Speaker 1: Yep, GEP Ghetto Boys is back and reload it all
Speaker 1: in your mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now deep throat it. This is going the streets.
Speaker 2: The real, the real roaded to disenfranchise the truth to escapegoating,
Speaker 2: and they ain't know where we speak the truth, so
Speaker 2: they quoted because we wrote it the North South East coach.
Speaker 3: Just the ge be mock keeping your head bobbing. It
Speaker 3: ain't no stopping.
Speaker 4: And once the bedrops head by.
Speaker 2: Then the system is so corrupt they threw the rock
Speaker 2: out their heads and then blame it on us.
Speaker 1: Don't get it twisted on colding Meg danced, they put
Speaker 1: no butterment biscuits. It's Willie d y'all Ghetto Boys in
Speaker 1: the house back with another episode of information and instructions
Speaker 1: to help you navigate through this wild, crazy, beautiful world.
Speaker 2: In the studio Jason.
Speaker 3: Mitchell, yes her, yes up. Can't oh good? But how
Speaker 3: you doing.
Speaker 2: Hey, man? Ship hold on hop out be on top.
Speaker 3: I heard that, man. Thank you for having me, brother,
Speaker 3: Thank you for.
Speaker 2: Having assolutely man. We got to get right into it.
Speaker 2: You have portrayed a number of complex characters and films
Speaker 2: like Straight out of Compton and mud Bound and mud
Speaker 2: Bound you played a you played a character that was
Speaker 2: based on uh this guy who was you know, coming
Speaker 2: home from post World War two and you got this
Speaker 2: racial tension going on. How is it that you were
Speaker 2: able to like channel that energy that was needed to
Speaker 2: where you're coming home basically damn near war hero coming
Speaker 2: back home to Mississippi, you know, one of the one
Speaker 2: of the racists. I mean, this is like damn near
Speaker 2: like the foundation of racism in America, fact, right, Like,
Speaker 2: how were you able to to channel to channel that
Speaker 2: energy well to deliver that role?
Speaker 5: I mean to be honest, right, like just being a
Speaker 5: black man in America, we know they got racism that
Speaker 5: that just lies on the surface, especially when you grew
Speaker 5: up in the South like me. I'm originally from New Orleans,
Speaker 5: right right. But my grandfather he's from Bush, Louisiana, and
Speaker 5: went to the Korean War, came home with I mean,
Speaker 5: uh probably like a fourth or fifth grade education, and
Speaker 5: had to marry my grandmother, which which they consider uh
Speaker 5: passe blan. I don't know if you ever seen this movie,
Speaker 5: The Pass and that Tessa Thompson just did this black.
Speaker 3: And white film.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was an excellent film, but it was like real, right, So,
Speaker 5: my my grandmother was what they called passe blann passed
Speaker 5: for white, and her my grandfather pretty much got together
Speaker 5: because he had some money from the war and she
Speaker 5: was white enough to go start them a business, you know.
Speaker 5: So that was it was damnar really his story, and
Speaker 5: like where we actually shot the film when I was
Speaker 5: in the f four than fifth grade. Man, we took
Speaker 5: field trips out there to see, you know, the plantations
Speaker 5: and the wax museums and all of that. So it
Speaker 5: was something that was already kind of deep rooted in
Speaker 5: me that I felt like I just needed to let out.
Speaker 5: And it was such a privilege to be able to
Speaker 5: let that.
Speaker 3: Out, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Like, I just appreciate d Read so much for talking
Speaker 5: about that, because a lot of times people want to
Speaker 5: jump straight from slavery to civil rights and they never
Speaker 5: want to talk about this Jim Crow situation that was
Speaker 5: happening that really, I feel like, built the hate, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean, between white and black people.
Speaker 3: And it was.
Speaker 5: Man funny story about that, right, Like I took my
Speaker 5: grandfather to see Straight out of Compton and he fell
Speaker 5: asleep in the middle of the movie, just was knocked out,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Not that had nothing to do with the movie.
Speaker 5: Right, But when I took him to go see mud Bone,
Speaker 5: he literally sat there with his arms folded the entire time.
Speaker 5: Not mind you, his oldest brother was a slave, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. And in his mind's always some
Speaker 5: work to be done, even on a Sunday, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean. He always tell me it's always it's
Speaker 5: always some wit. And he sat there with his arms
Speaker 5: folded the entire time. And when we left out of there,
Speaker 5: he was like, so, you mean to tell me that
Speaker 5: these people paid you to do this, that's.
Speaker 3: What you're saying.
Speaker 5: Like he couldn't even conceptualize the fact that I had
Speaker 5: got money put in my pocket and I'm getting glorified
Speaker 5: for putting this on TV. He couldn't even his brain
Speaker 5: couldn't even compute it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And I just look at it.
Speaker 2: Was he upset? Was he upset about it?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 5: Because I mean, to him, it was way too real,
Speaker 5: you know, because the exact same thing happened to him
Speaker 5: and a few of his brothers. They went to the war,
Speaker 5: came back and even though they was heroes, they wasn't
Speaker 5: getting no love from no white folks, and they wouldn't
Speaker 5: save them, you know what I mean. So they really
Speaker 5: they had a whole different type of a feeling about
Speaker 5: the film just in general, you know, and it took
Speaker 5: other people to tell them, oh, like he getting awards
Speaker 5: and you know, the movie is doing so good for
Speaker 5: him to even calm down, Like he wasn't even trying
Speaker 5: to hear that at first, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And it was just so he felt that your character
Speaker 2: was blasphem me.
Speaker 5: Well he thought cause in his mind right, acting is
Speaker 5: already kind of a joke, like they're not paying no
Speaker 5: black man to be no actor, Like that's that's not
Speaker 5: like that's never gonna happen, you know, because back in
Speaker 5: their day it was like if you was acting for
Speaker 5: them white people, you was basically a joke, like you.
Speaker 3: Know, black people wasn't respecting it, you know.
Speaker 5: So he already was kind of like looking at my
Speaker 5: job like when you're gonna get a real job, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm telling you like he never believed me.
Speaker 5: It always took everybody else to tell him like, oh,
Speaker 5: you know, your grandson doing great, and but yeah, he
Speaker 5: never he never looked at my job, like it was
Speaker 5: a real thing. So when he saw that, it was
Speaker 5: like but for me, I feel like, look what we
Speaker 5: did in three generations, you know what I mean. We
Speaker 5: basically went from his oldest brother who was a slave.
Speaker 5: I mean, he put my mama and her two siblings
Speaker 5: in LSU because all they could do was pick up
Speaker 5: trash at LSU. But think about it, like you go
Speaker 5: to a war and then you come home and all
Speaker 5: you could do is pick up trash on LSU campus.
Speaker 5: That's crazy. So he sent all his kids there, you know,
Speaker 5: just like to be able to stand firm on what
Speaker 5: he believed. And then you know, my mom had me.
Speaker 5: And then I put that story on the big screen,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, And we went for a
Speaker 5: few oscars.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Feel like that's when I realized as an actor, like
Speaker 5: what I did really meant something, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: Like when I play easy E, I knew.
Speaker 3: Like I just couldn't. You just can't fuck that up,
Speaker 3: you know what I.
Speaker 5: Mean, Like if you do, you just gotta hide under
Speaker 5: a rock until it blow over.
Speaker 3: But when you start, like.
Speaker 5: You know, when your children come home and they like, Daddy,
Speaker 5: we watched your movie at school today. That's that's life changing,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. So you know, I hate
Speaker 5: to look at myself like an actor activist or something
Speaker 5: like that, because I ain't got a racist bone in
Speaker 5: my body. But you know, it feel good to be
Speaker 5: able to tell our story and not have to be
Speaker 5: violent with our protests, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So I feel like we came a long way.
Speaker 2: But how do you go from easy a tough guy,
Speaker 2: easy e ain't scared of nothing, to Rounzel Jackson. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know this this guy who is it? What he rolling?
Speaker 2: He got a chip on his shoulder, but man, he
Speaker 2: got a deal. The motherfuckers right in Mississippi. I mean,
Speaker 2: they're a different type of uncivilized, but right, you know,
Speaker 2: and and they got they got the law enforcement and
Speaker 2: the courts and the government everything, everybody all inconhusion, everybody
Speaker 2: on the same page. Like you're nobody. You're dealing with
Speaker 2: a system. You're not dealing with a person. You're dealing
Speaker 2: with a system.
Speaker 5: Right, you know, right, And you know, as sad as
Speaker 5: it is, like still really haven't wiggled our way outside
Speaker 5: that system all the way you know, as blacks like
Speaker 5: because they have this cooker cutter version of what it
Speaker 5: should be.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: Let you know that with all due respect, Let's just
Speaker 5: take Hollywood for instance, right, it was built by a
Speaker 5: certain group of people, and you know a lot of
Speaker 5: the talent is black talent, or it may be you know,
Speaker 5: people of color or whatever it may be. But if
Speaker 5: you're not coloring inside the lines, they can move you
Speaker 5: around real quick.
Speaker 3: And it's the same thing with the sharecropping situation.
Speaker 5: It's like you you free, but you live on my land.
Speaker 5: So in order to have anything that me and anything,
Speaker 5: you got to work for me. And that's just how
Speaker 5: this system was built. And it's sad to see.
Speaker 3: You know, but.
Speaker 5: Me and a few of my brothers, brothers like yourself,
Speaker 5: you know, we wiggling our way out.
Speaker 3: Of this, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: And it's about ownership and it's about having something for yourself.
Speaker 5: So you know, if anybody learns anything for me in
Speaker 5: my career, that's what I want him to go home with,
Speaker 5: you know, go home with something that's for you and
Speaker 5: that's gonna be for your family, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: You gotta you gotta own something in this world for sure,
Speaker 5: you know. And it's it's it's it's pretty crazy or
Speaker 5: to have this, uh, this freedom to be able to
Speaker 5: express myself the way I feel like I need to because.
Speaker 3: It's tough. It's hard out here, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: You got the police on your back, you got all
Speaker 5: of this systemic racism, all of these different things happening,
Speaker 5: you know. So I think I was very blessed to
Speaker 5: be in a situation to be able to speak for
Speaker 5: an entire demographic of people, you know. So I just
Speaker 5: I really got to get a get a glory to God, man,
Speaker 5: because when you ask how, I don't really know.
Speaker 3: Man's it's a blessing.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: That's where the gift kicking and my own understanding moves
Speaker 5: out the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you talked about the role you played and straight
Speaker 2: out of Compton, Easy, the iconic easy Eric, right, the
Speaker 2: man the guy above. All right, that was your breakout roll.
Speaker 2: That was congrats, you know, thank you and salute because
Speaker 2: when I looked at you do that in fact, all
Speaker 2: all you guys nailed your roles. Y'all was just perfect.
