Speaker 1: What's up. Family's your girl to meeke A d Mallory
Speaker 1: and it's general and we are your hosts of Street Politicians,
Speaker 1: The Place Where and Politics Me my son Living. I
Speaker 1: just want to say at the oddsset of this today's
Speaker 1: show that I'm very, very very proud to see you
Speaker 1: really just kind of like spreading your wings and grabbing
Speaker 1: your destiny as they would say, you know, just trying
Speaker 1: to do the things and accomplish the things that you've
Speaker 1: set out to do. You've been talking about trying to
Speaker 1: you know, bring to the forefront and and some of
Speaker 1: them already in the forefront, but really to bring conversations
Speaker 1: around people who really have had to endure like hard,
Speaker 1: difficult circumstances, whether it be based upon their choice choices
Speaker 1: or whether they got called up, whether they are wrongfully charged, convicted,
Speaker 1: and things like that. But you wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: people who are you know, folks that we respect, and
Speaker 1: you have been saying you wanted to create this brand
Speaker 1: sit down with the stand ups, and you've done it,
Speaker 1: and you know you are sort of in the very
Speaker 1: beginning stages of day viewing your project, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to say I'm proud of what you're doing, and
Speaker 1: we we the people would like to know what this
Speaker 1: is and why you created. Sit Down with the stand Ups,
Speaker 1: which is going to be today will be the first
Speaker 1: episode of it. Really. I mean, you did in another
Speaker 1: interview with your brother, you're you're one of your mentor
Speaker 1: dear friend tone you did an interview some months back,
Speaker 1: but this one is going to really be like the
Speaker 1: debut of your project. So tell us about it. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, thank you. You know, it's been something
Speaker 1: that I wanted to do for a long time, you know,
Speaker 1: being formally incarcerated and you know, and dealing with the stigma.
Speaker 1: You know, when I came home, there was the stigma
Speaker 1: of you know, you know, you're just somebody had been
Speaker 1: in jail. You know, not I can do anything, you know,
Speaker 1: resipivism rate to hide people going back and forth to jail,
Speaker 1: you know, and you have this pretty much scarlet letter
Speaker 1: on you, you know, the f and the felony. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to people who I've known who've
Speaker 1: been incarcerated, who had to go through those hardships, whether
Speaker 1: it been through poor choices, some have been incarcerated for
Speaker 1: things they didn't do. You know, but all of them
Speaker 1: have utilized whatever time and you know circumstances and came
Speaker 1: home and had very very strong impacts and been successful.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to highlight that. I don't think those
Speaker 1: things that talked about it is enough. I think if
Speaker 1: we start to highlight individuals who've you know, been rehabilitated
Speaker 1: and actually took the time to learn from mistakes made,
Speaker 1: you know, and actually came out in society and being productive,
Speaker 1: I think it would give people who who actually are
Speaker 1: released and give them faith so that they don't have
Speaker 1: to return to prison. And then it will actually give
Speaker 1: society a different view. You know, at any given time,
Speaker 1: you can lose your freedom, you know, So it's not when.
Speaker 1: It's not about falling down, it's how you get back up.
Speaker 1: So sit down with the stand ups, sit down conversations
Speaker 1: with people I consider to be stand up individual And
Speaker 1: today it's gonna be our first episode. Like you said,
Speaker 1: it's not really our first episode because I did interview
Speaker 1: my man Tone in the early stages, which is another
Speaker 1: dope interview that you should go check out. It is
Speaker 1: on my YouTube page, my son general, go check that out.
Speaker 1: But this is our first interview, you know, that we did,
Speaker 1: like underneath the guys of just sit down with real
Speaker 1: professionally and had it all structured. So gonna interview my
Speaker 1: guy Aron, our friends, you know, our brother a, you
Speaker 1: know who overcame a lot of things from a young
Speaker 1: age man being in the streets to now being a
Speaker 1: successful entrepreneur, you know, and just all around good individuals.
Speaker 1: So this interview, it's dope. We got a lot more
Speaker 1: coming up, but this is gonna be our first interview
Speaker 1: man sit down with the stand ups. Shout out to
Speaker 1: Aron for you know, sitting down and giving me this
Speaker 1: information and giving me your story and pouring into this.
Speaker 1: So I look forward to it. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: long time coming. But the people that we're going to
Speaker 1: be interviewing, and it's gonna be people that are going
Speaker 1: to motivate you. You know. It's not gonna be just
Speaker 1: a bunch of bullshit and who you got beef with
Speaker 1: and why you don't like this person and negativity not.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be about people, real people going through real
Speaker 1: struggles and overcoming those struggles and coming out on top.
Speaker 1: Well that's we definitely need more of that. So I'm
Speaker 1: all in, let's check it out, sit down with the
Speaker 1: stand ups, Aaron, let's go. So today I have a
Speaker 1: very special guest, someone that I call a friend, a comrade,
Speaker 1: you know, a stand up individuals, because this is what
Speaker 1: it is, sit down with the stand ups. You know,
Speaker 1: I created this podcast and he's actually our first official
Speaker 1: guests of this podcast in our new studio. You know,
Speaker 1: Tone was the first official first guest, but this is
Speaker 1: the first official guest on the podcast, you know. And
Speaker 1: he's somebody that I respect, someone that I've watched, you know,
Speaker 1: since he's been back into society. Just continue to move,
Speaker 1: you know, in a and what I say, respectful man,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, with integrity, the carriage itself,
Speaker 1: with integrity, somebody I respect. Man. So I would like
Speaker 1: to introduce my guests today, my brother Big a Man. First, man,
Speaker 1: I'm great. I want to say thank you for allowing
Speaker 1: me to come on and because anybody can't come here,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's why I created this podcast, because
Speaker 1: I was tired of watching podcasts with people interview people
Speaker 1: who don't have integrity, you know, who've never been battle tests,
Speaker 1: who haven't been through anything, who haven't you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, who who really don't deserve to be interviewed.
Speaker 1: So it's like what I say to myself, if if
Speaker 1: you see that's something that's missing created, don't complain, you know,
Speaker 1: activate so you know, sit down with the stairs ups
Speaker 1: was a birth childer that especially, And I want to
Speaker 1: interview brothers and sistors, you know, who have overcome, especially
Speaker 1: going to prison, you know, because they're this stigma around
Speaker 1: prison about you know, you're a criminal and you're the
Speaker 1: worst scum of the earth, and you know you can't
Speaker 1: succeed afterwards. You got to go back to the same
Speaker 1: negativity and the bullshit that got you in prison, and
Speaker 1: you know, and so I want to interview in highlight
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters like yourself who dispel that myth. You know,
Speaker 1: so thank you, thank you for being I thank you. Um.
Speaker 1: Just to add to that, I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: that anything I do is uh abnormal. I just have
Speaker 1: a mission in my mind that I want to do
Speaker 1: better than I did previously, you know, my last efforts.
Speaker 1: And you know, I go about it that way, and
Speaker 1: you know, and you carry yourself properly. Man. You know,
Speaker 1: there's so many people that I see who who give
Speaker 1: you know, brothers who are formerly incarcerated this bad stigma,
Speaker 1: you know, because those are the only people they want
Speaker 1: to interview. They want to interview the people that want
Speaker 1: to talk about, Oh, I was this in jail when
Speaker 1: I was dad and always highlighting negativity. So this show
Speaker 1: is not We don't want to focus on all the negatives. Yes,
Speaker 1: we want to get in to the reality of what
Speaker 1: you would to jail for, you know, all of those realities,
Speaker 1: but we want to highlight what you've done since you've
Speaker 1: been out, and how you're moving on trajectory of what
Speaker 1: success looks like, and how other brothers and sisters like
Speaker 1: yourself who come back into society can go on that
Speaker 1: right track and can do things positively and can be
Speaker 1: extremely successful. Okay, you know what I'm saying. So so
Speaker 1: with that said, you know, um, a lot of people
Speaker 1: know your story, but a lot of people don't write.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. But if you're from Harlem,
Speaker 1: then you know you know what I'm saying. It is
Speaker 1: a household name Ayrong, that's a that's Aral. You know, UM,
Speaker 1: tell me about like young Aral. I was young abral school,
Speaker 1: Like what was how are you? I was just having
Speaker 1: this conversation with fab every day, and I was explaining
Speaker 1: to him. I said, dang, I was looking at other
Speaker 1: people high school yearbook pictures and I realized, I don't
Speaker 1: even have a high school yearbook picture. Wow, I didn't
Speaker 1: make it to high school. And that in that frame,
Speaker 1: I went to high school and visiting mode, like I
Speaker 1: went there to hang out from time to time, but
Speaker 1: school was like a form of thought for me at
Speaker 1: that point. I had my mindset on hustling. I probably
Speaker 1: was out there since I was twelve years old, and
Speaker 1: when by the time I got to high school, it
Speaker 1: was just for fun. And I didn't value an education
Speaker 1: to that degree at that time. And I did in
Speaker 1: a way and I didn't at the same time. So
Speaker 1: just to elaborate on that, I just say this, I
Speaker 1: wanted to graduate, but I didn't want my hustle to
Speaker 1: be stagnated by the schedule of school, so I ended
Speaker 1: up putting school on the back burner to pursue my
Speaker 1: I've never heard it put that way. You wanted to hustle.
Speaker 1: I mean, you wanted to graduate, but you didn't want
Speaker 1: graduation to stagnate the hustle. You didn't want it to
Speaker 1: interfere with the time. So I was moving up at
Speaker 1: the time. And so so when did you saw the hustle?
Speaker 1: What did you say? So I gave it a try.
Speaker 1: Dude gave me some weed when I was eleven years old.
Speaker 1: Funny story. You know, before I got a chance to
Speaker 1: sell it, I put it under the bed in my
Speaker 1: room or whatever. It must have had a smell that
Speaker 1: I didn't realize. It was a little more potent than
Speaker 1: I realized at the time. My moms might have found
Speaker 1: the joint. It disappeared. I never got confronted, I never
Speaker 1: got asked. Wise in here gone. So I would dude
Speaker 1: a little change. He was on my back, like I
Speaker 1: told him, stacks, but his little few hundred. I guess
Speaker 1: he needed it. So I was. I was my first
Speaker 1: loss in life. So you took your first loss with
Speaker 1: some weed. You don't know where it went, but you
Speaker 1: know it was gone. It was gone. I got this too.
Speaker 1: I had a partner, so he was two years older
Speaker 1: than me. He didn't have to go to school. I
Speaker 1: was still in elementary school. He had the um the
Speaker 1: ability to cut school already. I used to still try
Speaker 1: to keep up with the school schedule at that point,
Speaker 1: so he was selling more than me, you know, and
Speaker 1: quit our little partnership. Made us have a little fistfight,
Speaker 1: but we end up being friends again later on. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you went from weed and then after the weed,
Speaker 1: what happened? So after the week we we graduate, go
Speaker 1: to junior high school and my cousins and my friends
Speaker 1: they had this morning shift for this guy whatever, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to go. I thought I thought I could.
Speaker 1: I thought I was a little smarter than them. I
Speaker 1: thought I was sharper than them. So, um, I wanted
Speaker 1: I needed money. I thought I needed money in my pocket.
Speaker 1: D Dad. At that time, it was like an unspoken
Speaker 1: request in my household that you produce something. And then
Speaker 1: when you do produce, I was given like a certain
Speaker 1: amount of rope after that to be a grown up
Speaker 1: at least for a couple of hours. No beatings, no,
Speaker 1: no no chastise, no, no, just no confrontation. Because I
Speaker 1: contributed to the overall welfare of the household and did by,
Speaker 1: I was deemed important at that time, so it inspired
Speaker 1: me to try to go out there and get more. So, um,
Speaker 1: that was the that was the fastest way and a
Speaker 1: yield of results. Every day. So I was I was
Speaker 1: into that. So it started out of twelve and then
Speaker 1: you went to junior high school and then when she
Speaker 1: went to the next level of what we was, Oh
Speaker 1: it was the cracks then, yeah, now it was cracks
Speaker 1: um crack was already fever pitch um. It's ninety one.
