Speaker 1: Mm hmmmm.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: Welcome back all the smoke, Day three, Los Angeles. Jack
Speaker 1: has been a nice couple of days. I got the
Speaker 1: opportunity to finish strong with someone who's man been in
Speaker 1: the game since he was a youngster. Brought us a
Speaker 1: lot of classics. Welcome to the show, Alan Hughes, We
Speaker 1: appreciate your time. Man Award Roaming Director, producer. What's new?
Speaker 1: How's life? We know you just dropped Dear Mama. I'm
Speaker 1: unemployed right now currently speaking. You know what's funny when
Speaker 1: you do the it must be the same thing in sports.
Speaker 1: It's like when the season ends, it's just no more.
Speaker 1: What was that? Like?
Speaker 2: Fight or flight? Is the whole time fight and fight
Speaker 2: and then once it's over, it's like, Yeah, you have
Speaker 2: to learn what to do with your time.
Speaker 1: Before we get into Dear Mama, which was absolutely incredible,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into that. As I told you before,
Speaker 1: I'm a huge POC fan and obviously have followed your
Speaker 1: guys's journey together, the ups the downs. Let's get into that.
Speaker 1: How did you guys originally meet I met him.
Speaker 2: I keep saying a waffle house, but that's a Southern thing.
Speaker 2: I met him at a pancake house in San Francisco
Speaker 2: when my brother and I went up there to do
Speaker 2: a digital underground Basically a digital underground video was a
Speaker 2: money be had a group called Raw Fusion. But Digital
Speaker 2: Underground was so tight that when we met with them,
Speaker 2: shot g everyone's at the table at the pancake house,
Speaker 2: you know, and Tupac wasn't famous yet, and I didn't
Speaker 2: know he had just signed a record deal and juice
Speaker 2: was in the can, but he still wasn't famous. And
Speaker 2: it was clear at the end of this kid at
Speaker 2: the end of the table was the most charismatic, the funniest.
Speaker 1: He just was.
Speaker 2: I was drawn to him immediately.
Speaker 1: And you guys are teenagers this time, nineteen years old.
Speaker 2: Maybe an eighteen because this is early. And then when
Speaker 2: we had a private moment, he said, I just signed
Speaker 2: up record deal. I want you guys to do my
Speaker 2: first music videos. The next day was our first music video.
Speaker 2: That's how crazy that was. First, that was our first
Speaker 2: music video. We were up there for we had these
Speaker 2: little short films, these little Super eight films. One was
Speaker 2: called The Drive By, one was called Menace Society, no
Speaker 2: relation to the film. And he saw those and sure enough.
Speaker 2: Three weeks later the record label called us and we
Speaker 2: were off to the races doing all three of his
Speaker 2: music videos for his first album, debut album. So that
Speaker 2: was Brenda's Got a Baby, Trap, First Trap, Brenda's Got
Speaker 2: a Baby. By the time we got to Brenda's Got
Speaker 2: a Baby, we were having difficulties in a relationship and
Speaker 2: then we had Then third video was when my Homies
Speaker 2: called We Just He basically directed it. By that time,
Speaker 2: the relationship was really rocky.
Speaker 1: Dear Mama a piece that was based off of Feenie.
Speaker 1: But I read somewhere that once you kind of decided
Speaker 1: to take it, you kind of wanted to intertwine the
Speaker 1: two worlds between him and his mom and obviously his
Speaker 1: greatness and his mom's activists talk to us about obviously
Speaker 1: you know, you guys had your ups and downs. You
Speaker 1: know there's a story where he had his homeboys get
Speaker 1: at you. How hard was it for you to really
Speaker 1: kind of say, like, Okay, it's been X amount of years,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to take this project on.
Speaker 2: You know what we were I was making the Defiant Ones,
Speaker 2: which came out in twenty seventeen, and that was a
Speaker 2: four part series on Doctor Dray and Jimmy Ivan and
Speaker 2: their partnership. Part three was the whole explosive era of
Speaker 2: the early nineties and death Row and then ultimately Tupac
Speaker 2: and I remember while we were editing that Tupac just
Speaker 2: kept taking over the movie. Literally, like for a whole year,
Speaker 2: he was taking over the movie. His energy was you
Speaker 2: can't help but to go where energy, the energy is,
Speaker 2: and I kept wrestling it back from him because he's
Speaker 2: just he's just a rock star, you know. It's very
Speaker 2: difficult not to let that energy take. So that's when
Speaker 2: I was like, wait a minute. I started dealing with
Speaker 2: his passing for the first time, I think, and Easy
Speaker 2: as well, because Easy was my first mentor in the
Speaker 2: business before I even met Tupac or anymore, you know,
Speaker 2: and I was dealing with Easy's passing and I was
Speaker 2: so I was having like an experience on defined ones,
Speaker 2: and the estate came in and to approve things and
Speaker 2: disapproved things. So Tupaca state, they're not they're not easy,
Speaker 2: you know, they look at everything. So that's when it began.
Speaker 2: And then when they approached me a year later, I
Speaker 2: was like, nah, I don't think I want to do
Speaker 2: this because I didn't want to do another documentary. It
Speaker 2: takes everything out of you too, you know, and it's
Speaker 2: all it's real people. You guys talk about Glow Tupac's aunt.
Speaker 2: Now you know you're dealing with a real human being.
Speaker 2: This ain't the movies, This is not pretend. So it
Speaker 2: goes in your spirit and soul and you become a
Speaker 2: family with these people. So when they approached me, I didn't
Speaker 2: want to do it because of that. But also I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't know if his fans, a lot of his
Speaker 2: fans don't want to like me, and what are they
Speaker 2: going to think of that? So I was having that
Speaker 2: that but I went home and I thought about it.
Speaker 2: I said, wait a minute. I was raised by a
Speaker 2: single mother who was an activist in the women's rights
Speaker 2: movement and radical to my mom, was radical like a
Speaker 2: like a Fenn. He was my mom's Armenian. I said, wait,
Speaker 2: if I could find out about him through his mother,
Speaker 2: and that's my experience. And they were with it. They
Speaker 2: were with it. They were like, yes, I heard, you know.
Speaker 1: Obviously Pok's ashes were dumped in a beach in Malibu
Speaker 1: when they all gathered, and I heard there was a
Speaker 1: piece of paper that was sled to you and you
Speaker 1: kind of found out the address and expect because I
Speaker 1: thought that was super fascinating talk to us about that.
