Bradley Nowell

At the 2001 VMAs, Britney Spears famously performed her hit I'm A Slave 4 U while holding what type of animal? Question number seven.

Lou Dog or Louie was the Dalmatian mascot of what California-based band, outliving his owner and the band's former lead singer, Bradley Nowell, by five years? Question number eight.

A stylized sharp-toothed graphic of a bear was prevalent throughout the artwork for what English rock band's 2000 studio release Kid A? We'll give you a few seconds of music to wrap things up before we move on to the answers.

[gentle music] Here are the answers for round two, our audio spinoff round.

It's Jacob Knoll and Yelawolf.

Now Jacob Knoll was still an infant when his dad, Bradley Knoll, died at just 28.

Bradley was the frontman for the Southern California band Sublime, whose music would go on to reach a much wider audience not long after his death.

The other two members of Sublime continued with a different singer with varying degrees of success, while Jacob Knoll grew up and started making music on his own.

A couple of years back, Jacob got together with his dad's old bandmates and reignited Sublime again, and the fact that his voice sounds remarkably like his dad's made it a welcome transition for the band's fans.

This new Sublime recorded an album, which they say will be the band's last, and they tour and play like crazy, including owning their own festival packed with reggae and punk-tinged fellow travelers.

Those fellow travelers include the other half of today's conversation, Yelawolf, who will play a bunch of shows with Sublime this year, including the band's cruise in November, and a big amphitheater in Alabama later in September.

Yeah.

It's a very big throwback to the '90s.

So the band Sublime, which was one of my favorite bands growing up, and, uh, they were a ska punk band from Southern California, and, uh, the, the lead singer Brad Nowell tragically died very young, and he died actually even before their seminal album came out.

They recorded it, but before it came out he died of a, of an overdose.

But he had a son that had just been born, and his son's name was Jacob Nowell.

And, uh, for the first time ever, Jacob Nowell has joined Sublime, and, um, he's sort of like this prince that's, like, been trying to avoid the throne for 30 years, you know? Like, Sublime has gone out there.

They've done all these different it- iterations.

It's always been really hard to try to replace Brad Nowell.

He was a really dynamic, exciting frontman, and they did all these different versions of it, and finally Jacob said, "You know what? This, this feels like the right thing for me," and he sort of knew the other members of the band like these uncles.

It's got that kinda ska.

I don't know if Bradley Nowell was listening to it, but, uh, I, that's what I thought immediately, a little Sublime action.

They were definitely listening to Elvis Costello.

You think so?

Sublime, of course.

I even interviewed Bradley Nowell back in the '90s, right? So I go back to the very origins of this scene.

Um, and over the years, I have come across fans of reggae music, typically roots reggae fans of a certain age, who just dismiss automatically the entire reggae rock genre as being white boy reggae or whatever.

And that would piss me off so much because I'm like, just because of what you think you know about this music or who's creating it, you're dismissing it.

The band has just released their first new album in 30 years called Until the Sun Explodes.

Now three decades later, Jacob Knoll is standing at his father's microphone.

And when I talked with Jacob, we were supposed to talk about the new music, Sublime's upcoming performance at the inaugural Ocean Way Festival in Santa Monica, and what this new chapter has been like for him.

And we did.

And just like, oh, you know, in terms of dad rock, which you're either pejorative or endearing, depending on how you hear it.

But with Sublime, when I think about this date, I think, wow, when you come to a Sublime show, you have people of every single generation.

You know, it's a... wide, wide span of humanity that gets into my father's music.

So for me to be some small part of that feels good.