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Speaker 2: All right, Gods, welcome back another episode. E y L
Speaker 2: Yeah virtually virtual edition. So today's a special episode because
Speaker 2: you know the good thing we're having a business podcast.
Speaker 2: It allows you to cover almost everything. Everything is a
Speaker 2: business level of money and finances. Like Wu Tang said,
Speaker 2: casualles everything as a fact. So, you know, we wanted
Speaker 2: to do this this episode for a while as far
Speaker 2: as cover the prison system and cover the state of
Speaker 2: you know, criminal justice reform and mastercarceration from a financial standpoint, because.
Speaker 3: It's it's a business, it's.
Speaker 2: A billion dollars billion, and you know, we wanted to
Speaker 2: just make sure that, you know, we ate had enough information.
Speaker 2: And then we wanted to bring somebody on with a
Speaker 2: with a real life experience.
Speaker 4: Author experience.
Speaker 2: So it was like just perfect because not only does
Speaker 2: our guests have a real life experience, but he's on
Speaker 2: the front lines as far as being a social activist
Speaker 2: for years. And not only that, one of the best
Speaker 2: them sees ever ball football.
Speaker 3: I mean I remember from the Violated days man, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I remember I had the post wall Man album.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you're not familiar my song, my song
Speaker 2: is our guest today and yeah, my song is is
Speaker 2: dope from a musical standpoint, huge following on social media
Speaker 2: and on flex arguably one of the best flex freestyles ever.
Speaker 4: I think you got like five of the top ten joints.
Speaker 2: That's a fact. So so yeah, it's crazy. Wallow just
Speaker 2: posted it yesterday. Shout out to Wildstow brother. So yeah,
Speaker 2: one of the best flex funk flex freestyles ever, but
Speaker 2: bigger than that. Just like I said, social activists be
Speaker 2: on the front lines really doing this thing and making
Speaker 2: a difference in the community. So first and foremost, before
Speaker 2: we get started, thank you, thank you for joining us, appreciate.
Speaker 5: It, thank you for having me. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I still remember the first line the first time
Speaker 3: I ever heard you my song Lefty, That's still one
Speaker 3: of the hardest intros to a rap song I've ever
Speaker 3: left rifle.
Speaker 2: That was different. That was different. So yeah, So Mice,
Speaker 2: I want to tell people the backstoor they might not know.
Speaker 2: They might have just seen your freestyles, or they might
Speaker 2: have seen you, you know, doing the social activist thing, but
Speaker 2: they might not have known your story of you know,
Speaker 2: where you got to this point.
Speaker 6: And for us, we grew up.
Speaker 2: In the nineties, grew up in the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: and were huge fans of music. So when me and Troy,
Speaker 2: like when we first started ahead about your name, it
Speaker 2: was on the underground circuit and then that that Rough
Speaker 2: Riders Rough Fires was so hot. It's kind of hard
Speaker 2: for me to explain to people that's younger, like Rough
Speaker 2: Riders was it they had. It was bigger than music though,
Speaker 2: because they had the whole motorcycle movement and they had
Speaker 2: the merch, they had the T shirts and it was
Speaker 2: like they was huge. Like it's kind of hard for
Speaker 2: me to make a comparison to any not one right now. No,
Speaker 2: they was like three hundred, five hundred deep with motorcycles
Speaker 2: like all over the country.
Speaker 4: Shut.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So so when they put out their compilation, you had
Speaker 2: that legendary verse and then your name was just buzzing
Speaker 2: all over and believe you signed with Violator. But then
Speaker 2: you know, you was incarcerated for seven years came out.
Speaker 2: So can you talk about that as far as your
Speaker 2: journey from being a musician to being incarcerated and then
Speaker 2: coming home.
Speaker 6: And I'm not.
Speaker 2: Sure if you if you first started your activism, uh
Speaker 2: when you first came home, or if it took a
Speaker 2: while for that or like was that actually started while
Speaker 2: you were incarcerated. And you know what's crazy funny story
Speaker 2: because I got like a photographic memory. I memorized everything.
Speaker 2: I don't even know if you remember this. I think
Speaker 2: like the first week you was home, because it was
Speaker 2: like a big thing when you came home too. And
Speaker 2: the first week you just came home. We saw at
Speaker 2: two Fish, one Fish.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: It was out.
Speaker 2: We was out, We was out with some of our
Speaker 2: friends and he was like, Yo, that's my song right there.
Speaker 2: Just came home, Like he literally just came home. That's crazy.
Speaker 2: I just remember that. So, yeah, can you talk about
Speaker 2: that as far as your journey from music to being
Speaker 2: incarcerated and then you know, doing what you're doing now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's gonna be a long story, So let's
Speaker 5: sit back for it.
Speaker 4: We're ready, ready, But.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I got signed. I mean, I started in
Speaker 7: the industry in about ninety eight. My then manager, Tone
Speaker 7: was he was he was He managed Mace and I
Speaker 7: had a group back in the days. We called ourselves
Speaker 7: to Cartel and it was three. It was three of us.
Speaker 7: It was me and my friend Steve and my friend
Speaker 7: Camp and we kind of sound like the Locks though,
Speaker 7: you know, we had that whole Locks feel because that
Speaker 7: was that was the thing that, yeah, the Bronx, So
Speaker 7: we had that feel and we sounded different, but we
Speaker 7: sound it was similar because it was street and it
Speaker 7: was three of us, so you know, we were trying
Speaker 7: to get a deal, and a lot of people was
Speaker 7: like that we was dope. We actually did. We had
Speaker 7: an interview. That's what super Mario was it.
Speaker 5: Bad Boy. We bought.
Speaker 7: He brought us to his office and he was like,
Speaker 7: y'all sound a lot like the locks. Y'all need to
Speaker 7: try to try to look more like daylight soul.
Speaker 5: Or something.
Speaker 4: Two different spectrum, looking.
Speaker 7: For more of you know whatever. Anyway, so then we
Speaker 7: met up with my manager. He had met them first
Speaker 7: in the barber shop in the Bronx and.
Speaker 5: He was from.
Speaker 7: Queen's and he happened to be there with one of
Speaker 7: his friends that owned the barber shop.
Speaker 5: I heard my boy's rhyming.
Speaker 7: And then he was interested in them because he was
Speaker 7: I guess he had just finished manager man. He was
Speaker 7: still doing some things in and out of the industry,
Speaker 7: but he had just he was managing made for a
Speaker 7: little while and was still looking, you know, to move
Speaker 7: around the industry. He had a lot of connections, so
Speaker 7: he wanted to meet with them and he's like yo,
Speaker 7: He's like yo you and they was like yo, if
Speaker 7: you think we doe, you got to hear our other part.
Speaker 5: And by that time I had kind of got a
Speaker 5: little jaded with the industry. We had like three different
Speaker 5: and you know too.
Speaker 7: A Marrow had told us to sound like daylight soul,
Speaker 7: and it was just like, man, I'm in the street.
Speaker 5: I ain't even worried about that. So they like, you
Speaker 5: always going to meet with this dude.
Speaker 7: I'm not doing that, you know what I'm saying for what,
Speaker 7: I'm tired to keep hearing the same old shit. So
Speaker 7: I let him talk me into a dude pulls up.
Speaker 5: That's the ninety eight.
Speaker 7: He pulls up in front of my building with a navigator, black,
Speaker 7: brand new navigator, so nobody ain't have no no navigating
Speaker 7: in ninety eight. He got me somebody, he know, he
Speaker 7: doing something. They posed in front of my building getting
Speaker 7: a car. He like, I'm just quiet because I'm always
Speaker 7: the one that never pays, you know, never believes nothing.
Speaker 7: I'm always skeptical with everybody. So I'm sitting in back.
Speaker 7: They talking to me quiet. He looking at me like,
Speaker 7: what's what's your name. I'm like, my name is my son.
Speaker 7: And then he's just like you all right, I'm good.
Speaker 7: I'm just I don't know you.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm just kid.
Speaker 4: I'm eighteen years old.
Speaker 7: And my man say, I feel all right, but I
Speaker 7: still just don't know. You don't know if there's some
Speaker 7: game you wasting our time whatever. So he throws on
Speaker 7: beats and they spit. So then he like, so do
Speaker 7: you Rhy'm like yeah, Ron, He's like, so what they
Speaker 7: I'm like because you know, I'm not in the more
Speaker 7: right now. So he laughs, he's laughing, like all right,
Speaker 7: I get it. So then he happens to play a
Speaker 7: beat that I fuck with, so I spit. So he
Speaker 7: just looked at me, so all right, and we drove.
Speaker 7: We drove straight to.
Speaker 5: First person.
Speaker 7: We drove to I think we drove. That's what free.
Speaker 7: If you're back in the industry, that's what I'm free.
Speaker 7: Leskin brother he had afro light Eus. He used to
Speaker 7: run Jermaine Duprieze organization. So he took me the Freeze
Speaker 7: office in the city. We went straight in the building,
Speaker 7: boom upstairs. We're sitting in there. So he's like, yo, Rob,
Speaker 7: so we spitting the nigga like yo, he dope. He
Speaker 7: takes me to that's what uptown. Baby came out and
Speaker 7: Tracy Waybles was the man he was managed. They was
Speaker 7: managing Lord Trekan Peters.
Speaker 5: So I mean there, but they're like, oh, let's take
Speaker 5: the fight.
Speaker 7: So by the end of the day we had went
Speaker 7: to four different record latives. He just got us inside
Speaker 7: like and they was all like, nah, he's doing his dough,
Speaker 7: but we like him more, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So he was that's what he's like. Yo.
Speaker 7: We everybody listened, but most of the people liked you.
Speaker 7: So you know, that's when I started believing him. He
Speaker 7: ain't really just no dude, that's bullshit and that's coming,
Speaker 7: you know, trying to play no games.
Speaker 5: And from there I had I went to we had.
Speaker 5: What happened was I had a big battle.
Speaker 6: With Sean in front of Justice.
Speaker 3: Justine heard about that.
Speaker 5: That was that was like.
Speaker 7: But prior to that, I had went to UN's office.