Speaker 1: I got exposure, so the spot was clicking. All I
Speaker 1: had to do is just sit there and pass him
Speaker 1: out or had deuces back then, I don't know that
Speaker 1: was you had to be outside und you had to
Speaker 1: be the ruces was the thing, right, he had to
Speaker 1: talk bout deuces grad cat joints. Right, dudies to give
Speaker 1: me two thousand packs at the at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the school day and I'll be finished by three. Then
Speaker 1: I'll go about my business. At that point, you just
Speaker 1: wasn't going to school. I ain't go to school the
Speaker 1: whole seventh grade year, the whole sound grade year. That's
Speaker 1: so that was like when you was like, all right,
Speaker 1: this is this is clicking. The block is clicking as lucrative,
Speaker 1: I'm now I'm being seen as a man in the household.
Speaker 1: I'm bringing in and I got to defend my mom.
Speaker 1: She didn't advise she didn't bother me, but when the
Speaker 1: school crawled and was like, yo, he didn't come the
Speaker 1: whole year, she was upset. So then we had our
Speaker 1: little beef and I'm like, look, man, you can't do
Speaker 1: this and it ain't both of them ain't gonna happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I ain't gonna get no beatings though. Yeah I'm
Speaker 1: out here. Were just like I'm grown beat me. I
Speaker 1: hear you mad, but it ain't really much nobody. I'm
Speaker 1: telling growing ups to kind of pipe down. I mean,
Speaker 1: I got you stand over there, and so I couldn't
Speaker 1: come home and get a beating. I mean it kind
Speaker 1: of it's an oxymoor around to me at that point.
Speaker 1: So it was it was time to kind of either
Speaker 1: figure out how to become fully a man or like
Speaker 1: start listening again. So, you know, I just progress um
Speaker 1: as my little money came in. So did you go
Speaker 1: to high school at all? Yes? So I was embarrassed
Speaker 1: because I was an on a road kid in elementary school.
Speaker 1: I was I was on a road out and I
Speaker 1: don't want to, you know, give the impression that I
Speaker 1: was some arch criminal at at twelve years old. It
Speaker 1: wasn't that it was a it was a dabbling of sorts,
Speaker 1: but it managed to take up that whole school year.
Speaker 1: I get left back. I'm embarrassed. So that's a feel,
Speaker 1: right right. I go to school the next year, and
Speaker 1: it's the principle assured me like, if if you, you know,
Speaker 1: apply yourself and come to school, give me the grades
Speaker 1: you need, I'll skip you. So that was my motivation.
Speaker 1: I didn't want want to be left behind. So that yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of applied myself and I got back on
Speaker 1: the ball with school and went to high school in time.
Speaker 1: Get the high school as a whole different energy, who different,
Speaker 1: everybody fly, all of them super seniors is already they
Speaker 1: in power. So I'm like, all right, now I got
Speaker 1: to keep up again. So I get back out there
Speaker 1: and now I'm in the mix. And before long, um,
Speaker 1: I found myself in little troubles, uh little robbery there
Speaker 1: and another one here. And then Judge Judy sent me
Speaker 1: to dfy Judge Judy, Judge Judy. Wow, so Judy said,
Speaker 1: so using dy at what age? And so the first
Speaker 1: robbery charge came at twelve, and then the second one
Speaker 1: at thirteen fourteen something something to that effect, and she
Speaker 1: sent me upstate at thirteen, so he was in Dr
Speaker 1: Foil fourteen. So at fourteen years in dry came home
Speaker 1: from darfour at what time ninety five, ninety six? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm coming coming into ninety six and then I get back.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I immediately started hospital. Yeah. Shit,
Speaker 1: So I met my father at fifteen years old. So
Speaker 1: you never met your father prior to being fifteen. I
Speaker 1: never met my father. Wow, I never met him. Um,
Speaker 1: so you just was the man of the household. So
Speaker 1: that's I had a brother. He was the man until
Speaker 1: he left. You know, he went outside. He was outside
Speaker 1: early and uh, it got to the point where when
Speaker 1: he was going then it transitioned obviously. But now it's
Speaker 1: my time and I'm getting I'm coming home from the
Speaker 1: DFOY what have you. And when I got home, I
Speaker 1: got presented with a challenge even go to high school
Speaker 1: or um, you know, get some money. So my father,
Speaker 1: being as though I met him at fifteen, yeah, like
Speaker 1: certain amount of time of back child support to pay
Speaker 1: back to his situation because the people identified him, so
Speaker 1: he hold the system some back child support. I somehow
Speaker 1: checked the mailbox one day and it was check for
Speaker 1: three thousand and then I get excited, Oh, hey, vow,
Speaker 1: let's go cash his check or whatever, and she like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's my money. I'm like, naa, na na, I need
Speaker 1: this one. I'm so you got the rest of them,
Speaker 1: but I want to hold on to this one. So
Speaker 1: I went and took fifteen hundred or to sixty two,
Speaker 1: and then the other fifteen hundred I basically spent in
Speaker 1: the Nordicle store on seventy second in Columbus. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you remember that one. Yeah, that was that
Speaker 1: was That was the spot did. Yeah. At first I
Speaker 1: went to Brand and Ice came back from death while
Speaker 1: I went to King. So this is ninety six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I graduated in ninety four. So you can't back back.
Speaker 1: He loo than me blow so that you wouldn't got
Speaker 1: you sixty two. You ain't turned back since right right,
Speaker 1: I went out there. I kicked the ass. What I'm saying,
Speaker 1: my high shoo was crazy. I ain't lead a spot
Speaker 1: and I'm saying I was out out and then um
Speaker 1: the opportunity to go down South Camp. So that September comes.
Speaker 1: I don't know what what inspired us going to the fight,
Speaker 1: but we went to see Mike Tyson versus Bruce selling
Speaker 1: and fight in the Tupac We had the table. It
Speaker 1: was a crazy, crazy time and um hip hop history,
Speaker 1: but overall I was a big fan of Tupac anyway,
Speaker 1: so it was a big deal. That trip itself opened
Speaker 1: my eyes to a lot of what it really looked
Speaker 1: like when you start doing really good. That was like
Speaker 1: a commercial of source for ambition or you know, um
Speaker 1: just wanting to be bigger than I was at the time.
Speaker 1: So at that point when I got back from Vegas, um,
Speaker 1: you know, sad trip, being as though he got shot
Speaker 1: or whatever. I went to Dominican Republic the same week,
Speaker 1: went out there on my I can't say Frank Lucas
Speaker 1: dreams because you know, yeah, right, disrespected dude or whatever.
Speaker 1: But so I went out there with an ambition again
Speaker 1: like I you're gonna find him. People know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: and get it. Get a shaken to Mexico. No, No,
Speaker 1: we went to my man had a guy out there
Speaker 1: that was a good friend of his and he got
Speaker 1: deported or whatever. So he's still supposed to that knew
Speaker 1: something about something. And then by the time we get
Speaker 1: it back and that presented itself and it was on.
Speaker 1: So what year was this still ninety six right, so
Speaker 1: that was September. Then going into that the later part
Speaker 1: of ninety six is was like the blooming stage for me, right,
Speaker 1: and then ninety seven I was, I was. It was
Speaker 1: on like Donkey Kong, So that was kind of my
Speaker 1: my time right there. So um, but like everything I
Speaker 1: did good, then I did dad, and I did good again.
Speaker 1: Didn't right up and down? I tell you know, I
Speaker 1: always used to tell people, man, you know, it's and
Speaker 1: everything's up and down right, and and a lot of
Speaker 1: times when people glorify the streets and they talk about
Speaker 1: the streets, they make it seem like it's just yo,
Speaker 1: we just got a bunch money, and so you the
Speaker 1: risk don't really be worth the reward, right, you know
Speaker 1: what I say. You don't think that now. But when
Speaker 1: you're young, you're just like, oh, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You don't think it at that time. You just running around,
Speaker 1: You're just trying to you see, I've got money, right,
Speaker 1: I got girls, I got the clothes, I got everything
Speaker 1: I want. Right. But then when you realize, you know,
Speaker 1: when you look back on it, you started saying, damn,
Speaker 1: this really wasn't work. It's like, this is three four
Speaker 1: or five year thing that I lost ten twenty. It
Speaker 1: don't really be balancing out. So this was what you
Speaker 1: at ninety six, you went to Yah turned it up.
Speaker 1: So so what was going on in between that time
Speaker 1: between like what was going on from ninety six to
Speaker 1: like two thousand, right, So let's let's let's be clear
Speaker 1: about the facts. At A ninety six, my main my
Speaker 1: main desire was to have an impact on my household.
Speaker 1: That was your main. So basically you hustled, like a
Speaker 1: jay Z said of desperation, like we're not gonna be poor,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not gonna be poor. It wasn't And even
Speaker 1: if we're gonna be poor, we're gonna be poor and
Speaker 1: comfortable at the same time, right, because it's going to
Speaker 1: be to eat. Right, that level of whose big time
Speaker 1: and who's doing okay and whose little dude? Like that's
Speaker 1: relative at the time. You you you hustle from where
Speaker 1: you are, right, It's some dudes that never get past
Speaker 1: one hundred twenty five grams and they feel like they're
Speaker 1: the ship I'm saying. So I can't necessarily say that
Speaker 1: I knew what level I wanted to be on. But
Speaker 1: I had an idea. I've seen the movies. I know
Speaker 1: what breaks on breaks look, I heard a rich part
Speaker 1: in them. So I heard the stories. I know what
Speaker 1: the what the shot supposed to look like, from this
Speaker 1: dude that did a little bit to that dude that
Speaker 1: did a lot of bit. So you know, they provided
Speaker 1: the blueprint, if you will, and you had to have
Speaker 1: an appropriate level of audacity at that point to kind
Speaker 1: of following those steps. Um, and if you jumped out
Speaker 1: there in the streets, you you have to know the names.
Speaker 1: You know, the names that that give you the energy
Speaker 1: to go forth, the guy Fishers and all of these
Speaker 1: names like that that came before you and then you
Speaker 1: want to leave your mark. But more important to me,
Speaker 1: that's the thing I noticed. You know a lot of
Speaker 1: people hustlers in Hallow because it's hustling became famous in
Speaker 1: Hallan right, So it's like just the ambiance of what
Speaker 1: hustling was like you go to one fifty fifth Street
Speaker 1: and you see you and you're from the pun so
Speaker 1: you go there and you see cars, you see change,
Speaker 1: you see all And that was the thing that the
Speaker 1: low that that just pulled most of the people from
Speaker 1: Hallman right there. It made it worse. But going to
Speaker 1: Willie Burgers, you everybody pulling up in the biggest car
Speaker 1: is the biggest change. The girls is around the car.
Speaker 1: You like, Nah, it's no way. I'm not doing this, man,
Speaker 1: there's no way. I'm just gonna be kids out here
Speaker 1: with nothing and this is happening right. So that and
Speaker 1: that's the thing. You have Recca Park, you have rooftop
Speaker 1: over there, Crush the street from Recca Park, it was
Speaker 1: a Gamblett by the crust the street from that that
Speaker 1: everybody used to come to. So all of the names
Speaker 1: from here to Queen's Dudes, the Brooklyn dudes, that everybody
Speaker 1: that was getting money from whatever area came to my neighborhood. Now,
Speaker 1: once again, I'm a little too young to be relevant. However,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm noticing. I'm watching. I see who's who, I
Speaker 1: see how they carry theirself, and those examples become year motivation.