Speaker 2: The casting was perfect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got to give a big shout out to Vicky.
Speaker 2: Thomas Thomas man get that that the casting was perfect
Speaker 2: one thout believable and the way you the way you
Speaker 2: were able to channel your your your energy, it was
Speaker 2: like a roller coaster, you know, you was like a
Speaker 2: roller coaster type thing going on, and but you were
Speaker 2: able to deliver it and it was believable every step
Speaker 2: of the way. That was no hiccups, Like how were
Speaker 2: you able to channel this iconic character and maintain you know,
Speaker 2: like you know you're acting, but you know you're going
Speaker 2: cut cut, cut cut, and still be able to deliver
Speaker 2: like time and time and time again, because I know
Speaker 2: the movie only lasted an hour or something, right, right, right,
Speaker 2: but I know you know it took a lot of
Speaker 2: takes to get get it right, to get it perfect.
Speaker 5: Oh absolutely, Gary, Gary Gray. You know we also got
Speaker 5: to give a shout out to him. You know, that's
Speaker 5: our fearless leader and as a black director, I mean,
Speaker 5: he ain't ever missed, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 5: his first film Friday when you look at set it off,
Speaker 5: the Italian Job, the Negotiator, I mean, he just don't
Speaker 5: miss you know, so we we definitely got to put
Speaker 5: him properly on the plateau that he should be on.
Speaker 5: And you know, he's definitely one of the greades. He
Speaker 5: might be the highest paid black you know director ever.
Speaker 5: So he grew up around the corner from Cbe, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. He knew this life very well.
Speaker 5: But for me, you know, being from New Orleans, all
Speaker 5: I know is the lingo, right because I'm seeing it
Speaker 5: on TV. I'm seeing Minister Society, you know, these sorts
Speaker 5: of movies, and I'm not able to do the voice
Speaker 5: real quick because and I could switch it up and
Speaker 5: do the La voice, and you know, I could do
Speaker 5: all of that. And it was like something that we
Speaker 5: always thought was funny in New Orleans because you know,
Speaker 5: I don't really know exactly what language we speak because
Speaker 5: it's not quite English, you know, but like it was
Speaker 5: funny to us that they would pronounce every syllable even
Speaker 5: though they were super gangster, and you know, and it
Speaker 5: was things that I saw on TV that like, once
Speaker 5: I got to La and I met guys like Nipsey
Speaker 5: and Problem and Laylaw and all of them, when they
Speaker 5: started to explain the gang culture to me, a lot
Speaker 5: of it started to make more sense. Like when people
Speaker 5: see easy move in certain ways, like all of these
Speaker 5: things was like crip affiliated situations, right, So I just
Speaker 5: started looking at it like, you know, what if I
Speaker 5: could build this man from the ground up and humanize
Speaker 5: him as a person, you know, from you know him
Speaker 5: growing up like having their first little studio in his
Speaker 5: grandmother's garage.
Speaker 3: To you know, going through baby Mama drama, to you.
Speaker 5: Know, his cousin being killed and being one of the
Speaker 5: biggest drug dealers ever. I was just sort of putting
Speaker 5: all these pieces together that would allow me ultimately to
Speaker 5: be so prepared that by the time I got on set,
Speaker 5: I was taking direction as easy and not as Jason Mitchell.
Speaker 3: You dig that. So that's kind of that's how locked
Speaker 3: in I was.
Speaker 5: And man, we like working with Gary was crazy, right
Speaker 5: because for four straight weeks we had to like re
Speaker 5: record the album.
Speaker 3: We had to do our kind of like uh.
Speaker 5: Performance training and stuff like that with dub C, and
Speaker 5: they wanted to believe that we was in w A.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's my guy.
Speaker 5: He's a super solid one, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: But yeah, yeah, he's he's amazing. But they wanted us
Speaker 5: to convince NWA that we was in WA without the costumes, right, right,
Speaker 5: So you know, it was about being able to listen
Speaker 5: to each other and really be able to transfer the
Speaker 5: energy and all of these different things that like, at first,
Speaker 5: we all really kind of thought some bullshit. He like, man,
Speaker 5: this nigga, bro, he's just doing the most. So one
Speaker 5: day he pulls some money out of his pocket and
Speaker 5: he said, everybody close your eyes, and he drops a
Speaker 5: bill on the ground and he said what kind of
Speaker 5: bill is that? And were like, come on, bro, like
Speaker 5: you just making up anything now. He like, no, if
Speaker 5: you're really listening and you're really paying attention, you wouldn't
Speaker 5: know what kind of bill that hits the ground. If
Speaker 5: it's one hundred or five or one dollar bill, a
Speaker 5: twenty or ten, you gonna know if you're really paying attention, man, listen.
Speaker 3: By the end of that training, he had us do
Speaker 3: it again. He dropped that.
Speaker 5: Everybody was like, that's a hundred, that's a hundred. We
Speaker 5: looked down it was one hundred dollar bill, and it
Speaker 5: was just incredible to like work with him and get
Speaker 5: that real coarateie going.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean. We was really like brothers.
Speaker 5: Like when we were doing all that crying at the
Speaker 5: end of the movie, it became a joke to us because.
Speaker 3: We was like this nigga really about to make me cry.
Speaker 5: Like when Algi Hodge walked out of the player mc wren,
Speaker 5: he was really holding him to his back. When Neil
Speaker 5: ran out of that crying, he was really he was
Speaker 5: in the in the in the hallway, really balling off camera,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, Because we grew such a
Speaker 5: brotherhood that it was like it just it felt too real.
Speaker 5: It felt too real to us, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I just don't know a way that they could have
Speaker 2: gotten a better cast out of that. I just don't know,
Speaker 2: Like it was so perfectly casting. Typically, you can get
Speaker 2: one person, the right person. You can find somebody that
Speaker 2: can really really embody the role that character. They can
Speaker 2: do it for.
Speaker 6: That one person, right, but everybody is a different what
Speaker 6: five different man and even down to like the Jimmy
Speaker 6: Iveen little roles that they popped in that you like, damn.
Speaker 5: Like when I first met Jimmy, I was so impressed
Speaker 5: to see him standing next to the guy that was
Speaker 5: playing him.
Speaker 3: It blew my mind.
Speaker 5: I'm like, damn, they find everybody that really looked like
Speaker 5: the people.
Speaker 2: But they still had their chops too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Paul, he was he was amazing to work
Speaker 3: with Bro.
Speaker 5: He like, he changed my whole mind frame on where
Speaker 5: I was on the totem pole, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Because I didn't know no actors growing up, Like the
Speaker 5: actors that are from New Orleans, they had to leave
Speaker 5: New Orleans in order to you know, flourish. They had
Speaker 5: to you know, go to New York, LA or whatever
Speaker 5: it was. So I grew up around all rappers, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. I come up under Lil Wayne
Speaker 5: and you know what I mean, the squad and all
Speaker 5: of these guys.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying. Coming up, I rapped.
Speaker 5: I rapped before everybody thought I was gonna rap, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean, and not act. But I was
Speaker 5: just like, you know what, ain't nobody acting. So once
Speaker 5: I found that little hustle, I was like, hey, I
Speaker 5: might be good at this, you know.
Speaker 3: So I ended up.
Speaker 2: You're going you're gonna put it in? You gotta put it.
Speaker 2: It's like it's calling you, bro.
Speaker 3: It definitely is. I got it.
Speaker 5: I got a couple of records, you know, because I
Speaker 5: ain't gonna lie. I can write any kind of music.
Speaker 5: I could write country music if I really wanted to.
Speaker 5: Me and Trevor Jackson, who I did Superfly with. We
Speaker 5: we write a lot of music together. Yeah, that's my guy.
Speaker 2: Man, That's that's something else. You can country music.
Speaker 3: I can. I can. I'm here for it because I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm a storyteller.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, I bet you can't
Speaker 2: do that opera.
Speaker 3: Opera, you know what.
Speaker 5: That might be a little out my jacket, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean, But it's not necessarily something I enjoyed,
Speaker 5: Like the artist beautiful.
Speaker 3: I just saw a black opera singing like.
Speaker 5: Like a couple of months ago, and I was just like, wow,
Speaker 5: this is it's incredible.
Speaker 3: But I'm did you cry? I didn't.
Speaker 2: You're supposed to cry when you listen to opera. You
Speaker 2: gotta cry. You know what you're listening. That's what make
Speaker 2: it feel good. It's all about crime, bro. Like you
Speaker 2: if you don't cry, you you really don't understand opera.
Speaker 2: Like I'm supposed to go to my first opera event
Speaker 2: in a few days, and you know.
Speaker 3: You gotta record yourself crime.
Speaker 2: I'm a cry.
Speaker 3: I gotta see, I gotta I gotta I want to
Speaker 3: see the process.
Speaker 2: I got some tears for him, bro, Like, yeah, but
Speaker 2: you if you, if you can't cry or you're not
Speaker 2: really an actor.
Speaker 3: Oh I could.
Speaker 2: You gotta be able to cry, to be a really
Speaker 2: cry right now, do it right now, right now, right now,
Speaker 2: all right, let me see see you're gonna take me there,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna be able to come back, Willie, don't
Speaker 2: do you see you see you're big. You're about to
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 3: Though I saw us.
Speaker 5: I was, I was, but it's not the easiest place
Speaker 5: to come back from, you know, it's not the easiest place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you was about to do that, boy, Yeah, but
Speaker 2: I also I saw that.
Speaker 3: Look, yeah, you can see the Wellington quick.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Man, it's it's it's crazy because like you know, as
Speaker 5: a youngster, I would always entertain myself and entertain my friends.
Speaker 3: But I never thought that that.
Speaker 5: Meant anything, you know, and all the hardships that I
Speaker 5: really had in my life, I didn't I didn't cry
Speaker 5: about them then. You know, like I lost my dad
Speaker 5: when I was fifteen. He ended up killing himself. You know,
Speaker 5: like we experienced a lot of trauma and New Orleans. Yeah,
Speaker 5: just you know, my friends dying and all of this,
Speaker 5: and it's like you get so immune to the to
Speaker 5: the shock of it that you don't never really take
Speaker 5: the time to cry. So I think when I did
Speaker 5: start figuring out that that was something I could tap
Speaker 5: into and let loose on it, that it became like
Speaker 5: a therapy for me, right, Like me and f Gary Gray.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget.
Speaker 5: We're doing the Detroit scenes and you know, the big
Speaker 5: concert scenes.
Speaker 3: It's like high energy all of that.
