Speaker 1: Yip yip. You know boys is back and redod it
Speaker 1: all in your mind. Yeah, now deep throating. This is
Speaker 1: for the streets, the real, the real roading, the distenfranchise, the.
Speaker 2: Truth, escapegoating, and they ain't know where we speak the truth,
Speaker 2: so they a quoted because we wrote it. The North
Speaker 2: south East Coaches the chee be not for keeping your head, Bobby,
Speaker 2: it ain't no stopping and once to be drop sad
Speaker 2: by and then the system is so corrupt they threw the.
Speaker 1: Rock out their heads and then blame it on us.
Speaker 1: Don't get it twisted on coding. We danced to put
Speaker 1: no butterment biscuits. It's Willie d y'all ghetto boys in
Speaker 1: the house back with another episode of information and instructions
Speaker 1: to help you navigate through this wild, crazy, beautiful world.
Speaker 1: In the studio Jason Mitchell.
Speaker 3: Yes her, yes up, can oh good? But how you
Speaker 3: doing hey, man?
Speaker 1: Ship hold on hop o't be on top.
Speaker 3: I heard that, man. Thank you for having me, brother,
Speaker 3: Thank you for.
Speaker 1: Having absolutely man. We got to get right into it.
Speaker 1: You have portrayed a number of complex characters and films
Speaker 1: like Straight out of Compton and mud Bound and mud
Speaker 1: Bound you played a you played a character that was
Speaker 1: based on this guy who was you know, coming home
Speaker 1: from post World War two and you got this racial
Speaker 1: tension going on. How is it that you were able
Speaker 1: to like channel that energy that was needed to where
Speaker 1: you're coming home basically damn near war hero coming back
Speaker 1: home to Mississippi, you know, one of the one of
Speaker 1: the racists. I mean, this is like damn near like
Speaker 1: the foundation of racism in America, fact, right, Like how
Speaker 1: were you able to to channel to channel that energy
Speaker 1: well to deliver that role?
Speaker 4: I mean to be honest, right, like just being a
Speaker 4: black man in America, we know they got racism that
Speaker 4: that just lies on the surface, especially when you grew
Speaker 4: up in the South like me. I'm originally from New Orleans,
Speaker 4: right right. But my grandfather he's from Bush, Louisiana, and
Speaker 4: went to the Korean War, came home with I mean, uh,
Speaker 4: probably like a fourth or fifth grade education, and had
Speaker 4: to marry my grandmother, which which they consider uh posse blanc.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you ever seen this movie, The
Speaker 4: Pass and that Tessa Thompson just did this black and
Speaker 4: white film. Yeah, it was an excellent film, but it
Speaker 4: was like real right, So my my grandmother was what
Speaker 4: they called passe blan passed for white, and her my
Speaker 4: grandfather pretty much got together because he had some money
Speaker 4: from the war and she was white enough to go
Speaker 4: start them a business, you know. So that was it
Speaker 4: was damnar really his story, and like where we actually
Speaker 4: shot the film when I was in the fourth and
Speaker 4: fifth grade. Man, we took field trips out there to see,
Speaker 4: you know, the plantations and the wax museums and all
Speaker 4: of that. So it was something that was already kind
Speaker 4: of deep rooted in me that I felt like I
Speaker 4: just needed to let out. And it was such a
Speaker 4: privilege to be able to let that out, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean. Like, I just appreciate d Read so
Speaker 4: much for talking about that, because a lot of times
Speaker 4: people want to jump straight from slavery to civil rights
Speaker 4: and they never want to talk about this Jim Crow
Speaker 4: situation that was happening that really, I feel like, built
Speaker 4: the hate, you know what I mean, between white and
Speaker 4: black people.
Speaker 3: And it was.
Speaker 4: Man, funny story about that, right, Like I took my
Speaker 4: grandfather to see Straight out of Compton and he fell
Speaker 4: asleep in the middle of the movie, just was knocked out,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It was not had nothing to do with the movie, right, But.
Speaker 4: When I took him to go see mud Bone, he
Speaker 4: literally sat there with his arms folded the entire time.
Speaker 4: Not mind you, his oldest brother was a slave, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. And in his mind is always
Speaker 4: some work to be done, even on a Sunday, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. He always tell me it's always
Speaker 4: it's always some mo And he sat there with his
Speaker 4: arms folded the entire time. And when we left out
Speaker 4: of there, he was like, so, you mean to tell
Speaker 4: me that these people paid you to do this, that's
Speaker 4: what you're saying. Like he couldn't even conceptualize the fact
Speaker 4: that I had got money put in my pocket and
Speaker 4: I'm getting glorified for putting this on TV. He couldn't
Speaker 4: even his brain couldn't even compute it, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 3: And I just look at it.
Speaker 1: Was he upset? Was he upset about it?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: Because I mean, to him, it was way too real,
Speaker 4: you know, because the exact same thing happened to him
Speaker 4: and a few of his brothers. They went to the war,
Speaker 4: came back and even though they was heroes, they wasn't
Speaker 4: getting no love from no white folks.
Speaker 3: And they wouldn't save them, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: So they really they had a whole different type of
Speaker 4: a feeling about the film just in general, you know,
Speaker 4: and it took other people to tell them, oh, like
Speaker 4: he getting awards and you know, the movie is doing
Speaker 4: so good for him to even calm down, Like he
Speaker 4: wasn't even trying to hear that at first, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean.
Speaker 1: And it was just so he felt that your character
Speaker 1: was blasphemy.
Speaker 4: Well he thought because in his mind right, acting is
Speaker 4: already kind of a joke, like they're not paying no
Speaker 4: black man to be no actor, Like that's that's not
Speaker 4: like that's never gonna happen, you know, because back in
Speaker 4: their day, it was like if you was acting for
Speaker 4: them white people, you was basically a joke, like, you know,
Speaker 4: black people wasn't respecting it, you know. So he already
Speaker 4: was kind of like looking at my job like when
Speaker 4: you're gonna get a real job, you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and I'm telling you like he never believed me. It
Speaker 4: always took everybody else to tell him like, oh, you know,
Speaker 4: your grandson doing great, and but yeah, he never he
Speaker 4: never looked at my job like it was a real thing.
Speaker 4: So when he saw that, it was like, but for me,
Speaker 4: I feel like, look what we did in three generations,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. We basically went from his
Speaker 4: oldest brother who was a slave. I mean, he put
Speaker 4: my mama and her two siblings in LSU because all
Speaker 4: they could do was pick up trash at LSU. But
Speaker 4: think about it, like you go to a ward and
Speaker 4: then you come home and all you can do is
Speaker 4: pick up trash on LSU campus.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 4: So he sent all his kids there, you know, just
Speaker 4: like to be able to stand firm on what he believed.
Speaker 4: And then you know, my mom had me and then
Speaker 4: I put that story on the big screen, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, and we went for a few oscars.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I feel like that's when I realized as
Speaker 4: an actor, like what I did really meant something, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean? Like when I play easy E,
Speaker 4: I knew like I just couldn't. You just can't fuck
Speaker 4: that up, you know what I mean? Like if you do,
Speaker 4: you just gotta hide under a rock until it blow over.
Speaker 3: But when you start, like.
Speaker 4: You know, when your children come home and they like, Daddy,
Speaker 4: we watched your movie at school today, that's that's life changing,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. So you know, I hate
Speaker 4: to look at myself like an actor activist or something
Speaker 4: like that, because I ain't got a racist bone in
Speaker 4: my body. But you know, it feel good to be
Speaker 4: able to tell our story and not have to be
Speaker 4: violent with our protests, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 4: I feel like we came a long way.
Speaker 1: But how do you go from Easy a tough guy,
Speaker 1: easy e ain't scared of nothing, to Rounzel Jackson? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know this this guy who is it? What he rolling?
Speaker 1: He got a chip on his shoulder, but man, he
Speaker 1: got a deal. The motherfuckers right in Mississippi. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're a different type of uncivilized, but right, you know,
Speaker 1: and and they got they got the law enforcement and
Speaker 1: the courts and the government everything, everybody all inconhusi everybody
Speaker 1: on the same page. Like you're nobody. You're dealing with
Speaker 1: a system. You're not dealing with a person. You're dealing
Speaker 1: with a system.
Speaker 4: Right, you know, right, And you know, as sad as
Speaker 4: it is, like still really haven't wiggled our way outside
Speaker 4: that system all the way you know, as blacks like
Speaker 4: because they have this cooker cutter version of what it
Speaker 4: should be.
Speaker 3: You know. Let you know that with all due respect.
Speaker 4: Let's just take Hollywood for instance, right, it was built
Speaker 4: by a certain group of people, and you know, a
Speaker 4: lot of the talent is black talent, or it may
Speaker 4: be you know, people of color or whatever it may be.
Speaker 4: But if you not coloring inside the lines, they can
Speaker 4: move you around real quick.
Speaker 3: And it's the same thing with the sharecropping situation.
Speaker 4: It's like you you free, but you live on my land.
Speaker 4: So in order to have anything that me and anything,
Speaker 4: you got to work for me. And that's just how
Speaker 4: this this system was built. And it's sad to see,
Speaker 4: you know, but me and a few of my brothers,
Speaker 4: brothers like yourself, you know, we wiggling our way out
Speaker 4: of this, you know what I mean. And it's about
Speaker 4: ownership and it's about having something for yourself. So you know,
Speaker 4: if anybody learns anything from me in my career, that's
Speaker 4: what I want him to go home with, you know,
Speaker 4: go home with something that's for you and that's gonna
Speaker 4: be for your family, you know what I mean. You
Speaker 4: gotta you gotta own something in this world for sure,
Speaker 4: you know. And it's it's it's it's pretty crazy, you know,
Speaker 4: to have this uh, this freedom to be able to
Speaker 4: express myself the way I feel like I need to
Speaker 4: because it's tough. It's hard out here, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. You got the police on your back, you
Speaker 4: got all of this systemic racism, all of these different
Speaker 4: things happening, you know. So I think I was very
Speaker 4: blessed to be in a situation to be able to
Speaker 4: speak for an entire demographic of people, you know. So
Speaker 4: I just I really got to get a get a
Speaker 4: glory to God, man, because when you ask how, I
Speaker 4: don't really know.
Speaker 3: Man, it's a blessing. You know.
Speaker 4: That's where the gift kicking and my own understanding moves
Speaker 4: out the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you talked about the role you played and straight
Speaker 1: out of company, Easy, the iconic easy Eric, right, the
Speaker 1: man the guy above. All right, that was your breakout roll.
Speaker 1: That was congrats, you know, thank you and salute because
Speaker 1: when I looked at you do that. In fact, all
Speaker 1: all you guys nailed your roles. All was just perfect.