Speaker 2: I forget Matt me doing his homework and shit, that's
Speaker 2: why you guys, man, you guys are the best in
Speaker 2: this game. I think, I really like the conversations you
Speaker 2: guys have are the reallest ones I've ever seen. So
Speaker 2: I gotta be careful. God damn it. I'm not a
Speaker 2: big maliboup guy myself, you know, but I had it
Speaker 2: was least in a place on the beach way up there,
Speaker 2: and for a couple of years. And in that meeting,
Speaker 2: the second meeting where I agreed to do it, someone
Speaker 2: from the estate slid an address to me and I
Speaker 2: looked at this address and and me, I'm like, why
Speaker 2: is she? You know, this address is like seemingly right
Speaker 2: next to where im at my house was, And at
Speaker 2: the end she said to me, that's where we put
Speaker 2: his ashes. And I went, whoa, literally like steps away
Speaker 2: from where my house was. And I was like, all right, well,
Speaker 2: meant to be that's going. Because I also knew too,
Speaker 2: like and agreeing to do it, I knew I was
Speaker 2: not take bullets. You know, there's not be misunderstandings initially,
Speaker 2: but I know when people get to see it, they'll
Speaker 2: see my heart was absolutely in the right place because
Speaker 2: I'm trying to find it understanding and as black men
Speaker 2: and black women the people of color all over too, like,
Speaker 2: we can't be having misunderstandings. These two dudes ain't here
Speaker 2: because of a misunderstanding. They just weren't communicating, you know,
Speaker 2: they were shutting themselves off. So let me go ahead
Speaker 2: and take the bullets show people that at fifty I'm
Speaker 2: willing to look back with Snoop too. You could see
Speaker 2: Snoop looking back and going, hey, these were boys making
Speaker 2: silly decisions. Now we're men and we can analyze this
Speaker 2: and help our children, you know, look at things in
Speaker 2: the right perspective.
Speaker 1: I feel, you know, well, we got a chance to.
Speaker 1: I mean Snoop laid on that count and smoke like
Speaker 1: ten blunts while we interviewed him.
Speaker 2: That was one of my other favorite interviews.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god, you know, but me kind of
Speaker 1: talking to him off camera and on camera, his kind
Speaker 1: of before POC left, the odds they were at and
Speaker 1: obviously read up on you and how hard was it
Speaker 1: first of all for you to kind of forgive it,
Speaker 1: But then also when you said you went back and
Speaker 1: you saw that he had there was recordings of him
Speaker 1: apologizing that you never knew about. And how hard was
Speaker 1: it for you to you know? Once he passed, and
Speaker 1: I guess you said you start reminiscing during the defiant
Speaker 1: ones to kind of be like, damn, I wish I
Speaker 1: would have or like when did that kind of kick
Speaker 1: in for you?
Speaker 2: I knew a few years ago that I wish I
Speaker 2: was mad enough to go see him in prison, that
Speaker 2: I kind of knew him, because in the back of
Speaker 2: my head, I just felt my spirit that I wish
Speaker 2: I was maddening because I knew I would have had
Speaker 2: a captive audience. Quite literally, he would have heard me,
Speaker 2: and I would have heard him, you know. Uh. It
Speaker 2: wasn't until I started doing press about six weeks ago
Speaker 2: that I realized I have a tremendous amount of compassion
Speaker 2: for him. Now. I never had compassion for him, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's a big word, you know, when you're talking
Speaker 2: about like a journey and understanding someone. So I feel
Speaker 2: him now like we all feel Tupac, we feel his music.
Speaker 2: But I go, oh, wow when you see the film,
Speaker 2: and that's the revelation I think in the film as
Speaker 2: you go, Wow, look at all this shit he came from.
Speaker 2: Look what he was born into. Look what the expectation was.
Speaker 2: Look at the trauma he inherited. Look at the PTSD inherited.
Speaker 2: So there's all that mental health stuff that again in
Speaker 2: the black community, we never talked about in the nineties,
Speaker 2: let alone the eighties, seventies, and sixties. So when I
Speaker 2: saw a year ago, it was only a year ago.
Speaker 2: I saw the Tabitha Sore and MTV interview where he
Speaker 2: not only apologized again, but she asked him. I didn't
Speaker 2: put it in the movie. She asked him, would you
Speaker 2: ever want to work with them? And he's like, no,
Speaker 2: they're great filmmakers. I would hope that I can work
Speaker 2: with them in the future. And that gave me goosebumps.
Speaker 2: I never knew it existed, right, you know, And I
Speaker 2: was like, wow, you know when you look at Tupac.
Speaker 2: I've heard this from a lot of people, women especially,
Speaker 2: They're like, I want to hug him, I want to
Speaker 2: save them. I want to you know, like if I
Speaker 2: could have just he knew he was great, but all
Speaker 2: that stuff, I don't know if any of us could
Speaker 2: have sat down and got him to sit down, you know.
Speaker 2: And so I look back, you go, should it could have?
Speaker 2: Would have?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, I mean the one thing that I really
Speaker 1: want to and I was able to watch the doc
Speaker 1: and found was just his constant workload, how much he
Speaker 1: was on the move, and how much he would do
Speaker 1: in a single day. And it almost just seemed like
Speaker 1: and you guys painted such a great picture of it,
Speaker 1: seemed like, you know, obviously an untimely death, but he
Speaker 1: was going to burn out somehow, some way. He was
Speaker 1: just going too hard as far as just life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we call him runners. My mother taught me that
Speaker 2: my mother's a runner. My mother's a hustler. She went
Speaker 2: from welfare to millionaire on her own, single mother. But
Speaker 2: she didn't start doing therapy there later. And you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of people that build empires are just running,
Speaker 2: you know. And you see people like they just all
Speaker 2: their days or they got families and everything, but their
Speaker 2: days are stacked with all the work. You're running from something,
Speaker 2: you're not dealing with something, you know. And that's what
Speaker 2: I felt. And God bless him because he had every
Speaker 2: right to. When you come from abject poverty too, you
Speaker 2: have every right to be running towards the mountain of
Speaker 2: goal for you to. His credit to was always about
Speaker 2: his family and his people and other people that he
Speaker 2: wasn't even related to. When I knew him, you would
Speaker 2: go when he had no money. He lived right off
Speaker 2: of Lake Merritt in Oakland. He had no money. He
Speaker 2: was in a bumass apartment. There were always teenagers in
Speaker 2: there that he was taken care of like orphans. So
Speaker 2: he was always about the community and whatever. So he
Speaker 2: was working that hard for everyone. You know, it wasn't
Speaker 2: just him running from his own demons. You know, I
Speaker 2: feel you know.