Speaker 5: You know, we laughing and you know, I'm going back
Speaker 5: to my trailer for my lunch. And he comes to
Speaker 5: my trailer and he's like, yeah, these hospital scenes, you
Speaker 5: know they're coming up next week, and I just want
Speaker 5: to know what you're gonna do. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 5: you know, besides what's on the script, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm gonna bring the rain. I'm definitely gonna cry,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. Like it's it's a process,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. Because you know, he didn't
Speaker 5: even they didn't even think heterosexual men could get AIDS
Speaker 5: at that time, you know.
Speaker 3: So I told him.
Speaker 5: About the discovery I was gonna have and you know,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna cry, and he was like, well, I want
Speaker 5: you to do it right now, and I was like.
Speaker 3: No, Like I'm having a great day. I don't you
Speaker 3: know what. I don't want to do this right now,
Speaker 3: Like what do you mean?
Speaker 5: He was like, we really had a hot and heavy
Speaker 5: argument in my trailer because I didn't want to show him,
Speaker 5: you know, what I was gonna do. But then on
Speaker 5: the day I'm talking about take one, that's what you're
Speaker 5: seen on the movie because it just was coming down
Speaker 5: and he just was in there hugging me, and I
Speaker 5: was like, I told you, bro, I told you that
Speaker 5: I was gonna be able to get there. But getting
Speaker 5: back ain't the easiest thing in the world because they
Speaker 5: got so much to cry for that we hold back sometimes,
Speaker 5: and they got so much pain inside of us that
Speaker 5: like if it's not channeled properly, you know, you could
Speaker 5: it could pop out and go.
Speaker 3: The wrong way.
Speaker 5: So I'm glad that I do have this, this safe
Speaker 5: place to be able to come and let them tears out,
Speaker 5: like it ain't nothing.
Speaker 2: What's the process getting there and what's the process getting back?
Speaker 3: The process getting there?
Speaker 5: I think, you know, they teach you, like in these
Speaker 5: acting classes to use these breathing techniques, and you know,
Speaker 5: after like different therapy and stuff that I've been through,
Speaker 5: I realized that like when you are alone with your
Speaker 5: thoughts and you try to breathe through it. Right, A
Speaker 5: lot of times you can't help the way your body
Speaker 5: starts to feel, you know what I mean. So I
Speaker 5: just I built this muscle memory to not fight it,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying. Once it starts to come,
Speaker 5: let it go, you know. But getting back, I mean,
Speaker 5: like you know, I this this film that's about to
Speaker 5: come out. Now, everything is both you know, I had
Speaker 5: a I had a tough scene. Well you know, I
Speaker 5: had to. I had to let the tears out. But
Speaker 5: like it really pretty much just took everybody coming and
Speaker 5: put their arms around me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: And that's that's what you need. You need that family love,
Speaker 5: you know. So we have that moment, we had that
Speaker 5: guy love situation and then it's over. You know, sometimes
Speaker 5: you need that.
Speaker 2: And did he did?
Speaker 4: He hug?
Speaker 3: He did?
Speaker 2: He did.
Speaker 5: But you know, you know how people give you the
Speaker 5: tough hug you good man, You're good, great job man,
Speaker 5: but you good. It's like cause it's you know, like
Speaker 5: a lot of times when people see you go there
Speaker 5: that fast and they're like, all right, well we're gonna
Speaker 5: do a couple of more of these and you turn
Speaker 5: it on and turn it off. It's like, you know,
Speaker 5: it's crazy, but you know how like when you're young
Speaker 5: and you get a whooping and you cry yourself to
Speaker 5: sleep and you wake up feeling like a lot better.
Speaker 3: A lot of times, that's how it is.
Speaker 5: You know, it might feel a little fucked up while
Speaker 5: you're doing it and going through it, but afterwards you
Speaker 5: feel like the best.
Speaker 3: That's why to me, it's it's definitely like a therapy thing.
Speaker 4: I mean, Gottle Boys reloaded podcasts will be right back
Speaker 4: after the squat?
Speaker 2: How did you endust Man?
Speaker 3: Me and jaquevis mad.
Speaker 5: He ended up reaching out to me, just like I
Speaker 5: think he might have just ran across my page or
Speaker 5: something like that. But I was like, at the time
Speaker 5: COVID had just hit, I was living in New York
Speaker 5: and my life was kind of like, you know, it
Speaker 5: was just a little bit slow for everybody like you
Speaker 5: locked in the house, can't really do nothing whatever. So
Speaker 5: he was, I'm gonna send you some book, you know,
Speaker 5: but like you know, you know, nigga sometime say books
Speaker 5: and you'd be like, damn, I ain't gonna, you know,
Speaker 5: all right, send me books, you know, what I mean.
Speaker 3: So it was all good.
Speaker 5: But he sent me the books and I had nothing
Speaker 5: to do, so I just I started reading. But then
Speaker 5: I ain't put the books down. I'm like, damn, it's
Speaker 5: nigga cold, you know what I mean. So I'm just
Speaker 5: checking his books out, like dam he could you know,
Speaker 5: he really dope. So through that we just built a friendship,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. And we just would always
Speaker 5: just talk and just always be on the phone, and
Speaker 5: we just you know what I mean, We just jokes
Speaker 5: COVID together pretty much like you know, and we started
Speaker 5: talking about maybe, you know, how we could turn one
Speaker 5: of the books into a movie. And one thing just
Speaker 5: sort of led to another, and he was like, man, listen,
Speaker 5: you know I believe in you. If you believe in me,
Speaker 5: let's do a movie. So I'm like, all right, one
Speaker 5: thing just led to another and we ended up doing
Speaker 5: a movie.
Speaker 2: And did you know he was a New York best
Speaker 2: seller before he reached out.
Speaker 5: I didn't. I didn't. I mean I had heard his
Speaker 5: books before, you know. I heard his books because you know,
Speaker 5: they real popular in the black community, him and his wife.
Speaker 5: But I wasn't a big reader, you know, I would
Speaker 5: read scripts and stuff. But you know, like a lot
Speaker 5: of other black children, I just wasn't a big reader.
Speaker 2: When you would read scripts, did you just read your
Speaker 2: own parts and you read the whole script?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: I always read the whole script. Everybody know.
Speaker 5: When I come on set, like I know my lines,
Speaker 5: I know your lines.
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm just.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because I mean, I feel like you fine, because
Speaker 5: I love movies, you know what I mean. And a
Speaker 5: lot of times you got these little breadcrumbs and these
Speaker 5: little gems that happen, and this is how you know
Speaker 5: good writing. And I feel like, you know, a lot
Speaker 5: of people think that I got where I am in
Speaker 5: my career from the yesest, but it was really the nose.
Speaker 3: It was all the shit that I turned down.
Speaker 5: There was so many scripts that I get sent that
Speaker 5: like I'm looking for key things in it to know
Speaker 5: like if this is gonna be a good film or not.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, what are you looking for?
Speaker 2: Because that's one of the questions I have to ask you,
Speaker 2: like what do you look for? Because you actually picked
Speaker 2: some of the best roles, like memorable characters, characters that
Speaker 2: have to dive deep and pull out those emotions. Yeah,
Speaker 2: consistent with.
Speaker 3: That, Well, I'm looking for the human pieces of it. Man.
Speaker 5: A lot of times we just see stuff it's like
Speaker 5: on the surface, right, Like I mean, I don't want
Speaker 5: to I don't want to give no examples because I
Speaker 5: don't want to say, oh this is bad acting or
Speaker 5: bad movies. But we see it all the time, you know.
Speaker 5: And and me, I need layers to a man, right,
Speaker 5: Like just using Easy for example, he was the villain
Speaker 5: that everybody hated to hate, right because he did a
Speaker 5: lot of dumb shit and everybody was still rooting for him.
Speaker 3: At the end, nobody wanted Easy to die.
Speaker 5: He about to get his shit together. But in real
Speaker 5: life he was definitely the villain. He was the bad
Speaker 5: guy in the movie. You know, he liked Yeah, he
Speaker 5: didn't have no problem with it because in his mind
Speaker 5: he's thinking, QB, you seventeen years old, your opinion really
Speaker 5: don't count. You ain't got no money, dre you you
Speaker 5: got talent, but you ain't got no money, you know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. Still, I'm out here risking my life
Speaker 5: for my money. So y'all, ain't my friends, Like this
Speaker 5: is a business transaction. So at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: without no money, all of these fantasies that y'all have
Speaker 5: about being superstars and all of this good stuff is
Speaker 5: out the window, you know. And at the time they
Speaker 5: really was just thinking about being hood stars. Easy was
Speaker 5: thinking bigger than them. So for him, he was the
Speaker 5: mastermind and the money behind it. So how do you
Speaker 5: go to somebody and tell them I deserve xyz that
Speaker 5: they ain't never seen, you.
Speaker 3: Know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Like these guys went viral and it was just hand
Speaker 5: to hand situations. So every character that I try to
Speaker 5: find has layers. Rather they be good, bad, ugly, but
Speaker 5: they they got layers of a man and they need
Speaker 5: to be able to show that, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 5: Because I'm one of them people who I really believe,
Speaker 5: Like I mean, you could feel when people got an
Speaker 5: ugly energy about themselves, right, or some kind of demonic
Speaker 5: energy about themselves. But for the most part, I don't
Speaker 5: really believe in good people and bad people. I think
Speaker 5: it's just people and there's decisions on the table, you know,
Speaker 5: and like all of us have made a bad decision
Speaker 5: here or there in our life, or you know, made
Speaker 5: somebody feel a certain way, you know, Like everybody ain't
Speaker 5: gonna love you. Everybody ain't gonna love your opinions. And
Speaker 5: I think that's what humanizes roles and humanizes movies the most,
Speaker 5: you know, just being able to show them different layers.
Speaker 5: I'm a seventeen layer cake, so I need to be
Speaker 5: to show people.
Speaker 2: You know, you say everybody, you don't believe in good
Speaker 2: and bad people, just people what you're saying on that
Speaker 2: with And I think it is some demonic ass people
Speaker 2: out that. Yeah, you do you think that? Do you
Speaker 2: think that somebody like like say Dylan Ruth who shot
Speaker 2: up the black people at the church, You don't think
Speaker 2: he was a bad person. You think he just a person?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I'm also like, I ain't gonna say
Speaker 5: I'm a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that agendas
Speaker 5: be pushed a lot of times and situations, and like
Speaker 5: children are so easily influenced, Like they do have a
Speaker 5: lot of demonic energies out here, right, But do I
Speaker 5: believe that that kid was born hating black people and
Speaker 5: said to himself, as soon as I get a chance,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna shoot up a black church.
Speaker 3: Absolutely not.
Speaker 5: Now, whatever took over his mind at the time to
Speaker 5: make him go do that foolishness is a whole different story,
Speaker 5: you know, cause, like I don't know the dude named
Speaker 5: the other white boy who shot up the grocery store
Speaker 5: and was only killing black people, remember, and he ran
Speaker 5: up on a white person who was like, oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: He went to the next person.
