Speaker 1: Of Course, Love Supreme is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to QLs Classic Episode seven, Mob
Speaker 1: Deep Founder Prodigy, made two thousand seventeen. We were fortunate
Speaker 1: to have an amazing conversation with Albert Johnson, a k A.
Speaker 1: Queen's Bridge Finest Prodigy from the infamous Mob Deep while
Speaker 1: he was still with us on this Earth League plane.
Speaker 1: He passed away a month after this episode first debuted.
Speaker 1: He's promoting his commissary Kids in Prison cookbook at the time,
Speaker 1: but we also got to chop it up about his
Speaker 1: life growing up as a duop kid, the Duop parents,
Speaker 1: his grandmother's dance school, choreographer Michael Peters, Queen's Bridge in
Speaker 1: the eighties, fights, beat and beats, a life of diamond
Speaker 1: and guns, wake up calls, and Yeah that's summing. James
Speaker 1: Green a special Encore presentation of QLs Classic with rapper
Speaker 1: Prodigy and his co author Cathy Iandle Thank You. Suprema Son,
Speaker 1: Suprema Role Call, Subrima Son, Suprema Road called Suprema Suprema
Speaker 1: Road called Subprima Son, Suprema rog Call this is quest love. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Suprema,
Speaker 1: I haven't had suma road called Subrema Suprema rog called
Speaker 1: Fonte's in the building. Yeah, check out my rhymes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: q l S Family. Yeah, your beef is mindro sua
Speaker 1: Suprema road called Suprema Subrema rod call. My name is Sugar, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sugar Steve Dawn, I'm eat a sugar free Yeah. Commissary rogue,
Speaker 1: su Prima Prima rogue. My name's Boss Bill. Yeah, winter despising, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it spring again now, temperatures rising, roll call, some
Speaker 1: Frema roll call, Prima Primo roll call. I'm unpaid Bill, Yeah,
Speaker 1: rap RAPPERTI wraps. Yeah, I hope you can hear me
Speaker 1: through these white taps. Rog Premo roll call, some Prima
Speaker 1: some Premo roll. So it's like, yeah, I'm a little shut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my first one be better. Yeah. If I read more
Speaker 1: Bucks roll roll primam rogue, my name is Kathy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll write those books. Yeah I can read them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got no more hub roll. It's gonna me pe Yeah,
Speaker 1: h I c Yeah we on this show. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: mother go mother roll roll So Frema roll That was
Speaker 1: not bad. That wasn't bad. That wasn't bad. Came through.
Speaker 1: Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to another edition of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: Is this our our first double uh convert first double
Speaker 1: guest Pete rock and smoke this okay we didn't talked
Speaker 1: much about. Yeah it is. And that was also the
Speaker 1: episode where D'Angelo came in and was like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: more well, ladies and gentlemen, Uh, it's a special episode. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like every episode of Quest of Supremes a
Speaker 1: special episode, So I don't want to make like the
Speaker 1: Meratith back to Bernie episode whatever special Meredith back to
Speaker 1: Bernie episode of Supreme. Um, we have though, like one
Speaker 1: of my freaking heroes, like one of my rhyming heroes,
Speaker 1: a cultural icon in the world of music, not above
Speaker 1: hip hop, above I mean music, just uh for me,
Speaker 1: like one of the illness writers poets mcs as an
Speaker 1: MC to me, he has the best opening lines. Yes, wrap, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk more, but we will Yeah, Like I tell him,
Speaker 1: he's all the time, you have like four bars to
Speaker 1: get my attention. But he kind of made it even
Speaker 1: worse because it's like comes in the door, Yeah you
Speaker 1: only got one bar. So right, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Prodigy. Yo yo yo yo
Speaker 1: hu we have his co conspirator. Uh. Now what makes
Speaker 1: it great is that our special guest, Cathy's kind of
Speaker 1: family to uh some of us course love supremers that
Speaker 1: have started on the okay player boards. She's my favorite
Speaker 1: Lauren Hill stand of all time. Well, I mean that's
Speaker 1: how you came to my attention. I was like, who
Speaker 1: I mean before the day of social media. I mean,
Speaker 1: okay player was like the original Twitter. That was the original.
Speaker 1: That ship was glad Aga school Man, it was glad
Speaker 1: to school. We I feel like we pioneered the social
Speaker 1: media game before social media was the thing real. And uh,
Speaker 1: I just knew that this person was standing taking Lauren
Speaker 1: Hill stands to the next level. That's how you got
Speaker 1: my attention. But I mean you blossomed to your own
Speaker 1: as a writer. I mean you've written for a lot
Speaker 1: of periodicals and from BT dot com to I mean
Speaker 1: all the way to Billboards, Pitchfork, the p word pitchwork. Wow.
Speaker 1: That's but you've also collaborated with Prodigy on on his books.
Speaker 1: The proper title is commentary Kitchen, My Infamous prison Cookbook.
Speaker 1: Is this the first book you worked on? No, but
Speaker 1: legally I can say this is the first book I've
Speaker 1: worked on. I see, well, welcome, yep. I gotta say
Speaker 1: Prodigy that I'm I'm really not big on hip hop autobiographies.
Speaker 1: Actually haven't read War myself. I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of books that have been written by hip hop luminaries,
Speaker 1: but I gotta say none. You said you're not a
Speaker 1: fan of hip hop, but autobiography said you wrote one. No,
Speaker 1: I know that, but I'm just saying that it's usually
Speaker 1: for me, like most people that are in the genre
Speaker 1: really don't open up as much. It's almost like a
Speaker 1: moment of their childhood and then they came to music
Speaker 1: and men and here right, it really doesn't really doesn't
Speaker 1: let you like inside of like the mechanics of what
Speaker 1: makes them work as a person, like you know them
Speaker 1: as a personality. Like there's really not much you learned
Speaker 1: from the DMX book or this Snoop book like those things.
Speaker 1: So but I'm just saying that or even the ghost Facebook.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, which exactly like this is
Speaker 1: more of a comedy book to you than like a
Speaker 1: life story book. But Um, I guess that's read it
Speaker 1: like three years ago, like it's it's a gripping as story. Man.
Speaker 1: They listened to the audiobook on tour, like we ran
Speaker 1: we had to do like a long tool run and
Speaker 1: we had the audio book and that got us through
Speaker 1: the whole tool Like that ship was crazy us up. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Prodigy. Um, I'm not gonna saying I'm in this,
Speaker 1: but actually this, this is this is a rarity. My
Speaker 1: My favorite part of a Prodigy stories actually his beginnings.
Speaker 1: I know we all like to, you know, not to
Speaker 1: the good part, but I mean you you come from
Speaker 1: a lineage that I didn't know. We have something in common.
Speaker 1: We're both products of doo wop. I don't I won't
Speaker 1: say a dynasty, but I mean, you know you grew
Speaker 1: up actually with two do wop parents. Well man, my
Speaker 1: fun Yeah, Yeah, who was your father? Bud Johnson? You
Speaker 1: you know my grandfather's named Bud Johnson also, but my
Speaker 1: father was Bud Johnson. He was in a group called
Speaker 1: the Chances. Now your grandfather was a jazz musician, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that Budd Johnson senior. He uh, he was you know,
Speaker 1: big into jazz and like big band like him and
Speaker 1: Quincy started a big being together with Dizzy Gillespie and
Speaker 1: a bunch of different people. Man, Like, my grandfather used
Speaker 1: to have all these jazz old g s coming to
Speaker 1: the crib when I was a little kid. So I
Speaker 1: used to be in the crib and Dizzy used to
Speaker 1: make for me and all that. Like I was crazy
Speaker 1: growing up around all that because I didn't realize what
Speaker 1: was happening until I got older and think back about it, like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, that's I was at. My grandfather had me
Speaker 1: around on jazz greats, like you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: But I I didn't really get to appreciate his style
Speaker 1: of music until I got older, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It wasn't I just didn't get it when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, Like at what point in your life did
Speaker 1: it click? Like no one ever gets it when like
Speaker 1: your parents music when your kid. Only when you're older
Speaker 1: the high school is it? Like I'm not even understanding
Speaker 1: probably like probably like yeah, in high school when uh,
Speaker 1: when I first started making beats, um, then I understood
Speaker 1: like the power of my grandfather's music because we would
Speaker 1: sample a lot of jazz records, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And he left me like his collection, his jazz record collection,
Speaker 1: and we made a lot of uh the first album
Speaker 1: Infamous and Juvenile Hell that we did yeah from my
Speaker 1: grandfather was records like um shook ons was made actually record, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. So it was like once we got to
Speaker 1: that point, we was like actually researching the records and
Speaker 1: like using certain samples, and we was like, oh this,
Speaker 1: I understood the power of the jazz music and and
Speaker 1: I started listening to it like more in depth and
Speaker 1: paying attention to it. Then I started to, you know,
Speaker 1: appreciate what did he take and his shows when you
Speaker 1: were younger and hell yeah, man, I remember being that
Speaker 1: so many shows, but once one in particular that stand
Speaker 1: out a lot is that the Blue Note. My grandfather
Speaker 1: used to perform there, and I used to sit at
Speaker 1: the ball with my pops and I used to think,
Speaker 1: I'm just drinking, you know what I mean, my possibly
Speaker 1: ordering a real drink, and he would order me like
Speaker 1: a seven up with it, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I've been sitting at the ball drinking like a little kid,
Speaker 1: like you know what I mean at the ball. So
Speaker 1: I got memories like that and my grandfather performing while
Speaker 1: me and my pop sitting at the ball watching him
Speaker 1: and yeah, you know, just different different shows and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, man, I was I would definitely feel blessed.
Speaker 1: Got I got a chance to see him before, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, I remember that. That even makes
Speaker 1: it more special because I know earlier you told me
Speaker 1: that you're about to do a residency at Blue Up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy, it's crazy. It's crazy being in there. We
Speaker 1: did the first show last month, and it's crazy being
Speaker 1: in there because I just in places like it feels
Speaker 1: small because you know, when you're a little kid, everything
Speaker 1: seemed bigger and you know what I mean. So now
Speaker 1: I'm and I'm like, damn, this is smaller than my memories.
Speaker 1: But it's like it's so surreal being in there and
Speaker 1: performing in it because I just remember my grandfather doing it.
Speaker 1: So it was crazy, how you know, things turning, you know,
Speaker 1: come full circle. Was he a horn player? Yeah, clarinet
Speaker 1: and tenor saxophone and even before that, Uh, I think
Speaker 1: you're great grandfather started Morehouse. Yeah, my my great I
Speaker 1: think he was like three times great great great great grandfather. Like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you know how lucky you are to even
Speaker 1: know firsthand? Man like I just found out who my
Speaker 1: grades were like two weeks ago. Serious, but like the
Speaker 1: fact that you know the history of your great great
Speaker 1: great my mother she did the genial genealogy and you know,
Speaker 1: she researched and if you have some other family members
Speaker 1: that did the same thing in research, and we we
Speaker 1: found our whole family, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Plus we got a lot my my grandmother and my
Speaker 1: mother's side. She keeps a lot of family photos and
Speaker 1: just history and stuff, so we were able to like
Speaker 1: put pieces together to connect dots, like you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So it's pretty It's pretty interesting. Man. I
Speaker 1: learned a lot about my family while I was locked up.
Speaker 1: My moms used to write me and tell me, used
Speaker 1: this in your book. Put this in your book. This
Speaker 1: is important, you know what I mean. Mh so um,
Speaker 1: And your mother was a member of the Crystals up. Um.
Speaker 1: My mom's was like walking down the street somewhere I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know his queens or whatever whoever
Speaker 1: she was at, and somebody stopped and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: can you sing? And she was like no, And they
Speaker 1: was like you sure, we needed an extra member for
Speaker 1: this group because one of the members had dropped out,
Speaker 1: so they convinced her to do it. She was only eighteen.
Speaker 1: They convinced her to do it, and she became part
Speaker 1: of the group and went right on tour, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So it was it was kind of
Speaker 1: crazy hot. She she was a yeah, it was just
Speaker 1: like random, like somebody just she just so happened to
Speaker 1: be walking down the street and they stopped her, like
Speaker 1: because I guess you know my mother. She was very pretty,
Speaker 1: like with light eyes, so they had the look, so
Speaker 1: they stopped. Yeo, can you sing, we want we need
Speaker 1: you in this group? Come on and y'all like a
Speaker 1: generational New York family like that. People, My whole family
Speaker 1: is from South Side Jamaica, Queens and before that they
Speaker 1: come from like Texas and Virginia, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the crystals are for like our listeners. Um. I would
Speaker 1: always say that, like I grew up in an oldies
Speaker 1: duop family, but similar to like parents today, Like I
Speaker 1: would say, like Kamal from the roots, my keyboard player
Speaker 1: tricked his kids into thinking like Michael Jackson was brand new.
Speaker 1: You know, as a parents, you'd be trying to trick
Speaker 1: your kids into like you know, like or even like
Speaker 1: my production manager. Uh, like his sons think that like
Speaker 1: Eric being rock him is new. Uh. Even Kirk, my
Speaker 1: guitar player, Will plays slick Rick so much for his
Speaker 1: son that his son actually like the first time he
Speaker 1: ever had to reprimand his son about a school project,
Speaker 1: and I heard these words. He's like, son, you can't
Speaker 1: bite someone else's rhymes. Like I guess in kindergarten, someone
Speaker 1: was supposed to do it right in the sound. I
Speaker 1: thought I was gonna go somewhere, So no, no, he
Speaker 1: said that he took like plagiarized like some of the
Speaker 1: children's story and made like it was his own own joan.
Speaker 1: But like just I'm just fascinating how parents will trick
Speaker 1: you into thinking that that's your contemporary music. So I
Speaker 1: grew up just with you know, an oldies duop dad
Speaker 1: that would always play like the Crystals, Harving the Moon
Speaker 1: Glows like all these groups. So like you know, I
Speaker 1: grew up thinking like he's a rebel. It was like
Speaker 1: some new ship when I came like at home, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was surprised to find that out. So
Speaker 1: like in the beginning, did you did you have any
Speaker 1: designs of being an entertainer. Were you just like observing
Speaker 1: it and just like that's their ship and then um nah,
Speaker 1: in the beginning, I really didn't know what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do until our turn. Like man, maybe like twelve
Speaker 1: thirteen and I first heard I think it was when
Speaker 1: I first heard you know, L L Cool J and
Speaker 1: Run DMC, the Sucking m Season, Rock the Bells. When
Speaker 1: I heard those songs, that just changed everything in my life,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. That made me I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, this is what I want to do, this
Speaker 1: is this is what I like. I used to play
Speaker 1: the songs for my mobile, like your mom, check this out,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean. I used to play uh, you know,
Speaker 1: to paid it full. A matter of fact, I used
Speaker 1: to say Rock King's rhymes to my mom's act like
Speaker 1: I wrote it. And she was like, because you always
Speaker 1: have this deep dead pen voice as a kid, because
Speaker 1: like you are rocks like vocal. I don't know, that's
Speaker 1: just that's just my voice. Yeah hell yeah, so um
Speaker 1: I used to say. I used to say rock and
Speaker 1: Ron im my mom. She's like, oh my god, you're
Speaker 1: really good. And I used to be like, I ain't
Speaker 1: say nothing to us, be like Yeah. Yeah, I'm wrap
Speaker 1: mom rap. But I was first got turned on the
Speaker 1: hip ABLEM when I was like twelve thirteen. Before that. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, like like you said, it was a lot
Speaker 1: of there was a lot of dwop in crib like
Speaker 1: you know, um soul music. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: a lot of church church music. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: You were born was it? Were you born in Long
Speaker 1: Island or I was born in Hempstead. Yeah. I know
Speaker 1: that Chuck D and Flavor Offers talking about Hempstead and
Speaker 1: they chucked in from town right next to me. And
Speaker 1: I mean that's right next to Hampstead, so we all
Speaker 1: like to e P M D. I know that someone
Speaker 1: times about pm D was Brentwood. It was from Brentwood Hempstead.
Speaker 1: Remember Son of Berserk? Yes, Son of Berserk was from Hempstead. Yes, wait,
Speaker 1: I love that you just brought up Like for me
Speaker 1: Son of Berserk. I feel like I'm the only person
Speaker 1: that got that record and worshiped the ship out of it.
Speaker 1: Like I used to see. I used to go outside
Speaker 1: to the store and Son of bbserve be outside. He's
Speaker 1: like yo, shouting up old man voice. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying we was like the little dudes using the studio.
Speaker 1: It's a famous studio in Hampstead that Public Enemy started in.
Speaker 1: They would do their pre production out there. It's called
Speaker 1: five ten. Yeah. Yeah, so that's where we all started.
Speaker 1: Would be out there sometimes. Yeah, so that's where we
Speaker 1: all started. So everybody used to be over there, like,
Speaker 1: and we used to see everybody over there. Um but yeah, man,
Speaker 1: like Hampstead. Uh, I think method Man from Hampstead from
Speaker 1: terrorists terrorist at you know what I mean. Um, trying
Speaker 1: to think of who else from out there, Rock Massy
Speaker 1: from Hampstead, you know. Um, those are the few that
Speaker 1: I can remember, top man. So like what eventually brought
Speaker 1: you to the city to Queens? Um, when I turned
Speaker 1: like eleven twelve, my mom's moved to Left Rack. She
Speaker 1: moved to Left Franck City. Um, My pops had split
Speaker 1: up because my pop said, did some crazy ship. My
Speaker 1: pops was wow man, he uh yeah, kidnapped me, took
Speaker 1: me to Detroit. We was living in Detroit for a minute,
Speaker 1: bawling out of control. He was working in the stock
Speaker 1: market doing some crazy ship. And when did you live
Speaker 1: in Detroit? Man? This is like early eighties when scarfid
Speaker 1: what year this scarface came out? Because my pops took
Speaker 1: me to the way remember with you three. My pops
Speaker 1: took me to the movies in Detroit when at the
Speaker 1: Premier when scoll Face first came out. So that's when
Speaker 1: I was out there when you were nine. I was nine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the lyrics pop talk he was seven. That was real.
Speaker 1: That really my pop. Man, he was off dog man
Speaker 1: that that that boys something else. He was something else? Man.
Speaker 1: Was he a musicians as well? Or like, yeah he was.
Speaker 1: He was a singer, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 1: I said, he had group the Chances Do our group
Speaker 1: that had a couple of dope songs, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Um, But my father's things with computers, like
Speaker 1: in the early eighties. He I remember being like probably
Speaker 1: five six years old. My father was working on Macintosh
Speaker 1: writing programs. You know what I'm saying. Um, he was
Speaker 1: really really dope with it. Um. I think it's a
Speaker 1: school called t c I. I think it's called t
Speaker 1: c I. Um. My father went there and he actually
Speaker 1: got so good he became like a professor that he
Speaker 1: started teaching. He was in the commercials and all that.
Speaker 1: Like after a while, he got really nice with it.
Speaker 1: And you know that's what he was into. Computers, heroin, alcohol, karate.
Speaker 1: My father had a dojo on Jamaica Avenue, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So he used to teach karate. You
Speaker 1: just said that convo that it's very crazy, man. My
Speaker 1: pop life was wow. It was wow. Um. That was
Speaker 1: his thing. He loved computers and he loved fighting and
Speaker 1: just doing wild ship. He was crazy, man. And I
Speaker 1: know that you have a closeness with your grandmother as well,
Speaker 1: and she was in the artist. Yeah, my grand My
Speaker 1: grandmother was ill. She was She was one of the
Speaker 1: first Cotton Club dances when they first opened the Cotton
Speaker 1: Club way back and uh, you know, she was friends
Speaker 1: with Lena Horn. You know. Horn used to dance there
Speaker 1: early before she became famous, you know. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: how my grand mother met my grandfather because my grandfather
Speaker 1: used to play in the band at the Cotton Club,
Speaker 1: so that's how they met. And you know, after my
Speaker 1: grandmother started a dance school business in the basement health
Speaker 1: crib on the Guy Brewer and she started with like
Speaker 1: five students, you know what I mean, And it just
Speaker 1: grew and grew over the years until to a point
Speaker 1: where she started renting the building and then it grew
Speaker 1: to a point where she actually bought her own commercial
Speaker 1: bills in the Queen. She was like the first black
Speaker 1: woman to own a commercial space and queens. So you know,
Speaker 1: it was a dance school business, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: She was that was her thing, dancing. So a lot
Speaker 1: of her students, man, she has some famous students that
Speaker 1: she uh that she raised, like benveren Is when she
Speaker 1: raised like you know what I mean, and uh, he
Speaker 1: used to you know, being this house all the time,
Speaker 1: like you know what I mean, And anytime he had
Speaker 1: something going on, we used to watch it in the crib.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen Roots thousands of times, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. That's like everybody get together watched Ben bend
Speaker 1: Is on. Um, you know Michael Peters, he was a
Speaker 1: famous cabriograph Michael Michael Peters was. That's my grandmothers. That
Speaker 1: was when my grandma's students. Damn he did it. So
Speaker 1: like that was like event, same thing like with Benverine
Speaker 1: Peters is the and the knife knife att on. He's
Speaker 1: the one and when they got their hands tied up
Speaker 1: when I was sinking my dad introduced me to them,
Speaker 1: and I was like, but you can't dance better than
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson. And he walked away with me with so
Speaker 1: much apt like like I remember when I was a
Speaker 1: little kid, like we used to fly to Cali because
Speaker 1: a lot of her students live in Cali and whenot um,
Speaker 1: so we used to fly to Cali and visit them.
Speaker 1: And she used to take kids in business and Michael
Speaker 1: Peters to take me in the Universal Studios all the time.
Speaker 1: That was my favorite place when I was a little kid.
Speaker 1: I used to like, let's go again, Let's go again.
Speaker 1: I've been there like a honey times when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. That was my favorite ship, Like you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. But um, yeah, so this is my
Speaker 1: grand this is like my grandmother was like she she uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this is her thing in the dance world,
Speaker 1: and she got a lot of choreographed choreographers and she
Speaker 1: she helped out a lot of people as far as
Speaker 1: that in that world. So I grew up a lot
Speaker 1: around her concerts. She would do these concerts every year
Speaker 1: at Lincoln Center, at the Apolo at uh Carnegie Hall,
Speaker 1: you know, um, every year she would do like a
Speaker 1: big concert you know so you were a backstage kid. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: and my cousins will be backstage will and looking at
Speaker 1: the girls getting dressed in saying that my backstage, I
Speaker 1: just watched old old ass dudes, you know, Smoke Reaper
Speaker 1: and the Yo. He had a better backstage experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if my grandmother's dance school, she's like hundred hundreds
Speaker 1: of girls from Queens like that was like that was man.
Speaker 1: I used to let that place when I was a
Speaker 1: little kid. Man, we had so much fun running around
Speaker 1: to make an avenue and you know, having fun, man
Speaker 1: without all the girls. And then it was crazy crazy
Speaker 1: growing up. Like you know what, man, So when when
Speaker 1: did you offishally? You? You moved to Queens And so
Speaker 1: I moved to Queen's after Detroit or yeah, it had
Speaker 1: to be like eighty four, eighty four, eighty five and
Speaker 1: moved the left track with my mom's. She got divorced
Speaker 1: from my pops after he chiding at me, and she
Speaker 1: was tight. She was like, man, I ain't doing this
Speaker 1: ship no more. Man, how did she find you? She
Speaker 1: my pops that actually took me on the robbery. Well,
Speaker 1: he went and robbed the jury store when I was
Speaker 1: in the car and that ship pissed my mom's off,
Speaker 1: because you know what I mean, we got into the
Speaker 1: hot speed. National County Police is chasing us, and he
Speaker 1: finally pulls over because he realized, you know, I'm in
Speaker 1: the car. He jumps in the car and throws a
Speaker 1: big gas bag of jury in my hand. I'm like,
Speaker 1: this whole those jury and he's flying through Himpstead like
Speaker 1: it was out on Long Island, and you know, finally
Speaker 1: he pulls over. You know, I remember the cop put
Speaker 1: me in the back and my pop's hands was locked
Speaker 1: up on his back. I remember holding my pop's hand out.
