2 Jews and 3 Black Dudes Walk Into a Podcast Studio

It’s Sept. 11, and the controversial conservative content creator Charlie Kirk was assassinated the day before. Sheek is watching footage of the shooting from multiple angles over and over on his phone. He bounces around the studio as he holds up the device for his podcast partners, all the while offering his own analysis of the assassination. 

“He’s up there talking all that crazy shit about gang violence, and dude is just sitting on him, from way back there, just watching that n****,” Sheek says, referring to the marksmen about to get off a killshot, shaking his head at the irony.  

“I ain’t watching that shit,” Styles says. “You watch it.” 

Styles shares a story about how, unbeknownst to him, a photo he put on Instagram shortly after the killing, posing with the East New York rapper Uncle Murda, went viral because of Murda’s name and the caption on the post: “You be aight!” The left and right both saw it as an endorsement of political violence. It drew applause and rage in equal measure, but it was really just a Seinfeld-worthy coincidence.  

Jada explodes, unleashing a raspy, high-pitched trademark cackle any fan of aughts mixtape rap has lodged in their brain. It’s pure magic—an off-camera and unscripted moment that encapsulates the entire 2J3BD project. 

Conventional wisdom suggests a podcast lives and dies not by gimmick or subject matter but the chemistry of its hosts and their ability to draw listeners into their conversation. Sheek and Jada’s grandmothers lived next to each other as children. Years later, their grandsons, students at Charles E. Gorton High School in Yonkers, would form a rap group with a third friend. You can sense that level of comfort, love, and trust in the room, and for a minute, I, too, feel like a member of the Lox. It seems impossible for these three men and the Rosenthals to interact without being entertaining and bringing outsiders in. 

It’s an alchemy that demands bottling, which the Lox and the Rosenthals set out to do every week with their show. 

The Lox had been approached countless times with partnerships and business opportunities that turned out to be bullshit. Jadakiss was initially skeptical but, along with the other two-thirds of the Lox, was quickly won over. “At first, I thought they were just two crazy white dudes, but once I looked into them and seen that they were connected to the culture, they were cool with a lot of people we were cool with industry-wise, I knew they were the real deal. It wasn't cappin’. We were cool ever since,” Jada says. What set the Rosenthals apart was how quickly they proved that they meant what they said. “[They] came with the cameras. They draw up the sketches and run them by us, and we all agree on when we’re gonna shoot” Jada says. “They’re very hands-on, and we’re very hands-on. We’re people that don't bullshit each other, so the show is able to work like a well-oiled machine.”  

2J3BD retained that early chaotic magic, and what slowly emerged was a unique entrant to the movie podcast genre. The older Rosenthal, Eric, 44, is arguably the glue. He studied film at Syracuse and got his start working on music video, commercial, and movie sets. He was mentored by the cinematographer László Kovács, and his love of film and rap gained him entry to rooms Kanye West and Kobe Bryant. Meanwhile, Jeff, 41, was pursuing his own twin interests of comedy and rap journalism, writing for outlets like Complex and Rolling Stone. On the podcast, Eric serves as moderator and film literate translator, doing the thankless, admirable, and at times impossible work of keeping the conversation about film on the rails. “I look at myself as a point guard,” Eric tells me. “I like to distribute the ball and make sure everyone gets their touches.” 

But Eric can’t be too diligent in that work, because the internet is flooded with hyper-literate, obsessive, exhaustive movie podcasts. What sets 2J3BD apart is its tenuous, at times barely coherent connection to the film at its center. It is fueled by in-jokes and running bits, comedy sketches, and, occasionally, deep and revealing conversations grounded in life and personal histories. “None of us are Siskel and Ebert, none of us are Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins, but I think what we have is a perspective on life, an appreciation for what everyone else brings or doesn’t bring,” Eric says. “Our discussions won’t always focus on cinematography or pace of editing, or the writing or acting, but I think there’s an authenticity to all of our personal viewpoints and how they mesh. When we have ‘arguments’ over the level of gangster Ferris Buller has versus his sister, Jeannie, it’s that type of dynamic that separates us from anyone.” 

On the night I sit in, a conversation about this summer’s Brad Pitt vehicle, the frothy Apple+ blockbuster F1, digresses into a debate about mentorship and its pitfalls for both mentor and mentee. Styles opens the conversation by answering Eric’s question about the Lox’s early mentors. “Nobody made it from Yonkers rapping before that, so we had each other,” Styles says. “That’s what gave us longevity. We was smart enough to fuckin’ mentor ourselves through different times of life, from making it in the first place to going through the shit with Diddy, figuring out how to survive.” 