Speaker 1: The success of Dear Mama, the ratings through the roof overall,
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you You've done so many great projects.
Speaker 1: How do you look at a success of a project?
Speaker 1: Does the outside opinion matter? Or you know that I
Speaker 1: put everything I had into it and I'm good, I'm
Speaker 1: at peace. I mean, obviously this rated high, and everything
Speaker 1: you do rate it high, But how do you look
Speaker 1: at success?
Speaker 2: I caught a couple of bricks. I think you measured
Speaker 2: it like we did a documentary years ago. My brother
Speaker 2: and I American pimp and it's very hard to find
Speaker 2: that goddamn thing. Try finding it, right, But it became
Speaker 2: a cult classic, right, and then the time was really
Speaker 2: painful because you're like, is anyone But I see people
Speaker 2: along the way years it really affected them or they
Speaker 2: they memorized whatever it is. So you know, you gotta
Speaker 2: with Dear Mama. I know, I put my I put
Speaker 2: my soul into it. So I knew before we had
Speaker 2: the ratings record at the network and one hundred percent
Speaker 2: of Rotten Tomatoes with the critics like everyone the culture
Speaker 2: digging it. I didn't know what the culture was going
Speaker 2: to think. I didn't know everything I'd think of me,
Speaker 2: but I was prepared for it. But in hindsight, before
Speaker 2: all the good news came in, I was like, you
Speaker 2: know what I told my partner, I said, you know what,
Speaker 2: people may get this ten years from now. Don't expect
Speaker 2: for them to get it now because it's very emotional,
Speaker 2: it's complex, and I didn't think. I didn't think very
Speaker 2: many people.
Speaker 1: Now we got it now, trust me, we got that
Speaker 1: shit right. That was incredible. I mean, obviously with the
Speaker 1: v and Dear Mama, but I think you know, you're
Speaker 1: early vision to obviously intertwined and look at him through
Speaker 1: his mom's eyes. I've never seen I'm a huge Pok fan.
Speaker 1: I've never seen anyone just being able to break down
Speaker 1: and talk and then show so many different sides of him.
Speaker 1: You know, Like you say, you think you've seen everything
Speaker 1: out there on him because he's been gone for so long,
Speaker 1: But you guys had shit that no one had seen. Instrumentals,
Speaker 1: you know, putting different beats behind his music. Just the
Speaker 1: creativity of the project overall was just like I was
Speaker 1: blowing toy Binge watched me and my girl got in
Speaker 1: a fight because I just waught that shit straight. I'm like, baby,
Speaker 1: I got to interview him, Well can you do that?
Speaker 1: I was just like, now I'm watching this shit straight.
Speaker 1: This is what it is.
Speaker 2: That's an emotional five hours shit. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 2: lot of people talking about I didn't expect a lot
Speaker 2: of people talking about crying. A lot they're crying when
Speaker 2: they've seen this thing, and I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, wow, you know, I help my tears. I held
Speaker 1: my thug tears back. But yeah, you could definitely I
Speaker 1: can see where people can get it, though.
Speaker 2: Now it's a it's with him. The number one thing
Speaker 2: is I wanted to understand him, and I'm also gonna
Speaker 2: want to be DJ, so I wanted to make sure
Speaker 2: that you know, we we felt him, we heard the words.
Speaker 2: I have a rule in the editing room. If Grandma
Speaker 2: don't understand, it's got to go. And that's a lot
Speaker 2: of reason why we took the beats out sometimes and
Speaker 2: just had the words the compositions so that Grandma can understand.
Speaker 2: Are people that aren't necessarily Tupac fans can be brought
Speaker 2: into the poetry because I was never a poetry fan.
Speaker 2: I don't understand poetry. I'll just be real. And it
Speaker 2: wasn't to this journey, I'm like, wow, this dude really
Speaker 2: was a poet, Like, oh, I get it now, you know,
Speaker 2: reading this stuff and hearing this stuff, and also keeping
Speaker 2: in mind, move hip hop out of the way, move
Speaker 2: acting out of the way. Tupac first is an artist,
Speaker 2: like a pure artist a poet. And when you're a
Speaker 2: pure artist, when you see his journey and he painted
Speaker 2: in life with his life, right. I talk a lot
Speaker 2: about the delusions of artists. Artists live in a fantasy world.
Speaker 2: They don't see what normal people see. So a lot
Speaker 2: of that stuff with Tupac when people have this misunderstandings
Speaker 2: about him, even that night in at where he shot
Speaker 2: the two dudes, two cops in the ass, right, he's
Speaker 2: not seeing what we're all seeing. He's seen another movie.
Speaker 2: And you have to add that in there too, not
Speaker 2: just the activism, not just the way he was raised,
Speaker 2: not just his emotional state, you know, not just the
Speaker 2: fact that he's a method actor. But you have to
Speaker 2: add in there that there's these dreams and hopes and
Speaker 2: fantasies of a pure artist, and it's a it's a
Speaker 2: different world.
Speaker 1: Born in Detroit, youngest brother by nine minutes. Does that count, right?
Speaker 1: I got twins too, they're six minutes apart. Anything early days,
Speaker 1: you remember, before you guys migrated to California.
Speaker 2: Big ass rats like Ben remember that movie Ben Mike
Speaker 2: made a song about this shit. It was real sweet.
Speaker 2: There ain't nothing sweet about them, big ass rats without
Speaker 2: the tale. We got a cat one time Detroit. We
Speaker 2: were living in this tenement building. We got a cat.
Speaker 2: Dive fuck off the rats, right, and and the rat
Speaker 2: I'm sorry the cat, I'm the cat went missing. Like
Speaker 2: we hired this motherfucker to, you know, to get the neutrints.
Speaker 2: Check this out. Two weeks later we got a little
Speaker 2: slid and snow. That's it without the tail. Two weeks
Speaker 2: later we had a slid and we're going through the snow.
Speaker 2: That motherfucker was laid over there. Whole cavity opened up
Speaker 2: them ratually eating his ass a lot. That's Detroit, that's
Speaker 2: all I remember. Fuck a cat.
Speaker 1: Uh you guys move out to Claremont, California.
Speaker 2: Pomona first, that's what difference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, different, shout out, shout out, Damian Roderick, sugar Free,
Speaker 1: that's the sugar freezer. Yeah, no, no, my home, but
Speaker 1: snoop some way personally, that's that's froma But yeah, sugar
Speaker 1: Free was out there. Sugar Free was actually born in
Speaker 1: the Bay, wasn't he.