Speaker 7: Who was that's when entertainment you know Cam Cam, the
Speaker 7: cam there, Charlie Baltimore and who I think it was
Speaker 7: just Cam and Charlie. So I walked into under office
Speaker 7: and just start rhyming, almost we signing him, don't don't
Speaker 7: let nobody else him. I did a song that day
Speaker 7: in the studio. Digga, who is producing most of Cam tracks,
Speaker 7: was in the studio with me. We did this song
Speaker 7: that was so five that it was probably like it's
Speaker 7: still like one of my favorite songs. It never came
Speaker 7: out nothing. We played this song. She was fired so
Speaker 7: that I was supposed to get signed to them before.
Speaker 7: So he's like, ya, don't let nobody else him. I
Speaker 7: was like, y, don't let nobody else him. We're gonna
Speaker 7: sign him. Now, that's what Sean had just got signed
Speaker 7: a bad boy. So but nobody knew that I had
Speaker 7: this case that I was. I had a case from
Speaker 7: ninety seven, so I'm still fighting this case. So we're
Speaker 7: supposed to do the deal. For a couple of weeks.
Speaker 7: Underfinds out I have the case. You know, I told like,
Speaker 7: y'all got this case. So now he backs out to
Speaker 7: deal like, oh, he got a case I don't really
Speaker 7: want to do. I don't know, I don't know. So man,
Speaker 7: we're back on it on the shipping. But nobody else
Speaker 7: knows about the case with us whatever. So we go
Speaker 7: to Justice and were fast forward to Justice and Nori and.
Speaker 5: Sean is outside just Romen.
Speaker 2: Randomly, randomly, they just to be on Tuesday nights with
Speaker 2: industry nights, so randomly you'll pull up the Justice and
Speaker 2: Niggas the South.
Speaker 4: Side rom ninety eight. That that that was. That was
Speaker 4: the time. That was the NI album, That's what.
Speaker 5: And I remember when he when he first.
Speaker 4: Played super Dog super Dog No No.
Speaker 5: Not super Dog the show we.
Speaker 6: Had pun King TV TV.
Speaker 7: He pulled up there and played that song and I
Speaker 7: was like, yo, let me just get on.
Speaker 4: This please, Oh my gosh, this like.
Speaker 5: How did this happen? Anyway? So we outside did they freestyling?
Speaker 7: My lawyer at the time, Matt Middleton, was listening to
Speaker 7: the he listening to the Ryan's like, yo, he comes inside.
Speaker 5: We inside justine eating he come like yo, the outside
Speaker 5: rhym and shining.
Speaker 7: Numbers out there. And I know, Seana the dude, I
Speaker 7: just got the million dollar deal. You know, I got
Speaker 7: a hundred ROMs in the clip. I'm already mad. You
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying. I got a chip on my shoulder,
Speaker 7: like I'm dead than this nigga.
Speaker 5: He's fake biggie.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 6: That was the thing.
Speaker 3: That was the thing at that time. I was like,
Speaker 3: how y'all gonna start to doing so like that.
Speaker 7: Side the nigga whatever. So I'm alright, I go outside.
Speaker 7: So my man, my Man's.
Speaker 5: Like ahead go ahead.
Speaker 7: And then and then Norman was like, yo, you want
Speaker 7: to spit because Normany had never heard me. Rob to
Speaker 7: this time like he ain't never heard me. So I'm
Speaker 7: all right, I'll throw something in there. Ron Norman listened
Speaker 7: to me like, oh, this is fire the Sean Ron.
Speaker 7: He's okay, let.
Speaker 5: Me get out of this. He backs up. I go again. Yeah,
Speaker 5: proud Clue is there. It's everybody's coming.
Speaker 7: It's we got one of the biggest circles in the park,
Speaker 7: a lot of justice that probably ever happened.
Speaker 5: So we going. It was to the point where I noo.
Speaker 5: It was like enough enough enough.
Speaker 7: Man, you you got to slow down, killer, you're trying
Speaker 7: to kill this man.
Speaker 5: So it went back.
Speaker 7: It got back to puff that y'all he ate your artists,
Speaker 7: and yo, he killed Shine in front of the things.
Speaker 7: So I had this big bidding war. You know what
Speaker 7: I'm saying. We had a bidding war. Jamaine Dupre flew
Speaker 7: me up to his house. I sat down with pretty
Speaker 7: much every label from there. Chris Lighty was like, Yo,
Speaker 7: what we're gonna do. Chriss from the Pronx inst in peace.
Speaker 7: And I had this big bidding war and ended up
Speaker 7: going with Chris lighting Man and me and Sean became
Speaker 7: best friends after that, like because people was trying to
Speaker 7: peg us against each other, you know, and all he
Speaker 7: killed you Puff Puff was mad, like, Yo, I want
Speaker 7: you why I'm outside, No more messing up my money, you.
Speaker 5: Know what I'm saying. So it was it was it
Speaker 5: was an issue for me.
Speaker 7: Mean, we and him almost had We almost got into
Speaker 7: a fight over we was in the hand things.
Speaker 5: His man's was, man, it really was one of his man's.
Speaker 5: It wasn't him.
Speaker 7: His man's Like, fuck that nigga, he showing you fake love.
Speaker 7: So we almost got into a big beef. The whole
Speaker 7: teams were all twenty D you know what, we just
Speaker 7: haven't have somebody in the middle. I think it was Wolf.
Speaker 7: Wolf pretty much squashed that. God bless it that he
Speaker 7: had us sit gate, had us do a sit down,
Speaker 7: and we became best friends after that. So I got signed.
Speaker 7: I signed with Chris Lady. I was originally going to
Speaker 7: sign the Rough Fighters, but I just I had an ego,
Speaker 7: you know what I'm saying. I was like, Yo, that's
Speaker 7: what that's that's that's DMX label, Like I want to
Speaker 7: do that over here. I want my own, Like I
Speaker 7: don't want to be under DMX. I love X, but
Speaker 7: I want to be my own.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: When they got he got the Rough Fighters, I want
Speaker 7: to have the problem Children because that was my organization
Speaker 7: and I was the problem child and I had like
Speaker 7: five of my dudes.
Speaker 5: I called them a problem Georgia. So I'm like, we
Speaker 5: can have our own stuff.
Speaker 7: I don't want to sign underneath, and they was like, nah,
Speaker 7: you can do this, but I'm like, nah, everybody already
Speaker 7: know that the Rough Riders. It's symbolic with DMX in
Speaker 7: the lots, like I don't care what you say.
Speaker 5: DMX had already sold five million records.
Speaker 7: Like there's no way that you come in there and
Speaker 7: you're gonna be the main priority of BAX. So you know,
Speaker 7: Chris was like, you're gonna be the priority over here.
Speaker 7: I'm telling you, we're gonna do this. You know, we
Speaker 7: got Foxy, but you're the only guy over here. So
Speaker 7: it's not no like no competition. And it was cor Mega,
Speaker 7: matthats Foxy and Cormega. He's like everybody like they got
Speaker 7: their own. Lady, you're gonna do your own thing. We're
Speaker 7: gonna push it. We're gonna do this. So he sold
Speaker 7: me and with schedules, drove the album in the same
Speaker 7: case I had.
Speaker 5: I'm going back and forth with it. You know.
Speaker 7: We went to trial and ended up blowing travel. You know,
Speaker 7: it was my first my first fella in or whatever.
Speaker 7: But I ended up getting sentenced to seven to fourteen years.
Speaker 5: So you know now that that was crazy.
Speaker 6: How how are you?
Speaker 5: I was twenty years old, twenty.
Speaker 7: Twenty years old, just about to just got this record deal,
Speaker 7: just about to do all.
Speaker 5: Of this stuff, and I end up going trial for
Speaker 5: seven and fourteen. So I'm sitting there like this, this
Speaker 5: can't be true. I was just at the Super Bowl.
Speaker 7: I was just in the Bahamas recording my album with
Speaker 7: Havoc and Prodigy, and you know when we in the
Speaker 7: studio I got I was supposed to be doing vibor
Speaker 7: things remixed the date after I got locked up. Like
Speaker 7: it was just the weirdest turn of events that I've
Speaker 7: probably ever seen in my life. So, you know, just
Speaker 7: doing my bid I just had to find some level
Speaker 7: of solace and understanding, Like, you know, I got to
Speaker 7: find a purpose in this, Like I can't sit here
Speaker 7: and let this destroy me, I can't. You know, I
Speaker 7: gotta find focus. And I came up with this idea
Speaker 7: in my mind. And I was innocent of the crime
Speaker 7: that I blue trial for. Let's let me say that
Speaker 7: I was. I was convicted the armed robbery of cab
Speaker 7: drivers that I never robbed them my life.
Speaker 5: And when I got picked out of a lot, that
Speaker 5: one guy picked me.
Speaker 7: Up a street seeing I looked like somebody, And so
Speaker 7: that's that in itself was even worse. It was something
Speaker 7: that you.
Speaker 5: Did, and you you have a sudden you did.
Speaker 7: You like, this is what it comes with it when
Speaker 7: you sitting in jail losing a million dollar record deal
Speaker 7: and you sitting in prison for some shit you didn't do.
Speaker 5: You know, it's a lot.
Speaker 7: But you know, I just told myself every day that
Speaker 7: every data I don't learn something, I don't grow as
Speaker 7: a man, the system wins.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying. I can't sit here and
Speaker 5: be down. I can't like I'm going home.
Speaker 7: Eventually, I got at least seven years to do here,
Speaker 7: so I got to figure out what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 7: So I worked out, I read, I exercised, I wrote rhymes.
Speaker 5: I had books and rhymes.
Speaker 7: You know, I studied, you know, when I started realizing
Speaker 7: that the prison was a business, Like you said, it
Speaker 7: was an industrial system where we.
Speaker 5: Were the product.
Speaker 7: Blackrown might not already go in and out of prison,
Speaker 7: and they just keep bringing the same ones and then
Speaker 7: and they selling us the same fairy tales, you know,
Speaker 7: they making you believe that it's some type of badge
Speaker 7: of mindy to go to prison for our communities, and
Speaker 7: were going in and out, and the dudes is coming
Speaker 7: home telling.