Speaker 1: The casting was perfect.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we got to give a big shout out to
Speaker 4: Vicky Thomas.
Speaker 1: Thomas man get that that the casting was perfect. One
Speaker 1: thou believable and the way you the way you were
Speaker 1: able to channel your your your energy. It was like
Speaker 1: a roller coaster, you know, you was like a roller
Speaker 1: coaster type thing going on, and but you were able
Speaker 1: to deliver it, and it was believable every step in
Speaker 1: the way that were no hiccups, Like how were you
Speaker 1: able to channel this iconic character and maintain you know,
Speaker 1: like you know you're acting, but you know you're going
Speaker 1: cut cut, cut cut, and still be able to deliver
Speaker 1: like time and time and time again, because I know
Speaker 1: the movie only lasted an hour or something, right, right, right,
Speaker 1: but I know you know, it took a lot of
Speaker 1: takes to get get it right, to get it perfect.
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely, Gary f Gary Gray. You know, we also
Speaker 4: got to give a shout out to him. You know,
Speaker 4: that's how I feel this leader and as a black director.
Speaker 4: I mean, he ain't ever missed, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: Like his first film Friday, when you look at set
Speaker 4: it off, the Italian Job, the Negotiator, I mean, he
Speaker 4: just don't miss you know, so we we definitely got
Speaker 4: to put him properly on the plateau that he should
Speaker 4: be on. And you know, he's definitely one of the
Speaker 4: grades he might be the highest paid black you know
Speaker 4: director ever. So he grew up around the corner from Cbe,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, and he knew this life
Speaker 4: very well. But for me, you know, being from New Orleans,
Speaker 4: all I know is the lingo, right because I'm seeing
Speaker 4: it on TV. I'm seeing Minister Society, you know, these
Speaker 4: sorts of movies, and I'm able to do the voice
Speaker 4: real quick because and I could switch it up and
Speaker 4: do the La voice, and you know, I could do
Speaker 4: all of that. And it was like something that we
Speaker 4: always thought was funny in New Orleans because you know,
Speaker 4: I don't really know exactly what language we speak because
Speaker 4: it's not quite English, you know, but like it was
Speaker 4: funny to us that they would pronounce every syllable even
Speaker 4: though they were super gangster, and you know, and it
Speaker 4: was things that I saw on TV that like, once
Speaker 4: I got to LA and I met guys like Nipsey
Speaker 4: and Problem and Laylaw and all of them, when they
Speaker 4: started to explain the gang culture to me, a lot
Speaker 4: of it started to make more sense. Like when people
Speaker 4: see easy move in certain ways, like all of these
Speaker 4: things was like crip affiliated situations, right, So I just
Speaker 4: started looking at it, like you know, what if I
Speaker 4: could build this man from the ground up and humanize
Speaker 4: him as a person, you know, from you know him
Speaker 4: growing up, like having their first little studio in his
Speaker 4: grandmother's garage, to you know.
Speaker 3: Going through baby Mama drama.
Speaker 4: To you know, his cousin being killed and being one
Speaker 4: of the biggest drug dealers ever. I was just sort
Speaker 4: of putting all these pieces together that would allow me
Speaker 4: ultimately to be so prepared that by the time I
Speaker 4: got on set, I was taking direction as easy and
Speaker 4: not as Jason Mitchell.
Speaker 3: You dig that. So that's kind of that's how locked
Speaker 3: in I was.
Speaker 4: And man, we like working with Gary was crazy, right
Speaker 4: because for four straight weeks we had to like re
Speaker 4: record the album. We had to do all kind of
Speaker 4: like uh, performance training and stuff like that with dub C,
Speaker 4: and they wanted to believe that we was in w A.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my guy.
Speaker 4: He's a super solid one, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, he's he's amazing. But they wanted us
Speaker 4: to convince NWA that we was in WA without the costumes, right, right,
Speaker 4: So you know, it was about being able to listen
Speaker 4: to each other and really be able to transfer the
Speaker 4: energy and all of these different things that like, at first,
Speaker 4: we all really kind of thought some bullshit. He's like, man,
Speaker 4: this nigga, bro, he's just doing the most. So one
Speaker 4: day he pulls some money out of his pocket and
Speaker 4: he said, everybody close your eyes, and he drops a
Speaker 4: bill on the ground and he said what kind of
Speaker 4: bill is that?
Speaker 3: And were like, come on, bro, like you just making
Speaker 3: up anything now. He like, no, if you're.
Speaker 4: Really listening and you really paying attention, you wouldn't know
Speaker 4: what kind of bill that hits the ground, if it's
Speaker 4: one hundred or five or one dollar bill, a twenty
Speaker 4: or ten, you gonna know if you're really paying attention, man, listen.
Speaker 3: By the end of that training, he had us do
Speaker 3: it again. He dropped that.
Speaker 4: Everybody was like, that's a hundred, that's a hundred. We
Speaker 4: looked down it was one hundred dollar bill, and it
Speaker 4: was just incredible to like work with him and get
Speaker 4: that real coarateie going.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean. We was really like brothers.
Speaker 4: Like when we were doing all that crying at the
Speaker 4: end of the movie, it became a joke to us because.
Speaker 3: We was like, this nigga really about to make me cry.
Speaker 4: Like when Algie Hodge walked out of the play mc wren,
Speaker 4: he was really holding him tears back when Neil ran
Speaker 4: out of the crying. He was really he was in
Speaker 4: the in the in the hallway, really balling off camera,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, because we grew such a
Speaker 4: brotherhood that it was like.
Speaker 3: It just it felt too real. It felt too real
Speaker 3: to us, you know what I mean. I just don't know.
Speaker 1: A way that they could have gotten a better cast
Speaker 1: out of that. I just don't know, Like it was
Speaker 1: so perfectly casting. Typically, you can get one person, the
Speaker 1: right person. You can find somebody that can really really
Speaker 1: embody the role of that character. They can do it
Speaker 1: for that one person, right, everybody is a different what
Speaker 1: five different man and even down to like the Jimmy
Speaker 1: Iveen little roles that they popped in that you like, Damn.
Speaker 4: Like when I first met Jimmy, I was so impressed
Speaker 4: to see him standing next to the guy that was
Speaker 4: playing him.
Speaker 3: It blew my mind. I'm like, damn, they.
Speaker 4: Find everybody that really looked like the people, but they
Speaker 4: still had the chops too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Paul, he was He was amazing to work with.
Speaker 1: Bro.
Speaker 4: He like he changed my whole mind frame on where
Speaker 4: I was on the totem pole, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: because I didn't know no actors growing up, Like the
Speaker 4: actors that are from New Orleans, they had to leave
Speaker 4: New Orleans in order to you know, flourish.
Speaker 3: They had to you know, go to New York, LA
Speaker 3: or whatever it was.
Speaker 4: So I grew up around all rappers, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. I come up under Lil Wayne and you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, the squad and all of these guys.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Coming up, I rapped. I rapped before everybody thought I
Speaker 4: was gonna rap, you know what I mean, and not act.
Speaker 4: But I was just like, you know what, ain't nobody acting?
Speaker 4: So once I found that little hustle, I was like, hey,
Speaker 4: I might be good at this, you know.
Speaker 3: So I ended up.
Speaker 1: You're gonna wrap, You're gonna put it in. You gotta
Speaker 1: put it. It's like it's calling you, bro.
Speaker 3: It definitely is.
Speaker 1: I got it.
Speaker 3: I got a couple of records suck, you know, because
Speaker 3: I ain't gonna lie.
Speaker 4: I could write any kind of music. I could write
Speaker 4: country music if I really wanted to. Me and Trevor Jackson,
Speaker 4: who I did Superfly with We we write a lot
Speaker 4: of music together.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my.
Speaker 1: Guy, man, that's that's something else. You can country music.
Speaker 3: I can.
Speaker 1: I can.
Speaker 4: I'm here for it because I mean, I'm a storyteller.
Speaker 4: At the end of the day, I bet you can't
Speaker 4: do that opera opera, you know what. That might be
Speaker 4: a little out of my jacket, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: But it's not necessarily something I enjoyed, Like the artist beautiful.
Speaker 3: I just saw a black opera.
Speaker 4: Singing like like a couple of months ago, and I
Speaker 4: was just like, wow, this is it's incredible.
Speaker 1: But I'm did you cry?
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 1: You're supposed to cry with you listen to opera. You
Speaker 1: gotta cry, you know what you're listening.
Speaker 3: That's what make it feel.
Speaker 1: It's all about crime, bro. Like you if you don't cry,
Speaker 1: you you really don't understand opera. Like I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: go to my first opera event in.
Speaker 3: A few days and you know you gotta record yourself cried.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a cry.
Speaker 3: I gotta see, I gotta I gotta I want to
Speaker 3: see the process.
Speaker 1: I got some tears for him, bro, Like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: you if you if you can't cry or you're not
Speaker 1: really an actor.
Speaker 3: Oh I could.
Speaker 1: You gotta be able to cry, to be a real
Speaker 1: cry right now, do it, right now, right now, right now.
Speaker 3: All right, let me see see you're gonna take me there,
Speaker 3: and I'm gonna be able to come back, Willie, don't
Speaker 3: do you see you see you.
Speaker 1: You're about to do it.
Speaker 3: Though I saw us. I was, I was, but it's
Speaker 3: not the easiest place to come back from, you know,
Speaker 3: it's not the easiest place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you was about to do that, boy, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I also I saw that.
Speaker 3: Look, yeah, you can see the Wellington quick. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's crazy because like.
Speaker 4: You know, as a youngster, I would always entertain myself
Speaker 4: and entertain my friends, but I never thought that that
Speaker 4: meant anything, you know, and all the hardships that I
Speaker 4: really had in my life, I didn't I didn't cry
Speaker 4: about them then. You know, like I lost my dad
Speaker 4: when I was fifteen. He ended up killing himself. You know,
Speaker 4: like we experienced a lot of trauma and New Orleans. Yeah,
Speaker 4: just you know, my friends dying and all of this,
Speaker 4: and it's like you get so immune to the to
Speaker 4: the shock of it that you don't never really take
Speaker 4: the time to cry. So I think when I did
Speaker 4: start figuring out that that was something I could tap
Speaker 4: into and let loose on it, that it became like
Speaker 4: a therapy for me, right, Like me and f Gary Gray.
Speaker 4: I'll never forget. We're doing the Detroit scenes and you know,
Speaker 4: these big concert scenes. It's like high energy all of that.