Speaker 5: But the first guy that he killed, the security guard
Speaker 5: who was at the door, invented the engine that ran
Speaker 5: off water and was just on the news like two
Speaker 5: weeks before that. They ain't trying to have that, so
Speaker 5: they gonna shoot him and then make it look like
Speaker 5: a random mass mass shooting, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: So now when I'm starting to see these shootings, it's
Speaker 5: getting more and more popular and a little bit crazy now,
Speaker 5: and I feel like it's an agenda to cover up
Speaker 5: what's really happening behind whoever they are out there looking for.
Speaker 2: At the time, Well, I heard that theory. I heard
Speaker 2: that that was people saying that, you know, this happened
Speaker 2: because this guy, this black guy, invented a car that
Speaker 2: could run off water, and they can't let that happen.
Speaker 2: And we know that those things do happen. We know
Speaker 2: that they do try to silence black people who who
Speaker 2: have ideas and information that can change the world because
Speaker 2: they don't want to. They don't want to encourage black
Speaker 2: kids to think bigger.
Speaker 5: Right, And then on top of that, you know, it's
Speaker 5: like if they give the cure to AIDS, all the
Speaker 5: people who've been studying age making eighty ninety thousand a
Speaker 5: year studying AIDS now don't have a job that exists anymore,
Speaker 5: or so they gonna pluck you.
Speaker 2: But here's my right with that theory. They don't have
Speaker 2: to kill so many people just to kill this one guy.
Speaker 2: Like keep in mind, the rest of us didn't even
Speaker 2: know about this invention until after the dude got killed.
Speaker 2: So if they just wanted to kill that guy, I mean,
Speaker 2: why not just get, you know, one guy to run
Speaker 2: up on him. How about this some guy tried to
Speaker 2: act like he's stealing somebody's store. He acosta guy, the
Speaker 2: guy blows his brains out, nobody questions anything. They know
Speaker 2: how to kill. They know how to kill, and set
Speaker 2: it up to make it look like that was some
Speaker 2: type of disagreement. Like, especially when it comes to black people,
Speaker 2: they'll immediately try to get make it like a hood situation,
Speaker 2: like somebody just got out of pocket. They know how
Speaker 2: to do that. Why kill so many people?
Speaker 3: Well, I think.
Speaker 5: Historic Black people have never thrived well in chaos because
Speaker 5: we're so passionate, and the first thing we do when
Speaker 5: we really believe some shit is tear our own shit up,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. We've been our worst enemy
Speaker 5: for a long time, in my opinion, you know, so
Speaker 5: the first thing they want to do is hand us
Speaker 5: chaos and say, yeah, get mad, y'all get mad, everybody
Speaker 5: get mad, because then we start we completely forget about
Speaker 5: what's really happening in the situation. Because this is how
Speaker 5: I look at it, right, Like I know a few
Speaker 5: police and they wanted to be cops their entire life.
Speaker 5: They waiting on opportunities to do some heroic shit. What
Speaker 5: in any cop right mind after all of these people
Speaker 5: being shot up, that yo approach to this person who
Speaker 5: just did all of this killing and it's so sweet.
Speaker 5: You're taking these people to get burgers and you're putting
Speaker 5: bulletproof vests on them, and you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: Like with black people, it's not like that police is
Speaker 5: beating you up.
Speaker 3: They're killing you, they're shooting you.
Speaker 5: So to me, that was really what I'm looking at like, wait,
Speaker 5: they why they ain't just take this opportunity to kill
Speaker 5: this dude. They just had a mass shooting out here
Speaker 5: in Texas. He was a brown guy, you know, some
Speaker 5: kind of hispanic. Guess what, when it was all said
Speaker 5: and done, he was laid out, he was on the ground,
Speaker 5: he was finished. They killed him, you know. And I
Speaker 5: can't say that, like, you know, every one of them
Speaker 5: is part of the agenda. But I'm saying when it's
Speaker 5: the white folks who go do that, they never end
Speaker 5: up killing them and we never know what happens to
Speaker 5: him at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: I think it's as simple as he's one of us. Example,
Speaker 2: Like you know, he did what I wanted to do,
Speaker 2: you know, right, So of course I'm going to treat
Speaker 2: him with humanity because I would want to be treated
Speaker 2: with humanity if I did that to them.
Speaker 3: Like absolute.
Speaker 2: They are inhumane. Main people who behave that way are inhumane.
Speaker 2: They're uncivilized mus And and let me go back to
Speaker 2: a statement you just made about us being our worst enemy.
Speaker 2: I've heard that. I've heard that many many times from
Speaker 2: black people, especially online, and assuming that they were black,
Speaker 2: you know, online. The reason why I disagree with that
Speaker 2: is because that is a tall statement to say that
Speaker 2: we're our worst enemy. Uh, and we've been our worst enemy.
Speaker 2: We black people have never enslaved our entire population of
Speaker 2: people in any country. We we We didn't stamp unborn
Speaker 2: babies out of their mother's wounds. We didn't feed babies
Speaker 2: to alligators. We didn't take plows and snatched teeth out
Speaker 2: of the mouths of human beings who didn't want to work,
Speaker 2: and so they decided that because I don't want to work,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to work for you anymore, I'd rather stove.
Speaker 2: We forced them to eat liquids, so we snatched that
Speaker 2: te pull their teeth out of their mouth. We didn't
Speaker 2: bomb Tussle, Oklahoma. We didn't raid Rosewood and burn it
Speaker 2: down to the ground.
Speaker 3: We didn't.
Speaker 2: We didn't. We didn't implement Jim Crow or the Tuskegee experiment.
Speaker 2: You know, we didn't. We didn't create mass incarceration and
Speaker 2: our welfare to purposely target black families and divide them.
Speaker 2: We didn't bring crack cocaine into the neighborhood and disseminated,
Speaker 2: disseminated an entire uh population of people. We we didn't
Speaker 2: we didn't do any of those things. Those are a
Speaker 2: major tries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fact, yes fact.
Speaker 2: Yes we do have some uncivilized MutS in our race,
Speaker 2: Yes we do. But that is a very small group
Speaker 2: of people when you look at our entire population, when
Speaker 2: you look when you really think about our plight in America,
Speaker 2: we've only been freed legally freed just over one hundred
Speaker 2: and what sixty years or so, one hundred and seventy years.
Speaker 2: That is a very short time when you think about
Speaker 2: the overall accomplishments of black people, we think about all
Speaker 2: of our accomplishments. Let's not look at just the people
Speaker 2: who are the Beyonces and the jay Z's. It's what
Speaker 2: they try to get us to focus on, willly D's
Speaker 2: and the Jason Mitchell's.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: They try to get us to focus on people who
Speaker 2: are who are in very special categories.
Speaker 3: Right, we have.
Speaker 2: Produced thousands of doctors and lawyers, tens of thousands dollars, educators,
Speaker 2: inventors uh, entrepreneurs uh, just so and just every day
Speaker 2: working class people who despite the odds, put their children
Speaker 2: through school and kept them out of the long grips
Speaker 2: of Johnny law. You know, we have so many success stories.
Speaker 2: But what happens I think often to not not I think,
Speaker 2: but I know, is that they use our worst as
Speaker 2: an example of who we are collectively, and they use
Speaker 2: and they use their worst. I mean, they use our
Speaker 2: worst as an example of who we are collectively, and
Speaker 2: they use their best as an example of who they
Speaker 2: are collectively.
Speaker 3: And oftentimes, I look at what Jesus.
Speaker 2: And I think. I think all the times oftentimes we
Speaker 2: get brainwashed by by that psychological war fact that they're
Speaker 2: playing on us when we get born down so much
Speaker 2: and we tend to stay just like a lot of
Speaker 2: people that aren't black go like, damn, what's wrong with
Speaker 2: the Negroes?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: They can't get it together? And we're starting, Man, we
Speaker 2: can't get it together?
Speaker 3: We are you know right?
Speaker 5: Well, see what the way I look at it, right,
Speaker 5: is that, like you said, they've said, they've put these
Speaker 5: systems in place for us to fight each other. Because
Speaker 5: like even even to say something as small as we're
Speaker 5: the minority, when you ask yourself for real, like where
Speaker 5: really are we the minority?
Speaker 3: Those numbers would change? Right Like you ever been in Hawaii?
Speaker 2: Many I used to vacation all the time.
Speaker 3: So you heard a Holly Day before.
Speaker 5: I haven't, so Holly's is what they call white people, right,
Speaker 5: you know, Holly Day. They just beat up all the
Speaker 5: white people. It's like a it's like a holiday. But
Speaker 5: everybody knows, like it's it's all good. Like that goes
Speaker 5: on currently, INAII, Yeah, it's look it up. You can
Speaker 5: google it. The Hawaiians, everybody else that ain't white.
Speaker 3: They just beat the white people up. Yeah, it's a thing, right,
Speaker 3: So imagine.
Speaker 2: Well what days do they go out there?
Speaker 5: I don't know, we got to google it. Fine, fine,
Speaker 5: Holly Day. I think it's h O W l e y.
Speaker 2: Holly like that.
Speaker 6: But I just hate the white people who hate me man, right, right,
Speaker 6: I'm the same way.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I hate the one, and I hate the black people
Speaker 2: who hate me too. I hate an anybody who hate me.
Speaker 2: You don't like me, I don't like you. Man with me,
Speaker 2: I rock with.
Speaker 3: You, right?
Speaker 5: But I think you know, these systems have been put
Speaker 5: in place to, like you said, brainwash us, right, and
Speaker 5: then they set it up to where like you know,
Speaker 5: like for every fourth grader that fails the leap test,
Speaker 5: they build a jail cell. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 5: like they they figuring it, they figuring out how to
Speaker 5: again make you a slave. They're gonna put these systems
Speaker 5: in place. But being from such a violent city, you know,
Speaker 5: and what I see around me is it's kind of
Speaker 5: crazy because I'm like, yo, I've never seen the police
Speaker 5: actually kill somebody. You know, Like I know a lot
Speaker 5: of people who carry guns all the time, and they're
Speaker 5: not carrying guns for the white boys, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean. So like that's what I mean by times
Speaker 5: like we're our worst enemy because like we don't have
Speaker 5: no money, so it's like, oh, made the toughest guy win,
Speaker 5: or everybody want to be in charge.
Speaker 3: Or when we do.