Speaker 2: All that makes sense now.
Speaker 1: And then Alna right, yeah, yeah, but then moved to Pomona.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the ie so to speak from Detroit, what
Speaker 1: was that like for you? You know, Armenian and black correct.
Speaker 2: Yep. When we got out here in nineteen eighty, Reagan
Speaker 2: had just been voted in the office and things changed
Speaker 2: were changing, you know, and being from Detroit then too,
Speaker 2: there's there were always jokes, like you say, you from Detroit,
Speaker 2: everyone goes. It was a it was a badge of
Speaker 2: street honor back then, even though we were little, little kids,
Speaker 2: but it was a culture shock to seeing palm trees
Speaker 2: and not going through the four seasons. I think it's
Speaker 2: important for kids to go through the fourth seasons, the fall,
Speaker 2: the you know, all the leaves and all that stuff
Speaker 2: that happens outside of California. But to see to be
Speaker 2: there and be eight, nine, ten, eleven years old when
Speaker 2: all the programs were taking away we know now after
Speaker 2: school programming programs, you know, all that stuff that we
Speaker 2: were relying on not to fall prey to gangs and drugs.
Speaker 2: We were at the epicenter of that at that age
Speaker 2: and that era, you know, and I know Detroit got
Speaker 2: eviscerated by crap, you know. So it was happening in
Speaker 2: all communities, you know, of color and obviously throughout the states.
Speaker 2: So it didn't it looked sexier out here, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't much more.
Speaker 1: You know, you spoke to your mom, I mean her
Speaker 1: raising both of you guys, putting herself through school, and
Speaker 1: you spoke to her hustle speak a little more about
Speaker 1: how that shaped you, in which your mom was about.
Speaker 2: I think that's why we we never like succumb to
Speaker 2: any of that trappings of like excess. When she started
Speaker 2: making her money, she still would only buy us three pants,
Speaker 2: one pair of payless shoes, three shirts, and just payless shoes.
Speaker 1: I remember that because you can get three for like forts.
Speaker 1: They used to make it. At one point they were
Speaker 1: making them look like the Jordan replicas too, so you
Speaker 1: can away with that for like the first thirty minutes
Speaker 1: of school. Then they look at them, motherfuckers, like real
Speaker 1: good look at them joints.
Speaker 2: But she was all about like she would always pay
Speaker 2: for the arts, like all our friends had Adida suits, suits,
Speaker 2: track suits, the shelters, the gold. She would not indulge
Speaker 2: any of that. If I wanted to play guitar, she'd
Speaker 2: buy any guitar I wanted. My brother wanted to do
Speaker 2: art any So when we got into filmmaking, she would
Speaker 2: invest in the cameras and stuff like that, but never
Speaker 2: into like bullshit, like a material thing craft.
Speaker 1: She wanted you to invest in the craft. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2: So once we got in high school and started really
Speaker 2: doing film and stuff and making little movies, and then
Speaker 2: getting out of high school, we never got caught up
Speaker 2: in the party life. We never got caught up in
Speaker 2: the shit that wasn't important so our career. That's why
Speaker 2: we made minutes at twenty, I think because we were
Speaker 2: focused on the thing, not the hanging out part, you know,
Speaker 2: the excess of hanging out part. We got that from
Speaker 2: my mother. She's a no bullshit, like what am I
Speaker 2: here for? But in the fun way you come to
Speaker 2: If I show up to a party, I'm not just
Speaker 2: there to hang out. I'm like, I'm coming to see man,
Speaker 2: I'm coming to see Stephen. I'm coming to see someone
Speaker 2: that I know I'm gonna connect to. But I'm not
Speaker 2: going to just go to a party just to kick it,
Speaker 2: kick it or get my name out there, you know.
Speaker 2: So she taught us that that type of stuff where
Speaker 2: it's just to focus, like what is your what's your path?
Speaker 2: She's all about, like what was the saying she got
Speaker 2: from my man, follow your bliss, like finding your bliss
Speaker 2: and find a thing that turns you on. And she
Speaker 2: got us these shirts when we were young. I can't remember,
Speaker 2: I remember now. They made a huge impact. It was
Speaker 2: five penguins walking in the line and the four were
Speaker 2: behind this one the four penguins were normal and the
Speaker 2: one out front had a cigar, had Hawaiian shirt and said,
Speaker 2: be unique that she got us those shirts. I go,
Speaker 2: why those penguins are those? Now? I look, I go
Speaker 2: by racial on. I don't know what she was doing,
Speaker 2: but she was telling us like, stay out front, be yourself,
Speaker 2: don't fall into like uh, you know, everyone wants to
Speaker 2: be cool and and like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, authentic self. Question as someone who had twins, when
Speaker 1: did you guys finally get to start dressing in your
Speaker 1: own kind of your own personality. I know your mind
Speaker 1: probably had y'all matching and ship. And I know that
Speaker 1: my twins used to hate.
Speaker 2: It man past five that she was not hot right
Speaker 2: past five, that ship is cute. For five the first
Speaker 2: five years I hated being a twin. I still hate
Speaker 2: being really yeah, because that motherfucker right there in school
Speaker 2: if he catches a beef for someone, now, I gotta.
Speaker 1: Deal with that definitely. What would you guys relate? Were
Speaker 1: your best friends beef? What was your guys like?
Speaker 2: We were best friends and at me all kinds of ship.
Speaker 2: My brother would get vicious for fights. He throws ship TVs.
Speaker 1: So it was.
Speaker 2: That's funny. Yeah, where is it?
Speaker 1: Huh? Where he lives in Prague? Really, brother lives in Prague? Interesting?
Speaker 1: How long has here he's been? Over like twenty twenty
Speaker 1: something years. Because we did this film with Johnny Depp,
Speaker 1: Call from Hell, about Jack Ripper. We shot that over there,
Speaker 1: and that over I encourage more people in America, more whatever,
Speaker 1: get outside, go see Europe.
Speaker 2: That shit opens your mind up, you know. And his
Speaker 2: mind got opened and he stayed there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, damn.
Speaker 3: Directing as your brother, as the Hughes Brothers, I did
Speaker 3: a lot of legendary movies, especially in our culture. Let's
Speaker 3: talk about three of those movies. Ministers Society one. The
Speaker 3: process of doing that, I mean, I come from it
Speaker 3: just that whole movie was just it wasn't just exciting
Speaker 3: to our culture, but it told so many people's stories,
Speaker 3: the way a lot of people was living, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. To see that on the big screen,
Speaker 3: to see it played out like in real time, like
Speaker 3: how ri shit really gone? Like that really did a
Speaker 3: lot for our culture. Talk about that, the process of
Speaker 3: that movie.