Speaker 1: Those examples become a part of your yr psyche, and
Speaker 1: you start mimicking. So I took the necessary steps, and
Speaker 1: I took some moves from him, and that dude moves
Speaker 1: look good. And I borrowed a little bit from him,
Speaker 1: and I created my own, my own. I say that
Speaker 1: all the time. I say a lot of us our
Speaker 1: only vision of success was the drug dealer, right, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. I didn't live next to the doctor.
Speaker 1: There was no lawyers there, there was none of that.
Speaker 1: It was just the drug dealer. Right. So he had
Speaker 1: the girl, I won, he had the car one it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody respected him. So it's like, yo, that's who I
Speaker 1: want to be. So you know, in essence, we're pretty
Speaker 1: much groomed into that because you only can be what
Speaker 1: you see, you know. So you was just basically was
Speaker 1: a product of your environment, you know. And and then
Speaker 1: Nate nature, especially of man strong man. You want to
Speaker 1: compete and you want to be the best at it.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. If you if you involved
Speaker 1: in anything, I'm gonna be the best at it. And
Speaker 1: you know, hustling was like a sport, especially in the nineties,
Speaker 1: late eighties and nineties or way through to like the two.
Speaker 1: It was a sport, especially in our area, like from Hallom,
Speaker 1: the Bronks, like that was the sport. Like especially you
Speaker 1: went down to Hallom and he was like, nah, dudes
Speaker 1: was getting too much money? Man, Like I used to
Speaker 1: go to King. Niggas was coming to King pocketing. The
Speaker 1: locker room was again, it was like a casino. You
Speaker 1: understand I'm saying. The gym was a casino. Nigga was coming.
Speaker 1: I'm in ninth grade and niggas got five ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in their pocket. I'm like, how was this happened?
Speaker 1: You know? So they got mom moms, north faces, they
Speaker 1: got every They're going right to the north close. So
Speaker 1: so you like, you know what I'm saying. If you
Speaker 1: it's hard for you to not fall into that. Lord, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And then and then especially
Speaker 1: when you come from when you ain't got it right,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. It's not like you we
Speaker 1: privileged and we had good homes and she was good
Speaker 1: for us. You're like, nah, I'm just not knocked, gonna
Speaker 1: have nothing and they got all this and I've got none.
Speaker 1: It's not like you, like, I'm doing good. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm got. So you like, you start out basically,
Speaker 1: like you said, trying to make sure your home is
Speaker 1: taking kid of trying to do that, and then after
Speaker 1: that you're like, well I did that, now I can
Speaker 1: Now I can go into the next arena, so you
Speaker 1: just move up and on. So from ninety six in
Speaker 1: the two thousands, so that that was around that was
Speaker 1: when all of them like hip hop was right, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. That's when the whole hip hop
Speaker 1: so like affiliations to hip hop, Like what was Abra
Speaker 1: hun doing in like the hip hop error in that era.
Speaker 1: So before before that, the hall of hip Hop scene.
Speaker 1: And I'm not speaking the dougie freshman era because obviously
Speaker 1: they had their own school mood and all of them people.
Speaker 1: And I was there in Roca when rock him, did
Speaker 1: I know joke. I was in RockA Park, sitting there,
Speaker 1: playing in the park when they came in set up
Speaker 1: the cameras. I'm like, oh shoot, look at Flavor like
Speaker 1: it was a big deal of me at this time.
Speaker 1: I'm a kid. I loved it. I mean and looking
Speaker 1: at rooftop wall was like my favorite thing. I used
Speaker 1: to actually go to the park just to stand in
Speaker 1: a crosse the street and look at the wall. It was.
Speaker 1: It was littered with graffiti. Um it had the advertisement
Speaker 1: of Brucey B and m Busy B. So I used
Speaker 1: to draw off that wall like just trying to mimic
Speaker 1: the letter pattern and it was a big deal. So
Speaker 1: the whole culture always influenced some of our moves and
Speaker 1: the things that we aspired to um and you know,
Speaker 1: not to go back again. But that's why I do
Speaker 1: love the culture, because it gave us a sense of imagination,
Speaker 1: if you will. And the drug dealers, for what it's worth,
Speaker 1: those were the first guys that showed the kind of
Speaker 1: heart that that was a new feeling for us. We've
Speaker 1: seen housing men. We didn't see doctors and lawyers because
Speaker 1: that they wasn't in our neighborhoods. We see housing, then
Speaker 1: we see the the janitor, we see the people that
Speaker 1: you know, and we respect these men as grown men
Speaker 1: and provide us for their family. But the drug dealers
Speaker 1: gave us a sense of importance. Everything they touched on
Speaker 1: a daily was affected by they knew found wealth. Sure
Speaker 1: they had the girls in the clothes, but more importantly,
Speaker 1: if somebody needed something for school, if somebody needed to
Speaker 1: bill paid, they was given that to people in not
Speaker 1: having to think about, you know, the expenditure, it was nothing,
Speaker 1: especially with the rate of inflation at that time, and
Speaker 1: it was it was a low expenditure for them to
Speaker 1: have a big impact on your house. Providing your mom
Speaker 1: just got a eviction note that month and somebody gave
Speaker 1: a three hundred dollars, it was still a big deal.
Speaker 1: So all right, back to moving forward, These these um
Speaker 1: efforts on a behalf became some of the things that
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. I wanted to be impactful on
Speaker 1: the people that I loved, so I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that if they needed I had it. And I
Speaker 1: didn't really see that, you know, going to get a
Speaker 1: ninety nine or five job. I never had a job
Speaker 1: in my life, so not a traditional job, so um,
Speaker 1: it never was a part of my psyche. I always
Speaker 1: felt like I would have to go outside and get it.
Speaker 1: So wow. So and that's what I say all the time.
Speaker 1: You know, the mind state that team with the nineties
Speaker 1: and eighties era of hustling, it wasn't about negativity, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't It wasn't it wasn't criminology to us, right,
Speaker 1: it was survival, right, it was I wanted to do
Speaker 1: good for my community, like we wasn't. We didn't hustle
Speaker 1: just to flossh on each other and say I got
Speaker 1: more than you. Most of the drug dealers and the hustlers.
Speaker 1: You know, we're taking care of the community like you
Speaker 1: could go. They was paying rent like kids. They was
Speaker 1: like I remember the drug dealers in my hood when
Speaker 1: I was playing basketball early. They was paying for me
Speaker 1: to go to camps. There's buying me sneakers. There's like, Noah,
Speaker 1: we don't want you in the streets. You know. They
Speaker 1: was doing all the black parties, giving out all the stuff.
Speaker 1: So it was like this robin hood since you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. We wanted all of us wanted to
Speaker 1: be the person in the hood that took care of
Speaker 1: the hood and was the person that you can come to,
Speaker 1: you know, because we didn't. We didn't want nobody suffering,
Speaker 1: you know. So it was a different mind stake, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. And although we realized we was
Speaker 1: doing wrong, you know what I'm saying, we felt like
Speaker 1: we was doing wrong for the right reasons, you know.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't it wasn't just we're trying to hurt it.
Speaker 1: We just want to do negative certain No, it was
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be broke. I know these young
Speaker 1: kids ain't trying to be bro I want to make
Speaker 1: sure everybody in this community got something, and b got something,
Speaker 1: then they got something. I want to be the person
Speaker 1: that I know that they can come to and get
Speaker 1: something from me, you know. And that's still and and
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't understand it's not criminal mentality,
Speaker 1: right because I still I still base a lot of
Speaker 1: the principles that I live off of the streets. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. It's not the crime, its integrity,
Speaker 1: right as levels of integrity. So they're like, yo, you
Speaker 1: can't be gangster but woke, and I'm like wow, because
Speaker 1: the gang the principles of what I called gangster is manhood,
Speaker 1: protecting women, you know, make sure that the children is safe.
Speaker 1: All of these principles that I got from the streets
Speaker 1: that I didn't learn from nowhere else, nobody. I didn't have,
Speaker 1: no you know, no school of you know that they
Speaker 1: taught you how to be a boy, and all that
Speaker 1: I learned what I learned from the streets, and I
Speaker 1: applied that now as a civilian as as somebody who's not.
Speaker 1: And I apply all of those things, and those things
Speaker 1: make me great in every aspect of life that I
Speaker 1: live now, you know what I'm saying. So when I'm
Speaker 1: listening to you. We all had the same things, we
Speaker 1: all had the same mentalities, you know, and we was
Speaker 1: never just And that's what that's what I want to, like,
Speaker 1: try to dispel a lot of people who commit crime.
Speaker 1: It's not criminals, right, you know what I'm saying. You
Speaker 1: you you you're trying to some people that just enjoy
Speaker 1: committing crown. They're like, y'all want to do negative shit.
Speaker 1: That's just who I am. But there's a lot of
Speaker 1: us that was like, yo, I'm not gonna be broke. See,
Speaker 1: I'm confused about the mission of today's young US. But
Speaker 1: before I could speak on number because I didn't need
Speaker 1: to answer the question on with the ninety six ever
Speaker 1: asking me that. But let's not take for granted the
Speaker 1: mob era either. That that model led to the rich
Speaker 1: porters and them, and I mean, let's even to the
Speaker 1: nicky bonds and them of that era. They were direct
Speaker 1: beneficiaries of that model that they set, and then that
Speaker 1: one trickled down to the riches and them, Then they
Speaker 1: trickled down to us, and then so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: But as it kept going, one was to level the
Speaker 1: play and feel love, to have and to have not.
Speaker 1: The next one became, oh, it's our time, we're going
Speaker 1: for broke and we're gonna try to change the whole
Speaker 1: dynamics of the culture. At that point, we don't know
Speaker 1: nothing else, right, since these drugs is like newly introduced
Speaker 1: to the community. I'm and I don't want to speak
Speaker 1: in factual terms because one I was too young, right,
Speaker 1: But I just want to give my my opinion of
Speaker 1: it is when these guys came out with the idea
Speaker 1: of let's gather all of these resources and moneys to
Speaker 1: buy the community and pay for this and make sure
Speaker 1: we good and make sure they're good. The end result
Speaker 1: that the powers that be didn't care that happened to
Speaker 1: the community. I don't think they've seen it going that
Speaker 1: far at the beginning of it. By the time it
Speaker 1: got to us, and it was just a matter of
Speaker 1: I was already fucked up. We can't do nothing to
Speaker 1: make it worse or better. Just get what you can
Speaker 1: and try to do good from there. So it still
Speaker 1: was an objective to kind of do good from bad.
Speaker 1: Now it's more of an attention seeking thing and more
Speaker 1: of a I just want to look good. But I
Speaker 1: guess we all get lost in that in that journey,
Speaker 1: because we all ended up buying shit we didn't need.
Speaker 1: We all ended up with a chain or two that
Speaker 1: wasn't necessary, or car that that had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the overall objective. So we all get blinded by
Speaker 1: you know, I agreed and get lost that ninety six
Speaker 1: to two thousand and era, it was a exciting time.
Speaker 1: The kids. You want to be a kid, you want
Speaker 1: to have fun. You see the young rappers that you
Speaker 1: know might be a little seasoned now, but at that
Speaker 1: time when their gals and digging in the crates and
Speaker 1: the Bronx and all of these guys were still young
Speaker 1: enough to have a direct impact one on how our
Speaker 1: youth was fueled by the music and stuff. It was fire,
Speaker 1: It was great. I loved every second of it. M
Speaker 1: jay Z and them came nahs and they was killing boutang.
Speaker 1: It created this energy that you can make it you
Speaker 1: got fun. It could be a glorious time, and I
Speaker 1: was all for it. I was outside every day all day.
