Former President Obama is defending the integrity of his annual book, music and movie lists, saying he’s “scrupulous” about ensuring he legitimately enjoys his recommendations.
“Be honest with me,” comedian Hasan Minhaj said in an interview with Obama released on YouTube earlier this week. ”When you do your end-of-the-year lists, do you really read all those books, watch all those shows, and listen to all those songs?”
After Obama emphatically replied, “I do!” Minhaj shot back with a laugh, “No, you don’t!”
Obama first began releasing an annual Spotify playlist of songs when he was in office in 2015. The first list — which included tracks such as “Green Light” by John Legend and Justin Timberlake’s “Pusher Love Girl” — was “hand-picked by none other than President Obama,” the White House said at the time.
Since then, Obama has shared playlists, along with film and book suggestions in annual roundups.
“I am so glad that I had this opportunity,” Obama told Minhaj when asked about his choices for the list.
“People, they believe the books and the movies, but the playlists, they somehow think — and this is mostly coming from young people like you — somehow you all think you invented rock ‘n’ roll, you invented hip-hop,” Obama told the 37-year-old host of the Netflix talk show “Patriot Act.”
“So the fact that my lists are pretty incredible, people seem to think, ‘Wow, he must have had some 20-year-old intern who was figuring out you know, this latest cut.’ No, man — it’s on my iPad right now,” the 61-year-old ex-commander in chief said.
“You have ‘Life Is Good’ by SiR featuring Scribz Riley on your iPad?” Minhaj asked skeptically.
“Yes, I do!” Obama exclaimed. “Come on, man. Don’t play with me,” he said.
Minhaj attempted to test Obama again, asking the former president, “Give me the plotline for ‘Afterlives’ by Abdulrazak Gurnah.”
“Dude, how much time do we have here?” Obama replied, before acknowledging he does get a bit of help in assembling his yearly lists.
“Here’s the bottom line of my playlists and my book lists and my movie lists: I am very scrupulous about making sure that this is stuff that I actually like. I will confess that there are times on the playlists, on music lists, where I will get suggestions because it’s not like I got time to be listening to music all the time.”
“So typically, at the end of the year, what happens is folks will be like, ‘Man, you need to listen to this. This is good,’” Obama said.
“But unless I’m actually listening to it, watching it, reading it — I won’t put it on there.”