Speaker 5: Decide to have a movement that we're pushing forward, we
Speaker 5: leave with violence a lot of the times, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean. And we're just so much smarter than that,
Speaker 5: And like we got to be in this world where
Speaker 5: where we pivoting, you know what I mean, And we
Speaker 5: got to do that on a great level. Like you know,
Speaker 5: you see some guys like like nineteen Keys, who you know,
Speaker 5: they're getting huge groups of black people together and talking
Speaker 5: about things that's that's sort of like solution based, you know,
Speaker 5: they trying to make people think about it, but like
Speaker 5: that's all fun and dandy, but like, what's the plan,
Speaker 5: you know? And I think that's what we gotta start feeling,
Speaker 5: like what's the plan, What we're gonna do, What we're
Speaker 5: gonna do for each other, what situations we're gonna set
Speaker 5: up for each other, because we still pressing these these
Speaker 5: things to our a lot of our kids and a
Speaker 5: lot of our families that like it's still putting them
Speaker 5: up top and making it seem like white is right.
Speaker 3: And they doing this all over the world, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean.
Speaker 5: And you see so much chaos happening in these black communities,
Speaker 5: and I just I just think it's sad that, like,
Speaker 5: you know, it's somebody job to wake up and go
Speaker 5: spin on the ops.
Speaker 3: Every morning, Like what are you thinking about?
Speaker 5: You know what I mean? That's crazy to me. I
Speaker 5: just I can't. I can't take that land down.
Speaker 2: I gotta acknowledge everything that you said just now as truth. However,
Speaker 2: those black people who do behave like uncivilized mus or
Speaker 2: microcosm of society facts right overall American society. And so
Speaker 2: if you live amongst black people who behave that way,
Speaker 2: and even when you look at New Orleans as a whole.
Speaker 2: Most Black people I know from New Orleans or law abiding,
Speaker 2: hard working citizens.
Speaker 3: Facts.
Speaker 2: It is that small in the projects here or the
Speaker 2: projects there are the projects there. It's where all the
Speaker 2: bullshit comes from. They are not the majority of black
Speaker 2: people in New Orleans, you know. So it's easy if
Speaker 2: you come from that to see and that's all you see,
Speaker 2: to just say, Okay, maybe that's what it is. But
Speaker 2: I was. I was able to get outside of Fifth
Speaker 2: Ward and I saw a lot of that too. But
Speaker 2: I was able to get outside of Fifth Ward early on,
Speaker 2: and I saw black people living differently. I saw people
Speaker 2: behaving differently. I was able to move overseas to Azerbaijan,
Speaker 2: and in that country at the time, I lived in Bahku.
Speaker 2: Bahku is similar to Houston in numbers in the population
Speaker 2: about four million people at the time and I lived there.
Speaker 2: Houston had about four million people. The difference about Baiku
Speaker 2: experienced about one murder a month, and typically it was
Speaker 2: domestic wife's type of situation. In Houston. Comparably, Houston was
Speaker 2: averaging about fifteen murders a week at that time. Now,
Speaker 2: I also saw lines of men on the streets in suits,
Speaker 2: and these suits were like not really in good condition,
Speaker 2: but they were on the streets early in the morning,
Speaker 2: and they waiting on people to pick them up. You know,
Speaker 2: like in Houston and other parts, and even in Dallas
Speaker 2: you see Mexicans out in that gas stations and kind
Speaker 2: of stuff waiting on some jobs. Well, this is how
Speaker 2: these guys would do. But it would be hundreds and
Speaker 2: hundreds and rows of guys, I mean sometimes like for
Speaker 2: a solid mile, just straight on both sides of the streets.
Speaker 2: And some people were still sleeping on dirt floors at
Speaker 2: the time. Okay, some people, right, And I'm comparing it
Speaker 2: to the US, and I'm going like, well, they're poor,
Speaker 2: They're really really poor. Why aren't they killing each other?
Speaker 2: Why aren't they robbing? Because because we like we often say,
Speaker 2: well we're killing each other and were hurting and we're
Speaker 2: fighting and we robbing because we ain't got nothing. But
Speaker 2: they ain't got nothing either. They really ain't got nothing,
Speaker 2: and they're not robbing, they're not killing. And what I
Speaker 2: surmise is how the government communicates with his people. Leadership
Speaker 2: starts at the top, and these people have put a
Speaker 2: premium on life. They put a premium on family. They
Speaker 2: put a premium on community. We don't. I was with
Speaker 2: my family on our way home and we saw a fight.
Speaker 2: We looked off the left. I saw this a fight.
Speaker 2: It was like old women, children, men beating up this
Speaker 2: one guy. They were whooping his ass. They were serving
Speaker 2: or they were serving them all kinds of pieces.
Speaker 4: Bro.
Speaker 2: The dudes was punching them, killing them. Little kids was
Speaker 2: kicking them. Old lady, A couple old ladies had broomstick
Speaker 2: and they were hitting them in slow motion with the broomstick.
Speaker 2: So I turned the drive and I asked my drive.
Speaker 2: I say, say, man, what's going on? He said, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I find out. So he dropped us off
Speaker 2: and he went back to see what was up. He
Speaker 2: comes back and he said, yeah, that guy beat up
Speaker 2: his girlfriend, and so they beat him up. The whole
Speaker 2: neighborhood whooped his ass. They don't play that in Houston
Speaker 2: and America. We see something. Mind your own bitiness, your
Speaker 2: own bitness. And that's why our women and children are.
Speaker 3: Unsafe right because possible.
Speaker 2: That's why our boys are walking around at thirteen years old,
Speaker 2: ten years old with guns in their waistband. Because the
Speaker 2: people that are in this country and the people, even
Speaker 2: in their neighborhoods, instead of the men in the neighborhoods
Speaker 2: protecting the neighborhood and keeping them safe. They look at
Speaker 2: the boys as competition, right, you know, they're trying to
Speaker 2: high at you fifteen years old. You got a grown
Speaker 2: man twenty thirty some years old trying to get at
Speaker 2: the same girl you're trying to get at. So they
Speaker 2: see you as competition. And in many cases, the women
Speaker 2: see the girls, the younger girls, as competition, right, right, right.
Speaker 2: But I surmised that the reason, the fundamental reason is values. Brother,
Speaker 2: It comes down to values. At one point, I was
Speaker 2: a source of a lot of the pain in my community.
Speaker 2: You know, I was very violent, and so I made
Speaker 2: I contributed to some of.
Speaker 3: That, right right.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until I learned to love myself that I
Speaker 2: learned to love of other people. And I said, you
Speaker 2: know what, that ain't right now. I started actually taking
Speaker 2: up for people, and I became a protector, you know,
Speaker 2: instead of an agitator, you know, instead of provocator, I
Speaker 2: became a protector. And once I did that, I decided,
Speaker 2: ain't nobody coming in this neighborhood and bullying nobody and
Speaker 2: nobody pushing nobody around. You ain't coming to beat up
Speaker 2: nobody right this neighborhood. And once I put my foot down,
Speaker 2: the other guys around me did the same thing and
Speaker 2: it was peace. And so the men, it really starts
Speaker 2: with the men. They got to step up because the
Speaker 2: men are the ones who are and the boys are
Speaker 2: really the ones who are doing all the killing. So
Speaker 2: everybody like to talk about leadership. I'm a leader, I'm
Speaker 2: a man, I'm this whatever, right, But.
Speaker 5: You're right, yeah, I totally get it. And see that's
Speaker 5: why me and and everybody around us we realized how
Speaker 5: much influence film and television has on a lot of
Speaker 5: this music, all of that. It has a huge influence.
Speaker 5: Like look at you know what's going on with Jomrad.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 5: I mean, I mean he's a young guy twenty three
Speaker 5: years old, which you can't tell me that that influence
Speaker 5: ain't coming from TV and film and the music.
Speaker 3: And because you're not living that way.
Speaker 5: It's it's just but it's the culture putting so much
Speaker 5: pressure on people that the first thing you do when
Speaker 5: you get money is try to go and get some
Speaker 5: holes and try to do this in the holes like
Speaker 5: I want a real nigga. I want a nigga do
Speaker 5: this and do that, and do this and do that,
Speaker 5: and you're like, well shit, nigga g herbo out the hood.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying, Let me so I won't
Speaker 5: be flying were a push heisty mass too. And I'm
Speaker 5: but that ain't that ain't your life though, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean, because anybody who knows that life for
Speaker 5: real ain't got nothing. They're not glorifying it at all.
Speaker 5: They really just rapping by this so they can get
Speaker 5: some money and never got.
Speaker 3: To go back.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: So I created a foundation called Dream Seeker that ultimately
Speaker 5: is a film education platform that's allowing people to you know,
Speaker 5: we training people in every department behind the camera. They
Speaker 5: can come on set, get trained, work for union hours,
Speaker 5: and pretty much gearing them to work anywhere in the world.
Speaker 5: We already got this projected to be a global situation
Speaker 5: because a thing that's not happening is that we don't
Speaker 5: have no direct contact with Africa for real. They not
Speaker 5: teaching Africans about slavery, so they looking at us, we
Speaker 5: looking at them. It ain't no unity and none of this,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, and then when they do
Speaker 5: show us Africa, it's motherfuckers with pot bellies and you
Speaker 5: know what I mean, everybody starving, flies in their eyes.
Speaker 5: They ain't got no shoes on their feet, whatever it
Speaker 5: may be. And they ain't gonna tell you. Oh, some
Speaker 5: of these people, it's convoying and race. You know, some
Speaker 5: of these people got so much money that is crazy.
Speaker 5: It's all kind of billionaires and all kind of people
Speaker 5: that we never even heard of. And they don't want
Speaker 5: to shed light on that because it'll start to give
Speaker 5: us this different picture of ourselves, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: And you know, just go way back, like they've been
Speaker 5: trying to break our mind since White Jesus, you know.
Speaker 5: But like I think, through all this chaos, like you said,
Speaker 5: where does the leadership start? So I know, okay, I
Speaker 5: got my little piece of film television. All right, let's
Speaker 5: do it like this, and we can make movies about
Speaker 5: whatever we want to make the movies about. But the
Speaker 5: education process and the jobs that we give people and
Speaker 5: all of these different things I believe will change something.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I might not even live to see that.