Speaker 5: Us how cool it is and how gangs today is
Speaker 5: because they was locked up and they was in the yard.
Speaker 7: And sure they was coming to visit me, and all
Speaker 7: of this bullshit that you find out when you're in there.
Speaker 7: It's a bunch of dudes that just dying to get home.
Speaker 7: Some dudes you probably would never even talk to in
Speaker 7: the street. Now you surrounded by these dudes. So I
Speaker 7: realized that, and I'm like, yeah, we've been lied to
Speaker 7: for years, you know what, especially in our communities.
Speaker 5: So when I came home, my mind frame was different.
Speaker 7: I didn't immediately get into activism, but I was definitely
Speaker 7: way more conscious, you know what I'm saying. So my
Speaker 7: focus was different. My whole path was different. So when
Speaker 7: I did seven years later, when I did make my
Speaker 7: carole board and got out, you know, I still pursued
Speaker 7: my music, but you know it took time because you
Speaker 7: after seven years, you don't you out of touch, you
Speaker 7: don't know what's going on now, you know people you
Speaker 7: don't got you know, I'm trying.
Speaker 6: To can you talk about that?
Speaker 2: Like how because I don't think people the vast majority
Speaker 2: of the populace has never been to jail, right, so
Speaker 2: it's kind of hard for people to understand with somebody that,
Speaker 2: especially for a long period of time, like seven years.
Speaker 2: I remember, I think it was Mano and he was
Speaker 2: saying when he first came out of jail, he forgot
Speaker 2: how to cross the street. Like it's like you become institutionalizing.
Speaker 2: It's how hard is it to adapt back into society
Speaker 2: when you've been away for seven years?
Speaker 7: It is very hard because there is different There's so
Speaker 7: many different transitions that you have to go through.
Speaker 5: You have to go through your.
Speaker 7: Own you have to you have to adapt back into society.
Speaker 5: You have to get out of the society that you
Speaker 5: was in. You have to.
Speaker 7: You have to evolve your thinking because you used to
Speaker 7: things being one way you know what I'm saying. You
Speaker 7: used to think first, You used to do things being
Speaker 7: away that they were in the street before you got back.
Speaker 7: Then you're used to the surroundings that you just left.
Speaker 7: So there's so many different elements that you have to
Speaker 7: unpack and unroll from. So first, you're quiet because when
Speaker 7: you're in prison you can't, you're not allowed. You're not
Speaker 7: very energetic because that makes you a target. So the
Speaker 7: most the loudest person in the yard is the target
Speaker 7: and usually the weakest person, so that's how they judge you.
Speaker 7: So you have to be very militant. You got to
Speaker 7: be very focused. You gotta not say much. You listen
Speaker 7: more than you talk. You know, in society you have
Speaker 7: the network. So the more quiet you are, that the
Speaker 7: less productive you are. So I'm moving around people and
Speaker 7: I'm coming around and people are earl yah boom moore,
Speaker 7: and I'm just quiet.
Speaker 5: People like what man all right? Like everything good with them?
Speaker 5: I'm like, nah, I'm good, he good and good and
Speaker 5: they're like, yo, you are right.
Speaker 7: I'm like, yeah, what what do you mean what I'm
Speaker 7: saying like you look like.
Speaker 5: Like people are scared of talk.
Speaker 7: I'm like ah, and I didn't understand what they were
Speaker 7: talking about. But I didn't make myself approachable because I
Speaker 7: was a lot more serious. And then, especially dealing in
Speaker 7: this industry, you know how faith this shit is. Everybody'll
Speaker 7: shake your hands and tell you they love you and
Speaker 7: they're gonna call you tomorrow, and that's not gonna happen.
Speaker 7: They're gonna do this with you and it's not gonna happen.
Speaker 7: So that don't happen in prison. You're saying that don't
Speaker 7: really happen in the streets, just regular being in the streets.
Speaker 5: When you deal with men, it don't really go like that.
Speaker 5: So when you.
Speaker 7: Start having those conversations and you seeing these industry dudes
Speaker 7: and they tell you how much they love you, Yo,
Speaker 7: we're gonna do this, and then they don't.
Speaker 5: When you come in prison, it's like, yo, why you
Speaker 5: ain't do that.
Speaker 7: Everybody is used to that outside. So when you approaching
Speaker 7: the dude left he said he's gonna do something. Don't
Speaker 7: get nervous now.
Speaker 5: Now they're like, yo, we don't want to be around
Speaker 5: this dude. He bugged out, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: That's why when you look when men came home, he
Speaker 7: was doing a lot of stuff. It was a lot
Speaker 7: about because he wasn't used to being on that time.
Speaker 7: Will you play with me? You understand I'm saying, like
Speaker 7: you're gonna do.
Speaker 5: Something to me. You can't say you're gonna do something
Speaker 5: for me and don't do it. You can't give me
Speaker 5: a hug and look me in my eyes say I
Speaker 5: got you.
Speaker 7: And then I called you don't see your phone or
Speaker 7: you see me and we have the same conversation three
Speaker 7: times and nothing happened.
Speaker 5: So that's a process.
Speaker 7: So I was getting enemies from not playing because I'm
Speaker 7: taking you literally.
Speaker 5: Like DJ like, yo, I love you, I'm gonna do this.
Speaker 7: I play your record. I'm coming to the DJ. You
Speaker 7: giving the record. They playing it for two seconds, turning
Speaker 7: it off like you're like you doing like why he
Speaker 7: didn't play the song? He talking about you like Noah,
Speaker 7: you gotta do it now. But you're playing some song
Speaker 7: for some niggas that live down south. You never see
Speaker 7: it before in the New York club and you breaking
Speaker 7: the song.
Speaker 5: You're playing it four or five times, but you're playing my.
Speaker 7: Second for my record for three seconds. So I was
Speaker 7: having this is issues. I'm turning off niggas microphone tucking
Speaker 7: like you know what I'm saying. So this was a
Speaker 7: process for me. The acclamation, just realizing that you got
Speaker 7: to become and you got to do things different the
Speaker 7: way and you got to be a lot more diplomatic.
Speaker 7: That was a process for me, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 7: and coming from prison, because you all you have in
Speaker 7: prison is your world, the way that you carry yourself,
Speaker 7: You carry yourself like a man.
Speaker 5: Your word is everything. So that's how I came home,
Speaker 5: and that's not how it is here. You know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying.
Speaker 7: People will tell you anything, and if you do not
Speaker 7: adapt to that reality, then you will find yourself outside
Speaker 7: of the bubble.
Speaker 5: So what you got to do is learn how to
Speaker 5: play the game.
Speaker 7: You don't expect anything from and you realize happy you
Speaker 7: you doing what you gotta do, whatever they do is
Speaker 7: a plus. You don't expect anything from. So that that
Speaker 7: was a real process of adjustment for me.
Speaker 2: Let's let's talk about mass incarcerations. So for people that
Speaker 2: are not familiar with some of the numbers we looked at.
Speaker 2: So there's there's private prisons. America I think is the
Speaker 2: only country that has private prisons. One out of five
Speaker 2: prisoners in America are in private at prisons. It's a
Speaker 2: two billion dollar industry. And the whole thing is really
Speaker 2: crazy because it's like a bunch of fortune. Five hundred
Speaker 2: companies have workers that are incarcerated from Victoria's Secrets, Whole Foods, Walmart,
Speaker 2: Hopeful is actually owned by Amazon, so that's really Amazon, Walmart, Microsoft, Starbucks, BP,
Speaker 2: Nintendo AT and T Target to name a few, just
Speaker 2: a few. And there's a there's a whole economic system
Speaker 2: that's based around jail. From the cost of phone calls
Speaker 2: extremely high. Commissary is like way overpriced for food items,
Speaker 2: even transportation, Like these prisons are in the middle of
Speaker 2: nowhere most in most states, so it's like five hour
Speaker 2: bus trips and then they have transportation companies that provide
Speaker 2: bus trips to people's families to come.
Speaker 6: It's oh, it's a whole system.
Speaker 5: And they provide.
Speaker 6: Free label.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the free the freelan really quick. The free
Speaker 3: labor thing was especially and we'll get into the pandemic.
Speaker 3: But I work in the school and I'll never forget
Speaker 3: uh when it just started maybe like early March.
Speaker 4: Uh, they brought the.
Speaker 3: Hand sanitizers into our school and at the same time
Speaker 3: they brought it in. I remember sending shinty article like yo,
Speaker 3: they got the prisoners making the hand sanitizer.
Speaker 4: I'm like, now, I can't use that.
Speaker 3: This goes against everything I stand for, Like you could
Speaker 3: have actually employed people to make these things and gave
Speaker 3: them a job. But Rett, you're gonna let prisoners eight
Speaker 3: cents an hour.
Speaker 7: And the thing about it is those same prisoners that
Speaker 7: make that inside the prison can't go home and work
Speaker 7: in a factory where they do that.
Speaker 5: They won't even hire them, right, you can see what
Speaker 5: I'm saying.
Speaker 7: So it's like they it's prisons in there doing working
Speaker 7: for the phone on AT and T. They answering eighteen
Speaker 7: T calls, but can't come home and work at AT
Speaker 7: and T.
Speaker 5: They're doing construction and building. They on core craft.
Speaker 7: It's the biggest thing inside the prison. They make all
Speaker 7: the clothing, all of the soap, all everything. But you
Speaker 7: can't come home and work if you for core craft.
Speaker 7: And you got to feeling it, so it doesn't like
Speaker 7: it's really it's really slavery.
Speaker 2: And so from being inside, from like firsthand experience, because
Speaker 2: I think that they said the average prison across America
Speaker 2: gets paid like sixty eight cents an hour or something
Speaker 2: like that, or eighty six cents an hour. You don't
Speaker 2: have an option because I want to explain this for people, because,
Speaker 2: like I said, the vast majority of people have they've
Speaker 2: never been incarcerated. So I think it's because a lot
Speaker 2: of times people don't have compassion a last you know,
Speaker 2: it's very common, especially in our community. For some reason,
Speaker 2: we're very compassionate people, but we're very uncompassionate amongst ourselves exactly,
Speaker 2: And a lot of times it's like, well, don't do
Speaker 2: the crime. Don't do obviously, shouldn't make crimes, that's obvious, right,
Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean that. It's like America has five
Speaker 2: percent of the world's population, twenty five percent of the
Speaker 2: prison population. We have more prisoners than India. India and
Speaker 2: China they both have a billion people. We have three
Speaker 2: hundred million people. So there's obviously a financial system in
Speaker 2: play here, right. So being on the inside, how was
Speaker 2: it Because you don't you don't have an option to work.