Speaker 1: Nobody went home. I don't think, but not that I
Speaker 1: was a person that enjoyed hanging outside. But I was
Speaker 1: a person that enjoyed the energy of the error so
Speaker 1: I was on the road a lot down South, hustling.
Speaker 1: Every every time I went to UM, I tried to
Speaker 1: make my impression. Felt I wanted to constantly get to
Speaker 1: the levels that I wanted to be at. But UM
Speaker 1: that that error in itself was special because it gave
Speaker 1: true beginnings of wealth to people that didn't get a
Speaker 1: chance to have it no other way. UM kids that
Speaker 1: wouldn't have made it would have nine to five, but
Speaker 1: they ended up benefit enough. The jerkory that happened to
Speaker 1: the first wave of rappers, so it was new money.
Speaker 1: Then the street dudes was in competition with them. They
Speaker 1: was in competition with us, and it just was a
Speaker 1: hell of a time, like witnessing it all that if
Speaker 1: you was there, if he was present at that time,
Speaker 1: I was because I was. That was kind of like
Speaker 1: the error where I got into it, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So like I was a big big girl fan,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. I remember just listening to
Speaker 1: Big Elm stressing Poppito, like yo, this is probably the
Speaker 1: best rapper ever. You know what I'm saying. I had
Speaker 1: his him and jay Z's freestyle like that was that
Speaker 1: was the model for me. Like I listened to that
Speaker 1: so much. I used to be like, right, I gotta
Speaker 1: like these like I never forget that that freestyle, Like
Speaker 1: I used to listen to it all the time. My
Speaker 1: little cassette tape and I taped it and ship the
Speaker 1: ship popped and then I taped it back together with
Speaker 1: the nail polish and all of that, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So that was that error. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. That was that error of music. So you
Speaker 1: and you was shining like in the ever when when,
Speaker 1: especially when New York and Hall of Hip Hop was shot,
Speaker 1: right you know, so it was like so big hell
Speaker 1: you know big el Yes. So what was like your
Speaker 1: relationship with el al is a man that was a
Speaker 1: good guy, All was funny, il was talented, al was
Speaker 1: he was a leader um and and how many people
Speaker 1: benefited off Alice example, he kind of opened the door.
Speaker 1: Of course, you have to have your own level of talent,
Speaker 1: you have to have your own drive. But um Alice
Speaker 1: present led people to say fuck that, I'm ready too.
Speaker 1: So all of the dope runs Mace came up with,
Speaker 1: all of the fires Camp came up with. It was
Speaker 1: a direct result of all being l at the right
Speaker 1: time in Niles, right, So they both got to Columbia Deal.
Speaker 1: I'm in junior high school. They got to Columbia Deal.
Speaker 1: Even though that wasn't a time where I should have
Speaker 1: been noticing what was going on, it was it was
Speaker 1: big news to the neighborhood, like, oh, they got the deals,
Speaker 1: and we're like, damn, that's dope, I'm saying. So everybody
Speaker 1: kind of won the round, right. I was shocked. Could
Speaker 1: you used to write you? I had barushuns, so nah,
Speaker 1: I definitely, um, it's somebody out there. With my squeaky voice,
Speaker 1: say somebody, somebody got out. I promise is somebody room
Speaker 1: is a tape somewhere. You're supposed to be one of
Speaker 1: the children of the corn I promise you. I'm so
Speaker 1: heavy to tape players are gone so they could never
Speaker 1: get those, you know. So I definitely enjoyed the art form. Man,
Speaker 1: I was crazy and graffiti. I thought music was the ship.
Speaker 1: But I hustle. I hustle more than I had the
Speaker 1: desire to sit in the studio. I promise you, I
Speaker 1: hustle all day Like I didn't, I probably would have
Speaker 1: still been laughing at a nigger that was rapping because
Speaker 1: that's when the money was transitioning. The street money still
Speaker 1: was better than the wrapper money at that time and
Speaker 1: before the street, the rappers wanted to be like the
Speaker 1: hustle right that the superstars didn't make it, make it yet,
Speaker 1: Biggie and them just started right. But then Biggie early right,
Speaker 1: so to that, to that, and trust, everybody had aspirations
Speaker 1: to look as good as rock him. Cougie rapped like
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not down playing how good they looked
Speaker 1: when the lights were on, But it wasn't. It wasn't.
Speaker 1: It was a level of money right when you you
Speaker 1: hear the rapper you hit big l L and them
Speaker 1: talking about the street dudes had the money, like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Like when I was talking to Tune,
Speaker 1: he was like, man, we was coming through helicopters and
Speaker 1: them wanted to be around like they all of the
Speaker 1: rappers wanted to be around that. We had real, real money.
Speaker 1: Me being stuck on them corners. I watched all of that.
Speaker 1: I promise you man, it was. It was. It was
Speaker 1: a hell of the site because these were young men,
Speaker 1: teenagers coming out of teenage years into young adulthood and
Speaker 1: they had the glow of youth. They had to adascity.
Speaker 1: I don't give a fuck. But more importantly, nobody knew
Speaker 1: they worth yet. You didn't know you weren't supposed to
Speaker 1: die in yet twenties. You didn't know that at the
Speaker 1: end of all of this drug dealing, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a lit of people destroyed a community that once
Speaker 1: we're standing strong, it's going to be burnt out shell
Speaker 1: of a building. Now, some of that was aimed. Some
Speaker 1: of it was, you know, the people that was higher
Speaker 1: than us wanting to building the buildings to be burnt
Speaker 1: down for gentrification purposes that we couldn't see yet we
Speaker 1: don't we don't know what we don't know, right, but
Speaker 1: our contribution to the to the to the destruction of
Speaker 1: the community can't be discounted. So but at the time
Speaker 1: when they first came out, man, I tell you, like,
Speaker 1: these were stars into making, because these guys embody all
Speaker 1: of the characteristics that we love and leaders and it
Speaker 1: were tough, they were handsome where they were fly and
Speaker 1: that inspired people right, and it gave so much content
Speaker 1: for music. Right, So everybody had to have this story
Speaker 1: of who did what win and how it felt when
Speaker 1: he did this, and when that shot such a such
Speaker 1: what happened next? So me standing there all day on
Speaker 1: these street corners, I got a chance to witness. I
Speaker 1: don't want to say my level of participation in those
Speaker 1: things sometimes, but I was there, hashtag I was there,
Speaker 1: so I remember. So when I'm sitting here thinking about L,
Speaker 1: like L was that he was demand like EL was
Speaker 1: one of my favorite rappers. So I remember Freestan. I
Speaker 1: remember Mace brought me to forty of and I got
Speaker 1: out me and L was rapping, and he was like, yo,
Speaker 1: the secret rap right, you know what I'm saying. Then
Speaker 1: Primo talks about it all the time. We was in
Speaker 1: Forest Projects and it was me him, Party RD A
Speaker 1: gum show was there. Um I think Fat Joe was there,
Speaker 1: Domon did. Was a bunch of us just out and
Speaker 1: for us right, and we had one of the best
Speaker 1: ciphers and Primo love He's like, yo, it was you
Speaker 1: El party Arty. I was just going in right, God
Speaker 1: blessed dead party of Gards. So when El passed away, like,
Speaker 1: how was that? First of all? That that was a
Speaker 1: sad time. Um Al was at chair. If improv was
Speaker 1: was was a real thing. For a rapper. He was
Speaker 1: the improv king, right he was. He was a comedian
Speaker 1: without being paid for it. So the girl come up
Speaker 1: one day, she said, Oh, I ain't impressed by none
Speaker 1: of y'all. I don't even ask where to dude if
Speaker 1: he got eight inch eight inches it better? He said,
Speaker 1: eight inches, Charlie, I ain't cutting my dick for nobody
Speaker 1: making laugh by accident, Like he's gonna he's gonna he
Speaker 1: knocked a dude out one day. Whoop. So he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start shooting it. Next his brother said, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: whoa got stabbed somebody first? Your kids skip over the yeah,
Speaker 1: like your kids just run around shooting people like So,
Speaker 1: even though some of the stuff is once again it
Speaker 1: was destruct it was hilarious in real time because we
Speaker 1: identified with what we thought was tough right where we
Speaker 1: where we, where we laughed at probably wasn't funny do
Speaker 1: you look at it in retrospect, But at that time
Speaker 1: it was hilarious because it was meant to be a joke.
Speaker 1: And even if nobody wanted to Ella be violent, everybody
Speaker 1: want to Ella express his art. Nobody wanted him to
Speaker 1: be in the streets and do stuff. Now, if the
Speaker 1: street life ended up touching all by proximity, then that
Speaker 1: that's the that's the sad part, right, because his art
Speaker 1: helped him help him escape, then the proximity of the
Speaker 1: good gets back on you and you could die from it.
Speaker 1: And and nobody foresees that kind of outcome when he's
Speaker 1: not a bad person in totality. So you look at
Speaker 1: the bin of l He's a rapper's he said his rhymes.
Speaker 1: He hung out with girls, he liked the gamble, he
Speaker 1: wanted a party. He'd make you laugh all day and
Speaker 1: then you can make one little mistake and you'd be dead.
Speaker 1: And that and that's the part people can't foresee about
Speaker 1: the street life that if I could tell anybody, yo, man,
Speaker 1: you might want to reconsider that lifestyle. Because even though
Speaker 1: that dude is tough enough to go to jail, and
Speaker 1: that dude right there is tough enough to kill if
Speaker 1: he do this this kind of lifestyle, that end result
Speaker 1: to his journey is going to be deaf for jail.
Speaker 1: And we didn't Yeah, we didn't even foresee that that
Speaker 1: might mean something to the four kids he had, It
Speaker 1: might mean a lot. His absence might mean so much
Speaker 1: to those four kids that's left behind that we would
Speaker 1: beg him not to go on that journey. But we didn't.
Speaker 1: We didn't know we was that valuable yet it was
Speaker 1: too young to know we was that valuable. That's crazy
Speaker 1: and it's real. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 1: that's why when I'm having conversations with kids, I talk
Speaker 1: to them like me and you talking like the same
Speaker 1: way we're talking because we've been through a lot of shit.
Speaker 1: So I'm not I'm not sitting there like, don't do this,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm like, listen, I know what you I
Speaker 1: know exactly what you're thinking. Because I was young at
Speaker 1: that I wanted this, I wanted that, but this is
Speaker 1: the reality that comes right. So now if you're willing
Speaker 1: to do because understanding sharks in the water. Now, if
Speaker 1: you want to jump in the I'm advising you not
Speaker 1: too right with this. Understand when you're jumping there, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to deal with those sharks. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm And I'm having real conversations with I'm not talking
Speaker 1: from where I am now. I'm talking to you from
Speaker 1: where I was when you was. Because when I have
Speaker 1: conversation with them, I'd be like, Ye, what would somebody
Speaker 1: have had to say to me when I was fifteen
Speaker 1: to change my mind's stick? Because in fifteen six, I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: you your old niggas don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I know, look we outside you ain't even So I'm like,
Speaker 1: how would you have had to approach me for me
Speaker 1: to even pay attention to you? First? You gotta look away. First,
Speaker 1: I gotta feel like you know what I'm saying, you
Speaker 1: look like something. And then if you got a level
Speaker 1: of respect around, I'm gonna give you a little bit
Speaker 1: of it. You know what I'm saying. And then you
Speaker 1: gotta talk to me like you understand what's going on.