Speaker 5: But if this go all the way around the world,
Speaker 5: I know, for sure, I ain't gonna leave it like
Speaker 5: I can. And I think if we have that mindset
Speaker 5: to not leave the world the same way we found it,
Speaker 5: and we're starting with ourself, it's gonna be a beautiful place,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, because it ain't about us
Speaker 5: being divided. Like I don't want to live in the
Speaker 5: world with just black folks, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: I don't even want to live my life like that. So,
Speaker 5: you know, like you said, like when we get to
Speaker 5: the point where we could just start loving on ourselves
Speaker 5: a little bit more, you know, you could love on
Speaker 5: your kids better, you could love on your family a
Speaker 5: little bit better. You could love what you do, you know,
Speaker 5: because we're all wired to love. And you know, on
Speaker 5: the other end of that, it's the hate, that's that's
Speaker 5: what you know, And people end up hating because they
Speaker 5: want to be loved, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 5: it's it's it's interesting, man, But I think that I'm
Speaker 5: very optimistic about the situation, to say the least, you know,
Speaker 5: because I feel like, if if you're close to me,
Speaker 5: I know I could have a little love for you
Speaker 5: at least, you know what I mean, And it just
Speaker 5: have to start there.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I hope I'm radiant, and I hope that people like
Speaker 5: when they see me, they see God in me. They like, damn,
Speaker 5: that's what's up, you know what I mean? And it's
Speaker 5: you know, a lot of us ain't got no guidance.
Speaker 5: But it take a village, you know. It takes people
Speaker 5: like yourself for me to get around people and be like,
Speaker 5: you know what, this is a good thing, you know,
Speaker 5: because I feel like it's such a it's such a
Speaker 5: block between young people in the older generation, you know.
Speaker 3: Like I was talking to you about my grandfather.
Speaker 5: Him and I used to get into it a lot
Speaker 5: because he used to always want to pay his bills
Speaker 5: in the envelope that it come in and fill out
Speaker 5: the paper, and I'm like, you know, it's the twentieth century,
Speaker 5: Like people don't you don't have to do it this way?
Speaker 5: No more, like why do you want to do it
Speaker 5: like this? He always used to be peeking over my shoulder.
Speaker 5: I'm like, you know, and I.
Speaker 3: Would get agitated by it because.
Speaker 5: I'm like, damn, I'm trying to do something else. You
Speaker 5: want me to come phill these bills out? But I
Speaker 5: didn't know until maybe six or seven years ago that
Speaker 5: the only thing that my grandfather knows how to write
Speaker 5: is his name, and he could write it in cursive,
Speaker 5: so he hell a proud of it. That's all he
Speaker 5: knew how to write. So he was always very impressed
Speaker 5: with my penmanship. And you know what I mean, the
Speaker 5: fruit of his labor. Look how it's turning out. Damn,
Speaker 5: look what we're doing. And it would agitate me because
Speaker 5: I'm like, you know, but it was the block and
Speaker 5: he has so much pride that he was afraid to
Speaker 5: tell me like, oh I can't write this. This is
Speaker 5: why I need you to do it, like you know.
Speaker 5: So I feel like we need to listen to each other,
Speaker 5: young generation, old generation, whatever it may be, you know,
Speaker 5: And like you said, like we've we've all had our
Speaker 5: our slip ups, you know, and been part of the
Speaker 5: bullshit in our communities. You know, so we got to
Speaker 5: step up and start doing something great, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, and show people that you can change and
Speaker 5: that we can change this world if we change ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was profound, It was you know.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: The trip part about it is that a lot of
Speaker 2: the answers are in those characters that you've played. I'm
Speaker 2: telling you, man, thank you. You have done a remarkable
Speaker 2: job at at picking good characters.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Little boys. Reloaded podcasts will be right back after.
Speaker 2: The spots, going back to the easy movie movie Straight
Speaker 2: out of Compton and where you played uh easy when
Speaker 2: when they told you that, uh did you have did
Speaker 2: did you have to take any type of special uh
Speaker 2: courses or whatever to find out, you know, uh, how
Speaker 2: an age patient would respond to the treatment or to
Speaker 2: the news that they had gotten age. Did you have
Speaker 2: to go around any type of clinics or anything like that.
Speaker 5: No, No, I just thought of it like because I
Speaker 5: had an uncle that died from age, right, And I
Speaker 5: I got my own conspiracy thoughts on that too, because
Speaker 5: I ain't gonna lie. He was healthy as an ox,
Speaker 5: but he was a gay man, right, and when everybody
Speaker 5: was getting tested and people was finding out and all
Speaker 5: of this kind of stuff, like the whole family suggested
Speaker 5: that he go get tested because they knew he was gay.
Speaker 3: Lo and behold, he got AIDS.
Speaker 5: Four months later, he dies, but he paid like eighty
Speaker 5: thousand or something crazy number for the medicine. So you know,
Speaker 5: it was like to me, it was it came through
Speaker 5: and just swept a lot of people. But I personally
Speaker 5: feel like it came from the medicine, right, So aside
Speaker 5: from that, I'm looking at easy situation like he went
Speaker 5: to the hospital and never left, you know what I'm.
Speaker 3: Saying, Like he went in, they never leave. So the
Speaker 3: shock to him was more like, no, I'm you know,
Speaker 3: I ain't gay? What you mean I got aids?
Speaker 5: Like that's for gay people because that's what the media
Speaker 5: is saying. And then they're like, no, well your T
Speaker 5: sale account is thirteen sir. You know you got a
Speaker 5: few days. You about to get out of here that
Speaker 5: whole like, cause, I mean, we don't survived shoot out,
Speaker 5: so we didn't survive this and that it survived the
Speaker 5: police all of that, and I'm about to die from
Speaker 5: a sickness? Are you kidding me? Like I know his
Speaker 5: heart was broke, you know what I mean? Because he never, ever,
Speaker 5: I don't think, wanted He wanted the best for Qube.
Speaker 5: He wanted the best for Dre, wanted the best for
Speaker 5: Yellow Wren, even Jerry Helen. He wanted the best for
Speaker 5: people like he had a good heart about himself. He
Speaker 5: gave each of his kids twenty thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 5: You know, he was taking care of what he had
Speaker 5: to take care of.
Speaker 2: He gave each one of his kids twenty RECs a month.
Speaker 3: Twenty bands.
Speaker 2: Ain't your cue that money? C was asking about you
Speaker 2: want some money man?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, Cuban wrote a lot of that music.
Speaker 2: Man you wanted that money?
Speaker 3: Well, you know.
Speaker 5: But to be honest, I think Easy was also afraid
Speaker 5: to uh. I mean, he know that there was things
Speaker 5: that that Jerry could do that he couldn't. You know,
Speaker 5: Like when they went to go visit the White House,
Speaker 5: they made us take that out the movie. It was
Speaker 5: in the original script. They made us take that out
Speaker 5: the movie. And it wasn't even that's a simple shot
Speaker 5: to say, hey, you know, we just got off the
Speaker 5: airplane or whatever and we and they just simply turned
Speaker 5: us back around and say, now get your lass back
Speaker 5: on there. That's all they needed to put in the
Speaker 5: movie to let us know that it happened, you know.
Speaker 5: But they was like, no, check it out. I believe
Speaker 5: Universal wanted us to take it out. But f Gary Gray,
Speaker 5: he's so smart, you know that. Like at the end
Speaker 5: of the film, that's why Cube says to Easy, how
Speaker 5: you go from selling rocks in the Dope House to
Speaker 5: eating dinner with the president in the White House and
Speaker 5: he you know. Easy responds by saying, they still trying
Speaker 5: to figure that out because that was the truth. All
Speaker 5: they knew was Eric Lynn Wright donated X amount of
Speaker 5: dollars to the state of California. He should be a Republican.
Speaker 5: They didn't think he was going to show up and
Speaker 5: be the same nigga from the police.
Speaker 3: It was like, hell no, they turned him around, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean? But yeah, that's the truth.
Speaker 5: And they didn't want to see it, like they didn't
Speaker 5: want us to be that powerful, you know, like when
Speaker 5: you look at it, they knocked off him, Biggie and
Speaker 5: Pop in a very short amount of time. If you
Speaker 5: go from the first that to the last, it's like,
Speaker 5: I don't even think it's two four years.
Speaker 2: Who was in office when Easy went to the to
Speaker 2: the to the White House?
Speaker 3: Mm? Is it Reagan? I do who was it?
Speaker 2: See? I think that I think I don't even I
Speaker 2: don't even think Easy went to the White House.
Speaker 5: Uh, he was the presidential luncheon that they were supposed
Speaker 5: to be, So whatever it was, it might have been
Speaker 5: Big Bush.
Speaker 2: Whatever he went to uh was supposed to go to
Speaker 2: I think easy went there like justice to give him
Speaker 2: a big middle finger.
Speaker 5: Like absolutely, that's what it was always was.
Speaker 3: And yeah, he wasn't trying to go toga.
Speaker 2: Like I can just see that letter when he got
Speaker 2: the letter, you know what, and somebody probably was one
Speaker 2: of the secretary something probably has probably read the letter
Speaker 2: and say they want you to and he was like,
Speaker 2: what what you're gonna do?
Speaker 5: I'm going right, I'm head, I'm headed, you know, because
Speaker 5: they probably had no idea who Eric Lynn Wright was.
Speaker 5: They definitely didn't put that together and think it was easy.
Speaker 2: You know. You know, Eric, you were a very smart guy, right,
Speaker 2: but man, I think you overplayed your hand by not
Speaker 2: paying Cube and Drake. I mean, you overplayed your hand.
Speaker 3: He definitely, I think he definitely did that bad. He
Speaker 3: definitely did that bad.
Speaker 2: You got the guy, you got your most prolific writer
Speaker 2: in the group, and you got your beat maker. If
Speaker 2: you got your guy who's making the music, you gotta
Speaker 2: take care of those guys. You got to make them happy.
Speaker 2: They gotta be happy. Absolutely, it seemed like that they
Speaker 2: were asking for anything unreasonable.
Speaker 5: No, I mean I think at the end of the
Speaker 5: day he he was so stuck on what Jerry Heller
Speaker 5: was telling him and trusting in that situation so much
Speaker 5: that between everything that's going on in his life, he
Speaker 5: was just so blinded to it. I think he after
Speaker 5: a while just put on blinders and was like, Jerry
Speaker 5: got it. I don't want to talk to you all
Speaker 5: about the money because I mean, it is what it is.
Speaker 5: But you know, by that time, he was he was
Speaker 5: on a rapid downfall, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 5: Jerry really got all of the asks, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, like they easy was an exempt from the situation.
Speaker 5: Like he he definitely lost money too. And I think
Speaker 5: if he would have just paid more attention to the
Speaker 5: situation in its entirety, you know, because he really didn't
Speaker 5: believe that they couldn't do it without Jerry, and Dre
Speaker 5: was preaching that to him the whole time, you know.
Speaker 5: But I mean we see where Dre at now billionaih,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, We see where a cube
Speaker 5: at now like leading it, you.
Speaker 3: Know what I mean.
Speaker 5: So it's I don't know, man, you know, it's it
Speaker 5: was sad to watch. It was sad to watch, but
Speaker 5: you know, I am glad that I got to humanize
Speaker 5: him in a way that didn't tarnish the legacy or brother.