Speaker 4: You know, we laughing and you know, I'm going back
Speaker 4: to my trailer for my lunch. And he comes to
Speaker 4: my trailer and he's like, yeah, these hospital scenes, you
Speaker 4: know they're coming up next week, and I just want
Speaker 4: to know what you're gonna do. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 4: you know, besides what's on the script, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm gonna bring the rain. I'm definitely gonna cry,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. Like it's it's a process,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. Because you know, he didn't
Speaker 4: even they didn't even think heterosexual men could get AIDS
Speaker 4: at that time, you know. So I told him about
Speaker 4: the discovery I was gonna have and you know, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna cry, and he was like, well, I want you
Speaker 4: to do it right now, and I was like no,
Speaker 4: Like I'm having a great day, I don't you know
Speaker 4: what I don't want to do this right now, Like
Speaker 4: what do you mean? He was like, we really had
Speaker 4: a hot and heavy argument in my trailer because I
Speaker 4: didn't want to show him, you know, what I was
Speaker 4: gonna do. But then on the day I'm talking about
Speaker 4: take one, that's what you've seen on the movie because
Speaker 4: it just was coming down and he just was in
Speaker 4: there hugging me, and I was like, I told you, bro,
Speaker 4: I told you that I was gonna be able to
Speaker 4: get there. But getting back ain't the easiest thing in
Speaker 4: the world, because they got so much to cry for
Speaker 4: that we hold back sometimes, and they got so much
Speaker 4: pain inside of us that like if it's not channeled properly,
Speaker 4: you know, you could it could pop out and go
Speaker 4: the wrong way. So I'm glad that I do have this,
Speaker 4: this safe place to be able to come and let
Speaker 4: them tears out, like it ain't nothing.
Speaker 1: What's the process getting there and what's the process getting back?
Speaker 3: The process getting there?
Speaker 4: I think, you know, they teach you, like in these
Speaker 4: acting classes to use these breathing techniques, and you know,
Speaker 4: after like different therapy and stuff that I've been through,
Speaker 4: I realized that, like when you are alone with your thoughts,
Speaker 4: and you try to breathe through it. Right, A lot
Speaker 4: of times you can't help the way your body starts
Speaker 4: to feel, you know what I mean. So I just
Speaker 4: I built this muscle memory to not fight it, you
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying. Once it starts to come, let
Speaker 4: it go, you know. But getting back, I mean, like
Speaker 4: you know, I this this film that's about to come out.
Speaker 4: Now everything is both you know, I had a I
Speaker 4: had a tough scene.
Speaker 3: Well you know, I had to. I had to let
Speaker 3: the tears out.
Speaker 4: But like it really pretty much just took everybody coming
Speaker 4: and put their arms around me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And that's that's what you need.
Speaker 4: You need that family love, you know. So we have
Speaker 4: that moment, we had that guy love situation and it's over.
Speaker 4: You know, sometimes you need that.
Speaker 1: The director and did he did? He hug?
Speaker 3: He did?
Speaker 4: He did? But you know, you know how people get
Speaker 4: you the tough hug you good man, You're good, great
Speaker 4: job man, but you good. It's just like cause it's
Speaker 4: you know, like a lot of times when people see
Speaker 4: you go there that fast and then they're like, all right,
Speaker 4: well we're gonna do a couple of more of these,
Speaker 4: and you turn it on and turn it off. It's like,
Speaker 4: you know, it's crazy, but you know, like when you're
Speaker 4: young and you get a whooping and you cry yourself
Speaker 4: to sleep and you wake up feeling like a lot better.
Speaker 3: A lot of times, that's how it is.
Speaker 4: You know, it might feel a little fucked up while
Speaker 4: you're doing it and going through it, but afterwards you
Speaker 4: feel like the best.
Speaker 3: That's why to me, it's definitely like a therapy thing
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 2: Little boys reloaded podcasts will be right back after this spot.
Speaker 1: How did you enji Quavist meet.
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 4: Me and ji Quaevis Man. He ended up reaching out
Speaker 4: to me just like I think he might have just
Speaker 4: ran across my page or something like that.
Speaker 3: But I was like, at the.
Speaker 4: Time COVID had just hit, I was living in New
Speaker 4: York and my life was kind of like, you know,
Speaker 4: it was just a little bit slow for everybody, like
Speaker 4: you locked in the house, can't really do nothing whatever.
Speaker 3: So he was like, I'm gonna send you some book,
Speaker 3: you know, but like you know, you know how.
Speaker 4: Sometime say books and you'd be like, damn, I ain't gonna,
Speaker 4: you know, all right, send me books, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean?
Speaker 3: So it was all good.
Speaker 4: But he sent me the books and I had not
Speaker 4: enough to do, so I just I started reading. But
Speaker 4: then I ain't put the books down. I'm like, damn,
Speaker 4: it's nigga cold, you.
Speaker 3: Know what I mean. So I'm just checking his books out,
Speaker 3: like damn he could, you know, he really dope. So
Speaker 3: through that we just built a friendship, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 4: And we just would always just talk and just always
Speaker 4: be on the phone, and we just you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, we just jokes COVID together pretty much like
Speaker 4: you know, and we started talking about maybe, you know,
Speaker 4: how we could turn one of the books into a movie.
Speaker 4: And one thing just sort of led to another, and
Speaker 4: he was like, man, listen, you know, I believe in you.
Speaker 4: If you believe in me, let's do a movie. So
Speaker 4: I'm like, all right, one thing just led to another
Speaker 4: and we end up doing a movie.
Speaker 1: And did you know he was a New York best
Speaker 1: seller before he reached out.
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't.
Speaker 4: I mean I had heard of his books before, you know.
Speaker 4: I heard his books because you know, they real popular
Speaker 4: in the black community, him and his wife. But I
Speaker 4: wasn't a big reader, you know. I would read scripts
Speaker 4: and stuff but you know, like a lot of other
Speaker 4: black children, I just wasn't a big reader.
Speaker 1: When you would read scripts, did you just read your
Speaker 1: own parts and you read the whole script?
Speaker 3: No? I always read the whole script. Everybody know.
Speaker 4: When I come on set, like I know my lines,
Speaker 4: I know your lines. I was like, I'm just yeah
Speaker 4: because I mean, I feel like you fine, because I
Speaker 4: love movies, you know what I mean, And a lot
Speaker 4: of times you got these little breadcrumbs and these little
Speaker 4: gems that happen, and this is how you know good writing.
Speaker 4: And I feel like, you know, a lot of people
Speaker 4: think that I got where I am in my career
Speaker 4: from the yesest, but it was really the nose. It
Speaker 4: was all the shit that I turned down. There was
Speaker 4: so many scripts that I get sent that like, I'm
Speaker 4: looking for key things in it to know, like if
Speaker 4: this is gonna be a good film or not.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, what are you looking for?
Speaker 1: Because that's one of the questions I need to ask you,
Speaker 1: Like what you look for? Because you actually picked some
Speaker 1: of the best roles, like memorable characters, characters that have
Speaker 1: to die deep and pull out those emotions. Yeah, consistent
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm looking for the human pieces of it. Man,
Speaker 4: A lot of times we just see stuff. It's like
Speaker 4: on the surface, right, Like I mean, I don't want
Speaker 4: to I don't want to give no examples because I
Speaker 4: don't want to say, oh this is bad acting or
Speaker 4: bad movies.
Speaker 3: But we see it all the time, you know.
Speaker 4: And and me, I need layers to a man, right,
Speaker 4: Like just using Easy for example, he was the villain
Speaker 4: that everybody hated to hate, right because he did a
Speaker 4: lot of dumb shit, and everybody was still rooting for him.
Speaker 4: At the end, nobody wanted Easy to die. He about
Speaker 4: to get his shit together. But in real life he
Speaker 4: was definitely the villain. He was the bad guy in
Speaker 4: the movie.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he didn't have no problem with it because in
Speaker 4: his mind he's thinking, QB, you seventeen years old, Your
Speaker 4: opinion really don't count. You ain't got no money, dre
Speaker 4: you you got talent, but you ain't got no money.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying. Still, I'm out here risking
Speaker 4: my life for my money. So y'all, ain't my friends,
Speaker 4: Like this is a business transaction. So at the end
Speaker 4: of the day, without no money, all of these fantasies
Speaker 4: that y'all have about being superstars, and all of this
Speaker 4: good stuff is out the window, you know. And at
Speaker 4: the time they really was just thinking about being hood stars.
Speaker 4: Easy was thinking bigger than them. So for him, he
Speaker 4: was the mastermind and the money behind it. So how
Speaker 4: do you go to somebody and tell them I deserve
Speaker 4: xyz that they ain't never seen, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Like these guys went viral when it was just hand
Speaker 4: to hand situations. So every character that I try to
Speaker 4: find has layers rather they be good, bad, ugly, but
Speaker 4: it got layers of a man, and they need to
Speaker 4: be able to show that, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 4: Because I'm one of them people who who I really believe,
Speaker 4: Like I mean, you could feel when people got an
Speaker 4: ugly energy about themselves, right, or some kind of demonic
Speaker 4: energy about themselves. But for the most part, I don't
Speaker 4: really believe in good people and bad people. I think
Speaker 4: it's just people and there's decisions on the table, you know,
Speaker 4: and like all of us have made a bad decision
Speaker 4: here or there in our life, or you know, made
Speaker 4: somebody feel a certain way, you know, like everybody ain't
Speaker 4: gonna love you, Everybody ain't gonna love your opinions. And
Speaker 4: I think that's what humanizes roles and humanizes movies the most,
Speaker 4: you know, just being able to show them different layers.
Speaker 4: I'm a seventeen layer cake, so I need to be
Speaker 4: able to show people.
Speaker 1: You know, you say everybody, you don't believe in good
Speaker 1: and bad people, just people what you're saying on that
Speaker 1: with And I think it is some demonic ass people
Speaker 1: I that. Yeah, do you think that? Do you think
Speaker 1: that somebody like like say Dylan Ruth who shot up
Speaker 1: the black people at the church, you don't think he
Speaker 1: was a bad person. You think he just a person.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I'm also like, I ain't gonna say
Speaker 4: I'm a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that agendas
Speaker 4: be pushed a lot of times and situations, and like
Speaker 4: children are so easily influenced, Like they do have a
Speaker 4: lot of demonic energies out here, right, But do I
Speaker 4: believe that that kid was born hating black people and
Speaker 4: said to himself, as soon as I get a chance,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna shot up a black church.
Speaker 3: Absolutely not.
Speaker 4: Now, whatever took over his mind at the time to
Speaker 4: make him go do that foolishness it's a whole different story,
Speaker 4: you know, cause, like I don't know, the dude named
Speaker 4: the other white boy who shot up the grocery store
Speaker 4: and was only killing black people, remember, and he ran
Speaker 4: up on a white person, was like, oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: He went to the next person.