Speaker 1: You can't come from me from a hierarchy. You can't
Speaker 1: come to me like you talking down to me, like
Speaker 1: you know more than me. I don't know. I'm asking
Speaker 1: you questions. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. That's how
Speaker 1: I talk to you. Now. You know so what you
Speaker 1: think is gonna happen? So what tell me what your
Speaker 1: plan is? You know what I'm saying. So, because when
Speaker 1: you start hearing your plan and the ship don't make
Speaker 1: sense to you, then you start reconsidering I don't got
Speaker 1: to tell you something, just want to ask you. And
Speaker 1: as you start answering your own questions, you start coming
Speaker 1: up with your own solutions. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the way that I deal with them now. No,
Speaker 1: but as for you from twelve right so twenty six,
Speaker 1: you didn't do like real major time, none of that
Speaker 1: in between. So remember did you spatfor joint? They showed
Speaker 1: me all kind of love. You know, it's like a
Speaker 1: spafor as a holding place. It's not a meant to
Speaker 1: do a bid. So my my, my process of uh,
Speaker 1: it was everything was like a fake trial and juvenile court.
Speaker 1: So dude came and said I told the kids to
Speaker 1: rob them and that was it. He sent me up there.
Speaker 1: So I didn't the funny part about these you didn't
Speaker 1: even do this, man. That's what it always gets you
Speaker 1: for the shit you don't do. Man, both of the
Speaker 1: little juven Now, the first one is I'm at school,
Speaker 1: I'm just minding my business. But I hungered all of
Speaker 1: the kids to do the negative shit. Man. I wish
Speaker 1: I could say your names. Y'all was bad kids, and
Speaker 1: I promise you I should tell your name. And no, no,
Speaker 1: never you know that, you know that did my job.
Speaker 1: Y'all don't do that. So no, but um I hung
Speaker 1: with all the kids. That was terrible. Right. So once
Speaker 1: again these kids don't know what's they cause they think
Speaker 1: that they following a pat enough people that they thought
Speaker 1: was real. Dudes. We had this concept of what little
Speaker 1: gangsters supposed to do, and dear boy, they was following
Speaker 1: that mode. Um so they run around robbing kids after lunchtime.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying I never. So this is why, right,
Speaker 1: it was you gonna blame me because you've been with before,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't with the bush on this day, this
Speaker 1: particular day, I'm standing a crush the street. They run
Speaker 1: up on a kid, I don't have nothing to do
Speaker 1: it like they know, I know he'd be with them.
Speaker 1: He definitely. They came in my classroom and said it's
Speaker 1: on you. I said, really, man's you don't get away
Speaker 1: with a couple, right, That's how That's how I always
Speaker 1: the next one in my hood. Dude come in the hood,
Speaker 1: a man like yo, I get him like, don't do that.
Speaker 1: Get don't do that. He robs dude, dude, he ends
Speaker 1: up hitting do it upside his head dude come out
Speaker 1: from his stupor try to kind of. I got a
Speaker 1: two piece of pop pool just to get him off me, Like,
Speaker 1: why are you grabbing me? Family, like, talk to me.
Speaker 1: Next thing, you know, the police have my mother door.
Speaker 1: She likes, look at you. Right. So um, once again
Speaker 1: that proximity to stupidity because like and um, you know,
Speaker 1: they asked me who did it? I'm like, r come on,
Speaker 1: I'm playing a lot right, So right, so they sent
Speaker 1: me up there and that's that's the end of that story.
Speaker 1: But UM, I think it's a big thing to know,
Speaker 1: and that's why you got to watch your company. But
Speaker 1: more importantly, UM, you gotta know why you outside. So
Speaker 1: if we had the guys that I'm sure we had,
Speaker 1: everybody said yo yo, sure you know it's deaf a
Speaker 1: jail at the end of this heard that before. What
Speaker 1: we never had in abundance was the alternatives or the
Speaker 1: why the risk is worth it until you get this building.
Speaker 1: And you can't deviate from this mission of getting the
Speaker 1: building before you start buying them as ship put your
Speaker 1: life in jeopardy. So and that's what the MARV dudes
Speaker 1: did in in in successful ways. They they got to construction,
Speaker 1: their kids through college, the old lawyers, and they're different
Speaker 1: that they changed that, they change the trajectory of the
Speaker 1: whole you know, the whole bloodline that wasn't memphi Us.
Speaker 1: So we followed. The thing is, we talk about crime
Speaker 1: and all these things. America is built on crime, every
Speaker 1: every aspect of America. If you look at you look
Speaker 1: throughout history, they colonized, they took this, they did this,
Speaker 1: they built that, and then they called whatever they wanted. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is legal. We're gonna do it this way. It's
Speaker 1: legal for us, even though you might not like it,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna make it legal because it fits. It's
Speaker 1: the farman that our agenda, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened in the hood. We didn't have that,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. We had lemons and we
Speaker 1: made lemonade saying. So we had to say. I tell
Speaker 1: people all the time, you you mad at the drug deal,
Speaker 1: but you ain't mad at the pharmacy. You ain't mad
Speaker 1: at CVS. You ain't mad at farmer. That's where the
Speaker 1: drugs come from. You married the little dude on the
Speaker 1: corner that's trying to figure out how he gonna sell
Speaker 1: his food. But the nigga that's making billions of dollars,
Speaker 1: that's selling the same exact shit that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: the worst people in the world, where you're not saying
Speaker 1: nothing about you know what I'm saying. So you know,
Speaker 1: just understanding that we just tried to figure out America,
Speaker 1: how we was gonna get a piece of the pile,
Speaker 1: How are we gonna get a piece of the American dream?
Speaker 1: And as we grew we realized that it wasn't designed
Speaker 1: for us. It was never designed for us to get
Speaker 1: that and not that way. Somebody had to be the
Speaker 1: fall guy, you know, So we we learned and we
Speaker 1: evolved our way of thinking. There's so much either over
Speaker 1: glorification of the wrong shit or villainizing the right shit,
Speaker 1: right because at the end of the day, you you're
Speaker 1: punishing or you're mad at individuals figured out a way
Speaker 1: out of nothing. They picked up saying and say, Yo,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make this shit into brick somehow, and you
Speaker 1: mad at them because they didn't do it the conventional way,
Speaker 1: or they didn't do it the legal way, because there
Speaker 1: was there was no way to do it the legal way.
Speaker 1: The way they get They had to figure out we're
Speaker 1: gonna put this ship this way. They saying, we can't
Speaker 1: get no fire from over here. We gotta go steal
Speaker 1: some fire. We gotta do this shit, but we gotta
Speaker 1: build us a house. You know what I'm saying, You
Speaker 1: can't get mad in the nigga is saying, I want
Speaker 1: a house like everybody else got a house. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be out in the cold. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be freezing. So they get villainized. Oh, y'all soul
Speaker 1: drugs and y'all. Y'all killed the era. And at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, they the motivation in the hustle
Speaker 1: because a lot of people took the same hustle that
Speaker 1: Jay had. And it wasn't just streets. It was niggas
Speaker 1: that went into the boardrooms and niggas that went into
Speaker 1: the you know, to corporate and had the mind state
Speaker 1: that Jay had, Like listen, you're not jerking me. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get this money. We're gonna do this. So you
Speaker 1: needed that inspiration, all of these this inspirations, so you
Speaker 1: needed or everyone they part. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: So I want I want to dispel myths like you're
Speaker 1: not gonna You're not going to just pigeonholed. You know
Speaker 1: people who have done illegal things to be in criminals
Speaker 1: and negative. No, Yes, the acts have been wrong. We
Speaker 1: right our wrongs. We realized if we had better situation,
Speaker 1: if we if we knew better, we probably would have
Speaker 1: did way better. You know what I'm saying. But the
Speaker 1: reality is this is what we were given. We gotta
Speaker 1: taken a consideration. Initially it was a party drug. This
Speaker 1: was a an introduction to a good time for people
Speaker 1: that ended up a bad time. So when when all
Speaker 1: of this money is being generated, nobody sees that end result. Sure,
Speaker 1: it was propaganda to say don't do this because it's
Speaker 1: leading to this, just like it's propaganda to say we
Speaker 1: should help the people on fitting on now. Right, So
Speaker 1: that that that new level of concern that that's hidden society,
Speaker 1: it wasn't there before, right, that's for rehabilitation, because it
Speaker 1: wasn't even a reality that we understood on us. Now
Speaker 1: this new drug is being given out by the powers
Speaker 1: that be there by it got to be an accident
Speaker 1: that this is happening. So for us, it was they
Speaker 1: are criminals and they need to be destroyed. And even
Speaker 1: our leaders fell into that, you know, um frame of reference,
Speaker 1: like yeah, kill them all like it was and it
Speaker 1: was a it was a direct attack right on our community.
Speaker 1: And I've seen an interview that Wrangel did and they
Speaker 1: they they voiced that pinion like it was a good idea.
Speaker 1: At the time, we thought it was the best approach
Speaker 1: to you know what. We um, the epademic after that
Speaker 1: moment should be handed because that's because that's what they
Speaker 1: were being taught, right because a generation prior to that,
Speaker 1: they never seen that. They just wanted the streets clean.
Speaker 1: There's like people, these people oh d and this and
Speaker 1: that they need to go to jail. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, as you you get older, you don't want
Speaker 1: your civilian your citizen, you pay your taxes, you don't
Speaker 1: want to walk in your whole way and see none
Speaker 1: of this show you just trying to feel what y'all
Speaker 1: need to do to My grandmother was saying, send them
Speaker 1: all a jail, like everybody needs to go to jail.
Speaker 1: You're young. You're young, dudes now scared me? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying up there like this, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think some of these guys need to go to right,
Speaker 1: but I'm watching dudes, I would say that, like yo,
Speaker 1: you you you. I'm like, nah, I don't want but
Speaker 1: I can't do that product, so I will go is
Speaker 1: to try to redirect them. What happened that ultimately got
Speaker 1: you locked up? Me? Um, So what happens is if
Speaker 1: you become a person that manages to make money, that's
Speaker 1: when to get interesting, life get harder. Everybody's gonna look
Speaker 1: to you for guidance. Could be yeah, old that oldest
Speaker 1: member of your family got an emergency, and that emergence
Speaker 1: emergency becomes your emergency. You start to believe that you
Speaker 1: were sent here to be this kind of sacrifice. You
Speaker 1: you give yourself permission to be the sacrifice. So now,
Speaker 1: even if you had intent on doing good, being everybody's
Speaker 1: go to becomes your your main priority. Because one, you
Speaker 1: don't know your self worth. That part is so key
Speaker 1: to knowing what you're supposed to be saying yes too,
Speaker 1: and what you are supposed to be saying no too.
Speaker 1: If a request of me came and it was so
Speaker 1: strong that I had to consider it, I would then
Speaker 1: make a consideration to do wrong again to make sure
Speaker 1: that go right for them. So they need their money
Speaker 1: for their business, and this one needs money for college.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna be like, well, you're supposed to be
Speaker 1: in college, and you're supposed to have a business, and
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to die because I already made these decisions.
Speaker 1: And just like that, you could be that close to
Speaker 1: transition and then take a step back and try to
Speaker 1: do something again that it might be at a detriment
Speaker 1: to your your good health and well being. Described like
Speaker 1: the day you went to jail, Like what happened? All right?
Speaker 1: So first I went to jail. It's funny, not funny.
Speaker 1: Nothing's funny. Nothing's funny. So I get a phone call.
Speaker 1: You just finished up some bundles. My man um people
Speaker 1: wasn't around, so I didn't really play with round that much.