Speaker 1: They had me in the back seat with him. I
Speaker 1: ain't know what was going on. I'm like I was
Speaker 1: too young to even compute with the what was happening.
Speaker 1: Um get to the precinct. Police gave me a soda.
Speaker 1: I remember sitting there drinking a soda. My mom's can't
Speaker 1: even get me, and I remember her arguing my pops
Speaker 1: flipping on them, like and my pop's kidnapped me right
Speaker 1: to that, you know what I mean, Because she was like,
Speaker 1: I can't be with you no more. So he took
Speaker 1: me to Detroit and my mom found out where I
Speaker 1: was at she threatened, you know, call the cops on them,
Speaker 1: and so he sent me back or whatever my mom's
Speaker 1: Then we moved to the left Frack and then uh,
Speaker 1: I went to school and left Frack, went and went
Speaker 1: to junior high school and left. I said. He went
Speaker 1: to Halsey right across the street from Long you know
Speaker 1: for Vercrosse Street from the l I E. You gotta
Speaker 1: cross the ll Ie to get over to the high school.
Speaker 1: I'll say that the picture that I always think of
Speaker 1: when I think of Queens, there's more or less the
Speaker 1: picture that you guys paying it on the infamous. But
Speaker 1: was it always like that, like when you first got
Speaker 1: to the Queens? Was it that because you're paying a
Speaker 1: dark What was Queens like? I mean at that This
Speaker 1: is when crack first came out. When I'm on the
Speaker 1: left frack, crack just hit the street. It was brand new.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. I'm in junior high school.
Speaker 1: I'm twelve years old. All the little kids my age
Speaker 1: was selling crack in the neighborhood. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I used to go to school and she's a little
Speaker 1: nigs with rope chains and levis and Max, I'm like,
Speaker 1: what the fund is these niggers doing, Like you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like these little kids like you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying with big jewelry on looking like Eric
Speaker 1: being rocking on the cover of the album, like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. And then you know, I started
Speaker 1: getting cool with people out there and they started telling
Speaker 1: me what they're doing, you know what I mean, and
Speaker 1: left Crackers big time for like selling crack. Like it's
Speaker 1: well known that left Frack City was like big, big,
Speaker 1: big time crack neighborhood, like you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: And left Rackers his proper name, left Frack, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I was I think when city, Yeah, like I thought
Speaker 1: that was I mean, they used to they call left
Speaker 1: Rack Iraq. That's what that's a saying. Left Rack is
Speaker 1: Iraq Queen's bridges. Kuwait, you know what I'm saying. Okay,
Speaker 1: but uh yeah, so left Rack That's how I was
Speaker 1: out there. Um, this is when crack first hit. So
Speaker 1: you know, all my friends don't going to junior high school.
Speaker 1: They selling crack. And you know, once I got cool
Speaker 1: with them and they told me what they was doing,
Speaker 1: I was like, man, you know, let me try my
Speaker 1: hand at that. I don't want someone want to change
Speaker 1: to you know what I'm saying, want a little fly
Speaker 1: like y'all needs. So I hooked up with one of
Speaker 1: my homies from school. He gave me a few vials.
Speaker 1: He was like, I start with this. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. If you could do this so good, come back.
Speaker 1: I gave you some more, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So I went out. I'm twelve years old, I'm looking
Speaker 1: like I'm eight when I was twelve, a little like
Speaker 1: I was eight. Yeah, so yeah, you you definitely found
Speaker 1: the founder of youth man. So I went inties and forties. Now,
Speaker 1: like I go outside with with with the little cracks
Speaker 1: on me and when not, and I'm super annoyed. I
Speaker 1: never saw a crack in my life, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So I'm like, I'm looking around, I'm nervous.
Speaker 1: Motherfucker's walking up to me, like you know you guys
Speaker 1: something like I don't know. It's like that scene from
Speaker 1: Pay the Full. It was like scared when he first
Speaker 1: saw just like that, I was fucking paranoid, Joe. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I think I saw one vale and the police ran
Speaker 1: up for me. You know what. I first time police
Speaker 1: ran up for me, grab me, Yo, fu you doing
Speaker 1: out here? Uh found the cracks. They was like, how
Speaker 1: the funk? How old are you? I'm like twelve. They're like,
Speaker 1: what the funk? You look like a little kid. Like dude,
Speaker 1: like a real little kid, like go home, man, you're
Speaker 1: doing out here? And he just took the crack and
Speaker 1: set me on. So now I gotta explain to this
Speaker 1: is what happened with the crap? Crap, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. He's like, Yo, what happened. I'm like, yo,
Speaker 1: police just took it and they let me go. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta give me that breadge son. So we have
Speaker 1: a scrap, you know what I'm saying. At school, he
Speaker 1: want to scrap. I lost. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I was taking I'm taking my jack it off. He
Speaker 1: snuffed me. I'm like, oh, ship, So these girls breaking up,
Speaker 1: some girls I knew from the hood broke it up.
Speaker 1: Like leave him alone anyway, I ain't funk with the
Speaker 1: crack no more. Four minutes for a minute, and you
Speaker 1: know I just I just was just cool with everybody
Speaker 1: after that. And I'm saying I wasn't trying to you know,
Speaker 1: really sell the drugs and get caught. That was too
Speaker 1: much for me, like you know what I'm saying. And then, um,
Speaker 1: once I went to high school and uh, I'm at
Speaker 1: half so um they half brought me out to queens
Speaker 1: Bridge when I first you know, I went to high
Speaker 1: school when I first met him, and he introduced me
Speaker 1: to that whole world's just different now, mind you. When
Speaker 1: I was when I was a kid, my mother, you know,
Speaker 1: my mother whole life, she worked for the House on Authority.
Speaker 1: So she worked in all the projects in New York
Speaker 1: Brooklyn hallm and you know what I mean, Queens and
Speaker 1: Queen's Bridges is want of the projects that she worked in.
Speaker 1: Her job was she would get people to approved for
Speaker 1: their apartments, you know what I mean. So they come
Speaker 1: to her to apply. She worked in the office on
Speaker 1: the hill in Queensbridge, and you know, people got to
Speaker 1: come to her that she decided with signed them. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, if they make enough money to
Speaker 1: live in the projects or you know, subsidize rant or
Speaker 1: whatever how that works. Everybody wanted to be her friend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So she worked in Queensbridge when I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And I used to go
Speaker 1: with her to work in the summertime. This is before
Speaker 1: I meant having all that. And uh, I went to
Speaker 1: reach day camp. Like when my moms at work, she
Speaker 1: would drop me at day camp on the hill called Reice.
Speaker 1: So I was already out there for a few years
Speaker 1: when I was a little kid. I met a bunch
Speaker 1: of people and it just so happened to years later,
Speaker 1: you know when once I moved to left Ring, went
Speaker 1: to high school and the city. Man half. Now I'm
Speaker 1: back in Queensbridge. I'm older now and I'm saying people,
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a kid from days, from
Speaker 1: day camp and all that. But um, it was just
Speaker 1: being back out there and just seeing you know how
Speaker 1: queens was like just a whole nother world, like the fashion,
Speaker 1: the slang, like you know, just everything is just different. Okay,
Speaker 1: can you explain something to our listeners and buy our
Speaker 1: listeners listeners. I mean, what is the Dune language and
Speaker 1: what is the genesis other dumb language? What was that
Speaker 1: like dune duney like Dune the Dunn language. That's like
Speaker 1: saying we start no cats in Sweden that talked like
Speaker 1: after myb deep came up you know what I've done?
Speaker 1: And I was like, what are you talking about? When
Speaker 1: our homies from Queensbridge, his name is Bumpy. Uh, he
Speaker 1: got like a speech impetitive me. He speaks with like
Speaker 1: a list a little bit, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So you know, we call each other son. Everybody like Yo,
Speaker 1: what up Sun? What up Sun? And when Bumpy say it,
Speaker 1: he's like, whatout thunk? Whatout thunk? So you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So's t a yeah, yeah, it's tear as
Speaker 1: you And but I had showed when I write my rooms,
Speaker 1: I try to write shorthand I tried to write short
Speaker 1: as possible, so I used to write d U N
Speaker 1: just to write real quick and get it out the way.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. So it's like two different
Speaker 1: spellings when I do it. But whatever, um, that's where
Speaker 1: it started with Bumpy, you know what I'm saying, And
Speaker 1: we just started calling. He created the dun language, that's
Speaker 1: what we Yeah, it's out the bump man. But yeah,
Speaker 1: once I got out there and I just seen how
Speaker 1: that world wasn't Queensbridge and I remember being out there
Speaker 1: as a kid when I was out there. It was
Speaker 1: like super early eighties, like probably the Juice Crew was popping.
Speaker 1: Like back I was too young back in the days,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, when I was in day camp.
Speaker 1: But I remember how they used to dress. They used
Speaker 1: to have the shelt out, they used to have to
Speaker 1: pullmas with the you know, the tall one suits can't go.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing people dressed like that when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, So I know that was like probably the
Speaker 1: Juice Crew. Ever. And then when I came back out
Speaker 1: there later on, you know, it was it was new
Speaker 1: things happening, you know what I'm saying. It was like
Speaker 1: that era was starting to change. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Things were starting to change. And you know, I was
Speaker 1: like right smack dab in the middle of it, man,
Speaker 1: And you know, it was just interesting to see being
Speaker 1: from Hempstead and going to school in Manhattan, you know
Speaker 1: where I man have that. We went to high school
Speaker 1: with everybody from New York, different boroughs, Brooklyn, the Bronx,
Speaker 1: you know, Manhattan Queens. They was from everywhere in high
Speaker 1: school art and design, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: we had friends with people from all over eighties Borrow,
Speaker 1: so we used to hang out. You know, we used
Speaker 1: to party in the bronx of our Yankee Stadium and Sheridan.
Speaker 1: We used to you know, hang out in Brooklyn and
Speaker 1: Best Style Marcy Tompkins Sumna. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: We used to We was out there, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And so was there ever any hesitation whatsoever?
Speaker 1: Because I know, if you go to a different part
Speaker 1: of town that you're not necessary really from, it could
Speaker 1: be a caution thing, like you know, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you gotta be careful, man. I mean, look, growing up,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. This, this is this is
Speaker 1: where things changed for me a little bit. All right.
Speaker 1: My first year in high school, Um, there was this
Speaker 1: gang called Deceptic Cars, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 1: I used to come to school in the morning, and uh,
Speaker 1: I used to see people come to school, my friends
Speaker 1: coming to school, big gass cuts going across their face,
Speaker 1: their arms, hands like buck fifties, faces spliced open. Like
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. I'm like, what the funk
Speaker 1: happened to you? Something? Like, you know, the Decepti Cars
Speaker 1: just caught us in the train station, you know they
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, I'm like, Yo, the niggas ain't cutting
Speaker 1: me like that. Dog, I'm buying a gun right now
Speaker 1: because I then they try to cut me like that
Speaker 1: like the twisted you know what I'm saying. So that
Speaker 1: kind of it kind of forced me into position where
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm protect myself, like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. But that's when I bought my first gun
Speaker 1: because of that, you know what I'm saying, Because I
Speaker 1: was gonna let a white cut me in the face
Speaker 1: like that, you know what I'm saying. And they was
Speaker 1: running around doing this on a daily like this is
Speaker 1: what they was doing. Like they was from Brooklyn, like
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It was just a gang.
Speaker 1: It was called Deceptive Corns. They had a female version
Speaker 1: called Deceptive Nets. They had another game called the Low Lives,
Speaker 1: another game called uh, I can't think of it right now,
Speaker 1: but yeah, this was this was like this gang culture
Speaker 1: from Brooklyn, you know what I'm saying. And uh, we
Speaker 1: had to deal with that, you know, because after school
Speaker 1: they would come up to different schools and terrorize motherfucker's,
Speaker 1: robber motherfucker's like you know what I'm saying. So it
Speaker 1: forced me and my little tight friends to be on
Speaker 1: some bullshit. It forced us to be on some bullshit,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And that's that's where the
Speaker 1: bullshit started a little bit, like you know what I'm
Speaker 1: saying that, you know what I'm saying. And then uh,
Speaker 1: you know, also just growing up in Hampstead, you know
Speaker 1: that's like it's a hood. That's a hood out there,
Speaker 1: like you know what I'm saying. It's a residential everyady
Speaker 1: got houses. It looked nice, but that's the hood out
Speaker 1: of Hempstead. Wasn't be the cozy part of Long Island
Speaker 1: that because when I think a Long Island, I think
Speaker 1: of like, oh, that's a vacation spot or yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: you where'd you grow You grew up in Hampstead, Bill.
Speaker 1: Now I grew up a few miles north of Hempstead,
Speaker 1: but it's a little different. Yeah, there's a different part
Speaker 1: where you cross the track. As soon as you cross
Speaker 1: the track called the track side, right soon as you
Speaker 1: cross the track is over, you're in the hood. That
Speaker 1: on this episode that you know, I had a lot
Speaker 1: of friends out there. We did a lot of things
Speaker 1: and you know, it put me on some ship mentally,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, just my my pops already
Speaker 1: had me on some ship mentally, but then going to school,
Speaker 1: man had you know, that really kind of changed me
Speaker 1: because I started hanging out all the different burrows. I
Speaker 1: had friends from different burrows and we used to deal
Speaker 1: with this type of ship to art in design and man, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what that's that's that's uh, Guardia. So there's another
Speaker 1: My mother went to to that school she graduated from.
Speaker 1: So what did your having both go to the school for?
Speaker 1: Because so have was a great ahead of me. He
Speaker 1: was there for architecture. He was dope. He used to
Speaker 1: build like scale models or like you know, apartment complexies
Speaker 1: or whatever building like you know what I mean, he
Speaker 1: could do that nice. I went to school there because
Speaker 1: this is all most of my friends was from left Rack.
Speaker 1: You know, we should sit around the summertime we're going
Speaker 1: to high school, son, well we're going to Edison on
Speaker 1: going to this one and most of my friends like,
Speaker 1: we're going on design. So I was like, fun, I'm
Speaker 1: going there too. Then I'm going whatever y'all niggas is
Speaker 1: going right. So that's the only reason I wanted to
Speaker 1: go there. You know what, I'm saying I didn't really
Speaker 1: have I didn't think that I had any art skills,
Speaker 1: Like you know what I'm saying. I had to take
Speaker 1: a test to get into school. You had to bring
Speaker 1: a portfolio up. So I was like, all right, how
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do? How much am I getting
Speaker 1: to school? I got working my way into school something,
Speaker 1: so I thought, And I was like, oh right, I'm up.
Speaker 1: This is This is a group called the Shirt Kings.
Speaker 1: They like clothing designers and yeah and brushing and the
Speaker 1: College and Queen's So you know, I grew up with them,
Speaker 1: like I grew up a little kid on Jamaica Avenue,
Speaker 1: like you know what I'm saying. So they know me
Speaker 1: all my life, like you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: I was like, light bulb, I'm gonna just copy. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna bite the shirt Kings. I'm sure he's I'm sure
Speaker 1: these motherfucker's art designed. They never seen no ship like
Speaker 1: that before, you know what I'm saying. So I just
Speaker 1: got me some shirts, I got me some markers and uh,
Speaker 1: some paint whatever, and I just drew some graffiti on
Speaker 1: the ship. And I made a portfolio brought up to school,
Speaker 1: and they was like oh they liked it and I
Speaker 1: got it. I got into school with that ship. I
Speaker 1: was shocked. I was like, oh ship, that should work.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. This is crazy here, this
Speaker 1: this is That was trek story because Taik was was
Speaker 1: the art was art design stude. So he used to
Speaker 1: make like crazy medallions and there was yo baby yo
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse. Oh yeah, man like creative man creative. But
Speaker 1: you know, I guess uh, you know, I gotta love
Speaker 1: for being creative about being at that school. Like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, I gotta love for photography because
Speaker 1: we had photography class. There a love for you know,
Speaker 1: just designing ship and seeing what have used to do
Speaker 1: with the architecture. It's just you know, open my mind
Speaker 1: something new, you know. Um, So how did y'all how
Speaker 1: did you guys meet? You met in high school? Yeah?
Speaker 1: We met my first year of high school and my
Speaker 1: photography class was kid named Black from the Bronx and
Speaker 1: we got real cool kicking in every day in class.
Speaker 1: And one day he was like, yo, man, he was like,
Speaker 1: I used to wear mad Childrey, Like I used to
Speaker 1: have cray. I thought I would slick ricked dog. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, that's the hands full of rings,
Speaker 1: mad chains and ship stop. I was talger when I
Speaker 1: was in school, Like you know what I'm saying. That's
Speaker 1: another reason why I bought a gun too, because I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm a target with all this ship on, Like you
Speaker 1: didn't feel like I was. I was bugged out as
Speaker 1: a kid, yo, you know what I'm saying. I didn't
Speaker 1: really care too much. So you know, um, when I'm
Speaker 1: at half it was because of my man Black from
Speaker 1: the Bronx photography class. He was like, yo, man, you
Speaker 1: know you should meet my one of my friends. The
Speaker 1: name have it. They're both wrapped, you're both about the
Speaker 1: same height. You know, Um, I'm gonna introduce you to
Speaker 1: him at the school. So little did I know that
Speaker 1: these names are setting me up to rob me? Wait
Speaker 1: what have it? Wait? This is arranged marriage. That was
Speaker 1: like the greatest life. They were setting me up that
Speaker 1: day there. It was like a whole set up. They
Speaker 1: was gonna rob me, you know what I'm saying, and whatever.
Speaker 1: I didn't find this out till later, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like, lady, when you're on the proposer, but like,
Speaker 1: oh yo, you remember when your first back maybe like
Speaker 1: a yeah. Later they came, they was like, yo, remember
Speaker 1: that time. He was like, yo, we was gonna rob
Speaker 1: you that day, son, but you know you was cool.
Speaker 1: So we was like, nah, I don't rob him. You
Speaker 1: know that's our story. That's what I'm saying. You're listening
Speaker 1: to the Quest Love Supreme. Our guests this week are
Speaker 1: Prodigy of Mob Deep and Catheandoi, journalists and co author
Speaker 1: Product's latest book, Commissary Kitchen, my infamous prison cookbook. And
Speaker 1: we got some messages from our sponsors. Alright, So when
Speaker 1: you you're telling me that initially you're meeting was a setup.
Speaker 1: You came in the name of oh, we should be
Speaker 1: in a group together. I was like, I'm cool. Black,
Speaker 1: we cool. He seemed like a cool dude. He said
Speaker 1: he want to introduce me to somebody that wrapped. Two
Speaker 1: were about the same height. He was like, Yo, you
Speaker 1: should make a group. Let me introduce you to him.
Speaker 1: After school. I'm like, all, I bet so after school
Speaker 1: and go outside and there's a fight right in front
Speaker 1: of the school. So I'm like, we're looking at the fight,
Speaker 1: and my man Black is like, that's that's havoc right there. Fighting.
Speaker 1: He fighting that kids. So have I seen that he
Speaker 1: was fighting some kids? Kid actually tried to stab had
Speaker 1: missed missed him. He was like leather jacket and like,
Speaker 1: motherfucker's dropping his like got the knife out of his hand.
Speaker 1: Had beat him up, and everybody lifted half up in
Speaker 1: the air like he just like just like you just
Speaker 1: had the winning game touchdown. It was dumping with him
Speaker 1: in the air like this. I sweater go all the
Speaker 1: way to the train station after the fight. Damn. It's
Speaker 1: calling him Kiwi because I was like his name, Like
Speaker 1: his name is Keiwan. So he's like nickname in schools
Speaker 1: like Kiwi. The used to call ki and they used
Speaker 1: calling me peewee. You know what I'm saying. Because I
Speaker 1: was mad small, like you know what, that would have
Speaker 1: been a better group named. So you know, we're following
Speaker 1: them to the train station. I'm like this is crazy.
Speaker 1: Like so after they put him down, we get on
Speaker 1: the train, we meet each other. So I'm like, yo,
Speaker 1: where were going and we're going to Ravens Wood. I'm
Speaker 1: like Ravens would I'm like my grandmother from Ravenswood, my
Speaker 1: mother's mother, you know, I mean she had moved from
Speaker 1: South Jamaica projects to Ravenswood like some time ago. He
Speaker 1: was like a word, he's like my grandmother from ravens Wood.
Speaker 1: So both our grandmothers lived in Ravenswood. So right there,
Speaker 1: that was like we had a connection, Like you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So we went to his you know,
Speaker 1: his craving Ravenswood and we chilled, and we went to
Speaker 1: Queen's Bridge walking around chilling, and that was it. We
Speaker 1: just got cool that day. You know what I'm saying that.
Speaker 1: We started making songs immediately, and we just clicked. Immediately,
Speaker 1: we just clicked, you know what I mean. We became
Speaker 1: really close friends and getting in mad trouble together and
Speaker 1: just doing all this dope music and everything was just
Speaker 1: like so he was beats immediately or no, now, I
Speaker 1: actually taught Half how to how to make beats, how
Speaker 1: to sample? Wait, you were the initial person. What were
Speaker 1: you using? EPs sixteen plus task cam set, four track,
Speaker 1: ship recorded ship Like you know what I'm saying that
Speaker 1: a little mixed board. Um. Yeah, So after I met Half,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and we started getting real
Speaker 1: cool and we started being like all right, this is
Speaker 1: this is we got something you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: We kind of looked good together. We're the same height,
Speaker 1: we got the same style, like you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: and it's like, uh, we're making these dope. We made
Speaker 1: like fifty songs immediately. We made like fifty songs when
Speaker 1: we first met in a week or in a month,
Speaker 1: about a couple of weeks, you know what I'm saying. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know right after that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: we just realized like you're damn we got something here,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And uh, we just started
Speaker 1: pushing forward with it, like man, you know what funk school,
Speaker 1: let's do this for you did the Two Young Record?
Speaker 1: Now this this is after I did that. So I
Speaker 1: did the Two Young Records when I was in junior
Speaker 1: high school. Wow wa, this is this is why I
Speaker 1: wrote The boat Man so much, Like it's so much
Speaker 1: ship from different angles, like but the E P A
Speaker 1: won't listen to what I say. This is two the
Speaker 1: biggest biggest R and B heads of all times. To
Speaker 1: the fact that when I was living in Left Rack,
Speaker 1: I had made a uh I would had a solo career.
Speaker 1: I was like trying to be, you know, a solo artist.