Speaker 2: I think the important thing I remember at the time
Speaker 2: we were selling that is you remember the cops. That's
Speaker 2: what we saw. We saw on the news every night,
Speaker 2: young black males running from the cops. The helicopter point
Speaker 2: of view. I remember at the time Spike Lee talking
Speaker 2: about and he was right when Ciskel and Ebert didn't
Speaker 2: like one of his films, he said, I don't make
Speaker 2: my films for you, I make it for my community, right,
Speaker 2: and he was correcting that Menas was different. I felt
Speaker 2: we needed to make it for white people. I felt
Speaker 2: black people would appreciate it and know it. But again,
Speaker 2: that word understanding, I think we made that so you
Speaker 2: can see how that kid became that one of the
Speaker 2: news you're looking at, and humanize them as hardcore as
Speaker 2: Menace is. You got to humanize, you know, these these
Speaker 2: these children, their children, you know. And that was the
Speaker 2: number one reason we made that film was just to
Speaker 2: get an understanding, so we all weren't looked at like
Speaker 2: animals and as brutal as the film was. Also, like
Speaker 2: people were in the culture, like if you were lucky
Speaker 2: enough to make up a black film back then, it
Speaker 2: had to have a message. It had to be kind
Speaker 2: of sweet and have this good ending. You know, you
Speaker 2: didn't really have much control over your material. And we
Speaker 2: grew up on noir film. We grew up on Scorsese
Speaker 2: and de Palm and all that hard core shit, so
Speaker 2: we wanted to make a statement. It wasn't a message film.
Speaker 2: It was making a statement and it was a cautionary
Speaker 2: tale as well, and we knew we didn't want it
Speaker 2: to end pretty. It's part of the reason too. And
Speaker 2: dear Mama, I grapple with like, we have to be
Speaker 2: careful about not making Tupac's death sexy because there's nothing
Speaker 2: sexy about getting shot. There's nothing sexy about dying prematurely.
Speaker 2: So that was what Menace was about. And now it's
Speaker 2: a full circle moment with dealing with the Tupac thing,
Speaker 2: because eily enough, he kind of became that, for better
Speaker 2: or worse. He embodied it for a reason and he
Speaker 2: went out like that, you know.
Speaker 1: Can you speak to real quick? I was fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to before John Singleton pass got a chance to go
Speaker 1: to the Poetic Justice twenty five year anniversary and we
Speaker 1: watched it with him and everything. But I thought what
Speaker 1: was really dope was after he told us who possibly
Speaker 1: could have played the other characters and who are there
Speaker 1: looking at? Can you talk to us and in a
Speaker 1: society about who possibly could have played other roles or
Speaker 1: who you guys are thinking roles were for.
Speaker 2: First of all, I gotta give a shout out to
Speaker 2: Tyron Turner because he's mad at him and I don't Tyron.
Speaker 2: I'm acknowledging it right now. He was a raw talent.
Speaker 2: I saw in a Jennet Jackson video, Rhythm Nation video.
Speaker 2: I saw him on an episode of America's Most Wanted.
Speaker 2: He played a blood even though he's from a crip neighborhood.
Speaker 2: So who is this? This dude was going bananas. I
Speaker 2: find out he's from that, so he knows that. So
Speaker 2: we fought real hard to get him. That was the
Speaker 2: only right I start with Tyrann because we didn't have
Speaker 2: anyone in mind for that role but him. We were
Speaker 2: just obsessed with him. Old Dog was written for easy
Speaker 2: And I gotta carefully say this because Ice cubas stated
Speaker 2: a few times that we offered him that role. I
Speaker 2: don't know who offered him that role. God bless him because.
Speaker 1: They were going off a Boys in the Hood, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we never We never considered Ice Cube because because
Speaker 2: boys in the Hood and we had this easy thing
Speaker 2: at the time. But that doesn't mean he didn't get
Speaker 2: contacted by our casting agents, but in our minds we
Speaker 2: wrote that for Easy because we were with Easy while
Speaker 2: we were putting that script together, and that's who we
Speaker 2: were looking for.
Speaker 1: Easy.
Speaker 2: That's another story. You know, Cube had had been gone
Speaker 2: for a year, Dre was leaving when this was happening,
Speaker 2: and him and Jerry were very controlling. So that's I
Speaker 2: had to get kind of get out from underneath that.
Speaker 2: And so now we have to find a new guy,
Speaker 2: and we're looking for the Easy look, you know, bulky typical,
Speaker 2: and we can't find Odoll. And then the casting director says,
Speaker 2: I'll bring you I'll bring in the guys that that
Speaker 2: I didn't want you guys to see. And that's when
Speaker 2: lorenezs Tate walked in and and he didn't looked He
Speaker 2: looked like a Disney kid at the time, but once
Speaker 2: I said action, he he was right there. He was
Speaker 2: what you saw in the film.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 2: He came with that. I can't act like we gave
Speaker 2: that to him or you know, he came with that
Speaker 2: h A wax which was m c A that was
Speaker 2: supposed to be m c ran first met with him
Speaker 2: several times, but Easy and Jerry were blocking that, you know,
Speaker 2: so thank god because uh and Tupac was meant to
Speaker 2: play Sharif the Muslim, which became the challenge for him.
Speaker 2: You know, he didn't he signed none because he was
Speaker 2: our homeboy and he got the movie Greenley. They said,
Speaker 2: if we're not going to green light the movie unless
Speaker 2: you get a platinum recording artist, I go fly up
Speaker 2: to Oakland and he agrees to do it. But at
Speaker 2: the time that people have to understand too, like we
Speaker 2: were so close. The thing, the real misunderstanding where we're
Speaker 2: all like accountable, is we were meant to be making
Speaker 2: movies with Tupac. So you can imagine when he tells
Speaker 2: me one day he's in pre production on Poetic Justice.
Speaker 2: He goes me and John Singleton agreed, I'm only starring
Speaker 2: in John Singleton movies. We're gonna be like Scorsese and
Speaker 2: de Niro. He gets like that. He gets really once
Speaker 2: he starts a relationship with you, he gets he's fire.
Speaker 2: It's all passion. So I'm sitting there kind of hurt too,
Speaker 2: like damn right, and he goes, no, I'll still do
Speaker 2: I'll do the supporting role. I'll still do that. But
Speaker 2: I'm only starring in John Singleton movies. So that's what
Speaker 2: happened there. Dead President's Dead Presidents. Shoh, too young to
Speaker 2: make that movie, that's all. I think.
