out, especially the first two movies. But now we're in this world where Phantom Menace has now become one of the more beloved movies in the Star wars franchise because of the memes and the culture that lives on. And there still is a memorable scene with that duel of the Fates lightsaber battle with Darth Maul. He's fighting Qui Gon Jinn and Obi Wan Kenobi. That is a type of scene that, yes, despite all the ridiculousness with Jar Jar Binks in that movie, which has not aged well, you will never be able to convince me that that there still are things there that people do connect with. That's an example of what we're talking about. But Star Wars Episode 1 Phantom Menace is actually a good example here because there are plenty of things that happen there that can't be controlled. There's certain things that live on as memes that then impact the popularity of the movie. Like that classic scene from Star Wars Episode 2, Attack of the Clones, where Padme and Anakin are in the fields and they're going back and forth talking to each other and she's looking at them all puzzled. That is a popular Internet meme today. But again, there are plenty of things that can't be controlled for. You can't control which artists or which creators or auteurs are going to go on to create the next epic thing which may choose they no longer want to make art in the future and not do this anymore. It's hard to know that in the moment. You can make educated bets, but again, key person risk. It is very tough to know in the moment. It's also tough to know more broadly where culture is going to go moving forward. You may have your predictions, we're all making bets one way or another, but it's hard to know. Certainly it's also especially tough to know the platform incentives. So much of this is key, based on how a platform like Letterboxd can help resurface things, how YouTube comments can foster different types of community and people making different connections, Google searches and what comes up as a result, how these AI LLMs are going to show and prioritize different content versus others, Reddit threads, their reliance on Google SEO. All of these things play a factor into this cultural reappraisal that we're talking about. And this is why it's also important to know some common reasons why that cultural reappraisal may not always happen, even if some of the elements are there, but not all of them. One big reason is that there's no easy re entry point. Even if the movie may be polarizing. It's not like there's this one scene that you just gotta check out that can give people some reverence. If a lot of it again just feels a bit more dull, bland, that 40 degree day strigobel was talking about, then there's just not going to be enough to stick. On a similar note, the defenders may be passionate, but there's too few of them to really make noise. Every film has people that love it to some extent, to be clear, but if there's not enough of them, it's not going to create this type of cultural reappraisal that we're talking about. Third, the quality of the work may not be there. The flaws may just be a bit too central to the key text. And fourth, arguably most importantly, the work doesn't have a clean story around it. 808s and heartbreaks influenced an entire generation of melodic sounding rap hip hop of the 2010s freaks and geeks. This one season was the launch pad for an entire generation of comedy. The people that are making big bets on this stuff, they want the things that have the long legs, have the afterlife, the things that people will quote that can stick and have some relevance in culture down the road. The thing that a younger audience can grow and find love for without any of the emotional baggage that the older generation may have and still appreciate it. That thing that can become more useful as culture changes, as platforms change. That thing can stay constant through and through. And that's what it means to find your interstellar. Not the thing that people may immediately understand, but the thing that gives them a reason to come back time and time and hopefully decades and decades later. And that is a wrap. I hope you enjoyed this solo breakdown. Thank you to our video and audio producers G and Eric for everything that you do to help make trapital possible. Thank you to Rwana on our team for everything you do behind the scenes to make traplittle work. And most importantly, thank you for listening. If you know one person that would really enjoy this episode on Finding your Interstellar or any of the conversations that we have on Trapital, send them a link to the show. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow. And if you have a few moments, if you're not already following the show, please do that. Hit that follow button on Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcast and also leave a review. Leave a comment that helps the algorithm do the right thing and makes sure that trapital reaches the right people. Thanks again. Talk to you next time.