Speaker 2: You killed that role. If you was made for that role,
Speaker 2: I think you killed it. I mean, not talking about
Speaker 2: it out the park. You said a distant record with
Speaker 2: that ship. Hey man, I'm glad I was not there
Speaker 2: trying to audition. Stopped playing, man, stop playing. They would
Speaker 2: have called me back. I'm like Jason Road, I mean,
Speaker 2: you knocked that thing out. The part is that any
Speaker 2: role that they could ask of you that you would
Speaker 2: not play, you absolutely would just say no, I'm not
Speaker 2: playing that type of character.
Speaker 5: I'm not homophobic at all, don't have no homophobic bones
Speaker 5: in my body, but I just I don't. I don't
Speaker 5: want to play any of these rolls, you know that,
Speaker 5: you know. I mean I feel like they got they
Speaker 5: got gay people out here that act, they got transgenders
Speaker 5: out here that act, and they could portray those stories
Speaker 5: very well, you know, and they fit in that box
Speaker 5: very well. So you know, I could sort of leave
Speaker 5: that for them. That and maybe like I'm not too
Speaker 5: big on the woman nos this either, I don't really
Speaker 5: want to play that, you know, maybe a hot boy,
Speaker 5: but like as far as like on some Ike Turner
Speaker 5: type shit like nah, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 5: they still got people who be looking at Blair Underwood
Speaker 5: like I don't like his ass, but he you know,
Speaker 5: he probably don't beat his wife at home, but people
Speaker 5: just look at it like, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: Lawrence Fishburn had to shake that, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 5: because for a long time people just looking at him
Speaker 5: like I don't like his motherfucking ass, you know. So
Speaker 5: it's just like when you see Hannibal. Like when I
Speaker 5: first met Anthony Hopkins in real life, he was That
Speaker 5: was the first time I ever froze when I was
Speaker 5: like meeting a star because I'm I always I'll give
Speaker 5: myself enough to like, you know, you got some people
Speaker 5: you meet them and you're like, damn, I just been
Speaker 5: a huge fan my whole life or whatever. But as
Speaker 5: far as like being struck or you do some stupid
Speaker 5: shit like that only happened to me when I met
Speaker 5: him and the dude who played Candy Man, and they
Speaker 5: don't even know about it because I ain't speak to him.
Speaker 5: I feel like the dude who playing Candy Man fucked
Speaker 5: up my whole childhood, Like he don't even know, like
Speaker 5: you know, but I seen him and stop, like you know,
Speaker 5: and I kind of let them go their own way
Speaker 5: because I'm like, damn, But you know, it's powerful being
Speaker 5: an actor, you know what I'm saying. You never know
Speaker 5: how you affecting people lives. So you know, they got
Speaker 5: a couple of things that I wouldn't like to do.
Speaker 5: But I personally feel like, you know, because I had
Speaker 5: a bud all of these tattoos before I started acting,
Speaker 5: So in my mind, I always thought I was gonna
Speaker 5: get pigeonholed, you know, or be type cast as the
Speaker 5: guy with the tattoos stuck number three and shit right.
Speaker 5: So I always would press this this issue that I
Speaker 5: needed to show different faces at Jason Mitchell every time.
Speaker 5: I need to do something completely different, Like they called
Speaker 5: me to be easy in every other movie that had
Speaker 5: a glimpse of easy e in it, Like, bro.
Speaker 3: No, you know what I mean, I'm not doing that
Speaker 3: no more. I play easy.
Speaker 5: That's fine, Like you're not gonna get me to be
Speaker 5: easy in nine more movies, Like we could do this
Speaker 5: as a series and you know, we can keep going
Speaker 5: and then what you know what I mean? People be
Speaker 5: like went straight out of Compton too, come out Nigga.
Speaker 5: Hopefully never I died in the first one, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean?
Speaker 3: Fuck yeah, you know. So, I just I never wanted to.
Speaker 5: Let that be the thing that held me back, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean, because I definitely don't look at
Speaker 5: none of my tattoos as a mistake.
Speaker 3: I don't feel like I would take it back. I
Speaker 3: feel like it's.
Speaker 5: Part of my individuality and who I am as a person,
Speaker 5: you know. So it's good to know that it ain't
Speaker 5: holding me back, But it's it's always kind of like
Speaker 5: in the back of my mind, like can you really
Speaker 5: that show me?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 5: And I just I'm always in this battle with myself,
Speaker 5: Like I feel like it's just me against me. You know,
Speaker 5: if you stand in front of the goal, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: dunk on your ass. I'm definitely the little bron of
Speaker 5: this ship. I feel like they got actors out here
Speaker 5: that had opportunities to work with me and don't because
Speaker 5: they know I'm gonna go up on their ass, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. It just is what it is like,
Speaker 5: and I love this craft. It is what it is,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying, But like it's it's just
Speaker 5: like you know, you see Lebron and Steph Curry got
Speaker 5: this love for each other, you know, but like on
Speaker 5: the court, ain't no love, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 5: Like I'm not gonna disrespect you or do nothing like that.
Speaker 5: But I'm here to win. And that's how I feel
Speaker 5: when it comes to my craft, Like I'm here to win.
Speaker 5: You stand in front of the goal, prepare to get
Speaker 5: dunk though Vince Carter style, going with my arm and
Speaker 5: all of that in the rim, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna highlight posted your ass.
Speaker 2: I believe I'm ready for it. With your relationship, like
Speaker 2: with lean.
Speaker 3: Await, mainly not cool, mainly not cool.
Speaker 5: We like when I first met Leani, I met her
Speaker 5: at a SAG event and they had a stepping repeat right,
Speaker 5: and she had on like this fly ass suit and
Speaker 5: I actually asked to take a picture with her because
Speaker 5: I just thought she was fly as hell.
Speaker 3: You know, I ain't know who she was.
Speaker 5: And she was like, you know, I'm a writer, you know,
Speaker 5: I've I've done a couple of things, but like, I
Speaker 5: really want to work.
Speaker 3: With you one day.
Speaker 5: And I was like, let's touch and agree on it
Speaker 5: right now, Like all my friends that tell you like
Speaker 5: I pray in a minute, like I'm all about it,
Speaker 5: you know. So we literally stopped on the on the
Speaker 5: on the step and repeat and prayed, you know, and
Speaker 5: uh then I ended up getting this offer come in
Speaker 5: saying hey, yeah for the shot, and I was just like, damn,
Speaker 5: we really spoke that shit into existence. So by us
Speaker 5: having that that introduction, and you know, by us adding
Speaker 5: God into the into the mix early on, I don't
Speaker 5: feel like nothing could really break that, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean. I mean it was like, you know, when
Speaker 5: the whole little situation happened and shit kind of came
Speaker 5: rolling down on me or whatever, I understood why she
Speaker 5: got out the way, because you got the whole brand
Speaker 5: to protect, you got the whole show to protect.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. I just I took a
Speaker 3: bullet and it was what it was.
Speaker 2: Did she support you silently? I mean, well, let me
Speaker 2: put it like this. Did she support you privately?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? She did, absolutely.
Speaker 5: But you know, to be honest, I wasn't really trying
Speaker 5: to hear that shit at the time, like you know,
Speaker 5: cause I was I was like, why would you just
Speaker 5: flash out and be like I got to stand with
Speaker 5: the woman like you don't even know what the fuck
Speaker 5: happened yet, you know what I'm saying, she actually did that,
Speaker 5: I mean I think she did. I think at one
Speaker 5: point in time she called the Breakfast Club and was like,
Speaker 5: I never worked with Jason Mitchell again. But then she
Speaker 5: retracted those words when she found out that the situation
Speaker 5: wasn't what she thought it was. But I just think
Speaker 5: that's some bullshit, Like you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 5: as much as you know somebody, you know, I feel like.
Speaker 3: I feel like people who really know me, when when.
Speaker 5: They hear shit in the media, they'll be like, uh,
Speaker 5: that's not really him, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And I feel like.
Speaker 5: She was one of the people who could have spoke
Speaker 5: up and said something that could.
Speaker 3: Have changed the situation. But yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: But I also realized that, you know, if she did
Speaker 5: stand behind me, and you know, I did do some bullshit,
Speaker 5: it could have been bad for both of us, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. I understand that too, So you
Speaker 5: know that's I don't I don't. I don't judge nobody
Speaker 5: for their situation, you know what I mean. And you
Speaker 5: never know what people are gonna do under pressure. I mean,
Speaker 5: nigga snitch every day, you know what I'm saying, So
Speaker 5: I don't. I don't be judging people.
Speaker 3: I really don't.
Speaker 2: I tell you this, Bro, one of the quickest ways
Speaker 2: to find out who for you is to go through
Speaker 2: some heavy ship. Oh yeah, for sure, go through something.
Speaker 2: For sure, do something, and I'm gonna tell you know.
Speaker 2: Like when I when I had my situation with the thied, Bro,
Speaker 2: it was one of them situations that if you could
Speaker 2: talk to God and you'd be like, say, God, no,
Speaker 2: you ain't got to do all that to God. Like, nah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna sit you down for a while. Bro, you
Speaker 2: kind of moving a little bit too fast. I would
Speaker 2: have been like, now you ain't really got too many
Speaker 2: I'm talking to you right now. I'm gonna sit you
Speaker 2: down for a minute. But I'm gonna tell you something, Bro.
Speaker 2: It was a blessing in disguise. It's not something I
Speaker 2: would have wished for, but it was a blessing in
Speaker 2: disguise because when I say them niggas was dropping like
Speaker 2: flies all around me. When I say they were scatting,
Speaker 2: and it tightened my circle. It's strengthen it. My circle
Speaker 2: became so strong only the real was around me, and
Speaker 2: it stood out clearly. Including when I say the real,
Speaker 2: I mean even the women in my circle. The women
Speaker 2: got tight, super tight. The women in my circle. Shit,
Speaker 2: I take I go to wat any day. I'll pick
Speaker 2: them over some some of these dudes out here in
Speaker 2: a day because they sold as I mean, they like
Speaker 2: all the way, like oh they crying, they't going crazy, egg, well,
Speaker 2: we gotta do something.
Speaker 6: They want a twin power activate like we gonna It
Speaker 6: was like that. They were like that, I respect us
Speaker 6: so much and you want.
Speaker 2: To you want to know. It's not something that you wish,
Speaker 2: but if you know, if you gotta go through something,
Speaker 2: if you're going through it, that's when you're gonna really
Speaker 2: really know.
Speaker 5: Bro, absolutely absolutely, like because you know, we were just
Speaker 5: talking about your quavers, like.
Speaker 3: Listen. He helped me really start.
Speaker 5: To look at myself for who I was, because I've
Speaker 5: always been me.
Speaker 3: You understand, I'm with myself every day.