Speaker 1: That's all like how old were you at that time?
Speaker 2: Twenty two?
Speaker 1: Say you did what you did minutes at twenty yep,
Speaker 1: and then Dead President's twenty twit you feel like you're too.
Speaker 2: Young because when you look at the story, I just
Speaker 2: think that there's some really cool stuff in it. But
Speaker 2: the thing that's glaring is when he gets back from Vietnam,
Speaker 2: You're like, I don't think he struggled enough to go
Speaker 2: pull that caper off and get that violent Like there's
Speaker 2: some beats missing it, you know, Like me now as
Speaker 2: a storyteller going he needed more job rejection, He needed
Speaker 2: more like real life strife and fucked up shit happening
Speaker 2: to him, and it just wasn't there was beats missing,
Speaker 2: you know. And then there's something that Denzel taught taught me.
Speaker 2: How do I say this? You can't have your hero
Speaker 2: compromised and him not go get the dude that compromised him.
Speaker 2: So when the pimp did that thing to him, at
Speaker 2: the very least Large's character should have gone back towards
Speaker 2: the end of the movie and throw him out of
Speaker 2: a building something, you know, got him and that so
Speaker 2: the audience at the time, Menace wasn't a hit. It
Speaker 2: was a mild success. And I think a mena I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: Debt Presidence was a mild success. I think it was
Speaker 2: a mild success because it's so nealistic, nihilistic, whatever the
Speaker 2: word is. Towards the end, you're like, damn, this dude
Speaker 2: just got shit on.
Speaker 1: Wasn't the pimp a Wall from Mustling Flow.
Speaker 2: No, that's a Clifton Power was.
Speaker 3: The pimp Cutty Cutty Cuddy.
Speaker 2: But as a as a I look at a movie
Speaker 2: sometimes like a record it had, you know, if there's
Speaker 2: twelve eighteen tracks in there, he had like five tracks.
Speaker 2: What As a as a storyteller, now I know, I go, damn,
Speaker 2: I wish I could tell that story now because now
Speaker 2: I would know how to you got seen Deer Hunter
Speaker 2: and all that ship.
Speaker 1: I haven't who, but who who was the no, no,
Speaker 1: no Tower.
Speaker 2: That's not thinking about Tara Tower was in the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, terrencewer that's some thing.
Speaker 2: Terrence Howard. That was one of his first roles. I
Speaker 2: was taking with him when he came in, he came
Speaker 2: in from Lorenze's role Anthony, and he came in as
Speaker 2: we know him, and I'm like, dude, you're not getting
Speaker 2: the starring.
Speaker 1: Roll butt, you know.
Speaker 2: And it was his first movie or because he did
Speaker 2: Mister Holland's Opus with Richard Dreyfus and Dead Presence was
Speaker 2: his first movie. Yeah, Chris Tucker. I was it working
Speaker 2: with him. Man, Chris. He was awesome. He is awesome.
Speaker 2: I went and saw there's the Comedy act Theater down there.
Speaker 2: We were looking for some we were going to see
Speaker 2: someone else and I saw Chris and Chris had one
Speaker 2: movie in the can and it was Friday. It hadn't
Speaker 2: come out yet. I didn't know that. So this is
Speaker 2: essentially one of his second movie as well. He was extraordinary.
Speaker 2: A lot of that stuff in the film was ad lite.
Speaker 2: Some of it we did in rehearsals and put it
Speaker 2: in the script. All this stuff was and I wish
Speaker 2: again you talked about like youth being wasted on the youth.
Speaker 2: If I had to do it all over again, I'd
Speaker 2: put more Chris Tucker through the whole movie. He kind
Speaker 2: of drops out for a while and then comes back
Speaker 2: for the heist, and when we test screened the movie,
Speaker 2: like not only just the humor, but people really felt
Speaker 2: his dramatic chops in that way when he sold all
Speaker 2: big time, he was good, he went all in. I
Speaker 2: would make I would make these mixtapes because there were
Speaker 2: no playlists back then for Lorenz and all the guys
Speaker 2: with you know, Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, all the stuff
Speaker 2: from back then. Just get them in the vibe, you know,
Speaker 2: and we will watch old movies, whether it's surging lyone
Speaker 2: movies or like Once My Time in America obviously good Fellas,
Speaker 2: not good Fellas, I'm sorry, Apocalypse now. Like we just
Speaker 2: sit down all his like you know, twenty one twenty
Speaker 2: two year olds and just have sessions where we were
Speaker 2: studying the Godfathers, all that stuff just together with all
Speaker 2: this old music and getting getting him into the lingo
Speaker 2: because there's the movie the mac Richard Pryor is in
Speaker 2: it and Nate Chris and Lorenz studied that a lot
Speaker 2: for the rhythms and the linguistics.
Speaker 1: Motherfucker, can't you buy that straight? Twenty? I get him
Speaker 1: twenty right, getting twenty ready? You cant you get into
Speaker 1: five from you? Right, five plus seven, five plus seven
Speaker 1: plus two from you? Motherfucker?
Speaker 2: Can't you a rest taper for home, a rest for hose?
Speaker 1: Look look.
Speaker 4: Right now, say Johnny, you know the name of the game,
Speaker 4: me seek win. We can have this like some gentlemen. Oh,
Speaker 4: we can get to some gangster ship. Oh you how
Speaker 4: cortable is that movie? The whole movie? That movie class?
Speaker 1: Also, in case you didn't know, Alan, this dude's ready
Speaker 1: to jump on anything you got. Hey, before you even
Speaker 1: go there.
Speaker 3: A famous line from that movie is on the Chronic
Speaker 3: album straight up. Hey, you really don't understand, do you?
Speaker 2: Hey?
Speaker 1: You know how to make this thing work.
Speaker 3: We got to get rid of the pimps, prostitute hustlers,
Speaker 3: then start all over again.
Speaker 1: Clean niggas, you crazy, Come on, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 2: By the way. How dope was Richard Pryor in that
Speaker 2: movie Classic? He's really speaking that.
Speaker 1: Ship speak talking that ship. Yeah, he was in his
Speaker 1: own too. Oh man, ninety nine, you released American Pimp.
Speaker 1: Uh where did just that mindset and felt like the
Speaker 1: need for that film coming from.
Speaker 2: I gotta be careful with this one because we got
Speaker 2: sued for this.