Speaker 6: You have to work, right, right, you.
Speaker 7: Have you have programs, So when your program comes, you
Speaker 7: have to choose vocationals.
Speaker 5: What you have to like take some type of skill.
Speaker 7: Then they probably have programs that's mandatory programs based on
Speaker 7: your crime. They have drug programs you have to go to,
Speaker 7: or violence programs or turn it into violence programs you
Speaker 7: have to go to. And then you have a regular
Speaker 7: job that you have to do. And and like he said,
Speaker 7: the average prisoner doesn't. I don't know about maybe maybe
Speaker 7: it went up to sixty cents hour, because I when
Speaker 7: I was there, the job was like seven and eight
Speaker 7: cents hour. At the end week, we make about fifty
Speaker 7: cents probably a dollar two dollars. At the end of
Speaker 7: the week, we'll probably have about two dollars three dollars
Speaker 7: if you worked.
Speaker 5: The whole week, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: So, and that was working the regular seven hours seven
Speaker 7: eight hours a day's shift.
Speaker 5: And you get about no more than three to four
Speaker 5: dollars a week. That was a conversary ship.
Speaker 7: So you know, when you when you're in it, you
Speaker 7: don't have you like you said, you don't have a
Speaker 7: you don't have a choice over the world, and you
Speaker 7: can't even survive those That amount of money is not
Speaker 7: even enough to buy toilet trees. You know, if they
Speaker 7: don't supply you they supply you with soap, but they
Speaker 7: don't supply you with deodorant, you know, they don't supply
Speaker 7: you with certain with baby or you and things of
Speaker 7: that nature to lotion yourself. So that's not even enough
Speaker 7: to buy toiletrees. So most you bother with that. They
Speaker 7: give you these little ten dollars, you know, the Lieutenant
Speaker 7: Roman new ten cent Roman soups that you can buy
Speaker 7: an average person who's who has no outside friends and
Speaker 7: family to bring them anything, it's probably buying the about
Speaker 7: twenty of those suits, and they living off that because
Speaker 7: the food that they feed you can't really fill you up,
Speaker 7: and most of it ain't even good.
Speaker 5: So it's it's it's definitely slave slave industry inside.
Speaker 4: Of prison, and it's a big business.
Speaker 3: I think the first time it probably was on Kanye's album,
Speaker 3: and maybe I was ignorant to it, but when he
Speaker 3: said the line the CCA teamed up with the DEA,
Speaker 3: I had to stop him, like yo, the CCA, and
Speaker 3: then actually doing some research the Correction Corporation of America.
Speaker 3: They're building these private prisons, and when you build a prison,
Speaker 3: you have to have prisoners, obviously, so they're making millions
Speaker 3: of the dollars building these prisons and then finding inmates.
Speaker 4: But what they're doing at.
Speaker 3: The same time is they have to incriminate people. Right,
Speaker 3: So it's like, Yo, the thing that used to not
Speaker 3: be legal, now it is. And that's happened over time.
Speaker 3: We've seen that happen with Mexicans in the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 3: and the Chinese and during the gold Rush, Like we're
Speaker 3: going to criminalize what they do and people are not
Speaker 3: aware of it. Right, So when you're talking about this generation,
Speaker 3: I'm just like, Yeah, they don't get it because they
Speaker 3: can't see the big picture.
Speaker 7: America is built on capitalism. Capitalism only came to survive.
Speaker 7: If there's a lower class, there has to be a bottom.
Speaker 7: They don't really have to be a middle class, but
Speaker 7: the bottom has to be someone. So this is why,
Speaker 7: that's why why supremacy is such a big thing when
Speaker 7: we talk about it for black people and people don't
Speaker 7: understand it or you could do anything, No, it's not
Speaker 7: meant for you to do everything. The reason why we
Speaker 7: in marginalized communities, why you have projects, why the reason
Speaker 7: why they don't fix it up, because we need crime
Speaker 7: to happen in these communities.
Speaker 5: They need crime like, so.
Speaker 7: When after this pandemic, there's going to be a flood
Speaker 7: of flush in crime because you know why, because people
Speaker 7: are dealing with trauma, they're dealing with fear, people are
Speaker 7: gonna be dealing with financial issues. They cut all of
Speaker 7: the summer programs. The kids are not getting no summer youth.
Speaker 7: There's no basketball, there's no sports. They close the parks
Speaker 7: or what else are you going to do If you're
Speaker 7: living in a project, you know, you're sitting around, you're hot,
Speaker 7: you're outside, you're not stay in the house.
Speaker 5: There's nothing but crime.
Speaker 7: You're trying to you're probably gonna rob somebody because now
Speaker 7: you can't even enjoy the sports. The kids don't even
Speaker 7: go get to go enjoy the sports. You frustrated, you
Speaker 7: didn't graduate, You missed your graduation. You was probably going
Speaker 7: to one of the top basketball players. You're supposed to
Speaker 7: go to D one school.
Speaker 5: You didn't even get to.
Speaker 7: Play your last year. You don't even know if you're
Speaker 7: going back to us. Like, there's so much things that's
Speaker 7: going to breed crime in our communities right now. You know,
Speaker 7: So this is this right here is a time like
Speaker 7: when you if you if you start studying stops. The
Speaker 7: prison industry is what they invested in right now, prison
Speaker 7: pharmaceuticals because they can try to force us into back.
Speaker 5: Like, all of these things are things that's gonna happen.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: The stimulus product pack was to keep people silent because
Speaker 7: when the stimulus is over and then when you go back,
Speaker 7: they said, we got the highest this is the highest
Speaker 7: unemployment ever. They got over forty million people who've apply
Speaker 7: for unemployment who lost their jobs. So that's going to
Speaker 7: what that's going to look like in the next couple
Speaker 7: of months. When they start to reopen society and people
Speaker 7: are moving, it's gonna breed crime.
Speaker 5: There's gonna be some people that.
Speaker 3: Have nothing, some of them some of those jobs that
Speaker 3: they used to have won't be there right and a
Speaker 3: lot of people, a lot of people get confused. It's like, oh,
Speaker 3: that can't happen here. But I'm like, yo, somebody can't
Speaker 3: eat where they live, they come into your neighborhood.
Speaker 5: That's a fact.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Poverty is crime. That's the bottom line. Anywhere that you
Speaker 5: look with people live in poverty, there's crime.
Speaker 7: You know, it's not black people, it's not spending people
Speaker 7: it's the conditions that people. If you cannot change the conditions,
Speaker 7: you can't change the problems. When people say, yo, they
Speaker 7: shouldn't commit committed the crimes, well, the conditions were set
Speaker 7: there for them to commit the crime. If you you
Speaker 7: know that, some people have the ability to live with
Speaker 7: with mega, to live with nothing.
Speaker 5: Some people okay with that.
Speaker 7: When you look outside and you see other people having
Speaker 7: things as a young boy, and you're being teased for
Speaker 7: not having things, and you try to figure out how
Speaker 7: how to get it, and the only vision of success
Speaker 7: you ever seen was a drug dealer. The only people
Speaker 7: you ever seen have money with a drug dealer. And
Speaker 7: the stick of kids that pulled up, they had the
Speaker 7: girl you want. They had to call you want, they.
Speaker 5: Had to respect you want.
Speaker 7: It's not as easy as you just don't commit the crime.
Speaker 7: And you just keep going to school with barely enough
Speaker 7: lunch money and holds in your jeans, and you keep
Speaker 7: telling me, no, you can't buy the new video game
Speaker 7: I want. You can't know, we can't get these new shoes,
Speaker 7: and the cable keep getting.
Speaker 5: Cut off, and some days to come in there's nothing refrigerator.
Speaker 7: It's easy to say you should they shouldn't commit the
Speaker 7: crime when you don't understand those realities, you know what
Speaker 7: I'm saying, So you have to you have to change
Speaker 7: those realities for you to change the mind state of
Speaker 7: the individual. Nobody wants to commit crime. I never I
Speaker 7: never want. I did everything possible now to commit a crime.
Speaker 7: But it was a time where I felt like I
Speaker 7: was I was a man, and I was around people,
Speaker 7: and I don't even feel comfortable because I didn't have
Speaker 7: a dollar two dollars in my pod. So that that
Speaker 7: that that starts to play on the psyche. It's a
Speaker 7: reality that we live with in marginalized communities. And you know,
Speaker 7: and and I think people who don't identify with that,
Speaker 7: and and there are some people who are able to
Speaker 7: move through that without committing crowd because it's just certain
Speaker 7: people that are able to, you know, overcome. So people
Speaker 7: come from strong families to where even though they don't
Speaker 7: have nothing, they have a strong unit. Where you can't
Speaker 7: say that to a person who father o deed when
Speaker 7: he's eleven years old. The mother's don't crack in the streets,
Speaker 7: and you don't have the food stamps. She done sold
Speaker 7: the food stamps.
Speaker 5: And you're coming home and it's just you and your
Speaker 5: little sister in.
Speaker 7: The house, and you got to figure out how to eat.
Speaker 7: That's a different conversation. So when people say you just
Speaker 7: don't commit the crime and don't understand the realities that
Speaker 7: come with that, it's an insult, you know, it's inso
Speaker 7: to somebody who has a good heart, who considers themselves
Speaker 7: a good person.
Speaker 5: If you look at.
Speaker 7: Most of our people, who look at jay Z, you
Speaker 7: look at fifty when they got the opportunities, they didn't
Speaker 7: have to commit crimes, you know, but they they got
Speaker 7: where they got because if it wasn't for those crimes
Speaker 7: they committed, you wouldn't even know them. They probably would
Speaker 7: have been in the streets someone You understand I'm saying.