Speaker 1: My name was the Golden Child. My name was Lord
Speaker 1: T the Golden Child. You know what I'm saying because
Speaker 1: my family they called me Chocca. You know what I'm
Speaker 1: saying with a T, but the T is silent, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. The T come from Choccola. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Lord T the Golden Child. I
Speaker 1: thought I was the Golden Child. That was my like
Speaker 1: my favorite movie and I lived so anyway, I had
Speaker 1: lot T the Golden Child, one of my holmies from
Speaker 1: Left Frack. You know, we used to make some music
Speaker 1: together whatever whatever. But he used to send me some
Speaker 1: beats and I used to go record him and uh
Speaker 1: I al used to shop around. My My mom's was like, yo,
Speaker 1: shop your demo around. She was like, write your lyrics
Speaker 1: out main and to yourself. That's the cheap man copy man,
Speaker 1: poor man copyright. Like I was doing my mom's and
Speaker 1: teaching me what to do. She was like, do this,
Speaker 1: do that, taking ship around, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: So we got my music too jive. Um somehow I
Speaker 1: don't even remember how, but job gave me a demo deal.
Speaker 1: And the demo deal is they do you remember? I
Speaker 1: don't even remember that time. No, this is like eight nine,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So I'm in job working
Speaker 1: in battery studio. You know, they got their own studio,
Speaker 1: so they gave me a studio. They was like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's see what you could do by yourself. That's where
Speaker 1: the demo deal is. They put you in the studio.
Speaker 1: All right, let's see what you If you could come
Speaker 1: up with something dope within the next couple of months,
Speaker 1: we'll sign you, do you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: that's the kind of deal I had. So you by yourself,
Speaker 1: mean by myself with the German scene and you writing
Speaker 1: your rhymes, doing your own music. I wasn't making beats
Speaker 1: at that point. I was getting beats from people and
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, just trying whatever I could do.
Speaker 1: So while I'm dead, I used to I used to
Speaker 1: flirt with the girls at the front desk, like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. A couple of girls have worked
Speaker 1: at the front desk. You know, they was cool with me.
Speaker 1: So one day I'll go to job to go to
Speaker 1: the studio and the girl at the front desk, her
Speaker 1: name was Kim. I remember her name because she hooked
Speaker 1: it up for me. She was like, Yo, I want
Speaker 1: to bring you to the back you need to meet somebody.
Speaker 1: They're working on the soundtrack. I'm gonna get you on
Speaker 1: the soundtrack. Come on. So she brought me in the
Speaker 1: back office. She was like, Yo, this is this is
Speaker 1: a little t whatever that out of that he raped?
Speaker 1: You should get him on his song. So they was like,
Speaker 1: all right ahead, you know, right righte some balls, Let
Speaker 1: see what you could come up with. And I wrote
Speaker 1: that too young, you know what I mean? And they
Speaker 1: put me on the song. So crazy, y'all. I was
Speaker 1: just thinking about that. Do you think about that song
Speaker 1: last week? All this stuff about about Trump, you know,
Speaker 1: defunding the EPA and all that them, that lyric kept
Speaker 1: coming in my head. I never knew that then. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, my first year in high school, um mad
Speaker 1: Half still working that battery at this time. So I
Speaker 1: used to bring Half with me. I was like, yea,
Speaker 1: I got a studio we could work at, so I
Speaker 1: should bring had with me the battery. We should get beat.
Speaker 1: We should like use recording polls when it take that
Speaker 1: taps and make our own beats. And that's we made
Speaker 1: a lot of beasts like that, and well y'all going
Speaker 1: by the political profits at this time. Yeah, we still
Speaker 1: didn't figure out to name yet at this time. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. But uh, you know, Job gave
Speaker 1: me that studio. They now, I'm not supposed to be
Speaker 1: having other people in it. So this is story sound familiar,
Speaker 1: just the black version of it. Here this out third
Speaker 1: Base started, So take this out. So now you know.
Speaker 1: Job was like, all right, we want to sign you
Speaker 1: after the boys and the hood Ship and all that.
Speaker 1: And I was like, look, I got a partner now.
Speaker 1: I was like, if you want to sign me, you
Speaker 1: gotta signed him. And he was like, nine, we we
Speaker 1: just want to you know what I mean, We don't
Speaker 1: want your partner. And I was like, all right, well
Speaker 1: I see you later. You walked away from that. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's oil. I was like, man, listen, because what we
Speaker 1: were doing, it was just it was just vibe. You
Speaker 1: could just feel it, you know what I mean. You
Speaker 1: could feel the power of wood. And we just like
Speaker 1: met and just started and through our conversations and just
Speaker 1: hanging out and the music we was doing, you could
Speaker 1: just feel like, this is what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not supposed to being sol artist. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. The having know that you walked away. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that because I was trying to get both
Speaker 1: of us on the job, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But they was like nah, so the like I mean,
Speaker 1: by this time, there were other groups that were of
Speaker 1: your age or I mean, y'all look mad young at
Speaker 1: least on the juvenile health record, look young and ship.
Speaker 1: So I thought y'all were in the kids group realm right?
Speaker 1: So were they trying to mold y'all into that ABC
Speaker 1: criss cross kind of bandwagon, like when they trying to
Speaker 1: make your kids group. The ill part about it is
Speaker 1: we never had anybody telling us to do anything nor ever,
Speaker 1: Like I said, they put me in that room like
Speaker 1: a right, let's see what you can do. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: So nobody ever development no nobody ever told us was
Speaker 1: to teach yourself. We just did it. Like you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. We just did it. And you know,
Speaker 1: um after job was like nah, I was all right,
Speaker 1: we out of here, and uh we just continue to
Speaker 1: make songs and shot out demo around and you know,
Speaker 1: try to get on you know I'm saying, And uh,
Speaker 1: that's when we met Q took after a while. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, All right, I'm sure you told
Speaker 1: this story a good jillion times, but can you please
Speaker 1: tell that story so for listeners if not heard, this
Speaker 1: is the illest story ever. Yeah, and then let me
Speaker 1: say something real quick to Okay, just something clear, real quick.
Speaker 1: A lot of motherfucker's they read my book or they
Speaker 1: hear these stories snake dry snitching. Now, let me tell
Speaker 1: you something, right, there's nobody being convicted, arrested or anything.
Speaker 1: From what I'm saying. I'm saying ship with a I'm
Speaker 1: saying it with a what do you call it? The
Speaker 1: stacial limitations is done already. So it's like this is
Speaker 1: our life, like this is ship that happened our life,
Speaker 1: and we it's it's a blessing that we're able to
Speaker 1: talk about it right now. And then we made it
Speaker 1: out of certain ship. And you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So when when when you hear people saying all this,
Speaker 1: they don't know what the funk they're talking about, dog
Speaker 1: like that, that's that's it really pisses me off. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you the story. Um, thank you. So
Speaker 1: after the job shipped me and has started making mad songs.
Speaker 1: And we took our new demo around and what we
Speaker 1: useduld do is look on the back of albums to
Speaker 1: our favorite labels. So our favorite label, of course was
Speaker 1: death Jam at that time. So we should be like,
Speaker 1: all right, where's death Jam? All right, here's the address. Alright,
Speaker 1: come on, cut out of school, let's take the train
Speaker 1: and go down to death Jam. So we used to
Speaker 1: go down to Definth with the headphones, walk man, and
Speaker 1: we should just stand outside the door like this and
Speaker 1: wait for the rappers to come out. You know, I
Speaker 1: meant or whoever to come out, and uh, we've seen no.
Speaker 1: A bunch of different rappers come out. And she's be like, yo,
Speaker 1: listen to her demo take. And he was like a
Speaker 1: wo man, I got time for the ship in front
Speaker 1: of your Who's the mirror? Who's the mirror of the story?
Speaker 1: I spurned on three cats last week. Now I feel bad.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, they're gonna be biggest it like we
Speaker 1: was outside of thirty Rock right before you. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you it was. I'm gonna I remember clearly who was.
Speaker 1: I don't got no personal ship against him. I don't
Speaker 1: care about that ship. This is like, but it definitely
Speaker 1: was the Afros. Remember the hurricane Hurricane you could have
Speaker 1: Hurricane was like, what come on, watch our shorty. You
Speaker 1: ain't got time for this ship. So I'm like, whorld,
Speaker 1: I whatever. So we wait outside, We wait outside, we
Speaker 1: see people coming out. Nobody will give us a listen.
Speaker 1: That Q tip came out the building and you know
Speaker 1: they was on fire at that time. That would you know,
Speaker 1: trying call question ship. We're like, oh, ship tip right here, Yo,
Speaker 1: could you listen? Todd Demo son like check us out
Speaker 1: somewhere from Queens that like work, check your ship out.
Speaker 1: Put on listen, playing him a couple of songs. He
Speaker 1: took it off. He was like, come on, come inside
Speaker 1: the office with me. Wrought us in the office, introduces
Speaker 1: to Chris Likedy, introducers to man. It was called Rush
Speaker 1: associated label at that time, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It was like a management management thing and plus the
Speaker 1: associated label thing, and uh you know it introduced us
Speaker 1: to people in the office, and it was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: these dudes are dope. Helped them, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: He was like, helped them, get them, do something with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He's like, yo, setting. He's telling Chris, he's telling everybody
Speaker 1: office Joe set up a meeting with Russell, set up
Speaker 1: a meeting with Leo. Get them, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: get these kids music hurt, they dope. So after that,
Speaker 1: you know, we uh we had a meeting with They
Speaker 1: set up a meeting for us with Russell Simmons. So
Speaker 1: we go to the office to have a meeting with
Speaker 1: Russell and uh it's supposed to be at Russell Crib,
Speaker 1: which was around the corner on Broadway, Rob McDonald's somewhere
Speaker 1: down that area. So, um, okay, we get to Russell Crib.
Speaker 1: A matter of fact, I had the gun on me,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, A little one shot Darrens
Speaker 1: I had bought at school, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't trying to get cut. Um. I had
Speaker 1: left it in the deaf jam office because I didn't
Speaker 1: want to bring a gun in Russell house, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. I was like trying to beat respectful out,
Speaker 1: like I don't bring the weapon in his crib. Let me.
Speaker 1: I was told, my man officer and hold us in
Speaker 1: the drawer for me until we get back from the
Speaker 1: me And so he's all right, put in a drawer.
Speaker 1: I walked around the corner, went to Russell Crab. Russell
Speaker 1: was a no show. They're like, Russell got caught up.
Speaker 1: You're gonna meet with Leo instead in the office. Everyone
Speaker 1: has a story. So we're like, all right, bet So
Speaker 1: we go back to Death Jam. We meet with Leo.
Speaker 1: We play Leo music here listening. Then he stops the music.
Speaker 1: He's like, I can't do nothing with y'all. We're like why.
Speaker 1: He's like, how old they are? So we were fifteen
Speaker 1: sixteen this time. He's like, y'all, first of all, y'all
Speaker 1: look like y'all nine years old or something. Y'all cursing
Speaker 1: like sellers, you're talking about criminal crazy ship. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get suited. They're gonna sue Death Jam for
Speaker 1: putting this on the radio and doing on this in
Speaker 1: the third like, there's no way I can get this
Speaker 1: played on the radio. There's no way I could get this.
Speaker 1: They're gonna ban y'all. So he basically told us like
Speaker 1: he's like, I can't do nothing with y'all. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: and we're like that, like what we was like, what
Speaker 1: the fund is wrong? We just dude, like he didn't
Speaker 1: understand the music. He didn't I don't know, he didn't
Speaker 1: get it. He didn't like it. Yeah, that's his choice
Speaker 1: or whatever. So he was like, all right, fuck it.
Speaker 1: We wasn't mad at anything. We was a little upset,
Speaker 1: like fuck the snake a hell on know, but we
Speaker 1: we didn't give a fuck. We was like, all right,
Speaker 1: on to the next label. We're gonna go to it, Wenna,
Speaker 1: We're gonna finally find someplace. So we go downstairs and
Speaker 1: before we leave, you know, they had all these posters
Speaker 1: hanging up in the office and they had like the
Speaker 1: Great Eventures to slick Rick frame. They had like Big
Speaker 1: Daddy can't ship anybody ship framed in it, and daylight
Speaker 1: just dropped. Uh, they lost sold his dad. So I
Speaker 1: wanted one of those posters they had the ill they
Speaker 1: lost sold his Dad post I wanted to hanging up
Speaker 1: in my room. You know, that was that back in
Speaker 1: the day ship hanging it up in your room and whatnot.
Speaker 1: So I told my man that helped the gun for
Speaker 1: me and draw. I was like, Yo, get us some
Speaker 1: posters before we bounce, you know what I'm saying. He's like,
Speaker 1: I don't hook y'all up. So he went, got some posters,
Speaker 1: so me and have is at his desk. So I'm like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: the gun is in the drawer, so so have get
Speaker 1: the gun off the drow. He points it at me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yo, chill, so that she got you know,
Speaker 1: she got posts like I'm just playing with you, my nigga,
Speaker 1: ain't I'm just playing Calm down. I'm like, yell, don't
Speaker 1: point guns at people with my nigga. Chill. So did
Speaker 1: my man come back with all the posters. He's like, yo,
Speaker 1: here he put the posters down the half point the
Speaker 1: gun at him, like, yo, give me them posters, nigga,
Speaker 1: my mistake. They got to go. They got to go,
Speaker 1: you think, my nigga. Everything went in slow motion after that,
Speaker 1: literally literally everything turned misty and went to the slow motion.
Speaker 1: I remember literally like I don't know why that happens,
Speaker 1: but I guessing the heat of moments like that ship
Speaker 1: just so have drops the gun like he were both
Speaker 1: like oh ship with the funk, like we had shot
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Have boats out? The boats
Speaker 1: out the door, running downstairs like oh ship out. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, you're not leaving me tasting behind him like wait,
Speaker 1: my thumb, man one, did you at least take the
Speaker 1: poster because that they are so I wasn't even thinking
Speaker 1: about no more. You're not hard to sit on eBay
Speaker 1: right now. I was like nothing. I was trying to
Speaker 1: get low. We shry to get the funk out of
Speaker 1: there at that point. So have ran out the door,
Speaker 1: knocked DMC down. The MC and running was coming in
Speaker 1: the building. Knock one of them nigs fell on the floor.
Speaker 1: I don't remember because he busted. He like ran out
Speaker 1: and busted through the door. So one of them felt down.
Speaker 1: We ran and we're running up the block and I
Speaker 1: had some crazy way to meet. By the way, I
Speaker 1: heard somebody screaming behind me. Stop them kids, You'll stop
Speaker 1: them kids. So I'm like, look and it's fucking at
Speaker 1: least he is chasing. Oh god, so he's chasing us.
Speaker 1: Oh he keeps chasing. I'm like, yo, this it's chasing us.
Speaker 1: So we get down the Houston right, we get down
Speaker 1: the house and have stop have his willing like, yo, son,
Speaker 1: it was a mistake. I didn't mean to do that.
Speaker 1: It was a mistake. I'm like you calm down, Calm down,
Speaker 1: my nigga. This chill relaxed. He's wounding though. He's like
Speaker 1: hysteric because he didn't mean to do that. Ship like
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So he's wounding. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get him to calm down. And I see a D.
Speaker 1: I see a detective call pull up on my call.
Speaker 1: You know, we know what the deeds look like. So
Speaker 1: I've seen the D. I said, oh, I said, you
Speaker 1: have chilled. Chill to the DS is there because haveing
Speaker 1: screaming like I ain't mean to shoot him, ain't mistake
Speaker 1: ships on the d's about here, chill my nigga. So
Speaker 1: they see him bugging, so they stopped the car. They
Speaker 1: get out. They're like, yo, what's what's going on. He's like, Yo,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to do it. I ain't mean to
Speaker 1: do it. I'm like, oh my god, hey, come Alicea Yo.
Speaker 1: Get the They put the handcuffs on half because have
Speaker 1: it sitting there basically confessing. He's like, I didn't mean
Speaker 1: to do it. It was a mistake. They're like, oh no,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be I put your hand money back. I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, man. So they let me and my
Speaker 1: man Prince a D that was our DJ at the time.
Speaker 1: They let us go, took half. I go home, go
Speaker 1: to sleep right, wake up the next morning to go
Speaker 1: to school. My mom's always got w b LS playing
Speaker 1: on the clock radio in the morning. So I heard
Speaker 1: on the radio they like, uh, yesterday there was a
Speaker 1: shooting in this jam office over contracts the artists, some artists.
Speaker 1: Uh they wouldn't sign the artists or the artist shots
Speaker 1: of my in the office. That's what they said on
Speaker 1: the radio. So I'm sitting there listening to it. I
Speaker 1: didn't even tell my mom, ha two together. You don't
Speaker 1: even know what's going on. So when I heard that,
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like, oh my god. So
Speaker 1: now like reality is hitting me because I'm just waking
Speaker 1: up and I'm like it's a new day. Now, I'm like,
Speaker 1: reality is hitting me. What just happened yesterday? So now
Speaker 1: my brain kicks in the how we're gonna get out
Speaker 1: of this mode? You know what I'm saying. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, right away, I just came up with a story.
Speaker 1: All right. We thought it was a lighter, you know,
Speaker 1: you know in the village downtown they got the little
Speaker 1: lighters at the smoke shops. A little gun lightest. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, yo, and my mom I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: we gotta think of something quick. So right away, I'm like, yo,
Speaker 1: we thought we found it outside. We thought it was
Speaker 1: a lighter. He was playing with it and she went off.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. So you know I had
Speaker 1: to go to the hospital kick it with the homie.
Speaker 1: They got hit and um, you know, let him know,
Speaker 1: like you listen, man, you know that was an accident. Man,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. You got sick to this story.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Like it's gonna be bad
Speaker 1: for half. Like he was like I you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. He looked out. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: because you know it was. It was a terrible mistake,
Speaker 1: but with a bullet girl man the stomach after So yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that craziness happened, and y'all did not get
Speaker 1: signed the tough n presumed nine then uh talk or
Speaker 1: I'll leave about this like later like now. But Nicky
Speaker 1: d remember everything because she was there. Yeah, and after that,
Speaker 1: she would always remind me, you shoot, always your mommy
Speaker 1: about that. Every time that she'd be like, yo, y'all,
Speaker 1: little nime is bugged the funk out, y'all. What's wrong
Speaker 1: with y'all? The cat shot? He survived like he did.
Speaker 1: He was good man, you know. Fortunately, you know, everything
Speaker 1: worked out and that's a crazy story he'll tell for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. It's definitely a crazy story though. Man.
Speaker 1: After that, Deaf Jam had security. You couldn't even walk
Speaker 1: into building anymore. But I was gonna say, because when
Speaker 1: I went to death, it was like freaking not. So
Speaker 1: how long is it till Fourth and Broadway comes to NBA?
Speaker 1: Uh picture fourth on Broadways? A company on the record
Speaker 1: company on island Deaf Jam, you know. So right after that,
Speaker 1: we uh you know, after everything with the Deaf Jam ship,
Speaker 1: we uh you know, we continue to make demos and
Speaker 1: just Q tip had brought us like into the industry,
Speaker 1: so we started meeting different people and finding out. We
Speaker 1: started finding out about industry parties, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: because they would tell us it was a party over
Speaker 1: here tonight, party of it tonight. So we started being
Speaker 1: in the loop of all the industry parties at that point. Uh.
Speaker 1: Talent shows, Kid Capri would do these challenge shows or
Speaker 1: whoever got the best versus song you get a hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: We won one of those one night. Um. We were
Speaker 1: just going around different functions New York City talent shows,
Speaker 1: different party industry parties and I hold me from uh
Speaker 1: high school, Derek that put us together. My kid that
Speaker 1: was in my photography class. His moms used to work
Speaker 1: for w b LS and she was like cool with Puff.
Speaker 1: So he arranged a meeting with us and Puff. So
Speaker 1: we got real cool Puff right away. Um and Puff
Speaker 1: withld invite us to all his parties he was that's
Speaker 1: when he was a club promotor at that time. Have
Speaker 1: you doing a cup promotion? And we used to go
Speaker 1: to all of the Puff parties you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: at the building the Red Zone. So we started really
Speaker 1: being at all the functions and hanging out and people
Speaker 1: started knowing us, you know what I mean. And uh
Speaker 1: Maddie c got ahold of our demo from the source. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he got ahold of our demo and he put us
Speaker 1: in the unside hype column that he did. And because
Speaker 1: of the unsigned hype column and uh Maddie See's other
Speaker 1: homeboy Bones Malone, Yeah, they it was like they found
Speaker 1: interest in us from that and they was like Yo,
Speaker 1: we want to have a meeting with y'all. Bones brought
Speaker 1: us up there and Maddie and we met Cookie Gonzalez
Speaker 1: and uh we met uh Chris Black, will you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? So they brought us in to meet Chris.
Speaker 1: We sat down with Chris. Chris was an interesting dude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was that like? Because Chris is like that was
Speaker 1: very interesting. He was sitting there rolling up some hash
Speaker 1: and I ain't I've never seen hash before. He had
Speaker 1: a big roll of black hash and I'm like, what
Speaker 1: is that? It's hash smoking. So I'm like, he want
Speaker 1: to try it? I'm like, hell yeah. So we're smoking
Speaker 1: hash with us back within the office. He's like, YEO,
Speaker 1: I really like y'all, man, I want to sign y'all.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, do it deal with y'all?
Speaker 1: Did he ever interject I've never met Chris Black without
Speaker 1: lee him interjecting Bob Marley's story. I'm sure he did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he did, especially when we were smoking, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. He probably said something like that. Um,
Speaker 1: But at this time, you know, they had rock him
Speaker 1: or being rock Cam before, not at this time, but
Speaker 1: they had in the past very being rock Cam and
Speaker 1: the newer, more updated artists on for from Bro was
Speaker 1: m O P. They had song cod Hill That's real
Speaker 1: h and how about some hardcore? That was on fourth
Speaker 1: from Bro. At this time, when Chris is signing us,
Speaker 1: so he offered us a deal. He was like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 1: we want that. We're taking it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So we did the deal with Island and basically it
Speaker 1: was the same thing. He ain't trying to tell us
Speaker 1: what to do. They basically just no n R now
Speaker 1: I mean cookie and Bones was like, you know, but
Speaker 1: bones that stupe No Bones, no us. Like he's started
Speaker 1: hanging out with us and seeing how he also like
Speaker 1: and just leave. Let them niggers do them. They know
Speaker 1: what they're doing and they know what they want. Like,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, how old are you? Then
Speaker 1: at this point we're like six teams like are you
Speaker 1: going to school still? And ye, we're in high school.
Speaker 1: But at this point it's like I'm about to drop
Speaker 1: out because now one day I'm like sleeping in the crib.
Speaker 1: My mom's lake me up like I a't gonna be
Speaker 1: late for school. I woke up, I said, Mom, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to school. And how did she take that.
Speaker 1: She was like, oh, work, She's like, okay, what And
Speaker 1: when she came back from work and she thought about it,
Speaker 1: she said something, are you going to pay some rips?
Speaker 1: She just she was just like okay, because she's I
Speaker 1: guess she's seen what I was doing with my career,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. She was helping me, like
Speaker 1: do it like you don't have any resistance in your
Speaker 1: family now, not with like, you know, I come from
Speaker 1: an entertainment family, so they like they was encouraging the
Speaker 1: family trade. It's still hip hop, so you know, it's
Speaker 1: a different was definitely different, so they my mom's were scared.
Speaker 1: She was like apprehensive when Chris wanted to sign us,
Speaker 1: and he he actually did some kind of thing where
Speaker 1: we didn't need our parents consent. That pissed my mom's off.