Speaker 5: I'm not going home and saying nigga, you a superstar,
Speaker 5: nigga you this you that I'm just Jason.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 5: I'm just Jason, Bro, and I don't everybody know. I
Speaker 5: come with a very humble energy. I got a humble spirit,
Speaker 5: and just because I fucked around and did something great,
Speaker 5: I don't think that makes me no better than the
Speaker 5: next person, right, So it was hard for me to
Speaker 5: really start looking at it. He was like, Bro, when
Speaker 5: the last time you seen somebody on the street and
Speaker 5: they said, when you see showtime, tell them tell them
Speaker 5: we love we appreciate them for putting you on that show.
Speaker 5: Anybody ever stopped you and said, hey, man, tell you
Speaker 5: universal that we appreciate them for letting you play easy
Speaker 5: And You're like.
Speaker 3: Nah, nigga, they love you. Invest in yourself. You ain't
Speaker 3: doing shit but making somebody else rich.
Speaker 5: Even if you is getting a little a little bag,
Speaker 5: it could be a whole different type of bag. If
Speaker 5: you say, fuck it, I'm a bet on me, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. But when I did that, a
Speaker 5: lot of people because the handouts stopped, because a lot
Speaker 5: of motherfuckers call me and give me a sad story.
Speaker 5: Say brother, look man, I'm going through and I'll shoot
Speaker 5: you something. You come stay at the crib. You know
Speaker 5: a lot of motherfuckers. They know they know I ain't lying,
Speaker 5: They know I done held so many people down. But
Speaker 5: as soon as I said, ah, I can't do that,
Speaker 5: or I was going through some shit. You know, motherfuckers,
Speaker 5: if the phone stopped ringing as much, you think you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying, and I really I'm talking about
Speaker 5: my circle that went to a dot. Family members then
Speaker 5: dropped out it and everything, and it just is what
Speaker 5: it is, because I feel like, you know, if I
Speaker 5: ain't got nothing else, I got guard and God is
Speaker 5: gonna direct me to the right people at all times.
Speaker 5: And the people who really really love me gonna be
Speaker 5: one hundred percent down with that walk that I'm on.
Speaker 3: Period.
Speaker 5: And that's just it. That's the short and long of it.
Speaker 5: It ain't no miraculous, glamorous story. Now, either you gonna
Speaker 5: love me and you're gonna be here through the entire thing,
Speaker 5: or it's gonna be over, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Jamie Fox, you know, blessings to him, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, because he was one of them people like
Speaker 5: I went through some shit.
Speaker 3: He was like, man, come to the house, let me
Speaker 3: talk to you. Shit you down and talk to you.
Speaker 3: You know, really shoot some shit.
Speaker 5: If you ever really need something, brother, I got you.
Speaker 5: You know, they got very few people in the world
Speaker 5: who liked that dog like when things was going great
Speaker 5: I'm talking about it wasn't a movie star in the
Speaker 5: business that didn't want to work with me, or that
Speaker 5: I couldn't call personally. I could literally call my agent
Speaker 5: and be like, I need such and such a number.
Speaker 5: They texting it to me in the next five minutes.
Speaker 5: And I remember I was in Vietnam. Russell Simmons called
Speaker 5: my phone. They was like, can you hold for Russell Simmons.
Speaker 5: I was like, I ain't never had nobody call my
Speaker 5: phone and put me on hold immediately, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean. But this was the type of shit that
Speaker 5: was happening. You think when I went through the bullshit,
Speaker 5: these people was calling my phone. Hell no, you know.
Speaker 5: But now I just feel different because I'm like, you
Speaker 5: know what, if nothing else, I know, I got a
Speaker 5: direct pipeline to the fans, and you know, I acting
Speaker 5: as my happy place. So if I could make movies
Speaker 5: to the day I die, That's what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 5: And if the fans continue to watch my ship, that's
Speaker 5: gonna be great. But I know for a fact, and
Speaker 5: nobody else got to give me another opportunity in the world.
Speaker 5: Don't get me wrong, I would love it. I would
Speaker 5: love to be in a Marvel movie. I would love
Speaker 5: to be a superhero. But if them opportunities never roll
Speaker 5: back around, my bag is still gonna look the same
Speaker 5: as theirs.
Speaker 3: I believe that, you know, I believe that.
Speaker 2: That's that's why I am. See my my bounce back,
Speaker 2: you know, boy, my bounce back is very similar, bro,
Speaker 2: Like I just got one of those type of mentalities
Speaker 2: like I don't make it no matter what. So even
Speaker 2: if I got to do it all by myself, all along,
Speaker 2: everybody dropped off, But it's beautiful to have some support,
Speaker 2: even if it's a small circle. In fact, I actually
Speaker 2: prefer my smaller circle anyway, because that's less. Less birthday
Speaker 2: parties I gotta go through gift you know, that's less
Speaker 2: less anniversaries. I got to a ten. You know, that's
Speaker 2: less people I gotta talk to taking up my time.
Speaker 2: You know, like, hey man, you know, like everything that
Speaker 2: I do, man, it's all quality. Like I'm dealing with
Speaker 2: quality people. Yeah, super tight circle, quality people, and I'm
Speaker 2: cool with that. So blessing in disguise, man, And you
Speaker 2: know how it go, Bro, What don't kill us make
Speaker 2: us stronger?
Speaker 5: Facts, Facts and a lot of times, like you said, well,
Speaker 5: be willing to hear that, you know, you be like, God.
Speaker 3: You got it. You're like, yeah, I got you.
Speaker 5: But you're gonna have to sit this one out, you know.
Speaker 5: And I feel like so blessed that I got to
Speaker 5: get close enough to the fire to really know that
Speaker 5: it was hot, but not really get burned, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean, Because I feel like a lot of times,
Speaker 5: you know, when you get to celebrity status, you got
Speaker 5: to make sure that you're not self inflicting wounds, you know,
Speaker 5: and for whatever God has you know, set for me
Speaker 5: to do, because it's far from over, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean. I'm still a very young guy, and I
Speaker 5: feel like, you know, it's a lot that's gonna be
Speaker 5: on my path. But one thing I can't do is
Speaker 5: put myself in the line of fire or self inflict pain.
Speaker 5: I just I can't do that. If I do that,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna lose off the rip. So he put that
Speaker 5: in front of my face, like, Okay, this is what happened.
Speaker 5: If you do some dumb shit and then the process
Speaker 5: of that, all of these people who claiming they're your
Speaker 5: friends and all of this shit. Look, we're gonna wipe
Speaker 5: all of that situation out and then make it even
Speaker 5: better for you to feel secure.
Speaker 3: You're gonna go home with all of their secrets.
Speaker 5: So nobody gotta feel no kind of way about nothing,
Speaker 5: because I'm telling you, every time I get in front
Speaker 5: of a fucking microphone, I guarantee you they got people
Speaker 5: who cringe like, oh God, this nigga, don't bring this up.
Speaker 5: And I hope he don't say this, and I hope
Speaker 5: he don't say that. But nah, I don't care. I
Speaker 5: don't care that you don't that you didn't stick up
Speaker 5: for me. I don't give a fuck about that. I'm
Speaker 5: just happy that you out the way and that that
Speaker 5: that's not gonna affect my life, and no negative ways,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, Because we could potentially be
Speaker 5: in a situation where this could it really fucked me up,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. Look at Young Thug. All
Speaker 5: these niggas never turned on the game. I would never snitch,
Speaker 5: and as soon as they get in there, it was him,
Speaker 5: DeAndre did it. You're on it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: They doing it to each other and it's crazy, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. And I'm talking about instantly, So
Speaker 5: for me I just feel like I'm just so happy
Speaker 5: that like the people that's around me love me as
Speaker 5: much as I love them. You know, if anything would
Speaker 5: have happened to me, I feel safe with them being
Speaker 5: around my daughters, and you know, I can't ask for
Speaker 5: much more, you know, more life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, them boys over there and that young thug trial
Speaker 2: pointed like the Jackson five, I don't got no.
Speaker 3: Fucked up man.
Speaker 5: I'm so sad for that dude, bro, because to be honest, man,
Speaker 5: like you know, I mean, I can't speak on their business.
Speaker 5: I don't really know what really be going on, but
Speaker 5: I've always seen them be all about their business. That's
Speaker 5: what the whole world is englfed with rap music, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. They either on tour or in
Speaker 5: the studio, they're trying to do some shit with theirself.
Speaker 5: So you know, it's it's just fucked up, man, to
Speaker 5: see these these reco cases and these conspiracy shits that
Speaker 5: be happening, and you know, just tearing down these things
Speaker 5: that get built. You know, when half of it don't
Speaker 5: even be like that. It'd be a bunch of handshakes
Speaker 5: and DAPs and shit. These niggas made up and you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. And then you got somebody fucking
Speaker 5: off in the background who ruined it for everybody, and
Speaker 5: it's just it's really sad to watch, man, it's really
Speaker 5: sad to watch.
Speaker 2: That there be a lesson boys and girls. You resemble
Speaker 2: who you assemble real top Absolutely, Jason Mitchell, you wanted
Speaker 2: the realists, bro. This has been a this is what
Speaker 2: what we would call on Halloween, a treat.
Speaker 3: I heard that it has been a treat. I heard that.
Speaker 3: I appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Coming on the podcast, And is there anything that you
Speaker 2: want to leave with the audience.
Speaker 5: First and foremost, everything is both June second, Apple TV.
Speaker 5: If you ain't got Apple TV, you might be able
Speaker 5: to watch it on Amazon Prime, but you do got
Speaker 5: to go check that out. Me and JaQuavis called me
Speaker 5: and we produce that part time. Fitzpatrick is in it.
Speaker 5: We found because we like to give opportunities, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean. So we we got some sensations that
Speaker 5: you're gonna see in this movie that you have not
Speaker 5: seen yet, and it's just gonna be a lovely, lovely,
Speaker 5: lovely treat for y'all. So I want you to check
Speaker 5: that out. And for those who do want to be
Speaker 5: in the film business. Go to our dreamseek dot org
Speaker 5: and sign up, and we're gonna send you all the
Speaker 5: information you need to find out how we could get.
Speaker 3: You in this business.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: So not only are we making movies, but we're giving opportunities,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yes and yeah, speaking of opportunities, let me put your
Speaker 2: he was on the spot right now, the Quavens coming
Speaker 2: is in the house, Ladies and gentlemen, the family. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna let y'all know right now, I'm gonna tell the
Speaker 2: whole world the Quaves already said. The very next movie
Speaker 2: that he do, y'all gonna see me in it. Now,
Speaker 2: that's what he said. Let's see what happened. No more talking.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by a King and brought to
Speaker 1: you by the Black Effect Podcast Network at iHeart Radio.