Speaker 7: So it's a double assed ward and we want to
Speaker 7: do better. We got to understand the circumstances in our community.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you this because just I'm interested to
Speaker 2: know this. You had mentioned the calls in is like
Speaker 2: at and T at one of those companies. How does
Speaker 2: that work? Somebody's locked up like they're literally answering. They're
Speaker 2: like customer service.
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Speaker 5: So that's what jobs.
Speaker 7: Because one of my friends he literally he came home
Speaker 7: two days ago and he told me he was working
Speaker 7: for I think it was att of the Rise and
Speaker 7: wanted them.
Speaker 5: He was pick on the call and say hello, are
Speaker 5: you who would you like to speak to it?
Speaker 7: He would direct the call in certain lines that he
Speaker 7: pressed and he would ford them to you know, that
Speaker 7: can give them certain home.
Speaker 5: But he was the first line of calls that they called.
Speaker 2: That's interesting because it's like, yeah, it's it's really you know,
Speaker 2: it's like you don't have a choice to do it
Speaker 2: because if you don't do it, what happens?
Speaker 6: You get punished.
Speaker 4: Right, it's in fraction, Right, he's an infraction.
Speaker 7: You could lose your time then they can if you
Speaker 7: have parole or whatever, they can.
Speaker 3: But that's part of the cycle, right, like that, and
Speaker 3: that's what keeps you there, right, So I commit this
Speaker 3: infraction now my time is longer now they make more
Speaker 3: money because I'm staying, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: It's all part of the same.
Speaker 6: Circle, you know.
Speaker 2: And I'm one of these people where you know, I
Speaker 2: hate conspiracy theory because I'm just the person that I
Speaker 2: like to deal with fact, right, But a lot of
Speaker 2: this stuff is kind of it's not a conspiracy. It's
Speaker 2: common sense where it's like, Okay, if I if I'm
Speaker 2: the CEO of a fortune five hundred company right now,
Speaker 2: the easiest option is to outsource it to like India
Speaker 2: what they do, but you still got to pay them something,
Speaker 2: even if it's like two dollars an hour. It's like
Speaker 2: and it's like, you know, it's a language different thing
Speaker 2: though they speak English, but it's you know, whereas somebody
Speaker 2: from America that speaks English that you can pay ten
Speaker 2: cents an hour literally.
Speaker 4: Some sense a day, right an hour?
Speaker 2: Right cents an hour? I mean on the bottom company's
Speaker 2: bottom line. Why would it not? Why would I not
Speaker 2: do that? So being that that's a work population, you
Speaker 2: it's really no incentive not to have people in jails,
Speaker 2: if anything, is in the sense of to keep the
Speaker 2: jails full because you have a free.
Speaker 6: People here.
Speaker 2: Two million people that's that's locked up, that's that's working
Speaker 2: for free. And this is why it's not makes common
Speaker 2: sense that we have twenty five percent of the world's
Speaker 2: prison population only five percent of the.
Speaker 6: World total population.
Speaker 4: It's a big business.
Speaker 6: It's a business when it all comes down to money.
Speaker 7: At the end of the day, all comes down to money.
Speaker 7: And unfortunately, we came here as labor. That's what that's
Speaker 7: how black people brought to this country. So we maintained that,
Speaker 7: you know, and until we understand that reality and we stop,
Speaker 7: we stop punishing each other and stop figuring out how
Speaker 7: to build with each other, because everybody looks down on
Speaker 7: somebody else based on their circumstances or you don't got this,
Speaker 7: you you should have never did this, and not understanding
Speaker 7: people's services. And so until we create a culture, because
Speaker 7: the problem with us as blacks in America, we don't
Speaker 7: have one culture. We're not a monolith. And and people
Speaker 7: say that as it's a positive thing, and I think
Speaker 7: it's it's too our dittric because if you look at
Speaker 7: every other culture, when you look at the Asians, they
Speaker 7: have one culture.
Speaker 5: You know, they immediately.
Speaker 7: When something happen as they move together because it represents
Speaker 7: they culture. When you look at the Jews, they have
Speaker 7: one culture, so it happens they all move together and
Speaker 7: one and it gives it gives them a sense of power.
Speaker 7: Even when you look at the Hispanic community, the Minigans
Speaker 7: in Puerto Ricans, they have a culture they form together.
Speaker 7: We the only people that might hang with the Puerto Ricans.
Speaker 7: We might be over here, we might be everywhere else.
Speaker 7: But I don't gotta do it just because you're black.
Speaker 7: We don't feel no obligation just because you're black to
Speaker 7: support you. It just it's just not how most people feel.
Speaker 7: They feel like I did it myself. You need to
Speaker 7: figure out if the Chinese person come to jail. Every
Speaker 7: Chinese person Asian person in there is figuring out are
Speaker 7: you good? What you need to speak their language. They're
Speaker 7: gonna bring them, they gonna feed them. They're gonna make
Speaker 7: su a good Hispanic person. Come, all of this spanding
Speaker 7: people are gonna pull them.
Speaker 5: They're gonna feed them. You good black person. Come, They're
Speaker 5: gonna look at you like you got to head.
Speaker 6: Feed you.
Speaker 5: Unless you unless you they knew you from somewhere.
Speaker 7: But the ain't no just black people gonna say, oh,
Speaker 7: this is a black dude, I'm gonna.
Speaker 5: Make you good. It just don't work like that. So
Speaker 5: it shows the divide. We just don't move.
Speaker 2: Being on the inside. Did people like did some of
Speaker 2: your comrades while you was locked up start to realize
Speaker 2: that the financial play behind it? Like what they starting
Speaker 2: to see like this, Like I'm out in the streets
Speaker 2: doing all of this, but this is actually a bigger
Speaker 2: play here, and now I'm working for free, for Lord
Speaker 2: and Taylor, all of these companies. Like did they Did
Speaker 2: they ever realize that inside? Did you ever have those
Speaker 2: kind of conversations with people inside?
Speaker 7: It's the most the most brilliant people I ever met.
Speaker 5: Was in prison. I met genius man and they never
Speaker 5: coming home.
Speaker 7: Men who got convicted for stealing a dollar out of
Speaker 7: white women's purse, supposedly on robbery, doing thirty and forty years,
Speaker 7: you know, at seventeen and been getting hit at the
Speaker 7: board three and.
Speaker 5: Four times like this, This is the reality that.
Speaker 7: We come from, you know, the crimes that that people
Speaker 7: that our brothers are spending. If you if you heard
Speaker 7: the reality of what these crimes. I went to jail,
Speaker 7: I did seven and fourteen years, no record. I was
Speaker 7: going to John Jay College nothing for supposedly robin ten
Speaker 7: dollars from a cab driver with a gun that nobody
Speaker 7: ever found, nobody was ever hurt.
Speaker 5: And he sends me this seven to.
Speaker 7: Fourteen years and a problem in my life with record,
Speaker 7: deal all these things. People sending me letters like, oh,
Speaker 7: we'll do this for him, We'll make sure he's good.
Speaker 7: And they say, now we got to send him in
Speaker 7: jail for sef to ruin your life. You understand, said,
Speaker 7: this is the reality that our people come from. They
Speaker 7: don't have those realities in different communities.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: I know, the white dude was convicted of raping some
Speaker 7: girl behind you know, and they're throwing in a dumpster,
Speaker 7: and they said, we're not putting him in jail because
Speaker 7: it's gonna mess up his college.
Speaker 4: He's going to college, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: So this is this, this one, this is this is
Speaker 7: what we deal with.
Speaker 5: This is a reality when we deal me.
Speaker 7: So of course, this dude, when you get in there
Speaker 7: and you start to really look and say, damn, it's
Speaker 7: only us coming in these doors, and it's only us staying.
Speaker 7: You know, they to the minimum facilities where they're doing
Speaker 7: two and three years, don't matter what the crime, they're
Speaker 7: getting billions, they doing white collar crimes, getting a hundred
Speaker 7: million dollars and they going home for two and three years.
Speaker 7: You really tell you about her situation. She ended up
Speaker 7: doing ten years years.
Speaker 5: People who put her on did one in two years.
Speaker 7: You know, the people who made way more money than
Speaker 7: her ended up doing two years and one year or
Speaker 7: getting probation.
Speaker 5: So and the only difference was the skin color, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. So this is the reality that
Speaker 5: we deal with when you when we sit there. Of
Speaker 5: course we realize if you, if you have any level.
Speaker 7: Of intellect, you realize as a play that this is
Speaker 7: a money then you know they giving they getting about
Speaker 7: fifty thousand a year for each inmate in there, and
Speaker 7: they don't provide nothing for you but a bed that
Speaker 7: just keeps going in and pay three pair of state
Speaker 7: greens everything else, and they give you a fucking a
Speaker 7: state mail every day that probably they probably spending about
Speaker 7: one thousand dollars a week on the whole prison.
Speaker 5: Right they make it thirty.
Speaker 7: And fifty thousand on each individual in that prison.
Speaker 2: And it also helps the economy of the local town
Speaker 2: because these towns are like in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 2: and the prison the prisoners, yeah, they counted as population.
Speaker 2: So like when they do the census, they get and
Speaker 2: so they taken out of their community.
Speaker 4: They can't vote.
Speaker 2: There's more people in the other community. And then they
Speaker 2: have like a thing where it's like, cause one of
Speaker 2: my cousins was was incarcerated in a federal penitentiary in Connecticut,
Speaker 2: and I want to visit them, and I think I
Speaker 2: had jeans on, so I didn't know that you couldn't
Speaker 2: wear a geen so you had to buy sweat. So
Speaker 2: I drove two hours to get there. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to not go. So they like, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: There's a Marshals down the street, and they like that's convenient.
Speaker 2: They like everybody nobody really knows that, right, So it's
Speaker 2: like every day people's going to marshal the person. One person,
Speaker 2: God was coolly like, look, this is what you do.
Speaker 2: You buy it, keep it, tag going, then return it.
Speaker 2: But they like it happens so much. It's not aid
Speaker 2: the marshalls build your business around it exactly.
Speaker 6: It's crazy.