Speaker 1: She was like that he's a piece of ship. He
Speaker 1: did say, went around our backs and signed y'all without
Speaker 1: sent But we was like, ma, chill man, so the
Speaker 1: new addition story ain't happened to ya. Used to managers too.
Speaker 1: How at this time she was like managing us for
Speaker 1: a minute and then we fight her because you because
Speaker 1: she was like you we did the talent show right before,
Speaker 1: right before we got signed a four row, we did
Speaker 1: a talent show. Was like a New York City sometimes
Speaker 1: show New York you should do all the time. And
Speaker 1: we have we have to throw like auditions, rehearsals or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. And we're going through our song and
Speaker 1: our song got curses in it. The chorus of the
Speaker 1: song go, h Ship, here we go, Yo, Ship, here
Speaker 1: we go. That's the whole chorus, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So we put it on, were like doing our ship
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh stop the music stopping. There was like, yo,
Speaker 1: you can't curse in this talent show. We're like what.
Speaker 1: They're like, you can't courage You got to change the
Speaker 1: curses or do a new song. We're like, black, we're
Speaker 1: not changing nothing, man, We're not doing this. Man funk
Speaker 1: your show. And we walked over. My mom was like,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with y'all? So she sat us down, like
Speaker 1: right after that. She was like, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: You can't. You can't disrespect people like that. You just
Speaker 1: change take the curses out. He was like, you listen,
Speaker 1: we're gonna stick to what we do. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean. We don't want nobody trying to change us.
Speaker 1: We was hard headed, Like you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: having I having projects. I gotta say three times I've
Speaker 1: heard you easily walk away from some ship that could
Speaker 1: sort of maybe sort of change your life. What I've
Speaker 1: never heard neilism to this level where it's just like
Speaker 1: I'm out, I can walk away. What is it in you? Like,
Speaker 1: what's in your head that just be like all right,
Speaker 1: I walk away? I think we just we believed in
Speaker 1: what we were doing so much. Like like I said,
Speaker 1: it was like the vibe that we had, we could
Speaker 1: just feel it. It was gonna work and nothing was
Speaker 1: gonna stop it. It was just a feeling, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Like we was like, oh we got
Speaker 1: some ship. He don't know what, she don't know. None
Speaker 1: of these people don't know what they're talking about, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Because usually people by this point,
Speaker 1: people will either have a side and meeting. Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: we can meet him at the fifth yard line. Let's
Speaker 1: compromise a little bit, you know, and then you know,
Speaker 1: now we were really we were really hardheaded. You're just like, really, um,
Speaker 1: we were really just stuck on what we were doing.
Speaker 1: Tunnel vision. We wasn't trying to hear nobody. We we
Speaker 1: had something that didn't really exist, Like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It was like the vibe that we had,
Speaker 1: you know, just the the energy and the words and
Speaker 1: the style, the slang, everything was just it wasn't nothing
Speaker 1: like that, you know what I'm saying. And it was
Speaker 1: just like a changing of the guard at that time
Speaker 1: almost because you know, it was like you had the
Speaker 1: rock cams and big Daddy knes and you know, the
Speaker 1: sent knees like when the symphony came out, like that
Speaker 1: was what was popping. We was learning how to do
Speaker 1: rap and then once we started getting in the studio,
Speaker 1: we started catching on how this ship works. And we
Speaker 1: was like, oh, we got this ship, Like we know
Speaker 1: how to do this ship right. We thought we did,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, But it just it just
Speaker 1: made our minds like, oh, this is we do on
Speaker 1: some new ship. We're a new generation. These mothercker's don't
Speaker 1: know what they're talking about. We got some ship. We're
Speaker 1: not trying to hear nobody else. So that was it
Speaker 1: was a fund up attitude to have. But you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Um, so my mom was like, yo,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. So we was like, listen, if
Speaker 1: you if you're not gonna follow what we're saying and
Speaker 1: believing us to the maximum and funk everybody else, then
Speaker 1: we can't work with you no more. And she was like,
Speaker 1: she was like all right. She was like all right, cool,
Speaker 1: I see. She was like, that's a very bad attitude
Speaker 1: to have. You know what I mean, that's a very
Speaker 1: bad attitude to have. You're not gonna get far in
Speaker 1: life with the attitude. She gave me the whole spill
Speaker 1: or that whole thing, but we wasn't trying to hear it.
Speaker 1: So it's like when you find your mom's what happens
Speaker 1: when you get home? Like is it just normal? Like
Speaker 1: I mean at that time, I wasn't. I was kind
Speaker 1: of I wasn't going home anymore. I was kind of
Speaker 1: at the out the house already, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I would stay at half crib, or I would stay
Speaker 1: at my grandmother crib. I would pop up my mom's
Speaker 1: crib sometimes, like we were just bouncing everywhere. I was
Speaker 1: staying in the Bronx with my homie from school, staying
Speaker 1: Brooklyn with my Homi, illogy from school. Um, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. We were just everywhere. Man, We was young, active,
Speaker 1: trying to get on Like you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking about I don't want to be in
Speaker 1: the house with my mom's Like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. We're going to Coney Allen, We're popping,
Speaker 1: we stay in the weekend. We was just having fun
Speaker 1: and doing what we're doing and creating ourselves. So even
Speaker 1: even though juven Hole did, Juvenile Hell didn't necessarily do
Speaker 1: the numbers. I mean, it did get you guys so
Speaker 1: notice amongst industry people, so check this out. Arrogant ass,
Speaker 1: whole attitude, right, That's why that album came out like
Speaker 1: and underperformed, and it was like not really, we didn't
Speaker 1: put our heart and soul. We didn't put out We
Speaker 1: didn't understand that this ship is not a joke. Like
Speaker 1: you can't just do whatever and people supposed to kick
Speaker 1: your ass and like it. You gotta make timeless, you
Speaker 1: gotta make some ship that standing tests of time. And
Speaker 1: we didn't understand that. We was very arrogant. It was
Speaker 1: very you know, cocky on some bullshit. And that's why
Speaker 1: that product came out, and then a couple of months later,
Speaker 1: Nas dropped Amatic. That brought us down to reality. Have
Speaker 1: you met Nyes before? Like you want this same, like
Speaker 1: on the block together. We're all trying to get on
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know what I mean, We're
Speaker 1: all trying to get on. Nas had Live at the barbecue.
Speaker 1: He had the song on the Zebra soundtrack, the halftime,
Speaker 1: So dude, this is all at the same time. While
Speaker 1: we're doing juven O Hell, Nas had the Zebra halftime
Speaker 1: Ship and you know what I mean. And then we
Speaker 1: go off on a little promo run and we and
Speaker 1: we're doing an instore one day in d C. We're
Speaker 1: doing an instore for juven or Hell and we walk
Speaker 1: into the instore and Illmatic is playing. We never heard
Speaker 1: it before, so we listen. We're sitting there like this.
Speaker 1: We have a look at each other like you hit
Speaker 1: this ship. We're like, oh ship, yoh packed this ship up.
Speaker 1: He was like, you packed this ship up? Man, We
Speaker 1: went about this all wrong, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And that brought us down to reality. Basically, that gave
Speaker 1: us that was because that was a reality. He was
Speaker 1: right at the point. You know what I mean, but
Speaker 1: you know, right right there, we've seen it. We've seen
Speaker 1: it before before we even got dropped. We already knew
Speaker 1: old all right, we fucked up, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: because we could hear the difference. We could hear it.
Speaker 1: There's a big difference between the you know, the thought
Speaker 1: that was put into making the music, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, The thought that was put into making writing
Speaker 1: the lyrics, making the beats. He put some serious thought
Speaker 1: into that, and we didn't. We were just sucking around
Speaker 1: being a little dumba ass kids like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like filling ourselves. Yeah, we gotta rap deal,
Speaker 1: Yeah I got gold tooth. Yeah, like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Like, so how far Like when did the
Speaker 1: suddenly we come like okay, this serious business. So we
Speaker 1: got a lot of people still feel as though that's
Speaker 1: your first record when we got dropped. That's when when
Speaker 1: we heard it, Mattago, and then we got dropped, maybe
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks later or whatever. Whatever. We were
Speaker 1: just like in the sunken place. It was like, we
Speaker 1: gotta get the funk out of here. We gotta we
Speaker 1: was like, no, no, this can't happen, you know. So
Speaker 1: you was like your hearts was broken, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, because we was like, yo, this is what
Speaker 1: we want to do with our life. We're not playing
Speaker 1: with this ship. We just went about it the wrong way.
Speaker 1: We had the wrong attitude, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So we was like holo, holo. No. It was like
Speaker 1: we was like no, you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta show people who we are. We
Speaker 1: gotta tell our story the right way. We gotta put
Speaker 1: like I said, put thought and put me in, put
Speaker 1: your soul, put your heart into the music, like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, tell your story, man, Like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So you were just we went
Speaker 1: in and we had that attitude like yo, listen, this
Speaker 1: is what we want to do for rest of our life.
Speaker 1: We just got dropped. We feel like the biggest losers ever.
Speaker 1: We're going to the hood. Everybody laughing on us on
Speaker 1: the lower and not just dropped matic just it's just
Speaker 1: na nas looking at us like like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like they're laughing at us on the low.
Speaker 1: So we like went in regroup and we had the
Speaker 1: attitude like, you know, we're not We're not gonna this
Speaker 1: ain't gonna happen again. You know what I'm saying. One
Speaker 1: percent for sure, this is never gonna happen again, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. And so did you have the
Speaker 1: the well, I know that at that point, uh, Matt
Speaker 1: started working at loud correct Uh yeah, right, And right
Speaker 1: around that time Matt got a job at loud Loud.
Speaker 1: They were just like a cubicle inside the r c
Speaker 1: A office. They had PMD I think his first solo album.
Speaker 1: They had the Alcoholics and they had just signed you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So, yeah, we we regrouped after
Speaker 1: that with that mentality, we was like, oh hell no,
Speaker 1: that's when we really started going in making our own beats.
Speaker 1: That's when I was like I was teaching Have you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, during that time with juven to Hell and
Speaker 1: transitioning over to making this new demo, I was teaching
Speaker 1: Have how to do the beasts and ship and he
Speaker 1: was getting nice with it. So at first it was
Speaker 1: like I would make a baseline or some of some
Speaker 1: drums or something and then have him come and ask
Speaker 1: some ship to it, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: I'd be like, yo, yo, let me add, let me
Speaker 1: ask something, let me change something. They'd be like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: let me ask. So that that's how it wasn't for
Speaker 1: after a while, I started listening and looking and have
Speaker 1: started looking possessed, Like you could just see it. He
Speaker 1: was fucking possessed what I'm saying, and you can hear it.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, after a while, I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't even want to bother him, you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be like, yo, let me add,
Speaker 1: because he was in his groove, like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, so let me just let him work, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. And I'm just seeing him right
Speaker 1: there around you know what I'm saying. So it got
Speaker 1: like that. And plus he was hogging it a little
Speaker 1: something too. He was definitely holding you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: He was like, hold hold up, hold on, hold up, yo,
Speaker 1: come on, let me After while, I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: you got man, you know what I'm say. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna store get the forty. I'll be right back,
Speaker 1: come back to beat is done. And then I just
Speaker 1: right around to it. But then I also seen that have.
Speaker 1: I've seen Havoc become having. I've seen it, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. I've seen it in his face. I
Speaker 1: heard it in the music. I just seen a look
Speaker 1: in his face while he was sitting there making the bees.
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, he's really he's really tapped in
Speaker 1: right now, like you know what I'm saying. So that's
Speaker 1: how that happened. And you know, Maddie Broughts over to Steve.
Speaker 1: You heard our demos. He was like, Yo, motherfucker's I
Speaker 1: got some ship. Now, I got a new job over here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna Brna bring you up to the office, meet
Speaker 1: Steve Rifkin Boom Steve. He played music for Steve. Steve
Speaker 1: was like, y'all, I love it. He's like, I want
Speaker 1: to sign y'all, you know what I'm saying. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, we're hanging out with Puff every day.
Speaker 1: So Puff is telling us about this new company that
Speaker 1: he wants to start called bad Boy, and he's like, yo,
Speaker 1: I want to I want you to be the first artists.
Speaker 1: I want to sign y'all a bad Boy of WHOA.
Speaker 1: So we like, we're hanging with Puff every night, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. At the club. She like, you
Speaker 1: want to sign us, Steve want to sign us. So
Speaker 1: we're now now we're telling them, let's get some paperwork
Speaker 1: videos and okay in the video. So basically the deal
Speaker 1: that Steve offered us, basically it was more money and
Speaker 1: that's the only reason why we took the Steve. But
Speaker 1: what was the trade off, like, because usually with those
Speaker 1: things more money but less control power and something. Nah,
Speaker 1: it was it was, It wasn't. It wasn't actually any
Speaker 1: trade off. I guess trade off was. Um, the trade
Speaker 1: off was they probably got the key, didn't they got
Speaker 1: We didn't. We didn't. Maybe the trade off was also
Speaker 1: we didn't have to do all the gloss seat o
Speaker 1: ship like you know what I'm saying. That was one
Speaker 1: good trade off, Like you know what I mean. But
Speaker 1: Puff had a very he had a vision for this company,
Speaker 1: and he wanted us to be the first artist on
Speaker 1: bad Boy. But Steve just so happened over us, maybe
Speaker 1: like ten thousand dollars more than what he Puff was offering.
Speaker 1: So we we just went with to Steve deal. Plus
Speaker 1: Steve was talking like, yo, listen, I'll give y'all this deal.
Speaker 1: You'll just do what you want it sounds like you
Speaker 1: already got your game mastered. Just do what y'all do,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So we took this uh
Speaker 1: loud deal, and you know, we started working on the
Speaker 1: Infamous album, you know what I'm saying, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: shout out to Maddie s you know, shout out to
Speaker 1: Bones Malone, Cookie Gonzalez and you know, Chris black World
Speaker 1: and everybody that helped us out in the beginning and
Speaker 1: got us to that point, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: With Steve Riskman wanted to sign us. How did Q
Speaker 1: Tip come back into the foe working working with y'all
Speaker 1: on the Infamous Um. So, after we you know it
Speaker 1: was like probably done, maybe sixty done maybe with the album,
Speaker 1: he was like, Yo, let's cold Tip. We want some beats.
Speaker 1: We want some beats from Tip. So we reached out
Speaker 1: the Tip. Uh he came and picked us up and
Speaker 1: he brought us his crible in Linden and uh, he
Speaker 1: was basically just played us mad records. He was like,
Speaker 1: tell me, when you hear something, you're like, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So he was playing mad Patrese Russia
Speaker 1: and he would play his old kind of ship that
Speaker 1: we so I think it was the Patrese Russian one
Speaker 1: with that LLL did the song Pink Cookies in the
Speaker 1: Plastic Bag. So uh so uh, he plays us that
Speaker 1: record and right away I recognized it from LLL song
Speaker 1: when in my mind I was like, Yo, let's make
Speaker 1: a new let's make a different version. Let's use that
Speaker 1: beat and make a different you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we picked a bunch of beats from him
Speaker 1: and we did some songs and basically we finished the
Speaker 1: album up. And when the album was done, we broke
Speaker 1: cute to back in the studio to tweak up the
Speaker 1: mixes like you know what I'm saying, Like because she
Speaker 1: was nice with that, like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: fix the sounds here and then do little things here.
Speaker 1: And they touched the knobs and ship you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. That he basically like took what we did
Speaker 1: and like made it sound good, like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, hooked us up with the good mixed engine
Speaker 1: is you know what I'm saying. So that was that
Speaker 1: was really good that we was able to work with
Speaker 1: him at that point. You know what I'm saying, You're
Speaker 1: listening to the Quest of Supreme, where here were Prodigy
Speaker 1: of Mob Deep and Kathy Yonder Lee, journalists and co
Speaker 1: author of Prodigy's latest book, Commissary Kitchen, My infamous prison cookbook.
Speaker 1: Um okay, I have to say that, you know, the
Speaker 1: glory of hip hop and being alive during the classic
Speaker 1: doing the Renaissance and the classic period and and all
Speaker 1: the periods of hip hop is you know when a
Speaker 1: song stops you in your tracks, yo, I will say.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, I don't think anyone is really
Speaker 1: properly put in context. Why shook ones? It's so culturally important,
Speaker 1: all right, sake take from someone's shelter, someone sheltered like
Speaker 1: me that like, just listen to hip hop to really
Speaker 1: find out what's going out there, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like I'm one of the I'm one of the dudes
Speaker 1: that the marketing people of def jam would have loved,
Speaker 1: because like when Onyx came out, I was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: this is real hardcore. Or like when Niggas for Life
Speaker 1: came out, that was like, Yo, you were in w
Speaker 1: A saying this is so but I didn't realize that
Speaker 1: it was so over the top. Hardcore was cartoonist. It
Speaker 1: was cartoonish, and when I heard shook ones they did,
Speaker 1: I feel like, if if Robert de Niro and al
Speaker 1: Pacino we're making hip hop, that's what it would be.
Speaker 1: Because the glory and Robert DeNiro on Albacino's work is
Speaker 1: the fact that they're so dead Yeah, it's dead pan.
Speaker 1: You're more scared of someone that's silent and just deadpan
Speaker 1: as opposed to like someone's cartooning over the top. Then
Speaker 1: I don't take him serious. I'm like, oh, your your
Speaker 1: bark's worse than your but you're just being a cartoon
Speaker 1: But the fact that they were saying that ship, they
Speaker 1: were just saying and such so deadpan about it, and
Speaker 1: too it was the visuals to like the visual like
Speaker 1: that video. I don't see the video until later, so
Speaker 1: I heard the song was just like, yo, you saw
Speaker 1: the video first. I saw the video first, and so
Speaker 1: for us it was it was seeing the video and
Speaker 1: literally probably about a month after the video came out,
Speaker 1: I remember kids in my school coming homies had the
Speaker 1: Hennessey jerseys straight up. But yeah, it was something. It
Speaker 1: was just something that came through in that video that
Speaker 1: was like, I mean, being in the South, even though
Speaker 1: y'all were New York guys. That was just something I
Speaker 1: don't know, that was just that was But that was
Speaker 1: more New York to me than any wootank product any
Speaker 1: like to me, even even even on even on New
Speaker 1: York New York, where like if you listen to the
Speaker 1: very uh the first twenty seconds, but dog pounds New York,
Speaker 1: New York. I mean, they're basically mocking what you know.
Speaker 1: Like so for me, that's like lightning in a bottle
Speaker 1: you can't even capture. Like I guess the theme of
Speaker 1: Quest of Supreme is that whenever like these these monuments
Speaker 1: hip hop moments happened, it's always an afterthought like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we made that ship like five minutes, Like what was
Speaker 1: the process behind shook ones or at that part too,
Speaker 1: it was party because it was part one first one on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like why wasn't that push and um, I don't know
Speaker 1: it just it just happened the way it happened. I
Speaker 1: don't even know. Man. We made Paul one and uh,
Speaker 1: I think we made we might have made both of
Speaker 1: them around the same time, and then we put the
Speaker 1: part one out for us, put the second one out
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, we sped that shocked that at at
Speaker 1: it's the reception. And you know, every time we would
Speaker 1: make songs, we this is how we would test our music.
Speaker 1: We'd be outside on the block with everybody. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Um, Queen's Bridges. Like I said, ninety
Speaker 1: six billions is big. It's a big projects, a lot
Speaker 1: of people outside. Like we got a lot of friends
Speaker 1: like you know what I mean, Um, you know Brooklyn
Speaker 1: hanging out in Brooklyn and Bronx, same thing. We would
Speaker 1: hang out with all our friends and we would play
Speaker 1: our music and we want to see how people react
Speaker 1: to it, like you know what I'm saying. So you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. We and we got you know,
Speaker 1: our piss people like Nas spitting crazy, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, people like Omega was spitting crazy like it.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of people that was dope. The
Speaker 1: whole Juice Crew thing, the Symphony like that. That was
Speaker 1: like ship that we that was around us. So it
Speaker 1: was like, you know, we were trying to spit that
Speaker 1: level of ship. These are people that we got to
Speaker 1: deal with. These are people that are gonna laugh for
Speaker 1: us if we make some bullshit, Like you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, if we're talking some bullshit, if we talking
Speaker 1: some ship that's not true, like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: if we like we had to deal with people like
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And so that's how we
Speaker 1: would test a lot of music. We were played outside
Speaker 1: of the block, see how people react to it, and
Speaker 1: we would see how friends. Our friends were like, yo's fire,
Speaker 1: you'll bring that ship back, You'll bring that ship back.
Speaker 1: And we would walk around different blocks in the hood
Speaker 1: and just like I said, take it to Brooklyn, take
Speaker 1: your head and take it. Then see how everybody feeling it.
Speaker 1: And that's how we would know we got something. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. The motherfucker's didn't react and we're
Speaker 1: like that, we can't funk with that. But if they reacted,
Speaker 1: we knew we had something. So we did the same
Speaker 1: thing shook once. You know, most of the songs was
Speaker 1: like that, you know what I mean. We would test
Speaker 1: it out on the block and see how people will react,
Speaker 1: and then we were like, all right, we got wanna
Speaker 1: put that out, you know what I'm saying. I think
Speaker 1: another part of the formula that really made that album
Speaker 1: work is the fact that the musical backdrop, it was
Speaker 1: like so it wasn't as hardcore like even for like
Speaker 1: up North Trip, Like I remember, my uncle used to
Speaker 1: always that that came from a Spinner's record, Spinners eight,
Speaker 1: So you used to always play the Spinners I'm tired
Speaker 1: of living on his eight track, right, So that's how
Speaker 1: I always remembered it. But now it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: even though the subject matter that song was more like
Speaker 1: a it's kind of like a fun my friends, like
Speaker 1: I can only trust Me sort of thing, like I
Speaker 1: always had happy memories of being and my uncle Junie's
Speaker 1: card listen to that song. But then like y'all just
Speaker 1: took it and just made it into like yeah, it
Speaker 1: was like ast position of like smooth like soothing sounds
Speaker 1: and then like the most murderous ship on top of it,
Speaker 1: like lyrically even like a drink away the record, drink
Speaker 1: Away the pain, Like that's like a happy hit on
Speaker 1: a song. But then right then y'all slow it down
Speaker 1: and like spit that sh it over it. It becomes
Speaker 1: something was you know, we quote we caught our drift,
Speaker 1: We caught a drift. We was on it, like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, And once we locked in that
Speaker 1: was it. We wasn't. We was like, all right, we
Speaker 1: got it, we got it, let's go. Like you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, We we get in the reaction that
Speaker 1: we want from people. Now, So what of life like
Speaker 1: now that the album is taken off? I mean, y'all
Speaker 1: got four and a half mics in the source. I'm
Speaker 1: one of those people that actually believe that four and
Speaker 1: a half mics is better than a five, because when
Speaker 1: you when you, I mean, yeah, you you can have
Speaker 1: a five, but then it becomes a burden. Like I
Speaker 1: feel like for Nas that five is a burden on
Speaker 1: him because it's like everybody's always gonna say, well, in
Speaker 1: the beginning of this is when that you know, they
Speaker 1: kind of I feel like four and a half is
Speaker 1: like the highest atholete you can get where you don't
Speaker 1: get that much jealousy or or scrutiny from your peers
Speaker 1: or whatever. I see, I definitely see. Did you feel
Speaker 1: some sort of way, do you feel like, oh man,
Speaker 1: we should have got a five like yomatic or at
Speaker 1: that time we didn't really we didn't really care. Like
Speaker 1: the sauce was the source was definitely, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: I was like the bible hip hop bible, like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like that's how we got our break,
Speaker 1: was from the source like unsigned hype, but that you
Speaker 1: know what we were making, you know, we knew the
Speaker 1: power of what we were making, like we felt it,
Speaker 1: we've seen it, we heard it, like we've seen how
Speaker 1: people were reacting to it. So we didn't really once
Speaker 1: we got in that zone, it was just just go time.