Speaker 4: But the first guy that he killed, the security guard
Speaker 4: who was at the door, invented the engine that ran
Speaker 4: off water and was just on the news like two
Speaker 4: weeks before that. They ain't trying to have that, so
Speaker 4: they gonna shoot him and then make it look like
Speaker 4: a random mass mass shooting, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: So now when I'm starting to see these shootings, it's
Speaker 4: getting more and more popular and a little bit crazy now,
Speaker 4: and I feel like it's an agenda to cover up
Speaker 4: what's really happening behind whoever they are out there looking for.
Speaker 1: At the time, Well, I heard that theory. I heard
Speaker 1: that that was people saying that, you know, this happened
Speaker 1: because this guy, this black guy, invented a car that
Speaker 1: could run off water, and they can't let that happen.
Speaker 1: And we know that those things do happen. We know
Speaker 1: that they do try to silence black people who have
Speaker 1: ideas and information that can change the world because they
Speaker 1: don't want to. They don't want to encourage black kids
Speaker 1: to think bigger, right.
Speaker 4: And then on top of that, you know, it's like,
Speaker 4: if they give the cure to AIDS, all the people
Speaker 4: who've been studying age making eighty ninety thousand a year
Speaker 4: studying AIDS now don't have a job that exists anymore.
Speaker 1: So they gonna pluck you. But here's my right with
Speaker 1: that theory. They don't have to kill so many people
Speaker 1: just to kill this one guy. Like, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: the rest of us didn't even know about this invention
Speaker 1: until after the dude got killed. So if they just
Speaker 1: wanted to kill that guy, I mean, why not just get,
Speaker 1: you know, one guy to run up on him. How
Speaker 1: about this some guy tried to act like he's stealing
Speaker 1: somebody's store. He accosta guy, the guy blows his brains out,
Speaker 1: Nobody questions anything. They know how to kill. They know
Speaker 1: how to kill and set it up to make it
Speaker 1: look like that was some type of disagreement. Especially when
Speaker 1: it comes to black people, they'll immediately try to get
Speaker 1: make it like a hood situation, like somebody just got
Speaker 1: out of pocket. They know how to do that. Why
Speaker 1: kill so many people.
Speaker 3: Well, I think.
Speaker 4: Historic black people have never thrived well in chaos because
Speaker 4: we're so passionate, and the first thing we do when
Speaker 4: we really believe some shit is tear our own shit up, you.
Speaker 2: Know what I mean.
Speaker 4: We've been our worst enemy for a long time, in
Speaker 4: my opinion, you know, So the first thing they want
Speaker 4: to do is hand us chaos and say, yeah, get mad,
Speaker 4: y'all get mad, everybody get mad, because then we start
Speaker 4: we completely forget about what's really happening in the situation.
Speaker 4: Because this is how I look at it, right, Like
Speaker 4: I know a few police and they wanted to be
Speaker 4: cops their entire life. They waiting on opportunities to do
Speaker 4: some heroic shit. What in any cop right mind after
Speaker 4: all of these people being shot up, that yo approach
Speaker 4: to this person who just did all of this killing
Speaker 4: and it's so sweet. You're taking these people to get
Speaker 4: burgers and you're putting bulletproof vests on them, and you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, Like with black people, it's not
Speaker 4: like that police is beating you up. They're killing you,
Speaker 4: they're shooting you. So to me, that was really what
Speaker 4: I'm looking at, Like, Wait, they why the ain't just
Speaker 4: take this opportunity to kill this dude. They just had
Speaker 4: a mass shooting out here in Texas. He was a
Speaker 4: brown guy, you know, some kind of hispanic. Guess what,
Speaker 4: when it was all said and done, he was laid out,
Speaker 4: he was on the ground, he was finished. They killed him,
Speaker 4: you know. And I can't say that, like, you know,
Speaker 4: every one of them is part of the agenda. But
Speaker 4: I'm saying when it's the white folks who go do that,
Speaker 4: they never end up killing them and we never know
Speaker 4: what happens to him at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: I think it's as simple as he's one of us, exactly,
Speaker 1: Like you know, he did what I wanted to do,
Speaker 1: you know, right, So of course I'm going to treat
Speaker 1: him with humanity because I would want to be treated
Speaker 1: with humanity if I did that to them. You're like, absolute,
Speaker 1: they are inhumane. Main people who behave that way are inhumane.
Speaker 1: They're uncivilized mus And and let me go back to
Speaker 1: a statement you just made about us being our worst enemy.
Speaker 1: I've heard that. I've heard that many many times from
Speaker 1: black people, especially online, and assuming that they were black,
Speaker 1: you were online. The reason why I disagree with that
Speaker 1: is because that is a tall statement to say that
Speaker 1: we're our worst enemy, uh, and we've been our worst enemy.
Speaker 1: We black people have never enslaved our entire population of
Speaker 1: people in any country. We we We didn't stump unborn
Speaker 1: babies out of their mother's wounds. We didn't feed babies
Speaker 1: to alligators. We didn't take plows and snatched teeth out
Speaker 1: of the mouths of human beings who didn't want to work,
Speaker 1: and so they decided that because I don't want to work,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna work for you anymore. I'd rather starve.
Speaker 1: We forced them to eat liquids, so we snatched that
Speaker 1: te pull their teeth out of their mouth. We didn't
Speaker 1: bomb Tulsa, Oklahoma. We didn't raid rose Wood and burn
Speaker 1: it down to the ground. We didn't. We didn't implement
Speaker 1: Jim Crow or the Tuskegee experiment.
Speaker 3: You know, we didn't.
Speaker 1: We didn't create mass incarceration and our welfare to purposely
Speaker 1: target black families and divide them. We didn't bring crack
Speaker 1: cocaine into the neighborhood and disseminated, disseminated an entire uh
Speaker 1: population of people. We we didn't. We didn't do any
Speaker 1: of those things.
Speaker 3: Those are a.
Speaker 1: Major tri Yeah, that's fact.
Speaker 3: Yes, fact.
Speaker 1: Yes, we do have some uncivilized MutS in our race,
Speaker 1: Yes we do. But that is a very small group
Speaker 1: of people when you look at our entire population. When
Speaker 1: you look when you really think about our plight in America,
Speaker 1: we've only been freed legally freed just over one hundred
Speaker 1: and what sixty years or so, one hundred and seventy years.
Speaker 1: That is a very short time. When you think about
Speaker 1: the overall accomplishments of black people, we think about all
Speaker 1: of our accomplishments. Let's not look at just the people
Speaker 1: who are the Beyonces and the jay Z's. It's what
Speaker 1: they try to get us to focus on, Willy D's
Speaker 1: and the Jason Mitchell's. Right, They try to get us
Speaker 1: to focus on people who are who are in very
Speaker 1: special categories.
Speaker 3: Right, we have.
Speaker 1: Produced thousands of doctors and lawyers, tens of thousands dollars.
Speaker 1: I mean the educators, inventors, uh, entrepreneurs uh, just so
Speaker 1: and just every day working class people who despite the odds,
Speaker 1: put their children through school and kept them out of
Speaker 1: the loan grips of Johnny law. You know, we have
Speaker 1: so many success stories. But what happens I think often
Speaker 1: to not not I think, but I know is that
Speaker 1: they use our worst as an example of who we
Speaker 1: are collectively, and they use hold on and they use
Speaker 1: their worst. I mean, they use our worst as an
Speaker 1: example of who we are collectively, and they use their
Speaker 1: best as an example of who they are collectively.
Speaker 3: And oftentimes, I mean, even look at what Jesus and
Speaker 3: I think, I think all.
Speaker 1: The times oftentimes we get brainwashed by by that psychological
Speaker 1: warfact that they're playing on us when we get born
Speaker 1: down so much and we tend to stay just like
Speaker 1: a lot of people that aren't black go like, damn,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with the Negroes?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: They can't get it together? And we start that man,
Speaker 1: we can't get it together.
Speaker 3: We are you know right?
Speaker 4: Well, see what the way I look at it, right
Speaker 4: is that, like you said, they've said, they've put these
Speaker 4: systems in place for us to fight each other. Because
Speaker 4: like even even to say something as small as we're
Speaker 4: the minority, when you ask yourself for real, like where
Speaker 4: really are we the minority?
Speaker 3: Those numbers would change?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Like you ever been to Hawaii many?
Speaker 1: I used to vacation there all the time.
Speaker 4: So you heard a Holly day before. I haven't so
Speaker 4: Hollis is what they call white people, right, you know, hollyday.
Speaker 4: They just beat up all the white people. It's like
Speaker 4: it's like a holiday, but everybody knows, like it's it's
Speaker 4: all good.
Speaker 1: Like that goes on currently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's look it up. You can google it. The Hawaiians,
Speaker 3: everybody else that ain't white.
Speaker 4: They just beat the white people up. Yeah, it's a thing, right,
Speaker 4: So imagine, well what days do they go out there?
Speaker 4: I don't know, we got to google it. Fine, fine,
Speaker 4: Holly day.
Speaker 3: I think it's h o W l e y holly
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 1: But I just hate the white people who hate me man, right, right,
Speaker 1: I'm the same way that I don't. I hate the
Speaker 1: one and I hate the black people who hate me too.
Speaker 1: I hate an anybody who hate me. You don't like me,
Speaker 1: I don't like you. Man with me, I rock with you, right.
Speaker 4: But I think you know, these systems have been put
Speaker 4: in place to, like you said, brainwash us, right, and
Speaker 4: then they set it up to where like you know,
Speaker 4: like for every fourth grader that fails the leap test,
Speaker 4: they build a jail cell. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 4: Like they they figuring it. They figuring out how to
Speaker 4: again make you a slave. They're gonna put these systems
Speaker 4: in place. But being from such a violent city, you know,
Speaker 4: and what I see around me is it's kind of
Speaker 4: crazy because I'm like, yo, I've never seen the police
Speaker 4: actually kill somebody. You know, Like I know a lot
Speaker 4: of people who carry guns all the time, and they're
Speaker 4: not carrying guns for the white boys, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. So like that's what I mean by the
Speaker 4: times like we're our worst enemy because like we don't
Speaker 4: have no money, so it's like, oh, made the toughest
Speaker 4: guy win, or everybody want to be in charge.
Speaker 3: Or when we do.
Speaker 4: Decide to have a movement that we're pushing forward, we
Speaker 4: leave with violence a lot of the times, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean. And we're just so much smarter than that,
Speaker 4: And like we got to be in this world where
Speaker 4: where we pivoting, you know what I mean, And we
Speaker 4: got to do that on a great level.
Speaker 3: Like you know, you see some guys like like nineteen.