Speaker 7: Most person, it ain't gonna take you back because they're like,
Speaker 7: I ain't going back, and let me give me a
Speaker 7: kid of jeans, real quick, little.
Speaker 5: Sweats, and I'm good.
Speaker 4: There's gonna be a five hour ride back home. Now,
Speaker 4: I'm good.
Speaker 5: And that's what we deal with. Man. It's like the
Speaker 5: whole town, the whole all them towns upstate. You know
Speaker 5: a lot of these towns.
Speaker 7: I never wore killing all these that's the whole industry
Speaker 7: is prison.
Speaker 5: There's nothing else Orleans. It's nothing. I went is in
Speaker 5: the jail.
Speaker 7: Orleans and Benford Hills is right across the street, and everybody,
Speaker 7: all of the seons is like cousins.
Speaker 5: Family. He was either family or he was married to
Speaker 5: his sister.
Speaker 7: It was one town where all everybody in the town
Speaker 7: worked in the prison.
Speaker 4: After you release.
Speaker 3: Did you have to go through the probation process, because
Speaker 3: I know that's something that Meek talked about a lot
Speaker 3: and he's trying, you know, they're trying to do the
Speaker 3: reform project.
Speaker 4: Can you talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 5: Well, I didn't have to do probation.
Speaker 7: I had to do parole, which is pretty much it's similar,
Speaker 7: but it's different, you know, as far as parole. When
Speaker 7: you on parole, you have a certain amount of time
Speaker 7: on parole excuse me, that you have to complete without
Speaker 7: being violated. So I came home. I did seven years
Speaker 7: in prison. I have a seven to fourteen means I
Speaker 7: either do seven or the maximum I could do is fourteen.
Speaker 7: So after I was released on my parole, that means
Speaker 7: I had seven years left on parole. So what happens
Speaker 7: is you have to not get into any trouble for
Speaker 7: seven years, and if you do, they can keep violating
Speaker 7: you based on the amount of time that you have.
Speaker 7: So if you're on parole right and you get violated,
Speaker 7: you do a year good, and now you get into trouble,
Speaker 7: they can give you two years in prison. The maximum
Speaker 7: they can give you two years every time, and they
Speaker 7: can keep doing that until you get to your maximum day.
Speaker 3: So that seven years could be like two to two
Speaker 3: and then one yeoh, you can just be doing.
Speaker 5: Good, nothing booming.
Speaker 7: We're gonna violate you three years or we're gonna max
Speaker 7: out on your Whatever they want to do for probation
Speaker 7: is different because they can continue keep starting your probation
Speaker 7: over probation period means that we're gonna suspend your sentence
Speaker 7: for five years, but you can't get into any trouble
Speaker 7: within that five years, and if you do, we get
Speaker 7: start it.
Speaker 5: All the way over again.
Speaker 2: And trouble can be any anything, any form. That's why
Speaker 2: the Meek Mill thing was, it was he's a celebrity,
Speaker 2: he's a you know, one of the top rappers.
Speaker 6: So that really highlighted.
Speaker 2: But there's millions of stories like that for even word,
Speaker 2: even a Nipsey Hustle situation. Rest in peace. But remember
Speaker 2: the guy that was just there and he got arrested.
Speaker 2: Let him out be because it was so ridiculous, But
Speaker 2: he literally got shot and he got arrested. He got
Speaker 2: shot and got arrested because he was around felon. He's
Speaker 2: in the presence of a felon h So it's like,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying, It's like he's going to
Speaker 2: get closed that Nipsey was supposed to have given him
Speaker 2: because he just came home from during twenty years in
Speaker 2: jail and he gets shot his first day home and
Speaker 2: he gets incarcerated the same night. You know what I'm
Speaker 2: saying just speaks to that, Like as far as the
Speaker 2: criminal justice reformed, do you think that that that should
Speaker 2: because I don't think that that's talked about enough as
Speaker 2: far as the financial Do you think like that there
Speaker 2: should be pressure on companies like I feel like no
Speaker 2: company should be able to benefit from a prisoner like
Speaker 2: that should be in a bill like you you can't
Speaker 2: have prison labor like.
Speaker 7: But you to say that it is to not understand
Speaker 7: that that's what this country is built. We built on slavery.
Speaker 7: They just figured out a new way to call it.
Speaker 7: Like we came here, came here as work, as slaves.
Speaker 7: We came here as slaves, and we.
Speaker 5: Did all of the labor. You know, we were to
Speaker 5: come out of it.
Speaker 7: So they figured out when it ended, slavery just figured
Speaker 7: out how do we continue to justify it. I put
Speaker 7: it in my phone as the French up. They don't
Speaker 7: call you slaves no more. They call you prim you
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying. So now it's in the it's
Speaker 7: in the constitution. Slavery is illegal or less when you
Speaker 7: get arrested. So that means now they've legalize slavery. So
Speaker 7: in order for the country to continue to it's built
Speaker 7: on capitalism.
Speaker 5: So capitalism has to flourish.
Speaker 7: The reason why capitalism flourishes is because there has to
Speaker 7: be a group of people that can just continue to
Speaker 7: feed the upper edge of them in jail.
Speaker 5: Is the way the lower class are gonna do crimes.
Speaker 7: They're gonna die, they're gonna they're gonna spend all their money.
Speaker 7: And and that is how the other people stay rich.
Speaker 7: They figure out ways to continue to profit. They're not
Speaker 7: gonna spend their money, so they figure out ways to
Speaker 7: profit off of you.
Speaker 5: So for them, for you to say they gonna.
Speaker 7: Write in the Constitution if they can't make money the
Speaker 7: way that they make money, it ain't that gonna make
Speaker 7: sense to them. That's why they That's why when when
Speaker 7: you hear that's why they try to get rid over.
Speaker 7: But that's why they Immediately Barama was trying to end all.
Speaker 7: Obama was trying to end all what you call. He
Speaker 7: was trying to end the prisons. He was trying to
Speaker 7: end private prisons. And when he when he they immediately
Speaker 7: stopped at you know, see what I'm saying. He was trying
Speaker 7: to end privates. Like now we stopped in that. You know,
Speaker 7: that was his job, like we don't want no more
Speaker 7: private prisons. Trump got board in office, private prison stopped
Speaker 7: up because the goal was.
Speaker 5: You know, what I'm saying. So even so.
Speaker 7: When they do this prison reform, it's a strategy prison reform, Right, Okay,
Speaker 7: we're gonna say, we're gonna let we're gonna let the
Speaker 7: non violent prisoners out. We're gonna let people who got drugs,
Speaker 7: We're gonna let them out warm. We're gonna make sure
Speaker 7: that everybody who commits something that we call violence just
Speaker 7: never comes home.
Speaker 5: And we're gonna create.
Speaker 7: Situations to where violence is inevitable, you know, saying so
Speaker 7: we're gonna create. Now, we got a pandemic with we
Speaker 7: know the communities in our communities is gonna be broken.
Speaker 7: They're gonna be hit the hardest. It's gonna be a
Speaker 7: couple of dudes they got it and others who don't.
Speaker 7: So after this pandemic, it's gonna be a hot summer.
Speaker 7: It's no activities, no clubs to go to. There's no parties,
Speaker 7: there's no sports. You just outside in the heat all day. Kids,
Speaker 7: is gonna get it.
Speaker 5: The crime, the crime raid is gonna Scott Scott wide.
Speaker 3: In New York City. They you know, they're getting rid
Speaker 3: of Rock and Island. They're putting a prison on East Borough.
Speaker 3: That's the proposal.
Speaker 4: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: It's crazy because I never hear about new schools being
Speaker 3: built in these boroughs.
Speaker 4: But that is a headline. Man. I mean, I know
Speaker 4: you do work in the schools. What's your thoughts.
Speaker 7: They don't build schools, you know what I'm saying. Most
Speaker 7: of these schools is the school to prison plapeliners. Most
Speaker 7: of these schools look like prisons. You know, I've been
Speaker 7: in prison. Most of these schools are pretty much models
Speaker 7: for for you preparing our kids from prison.
Speaker 4: That's crazy. You said that.
Speaker 3: I had It's crazy and he's don't remember the story.
Speaker 3: When I was in the Bronx, I was teaching. I
Speaker 3: had Shoty come speak for career day and soon he
Speaker 3: went through the metal detector and say, Yo.
Speaker 4: What the hell is this Like?
Speaker 3: Literally, it looked like the forty seven precinct, like the
Speaker 3: blue paint, the bars, the metal detectors, security walking around everywhere.
Speaker 3: I was like, Yo, damn, this is real, Like people.
Speaker 3: I don't think people really understand that that school to
Speaker 3: prison pipeline suspending kids, not providing them with adequate education,
Speaker 3: so they're more likely to not even go to school,
Speaker 3: so they're back on the streets and what's gonna happen.
Speaker 4: They gonna feed the beasts.
Speaker 5: Man, that's the reality.
Speaker 7: That's what is important that they see people like you
Speaker 7: and meet in these schools because we.
Speaker 5: Are able to identify with that reality.
Speaker 7: We are able to identify with the fact that you're young,
Speaker 7: you're energetic, you don't really see the need in school.
Speaker 7: You fidgety, you want to see girls, you want money,
Speaker 7: and we able to redirect that. We able to make
Speaker 7: these classrooms comfortable and fun enough to where the average.
Speaker 5: Person don't want to come.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna go there because oh, he gonna be there,
Speaker 7: and that's my cool teacher. Let me go to make
Speaker 7: sure I bought this class you.
Speaker 5: Know, see what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: We saw create institutions that reflect what our culture is.
Speaker 7: We don't learn the same way everybody else. We don't
Speaker 7: want to sit at the desk and look at chalkboarding
Speaker 7: right now. We want to be moving around, We want
Speaker 7: to have activities. If we created institutions that taught us
Speaker 7: the way that we learn based on act, That's one
Speaker 7: of the things that that that Kanye was saying when
Speaker 7: he did that that meeting with Trump, and he was
Speaker 7: sitting and he's like, Yo, what if we had schools
Speaker 7: where they learned through basketball, When they taught you through that,
Speaker 7: you would schools would be more fun, it would be
Speaker 7: appealing to us. That's how we They created a whole
Speaker 7: structure that fits how Europeans learn and told us we
Speaker 7: have to acclimate to that. That's not who we are.