Speaker 1: But in this particular occasion, my man ain't have nothing,
Speaker 1: and he asked me make a phone call. I made
Speaker 1: a phone call and got some ship phone cool, give
Speaker 1: me the little change. I breeze off, go to my
Speaker 1: block chilling. I get a distress call, like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: these dudes is a circling the block. Whatever. I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, all right, let me um, let me double
Speaker 1: back and get the drink real quick jump in the
Speaker 1: car cruising down to his block. I see this girl
Speaker 1: that you know, Uh, she used to be at an
Speaker 1: apartment that out. If all goes wrong that day, I
Speaker 1: might run in this apartment if if I just so
Speaker 1: happened to do something that's beyond my normal action. Right,
Speaker 1: So cool, jump out the car and I'm telling her, yo,
Speaker 1: I have this door open case I come back over
Speaker 1: here and hurry. You know, I ain't explain it to
Speaker 1: her why the door need to be open, but I
Speaker 1: might need to shoot up here. As I'm speaking to her,
Speaker 1: DTS is running at me. I'm like, oh, before long,
Speaker 1: I kind of brush one so hard that he fell.
Speaker 1: I one jumped on me. They jumped me, grabbed the
Speaker 1: gun like they knew it was there. I don't know
Speaker 1: how they was that good, but they grabbed the gun like, oh,
Speaker 1: he got the gun, so they they took gun or whatever.
Speaker 1: I got locked up, No proud, I wasn't that heavy
Speaker 1: or nothing to really be fighting. The three didn't, so whatever.
Speaker 1: So I get locked up with the gun and my
Speaker 1: men get shot. So the dude that I was going
Speaker 1: to save I didn't go save him. He ends up
Speaker 1: getting shot three times and he lived, but he got
Speaker 1: shot and I get out, I go back to get
Speaker 1: my property, and the detectives come like, yeah, we saved
Speaker 1: your life, man, Like really how so? Like yeah, we
Speaker 1: know where you was going. I'm like really, where was
Speaker 1: that going? Or he was going to see dude? I'm
Speaker 1: like yeah nah, like yeah, he said. Now think about
Speaker 1: it this way. You could have made it there, shot somebody,
Speaker 1: killed somebody and we would have had to catch you.
Speaker 1: Or you could have got shot with him and possibly died.
Speaker 1: You don't never view things in that and that reality
Speaker 1: and just the plane's common sense of it, because when
Speaker 1: you end it, shit, we don't deal with common sense.
Speaker 1: You don't really be that common. Sometimes it don't be
Speaker 1: that common. And even if it's that plane, it's just
Speaker 1: not real, not real. The only thing is real is
Speaker 1: what you said you could do, no matter how ill shape,
Speaker 1: whether or not you know, um, I meant good to
Speaker 1: save my men. A problem happened because of our chosen lifestyle.
Speaker 1: It raised the probability of us getting hurt or our
Speaker 1: lives being effectively destroyed as a byproduct of our decision making.
Speaker 1: You got out with the came on. The police said
Speaker 1: told you they pretty much saved you. That's I'm bare, right,
Speaker 1: That's I'm bare and crazy. I had the fast fastest
Speaker 1: process to go back to jail like you could think of.
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to prolong it as long as possible.
Speaker 1: But they like, man, you want to go straight to trial.
Speaker 1: So you know, dudes be on down for like a
Speaker 1: year or two minds like four months. Like yo, I
Speaker 1: don't want to go to shoal Yeah, I want to rate.
Speaker 1: So I get there trying to um get extension. Is
Speaker 1: they not? Not? Not? So get in there and I lose.
Speaker 1: I go to trial for attempt to use in a possession.
Speaker 1: I beat the attempt to use, lose to the possession.
Speaker 1: Just telling my lawyer, he's like, oh, he need to
Speaker 1: go home and get his family if fears no, no,
Speaker 1: he's gonna jel ady. And this is a this is
Speaker 1: a result of the detective saying that, you know, I
Speaker 1: really intended on using the gun. They think they know me,
Speaker 1: you know, YadA, YadA YadA. And I'm like, tell my
Speaker 1: lawyer like, well that's cross for a pill yanna. They said,
Speaker 1: he said, well a pillot, but here being jail in
Speaker 1: the meantime, whatever, let me go and finish this thing up.
Speaker 1: So I end up getting the two flat. I thought
Speaker 1: I beat the attempt to use, So I get a
Speaker 1: two flat, come home a little early for work release.
Speaker 1: Now this is where it gets interesting. I have to
Speaker 1: make a decision on what's gonna happen with the rest
Speaker 1: of my life now right now I get home. I
Speaker 1: have every intent on being a janitor. Like I'm I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna be a janitor, but I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't want to. I don't know what job I'm gonna get.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm not going
Speaker 1: in the streets. It's quiet for the street. I'm cool
Speaker 1: slotwle skid skid dude was cool now my jail. Stay
Speaker 1: smooth than ice like I have. I ain't have. I
Speaker 1: had a half a fight through argument like I ain't
Speaker 1: really have to throw no blows, worked out, chill read
Speaker 1: my books, stayed out the way like you know, trouble
Speaker 1: finds you when't you look for it. Right, So, um,
Speaker 1: I ain't do nothing super flamboyant in there. I just was.
Speaker 1: I was just chuck chill out, so get out. I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, my main thing is to stay stay super positive.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm gonna go get a job and start
Speaker 1: a new life. Man, I got my daughter because said
Speaker 1: I left for a little while. And that was no
Speaker 1: no for me, because in my book, a good father
Speaker 1: is there to be a father, right, a good father anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be a good father. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be dad. I wanted to be um all of
Speaker 1: the positive attributes that come with fatherhood. I let my
Speaker 1: friends that I love because I love, man, some of
Speaker 1: my friends I love more than my family members. And
Speaker 1: and now I mean no disrespect to my family members.
Speaker 1: It's a different bar that you you you share with
Speaker 1: some of these guys that that allow you to make
Speaker 1: decisions that might be kunter productive to your overall benefit.
Speaker 1: And um, not not naming but that show I named
Speaker 1: name one about who talked me into it. But I
Speaker 1: think I think I did anyway. Legit though this statue
Speaker 1: limitation stuff like that, but it's legit. Respect Um tell
Speaker 1: my man, he yo, hey, we gotta know, get get
Speaker 1: back into it for a second. I'm saying, just do something.
Speaker 1: So after a while I'll succumbed to the pressure. One
Speaker 1: out of what I what I felt like was obligation
Speaker 1: to my friendships, and then two I could have used
Speaker 1: the extra money, right, but I make the decision to
Speaker 1: go back. I go back. And then from our few joints,
Speaker 1: we started doing too many joints. We had, you know,
Speaker 1: so many sales that we ain't never even have enough joints.
Speaker 1: So it's getting a lot, but it wasn't even it
Speaker 1: wasn't even enough. I'm supply didn't even message. The demand
Speaker 1: was way bigger than the demand was always bigger than
Speaker 1: the supply, and we made a lot of money in
Speaker 1: a short period of time. But when I came home
Speaker 1: from jail, I was already under investigation, basically because some
Speaker 1: dudes and the Bronx. No defects to the front. No no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no distraction now, no disrespect to the Bronx. All right,
Speaker 1: come on, now, I work with me. Now, some dudes
Speaker 1: in the Bronx they found theirself in in a gym
Speaker 1: and they put my name in No dude named Aron,
Speaker 1: he only sell keys. That was the tagline in my paperwork,
Speaker 1: like Aroun only sell keys. And investigation started from there.
Speaker 1: So initially I wasn't even doing shit. By the time
Speaker 1: they was looking to get me or something. Then I started,
Speaker 1: and then when when when when they heated up and
Speaker 1: they got all of this extra survailance going from bugs
Speaker 1: in my car to just following me everywhere hours already
Speaker 1: quit So it was like I was in under investigation
Speaker 1: before I started. Then I quit before they got all
Speaker 1: of the technology involved to kind of wrap the case up.
Speaker 1: So um and that time frame, I just I went
Speaker 1: as hard as I could because now my mind state
Speaker 1: was all right, I'm gonna do the last favor for
Speaker 1: my friends or my brothers, if you will, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make enough money to actually do some of the
Speaker 1: plans that I had in mind all along, and that
Speaker 1: that was my you know, objective. And then they got you.
Speaker 1: Then they got me. When I get locked up, they
Speaker 1: came right at me like, yo, a rong, we know you.
Speaker 1: You was hitting everybody with work and um a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble man, and uh, you need to go ahead
Speaker 1: and cooperate right that big seat immediately right. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't, I don't even know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Like that shit, that's not for me. Cool,
Speaker 1: get inside. They they they come back again like, look, man,
Speaker 1: let's have me and A know me and know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, don't got nothing nothing for you guys all
Speaker 1: in all of the discovery comes. I look at the
Speaker 1: discovery as a bunch of phone calls. Forty thousand phone calls.
Speaker 1: It's a bunch of evidence. But I'm like, where's mine, Like,
Speaker 1: y'all see a lot of evidence. But I phone call.
Speaker 1: Drugs on the Ain't no drugs on the table, Ain't
Speaker 1: no money on the table. Is nothing. I'm like, oh nah,
Speaker 1: ain't no way. I'm taking those twenty years that they're
Speaker 1: offering me Like it ain't no way. So I'm like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try out. Hey. The next thing was yo,
Speaker 1: he bugged out, like yo. You know, when the people
Speaker 1: get you, they go. And I'm in agreement to an
Speaker 1: extent because let's I've started businesses at that point, had
Speaker 1: some group homes down south, invested in a couple other
Speaker 1: people businesses. I had some things that was positive that
Speaker 1: that could speak for me. And I was using birthardale
Speaker 1: as as as you know accounting, so good old head
Speaker 1: right he was he was shot with the stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't that nervous. But what happened was I
Speaker 1: spoke to my lawyer candidly, and I'm like, I know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. You know, I'm a young black kid,
Speaker 1: and this is gonna look like a young black men
Speaker 1: are selling drugs. Like this is gonna be the the
Speaker 1: push of the whole narrative, right, you got so many
Speaker 1: people hanging around me that we're selling drugs. Is not
Speaker 1: going to be that easy to say. I was number ten,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like, and more importantly, they
Speaker 1: made me the light, the leader of these guys, so
Speaker 1: I'm the head of the case in my lawyer like, look,
Speaker 1: you you got property and money in the bank and
Speaker 1: they don't or not enough of or you know, I
Speaker 1: can't speak to what they had, and I don't know
Speaker 1: to that extent, but it just doesn't seem like right.
Speaker 1: He like, Yo, it seems right. It was not enough
Speaker 1: businesses and enough things speaking, or this whole picture to
Speaker 1: allow you to get out of it unscathed. And I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: that makes sense to me, and I'm willing to take
Speaker 1: the time just not what they're offering because it don't
Speaker 1: make sense. So what's on the table versus what they
Speaker 1: want to give me? So I was willing to go
Speaker 1: to trial, because I wasn't going to sign my name
Speaker 1: to a paper to act for twenty years for not
Speaker 1: twenty years worth of evidence. So my decision to go
Speaker 1: to trial was like, man, fuck that, I'm with it,
Speaker 1: Like we just got to I'm at the blow of course,
Speaker 1: and they sent me in there screaming based on the
Speaker 1: extra five I might have got or the extra ten,
Speaker 1: but I was going to sign a twenty inches to
Speaker 1: be said, I was still been in there, I would
Speaker 1: have been chilling. I probably would have just been getting
Speaker 1: out now to have been getting out now. So um,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, we got three days
Speaker 1: from trial and the journey, and there was the same
Speaker 1: difference even though it was a pre trial situation. You know,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of people that liked me and
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, I'm bumped to tell a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I know. I had a few co defendants in the building,
Speaker 1: and there was a smooth situation. We all just had
Speaker 1: to focus on that case to gather all of the
Speaker 1: evidence we could to fight the case accordingly. Now, after
Speaker 1: the cop out, I go to the prison. Oh so
Speaker 1: three days before trial, coming to offer hey, man, tell
Speaker 1: your client one one eighty eight he don't argue down,
Speaker 1: we won't argue up. Let the judge do what the
Speaker 1: judge gonna do. The guidelines became advisory, so in the
Speaker 1: federal system, it was a time where you got sentenced
Speaker 1: according to your guidelines, So meaning if you got the
Speaker 1: mandatory minimum of ten years and excuse me, and your
Speaker 1: guidelines came back to one sixty eight to two ten,
Speaker 1: that would be like basically, you're gonna be landing on
Speaker 1: fifteen years and better. And I landed on that like
Speaker 1: at a point and I'm like, so you're saying, if
Speaker 1: I cop out right and the judge gave me two
Speaker 1: hundred months, I'm stuck with that. He's like yeah, like yeah, now,
Speaker 1: I'm cool on that. Mom, we're gonna still go. Now
Speaker 1: you taking that three days before trial it came with
Speaker 1: that one fifty one to one eighty eight. I'm like, well, shoot,
Speaker 1: twelve and a half years. I got three in already.