Speaker 1: We didn't have to talk about if you don't want to.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it just it just it comes from my father,
Speaker 2: you know, and just wanted to understand him. And and
Speaker 2: you know, my mother and father went two different directions.
Speaker 2: She became a feminist radical. He got off in that culture,
Speaker 2: you know, and and we lived in that culture in Detroit.
Speaker 2: That's the part of Detroit I remember the most is
Speaker 2: being around women of the night, teaching him to read
Speaker 2: at seven years old. It's funny, but it's it's you know,
Speaker 2: I've had to deal with that as an adult now
Speaker 2: and go whow. I was waking up with with prostitutes,
Speaker 2: you know, in my house and and recently having to go,
Speaker 2: oh wait, that's not normal, you know. So that was
Speaker 2: me and my brothers trying to reconcile. My father was
Speaker 2: an American pimp, so and my mother taught us to put women,
Speaker 2: no matter what, on pedestals. So we were always in
Speaker 2: your and our hearts broken, so I said, back then,
Speaker 2: we always did. At the time, we thought we did
Speaker 2: an American pimp as a reaction to our mother's feminism, not
Speaker 2: the de gray women at all. But to go, hey, man,
Speaker 2: let's balance the shit out and go hang out with
Speaker 2: these guys not knowing the father thing whatever, but it
Speaker 2: was amazing. I remember about six months into shooting, American
Speaker 2: pimp Rosebud asked us, He said, how are you guys
Speaker 2: doing in your relationships right now? I said, why is
Speaker 2: he asking this question? And we were like fucked up.
Speaker 2: He's like, yes's what happens with squares hang out with pimps.
Speaker 2: You guys can't do it. You know, you come home
Speaker 2: being all empowered and shit like, no, no, I ain't
Speaker 2: taking a trash out.
Speaker 1: You take a trash was like, ain't flying.
Speaker 2: I got pimp friends for life, now, you know.
Speaker 1: Come on, man, bucket Eli twenty ten. You got to say,
Speaker 1: you say you learn from Denzel, but what was it
Speaker 1: like initially working with him.
Speaker 2: I think you're working with Denzel outside of Johnny Depp,
Speaker 2: who was a star as well. But when we work
Speaker 2: with Johnny Depp, he hadn't become the Pirates guy yet.
Speaker 2: You know, Denzel, you know, you got to give him
Speaker 2: credit because I think he's the greatest movie star of
Speaker 2: all time. When you look at the stat sheet. He's
Speaker 2: a real theatrical actor, meaning he can do Broadway. He's
Speaker 2: done Broadway. He comes from that. He's a twenty million
Speaker 2: dollar plus movie movie star. He's got that thing that
Speaker 2: first that tupadcasts, that thing, that that charisma, that it thing,
Speaker 2: and he can do and he's black. So you got
Speaker 2: to give him more credit than Mel Gibson or anyone
Speaker 2: you want to give credit to, right because he's got
Speaker 2: all those things and despite being a black man in
Speaker 2: the business, he has all that that. How do you
Speaker 2: say he just became He's everything. He's everything, So to
Speaker 2: be around him and to collaborate with him, he would
Speaker 2: you learn more through osmosis with someone like that. Although
Speaker 2: Denzel does have sayings and stuff. What's one of his
Speaker 2: famous ones. We do what we have to do so
Speaker 2: we can do what we want to do. I butchered it.
Speaker 2: We do what we have to so we do what
Speaker 2: we want to something like that. He has a lot
Speaker 2: of those. But he teaches you. He taught me about
Speaker 2: like when he shows up on the set, that's the
Speaker 2: money right there, like everything you just got to get
Speaker 2: focused and and it's intangibles. I don't know how to
Speaker 2: describe the things. He taught me a lot about, like
Speaker 2: when you're doing a project too, like what company is
Speaker 2: to set. Do they really believe in it, How they're
Speaker 2: marketing this, how they plan on rolling this out, the
Speaker 2: whole process, the whole process of because we do a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff that's great, but no one sees it,
Speaker 2: and you learn as you get older, like well is
Speaker 2: that worth it? So he's very strategic and intelligent about like,
Speaker 2: all right, what's the project. Who's my fan base? We
Speaker 2: can't offend them. We got to build off of that.
Speaker 2: How we marketing positioning this, When is it coming out?
Speaker 2: So he understands the whole business of it, and I'm
Speaker 2: just learning that through him. Was extraordinary.
Speaker 1: You know, the talk to us about the creative process
Speaker 1: for the soundtracks, particularly to a Minister Society, Dead President's
Speaker 1: obviously Dear Mama, which he just dropped. Obviously, how important
Speaker 1: is that to the piece that you're putting together.
Speaker 2: I think music is everything. I think it starts with
Speaker 2: music with me first. I think music is a superpower,
Speaker 2: you know, and these things too. If you don't have
Speaker 2: the right music, like with Dead Presidents, it started with
Speaker 2: walk On by Isaac Hayes. Like that sound, that's what
Speaker 2: made that, that's at the tone. So we had that
Speaker 2: before the movie and we tend to cut me and
Speaker 2: my brother get the music first and cut our design
Speaker 2: scenes around the music. And I still do that, and
Speaker 2: I was more the musical guy in the soundtrack guy,
Speaker 2: and my brother obviously was collaborated in that as well,
Speaker 2: but I'm more of the music guys. So I would
Speaker 2: put the soundtracks together, and we did a lot of
Speaker 2: successful soundtracks Menace, Platinum, Dead Presidence, American Pimp. So now
Speaker 2: unfortunately there are no soundtracks, so FX and was like, hey,
Speaker 2: put the director's playlist together, put the put the We're
Speaker 2: gonna do a TUPAC playlist. So it's it's I don't
Speaker 2: think it's sexy anymore. You don't have the tangible soundtrack
Speaker 2: and the artwork, but I still design it like all
Speaker 2: that stuff, and dear Mama, all the way the music's
Speaker 2: moving is something I'm obsessed with. Again, I'm gonna want
Speaker 2: to be DJ. And there's TUPAC tracks that like hardcore
Speaker 2: fans love that are like to me, maybe the beat
Speaker 2: is a little not well produced or whatever. I'm a
Speaker 2: fidelity guy, so like my favorite TUPAC track of all
Speaker 2: time is shed so many tears because of the whole
Speaker 2: it's the whole package in one right, and then you
Speaker 2: go all the way to me and my girlfriend, which
Speaker 2: isn't which is incredible, like how do you say it?