Speaker 7: Like you, if you create a school and you create
Speaker 7: a structure that's for us, by us that we understand
Speaker 7: how to teach us, we understand you know the best
Speaker 7: to appeal to the attributes to each individual.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying, you would see higher levels
Speaker 5: of people going.
Speaker 7: To school and the school instead they create some ship
Speaker 7: that they know that we a it's not for us.
Speaker 3: It's tough because, like I said, man, education is important,
Speaker 3: but a lot of people, especially in our community, don't
Speaker 3: aspire to be in education. They don't aspire to be teachers.
Speaker 3: It's not enough money, you know what I'm saying. Like
Speaker 3: we grow up, it's like y'all want I want to
Speaker 3: be this, I want to be a rapper. I want
Speaker 3: to Nobody aspires to be in education when everybody that
Speaker 3: you talk to has started there, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So it's important like you said, for you to be
Speaker 3: in schools myself, Shotty, coming into schools is support because
Speaker 3: the representation they may not see you again, they may
Speaker 3: not see like for one time.
Speaker 4: Only they may see you and say like, wait, I
Speaker 4: could be that. I mean that is super important.
Speaker 5: You can see it to be.
Speaker 2: So we talked about the economics of prison, but that's
Speaker 2: only half of the conversation because even when you come out,
Speaker 2: there's a whole economic play behind that. Right, it's like
Speaker 2: being in a halfway house and they get paid per
Speaker 2: bed and then it's like you got to give a
Speaker 2: portion of your paycheck back to the state. And I
Speaker 2: know you had a program helping people out with their credit,
Speaker 2: because it's the whole thing. Like when you come out
Speaker 2: of jail, you don't have a license, you don't passport credit,
Speaker 2: you don't have any credit history, you can't rent an apartment.
Speaker 2: So now it's like you can't get a job a
Speaker 2: lot of times, especially if you have a felony. So
Speaker 2: the economic is not like, Okay, you just did a
Speaker 2: few years in jail, now you're back to being normal. Now,
Speaker 2: it's the whole economic play off of that, And it's like,
Speaker 2: so can you talk about that, like getting out of jail.
Speaker 2: How's that process as far as, like I said, like
Speaker 2: building your credit and stuff like that.
Speaker 7: That process is if you don't if you're not in
Speaker 7: the know, you don't have around you that can educate you.
Speaker 7: You know, especially right now, we understand that if you
Speaker 7: don't have credits, you don't have nothing.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: So a lot of these dudes coming home and into
Speaker 7: more money, and they got cash getting them with cash,
Speaker 7: you can't get an apartment, you can't do anything, you know,
Speaker 7: So that transition is is different. Especially it depends on
Speaker 7: when you how long have you been in prison. This
Speaker 7: dude's just coming home now and been in jail twenty
Speaker 7: twenty five years, you know, so they trying to figure out,
Speaker 7: like what do we do next?
Speaker 5: How we do this? In that process is slow, it's
Speaker 5: it's different.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: I was blessed enough to have people to put me
Speaker 7: to see, hell, we're gonna get your cell phone, and
Speaker 7: you gotta do this, you know, because when I when
Speaker 7: I left there, I barely had a cell phone. I
Speaker 7: had one of the first cell phones and in the
Speaker 7: two way, so it.
Speaker 5: Wasn't it was. It was way different.
Speaker 7: So when I came home and it was you know,
Speaker 7: cell phone, and we had to get an Instagram and
Speaker 7: I had to get what was it my Space? I
Speaker 7: came home with my Space. I was blessed enough to
Speaker 7: have people that.
Speaker 5: Put you any thing.
Speaker 7: So it's it's a lot to readjust yourself to in prison,
Speaker 7: and a lot of times people don't, and they become
Speaker 7: institutionalized because it's easier to live in prison because they
Speaker 7: can do things for you.
Speaker 5: You get three miles. All you gotta do is we
Speaker 5: state greens.
Speaker 7: You know, if you're a person who don't have no family,
Speaker 7: no nothing, they don't have no support system, then it's easier.
Speaker 7: Or even if it's not easier, you you don't mind
Speaker 7: going to prison. You're like, I'm gonna go home. I'm
Speaker 7: gonna throw a brick. I'm robbing this. Either'm gonna get
Speaker 7: a million. If not, then I'm just gonna come back here.
Speaker 7: I know I'm good here, I'm gonna get three meals
Speaker 7: and I'm just gonna be chilling.
Speaker 5: And you know how to I know the CEO's here.
Speaker 7: My name is heavy into jail like some people have,
Speaker 7: that's become their life and they institutionalize and they can't
Speaker 7: survive outside because it's not it's moving too fast, or
Speaker 7: they don't know how to adjust, they don't have nobody
Speaker 7: to help them adjust, and they realize that, you know.
Speaker 5: So that's what they call people being institutionalized.
Speaker 7: You see a lot of dudes that come out you
Speaker 7: probably know them, that they'd be out.
Speaker 5: For a week or two and you be like, damn this,
Speaker 5: they're going back to jail again.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's like and it's like what he did, like
Speaker 8: howie And you don't get it, but he he got
Speaker 8: in his mind that he can't survive out here, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying, rather than say that he just
Speaker 8: gonna do something that's so outlanded and then go to jail,
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 5: And and and that's what it creates.
Speaker 2: So you know, I wanted to have this conversation to
Speaker 2: raise awareness, but we never want to leave anything on
Speaker 2: a damp or note.
Speaker 6: So what is there?
Speaker 2: Because the whole point of what you're doing as far
Speaker 2: as activist is to create change, right So now it's
Speaker 2: like the first part I think for people to be
Speaker 2: inspired to make change is to actually be aware of
Speaker 2: what's going on, because a lot of people just are
Speaker 2: are ignorant to that fact. And not ignorant in a
Speaker 2: bad way. They just don't know, right, and and that's
Speaker 2: really a good thing. It's like, you know, you shouldn't
Speaker 2: know what jail is like hopefully you don't. You never
Speaker 2: have to go to jail. But it's like now hopefully
Speaker 2: people are a little bit more educated on what's going on. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: so what is some in your opinion, what are some
Speaker 2: solutions that we of course there's a political solution where
Speaker 2: you know, there's different ideas in place to like take
Speaker 2: the fel and thing awful job application and yeah, so
Speaker 2: how can the average person or how can as a
Speaker 2: community or as a country as a world make this
Speaker 2: thing better? Is it through political action? Is it through
Speaker 2: like what's what's what's some of the avenues?
Speaker 7: There's so many different avenues. I want to shout out
Speaker 7: my brother Jay Jordan. He lives in California and he
Speaker 7: started a program called Tim Done.
Speaker 4: We know Jay Jordan.
Speaker 6: We spoke to him and watch watch Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: we spoke to him.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you know what I'm saying, Jays
Speaker 7: he's out there doing the Times Done. Like the last
Speaker 7: time I was with Nipsey, we did a concert with
Speaker 7: Times Done.
Speaker 5: That Jay had put together.
Speaker 7: You know, it was probably like four or five months
Speaker 7: before Nipsey passed away. And so anyway, he's doing the
Speaker 7: times in concert I mean Time Done initiative where basically,
Speaker 7: after you serve your time, after.
Speaker 5: A certain amount of time, you.
Speaker 7: Get to get your your your record a sponge, you know,
Speaker 7: completely exponge.
Speaker 5: Because what happens just the stigma of being a felon.
Speaker 5: You know you can it's over. It says over three
Speaker 5: thousand jobs that you can't have.
Speaker 7: It's like a letter yea, you know the things jobs.
Speaker 7: You can't be a barber, you can't be a dog walker,
Speaker 7: you can't be a babies, like certain certain things you
Speaker 7: just can't be at all if you if you if
Speaker 7: you have a you know, a felony. So he's working
Speaker 7: to get those. I think they're pat They're about to
Speaker 7: pass it in California, and like initiatives like that, we
Speaker 7: have to support those type of initiatives.
Speaker 5: We got to look at those, bring them over here.
Speaker 5: We also have to we have to as.
Speaker 7: Individuals stop stigmatizing each other. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 7: because it's easy, you know, like even when I'm watching
Speaker 7: this a ma Aubrey case, right, And it's it's people
Speaker 7: that where we come from. It's like that trying to
Speaker 7: justify this man being killed. Like I've heard people like,
Speaker 7: well he shooted did this? Or or he walked into
Speaker 7: this abandoned house. Oh that's what so you telling me
Speaker 7: me walking into a house where they do a construction
Speaker 7: justifies you killing me like that that makes sense to you?
Speaker 7: Oh well, what was he doing? It don't matter if you.
Speaker 5: Thought he was trespassing, Give him a ticket for trespassing.
Speaker 7: But what is this man the right to approach him
Speaker 7: with a gun and and and shoot him?
Speaker 5: And they said he wasn't he wouldn't comply. We who
Speaker 5: are you to.
Speaker 3: A random person driving down the street with a shotgun
Speaker 3: pointed at me?
Speaker 5: And I'm st to comply to you?
Speaker 7: Like this is the mindset and us as if some
Speaker 7: of us have adopted it. We're dealing with, you know,
Speaker 7: we're dealing with Stockholm syndrome, in which we start to
Speaker 7: identify and love the people.
Speaker 5: Who oppressident.
Speaker 7: We had to stop that, like we we can't get
Speaker 7: bored or credits the ship that don't make sense like
Speaker 7: you can't when we when we saying yo, it's a
Speaker 7: million people in prison, and in prison is probably the
Speaker 7: biggest population that can be effected from the coronavirus, and
Speaker 7: they can die easier to anybody because she's like a
Speaker 7: Petri dish.
Speaker 5: You know, understand that. And people I don't care they
Speaker 5: did a crime.
Speaker 7: You don't know what nobody did that's in prison and
Speaker 7: they're not saying to death. Why would you be okay
Speaker 7: with just sacrificing those people lives, their fathers, they husbands,
Speaker 7: they brothers to people like, we have to start humanizing
Speaker 7: people who get incarcerated, because some people get in cans
Speaker 7: ready to come home and they do brilliant things. Some
Speaker 7: people don't even belong in prison. Every day we find
Speaker 7: out that somebody's conviction is overturned.