Speaker 1: That shit easy, Like this this I knocked this over,
Speaker 1: even though when they read the months off and in
Speaker 1: the courtroom, my mother and them and they're like, what
Speaker 1: what what's that? What's one thirty Yeah? Wait yeah, Like
Speaker 1: so I'm like, yeah, said the judge like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't deserve one fifty one and break it down or
Speaker 1: one thirty one. She didn't say shit, but want of
Speaker 1: them break it down and one thirty one. And you know,
Speaker 1: I recommend you get the drug program because I don't
Speaker 1: let them know. I sniffed coke and smoke weed and
Speaker 1: even though I've never been high in my life, that
Speaker 1: was the That was the best part of the you know,
Speaker 1: how to get out of a little early via drug
Speaker 1: program and that was it. That was my journey. Um,
Speaker 1: and I got in the system. So when you got
Speaker 1: in the system, right, yeah, you know you've already been
Speaker 1: trying to transition out of the game. So when you
Speaker 1: got in the system, you had one hundred thirty one months,
Speaker 1: right to sit down and what was that time like
Speaker 1: for you? Like what did you do with your mind?
Speaker 1: What did you prepare yourself? What did you say to yourself?
Speaker 1: What what was your process? It's like being outside, right,
Speaker 1: except nobody's going nowhere, So that level of camaraderie, it
Speaker 1: kind of intensifies because to the same person every day,
Speaker 1: every same good days, every day. It's not no days
Speaker 1: that you have to share your your ups, your downs,
Speaker 1: your aspirations. Yeah, your your failures, your weaknesses. You're sharing
Speaker 1: it with these people constantly. The ones you you you
Speaker 1: attract to, the ones that you you form a common bond.
Speaker 1: My journey started off in the law library. So a
Speaker 1: guy that was very intelligent pumps into me early on
Speaker 1: during my process. He was fighting a forty eight case.
Speaker 1: I didn't have an a forty eight case out of
Speaker 1: a forty one B one d A and that's a
Speaker 1: five a kilo or more conspiracy. But initially I was
Speaker 1: charged with one hundred fifty kilos and more. But by
Speaker 1: the time I copped out, I copped out to a
Speaker 1: flat fifty keys. The dude is on his case every day.
Speaker 1: He's transcribing all the phone calls. He's reading through all
Speaker 1: of these after David's made by the US attorney that
Speaker 1: could dispel some kind of mistake on when they apply
Speaker 1: for this application or this than the third. So I'm
Speaker 1: going through the same process he's going through in real time.
Speaker 1: All of my pre troyout time was based on trying
Speaker 1: to get out. Yeah, I ain't do this, I han't
Speaker 1: underdo this. I look at the always eight different people
Speaker 1: selling the drugs. It ain't even me. Yah, they're bugging
Speaker 1: like I'm going through the hope, which was true. But
Speaker 1: in order to argue all of these facts, you one,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to be in trial. Two, you have
Speaker 1: to be able to defend yourself without hurting anybody else.
Speaker 1: It's so many things that are coming to play while
Speaker 1: trying to keep it real right. So at some point, um,
Speaker 1: my best friend got subpoened and my lawyer office got
Speaker 1: subpoened because they gave me the job. When I got
Speaker 1: on work release and they following me, they like when
Speaker 1: you went to the office, It's like they somebody got
Speaker 1: to answer some of these questions. So I didn't want
Speaker 1: to put nobody through these these things, these changes and
Speaker 1: over my my stupidity. So um, that being that when
Speaker 1: I took the cop out, I felt relieved that it
Speaker 1: would alleviate them from any further scrutiny, if you will. Now,
Speaker 1: my process of fighting that case was that, so my
Speaker 1: mind was already I'm conditioned to stay so far out
Speaker 1: the way that I'm not worried about what's gonna happen
Speaker 1: when I get on the pound. I know that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be in my books, preparing for tomorrow and working
Speaker 1: out and staying poised. I'm eating raw vegetables until they
Speaker 1: cut the common field off. I'm bowl of oatmeal for
Speaker 1: hard to help. Like I wanted to get out as
Speaker 1: young as I went in, Like that was the mission.
Speaker 1: Like if I could get out with a semblance of youth,
Speaker 1: I feel good, Like I'm know happy to say I
Speaker 1: came out without a gray hair at that time, I'm saying. So.
Speaker 1: Then I bumped in the older guys that'd been in
Speaker 1: jest since nineteen eighty eight, nineteen eighty two and eight,
Speaker 1: telling me you won, you won. That's how I came
Speaker 1: up with the with the title for the book, you
Speaker 1: won Man. You came in young, You're going out young.
Speaker 1: You won, man, I said, Man, already wont huh? So
Speaker 1: I'm like, right, fine, you know I took that, you know,
Speaker 1: as gospel, because these guys get up with the strength
Speaker 1: every day to prepare for tomorrow that wasn't promised to them.
Speaker 1: They had life sentences, yet they got up every day
Speaker 1: as if it was getting out the day after that.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, shit, if they're gonna be that prepared
Speaker 1: to get out, definitely right what I'm actually I know
Speaker 1: I'm getting out I had this new sense of worth
Speaker 1: for myself. So when I when I found out I
Speaker 1: had a different goal in mind for my life, it
Speaker 1: made me focus on that goal more. And you said
Speaker 1: you stay secluded away from even in it is you
Speaker 1: once in Maya that probably was like yo, what's up?
Speaker 1: And you're like nah, because we didn't even know on
Speaker 1: the same wavelength. Like I'm trying to do and you're
Speaker 1: trying to do is different. No disrespect, disrespect you know,
Speaker 1: but I'm just over here with minds. At that point
Speaker 1: when you was in jail, did you realize did you
Speaker 1: make up your mind that I don't care who I love,
Speaker 1: I can't put myself in jeopardy to help them. Do
Speaker 1: you realize? Because that's that's what when I listened to
Speaker 1: your story, That's what it was about, your love for
Speaker 1: everybody else and you feeling obligated to make sure that
Speaker 1: you provided and did things for them. So when you
Speaker 1: got into that situation, you did you make up your
Speaker 1: mind that that wasn't happening no more? Yes, that was
Speaker 1: That was the biggest part of my transition. I knew
Speaker 1: that I was still gonna love some of these people.
Speaker 1: You're still kind of based some of your your journey
Speaker 1: with these people and extremes. We lived by extremes. Everything
Speaker 1: was life or death. All of our relationships, if you
Speaker 1: look back on most street guys, all of the relationships
Speaker 1: you make a life of death friendships. So these are
Speaker 1: the things that you got to take into consideration sometimes
Speaker 1: like how much how much do you love your life?
Speaker 1: And how much new information did you gather that's going
Speaker 1: to help you say no to put in your your
Speaker 1: livelihood at in jeopardy. So cool, I'm sturdy now and
Speaker 1: and now I'm using the term sturdy as if it
Speaker 1: don't mean that you a push over. It means that
Speaker 1: you're you're not a pushover mentally. So that form of
Speaker 1: manipulation or that form of limited thinking and beliefs that
Speaker 1: will allow you to make a decision against yourself and
Speaker 1: your family and all of the positive things you could
Speaker 1: be given back to the community as a result of
Speaker 1: your journey. You can't just say no to that. These
Speaker 1: are big time things. That's what make gangsters. This is
Speaker 1: what make gangsters. Gangsters don't necessarily put destruction in your
Speaker 1: hands and say go for it. They're supposed to be
Speaker 1: the ones making a better way for everybody. So now
Speaker 1: I don't I don't use the word gangster lightly if
Speaker 1: it's a such thing. If I could associate myself with
Speaker 1: whatever my definition a gangster is. It means that I
Speaker 1: want to build on something positive. I want to I
Speaker 1: want to be the one that say, yo, kid, I
Speaker 1: see you got a hell of a knockout punch, and
Speaker 1: you think that I gotta lead to you having a
Speaker 1: hell of a trigger finger. You don't need that. If
Speaker 1: you that tough, read this book. Don't let nobody push
Speaker 1: you over in negotiations when you go to talk about
Speaker 1: your contract. So I had aart too, but my jel
Speaker 1: and have aart, so did bye. I skip that, But
Speaker 1: in the fans they had to another version of a RT.
Speaker 1: But I get in there and I used to ask people,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yo, and these are sturdy guys that the
Speaker 1: realists are the realists. And I'm like, what if you
Speaker 1: found out everything that you learned in life that's far
Speaker 1: was wrong. What if all of the principles and stuff
Speaker 1: we stood on and found out they was wrong? What
Speaker 1: we have the power to go back and address them
Speaker 1: where we where we have the kind of the same
Speaker 1: energy to go back and find new answers that we
Speaker 1: had when following some of these suggestions. And that's what
Speaker 1: I and I used to get pushed back. It used
Speaker 1: to be, you know what I'm saying, be like, yo,
Speaker 1: every everything I did for my people wouldn't I'm saying.
Speaker 1: That's how I'm like, Yo, I can't knock that, but
Speaker 1: I'm agin hypothetically that you have sudden benefited from everything
Speaker 1: you did. Because my daughter used to ask me to
Speaker 1: put it asleep and it was quiet for that. I
Speaker 1: used to be like that. It can't right now, and
Speaker 1: my relationship with her is strained to this day because
Speaker 1: we don't understand each other. So every time, it's every
Speaker 1: time we say we're doing it for our family, and
Speaker 1: you're doing it for this when you're not there, you
Speaker 1: can't do shit for your family. That absence has created
Speaker 1: such a divide and our understanding that if it's something really,
Speaker 1: really miniscule, could destray our whole thread because the thread
Speaker 1: is so thin. And that is a result of my
Speaker 1: decision making in my journey, no matter how much I
Speaker 1: meant well, So that has to be that has to hurt,
Speaker 1: like knowing that it hurts. My daughter needs support, she
Speaker 1: needs she needs rescuing, she needs you can't even give
Speaker 1: her in full capacity because the relationship is not strong
Speaker 1: enough to even be able to give it to her
Speaker 1: like you want to. I'll try to make amends for
Speaker 1: my original journey to this journey. Now, do that mean
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a good relationship because I'm trying. No,
Speaker 1: it don't mean that, But it don't stop me from
Speaker 1: continuing to give it to somebody else that might be
Speaker 1: more agreeable to hear in it at this time. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep practicing. I'm gonna keep saying the good
Speaker 1: things to people that might be more agreeable to the
Speaker 1: message today, and then some of those things might get
Speaker 1: to what was what was your mind state when you
Speaker 1: got back into society? How how was your transition? Like
Speaker 1: what did you find yourself doing differently? What did you
Speaker 1: what was you What did you say like, all right,
Speaker 1: this is what i'm gonna do. Did you have or
Speaker 1: did you have a plan? Did you have one plan
Speaker 1: like yo, this is what I'm doing And did you
Speaker 1: follow it out or did you get out here and
Speaker 1: then started figuring out what you want to do? Like
Speaker 1: what was the p Well, there's no way it's no way.