Speaker 1: We didn't really care, you know what I mean, too
Speaker 1: much about to give us four mix that whatever, because
Speaker 1: we still had the attitude a little bit in us,
Speaker 1: like you don't know what they talk about, Like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, But it was a little bit
Speaker 1: more polished. The attitude was a little bit more polished,
Speaker 1: but it was still there, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It was still there. So we didn't really we didn't
Speaker 1: really care too much about anything. Once we got our
Speaker 1: ship off and running and shook once Avival the Fittest,
Speaker 1: it was like we out of here, funk everybody. Now,
Speaker 1: let's just do what we do, stick to what we do,
Speaker 1: stay in the studio, stay working, just keep dropping each
Speaker 1: fucking albums, keep dropping his music. And it was just
Speaker 1: like that. That was is it. It was over so
Speaker 1: now that it's more active for you, it's as far
Speaker 1: as the reception and I'm sure the touring has ramped
Speaker 1: up and just the overall activity. How are you able
Speaker 1: to deal with your health issues and still maintain a
Speaker 1: busy like itinerary promoting? And I was sucking up bad.
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize what I was doing to myself
Speaker 1: because I didn't learn about health and dying until like
Speaker 1: my mid twenties, Like you know what I'm saying. My
Speaker 1: look mid too early mid twenties, like you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So I was like I didn't even realize.
Speaker 1: So there wouldn't be times where like right before show
Speaker 1: you might have an attack or it's like it was
Speaker 1: plenty of those times because I didn't I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that I was making myself sick. Like we would get
Speaker 1: up in the morning and have Ian J for breakfast
Speaker 1: like you know, ship like literally every day, like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, and for breakfast like that was
Speaker 1: I think, you know what I'm saying, Like as crazy
Speaker 1: as it sound, that's what we were doing. And why
Speaker 1: was that? Because a lot of people don't really understand
Speaker 1: sickle cell like that. So why was that so bad
Speaker 1: for you? Um? Because I learned later. I didn't know
Speaker 1: it this time, but I learned later that alcohol um
Speaker 1: dehydrates you know what I mean, your blood, It d
Speaker 1: It takes all the oxygen out your blood. It drives
Speaker 1: up your blood cells. So if that, uh, when oxygen
Speaker 1: is missing out of my blood, that's what triggers a
Speaker 1: sick of cell crisis. Like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: you were having a lot back then. I didn't even
Speaker 1: realize I'm doing it to myself. I'm thinking because the
Speaker 1: doctor which told me all my life you got sick
Speaker 1: of cells. None you can do about it. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna live past forty, you know what I'm saying. That's
Speaker 1: what they told me all my life. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. There's nothing you can do about it. It
Speaker 1: is no cure. Just that's it. You got to deal
Speaker 1: with this ship. So do you think a part of
Speaker 1: the Nehilists kind of I don't give an attitude, is
Speaker 1: just the fact that inside you felt maybe by the
Speaker 1: time I'm forty, I'm not even gonna be there anyway.
Speaker 1: So it's just it wasn't so much. I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: subconsciously that, but I never I never thought like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna die forty because that's what they said. But I
Speaker 1: used to hear that all the time, so maybe sub consciously, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But definitely the pain that
Speaker 1: I was going through made me off a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying a little bit. What is
Speaker 1: the stomach? Well, um, now, it's like pain and blood.
Speaker 1: It starts. It starts like all right, you know, blood
Speaker 1: cells around you know what may look like a life
Speaker 1: save or whatever. And when my blood is missing oxygen,
Speaker 1: when it's not enough oxygen, my blood my blood cells
Speaker 1: change shape and turning like crescent moon shapes, sickle shapes,
Speaker 1: and they start interlocking with each other like this, and
Speaker 1: it causes like chain reaction. And when they when they
Speaker 1: start interlocking with each other, it just builds up and
Speaker 1: I guess creates pressure. I don't really like a headache
Speaker 1: or not. He's like like somebody took a hammer or
Speaker 1: sledge hammer and just like boom, Like you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Ever, the pain is that, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's like crippling, like you know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: can't even walk, I can't move sometimes my friends had
Speaker 1: to carry me to the hospital like it's crazy, get
Speaker 1: crazy like so um, you know, I mean, I've been
Speaker 1: remember that. I can remember being a little baby laying
Speaker 1: in the hospital looking up at my family looking down
Speaker 1: at me. I don't even I probably was like three
Speaker 1: years old, you know what I'm saying, And I could
Speaker 1: I remember those memories, just laying in the hospital looking
Speaker 1: up at my family, being sick in the hospital. I
Speaker 1: ain't understand what was going on. I just know I'm
Speaker 1: in pain. I don't know what then is happening. So
Speaker 1: this pain been with me all my life and it definitely,
Speaker 1: you know, had an effect on, you know, my mentality
Speaker 1: and maybe angry. I ain't believe in God, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, because I used to prey it make
Speaker 1: make the pain go away, and it's not going away.
Speaker 1: So I was like, oh, it ain't no God. What
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It just might be a dumb, non celebrity question,
Speaker 1: but did you ever Were you ever in the same
Speaker 1: room with like tea box? Because I feel like y'all
Speaker 1: would have some of the same issues the job. Both
Speaker 1: were on tour a lot, and she seemed like she
Speaker 1: really went through it a lot. Yeah, we had a conversation.
Speaker 1: We were going to do a song on my H
Speaker 1: and I See album, but she said, how label wouldn't
Speaker 1: let her do a song? But do you can never
Speaker 1: feel my pains? Right? Yeah, she was supposed to get
Speaker 1: on that with me. I had made that song for
Speaker 1: me and huh and uh. I went down and flew
Speaker 1: down to Atlanta and for for her to hear it.
Speaker 1: She came to the studio and she liked it. She
Speaker 1: was like, my labels not gonna let me do it
Speaker 1: because they're not gonna let me get on the hard
Speaker 1: core rap song. So I don't know, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? But yeah, the sick of Cell was crazy.
Speaker 1: It was a crazy thing to grow up with. And
Speaker 1: you know it definitely he made me angry, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. I was an angry, piste off kid
Speaker 1: and then my fault. Would you know, he didn't help
Speaker 1: all the ship he was teaching me, and you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So you know, by the time I
Speaker 1: got to high school and they have I was it
Speaker 1: was I was insane. I was an insane kid. Like
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. I was very fucking insane man,
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, going on toll. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: I was chilling myself like I would. We would get
Speaker 1: off the plane. I'm sick. I gotta go right to
Speaker 1: the hospital. You can't even do you got to cancel
Speaker 1: the show. I have got to perform by itself. This
Speaker 1: is when infamous, you know what I mean, infamous came out.
Speaker 1: We was like touring overseas immediately when shook ones and
Speaker 1: all that, and uh, you know, I get I got
Speaker 1: sick in Paris, had to go to hospital in Paris.
Speaker 1: I had to go you know, different places overseas, and
Speaker 1: you know, I just thought it was normal because this
Speaker 1: is what I did all my life, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, get sick or the hospital. We get better
Speaker 1: after a couple of weeks come out. But when it
Speaker 1: started affecting the shows and started affecting the money and
Speaker 1: people booking us, and you know what I mean, that
Speaker 1: affect your relationship with with with having no na like
Speaker 1: would he be on you like yo, man, like you
Speaker 1: know if you do this, he didn't mess up the
Speaker 1: money or yeah he didn't know. You know, we just thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I got sick, of sell I get sick.
Speaker 1: We didn't I didn't realize didn't connect it's because of
Speaker 1: my diet and you know this drinking or just smoking
Speaker 1: or this, we didn't know that, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So we just think I'm he gets sick all the time.
Speaker 1: I hope he doesn't get sick tonight. I hope he
Speaker 1: doesn't get you know what I mean. So after a while,
Speaker 1: the money getting fucked up and promoter scared the book us,
Speaker 1: that started making me think different, Like, all right, hold up,
Speaker 1: this is sucking up the business. I keep getting sick.
Speaker 1: What's going on? So you know, I started doing research
Speaker 1: and I started finding out there like you know, you
Speaker 1: could control the sick of cell just you know, having
Speaker 1: a proper diet. It's all about diet and what you
Speaker 1: put into your body and and uh also also you're
Speaker 1: like your spirit, your mentality, like because once you change
Speaker 1: your mind and spirit, it kind of has a domino effect.
Speaker 1: Everything has a domino effect. Once you start making change
Speaker 1: in your life little things, whether it's diet or whether
Speaker 1: it's spirituality. With once you start making changes everything else
Speaker 1: you look. You start looking at other things. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I eat clean, I eat vegetables, all right, so what
Speaker 1: else do I need to clean? Up in my life,
Speaker 1: Like you know what I mean, I need to stop
Speaker 1: this or I need to stop hanging out with with
Speaker 1: these people they you know mean, get me in trouble.
Speaker 1: I need to stop thinking like this. I need to
Speaker 1: start having negative thoughts. So it's like a domino effect.
Speaker 1: Is it easy to do that? Well, we didn't even
Speaker 1: get into how you guys went from political profits to
Speaker 1: mob deep. But even the first time I met y'all,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember, like the you guys
Speaker 1: did an in store, Well maybe I were just there.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Um, when do you want more? Our
Speaker 1: our second album came out in Philadelphia at Tower Records. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were We did an in store, like played inside
Speaker 1: of the side of that store, and you guys were there,
Speaker 1: and I was kind of shocked. I was like, because
Speaker 1: you know, even then for us, I guess people sort
Speaker 1: of looked at this like alternative rep kind of didn't
Speaker 1: accept us into the fold until like wait later. But
Speaker 1: I was shocked. I was like, damn mob D here,
Speaker 1: Like damn okay, maybe maybe we're doing good. Like I
Speaker 1: know that you guys were in town at night to
Speaker 1: do how N the night before, but I also knew
Speaker 1: it's that y'all rolled humongous like big, Like, how how
Speaker 1: do you if you decide, okay, maybe I need to
Speaker 1: break away, Like how do you separate yourself from church
Speaker 1: and state if you will? I mean, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's very tricky, man, It's very tricky navigating do
Speaker 1: that whole lifestyle and do that whole like you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, communities that we grew up in, Like
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's it's not easy, man,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Like on the average tour,
Speaker 1: how many people are rolling with y'all um now? Or
Speaker 1: if we was in the States maybe like fifteen twenty,
Speaker 1: it could be more. Sometimes if sometimes we would drive
Speaker 1: to like Genetic in or drive to Boston it or something,
Speaker 1: and we had like fifteen calls with us, So I
Speaker 1: got people, So I gotta ask, Not because we're dropping,
Speaker 1: like you know what I mean, it's nothing really, So
Speaker 1: I gotta ask because of us sleeping in the room,
Speaker 1: like you know what I'm saying. So when when drop
Speaker 1: a Gym on Him came out and I first heard
Speaker 1: that on a mixtape, I mean that was like at
Speaker 1: the not even at the hype but at the beginning
Speaker 1: of what would soon become a very unnecessary you know,
Speaker 1: Fable talked about East West rivalry thing, which you guys
Speaker 1: were like caught dead in the middle. What was what
Speaker 1: was your reaction? Because I know, I mean, in hindsight,
Speaker 1: I know that Tupac was just basically like just calling
Speaker 1: out any and every name. I mean even Day Last
Speaker 1: Soul and the Fuji's got. I was like, what do
Speaker 1: they do about it? Right exactly? So I know they
Speaker 1: were just calling out he was just calling out any
Speaker 1: and everyone. But when you first heard, when you first
Speaker 1: heard hit him up, like, what was your reaction, You're
Speaker 1: feeling like, did y'all ever have a relationship with Tupac before? Nah?
Speaker 1: We never. We never met poc. We've been in the
Speaker 1: same room a few times, but we didn't we didn't
Speaker 1: have any connection. We didn't know each other, Like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Um, yeah. So so when uh,
Speaker 1: you know, when they hit him up Ship came out,
Speaker 1: he was like, oh Ship or work. So immediately, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm already thinking like, oh, he's standing up for a
Speaker 1: snoop because we just made a song going back at
Speaker 1: Snoop and Pockets the brand new artists on on death Roll.
Speaker 1: I forgot about New York. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: pockets the brand new artists on death Roll. So he
Speaker 1: feels like he gotta show y'all what I'm I'm death Roll.
Speaker 1: Now watch out, Snoop. You know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: I'll hand do these niggas for you. I'm the new artist.
Speaker 1: Let me. This is my job to do this, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So that's how park mentality was,
Speaker 1: I think, you know what I mean. He was like
Speaker 1: that he got to show improved to Death Row. He's
Speaker 1: gonna hold it down, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: he went at us for Snoop. That's what I think,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And also a lot of
Speaker 1: people say that on the album on Survival when our
Speaker 1: homies have his cousin, he says in the chorus, Doug life,
Speaker 1: we're still living it, Doug life, were still living it.
Speaker 1: Like on the chorus, um, we wasn't dissing Park. That
Speaker 1: was just like a slang in the street, like the
Speaker 1: Doug like probably coined, probably coined the phrase, right, but
Speaker 1: it was so this is what how we were talking, like,
Speaker 1: you know, what I mean. So I heard that Park
Speaker 1: took offense to that, you know what I mean, because
Speaker 1: we were saying thug life. You're still living it, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? So not knowing you just adapting
Speaker 1: what he did. It wasn't know it wasn't even taking
Speaker 1: those shots, right, So what drop dropping Jim on him?
Speaker 1: It's like you know, for for most East Coast rappers,
Speaker 1: one to l A is like, yo, that's some function.
Speaker 1: I mean, at least for now now that you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. But yeah, like how I mean just
Speaker 1: to be caught up in that ship. Were you guys
Speaker 1: like very cautious and coming to Los Angeles for fear
Speaker 1: of like some ship might go down? Or was it
Speaker 1: just like um when when the L A l A
Speaker 1: and New York, New York came out and then Pop
Speaker 1: dropped hit him up? Um? I saw L A l
Speaker 1: A was number one l A radio, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. For whatever reason, we had a big fan
Speaker 1: base in Cali early, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: we had fans out there and the song became number
Speaker 1: one in l A radio and they was requesting for
Speaker 1: us to fly out there and perform it. So we
Speaker 1: were flying to l A. We would bring like all
Speaker 1: our boys with us, you know what I'm saying, and
Speaker 1: we would go perform this song. And we had the
Speaker 1: mentality like you know, yeah, we're were already, We're gonna
Speaker 1: bring our niggers with us. Something pop off. We're gonna
Speaker 1: pop off, like you know what I'm saying. That was
Speaker 1: our mentality, like you know what I'm saying. And we
Speaker 1: was out there performing that ship, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: in the middle of all that. Damn, I'm glad nothing escalated, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know I can get bad anyway. LA is bad.
Speaker 1: New York is bad, like everybody bad, like you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So it could have got nasty, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. But you know it is what
Speaker 1: it is, man like. That's I'm just saying how I
Speaker 1: went down, Like you know what I mean. We were
Speaker 1: performing out there the l A l A record and
Speaker 1: it felt weird, but we did it. It felt like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we was in danger, but we didn't give a funk
Speaker 1: because we're in danger back home too, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. When we hang out with the clubs, we're
Speaker 1: hanging in the hood. Our friends are getting shot, So
Speaker 1: what's the difference. That's our that was our attitude, like
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, it's a different I don't
Speaker 1: give a funk, Let's go perform. Like I happen to
Speaker 1: read the source article, uh for your solo project when
Speaker 1: you were explaining that, you know, the whole snoop crusted
Speaker 1: the buildings line or whatever. I mean, I got the
Speaker 1: perspective you were coming from saying like basically, like we
Speaker 1: out here on the front lines. You know, we're out
Speaker 1: here Reppertend where we came from, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So it's just the the the whole takeover situation like
Speaker 1: in hindsight, I mean, how do you feel like, have
Speaker 1: you guys spoken sense or is it just like is
Speaker 1: it water on the bridge now or yeah, it's basically
Speaker 1: you know what under the bridge. Of course, we still
Speaker 1: we still got that little you know, competition and us
Speaker 1: like we still be looking at it like and you know,
Speaker 1: Jay don't really funk with nobody. You don't do songs
Speaker 1: with nobody like badly. I was surprised when Jay did
Speaker 1: to join with Fabulous. I was like, oh, ship, he
Speaker 1: did the joint with fab that's dope, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I was happy for fab when that happened.
Speaker 1: But you know, Jay don't do songs with nobody, so
Speaker 1: it's like I know that him and Nas sort of.
Speaker 1: You know, people basically see take it over as a
Speaker 1: as a Nas jay Z situation. So let let me
Speaker 1: let me, let me let me start from the top, right.
Speaker 1: I was already thinking when I first heard Jay said
Speaker 1: that line. I was in the club in Queens and
Speaker 1: it was always all my boys and I heard the
Speaker 1: song money Cash Holes playing in the club. I was like,
Speaker 1: it's just dope. That beat is crazy, but with the
Speaker 1: piano ship right, So I heard the line, I was like,
Speaker 1: because you know we listened to we like really be
Speaker 1: scrutinizing rap, you know what I mean, We're like, what
Speaker 1: do you just said? You know what I'm saying? Who
Speaker 1: we talked about? Like what you know? I mean, we'd
Speaker 1: be over analyzing ship. Like. So when I heard this
Speaker 1: and I was like, huh, I caught that ship right away.
Speaker 1: I was like in the open Snoop Ever since Snoop
Speaker 1: came through and I was like, what the fun is
Speaker 1: he talking about? So, you know, the thought just went
Speaker 1: past my head. So I ain't think none of the
Speaker 1: really after that. And I was in office one day
Speaker 1: and Loud and Punt was dead, Fat Joe was dead,
Speaker 1: and I was just kicking in the office chilling, and
Speaker 1: I overheard that Joe said, Yo, you heard that line.
Speaker 1: He was talking to somebody. You know you heard that line,
Speaker 1: Jay said, and he yoke, and so I was like, words, all,
Speaker 1: I feel the same way his money. I was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. You said that. So I feel the same way.
Speaker 1: He's like, work, that's kind of crazy he said that.
Speaker 1: So you know, um, when when doing the Source, I
Speaker 1: did the Source interview and I was like, man, Jay
Speaker 1: z a bitch ass nigger for saying that, Like how
Speaker 1: you gonna say that? Like you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: That was some bitch ass nigger ship to say that,
Speaker 1: Like come on, man, cut it out, man, like we
Speaker 1: was holding it down, we was out there performing, We've
Speaker 1: risking our life like it was serious, like you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. And that comes years later saying some
Speaker 1: ship like shut the funk up, like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Just rap nigga, Why are you talking about
Speaker 1: that that has nothing to do with you, Like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Just wrap nigger. So I was pissed,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was on my bullshit. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying when I was young, my bullshit. I said,
Speaker 1: I said something. I was like, here a bitch ass
Speaker 1: nigger for saying that, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: you know, he he got the word back from Dane
Speaker 1: Dazz and Dan was like, yo, Jay was you know,
Speaker 1: Jay said, you know, he wish you just would have
Speaker 1: reached out and spoke to him instead of saying that
Speaker 1: in the magazine. I'm like, man, whatever, man, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So then, Uh, I actually had a
Speaker 1: conversation with Nas right like before this article. I had
Speaker 1: a conversation with Nas, and uh because met meet what's
Speaker 1: his nigga name, Memphis Bleak. Um, Memphis Bleak was taking
Speaker 1: shots to Nas. You know what I'm saying, Um, he was,
Speaker 1: I can help you out. He was just saying a
Speaker 1: little slick ship here and he was like, your life
Speaker 1: was written? Who you kidding? Something like that. Whatever. So
Speaker 1: you know, I took offense to that. Anybody talking about Nas,
Speaker 1: I'm taking offense to it, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like everybody, you know Queen's Bridge, like that's the crue,
Speaker 1: that's that's our cruel. So I'll talk to naas One day.
Speaker 1: I was like, yo, son, I was like, you heard
Speaker 1: you heard he hit these niggas and he was like yeah,
Speaker 1: He's like, I ain't worry about that ship though. I
Speaker 1: was like something that. Fuck that. Let's go out these niggas,
Speaker 1: so what's up. He's like, no, you like that fun
Speaker 1: the niggas, but you don't gonna go out the niggas
Speaker 1: and niggas ain't nobody. I'm like, your son, fuck that,
Speaker 1: Let's go at these. He was trying to pop ship.
Speaker 1: So you hear this ship they popping man ship. He's like, man, far,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you man, funk that ship man that it
Speaker 1: ain't about nothing. And I'm like, yo, I'm gonna just
Speaker 1: do it by myself then fuck it. He was like
Speaker 1: all right. Then. You know that's when I did the
Speaker 1: article ship said the ship about him, blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and then he did the Summer Jam ship. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Yeah, so how that happened is earth
Speaker 1: Gotti is cool with you know, with Jay and a
Speaker 1: shot T used to go to my Grandmo's dance school.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Hi O and and Uh.
Speaker 1: At the time, we had did a song with Vita
Speaker 1: called Burn. You know, we was like that was my
Speaker 1: We was like my we was going at it with
Speaker 1: Jay like we was going at it like you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. I was going at it with Jay
Speaker 1: like little Ship on mixed tapes. I wasn't taking it
Speaker 1: as serious. I wasn't like being like rapper, like being
Speaker 1: like I gotta write some balls like I was on
Speaker 1: some right and like, Nigga, when we see you, we're
Speaker 1: gonna beat you while we're gonna I'm gonna shoot you
Speaker 1: in your foot. Don't remember that ship, you know, Like
Speaker 1: that was about mentality. I'm not even thinking like I
Speaker 1: gotta write immaculate balls. I gotta make a battle rap
Speaker 1: Like I'm not even thinking like that at all. I'm
Speaker 1: just thinking like nig I'm just writing like nig I'm
Speaker 1: angry right, like see this nigga, so fuck you know
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So we did a song
Speaker 1: with Vita called Burn, and Vita signed, you know, to
Speaker 1: er Gotti. So it's trying to shoot the video for Burn,
Speaker 1: and you know, Burn is getting a lot of play.
Speaker 1: Flex is playing this ship out of it. Right, and
Speaker 1: it becomes a hit and we're trying to shoot the video.
Speaker 1: We hill let and we get a word from Vida
Speaker 1: that she can't do the video. So I called her
Speaker 1: because I was like, video was kicking it, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So I had a number. I'm called up.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Yo, what's going on. She's like yo, pee,
Speaker 1: let me tell you. She was like Earth told me
Speaker 1: I can't do the video because Jay, you know, it
Speaker 1: was like, Yo, don't let her do that. I was like, word,
Speaker 1: he was like yeah, they're hating on you over there
Speaker 1: right now. Just then the third she was like I can't.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I can't do the video. I'm like, word,
Speaker 1: they really did that? She was like yeah, she was
Speaker 1: like they over there like you know what I'm saying, Jay, like,
Speaker 1: don't let her do it? Something like all right, it's cool,
Speaker 1: I understand, you know what I'm saying. Whatever. So Vita
Speaker 1: never got in the video with us because of that.