Speaker 4: Keys, who you know, they're getting huge groups of black
Speaker 4: people together talking about things that's that's sort of like
Speaker 4: solution based, you know, they trying to make people think
Speaker 4: about it, but like that's all fun and dandy, but like,
Speaker 4: what's the plan, you know? And I think that's what
Speaker 4: we gotta start feeling, like what's the plan, What we're
Speaker 4: gonna do, What we're gonna do for each other, what
Speaker 4: situations we're gonna set up for each other, because we
Speaker 4: still pressing these these things to our a lot of
Speaker 4: our kids and a lot of our families that like
Speaker 4: it's still putting them up top and making it seem
Speaker 4: like white is right. And they doing this all over
Speaker 4: the world, you know what I mean. And you see
Speaker 4: so much chaos happening in these black communities, and I
Speaker 4: just I just think it's sad that, like, you know,
Speaker 4: it's somebody job to wake up and go spin on
Speaker 4: the ops every morning, Like what are you thinking about?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: That's crazy to me. I just I can't. I can't
Speaker 3: take that land down.
Speaker 1: I gotta acknowledge everything that you said just now as truth. However,
Speaker 1: those black people who do behave like uncivilized mus or
Speaker 1: microcosm of society facts right overall American society. And so
Speaker 1: if you live amongst black people who behave that way,
Speaker 1: and even when you look at New Orleans as a whole.
Speaker 1: Most Black people I know from New Orleans or law abiding,
Speaker 1: hard working citizens.
Speaker 3: Facts.
Speaker 1: It is that small in the projects here or the
Speaker 1: projects there are the projects there, it's where all the
Speaker 1: bullshit comes from. They are not the majority of Black
Speaker 1: people in New Orleans. Facts. So it's easy if you
Speaker 1: come from that to see and that's all you see,
Speaker 1: to just say, Okay, maybe that's what it is. But
Speaker 1: I was. I was able to get outside of Fifth Ward.
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of that too, But I was
Speaker 1: able to get outside of Fifth Ward early on, and
Speaker 1: I saw black people living differently. I saw people behaving differently.
Speaker 1: I was able to move overseas to Azerbaijan, and in
Speaker 1: that country at the time, I lived in Bahku. Bahku
Speaker 1: is similar to Houston in numbers in the population about
Speaker 1: four million people at the time and I lived there.
Speaker 1: Houston had about four million people. The difference about Baiku
Speaker 1: experienced about one murder a month, and typically it was
Speaker 1: domestic wife's type of situation. In Houston. Comparably, Houston was
Speaker 1: averaging about fifteen murders a week at that time. Now,
Speaker 1: I also saw lines of men on the streets in suits,
Speaker 1: and these suits were like not really in good condition,
Speaker 1: but they were on the streets early in the morning,
Speaker 1: and they waiting on people to pick them up. You know,
Speaker 1: like in Houston and other parts, and even in Dallas
Speaker 1: you see Mexicans out in that gas stations and kind
Speaker 1: of stuff waiting on some jobs. Well, this is how
Speaker 1: these guys would do. But it would be hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds and rows of guys, I mean sometimes like for
Speaker 1: a solid mill, just straight on both sides of the streets.
Speaker 1: And some people were still sleeping on dirt floors at
Speaker 1: the time. Okay, some people, right, And I'm comparing it
Speaker 1: to the US, and I'm going like, well, they're poor,
Speaker 1: They're really really poor. Why aren't they killing each other?
Speaker 1: Why aren't they robbing? Because because we like we often say,
Speaker 1: well we're killing each other and were hurting and we're
Speaker 1: fighting and we robbing because we ain't got nothing. But
Speaker 1: they ain't got nothing either. They really ain't got nothing, right,
Speaker 1: and they're not robbing, they're not killing. And what I
Speaker 1: surmise is how the government communicates with his people. Leadership
Speaker 1: starts at the top, and these people have put a
Speaker 1: premium on life, they put a premium on family. They
Speaker 1: put a premium on community. We don't.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 1: With my family on our way home and we saw
Speaker 1: a fight. We looked off the left. I saw this
Speaker 1: a fight. It was like old women, children, men beating
Speaker 1: up this one guy. They were whooping his ass. They
Speaker 1: were serving or they were serving them all kinds of pieces.
Speaker 4: Bro.
Speaker 1: The dudes was punching them, killing them. Little kids was
Speaker 1: kicking them. Old lady, a couple old ladies had broomstick
Speaker 1: and they were hitting them in slow motion with the broomstick.
Speaker 1: So I turned the drive and I asked my drive.
Speaker 1: I say, say, man, what's going on? He said, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I find out. So he dropped us off
Speaker 1: and he went back to see what was up. He
Speaker 1: comes back and he said, yeah, that guy beat up
Speaker 1: his girlfriend, and so they beat him up. The whole
Speaker 1: neighbor dud whooped his ass. They don't play that. In
Speaker 1: Houston and America, we see something. Mind your own bitness,
Speaker 1: your own bitness. And that's why our women and children
Speaker 1: are unsafe right because principle, that's why our boys are
Speaker 1: walking around at thirteen years old, ten years old with
Speaker 1: guns and their waistband. Because the people that are in
Speaker 1: this country and the people, even in their neighborhoods, instead
Speaker 1: of the men in the neighborhoods protecting the neighborhood and
Speaker 1: keeping them safe. They look at the boys as competition, right,
Speaker 1: you know, they're trying to hog at you fifteen years old.
Speaker 1: You got a grown man twenty some thirty some years
Speaker 1: old trying to get at the same girl you're trying
Speaker 1: to get at. So they see you as competition. And
Speaker 1: in many cases, the women see the girls, the younger girls,
Speaker 1: as competition, right, right, right. But I surmised that the reason,
Speaker 1: the fundamental reason, is values. Brother, It comes down to values.
Speaker 1: At one point, I was a source of a lot
Speaker 1: of the pain in my community. You know, I was
Speaker 1: very violent, and so I made I contributed to some
Speaker 1: of that, right right. It wasn't until I learned to
Speaker 1: love myself that I learned to love other people. And
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, that ain't right. I started
Speaker 1: actually taking up for people, and I became a protector,
Speaker 1: you know, instead of an agitator, you know, instead of provocator.
Speaker 1: I became a protector. And once I did that, I decided,
Speaker 1: ain't nobody coming in this neighborhood and bullying nobody? And
Speaker 1: nobody pushing nobody around. You ain't coming to beat up
Speaker 1: nobody right this neighborhood. And once I put my foot down,
Speaker 1: the other guys around me did the same thing and
Speaker 1: it was peace. And so the men, it really starts
Speaker 1: with the men. They got to step up because the
Speaker 1: men are the ones who are and the boys are
Speaker 1: really the ones who are doing all the killing. So
Speaker 1: everybody like to talk about leadership. I'm a leader, I'm
Speaker 1: a man, I'm this whatever.
Speaker 3: Right, you're right, Yeah, I totally get it.
Speaker 4: And see that's why me and and everybody around us
Speaker 4: we realized how much influence film and television has on
Speaker 4: a lot of this music, all of that. It has
Speaker 4: a huge influence. Like look at you know what's going
Speaker 4: on with Joamrad You can't. I mean, I mean he's
Speaker 4: a young guy twenty three years old, which you can't
Speaker 4: tell me that that influence ain't coming from TV and
Speaker 4: film in the music and because you're not living that way.
Speaker 4: It's it's just but it's the culture putting so much
Speaker 4: pressure on people that the first thing you do when
Speaker 4: you get money is try to go get some holes
Speaker 4: and try to do this in the holes, Like I
Speaker 4: want a real nigga, I want a nigga do this
Speaker 4: and do that, and do this and do that, and
Speaker 4: you're like, well shit, nigga, g herbo out the hood.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying, Let me so I won't
Speaker 4: be flying were push heisty mass too, And I'm but
Speaker 4: that ain't that ain't your life though, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, because anybody who knows that life for real
Speaker 4: ain't got nothing. They're not glorifying it at all. They
Speaker 4: really just rapping by this so they can get some
Speaker 4: money and never got to go back, you know. So
Speaker 4: I created a foundation called Dream Seeker that ultimately is
Speaker 4: a film education platform that's allowing people to you know,
Speaker 4: we training people in every department behind the camera. They
Speaker 4: can come on set, get trained, work for union hours
Speaker 4: and pretty much gearing them to work anywhere in the world.
Speaker 4: We already got this projected to be a global situation
Speaker 4: because a thing that's not happening is that we don't
Speaker 4: have no direct contact with Africa. For real, They not
Speaker 4: teaching Africans about slavery, so they looking at us, we
Speaker 4: looking at them. It ain't no unity and none of this,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. And then when they do
Speaker 4: show us Africa. It's motherfuckers with pot bellies and you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, everybody starving, flies in their eyes.
Speaker 4: They ain't got no shoes on their feet, whatever it
Speaker 4: may be, and they ain't gonna tell you. Oh, some
Speaker 4: of these people, it's convoying and race.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Some of these people got so much money that is crazy.
Speaker 4: It's all kind of billionaires and all kinds of people
Speaker 4: that we never even heard of. And they don't want
Speaker 4: to shed light on that because it'll start to give
Speaker 4: us this different picture of ourselves, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And you know, this go way back, like they've been
Speaker 4: trying to break our mind since White Jesus, you know.
Speaker 4: But like I think, through all this chaos, like you said,
Speaker 4: where does the leadership start? So I know, okay, I
Speaker 4: got my little piece of film and television. All right,
Speaker 4: let's do it like this, and we can make movies
Speaker 4: about whatever we want to make the movies about. But
Speaker 4: the education process and the jobs that we give people
Speaker 4: and all of these different things I believe will change something.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, I might not even live to see that,
Speaker 4: But if this go all the way around the world,
Speaker 4: I know for sure I ain't gonna leave it like
Speaker 4: I came. And I think if we have that mindset
Speaker 4: to not leave the world the same way we found it,
Speaker 4: and we're starting with ourself, it's gonna be a beautiful place,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, because it ain't about us
Speaker 4: being divided. Like I don't want to live in the
Speaker 4: world with just black folks, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: I don't even want to live my life like that.
Speaker 3: So, you know, like you said, like when we get
Speaker 3: to the point where we could just start loving on
Speaker 3: ourselves a little bit more, you know, you could love
Speaker 3: on your kids better, you could love on your family
Speaker 3: a little bit better.
Speaker 4: You could love what you do, you know, because we're
Speaker 4: all wired to love. And you know, on the other
Speaker 4: end of that, it's the hate, that's that's what you know,
Speaker 4: And people end up hating because they want to be loved,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So it's it's it's interesting, man, But I think that
Speaker 3: I'm very.