Speaker 1: Looking at this resume, no smuch job, no job. Who's
Speaker 1: gonna hire me? It's nobody. This is quiet for that.
Speaker 1: It's nobody gonna hire it. This two time felon with
Speaker 1: no job history, no work history. So I said, okay,
Speaker 1: me understanding that, and I don't want to work for
Speaker 1: nobody anyway. That wasn't like that was one of my ambitions.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, well, if I want to be, you know,
Speaker 1: a part of an industry and a culture that that
Speaker 1: that did help shape me, it behooves me to use
Speaker 1: my best attributes. My pencil was always fairly decent and drawing.
Speaker 1: I thought I had a sense of style that you know,
Speaker 1: could at least fight to look cool. And I used
Speaker 1: those things to say, all right, this would be one
Speaker 1: business that I could I could I could build. Initially,
Speaker 1: I came home and uh y Indian man DC greeted
Speaker 1: me with the YO, what's up? Man? Like we're gonna
Speaker 1: do out of that? I'm like, well, shoot, let's get
Speaker 1: man DC situated. He you know, you guys are celebrities
Speaker 1: and I'm not a celebrity. I don't even want to
Speaker 1: be a celebrity. I just want to be helpful to
Speaker 1: excuse me to your journey and let me see what
Speaker 1: I could do to be a part of that. So
Speaker 1: they share, they they roll indexes with me and said,
Speaker 1: broll figure it out. Whatever it is that you want
Speaker 1: to do, you know you you kill it, you eat it,
Speaker 1: like you know what I'm saying. So I'm like, I
Speaker 1: thought that was a good challenge, and I started trying
Speaker 1: to think of things that I could fit or be
Speaker 1: a part of. And that led me to um saying,
Speaker 1: all right, like clothing, I'm I'm fairly good in music,
Speaker 1: to help somebody else get to somebody that they want to,
Speaker 1: you know, be a part of. And also if opportunities
Speaker 1: should come in the movie, feel I could apply whatever
Speaker 1: little change I get my hands onto being a part
Speaker 1: of the production. So it was so many ways I
Speaker 1: was trying to fit, and so I did some of all.
Speaker 1: And I don't even know if I had enough resources
Speaker 1: for that, which I'm sure I did not have enough.
Speaker 1: I look at me, No, I didn't have enough resources.
Speaker 1: So but you you just you go fight, you fight,
Speaker 1: and you you figure it out. Like small victories add
Speaker 1: up and those seeds make trees. And after a while
Speaker 1: people were qual a genius when something clicks and it
Speaker 1: just went through the natural progression of maturity, right and
Speaker 1: people say, yo, kid is a hustler. But no, it
Speaker 1: was hard like and I'm watching what I say because
Speaker 1: some people could take this offensively as a community, we don't.
Speaker 1: We don't like to make stuff more. We think that
Speaker 1: soon closed as a as a job description is meaning
Speaker 1: you and we want to be the person directing people
Speaker 1: to do this' the boss, right. So I had to
Speaker 1: go all the way to La to be a part
Speaker 1: of the community that didn't look down on that that
Speaker 1: level of service. So I couldn't find many black people.
Speaker 1: I ain't even gonna hold you, couldn't just didn't know
Speaker 1: where they was at, couldn't find them. A lot of
Speaker 1: people I ran into were Mexicans. Now Mexicans, they work
Speaker 1: with you. Now it was supposed to be a little
Speaker 1: racial divide. I have no I have no um experience
Speaker 1: with that. I mean outside of jail, jail segregated everything said,
Speaker 1: and I still was super cool the Mexicans, yeah, right
Speaker 1: right right. But out there in LA I was hung
Speaker 1: with one guy in particular. He showed me everything from
Speaker 1: cutting and selling to the whole process of m constructing
Speaker 1: a garment. So I used these. Now these skills, they're
Speaker 1: very usable skills, but they're also it was a way
Speaker 1: of making a business. So I could not only do minds,
Speaker 1: but I could do for others shoe. I ended up
Speaker 1: doing it for others more than I was doing it
Speaker 1: for myself. So, especially when the pandemic came in, because
Speaker 1: more people needed that service because so many positive world
Speaker 1: wasn't available to them. It made me money. Actually it
Speaker 1: was crazy, but um yeah, so me me sitting down
Speaker 1: there going that's a level of going to school. It. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't get a certificate. I sat down and learn.
Speaker 1: And my people was like, yo, eat bugging like it's
Speaker 1: just hanging around and got some all machines and shit
Speaker 1: like heat bugging for real. But people can't always see, right,
Speaker 1: you can't listen. I'm getting to this fashion. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm saying, I know a little thing about movies. I'm
Speaker 1: just figure out how I can dibble and dabbling that right,
Speaker 1: You got your book, right, you know what I'm saying
Speaker 1: that it's dope book. Thank you. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Guy's clothing Like I still ain't got my hat. But
Speaker 1: it's cool. Don't worry. But you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You've got guys and you in the movie that you
Speaker 1: have you you're an investor in the It is actually
Speaker 1: a really great project. No, well callaway, I'm directed. He
Speaker 1: did a great job. I'm happy to be a part
Speaker 1: of it. And when it when it is, people will
Speaker 1: see some humor, um live story and it just changes
Speaker 1: the narrative of or shoot him up, bang bang, because
Speaker 1: that's not all we we are, right, so we could
Speaker 1: get to that. I know a bunch of those stories too.
Speaker 1: But I love love like it's Yeah, it resonates with me,
Speaker 1: so you know, I wanted to be a part of
Speaker 1: that kind of movement also. And as you said about
Speaker 1: the book, I have another book in the works that
Speaker 1: um I think it's gonna be a nice sequel, if
Speaker 1: not sequel, but a nice continuation to um, you already won,
Speaker 1: Now you already won. I didn't want to do I
Speaker 1: kept being nagged by a lady named Donna. Well I
Speaker 1: call him Monique, So Monique, she stayed on my back.
Speaker 1: Monique says, listen around. You have to put yourself out there,
Speaker 1: and Dada that you got a lot of talent. I'm like, naw,
Speaker 1: I'm behind the scene, you know. Through her persuasion, I said,
Speaker 1: all right, well, I might have to put a little
Speaker 1: leg out there because I don't have the benefit of
Speaker 1: being around such um, you know, being by myself at
Speaker 1: this point um in the journey, I didn't have the
Speaker 1: benefit of being attached to such a power source that
Speaker 1: I was able to right right, I had to put
Speaker 1: a little leg out there. And so it made me
Speaker 1: write the book. And you know, I thought that, you know,
Speaker 1: use some of the things that happened in my life,
Speaker 1: or just common phrases that people used in my neighborhood
Speaker 1: that might seem like a one liner, but it meant
Speaker 1: so much more. So I used that as inspiration to
Speaker 1: write the first book. But I have so much more
Speaker 1: to share that, you know, I hope that people enjoy
Speaker 1: going forward. There's this stigma that you know, when you incarcerated,
Speaker 1: that you just don't have a chance. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. You're negative, you know you when you Chi
Speaker 1: like used to go to look for jobs and they said,
Speaker 1: were you ever incarcerated? Though? We definitely don't want to
Speaker 1: do him right, right, and you defy that stigma you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. You an individual who most of
Speaker 1: his life was taught things. You know, we glorified things
Speaker 1: that we thought was right, but we realized that it
Speaker 1: was a dead end, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 1: you tried to transition as you grow. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Youth is we sometimes we just so oblivious
Speaker 1: to realities and our youth and we just move off
Speaker 1: energy without even any level of wisdom, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And you've seen you show the process of growing.
Speaker 1: You know, each step he was like, damn, I need
Speaker 1: to get out of this. First you you inspire like
Speaker 1: I just want to be the biggest drug that I
Speaker 1: want to and then he was like this shit ain't nothing,
Speaker 1: Like I'm trying to transition. And then you know, ultimately, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: you know, you had to sit down and you had
Speaker 1: to regather and you had to restructure your mindset, and
Speaker 1: then you came back out here. You show different, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying saying, and I know that you
Speaker 1: destined for more and more success and you could you
Speaker 1: constantly keep growing. So I just want to celebrate that,
Speaker 1: you know, and I want people to hear your story
Speaker 1: because Aaron is a person. Aaron is a legend. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, the legendary and you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, But a lot of people don't know the full,
Speaker 1: you know, scope of your story. And I just wanted
Speaker 1: people to sit down here. You one of those people
Speaker 1: that I believe that somebody's gonna hear, some young boy
Speaker 1: who's on the trajectory, it's gonna hear and be like, damn,
Speaker 1: that sounds like me. So I appreciate you. I'm motivated
Speaker 1: by you. You know. I want to interview people that
Speaker 1: motivate me. You know what I'm saying, I just trendy
Speaker 1: or only this, and I want to interview people that
Speaker 1: most people may not even know that have done things
Speaker 1: that motivate you know what I'm saying, add to this,
Speaker 1: just you, king king, So I thank you for the
Speaker 1: legend tag. I never give myself I supposed, I don't
Speaker 1: even play with the word. I think that the thing
Speaker 1: that you do with your opportunity to me makes your
Speaker 1: legend so much to close out before I consider myself.
Speaker 1: You're saying, this is what stand up individuals do. They acknowledge,
Speaker 1: they hold themselves accountable. You know, it was so much
Speaker 1: self accountability here, like you, every time you you did well,
Speaker 1: I got to hold myself account Well I did it.
Speaker 1: You ain't blame nobody else. Well I did this wrong,
Speaker 1: and I did this and I had to deal with this,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna sit and I you know, it's always
Speaker 1: on the eye, and that's what stand up individuals do.
Speaker 1: So you know in that regard for me, it's legendary.
Speaker 1: And the fact that anywhere that you go, for the
Speaker 1: most part, if it's a stand up individual, they know
Speaker 1: egg you know what I'm saying, and they know that
Speaker 1: he carries itself it is, they're gonna have the same
Speaker 1: story every time you talk about it's gonna on nine.
Speaker 1: I say, hey, he's official. He's a stand up dude here,
Speaker 1: a good dude, you know what I'm saying. Like that,
Speaker 1: when that when your name circulates throughout the world and
Speaker 1: that's what they say about you everywhere, nine of the
Speaker 1: ten is probably one person that's just mad at you
Speaker 1: for something because you probably had something to do with
Speaker 1: his girlfriend or something. But you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: We know that probably child that was your childish ambitious
Speaker 1: But for the most part, that's what they're gonna say. Man,
Speaker 1: make sure that you tune in with a Ron. He's
Speaker 1: on Instagram, He's doing a lot of things. Make sure
Speaker 1: that you follow him paid ten into his journey, young kids,
Speaker 1: listen to his story. Hope that it can motivate you
Speaker 1: and it can deter you from certain things. You know,
Speaker 1: this is about education. We want you to hear the
Speaker 1: realities of our stories in our life and our trials
Speaker 1: and tribulations, and take that and don't make the same
Speaker 1: mistakes we've made, you know, Please, our job is to
Speaker 1: circum help you circumvent those mistakes. I say it all
Speaker 1: the time to my young boys. I'm a cheat sheet
Speaker 1: through life, you know. And if you just if you
Speaker 1: just take this sheet and you listen to what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: you ain't goin to make the mistakes I make, you
Speaker 1: can get to where I'm at now with I'm making
Speaker 1: none of the mistakes. So tune into the next episode
Speaker 1: sit Down with with the stand Ups, shout out to
Speaker 1: my boy, hey love. You can't listen to Street Politicians
Speaker 1: on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio and catch us
Speaker 1: every single Wednesday for the video version of Street Politicians.
Speaker 1: Well I Women Dot TV