Speaker 1: So then the whole summer jam ship happened, and he
Speaker 1: pushed this picture up me dressed like Michael Jackson. You know,
Speaker 1: I thought Michael Jackson when I was a little kid
Speaker 1: who didn't so right, away. I knew where it came
Speaker 1: from them right away. You know. Immediately I was like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, he did some real real over ship. Like
Speaker 1: he went and got a pictures and put he lied
Speaker 1: on the picture, said it was proud of the nineteen
Speaker 1: nine or some ship like you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: He lied about the year. Um, so whatever. I thought.
Speaker 1: It was funny, you know what I'm saying that, Like
Speaker 1: mym Nigger was in in the audience and some of
Speaker 1: Jim Man illergy. He called me like, Yo, Pete, you know,
Speaker 1: I told you that picture was gonna come back to
Speaker 1: haunt youse. He had seen the pictures years ago and
Speaker 1: ship when he was like working on music. He was
Speaker 1: looking through the books. He's like, oh, ship looking at
Speaker 1: this ship. So whatever, He's like, Yo, I told you
Speaker 1: that picture come back to haunt. You Like what you're
Speaker 1: talking about? He said, Yo, son, Jay, just put your
Speaker 1: picture up summer. Jim like what So now we died
Speaker 1: and laughing on the phone right So now I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. So I'm like, all right, that's what's up.
Speaker 1: He got jokes, He got jokes. I cool, It's funny,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And that was that and
Speaker 1: then he made you know, he was going at Naas
Speaker 1: and and me. He was like, as Nas, you don't
Speaker 1: want it with holes, so basically talking to me, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, like, as Nas, you don't want
Speaker 1: it with held this that I got money stacks bigger
Speaker 1: than you and all this ship. He talked about me
Speaker 1: the whole song. You know what I'm saying. He took
Speaker 1: a little jabb at Nas where he talking about me
Speaker 1: the whole song. So um, now I'm like this is
Speaker 1: it funk that it's warm? And you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: fuck this ship, Fuck this nigga. Everybody day down with
Speaker 1: So you know, I was on my ship and Nas
Speaker 1: dropped ether, you know what I'm saying, and it just
Speaker 1: I was like, whoa, he took it serious, he took
Speaker 1: the beef and you know what I'm saying, making Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I wouldn't have wrote no ship
Speaker 1: like that. I was. I was too angry. I was
Speaker 1: just mad. I wanted to catch this nigga like and
Speaker 1: do something to him, like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Did you ever talk to Nas after he did either
Speaker 1: about it? Because like he changed his mind and then
Speaker 1: he changed his mind to a major extent. So what
Speaker 1: was he thinking. Was it that he got mad for
Speaker 1: the attack on you or the mad for the attack?
Speaker 1: I think na. I think NAS did eat defended his title. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think NAS did eat And the song called Building
Speaker 1: Destroy number one because Jay mentioned his name, so he's like,
Speaker 1: I got fun that and plus we was me and
Speaker 1: I was already talking about I was like, Yo, let's
Speaker 1: go out these niggers, Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But now I guess he heard that song and that
Speaker 1: drew the line. He was like, man, funk that. So
Speaker 1: he made a song called Building Destroy. Also at the
Speaker 1: same time he shipped on me talking about your apology
Speaker 1: get robbed? You know us that he was talking about.
Speaker 1: Nas was saying some things that he doesn't have no
Speaker 1: idea what really happened. He thinks he knows, but he
Speaker 1: really doesn't know. So he was something I got robbed
Speaker 1: to stand the third and uh. At the end of
Speaker 1: the song, he apologized to me, I love you, man,
Speaker 1: just get away from them fake gass niggers. That's what
Speaker 1: he's saying on the song, Like you know what I'm
Speaker 1: saying after you just shipped it on me. The whole.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yo, where did this come from? Oh? He
Speaker 1: didn't hit you like ya, I got this joint building
Speaker 1: destroy just in a student with him, Like I was
Speaker 1: mad that they was rapping about Nas. I'm like, yo,
Speaker 1: that let's go out these niggas. They're rapping about you.
Speaker 1: So you know what I'm saying. And now he had
Speaker 1: a song this in me, I'm like, where did this
Speaker 1: come from? I don't have no beef for Nats. I
Speaker 1: hate to ask this. What the album is? That one?
Speaker 1: It was one? Was it still madic? I think? I
Speaker 1: think Building shows an still madly? I think I found
Speaker 1: out that Nas was mad at me because I did
Speaker 1: the song with co Omega right, And I didn't when
Speaker 1: I did this one of my favorite songs on Murder Music, right,
Speaker 1: no no, no, no no, it was one of the
Speaker 1: mega songs. When I did the song with co Omega,
Speaker 1: he didn't have a verse on it. It was just
Speaker 1: a beat. I went wrote my verse to it. I left.
Speaker 1: When he pushed the song out, he writes his whole
Speaker 1: verse this and Nash. So I didn't know that before situation,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. I didn't know that. So
Speaker 1: then I found out later. That's why nas he. I
Speaker 1: guess he thought my verses about him because he heard
Speaker 1: that's far from you know what I'm saying, like I didn't.
Speaker 1: I never that. I guess they can change his version
Speaker 1: without you even knowing. I guess years later after me
Speaker 1: being vocal about it and talking about it. That's why.
Speaker 1: That's why I wrote. That's why I wrote the book,
Speaker 1: because it's the story. It's so much complex, pieces to everything.
Speaker 1: I want people to understand how everything transpired, how it
Speaker 1: went down. I was communicating. I was one of the
Speaker 1: main reasons I wrote that book. And plus I looked
Speaker 1: at it like, this is my youth. I'm gonna grown
Speaker 1: man now. That book is my youth. That's my youth,
Speaker 1: that's me growing up. I'm gonna grown man now. I'm
Speaker 1: not like that no more. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I was very hard headed and ignorant and on my bullshit,
Speaker 1: and I grew up. So I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna write a book and I'm gonna just like
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna explaining how I grew up, and
Speaker 1: I'm explaining certain situations for people so they can understand
Speaker 1: why this happened, how did that happen? How did you know?
Speaker 1: What I'm saying? Like? It was so many questions, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure that fans want to know why y'all beefing?
Speaker 1: Why did it? Just? How did this start with it?
Speaker 1: That was the main reason I wrote this book, because
Speaker 1: I want people to have a clear picture of how
Speaker 1: actually went down. Like now, oh yeah, I see Nas
Speaker 1: everyone again. I've just seen him recently at New York
Speaker 1: Fashion Week. We kicked it like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about doing some new music together.
Speaker 1: So we're cool. I don't got no problem with Nas.
Speaker 1: We never really had a I was gonna say, how
Speaker 1: come like a Queen's Bridge? Like just Summit Meeting album?
Speaker 1: Never went down? Could have been There's too many years,
Speaker 1: too many egos, there's too many people like thinking like
Speaker 1: mom deep Nas like yeah, like eight some of the
Speaker 1: most incredible as MCO. One day, Um, I was on
Speaker 1: the phone with Pharrell and Pharrell was like our first
Speaker 1: conversation never No, actually I second conversation. Who's on the
Speaker 1: phone And he was like, Yo, you gotta ask you something.
Speaker 1: He was like, what's wrong with you? Whuen's Bridge? Knames?
Speaker 1: So why don't you fucking stick together and just do music.
Speaker 1: My nigga was wrong with you, Like I'm like your son. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just it is what it is. My niggas just
Speaker 1: hood ship, Like that's what happens. Man. Everybody don't get along.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure everybody wants to be lovey dovey
Speaker 1: and picture perfect, but it's not like that, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like, what's the what's the deal now
Speaker 1: with I'm thinking about other queens of his cats like
Speaker 1: Mega Nature, Littles, Bars and Hooks, Like, what's what's They're
Speaker 1: all doing anything? You know what they're doing anything, and
Speaker 1: you know we're doing our thing. And that's it just
Speaker 1: is what it is. Everybody just doing their own separate
Speaker 1: things like you know what I'm saying. I mean, especially
Speaker 1: for me, I look at it. I went through a
Speaker 1: lot of ship, you know what I mean, just like
Speaker 1: being out there because I'm like outside out there, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So a lot of people treated
Speaker 1: me like that. They were like from the hood. I
Speaker 1: always had to deal with that attitude a little bit.
Speaker 1: A lot of people might have been scared to say
Speaker 1: it or they didn't want to say it. But I
Speaker 1: could just feel it, you know what I mean, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people did say it. So again it
Speaker 1: kind of turned me off a little bit and made
Speaker 1: me really want to just do my own thing, like
Speaker 1: I never said I was from Queensbridge. Always something from Hempstead,
Speaker 1: like you know what I'm saying, And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of different people from Queensbridge wh would
Speaker 1: like to I would like to have you think that
Speaker 1: I'm a fake queen like I like I say I'm
Speaker 1: from Queensbridge, like he ain't rarely from the hood, like
Speaker 1: I never said I was. You just want people to
Speaker 1: think that, like you know what I'm saying. Stop running
Speaker 1: in people's minds like you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: I had to deal with that attitude all the time
Speaker 1: with a lot of rappers, a lot of regular people
Speaker 1: in the hood or whatever whatever. So it kind of
Speaker 1: turned me off and made me just like you know what,
Speaker 1: I kind of I kind of small, just do my
Speaker 1: own ship because I gotta show it made me like
Speaker 1: I have to show you now that I don't care
Speaker 1: about none of this. I'm my own person, I'm my
Speaker 1: own entity, y'all, don't control anything. I'll do y'all don't
Speaker 1: scare me. I don't give a fun from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queensbridge,
Speaker 1: a good Queen's l a. I don't give a funk
Speaker 1: where you from. This is my life. Everybody lived their life,
Speaker 1: and I don't live my life in fear, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So it made me back up over everybody.
Speaker 1: It made me back up over everybody and just want
Speaker 1: to do my own thing, man. That's what I started doing,
Speaker 1: you know, my own ship, man, because I started dealing
Speaker 1: with a lot of that, a lot of that, you know,
Speaker 1: just just weird ship people like you're not from out here.
Speaker 1: Don't you think it's ironic that, like amongst that, all
Speaker 1: those mcs who look at you like that in that way,
Speaker 1: it's like, now they're raising children who and they're bringing
Speaker 1: them up in a way that you were brought up
Speaker 1: in your childhood, like culturally and all the stuff. And
Speaker 1: I even thought that now we're looking at the video
Speaker 1: you doing ballet and like that, now that we have
Speaker 1: the context of where that come from, it adds to
Speaker 1: the dopeness of who you are. And now I look
Speaker 1: at even a blue ivy and I'm like, that's her
Speaker 1: she's growing up in that environment. So do you see
Speaker 1: that now as clearly? And um, I just think that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not everybody. Everybody's not a bad person,
Speaker 1: Like everybody didn't have the attitude. It was only certain
Speaker 1: particular people. And yeah, I mean it just it just
Speaker 1: is what it is. Man. I'm me, Man, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. And I'm the type of person. I
Speaker 1: was trying to get everybody together, and you know I'm
Speaker 1: that type of person. I'm like, Yo, all right, come on,
Speaker 1: you're gonna rap. We made Nooyd and Twin and everybody rap,
Speaker 1: like you know what I'm saying. We was like, now
Speaker 1: you're gonna rap Nigger and Noid Like I don't want
Speaker 1: to sell drugs. I don't want to wrap. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like, no, come to the studio with us.
Speaker 1: Come on, you're gonna wrap son. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I used to help Noid right this ship, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. And we used to all help each other,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And then it was just like,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, I'm that type of person
Speaker 1: to try to, you know, keep the team strong and
Speaker 1: keep everybody together. I shot a movie for Queen's Bridge,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, called Murder Music. I put
Speaker 1: everybody's in the movie. Nas, Everybody's in that motherfucking like.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. That's the type of person
Speaker 1: I am. You know what I'm saying, Like, I try
Speaker 1: to do ship the right way, to get it together.
Speaker 1: And then you got niggas as haters. They don't want
Speaker 1: to see that. Like he ain't even from out here
Speaker 1: doing that. I should be doing it. I'm all right.
Speaker 1: So you listen to the cost of Supreme. We're unto
Speaker 1: our last hour prodigy of Mob Deep and Kathie Yonder Lee,
Speaker 1: journalists and co author of Prodigies latedst book Commissary Kitchen,
Speaker 1: my infamous prison cookbook, And we'll be right back after
Speaker 1: a quick message from our sponsor. So, I feel like
Speaker 1: your journey, it's probably you of anyone has had a
Speaker 1: kind of a parallel journey to that of like Malcolm X.
Speaker 1: We're like you. You had your Detroit Red experience. Literally right,
Speaker 1: oh damn, that's right, yeah, like you. You You you
Speaker 1: had your your Malcolm little Detroit Red experience. And then
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight when you had to do
Speaker 1: your bid um you know you said and that that
Speaker 1: that really changed as you save my life explained that
Speaker 1: because what I want to know, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: ask in away because i know a lot of people
Speaker 1: have a tendency especially in the press, they have a
Speaker 1: tendency to like fetishized jail. Yeah, like or just like
Speaker 1: people have experience, so tell me what it was like
Speaker 1: or whatever. But I'm I'm personally curious, like to be
Speaker 1: a celebrity going into that environment, like what is it
Speaker 1: what is your first day, like when you're when you're
Speaker 1: going there? All right, let me let me just back
Speaker 1: up a little bit and say because I always think
Speaker 1: of it. I always think about people comments when you
Speaker 1: you know, I mean here the podcast or like people
Speaker 1: what what they say? And a lot of people like
Speaker 1: to say, why is he talking about all this is over?
Speaker 1: It's in the past, Like why you keep saying like,
Speaker 1: because this is the questions I'm being asked, So I
Speaker 1: have to answer, all right, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I just want to make that clear real quick for
Speaker 1: the listeners to shuttle that calm and shift down, like
Speaker 1: I'm being asked questions. That's why I'm talking about this
Speaker 1: like you know what I'm saying, and and you know,
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about my life and my youth.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about my youth, and my book
Speaker 1: it talks about all these things, and you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, that's my past. I'm a grown man now,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So I put my I
Speaker 1: put my youth out there for the people so they
Speaker 1: could see all the funked up ship. And now I
Speaker 1: grew up and the funked up ship that I did
Speaker 1: and been through, and you know what I mean, all
Speaker 1: the good ship and what got me to this point. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's why I did this book. That's why I
Speaker 1: do these interviews and talk about past things a lot,
Speaker 1: because these are questions that people asking, they want to
Speaker 1: know the answers to. So going when I got locked up, um,
Speaker 1: it was the best thing that happened to me because
Speaker 1: at this time I was dealing with a lot of
Speaker 1: hatred coming from people from certain people from Queensbridge, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, certain people from uh, you know whatever, whatever,
Speaker 1: but mostly from Queensbridge. A couple of individuals that have
Speaker 1: a few problems with that they just didn't like me.
Speaker 1: Can a quick question. So after the informence, are you
Speaker 1: still living in the Queen's Bridge area or did you
Speaker 1: like we we we probably moved. We probably moved like
Speaker 1: around right after informence came out. You know, I was
Speaker 1: living with Halving Queensben for like two years when we
Speaker 1: was working on the infamous and what I'm saying, we
Speaker 1: would stay at his crib or that we would take
Speaker 1: the equipment back to Long Island Hempstead, change the scenery
Speaker 1: for a little while, then we go back to Queen's Bridge,
Speaker 1: like you know what I'm saying. So after the infamous
Speaker 1: job and we was doing tools and ship, we kind
Speaker 1: of like but we would still go back all the
Speaker 1: time because that's why people on the block, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And we grew up with the mentality
Speaker 1: you don't shoot on your people. You always take care
Speaker 1: of your people, like you know what I mean. You
Speaker 1: don't run away from problems, You don't run away from anything.
Speaker 1: You deal with it, You face it, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, and you deal with the ship. That's how
Speaker 1: we grew up. So that's why we're still then in
Speaker 1: these communities dealing with my people's that I grew up
Speaker 1: with my PIDs because I'm not the type of person
Speaker 1: is gonna run away from ship. I got to deal with,
Speaker 1: like you know what I'm saying. So we were just
Speaker 1: learning how to navigate, uh being celebrity and all that ship.
Speaker 1: And it was never awkward going back there, even though
Speaker 1: you're obviously established as a celebrity rapper and now because
Speaker 1: that was just like home base. That was like the block.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. We'd go to the block,
Speaker 1: have fun, like drink all night. We just I just
Speaker 1: fall asleep on the bench, wake up in the morning,
Speaker 1: little kids going to school. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like I'm bent waking up like oh ship, Like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So it's just like that was
Speaker 1: the block. That's why that's what our friends is at.
Speaker 1: We made something monumental from this block. We created Infamous,
Speaker 1: Mall Deep, we created all these ships. So this is
Speaker 1: our ship, this is our people, like, this is our
Speaker 1: home team. So that's how mentality was. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: after a while, you know, we deal with a lot
Speaker 1: of jealousy people black pe coming right with a jury on.
Speaker 1: You know, ain't from our head rapping about my life?
Speaker 1: Why are you rapping by my life, Like that's what
Speaker 1: they like to say, Like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: you're wrapping about my life. Everybody likes to say that
Speaker 1: that's so crazy. But anyway, I was dealing with people
Speaker 1: that didn't grow up with me. Have it, grew up
Speaker 1: with all these people, you know all I'm annoyed when
Speaker 1: they grew up with all these niggas. I didn't grow
Speaker 1: up with these people, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: they don't know me. I don't really know them. We're
Speaker 1: figuring out each other. I'm seeing who scared who not,
Speaker 1: who's putting pressure on people who are doing this. I'm like, oh, word,
Speaker 1: that's how these niggas get down that word, that's how
Speaker 1: that's out here in the world. Like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, I'm learning, that's I'm kids still, Like I'm
Speaker 1: learning as I go. And uh, you know, we got
Speaker 1: to the point where we were just dealing with a
Speaker 1: lot of jealousy and we had to click up. We
Speaker 1: had to strap up, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's on Like we had to strap up, like we
Speaker 1: got beef with niggas that shoot people. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like these niggas shoot people like and that's it.
Speaker 1: So they cut people, shoot people like that's what we
Speaker 1: was dealing with. So I'm protecting myself, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, I would carry the hammer. I'm not out
Speaker 1: doing no harm to nobody, you know what i mean.
Speaker 1: At this point in my life, I'm just protecting myself.
Speaker 1: So you know, it just got bad, man. It got
Speaker 1: to the point where you know, I started just just
Speaker 1: losing it man, Like you know what I'm saying so
Speaker 1: much negative, negative thoughts, so much all the time, just
Speaker 1: ready to shoot somebody every time I get out of
Speaker 1: my car and walk into my crib or what whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, if somebody gonna try to run
Speaker 1: up on my car being the bushes or I'm on point,
Speaker 1: like you know what I'm saying, Like certain ship that
Speaker 1: we used to do to people back in the days.
Speaker 1: We was bad kids, Like we was bad growing up
Speaker 1: in high school. He was would come back there. We
Speaker 1: was foul neggas. We was doing foul ship to people
Speaker 1: like we're robbing people doing foul you know, young young ship. Right,
Speaker 1: So I got the mentality already, like that's how niggas
Speaker 1: get down. And I'm not gonna let that happen to me.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, you know, carrying guns. I'm dealing with
Speaker 1: this mentality or time, and that ship rots your fucking
Speaker 1: brain and your your spirit and ship rots. You keep
Speaker 1: thinking like that and keep living like that and moving
Speaker 1: like that, it just takes away from your spirit. Man.
Speaker 1: It just makes you a foul person after a while,
Speaker 1: Like you know what I mean, because you're dealing with
Speaker 1: all this negativity and people saying they're gonna do this
Speaker 1: to me when they see me, and making threats, and
Speaker 1: and then I gotta stand up for myself like, Ni,
Speaker 1: you ain't doing nothing when you see me, Like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. And that's just what it was.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately, this is the you know, the the crazy
Speaker 1: life that I was growing up living and the ship
Speaker 1: that I had to deal with. And it got to
Speaker 1: the point where you know, I was just out of control, man, smoking, man,
Speaker 1: we just drinking heavily. Like I was already learned that
Speaker 1: ship funks up my sick oft sell when I do that.
Speaker 1: When I was so angry and just wanting to hurt somebody,
Speaker 1: just always like trick those fingers itchy, like ready to
Speaker 1: show a nigga, like, don't play with me. Like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to going about my business doing my music.
Speaker 1: I'm making my money. Don't come over here playing with
Speaker 1: my life, you know what I'm saying, Because you're gonna
Speaker 1: find out what happens. So this is my mentority every day.
Speaker 1: And that's just started. Like I said, it started to
Speaker 1: right away. My spirit, my brain, everything was just like
Speaker 1: it felt disgusting. And I didn't realize how disgusting it
Speaker 1: was until I got put with the gun in my
Speaker 1: car and got locked up, and I just started thinking
Speaker 1: about everything, like damn, just just living that life and
Speaker 1: just not thinking being young minded, and it was just
Speaker 1: it was just bad. It wasn't good, man. It was
Speaker 1: I was I was gonna eventually get killed or some
Speaker 1: or I was gonna kill somebody or hurt and I
Speaker 1: would have went to jail. One or the other was
Speaker 1: definitely gonna happen. That was definitely for sure, one gonna
Speaker 1: happen eventually. If I didn't go to jail. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. It was like serious, um, And it's
Speaker 1: sad to say it's like that, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And I know a lot of people would listen to
Speaker 1: this interview, like, like I said on the album, like
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Pete think he's tough, Pete
Speaker 1: talking tough. What I'm saying, I think it's tough, But
Speaker 1: I like to address the people that think that so
Speaker 1: they can hear me say that. So save your little Pete,
Speaker 1: I think you tough comment because I'm already ahead of you.
Speaker 1: Though I know that's what you're thinking. We have a
Speaker 1: bunch of nerves. Some people they hit that and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this know this guy think he's talking tough. You're trying
Speaker 1: to make his leave, trying to portray his life. There's
Speaker 1: something that's not I'm just being honest with you. This
Speaker 1: is what it was. I thank you for this, because
Speaker 1: the thing is that hip hop really doesn't allow for
Speaker 1: its figures to come uh in a kind of a
Speaker 1: three dimensional, flesh and blood tone like this is the
Speaker 1: first time I'm really hearing your story. Like I've known
Speaker 1: of you for twenty plus years as an artist, and
Speaker 1: I've read lots of articles, but you know, I've never
Speaker 1: ever known about out your life or your experiences, like
Speaker 1: this is the first time I'm really, really really hearing
Speaker 1: you as a human being even speaking complete sentences. So no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean I think the contrary. I think, if anything,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's more you really showing a human
Speaker 1: side too, your life journey and your experiences. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was going down a bad, a bad road man,
Speaker 1: because it was just like ship was escalating, the drama
Speaker 1: was escalating, the threats people were making threats to us
Speaker 1: was escalating, like it was getting really crazy, especially we
Speaker 1: at the g and It deal and the money got
Speaker 1: even bigger. A lot of people was like, all these
Speaker 1: niggers are stupid. While they signed the fifty, they now
Speaker 1: they're looking as like we stupid. They don't even understand it.