Speaker 5: So we have to take.
Speaker 7: That stigma and that that false narrative that everybody that's
Speaker 7: inside of prison is just trash.
Speaker 2: And the reality is that the vast majority of people
Speaker 2: have has done something that at some point, big or small,
Speaker 2: you've done something in your life where if a cop
Speaker 2: was there and if write circumstances, you could have potentially
Speaker 2: been in jail.
Speaker 3: And I was gonna say, this is a living testament,
Speaker 3: Like we've had a number of guests ONALSIA that have
Speaker 3: been incarcerated and have come out to do amazing things,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So that's that's what the
Speaker 3: importance of this is. Like what we said earlier is like, Yo,
Speaker 3: we got to see it and we got to keep
Speaker 3: highlighting stories like that.
Speaker 4: So everybody that's.
Speaker 3: Been in that situation or cans had somebody that is
Speaker 3: near that situation. It's like, Yo, no, it's not over,
Speaker 3: but there's plenty of opportunities out here for us.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I taught a financial literacy class in jail. Shout out
Speaker 2: to Tony Earl, My god. He you know, Tony's a
Speaker 2: good dude. He had a jail a program in Rockland
Speaker 2: County and I taught. And that was my first time
Speaker 2: teaching financial literacy and jail teaching in school and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, and I was pleasantly surprised. It was one
Speaker 2: of the best experiences I had. Like they was all
Speaker 2: asking me questions, like they was like really paying attention.
Speaker 6: They was really stupid.
Speaker 2: A lot of them really knew a lot in regardless
Speaker 2: stocks and cryptocurrency, like they were doing it like you
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying, So I say, I have to
Speaker 2: say it's like, don't look down on somebody just because
Speaker 2: they're incarcerated, because everybody has an opportunity to change their life.
Speaker 2: You don't know what they're incarcerated for, and regardless of anything,
Speaker 2: is like, the whole point of being a human is
Speaker 2: to be a better person tomorrow than you were today,
Speaker 2: So we can't judge people. And yeah, it's like we
Speaker 2: can't give up on people because you're giving up on
Speaker 2: millions of people that can be doctors, scientists, lawyers, like
Speaker 2: they can change the world. And it's like you said,
Speaker 2: it's our best potential because we see that on earn
Speaker 2: your liege, a lot of a lot of from Caesar
Speaker 2: djmv's partner, he's a real estate mobile and he was incarcerated,
Speaker 2: and it's like, you know, that's just one of many
Speaker 2: people that we've had on. Some of the most brilliant
Speaker 2: people that we've had on have criminal backgrounds. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's important to highlight this and to really you know,
Speaker 2: even if it doesn't affect you, it affects you one
Speaker 2: way or another. You have a family member, you have
Speaker 2: somebody in your community that you know personally.
Speaker 6: Everybody does. It's just it's impossible not to so mice, man.
Speaker 2: Appreciate I appreciate you taking your time out to kick
Speaker 2: it with us. Like I said, you know something that
Speaker 2: we wanted to do for a while. So I'm glad that.
Speaker 2: I'm glad we had an opportunity to talk about this.
Speaker 5: I'm glad to have it. Man, this is a dope conversation,
Speaker 5: good energy. Man. Hopefully somebody hear this and take heed
Speaker 5: to this.
Speaker 7: Man. Understand that we're all human, man, you know, we
Speaker 7: all go to ups and downs. You make mistakes, sometimes
Speaker 7: you make the wrong term. Some of us are blessed enough.
Speaker 7: You know that our mistakes didn't turn out to be tragic.
Speaker 7: They didn't land us in prison, you know, so we
Speaker 7: should be we should be blessed for that and try
Speaker 7: to pay it forward, you know, because understanding that we
Speaker 7: could at some point, we probably could have ended up
Speaker 7: on the opposite. So, you know, don't look down on
Speaker 7: your brothers. Man, give him a hand, lift them up.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Prayers up to everybody that that's incarcerated, family, friends, brothers
Speaker 3: and sisters that are fighting coronavirus inside of prison. That's
Speaker 3: a real situation that I don't think people really understand. Right,
Speaker 3: we were on the outside like complain like, Yo, we
Speaker 3: can't go and we can't leave a house. But we're
Speaker 3: talking about a place where it's overcrowded already. There's no
Speaker 3: way to social distances. It's a real situation. So prayers
Speaker 3: up to everybody that is fighting that and facing that
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: I was watching CNBC yesterday and they said they were saying,
Speaker 2: like some of the prisons, like the population, how muchy
Speaker 2: people have crazy marrying Marrying Indiana and that's like a
Speaker 2: real well known prison. I think it's like underground. Eighty
Speaker 2: five percent of the prison population has Corona.
Speaker 3: In Texas, same thing, they tested twenty four hundred inmates,
Speaker 3: seventy five percent tested positive.
Speaker 6: It's that's that's crazy crazy.
Speaker 2: And obviously there's underlying health issues with people that are
Speaker 2: incarcerated and a lot of people probably gonna die health issues.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the fact that it is not come for oxygen, right,
Speaker 5: I don't understanding.
Speaker 7: If you look, you look at the numbers from the
Speaker 7: coronavirus and you're looking with most of the people, the
Speaker 7: mortality rate is highest in places where people are inside
Speaker 7: looking own folks homes and things like that, where people
Speaker 7: are trapped inside oka when you look at a prison,
Speaker 7: that's it's nothing else. You inhaling the same ears. Somebody's
Speaker 7: breathing all day. It's not like no frushating windows.
Speaker 2: Nowhere, same shower, shame toilet, like public space. It's like
Speaker 2: eighty five percent of the population and that person has
Speaker 2: corona Like that Really surprised.
Speaker 3: I'm like, wow, that's how do you how do you
Speaker 3: stop one hundred percent from getting it? And it doesn't
Speaker 3: just stop with the prisoners, because you have CEOs that
Speaker 3: are in the prison that go home to their families
Speaker 3: that now bring it, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: So it's like a real situation.
Speaker 3: I don'tly think people are fully grasping the magnitude of.
Speaker 6: Out Yeah, it's an issue.
Speaker 2: But anything you want to make the public aware of,
Speaker 2: any initiatives you got going on, any music too.
Speaker 6: We ain't get a chance to talk about music, but
Speaker 6: I know you still you still spar still.
Speaker 2: We didn't get a heare to talk about that, But
Speaker 2: any projects that you're working on, anything you want to
Speaker 2: make the public.
Speaker 7: Well, my project been out for a couple of months.
Speaker 7: I did so now for sales. Probably my favorite mixtape
Speaker 7: that I did in a long time. So I would
Speaker 7: advise you to go download. I just wrote this new
Speaker 7: children's book, I Know My Rights. It's important, especially based
Speaker 7: on what we were talking about now it's talking about
Speaker 7: the Bill Rights. I broke down the first ten amendments
Speaker 7: of the Bill of Rights, and you know too for
Speaker 7: children from like age eight unto high schools. It's really
Speaker 7: a family orientated book. A lot of adults read it
Speaker 7: and say that I broke down the amendments to them
Speaker 7: because they didn't even really understand them. So it's a
Speaker 7: book that, you know, shout out to McBride Publishing for partnering.
Speaker 5: What we were with the book is so dope.
Speaker 7: Where can we purchase You could purchase it on Amazon
Speaker 7: and had so many different like the animation on it
Speaker 7: is like fire Right, the whole animation of it, and
Speaker 7: it's just like like I took pictures of my kids.
Speaker 5: This is like one of my sons. They took they
Speaker 5: like drew sons.
Speaker 7: Like on the cover, this is the little this is
Speaker 7: my son, this is my son, and this is my son.
Speaker 7: So like you know what I'm saying, I try to
Speaker 7: make it real do for people. Talks about the right
Speaker 7: to vote, the right to religion, Wow, you know what
Speaker 7: I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna get I'm gonna get that for myself
Speaker 2: right now or Amazon definitely, Yeah, I'm gonna get that
Speaker 2: for myself. I was just thinking summer reading. We gotta
Speaker 2: have something for him and dude, So I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: be playing.
Speaker 6: It's gonna be this is different Troy Household items.
Speaker 4: Shout to everybody on Patreon dot com. We got a
Speaker 4: few new members.
Speaker 3: Shout to Shyanne she's a tear four member, and Mark
Speaker 3: and Baked Beans and Rice. So we're looking forward to heaven. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're looking forward to having those conversations. We appreciate your
Speaker 3: support and everybody. If you looking to join Patreon, Patreon
Speaker 3: dot com, Backslash and your leisure, we have, like we said,
Speaker 3: five different tiers. You can join anyone and they all
Speaker 3: come with different incentives. To four and five, we'll get
Speaker 3: you access to.
Speaker 4: Our online school.
Speaker 3: Uy L University is one of the fastest growing online
Speaker 3: universities in the world, so feel free to join that.
Speaker 5: And uh.
Speaker 4: One of those other incentives.
Speaker 3: Is that you have access to our private real estate
Speaker 3: Facebook group man, and that has just been killing it.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 4: A lot of learnings going on in there.
Speaker 3: We have a movie club, a book club, we have webinars.
Speaker 3: It's incredible, man, So everybody that's been joining that, we
Speaker 3: appreciate it. And everybody's supporting the Merchi. On uner leisure
Speaker 3: dot com. We got to access of a liability shot.
Speaker 3: You got the you got the tracksuit on Man. The
Speaker 3: tracksuit was was kind of crazy. I actually have to
Speaker 3: give my my red one away. It was it was
Speaker 3: that hot. So shout out to everybody that's supporting the
Speaker 3: Memerchi and continue support it.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 6: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 4: So we're gonna send you some stuff get you Yeah
Speaker 4: for sure.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Make sure you like and subscribe on YouTube. That's important.
Speaker 2: Comment all of that, and thank you guys for rocking
Speaker 2: with us.
Speaker 6: We'll see you next week.
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