The conversation is, as you might have guessed, informal. All three members of the Lox get up intermittently to grab a snack or fix themselves a drink. At the end of each episode, each individually scores the film they watched; in this case, they unanimously (and accurately) deem F1 a solid but not spectacular seven out of 10. There's then a skit called “Karate Man,” in which Styles narrates an episodic Blaxploitation-mixed-with-Kung Fu series he’s composing in his head. It’s an exemplar of what makes the show riveting for rap fans of a certain age, a house blend of philosophy, comedy, film criticism, and a Library of Congress-worthy long-form oral history project with one of the foundational New York rap groups of the late ’90s.  

That formula has found an audience. Episodes of the podcast on YouTube typically average between 15,000 and 20,000 views, with Jeff sharing that, unsurprisingly, the show’s core demo is 35 to 44 years old. Jadakiss says that beyond raw numbers, he’s been pleasantly surprised by some superfans of the podcast who have reached out. “A lot of the directors of the movies we talk about start following us. They’ll comment on videos. It’s not just getting good traffic, but the right traffic. People we'd never think would watch the show or know about it really fuck with it.” Jeff and Eric discussed monetization, including ad buys from “humongous brands,” to go along with merch, live shows, and business opportunities. “There’s two fields of thought, between going independent or linking with a bigger company,” Jeff says. “The beauty of this is it’s very democratized, and even if there’s different opinions, there’s an understanding of what the broader goals are, which is holding on to creative control.” Jada sees the podcast as more: a springboard to a full-fledged television show. “I can see it possibly landing on TV with a big network, Peacock or Netflix or one of them. I see it becoming something the world can connect to,” he says.  

On its face, 2J3BD would appear to be a kind of fantasy-camp proposition for New York rap fans, that these brothers must be paying the Lox to hang out with them and talk shit under the guise of a podcast. But it’s actually an organic extension of the Rosenthals’ long and charmed careers in rap media. As ItsTheReal, Eric and Jeff carved out a niche as the embodiment of a certain sensibility as the internet took over: satirical, witty, self-effacing, credible.

But even with their success, they never lose sight of the extreme unlikelihood of this situation. “Being friends with people we grew up revering is still very trippy for us,” Eric says. I go fishing with a dumb question, asking Jeff where the Lox would stand in his life if he had to rank all his friendships. He says they’d be up there and explains how they attained their rank in the relatively short period of their eight years hanging out. “I don't have a lot of loud differences of opinion with most of the other people in my life, but because that is part of my love language, and we learn so much about each other through these differences of opinion, you actually grow closer because of it, and I think that’s one reason why they rose up the ranks so quickly,” Jeff says.  

You feel the affection the crew has for each other, whether arguing about real or imagined plot threads in Inception or bagging on Jeff for being a dork. “There have been some moments where I’ve thought, ‘Oh, shit, I’d hate for the Lox to break up during this podcast over some movie I’ve suggested.’” Jeff says, laughing. The Rosenthals pitch comedy sketches that close out most episodes, and the Lox commit fully to the concept, whether it’s Jadakiss’ Italian parentage or Sheek getting mad. The bits, self-deprecating and goofy, show the street rappers in a different light, illustrating the trust and respect the Lox and Rosenthals share. The Lox recognize the professionalism and creativity each brother brings to the show. “That’s where relationships and rapport come in. When you know your colleagues, when you know who you working with, you know the line not to cross, and you know the extent of how far you can push the line, so we never have,” Jada says.  

The quintet formed a company in which each member is an equal partner. “These are three guys, when they were getting their start, they would split Chinese food a third, a third, a third,” Eric says. “Every time they would get some money their way, they’d split it in thirds. When it comes to 2J3BD stuff, everything is a fifth, because me and Jeff are the same way.” 

As one-half of his second podcast gig, hosting Joe and Jada with the Bronx legend Fat Joe, Jadakiss has gained some empathy for Eric, and has come to respect how difficult and important his role is. “I definitely learned a lot from them, especially me being new to media and journalism. [Jeff and Eric] are very seasoned on how to ask questions and how to create the mood making conversation, as opposed to feeling like you're being interrogated. Every time we link, I pick up things like that from their professionalism, because when I’m with Joe, I’m them.” 

The night was a reminder that in the history of the American music industry, from rap to R&B to classic rock, few groups have enjoyed the longevity and harmony of the Lox. “Nothing is bigger than the program,” Jadakiss says. “If one person turns into fucking Elton John and sells millions of records solo, we all gonna celebrate, and once we agreed to that, that’s just how we carry it forever. We came into this business together as young, broke, radical teens from the north side of Yonkers, and you able to make something of yourselves, change your family financial situation, put your kids through college, buy your moms a house, live comfortably. You gotta be thankful for that, and you should be able to be friends and brothers with the people you did that with until you die.”  

I thought about that Verzuz moment often as I reported this story, because the key to that victory is the reason 2J3BD works. That night, hundreds of thousands of rap fans experienced what I did in Yonkers: the feeling that they, too, were members of the Lox.