Speaker 1: We got a relationship with fifty, Like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Fifty from self side, it's like my family,
Speaker 1: Like you know what I'm saying, Like we got friends
Speaker 1: in common. You know what I mean that, Like me
Speaker 1: and fifty got friends in common, Like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And it was just meant to be. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. That he got in a position
Speaker 1: where he was able to put you on reach back
Speaker 1: into to some of his favorite all this or whatever,
Speaker 1: and he was like Mom, come on, you're coming with me.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Come on. We was like,
Speaker 1: hold up, you know what I'm saying, Like we're gonna
Speaker 1: get out of this, you know what I mean. He
Speaker 1: was like, you're gonna get this. You're gonna get this,
Speaker 1: you gonna get this. We was like, where did we
Speaker 1: sign up? You know what I'm saying? Like, we was like,
Speaker 1: where did we sign up? I was I was one
Speaker 1: of the people. It's funny. I was on the people
Speaker 1: like years ago, uh that I wrote a review. It
Speaker 1: wasn't even a review. I was just on our little
Speaker 1: website and I was talking about the album. I know
Speaker 1: it was okay. I was on the lawn. It was
Speaker 1: like just the right, but then the lawn. But then
Speaker 1: it went to okay player. So no, I was just dude,
Speaker 1: I'm all my message, but we're just talking whatever. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: ain't nobody gonna read this ship. It's like thirty people
Speaker 1: here whatever. Then the ship goes okay player. Then like
Speaker 1: two or three days later XXL Fonte, this is mom,
Speaker 1: what the funk are you serious? So then like a
Speaker 1: couple of years later, it was I guess it's right
Speaker 1: before you went in and like he wrote, he wrote
Speaker 1: a blog. He was like, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: He was, he was like dissing me back. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: well that's so. That's like four guests and around. So
Speaker 1: dude getting sob and this is our first time like
Speaker 1: really talking talking like we've met like once I met
Speaker 1: you once at Al's crib like years ago. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: but we wash this first time we really talked. And
Speaker 1: so afterwards, um, the joint came out and then you
Speaker 1: did the blog and then you went on your in
Speaker 1: your bid. So then I was on tour with us
Speaker 1: for a minute. We was touring. Um it was LB
Speaker 1: little brother and uh, evidence was with us and he
Speaker 1: an alt with him and so me an owl on
Speaker 1: the bus like we just chopping it up by everything.
Speaker 1: We're just talking whatever, and he was he asked me,
Speaker 1: but he was like, yo the album, Like Yo, why
Speaker 1: you going? I was like, dog, it wasn't that, I said,
Speaker 1: first off, I did you know they were listening back
Speaker 1: to it? Like at that point, I said, it was
Speaker 1: better much like Phrenology. I think it aged better than
Speaker 1: it would than it did. Critique the album myself. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying when I when I read what
Speaker 1: you had said, it made me think that should it
Speaker 1: hit me? I was like, he he said, we got
Speaker 1: rich to stop trying. When I suggested yesterday gonna be
Speaker 1: on this show, did your first start on? I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, but but I don't know what's
Speaker 1: gonna be nothing. Let me it's real. Bet. I was
Speaker 1: just like, it ain't like that. That that but when
Speaker 1: you said, look, when you said that, it made me
Speaker 1: think like and being being locked up that shi just
Speaker 1: made me think about everything. Made me think about life
Speaker 1: and decisions that we were making, just everything, because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there without nothing else to do but think,
Speaker 1: so I'm not just thinking about my own life and decisions.
Speaker 1: We made business decisions. And then I read I read that,
Speaker 1: and I would listen to the album and hear other
Speaker 1: people talk about it was mad we signed a G
Speaker 1: on it, but that but you were coming from a
Speaker 1: different perspective. There was other people that was like just
Speaker 1: mad we signed and they're like, y'all mob, you know
Speaker 1: I was. I was on eight Street one day and
Speaker 1: this old black ladies had to be like seven years old.
Speaker 1: She seen me. She was like prodigen. I was like, yeah.
Speaker 1: She was like, yo, why the fund y'all signed that?
Speaker 1: Just shot down. I was like yo, she was like,
Speaker 1: y'all mobb deep. You're supposed to be just mobb deep.
Speaker 1: You don't signing nobody else. I'm like, yo, it's just
Speaker 1: a business move. Like hold me, like it's the Queen's thing,
Speaker 1: Like nah nah, she was upset what it was. It
Speaker 1: made sense for me because I thought he was from Queen's.
Speaker 1: They from Queen's he looking out. I got that, I
Speaker 1: guess just for me at that time as a family
Speaker 1: and grand this is ten years ago, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. We all have grown whatever is then. But
Speaker 1: my thing was because y'all was coming off the Free
Speaker 1: Agents Joint and that was my ship. I was like, yo,
Speaker 1: actually we was coming on from that's right. It was
Speaker 1: a job, that's right, because we went from jobs. And
Speaker 1: so with that, I was just like, I mean the
Speaker 1: stuff that y'all was doing with alchemists, particularly like you
Speaker 1: and alchemists, just the chemistry y'all have and still have,
Speaker 1: like with Return of the Mac And I was like, yo,
Speaker 1: they just do that. I'm like, man, So then so
Speaker 1: for me just coming from that perspective where I said
Speaker 1: that got rich, I was just like, man like, to me,
Speaker 1: it just felt like like I understood on paper and
Speaker 1: like business wise while it worked, but just to me,
Speaker 1: just as a true hardcore fan, I was just like,
Speaker 1: and then I think they could have just did them.
Speaker 1: And I thought about it. I was like, it was
Speaker 1: right because I'm sitting there listening to you. I examined
Speaker 1: that album, that Unit album, we did so much, and
Speaker 1: what I got out of it is when I when
Speaker 1: I was in jail, when I was just like listening
Speaker 1: to it and listening to it and trying to figure
Speaker 1: out why people are saying things that they were saying,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I was like, Okay, the first
Speaker 1: thing I noticed that it was too much g Unit
Speaker 1: on the album. They was on almost every song. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that why we're making it. We were just
Speaker 1: having fun, like oh ship, I didn't come on do this,
Speaker 1: Oh Buck, come on Buck, get on this song, your
Speaker 1: banks get on this one. Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: We're not even thinking, like we're just having fun moving
Speaker 1: so but you know, being in jail, sitting there with
Speaker 1: nothing to do, I'm just like listening to analyzing the album,
Speaker 1: like Okay, it's to day on too many songs. Not
Speaker 1: only that, but it was it was too many like
Speaker 1: beats from like outside that wasn't really like mall deep
Speaker 1: sounding beats, you know what I mean. But we didn't
Speaker 1: realize that while we're sitting there making it. We was
Speaker 1: like so caught up on G five going on tour,
Speaker 1: and we're like, you know, we were just living a
Speaker 1: high life, like you know what I'm saying, Like we
Speaker 1: was already used to, you know, having fun living that
Speaker 1: life on the road, but now it was just like
Speaker 1: living that life on steroids, like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: with the interschool money now and the big budget and
Speaker 1: the private jets and arenas every night, like you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So we were just lost, man, Like
Speaker 1: we were lost at that point, like you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And I was officially lost because I'm already
Speaker 1: already got the attitude like, um, I gotta defend myself
Speaker 1: like it's mad threats going on. So the threats is
Speaker 1: even high in that because they know we got bread.
Speaker 1: They know we you know, fifty, I bought a bulletproof truck.
Speaker 1: I'm like, nig you know what I'm saying, I'm like
Speaker 1: fifty moving right, I'm about to do the same thing
Speaker 1: because I'm we're getting threats like that, and we kind
Speaker 1: of got beef with the same niggas almost like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I just wasn't living right. So not living right plus
Speaker 1: access to all of that, no money and high life,
Speaker 1: it was just like a recipe for disaster. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. I wasn't. I was gone. I was
Speaker 1: gone dog, you know what I mean. Like I was gone.
Speaker 1: So I had to get locked up that first that
Speaker 1: first week or the first day, like it is the
Speaker 1: goal just to be under the radar and do your
Speaker 1: time or like for people that are notable and and
Speaker 1: doing time. Is there a thing where the judges like, okay,
Speaker 1: I know because I know in Tupox case, he was
Speaker 1: they gladly threw him in gym Pop. Like all right,
Speaker 1: you go to gym Pop, no no protection, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So is it a thing where like
Speaker 1: what is your goal or what is your thought mentality
Speaker 1: that first week there, especially with your condition, which leads
Speaker 1: to the book, which when I when I got locked up,
Speaker 1: when I realized I had to go to jail and
Speaker 1: served three and a half years and I got locked up.
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, let me deal with this.
Speaker 1: I gotta do this time, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And I went in there with the attitude like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to make friends like you said, fly
Speaker 1: under the radar, do my time, get the funk out
Speaker 1: of there, get my ship. And I went in there
Speaker 1: with the mentality to get my ship together because I
Speaker 1: already knew what my problem was, already knew what the
Speaker 1: downfall was as far as like streak sho I was
Speaker 1: going through in my health and just my spirituality. I
Speaker 1: was my spirit wasn't right, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So I went in there with the plans to get
Speaker 1: my spirit together, get my body together, get my health
Speaker 1: in order come and try to come out a better person.
Speaker 1: So I really went in and went to school with myself.
Speaker 1: I went to school to learn myself how much time
Speaker 1: did you have to prepare from the time of your
Speaker 1: sentence to the time that you're going in because I
Speaker 1: know that you have a family take cut care of
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. So it was it was
Speaker 1: about maybe a few months, like three or four months
Speaker 1: maybe you know what I mean. And yeah, I went
Speaker 1: in there with the attitude like I'm I'm going in
Speaker 1: here to get my ship together. I'm gonna learn. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna discipline myself as far as diet, as far as uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just spirituality, my my thoughts, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. I started reading a lot of books on
Speaker 1: you know, your thought patterns, and you know that if
Speaker 1: you have negative thoughts, that change it immediately into something positive.
Speaker 1: And when you practice, when you practice that, it becomes normal.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. When you practice getting rid
Speaker 1: of the negative thoughts as soon as you think, it
Speaker 1: becomes normal. And just you know everything, man, just getting
Speaker 1: better with myself and be just trying to become a
Speaker 1: better person. And like I said, I was listening to
Speaker 1: the albums and seeing what we did wrong, what we
Speaker 1: was doing right. I was just analyzing everything like and
Speaker 1: it took me some time to adjust because I was
Speaker 1: writing blogs and you know what I mean, still popping
Speaker 1: ship and talking crazy ship. But then after a while
Speaker 1: I started being like, Okay, I'm going about this all wrong.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. I gotta I gotta be more.
Speaker 1: You know, I gotta be more humble, humbling, like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, humble myself from calm down and
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Um. I was sitting in
Speaker 1: the dayroom one day with one of my young homies
Speaker 1: in there, his name is Fresh, and we're watching BT
Speaker 1: and somebody video came on. I was, man, that ship
Speaker 1: is garbage. You like this ship? He was like, yo, Pee,
Speaker 1: why you say everything is garbage when you're like, like,
Speaker 1: give people a chance, son, He's like, why you don't
Speaker 1: give nobody a chance? Like when he said he said
Speaker 1: he was that serious and said it just like that. Now.
Speaker 1: He made me look at myself. I never thought about that.
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like, damn you right, Like
Speaker 1: I never like, I was like you right. He was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: the dude just trying to get his money MONEYGGA, like everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, not the same, everybody got different tastes. Just
Speaker 1: let that man get his money, like stop shipping on everybody,
Speaker 1: Like you know what I'm saying. And it made me.
Speaker 1: That ship made me. That ship changed me. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I was like I never thought of it like that. Somebody,
Speaker 1: Nobody ever said that to me before. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. They were just letting me beat me. No
Speaker 1: one challenge you. I did never say, you know what's
Speaker 1: wrong with you? Should like why you shut the funk up?
Speaker 1: Like you know what I'm saying, Let that man get
Speaker 1: his money, like you know what I'm saying. And I
Speaker 1: was made me look at myself. I felt stupid when
Speaker 1: he said that, you know what I mean. I was like, Damn,
Speaker 1: I had the wrong attitude this whole time. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Now, how does how does someone survive
Speaker 1: in that system with uh dietary restrictions? Like is it
Speaker 1: possible to be a vegan in jail or a vegetarian?
Speaker 1: And does the private prison complex even allow for those
Speaker 1: types of foods too? For you to even have access
Speaker 1: to that? Well, every mohere do they care? Every prison
Speaker 1: is different, Every prison allowed different things, and every prison
Speaker 1: you know, won't allow certain things, and um, so every
Speaker 1: prison is different. One will let you know, a whole
Speaker 1: chicken in the ovel. They won't let you let it in,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's just so it depends on
Speaker 1: what you have. And like the packaging, the way it's packaged,
Speaker 1: the way it's sealed, the color on the packaging. Like
Speaker 1: every jail is different. It's real specific, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, for each individual jel. Some jails you can
Speaker 1: have CDs. Other jails you can't have CDs. You only
Speaker 1: have cassettes. Some jails, you know what I mean, they
Speaker 1: still got they still got cassettes. And in certain jails
Speaker 1: you're gonna only have cassettes because they I was in mistake.
Speaker 1: It's like four hours four hours from here dropping up,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And uh yeah, So every
Speaker 1: every prison is different. The food that they that they serve,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, and what they allow in
Speaker 1: the package from your family, it's all different. So um,
Speaker 1: you know they have a special diet in prison for
Speaker 1: like Kosher coaching I or halal diet, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. You got to prove that you know, that's
Speaker 1: your religion, and you gotta have a special diet. Sugar.
Speaker 1: Because one of my prisoner friends asked me, were you
Speaker 1: gonna do a book for the folks to mean for
Speaker 1: the non sugar. Um, yeah, I mean I don't really
Speaker 1: know too much about that, but uh side newt uh
Speaker 1: for the very few people in this room that no
Speaker 1: my day managers era. She loves the ship at this
Speaker 1: point because her diet is that fucked up, Like she's
Speaker 1: like prom noodles. I like this, like she saw that
Speaker 1: as like college survival food. I'm like, not quite there, No,
Speaker 1: I mean she's the type of prison that actually, yes,
Speaker 1: she looked at it. It's like that is okay. But yeah,
Speaker 1: So bringing Kathy into this, how are you hey? I'm
Speaker 1: glad you here. I forgot she was here. So what
Speaker 1: what is the research process in trying these uh these
Speaker 1: recipes out that you you you made in the in
Speaker 1: the book in and I guess the trial and era
Speaker 1: of it all, Like how do you even, I guess
Speaker 1: with very little instruments, instruments or tools, you know, it
Speaker 1: it becomes you know, creative creativities is your is your
Speaker 1: best instruments. So how do you test these things out
Speaker 1: to see what works and what doesn't work? Well, there's
Speaker 1: two like completely different parts of the cookbook. There's the
Speaker 1: stuff that that p always cooked, and then there's the
Speaker 1: stuff that most people in prison cook. So you know,
Speaker 1: so were you allowed special? You know, he just chose
Speaker 1: Like see the thing that's kind of the thing that's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting about the commissary catching cookebook is everything that
Speaker 1: was cooked was what you could purchase in commissary. But
Speaker 1: you know he had been through what was it, five
Speaker 1: different prisons in three years because he always had to
Speaker 1: have an infirmary like nearby, so you know he was moved,
Speaker 1: but I think he spent the longest at Mid State, right.
Speaker 1: So in doing that research, I went through the commissary
Speaker 1: that was available at mid State to know what some
Speaker 1: of those items were. And then so what's the typical meal,
Speaker 1: what's the typical breakfast? Well, typical breakfast at chow is
Speaker 1: different from see because you know they would give the
Speaker 1: breakfast would be at six, right, Lunch would be at ten. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you gotta wake up at five. What was it
Speaker 1: like like quarter to six breakfast and they go to
Speaker 1: yard and like seven, yeah, lunch would be at ten.
Speaker 1: Four o'clock was dinner and you were done so when
Speaker 1: you had Jesus Christ. Yeah, So when it came to
Speaker 1: the commissary, that was the thing that people used to
Speaker 1: to fill to fill them up for the rest of
Speaker 1: the day. So if your family doesn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of money to fill the commissary, that's where you get
Speaker 1: those traditional prison meals like mashing up cheetos and pouring
Speaker 1: chili on them because those are the cheapest things in commissary.
Speaker 1: And also there's a pound limitation to what like family
Speaker 1: could mail you as well, and he would um make
Speaker 1: most of that those deliveries of nothing but can vegetables.
Speaker 1: But because they're in a can, they weigh more. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't like he was able to get like tons
Speaker 1: of spinache, you know, because he would mostly get spinage
Speaker 1: delivered like that, but it's by can. So yeah, even
Speaker 1: though the potential of that being a weapon, you can
Speaker 1: use the top, you can get it taken away. They
Speaker 1: won't allow CDs, but you can have a UM. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, in going through and going through this book,
Speaker 1: you know, and we were going through some of the
Speaker 1: recipes that he actually made, UM, there was just this
Speaker 1: whole other part that you know, I feel is like
Speaker 1: this this voice to culture of people wanting to know
Speaker 1: about those kinds of traditional prison meals. And in doing
Speaker 1: that research and seeing some of those things, and the
Speaker 1: thing that I thought was really important about putting it
Speaker 1: in the book was, you know, on piece first day,
Speaker 1: he had food poisoning because one of the inmates wanted
Speaker 1: to make him a welcome meal, which was one of
Speaker 1: those traditional prison dishes, but peace stomach obviously wasn't trained
Speaker 1: to that. It's like going to Mexico and drinking the water,
Speaker 1: you know, prison surprise, which is um jack mac mashed
Speaker 1: up cheetos to make a cheese sauce poured over like ramen. Right,
Speaker 1: it was something like that. And and by the end
Speaker 1: of the night he had n ivy in his arm,
Speaker 1: so because you know, he wasn't used to eating. And
Speaker 1: I mean the thing is sweat and bullets throwing up
Speaker 1: me up. Yeah. Yeah. And you learn about certain things
Speaker 1: in doing this research, where like, for example, they only
Speaker 1: give you fruit punch and iced tea, but if you
Speaker 1: want water, they give you an empty jug and you
Speaker 1: have to go get it. So it's like, if you
Speaker 1: want to lead a healthy lifestyle, you have to actively
Speaker 1: pursue it in prison. So there's there's also you know,
Speaker 1: there's this um there's prison tea that a lot of
Speaker 1: inmates drink, which is just simply a Ramen packet in water,
Speaker 1: and the average Ramen packet has of us. So you're
Speaker 1: drinking that's prison. It's called prison tea. And how are
Speaker 1: you able to how are you able to cook the
Speaker 1: food on your own in your cell? Like are you allowed? No,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a common area where there's a microwave
Speaker 1: and a toaster oven, which is that's why so many
Speaker 1: of these meals are so simple, which is why so
Speaker 1: many people in dorms will gravitate towards it because of
Speaker 1: of just the availability of those just two devices and
Speaker 1: a couple of other things. So, you know, and but
Speaker 1: in doing the research, you really learn the way the
Speaker 1: prison system kind of controls the situation. And you know,
Speaker 1: for me, the reason why I even you know, I
Speaker 1: was part of this project was over over, Like you know,
Speaker 1: the ten fifteen years that I've been a rap journalist,
Speaker 1: I've had this kind of like unique privilege of speaking
Speaker 1: to a lot of artists right when they get out
Speaker 1: of prison. And I spoke with p like right when
Speaker 1: you get up got out. But I also spoke with
Speaker 1: Boosey and come to find out, yeah, but he had
Speaker 1: also cancer, so I believe it was kidney cancer. So
Speaker 1: and they blamed it on the lean. But I started to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you start putting two and two together, how
Speaker 1: people can enter somewhat healthy and leave like completely a mess.
Speaker 1: And you know, in talking with p about it, like
Speaker 1: literally when he got out and he was just telling
Speaker 1: me these stories and I'll never forget it was one
Speaker 1: of your guys gave me one of the cassettes that
Speaker 1: were available in prison. It was a Jada Kiss, The
Speaker 1: Last Kiss, and like a prison catalog, and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what's a available. So you know, I was
Speaker 1: just like going through the what was available, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: how can anyone survive on this stuff? So you know,
Speaker 1: we were putting this this together and you just look
Speaker 1: at the nutritional information and then I started to dig
Speaker 1: even deeper and you look at what was available in
Speaker 1: like the UK in the fifties, a typical prison meal
Speaker 1: was like prime rib and like mash potatoes and glazed carrotter.
Speaker 1: That was like a typical prison meal. And you start
Speaker 1: you see what happens over the years, and especially as
Speaker 1: it made its way, you know, to this country, and
Speaker 1: and like what was available, I mean even in the past,
Speaker 1: what was available here it was so fundamentally different than
Speaker 1: what's available now. And you know, when we were touring
Speaker 1: this book, the biggest prison strike in history was happening,
Speaker 1: So it was kind of like this perfect storm. But
Speaker 1: it was also pretty funny because some of the stuff
Speaker 1: that we were discussing, like, we didn't make it too
Speaker 1: politically heavy, but if you start to read about some
Speaker 1: of these recipes and what's available and all this other stuff,
Speaker 1: you can kind of put two and two together and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, you know, trying to kill you in there.
Speaker 1: You know, Well, the book they get banned in some
Speaker 1: We got banned in California because yeah, but they said
Speaker 1: it was because there was a hood recipe, like like
Speaker 1: who doesn't know how to make a cooch at this point?
Speaker 1: But you know, and I think, um, I think there's
Speaker 1: also parts, you know, especially when it comes to pop culture,
Speaker 1: the way people like glamorize prison, especially because of Oranges
Speaker 1: in the New Black, and just make it seem make
Speaker 1: this like cool place for a camaraderie. And there is
Speaker 1: some of that in the book, you know, because that
Speaker 1: some of that is true, but there's also something real.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's an episode of Oranges the New Black
Speaker 1: where they they use the prison packets for current for
Speaker 1: like currencies so they can season their food. But it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but the sodium, like you know, or there's a joke
Speaker 1: that one of the inmates um pretends to be Jewish.
Speaker 1: She she could so she can have a kosher meal.
Speaker 1: But like because the kosher meal is the only meal
Speaker 1: that actually has fresh vegetables in it. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's things that they that they put in there
Speaker 1: that I think it's pretty cool. But if you don't
Speaker 1: do your research on why those things are even incorporated
Speaker 1: into those episodes or whatever, you know, you don't you
Speaker 1: don't really understand what's going on. So uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the kosher meals are like amazing in prison and
Speaker 1: the only fresh thing that um that in in peace
Speaker 1: facility were allowed to have as an apple damn celly sticks.
Speaker 1: So yeah, until the day that you you rated. Uh,
Speaker 1: little Punza the CEO the correction office refrigerating little Yeah,
Speaker 1: he used called little punks. He look like little guy,
Speaker 1: a little person, but he would eat the inmates food.