Speaker 4: Optimistic about the situation, to say the least, you know,
Speaker 4: because I feel like, if if you're close to me,
Speaker 4: I know I could have a little love for you
Speaker 4: at least, you know what I mean, And it just
Speaker 4: have to start there. You know, I hope I'm radiant,
Speaker 4: and I hope that people like when they see me,
Speaker 4: they see guarding me, they like, damn, that's what's up.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? And it's you know, a
Speaker 3: lot of us ain't got no guidance.
Speaker 4: But it takes a village, you know, It take people
Speaker 4: like yourself for me to get around people and be like,
Speaker 4: you know what, this is a good thing, you know,
Speaker 4: because I feel like it's such a it's such a
Speaker 4: block between young people in the older generation, you know.
Speaker 4: Like I was talking to you about my grandfather. Him
Speaker 4: and I used to get into it a lot because
Speaker 4: he used to always want to pay his bills in
Speaker 4: the envelope that it come in and fill out the paper,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, you know, it's the twentieth century, Like
Speaker 4: people don't you don't have to do it this way,
Speaker 4: no more like why do you want to do it
Speaker 4: like this? He always used to be peeking over my shoulder.
Speaker 4: I'm like, you know, and I would get agitated by
Speaker 4: it because I'm like, damn, I'm trying to do something else.
Speaker 4: You want me to come?
Speaker 3: Phillys bells out And but I didn't know until maybe.
Speaker 4: Six or seven years ago that the only thing that
Speaker 4: my grandfather knows how to write is his name, and
Speaker 4: he could write it in cursive, so he hell a
Speaker 4: proud of it. That's all he knew how to write.
Speaker 4: So he was always very impressed with my penmanship. And
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, the fruit of his labor.
Speaker 4: Look how it's turning out. Damn, look what we doing.
Speaker 4: And it would agitate me because I'm like, you know,
Speaker 4: but it was the block and he has so much
Speaker 4: pride that he was afraid to tell me like, oh
Speaker 4: I can't write this.
Speaker 3: This is why I need you to do it, like
Speaker 3: you know, So I feel like we need to listen
Speaker 3: to each.
Speaker 4: Other, young generation, old generation, whatever it may be, you know,
Speaker 4: And like you said, like we've we've all had our
Speaker 4: our slip ups, you know, and been part of the
Speaker 4: bullshit in our communities, you know, so we got to
Speaker 4: step up and start doing something great, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, and show people that you can change and
Speaker 4: that we can change this world if we change ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was profound, It was you you know.
Speaker 1: The trip part about it is that a lot of
Speaker 1: the answers are in those characters that you've played. I'm
Speaker 1: telling you man. Thank you, you have done a remarkable
Speaker 1: job at at picking good characters.
Speaker 3: Thank you your boys reloaded podcasts. We work back back
Speaker 3: the boys.
Speaker 1: Going back to the easy movie, I mean wa movie
Speaker 1: straight out of Compton and where you played uh easy
Speaker 1: when when they told you that, uh did you have
Speaker 1: did did you have to take any type of special
Speaker 1: uh courses or whatever to find out, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: how an age patient would respond to the treatment or
Speaker 1: to the news that they had gotten the age. Did
Speaker 1: you have to go around any type of clinics say
Speaker 1: anything like that.
Speaker 3: No, No, I just thought of it like because.
Speaker 4: I had an uncle that died from age, right, and
Speaker 4: I I got my own conspiracy thoughts on that too,
Speaker 4: because I ain't gonna lie. He was healthy as an ox,
Speaker 4: but he was a gay man, right, and when everybody
Speaker 4: was getting tested and people was finding out and all
Speaker 4: of this kind of stuff, like the whole family suggested
Speaker 4: that he go get tested because they knew he was gay.
Speaker 4: Lo and behold he got AIDS. Four months later he dies,
Speaker 4: but he paid like eighty thousand or something crazy number
Speaker 4: for the medicine. So you know, it was like to me,
Speaker 4: it was it came through and just swept a lot
Speaker 4: of people, but I personally feel like it came from
Speaker 4: the medicine, right, So aside from that, I'm looking at
Speaker 4: easy situation like he went to the hospital and never left,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying, Like he went and they
Speaker 4: never leave.
Speaker 3: So the shock to him was more like, no, I'm
Speaker 3: you know, I ain't gay?
Speaker 4: What you mean I got aids Like that's for gay
Speaker 4: people because that's what the media is saying. And then
Speaker 4: they're like, no, well your t sale count is thirteen, sir,
Speaker 4: you know you got a few days. You about to
Speaker 4: get out of here that whole like, cause, I mean,
Speaker 4: we don't survive shootout, so we doesn't survive this, and
Speaker 4: that it survived the police all of that, and I'm
Speaker 4: about to die from a sickness?
Speaker 3: Are you kidding me? Like I know his heart was broke,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Because he never, ever, I don't think, wanted He wanted
Speaker 4: the best for Qube. He wanted the best for Dre,
Speaker 4: wanted the best for Yellow Wren, even Jerry Helen. He
Speaker 4: wanted the best for people like he had a good
Speaker 4: heart about himself. He gave each of his kids twenty
Speaker 4: thousand dollars a month. You know, he was taking care
Speaker 4: of what he had to take care of. He gave
Speaker 4: each one of his kids twenty recks a month, twenty bands.
Speaker 4: Ain't your cue that money? Cub was asking about you
Speaker 4: want some money man? Well, you know, Cuban wrote a
Speaker 4: lot of that music. Man you wanted that money?
Speaker 3: Well, you know.
Speaker 4: But to be honest, I think Easy was also afraid
Speaker 4: to uh. I mean, he know that there was things
Speaker 4: that that Jerry could do that he couldn't, you know,
Speaker 4: Like when they went to go visit the White House,
Speaker 4: they made us take that out the movie. It was
Speaker 4: in the original script. They made us take that out
Speaker 4: the movie. And it wasn't even that's a simple shot
Speaker 4: to say, hey, you know, we just got off the
Speaker 4: airplane or whatever and we and they just simply turned
Speaker 4: us back around and say, now get your lass back
Speaker 4: on there.
Speaker 3: That's all they needed to put in the movie to
Speaker 3: let us know that it happened, you know. But it
Speaker 3: was like, no, tak it out.
Speaker 4: I believe Universal wanted us to take it out. But
Speaker 4: f Gary Gray, he's so smart, you know that. Like
Speaker 4: at the end of the film, that's why Cube says
Speaker 4: to Easy, how you go from selling rocks in the
Speaker 4: Dope House to eating dinner with the president in the
Speaker 4: White House and he you know. Easy responds by saying,
Speaker 4: they still trying to figure that out because that was
Speaker 4: the truth. All they knew was Eric Lynn Wright donated
Speaker 4: X amount of dollars to the state of California. He
Speaker 4: should be a Republican. They didn't think he was going
Speaker 4: to show up and be the same nigga from the police.
Speaker 4: They was like, hell no, they turned him around, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean? But yeah, that's the truth. And
Speaker 4: they didn't want to see it, like they didn't want
Speaker 4: us to be that powerful, you know, like when you
Speaker 4: look at it, they knocked off him, Biggie and Park
Speaker 4: in a very short amount of time. If you go
Speaker 4: from the first that to the last, it's like, I
Speaker 4: don't even think it's two four years.
Speaker 1: Who was in office when Easy E went to the
Speaker 1: to the to the White House?
Speaker 2: Mm?
Speaker 3: Is it Reagan? Who was it?
Speaker 1: See? I think that I think I don't even I
Speaker 1: don't even think Easy went to the White House.
Speaker 4: Uh it was the presidential luncheon that they were supposed
Speaker 4: to be so whatever it was, it might have been
Speaker 4: Big Bush. Whatever he went to.
Speaker 1: Uh, was supposed to go to. I think easy went
Speaker 1: there like just this to give him a big middle finger.
Speaker 3: Like absolutely, that's what it was always about.
Speaker 2: It was not.
Speaker 3: Press and yeah, he wasn't trying to go again, Like
Speaker 3: I can just see.
Speaker 1: When he got the letter, you know what, And somebody
Speaker 1: probably was one of the secondary is something probably probably
Speaker 1: read the letter and say they want you to and
Speaker 1: he was like, what, well, what you're gonna do?
Speaker 4: I'm going right, I'm I'm headed, you know, because they
Speaker 4: probably had no idea who Eric lynn Wright was. They
Speaker 4: definitely didn't put that together and think it was easy.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: You know, Eric, you were a very smart guy, right,
Speaker 1: but man, I think you overplayed your hand by not
Speaker 1: paying Cube and Drake. I mean, you overplayed your hand.
Speaker 3: He definitely, I think he definitely did that bad. He
Speaker 3: definitely did that bad.
Speaker 1: You got the guy, you got your most prolific writer
Speaker 1: in the group, and you got your beat maker. If
Speaker 1: you got your guy who's making the music, you gotta
Speaker 1: take care of those guys. You got to make them happy.
Speaker 1: They gotta be happy. Absolutely, it seemed like that they
Speaker 1: were asking for anything unreasonable.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, I think at the end of the day.
Speaker 4: He he was so stuck on what Jerry Heller was
Speaker 4: telling him and trusting in that situation so much that
Speaker 4: between everything that's going on in his life, he was
Speaker 4: just so blinded to it. I think he after a
Speaker 4: while just put on blinders and was like, Jerry got it.
Speaker 4: I don't want to talk to you all about no
Speaker 4: money because I mean, it is what it is. But
Speaker 4: you know, by that time, he was he was on
Speaker 4: a rapid downfall, you know what I mean, Like Jerry
Speaker 4: really got all of the ass, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: Like they easy wasn't an exempt from the situation like
Speaker 4: he He definitely lost money too. And I think if
Speaker 4: he would have just paid more attention to the situation
Speaker 4: in its entirety, you know, because he really didn't believe
Speaker 4: that they couldn't do it without Jerry, and Dre was
Speaker 4: preaching that to him the whole time, you know. But
Speaker 4: I mean we see where Dre at now billion hya,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, We see where a cube
Speaker 4: at now like leading it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: So it's I don't know, man, you know, it's it
Speaker 4: was sad to watch. It was sad to watch, but
Speaker 4: you know, I am glad that I got to humanize
Speaker 4: him in a way that didn't tarnish the legacy.
Speaker 1: Or brother, you killed that role. If you was made
Speaker 1: for that role, I think you killed it. I mean
Speaker 1: not talking about knocking out the park he said a
Speaker 1: distance record with that ship. Hey man, I'm glad I
Speaker 1: was not there trying to audition. Stop playing, man, stop playing.
Speaker 1: They would have called me back. I'm like, Jason Rod,
Speaker 1: I mean, you knocked that thing out. The part is
Speaker 1: that any role that they could ask of you that
Speaker 1: you would not play, you absolutely would just say no,
Speaker 1: I'm not playing that type of character.
Speaker 4: I'm not homophobic at all, don't have no homophobic bones
Speaker 4: in my body, but I just I don't I don't
Speaker 4: want to play any of these rolls, you know that,
Speaker 4: you know. I mean I feel like they got they
Speaker 4: got gay people out here that act, they got transgenders
Speaker 4: out here that act, and they could portray those stories
Speaker 4: very well, you know, and they fit in that box
Speaker 4: very well.
Speaker 3: So you know, I could sort of leave that for them.
Speaker 3: That and maybe like I'm not too big on the
Speaker 3: woman nos this even I don't really want to play that,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe a hot boy.
Speaker 4: But like as far as like on some Ike Turner
Speaker 4: type shit like nah, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 4: they still got people who be looking at Blair Underwood
Speaker 4: like I don't like his ass, but he you know,
Speaker 4: he probably don't beat his wife at home, but people
Speaker 4: just look at it like, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: Lawrence Fishburn had to shake that, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 4: because for a long time people just looking at him
Speaker 4: like I don't like his motherfucking ass, you know. So
Speaker 4: it's just like when you see Hannibal. Like when I
Speaker 4: first met Anthony Hopkins in real life, he was That
Speaker 4: was the first time I ever froze when I was
Speaker 4: like meeting a star because I'm I always I'll give
Speaker 4: myself enough to like, you know, you got some people
Speaker 4: you meet them and you're like, damn, I just been
Speaker 4: a huge fan my whole life or whatever. But as
Speaker 4: far as like being struck or you do some stupid
Speaker 4: shit like that only happened to me when I met
Speaker 4: him and the dude who played Candy Man, and they
Speaker 4: don't even know about it because I ain't speak to him.
Speaker 4: I feel like the dude who playing Candy Man fucked
Speaker 4: up my whole childhood, Like he don't even know, like
Speaker 4: you know, but I seen him and stop like you know,
Speaker 4: and I kind of let them go their own way
Speaker 4: because I'm like, damn, But you know, it's powerful being
Speaker 4: an actor, you know what I'm saying. You never know
Speaker 4: how you affecting people lives. So you know, they got
Speaker 4: a couple of things that I wouldn't like to do.
Speaker 4: But I personally feel like, you know, cause I had
Speaker 4: a bud all of these tattoos before I started acting,
Speaker 4: So in my mind, I always thought I was gonna
Speaker 4: get pigeonholed, you know, or be type cast as the
Speaker 4: guy with the tattoos stuck number three and shit right.
Speaker 3: So I always would press this.
Speaker 4: Issue that I needed to show different faces at Jason
Speaker 4: Mitchell every time.
Speaker 3: I need to do something completely different, Like.
Speaker 4: They called me to be easy in every other movie
Speaker 4: that had a glimpse of easy e in it, Like, bro, no.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, I'm not doing that no more.
Speaker 3: I'll play easy.
Speaker 4: That's fine, Like you're not gonna get me to be
Speaker 4: easy in nine more movies, Like we could do this
Speaker 4: as a series and you know we can keep going
Speaker 4: and then what you know what I mean? People be
Speaker 4: like wit straight out of Compton too come out Nigga.
Speaker 4: Hopefully never I died in the first.
Speaker 3: One, you know what I mean. Fu, Yeah, you know, so,
Speaker 3: I just I never wanted to.
Speaker 4: To let that be the thing that held me back,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Because I definitely don't look
Speaker 4: at none of my tattoos as a mistake.
Speaker 3: I don't feel like I would take it back.
Speaker 4: I feel like it's part of my individuality and who
Speaker 4: I am as a person, you know. So it's good
Speaker 4: to know that it ain't holding me back, But it's
Speaker 4: it's always kind of like in the back of my mind,
Speaker 4: like can you really do that?
Speaker 3: Show me? You know?
Speaker 4: And I just I'm always in this battle with myself,
Speaker 4: Like I feel like it's just me against me. You know,
Speaker 4: if you stand in front of the goal, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: dunk on your ass. I'm definitely the little bron of
Speaker 4: this ship. I feel like they got actors out here
Speaker 4: that had opportunities to work with me and don't because
Speaker 4: they know I'm gonna go up on their ass, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It just is what it is like, and I love
Speaker 3: this craft.
Speaker 4: It is what it is, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 4: But like it's it's just like you know, you see
Speaker 4: Lebron and Steph Curry got this love for each other,
Speaker 4: you know, but like on the court, ain't no love.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying, Like I'm not gonna disrespect
Speaker 4: you or do nothing like that.
Speaker 3: But I'm here to win.
Speaker 4: And that's how I feel when it comes to my craft,
Speaker 4: Like I'm here to win. You stand in front of
Speaker 4: the goal, prepare to get dunk though Vince Carter style,
Speaker 4: going with my arm and all of that in the rim,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, I'm gonna highlight posted your ass.
Speaker 3: I believe I'm ready for it.
Speaker 1: With your relationship, like with Lead await.
Speaker 3: Mainly not cool, mainly not cool.
Speaker 4: We like when I first met Lena, I met her
Speaker 4: at a SAG event and they had a stepping repeat right,
Speaker 4: and she had on like this fly ass suit and
Speaker 4: I actually asked to take a picture with her because
Speaker 4: I just thought she was fly as hell.
Speaker 3: You know, I ain't know who she was. And she
Speaker 3: was like, you know, I'm a writer.
Speaker 4: You know, I've done a couple of things, but like,
Speaker 4: I really want to work with you one day. And
Speaker 4: I was like, let's touch and agree on it right now,
Speaker 4: Like all my friends that tell you like I pray
Speaker 4: in a minute, like I'm all about it, you know.
Speaker 4: So we literally stopped on the on the on the
Speaker 4: step and repeat and prayed, you know, and uh then
Speaker 4: I ended up getting this offer come in saying hey,
Speaker 4: yeah for the shot, and I was just like, damn,
Speaker 4: we really spoke that shit into existence.
Speaker 3: So by us having that.
Speaker 4: That introduction and you know, by us adding God into
Speaker 4: the into the mix early on, I don't feel like
Speaker 4: nothing could really break that, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: It was like, you know, when the whole little situation
Speaker 4: happened and shit kind of came rolling down on me
Speaker 4: or whatever, I understood why she got out the way,
Speaker 4: because you got the whole brand to protect, you got
Speaker 4: the whole show to protect.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. I just I took a
Speaker 3: bullet and it was what it was.
Speaker 1: Did she support you silently? I mean, well, let me
Speaker 1: put it like this. Did she support you privately?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: She did, absolutely, But you know, to be honest, I
Speaker 4: wasn't really trying to hear that shit at the time,
Speaker 4: like you know, cause I was I was like, why
Speaker 4: would you just flash out and be like I gotta
Speaker 4: stand with the woman like, you don't even know what
Speaker 4: the fuck happened.
Speaker 3: Yet, you know what I'm saying, she actually did that,
Speaker 3: I mean, I think she did.
Speaker 4: I think at one point in time she called the
Speaker 4: Breakfast Club and was like, I never worked with Jason
Speaker 4: Mitchell again. But then she retracted those words when she
Speaker 4: found out that the situation wasn't what she thought it was.
Speaker 4: But I just think that's some bullshit, Like you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, Like as much as you know somebody,
Speaker 4: you know, I.
Speaker 3: Feel like.
Speaker 4: I feel like people who really know me, when when
Speaker 4: they hear shit in the media, they'll be like, uh,
Speaker 4: that's not really him, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And I feel like.
Speaker 4: She was one of the people who could have spoke
Speaker 4: up and said something that could have changed the situation.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: But I also realized that, you know, if she did
Speaker 4: stand behind me, and you know, I did do some bullshit,
Speaker 4: it could have been bad for both of us, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. I understand that too, So you
Speaker 4: know that's I don't I don't. I don't judge nobody
Speaker 4: for their situation, you know what I mean. And you
Speaker 4: never know what people are gonna do under pressure. I mean,
Speaker 4: nigga snitch every day. You know what I'm saying, So
Speaker 4: I don't. I don't be judging people.
Speaker 3: I really don't.
Speaker 1: I tell you this, broh. One of the quickest ways
Speaker 1: to find out who for you is to go through
Speaker 1: some heavy ship. Oh yeah, for sure, go through something.
Speaker 1: For sure, do something and I'm gonna tell you know.
Speaker 1: Like when I when I had my situation with the
Speaker 1: fig bro, it was one of them situations that if
Speaker 1: you could talk to God and you'd be like, say, God, no,
Speaker 1: you ain't got to do all that to God. Like nah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sit you down for a while.
Speaker 2: Bro.
Speaker 1: You kind of moving a little bit too fast. I
Speaker 1: would have been like, now you ain't really got too
Speaker 1: many I'm talking to you right now. I got i'ma
Speaker 1: sit you down for a minute, but I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you something, Bro. It was a blessing in disguise. It's
Speaker 1: not something I would have wished for, but it was
Speaker 1: a blessing in disguise because when I say them niggas
Speaker 1: was dropping like flies all around me. When I say
Speaker 1: they were scatting, and it tightened my circle. It's strengthened it.
Speaker 1: My circle became so strong only the real was around me,
Speaker 1: and it stood out clearly. Including when I say the real,
Speaker 1: I mean even the women in my circle. The women
Speaker 1: got tight, super tight. The women in my circle. Shit,
Speaker 1: I take I go to wat any day. I'll pick
Speaker 1: them over some some of these dudes out here in
Speaker 1: the day because they sold as I mean, they like
Speaker 1: all the way, like, oh they crying, ain't going crazy? Well,
Speaker 1: we gotta do something. They want a twin power activate
Speaker 1: like we gonna hate. It's like that they.
Speaker 4: Were like that.
Speaker 3: I respect us so much and you want to you
Speaker 3: want to know.
Speaker 1: It's not something that you wish. But if you know,
Speaker 1: if you gotta go through something, if you're going through it,
Speaker 1: that's when you're gonna really really know.
Speaker 4: Bro, absolutely absolutely, like because you know, we were just
Speaker 4: talking about your quavers, Like.
Speaker 3: Listen.
Speaker 4: He helped me really start to look at myself for
Speaker 4: who I was, because I've always been me.
Speaker 3: You understand, I'm with myself every day. I'm not going
Speaker 3: home and saying, Nigga, you're a superstar. Nigga you this
Speaker 3: you that I'm just Jason. That's it.