Speaker 1: Like he would come in there and he would eat
Speaker 1: their meals. Like why is there is there someone to
Speaker 1: be an advocate for better health? There's there's some steps
Speaker 1: that I know in California that are now leaving their
Speaker 1: respective I mean these are like Michelin, uh michellan level chefs,
Speaker 1: James Beard, chefs that you know, kind of felt in
Speaker 1: a moral waves, im moral for them to you know,
Speaker 1: learn fine cuisine and then charge people two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to eat it. And so they're going to the opposite there,
Speaker 1: they're going to the hoods. They're going in like South Central,
Speaker 1: opening up healthy versions of fast food spots. And even
Speaker 1: Magic Johnson said the reason why he, you know, opened
Speaker 1: up a Friday's was because, uh, you know, that's one
Speaker 1: of the few places where you can get a garden
Speaker 1: salad or that sort of thing. Um, don't sad, I'm
Speaker 1: going to Fridays for the salad. No. But a woman
Speaker 1: approached Magic and said, yo, I hope this is like
Speaker 1: when he opened up his movie theater. She's like, yo,
Speaker 1: I really hope you opened up a restaurant and bring
Speaker 1: it to the hood so we can have fresh salads,
Speaker 1: because you'll be shocked at the fact that you cannot
Speaker 1: find I mean now that most hood spots are being gentrified.
Speaker 1: I mean even with um the locks, they opened up
Speaker 1: a jar, you know, giving people their first taste of
Speaker 1: healthy options. So it's like, you know, for for a
Speaker 1: lot of for a lot of people, especially like I
Speaker 1: mean even the idea of soul food is inaccessible, inaccessible now,
Speaker 1: like you go to find Southern cuisine spots at least
Speaker 1: in the northeast, not not in North Carolina. No, no,
Speaker 1: but I mean soul food right now, and most hoods
Speaker 1: are take out Chinese food, like what people had the
Speaker 1: experience of, like oh Kyla green and chicken and grits
Speaker 1: for dinner like in the sixties and seventies. Now it's
Speaker 1: gravy white, yeah, ris and wings for unto five. So
Speaker 1: it's like, do you you were play order specially so
Speaker 1: after you experience all right, motherfucker's I'm just I'm just asking,
Speaker 1: do you feel that it's almost necessary that someone advocates,
Speaker 1: uh or speaks on the behalf of of getting better
Speaker 1: conditions because I often hear of the conditions in prison
Speaker 1: being horrible and you know, substandard, and of course you know,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll hear these these you know, right wing Republicans
Speaker 1: just being like you knows that's what it deserves. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's still like you still got to treat
Speaker 1: a person human, and so like, is there any is it,
Speaker 1: is there any step or do you realistically see reality
Speaker 1: where that could be changed. I think it's getting I
Speaker 1: think it's getting every one on board, but having you know,
Speaker 1: their own reasons for it, like um, a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of right wing Republicans have you know, hit
Speaker 1: me and my d m s along with um crazy
Speaker 1: mob deep fans. Uh, but you know, kind of trying
Speaker 1: to challenge me in this discussion. And you know, well,
Speaker 1: their prisoners, like you know, they can eat whatever, whatever.
Speaker 1: And even if you take away like the humane aspect
Speaker 1: of it, right, someone enters prison healthy, they leave with diabetes, hypertension,
Speaker 1: you know, poor liver functions everything right. When they get sick,
Speaker 1: they go to the e er. You pay for the
Speaker 1: e R. So if you want to, you don't want
Speaker 1: to even look at it for anything other than selfish
Speaker 1: financial reasons. Look at that. Look at that at the
Speaker 1: heart of it that it's still it's ultimately costing you
Speaker 1: money for these for people to to get better essentially,
Speaker 1: so you know, which it's a horrible reason to have
Speaker 1: to It's a horrible argument to even present. But there
Speaker 1: are some people that yeah, yeah, well people don't also realize,
Speaker 1: you know, when when you hear people arguing against the
Speaker 1: idea of private prison industry complex, people don't know that,
Speaker 1: um if you're one of the commissary owners. There was
Speaker 1: a website. There was an article I was reading about
Speaker 1: I guess one of the CEOs of of I don't
Speaker 1: know if Bonton is a thing here, and it's in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania's real big. It's like little Devies Bontan. It's like
Speaker 1: these local snack companies, but they are making a killing
Speaker 1: being the exclusive uh provider of all these high end snacks.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like I feel, I mean not even
Speaker 1: I feel I almost know of that. It's like the
Speaker 1: cheapest high sodium, high sugar amount which keeps you almost
Speaker 1: And what's funny is even when you go visit. I
Speaker 1: just made me think about something because I've been the
Speaker 1: way too many prisoners in Jersey. Even when you go
Speaker 1: to visit, they don't even provide, Like the snacks are
Speaker 1: the same for as for the visit, Like say you're
Speaker 1: there and his families as kids and they want to
Speaker 1: eat something while they're there, you better go to the
Speaker 1: vendom machine and get you a chocolate or something. Not
Speaker 1: even like the trail makes nothing in that area, is it, Kathy?
Speaker 1: Is there not one prison is working on their dietary situation.
Speaker 1: You know, I think, um, sorry, Martha Stewart changed her
Speaker 1: spot in West Virginia and she's still yeah, she's still
Speaker 1: but hers is like a minimum security it's a federal
Speaker 1: women's present. I think it was Morgan. That's not Morgan Thomas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's still actively sends them uh fresh veestivals and fruit
Speaker 1: and you know what, what what's going to ultimately happen
Speaker 1: In my opinion, I mean, I'm seeing some of it
Speaker 1: that they're they're talking about doing it in New York.
Speaker 1: It's going to take someone trying to do it in
Speaker 1: such a kitchy way because that's what's gonna end up.
Speaker 1: It's going to become trendy to do it because um,
Speaker 1: I was reading some articles and I like, check out
Speaker 1: the farm to table prison whatever, and it becomes it's
Speaker 1: gonna have to take that rebranding, like rebranding. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: gonna have to be that. Unfortunately in the same way
Speaker 1: that you've got to change the argument for Republicans on
Speaker 1: on the whole prison system in general. But it's going
Speaker 1: to have to be something cute. See for them to
Speaker 1: kids are doing is like wait a minute, right, so
Speaker 1: kind of like the way Heroin got rebranded. I mean,
Speaker 1: but you know, the the jump from OZ to Orange
Speaker 1: is the new black one, you know what took off
Speaker 1: by making it like, hey, what happens when you put
Speaker 1: you know, like that kind of Yeah. So I think, um,
Speaker 1: I think that's going to be the thing that will
Speaker 1: will have to do it. Uh, you know it's it's
Speaker 1: not not similar, but um, you know when people started
Speaker 1: to advocate for better snacks and offices and schools and
Speaker 1: all these other all these other things where those things
Speaker 1: had to change, but it had to be a slow build.
Speaker 1: It's a harder argument in prison, Kathy, Are you saying
Speaker 1: Michelle Obama missed out on that one? Because I just
Speaker 1: like she was supposed to cover that. No, I love
Speaker 1: all prices due to the Queen, but the clue just
Speaker 1: went off in my head, right, she did schools, she
Speaker 1: didn't Well, you know the thing that Michelle Obama did
Speaker 1: that I think was wonderful too was, um, you know
Speaker 1: there's a school in particular, I forget the name. You know,
Speaker 1: my mom had consulted for them in Nork. They had
Speaker 1: a garden at the top on the roof and the
Speaker 1: kids would grow the vegetables they would pull down the
Speaker 1: vegetables and they would cook with the vegetables for their lunches.
Speaker 1: So she did some amazing things, but that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff doesn't translate into prison, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the the initiative that she did was it was
Speaker 1: making nutrition fun, because that was the problem. Kids weren't
Speaker 1: having fun with nutrition. Your your brustles sprouts are gross
Speaker 1: like you know, dipam and chocolate like whenever. Like that
Speaker 1: you're making you're making you're making nutrition fun. But convincing,
Speaker 1: convincing inmates whose families are maybe putting five dollars into
Speaker 1: their commissary and they finish eating at four pm and
Speaker 1: they're starving by eight o'clock and they're hanging out in
Speaker 1: the common area and all they have is like enough
Speaker 1: in their commissary for ramen noodles, convinced them that nutrition
Speaker 1: is fun. Because what what happens is it's not the
Speaker 1: it's not the commissary necessarily, that's the problem. It's the
Speaker 1: quality of the food that they're eating in chow too.
Speaker 1: I mean the sodium levels of some of those things.
Speaker 1: But also it's expired food sometimes you know, they'll leave
Speaker 1: cans for however, long. I mean, there's rat poisoning in
Speaker 1: certain prisons, and some of the food they found glass
Speaker 1: pubic hair. I mean, these are things like these are
Speaker 1: real issues that just the quality of the food alone,
Speaker 1: and what will end up happening is a lot of
Speaker 1: the inmates just don't want to eat the food. You know,
Speaker 1: who's gonna want to eat that? So it becomes a
Speaker 1: matter of all right, well I'll just eat some chips.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of artists that I've spoken to who
Speaker 1: when they got out of prison, and even before meeting
Speaker 1: um Pete and hearing that story, I would say, what
Speaker 1: did you eat like, you know most of the time
Speaker 1: to some chips, like living off like freedoms, you know,
Speaker 1: And and then I remember, um, I forget the artists.
Speaker 1: Was it Thurst and how the third who did the
Speaker 1: prison cooking shows? And he would do this like show
Speaker 1: or he would like, you know, mash up all like
Speaker 1: the food and he would like make these prison dishes,
Speaker 1: and I was just so fascinated. I'm just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it, because if like if someone said to you, okay,
Speaker 1: every day all you can eat the bag of Cheetos,
Speaker 1: bag of Dorito's one of those packets of chili and
Speaker 1: a pack of ramen noodles. Of course by week three, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're you're trying to deep fry your ramen noodles
Speaker 1: in the toaster and you're trying to make a burger
Speaker 1: out of the chili patty, like you're gonna try to
Speaker 1: get creative. So um, and and that that chapter that
Speaker 1: we put in the book. Um. I remember. I remember
Speaker 1: talking to pe about it and he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the things we were going over, and he's
Speaker 1: like fucking disgusting because like you know, he he was
Speaker 1: like he just made a concerted effort to not touch
Speaker 1: any of that stuff because for him it was like
Speaker 1: it could it's life, you know. There he can't eat
Speaker 1: that stuff. So I mean, I remember when you know,
Speaker 1: there was like a lot of the guys would go
Speaker 1: and they would cook together, and I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: asking p like what was the main thing, and he's like, no,
Speaker 1: I would just have spinach. Like if I didn't if
Speaker 1: there was if I didn't want to cook, I would
Speaker 1: just keep eating canned spinach. But you didn't even have
Speaker 1: to wash that off. It's like packed with sodium. So
Speaker 1: there's like really no way out if you don't sit
Speaker 1: and think about it, which is why we put this
Speaker 1: book together because it's like, listen, I get it. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe your commissary is lower than the next guy, but
Speaker 1: there's ways around what you're choosing to buy and how
Speaker 1: you're choosing to prepare it. You know, can I ask
Speaker 1: what was the first and you ate when you got out.
Speaker 1: I went to this Korean barbecue spot, Koo Lio downtown
Speaker 1: and Soho Korean Barbecue. It was really good and I
Speaker 1: thought about it the whole big every time I sat
Speaker 1: down to eighth hold, I was like, yo, man, if
Speaker 1: I was home right now, I'll be eating Korean barbecue.
Speaker 1: Everybody was like, what the fun is that you make
Speaker 1: it yourself? I was likest me, trust me. So as
Speaker 1: soon as I got out, we drove straight to the
Speaker 1: restaurant and I couldn't wait to eat some more that
Speaker 1: good food. What's your diet and stuff like on the
Speaker 1: day to day now? Um, you know, I just try
Speaker 1: to my favorite thing to eat it. I try to
Speaker 1: like grilled chicken, um, like Cathy said, a lot of
Speaker 1: green vegetables, a lot of water, um, brown rice. You know.
Speaker 1: I try to just eliminate fried foods and red meats um.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes it takes time to get to
Speaker 1: that point, a lot of time and discipline. Some people
Speaker 1: don't like water, you know. I mean, it took mean
Speaker 1: about a year or two to really get used to,
Speaker 1: like I could just guzzle water and I love how
Speaker 1: it tastes. Before that, I was always craving for juice
Speaker 1: or you know what I'm saying, So that it takes
Speaker 1: time to develop and discipline your body and your mind
Speaker 1: and your taste buzz to, you know, to do the
Speaker 1: right thing. So you know, after a while, you know,
Speaker 1: even before I went to jail, I was already learning
Speaker 1: that stuff in my twenties, Like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: and you know, just being locked up it made me like,
Speaker 1: all right, I want to see what happens if I'm
Speaker 1: on some military discipline ship. I want to see what happens,
Speaker 1: how my body is gonna react, how my mind, how
Speaker 1: how things are gonna be different if I, like on
Speaker 1: some military discipline straight water every day, green vestibule. I
Speaker 1: wanted to see the outcome of that, So I did it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Because of doing that, I
Speaker 1: was able to work out, like you know they tell
Speaker 1: doctors told me in my life, I can't work out,
Speaker 1: I can't do any um physical contact or stren you
Speaker 1: with exercise because the trigger is sick of sell. And
Speaker 1: it's true. Like certain things I do, like if if
Speaker 1: if if I'm running around too much, my heart rates
Speaker 1: start going too fast, I get to hype, my adrenaline
Speaker 1: start pumping and triggered my sicker cell. It can trigger
Speaker 1: my sick So you know, once I, once I cleaned out,
Speaker 1: changed my diet and was very very very strict with
Speaker 1: it and with the water, very strict with with the
Speaker 1: vegetables and everything. I noticed that I wasn't getting sick.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel sick at all. I was able to
Speaker 1: work out, not feel sick like you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I was just able to get strong and it felt great.
Speaker 1: It felt great. I was like, wow, this is ill,
Speaker 1: like you know what I'm saying, because I was already
Speaker 1: doing it in the streets. Like I said, I learned.
Speaker 1: I learned how to do that. In my twenties, I
Speaker 1: kind of fell off, you know what I mean. Right
Speaker 1: before I went to jail, I started going a little
Speaker 1: down with spiral, going through some bullshit in my life.
Speaker 1: But you know I was already with that discipline. I
Speaker 1: had already changed my life five six years straight smoking.
Speaker 1: But this is this is lie from two thousand let
Speaker 1: me excuse me from ninety eight, like two thousand two,
Speaker 1: something like that, you know what I'm saying. Maybe two
Speaker 1: thousand three. Um, you know, I was on some strict
Speaker 1: diet and I was like learning how to heal myself
Speaker 1: through diet and spirituality. So I did that already and
Speaker 1: I felt the effects of it. And then I kind of,
Speaker 1: like I said, I kind of went on a down
Speaker 1: spiral right before I got locked up. So when I
Speaker 1: got locked up, I was like, you know what, I
Speaker 1: want to try what I did, I want to do
Speaker 1: it to the maximum now. And I don't want to
Speaker 1: really do this ship now. Like I said, straight military
Speaker 1: discipline with it. So what spiritually I don't do you
Speaker 1: mean like meditating, deep reaving. I mean like just the
Speaker 1: thoughts affirmations, Yeah, like just the power of your thoughts,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Negative thoughts like if somebody, like,
Speaker 1: especially being in jail, everybody got bad attitude, nobody wants
Speaker 1: to be there. Everybody's upset. Thing in jail, like everybody
Speaker 1: wakes up in the morning piste off. Nobody even to see.
Speaker 1: Even the correction officers are piste off. They gotta work,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So everybody got an attitude,
Speaker 1: and that motherfucker and especially correcting officers. They talked to
Speaker 1: you like up, go through this, go do go, go
Speaker 1: wash the toilets, go through like they bossed you around,
Speaker 1: like they funk with you, especially when they first meeting
Speaker 1: you and you didn't know who you are. They funk
Speaker 1: with you. They try to press your buttons and see
Speaker 1: if you how you react. So I used that as
Speaker 1: all right, this is gonna be my training. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: control my thoughts as soon as he or anybody gives
Speaker 1: me a bad attitude instead of me saying that funk
Speaker 1: in my mind. You know, my first thought in my
Speaker 1: mind used to be gonna fun this nigger, like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, piece of ship. But then now
Speaker 1: I started practicing as soon as that thought pops in
Speaker 1: my head, change it. But like you know what, I'll
Speaker 1: pray for him, you know what I'm saying. Hopefully he'll
Speaker 1: get his thing together, you know what I mean. He
Speaker 1: don't know what he's doing. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: he's just angry, he gotta work here. So I'll pray
Speaker 1: for this person that should and I'll change my thoughts
Speaker 1: to that. So I started practicing that and there, and
Speaker 1: that was like the perfect place to practice that, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, because you're dealing with all his
Speaker 1: tensions and foul ship every day. So I would practice
Speaker 1: that every day every day, practice changing my thoughts immediately
Speaker 1: as soon as the thought prop of mina I changed
Speaker 1: to something else. And then when I kept doing it,
Speaker 1: it just it happened naturally, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have to think about it no more. And through eating
Speaker 1: right and you know, thinking different, it changed like spirituality,
Speaker 1: that changes your spirit. Once you start thinking different, you know,
Speaker 1: you're more at peace. You're more at peace with everybody
Speaker 1: else and yourself. You know what I'm saying. You you
Speaker 1: walk peacefully, like you carry yourself peacefully. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Um. At the same time, you know, UM,
Speaker 1: who I am. I grew up how I grew up,
Speaker 1: So it's not like I turned into some soft sucker motherfucker.
Speaker 1: I just know how to control my thoughts. Now. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say too man, I hear that in the
Speaker 1: new record too. I listened to it on the plane
Speaker 1: on the way over here. And ship is dope, Man,
Speaker 1: I can hear like just the the I don't want
Speaker 1: to misquote the liquor, but it was one joint in particular.
Speaker 1: You were talking about, you know what, it ain't about
Speaker 1: black and I don't care if you white. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it ain't about your religion. You were just you know,
Speaker 1: just kind of speaking. Yeah, and you're saying, I just tyranny,
Speaker 1: don't about none of that. Race don't matter. Yeah, your
Speaker 1: faith don't matter. The enemy is government tyranny. All that
Speaker 1: other ship don't matter, like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You rich, don't matter, you broke, don't matter. The enemy
Speaker 1: they threatened our liberties, all that other ship don't matter,
Speaker 1: like you know what I'm saying. That's what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get because they try to like divert attention with
Speaker 1: like a lot of racial issues. Now, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of racial issues with this country, like
Speaker 1: for a long time. But they magnify that ship on
Speaker 1: the news, and they magnify so much to the point
Speaker 1: where we think it's more than what it really is,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like, and if people only
Speaker 1: knew we all have a common enemy that's really trying
Speaker 1: to destroy our spirit in our soul and I control
Speaker 1: our life. We actually have a common enemy. Is like,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, That's what I was trying
Speaker 1: to get a cross the point I was trying to
Speaker 1: get closed on that song. So um yeah, you know
Speaker 1: I would practice that in jail, and it just it
Speaker 1: changed me. Man, that's it felt great. I was like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: this is ill. I was like, this is a great
Speaker 1: way to think. Like I'm glad I was doing this.
Speaker 1: I was like, man, this is great man meditation. Well,
Speaker 1: I was like, you know what I mean. It just
Speaker 1: made me feel better. I felt better every day as
Speaker 1: a person, Like you know what I mean, Well, priors
Speaker 1: of you, we are going to have to close this show. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we could talk to you forever. I do have one
Speaker 1: last question, what up though? Are we gonna get one
Speaker 1: more reunion an album out of you? And having we
Speaker 1: definitely didn't have like crack fings when it comes to
Speaker 1: hip hop, like it's like we that's good like rock him,
Speaker 1: but like my fiend, So you're about to do something
Speaker 1: your You're I know that you're gonna do. Uh, you're
Speaker 1: doing a few projects with live musicians, You're doing your
Speaker 1: residency at Blue Note. Yeah that's every month. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: do it once a month. Then, so how can people
Speaker 1: find out like news about upcoming dates with you and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing? Um, always tell people like you know,
Speaker 1: you can always Google, come hit up, hit up Google,
Speaker 1: like Yo, are you on Twitter? Or yeah, yeah I'm
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Mob Deep, Instagram, Prodigy, mab Deep. Um, but
Speaker 1: I'll forget sometimes to myself. If you want to know
Speaker 1: what any of your favorite artist is performing, or when
Speaker 1: a new album is dropping in, you could go right
Speaker 1: on Google and just be like yo, Deep new album
Speaker 1: or Prodigy new concert or you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: like and it's all pop up like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying or or you you I guess. Uh. Cleverly
Speaker 1: released the Hegelian dialect dialectic uh Orange January, which was
Speaker 1: yeah I was gonna say and I was playing out.
Speaker 1: We did that, I figured as much. Um, Oh, my
Speaker 1: year's birthday and your birthday, well yeah it's all about you,
Speaker 1: like right, well, Kathy and prior, I thank you very
Speaker 1: much for Yeah, thank you. I don't even think I'll
Speaker 1: go through the customary what we learned thing, because I
Speaker 1: think we learned everything at the same time. Man, shout
Speaker 1: out to everybody too, Man, I always gotta do this. Man,
Speaker 1: Shout to jay Z, Shout to NAJ, Shout to my niggas. Man.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. So low, you know I
Speaker 1: funk with your n This is like, Man, I'm a
Speaker 1: fan of jay Z. You know what I'm saying. We
Speaker 1: went through our ship. I'm a fan. I love son,
Speaker 1: He's one of the allers. I learned so much from
Speaker 1: him watching him do business. Hey, charry yourself in the
Speaker 1: same with Nasa. I so much for how he writes
Speaker 1: songs and make his music. Like, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It ain't no, ain't no beef, ain't know none of
Speaker 1: that ship. Man, we grown involved, I'm saying, yeah, But
Speaker 1: you gotta get out the comments. Don't read them comments.
Speaker 1: No more they get comments reading the comments than the
Speaker 1: articles that when they're taking him down too much. Remember
Speaker 1: none of the positive. I don't remember the negative. Joe.
Speaker 1: The listeners out there, man, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Anybody could go to jail. I was locked up with
Speaker 1: a lot of characters from different walks of life. Everybody
Speaker 1: could get locked You too can go to jail. I
Speaker 1: was in there with judges, d A's detectives. My prisoner
Speaker 1: friend just said at the other day here and there
Speaker 1: with engineers, bombers, millionaires. Anybody can get locked up. Mistakes happy,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you can make a mistake, a
Speaker 1: fatal mistake, and end up going to jail. And from
Speaker 1: any walk of life. Look at Martha Stewart. So what
Speaker 1: I don't wop saying that is just, you know, stay
Speaker 1: out of jail man, so you ain't gotta eat that
Speaker 1: crap man out the corner store. Stay out the corner
Speaker 1: store man, stay as in the street man due to
Speaker 1: the reg thing. And on that note, on b Prodigy
Speaker 1: Kathie Yonda, I got it finally, Sugar Steve, Sugar Steve,
Speaker 1: Damn Sugar Steve. We didn't even bring up your sugar,
Speaker 1: Sugar Sugar exactly get you. Just hang out with you
Speaker 1: and that whatever whatever. Unfaith Bill Boss Bill Fartigolo and
Speaker 1: Margaret Margaret, how many prisons have been doing Jersey remember
Speaker 1: everywhere tool, Yeah, this is a question. Love, of course,
Speaker 1: Love Supreme. We will see you on the next ground.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, see you later. What's Love Supreme
Speaker 1: is a production my Heart Radio. This classic episode was
Speaker 1: produced by the team at Pandora. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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