Speaker 4: I'm just Jason, Bro, And I don't everybody know. I
Speaker 4: come with a very humble energy. I got a humble spirit,
Speaker 4: and just because I fucked around and did something great,
Speaker 4: I don't think that makes me no better than the
Speaker 4: next person, right, So it was hard for me to
Speaker 4: really start looking at it. He was like, Bro, when
Speaker 4: of the last time you seen somebody on the street
Speaker 4: and they said, when you see showtime, tell them tell
Speaker 4: them we love we appreciate them for putting you.
Speaker 3: On that show.
Speaker 4: Anybody ever stopped you and said, hey, man, tell you
Speaker 4: universal that we appreciate them for letting you play easy.
Speaker 3: And You're like, no, nigga, they love you. Invest in yourself.
Speaker 3: You ain't doing shit but making somebody else rich.
Speaker 4: Even if you is getting a little a little bag,
Speaker 4: it could be a whole different type of bag. If
Speaker 4: you say, fuck it, I'm a bet on me, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. But when I did that, a
Speaker 4: lot of people because the handouts stopped, because a lot
Speaker 4: of motherfuckers call me and give me a sad story.
Speaker 4: Say brother, look man, I'm going through you. I'll shoot
Speaker 4: you something. You come, stay at the crib. You know
Speaker 4: a lot of motherfuckers. They know they know I ain't lying.
Speaker 4: They know I done held so many people down. But
Speaker 4: as soon as I said, ah, I can't do that,
Speaker 4: or I was going through some shit. You know, motherfuckers,
Speaker 4: if the phone stopped ringing as much, you dig you
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying. And I really I'm talking about
Speaker 4: my circle that went to a dot. Family members then
Speaker 4: dropped out it and everything, and it just is what
Speaker 4: it is, because I feel like, you know, if I
Speaker 4: ain't got nothing else, I got guard and God is
Speaker 4: gonna direct me to the right people at all times.
Speaker 3: And the people who.
Speaker 4: Really really loved me gonna be one hundred percent down
Speaker 4: with that walk that I'm on.
Speaker 3: Period.
Speaker 1: And that's just it.
Speaker 4: That's the short and long of it. It ain't no miraculous,
Speaker 4: glamorous story. Now, either you gonna love me and you're
Speaker 4: gonna be here through the entire thing, or it's gonna
Speaker 4: be over, you know what I mean. Jamie Fox, you know,
Speaker 4: blessings to him, you know what I mean, because he
Speaker 4: was one of them people like I went through some shit.
Speaker 4: He was like, man, come to the house, let me
Speaker 4: talk to you. Shit you down and talk to you,
Speaker 4: you know, really shoot some shit. And if you ever
Speaker 4: really need something, brother, I got you. You know, they
Speaker 4: got very few people in the world who liked that
Speaker 4: dog Like when things was going great, I'm talking about
Speaker 4: it wasn't a movie star in the business that didn't
Speaker 4: want to work with me, or that I couldn't call personally.
Speaker 4: I could literally call my agent and be like, I
Speaker 4: need such and such a number. They texting it to
Speaker 4: me in the next five minutes. And I remember I
Speaker 4: was in Vietnam. Russell Simmons called my phone. They was like,
Speaker 4: can you hold for Russell Simmons. I was like, I
Speaker 4: ain't never had nobody call my phone and put me
Speaker 4: on hold immediately, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: But this was the type of shit that was happening.
Speaker 3: You think when I went through the bullshit, these people
Speaker 3: was calling my phone. Hell no, you know.
Speaker 4: But now I just feel different because I'm like, you
Speaker 4: know what, if nothing else, I know, I got a
Speaker 4: direct pipeline to the fans, and you know, I acting
Speaker 4: as my happy place. So if I could make movies
Speaker 4: to the day I die, That's what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 4: And if the fans continue to watch my ship, that's
Speaker 4: gonna be great. But I know for a fact, and
Speaker 4: nobody else got to give me another opportunity in the world.
Speaker 3: Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 4: I would love it. I would love to be in
Speaker 4: a Marvel movie. I would love to be a superhero.
Speaker 4: But if them opportunities never roll back around, my bag
Speaker 4: is still gonna look the same as theirs.
Speaker 1: I believe that, you know, I believe that. All right,
Speaker 1: That's that's why I am. See my my bounce back,
Speaker 1: you know, boy, my bounce back is very similar, bro.
Speaker 1: Like I just got one of those type of mentalities
Speaker 1: like I don't make it no matter what. So even
Speaker 1: if I gotta do it all by myself, all along,
Speaker 1: everybody dropped off, but it's beautiful to have some support,
Speaker 1: even if it's a small circle. In fact, I actually
Speaker 1: prefer my smaller circle anyway, because that's less less birthday
Speaker 1: parties I gotta go through, you know, that's less less anniversaries.
Speaker 1: I got to a ten. You know, that's less people
Speaker 1: I gotta talk to taking up my time. You know, Like,
Speaker 1: hey man, you know, like everything that I do, man,
Speaker 1: it's all quality. Like I'm dealing with quality people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: super tight circle, quality people, and I'm cool with that.
Speaker 1: So blessing in disguise, man, And you know how it go, bro,
Speaker 1: What don't killers make us stronger?
Speaker 3: Facts? Facts, and a lot of times, like you said, well,
Speaker 3: don't be willing to hear that, you know, you be like, God,
Speaker 3: you got it. You're like, yeah, I got you. But
Speaker 3: you're gonna have to sit this one out, you know.
Speaker 4: And I feel like so blessed that I got to
Speaker 4: get close enough to the fire to really know that
Speaker 4: it was hot, but not really get burned, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, because I feel like a lot of times,
Speaker 4: you know, when you get to celebrity status, you got
Speaker 4: to make sure that you're not self inflicting wounds, you know,
Speaker 4: and for whatever God has you know, set for me
Speaker 4: to do, because it's far from over, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. I'm still a very young guy, and I
Speaker 4: feel like, you know, it's a lot that's gonna be
Speaker 4: on my path. But one thing I can't do is
Speaker 4: put myself in the line of fire or self inflict pain.
Speaker 4: I just I can't do that. If I do that,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna lose off the rip. So he put that
Speaker 4: in front of my face, like, Okay, this is what
Speaker 4: happened if you do some dumb shit, and then the
Speaker 4: process of that, all of these people who claiming they're
Speaker 4: your friends and all of this shit, Look, we're gonna
Speaker 4: wipe all of that situation out and to make it
Speaker 4: even better for you to feel secure, you're gonna go
Speaker 4: home with all of these secrets. So nobody gotta feel
Speaker 4: no kind of way about nothing, because I'm telling you,
Speaker 4: every time I get in front of a fucking microphone,
Speaker 4: I guarantee you they got people who cringe, like, oh God,
Speaker 4: I hope this nigga don't bring this up, and I
Speaker 4: hope he don't say this, and I hope he don't
Speaker 4: say that. But nah, I don't care. I don't care
Speaker 4: that you don't that you didn't stick up for me.
Speaker 4: I don't give a fuck about that. I'm just happy
Speaker 4: that you out the way and that that that's not
Speaker 4: gonna affect my life and no negative ways, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, Because we could potentially be in a
Speaker 4: situation where this could it really fucked me up, you.
Speaker 3: Know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Look at Young Thug. All these niggas never turned on
Speaker 4: the game. I would never snitch, and as soon as
Speaker 4: they get in there, it was him, DeAndre did it.
Speaker 3: You're on it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: They doing it to each other and it's crazy, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. And I'm talking about instantly. So
Speaker 4: for me, I just feel like I'm just so happy
Speaker 4: that like the people that's around me love me as
Speaker 4: much as I love them. You know, if anything would
Speaker 4: have happened to me, I feel safe with them being
Speaker 4: around my daughters, and you know, I can't ask for
Speaker 4: much more, you know, more life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, them boys over there and that young thug trial
Speaker 1: pointed like the Jackson five.
Speaker 3: Got fucked up.
Speaker 4: Man, I'm so sad for that dude, bro, because to
Speaker 4: be honest, man, like you know, I mean, I can't
Speaker 4: speak on their business. I don't really know what really
Speaker 4: be going on, but I've always seen them be all
Speaker 4: about their business. That's what their whole world is. E
Speaker 4: golfed with rap music, you know what I'm saying. They
Speaker 4: either on tour or in the studio, they're trying to
Speaker 4: do some shit with theirself. So you know, it's it's
Speaker 4: just fucked up, man, to see these these reco cases
Speaker 4: and these conspiracy shits that be happening, you know, just
Speaker 4: tearing down these things that get built. You know, when
Speaker 4: half of it don't even be like that. It'd be
Speaker 4: a bunch of handshakes and DAPs and shit. These niggas
Speaker 4: made up and you know what I mean, And then
Speaker 4: you got somebody fucking off in the background who ruined
Speaker 4: it for everybody, And it's just it's really sad to watch, man,
Speaker 4: it's really sad to watch that.
Speaker 1: There be a lesson boys and girls you resemble who
Speaker 1: your symble a real top Absolutely, Jason Mitchell, you wanted
Speaker 1: the realists, bro. This has been a this is what
Speaker 1: what we would call on Halloween, a treat. I heard
Speaker 1: that it has been a treat.
Speaker 3: I heard that.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming on the podcast, And is there
Speaker 1: anything that you want to leave with the audience?
Speaker 4: First and foremost, everything is both June second, Apple TV.
Speaker 4: If you ain't got Apple TV, you might be able
Speaker 4: to watch it on Amazon Prime, but you do got
Speaker 4: to go check that out. Me and JaQuavis called me
Speaker 4: and we produce that part time. Fitzpatrick is in here.
Speaker 4: We found because we like to give opportunities, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean. So we got some sensations that you're
Speaker 4: gonna see in this movie that you have not seen yet,
Speaker 4: and it's just gonna be a lovely, lovely, lovely treat
Speaker 4: for y'all. So I want you to check that out.
Speaker 4: And for those who do want to be in the
Speaker 4: film business, go to our dreamseek dot org and sign up,
Speaker 4: and we're gonna send you all the information you need
Speaker 4: to find out how we could get you in this business.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So not only are we making movies, but we're given opportunities,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yes and yeah, speaking of opportunities, let me put your
Speaker 1: Heven's on the spot right now, the Quavens coming is
Speaker 1: in the house. Ladies and gentlemen, the family. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: let y'all know right now, I'm gonna tell the whole
Speaker 1: world the Quavens already said the very next movie that
Speaker 1: he do, y'all gonna see me in it. Now, that's
Speaker 1: what he said. Let's see what happened.
Speaker 3: No more talking. This episode was produced by a King
Speaker 3: and brought to you by
Speaker 1: The Black Effect Podcast Network at iHeartRadio.