Speaker 2: Like musically and what he's doing, but it's raw. You
Speaker 2: can hear the rawness and blasphemy, hail Mary. These things
Speaker 2: are like really raw and primal tracks then as well
Speaker 2: mixed as set so many tales tears. He's not as polished,
Speaker 2: which I like that later that he becomes more raw
Speaker 2: like that, So then you go, hey, later and dear mama,
Speaker 2: maybe we need to strip away some of these tracks,
Speaker 2: Maybe we need I like to get the multi tracks
Speaker 2: and score with the multi track, so you bring in
Speaker 2: the drum or the strings, and and then you apex
Speaker 2: out with the actual track and then you start deconstructing
Speaker 2: the track again. I did that a lot and defining one,
Speaker 2: so I like that had never been done before, where
Speaker 2: you pull all the multi tracks and you start scoring
Speaker 2: the movie and playing with that with the audience, and
Speaker 2: I think fans get a lot more on that. They
Speaker 2: get a whole new experience out of that. So I
Speaker 2: love that process.
Speaker 3: We loved Mass for the soundtrack reasons too, because I
Speaker 3: had ugk on on this.
Speaker 2: Pocket that's right. I always forget that, but because that
Speaker 2: was when they first came out. Yeah, yeah, in fact,
Speaker 2: and here's a trivia. No, that's the right word for it.
Speaker 2: In Japan, minister Society is called pocket full of stones.
Speaker 2: Really because they minister to society. There's no word for
Speaker 2: that in Japanese, at least then there wasn't. So I
Speaker 2: got off the plane and that's the name of the movie,
Speaker 2: pocket full of Stones. And I'm sure in Japan the
Speaker 2: stones weren't the kind of stones we were not.
Speaker 1: Damn uh uh the finant ones. You've you've talked about
Speaker 1: that a few times. What was it like working with
Speaker 1: Jimmy and and and Dre and and and just both
Speaker 1: of their greatness and and and again inheriting everything that
Speaker 1: kind of comes along with the process.
Speaker 2: Again, you're working with two guys that you're learning a
Speaker 2: lot about the game and the business. And uh Ray
Speaker 2: always was kind of like a mentor to me back
Speaker 2: in the day, back in the day, because I'm a
Speaker 2: sonic guy, and I'd always go over and ask him
Speaker 2: questions about recording and mixing and sonics. And then eventually
Speaker 2: he became like a big brother when it came to
Speaker 2: the business of what to do, what not to do,
Speaker 2: and Jimmy's a juggernaut in that respect. You know, Jimmy's
Speaker 2: also like a marketing genius. And just as I learned
Speaker 2: a lot, I learned, I dropped a lot of bad
Speaker 2: habits because of those guys, I would get hung up Jimmy.
Speaker 2: The number one thing I learned from Jimmy, because I've
Speaker 2: learned so much, is when Jimmy's on something, he doesn't
Speaker 2: when he's like into something, he doesn't get offended. He's
Speaker 2: tracking that thing. So sometimes Jimmy be all over me
Speaker 2: and I'm like, Jimmy, you're in my head.
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 2: I got to go make this movie. And I would
Speaker 2: avoid his calls for like two days. And the average person,
Speaker 2: if you avoid their calls, especially a powerful person, when
Speaker 2: they're getting the phone and go listen, motherfucker like this,
Speaker 2: then Jimmy would pick up right where he left off,
Speaker 2: like it wasn't even two days, like because there's no
Speaker 2: time for that. Like he's and he understands, like it's
Speaker 2: the thing, it's the thing, it's the thing. Jimmy also
Speaker 2: does everything in real time. I'm used to, like if
Speaker 2: we're all sitting here talking about business and Steve and
Speaker 2: you're like, man, Charlie owes me like five thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: We can't do this deal right now until I get
Speaker 2: that five thousand dollars. The old me would be like,
Speaker 2: all right, I'll call him later, then i'll call you.
Speaker 2: Jimmy calls him right now. Hey, hey, Charlie, like get him.
Speaker 2: Its five thousand. We're trying to make this everything's happening
Speaker 2: right now. I go, oh shit, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Like that's how you close that gap. You know all this,
Speaker 2: I'll call you later, I'll email you later. None of
Speaker 2: that shit exists with Jimmy. Everything's going down in the moment.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm similar to that. But can you speak
Speaker 1: to just uh Dre and Jimmy's compatibility, almless, peanut butter
Speaker 1: and jelly, how they just work well together?
Speaker 2: Ten s feet and brown shoe, Yeah whatever, you know
Speaker 2: what it is. I've never seen in the partnership like
Speaker 2: the one doesn't want to be the other one. They
Speaker 2: appreciate each other. Yeah, they appreciate you do this, I
Speaker 2: do that. And I've never seen ego with him, where
Speaker 2: like the ones kind of on the load there's always
Speaker 2: that jealous of the one and no and Jimmy. Dre
Speaker 2: is the synthesizer, So Jimmy's always got all these ideas
Speaker 2: and Dre's like nope, nope, no, oh hold on yep.
Speaker 2: So that that works too, because Jimmy's a mile a
Speaker 2: minute and Dre synthesizes it, you know. And and Dre
Speaker 2: Andre's laid. Drey's as I told him years ago, You're
Speaker 2: the shay Day of hip hop. So he's not. He's
Speaker 2: never horn himself out there. He's very selective, and I
Speaker 2: think that that's worked to his advantage and his mystique,
Speaker 2: and Jimmy knows how to operate that as well. That
Speaker 2: old beach thing doesn't work with any other artists, one
Speaker 2: because of the sonic genius that Drey is, but also
Speaker 2: he doesn't do everything, so you know, like, hey, this is.
Speaker 1: If he's touching it. It's real. Thoughts on the writer's strike.
Speaker 2: The writers strike. You guys got writers on this show. Shit,
Speaker 2: give them their money, man. Writers are like the bedrock
Speaker 2: of everything. I never understood that in even the music business,
Speaker 2: like people's getting it publishing jack. This guy really wrote
Speaker 2: the track, but everyone's jacking him and saying that, you know, like,
Speaker 2: how do you not respect the foundation of everything? Writing
Speaker 2: is the foundation of the whole business. How do you
Speaker 2: not overpay a writer and underpay some directors, underpay some
Speaker 2: other talent. I don't. I just don't. I never got that.
Speaker 2: So they when it comes to the streaming and everything
Speaker 2: like that, and it's hard to quantify when something's a hit,
Speaker 2: or if it is a hit, they can hide it
Speaker 2: from you. That's all bullshit. So hopefully they, you know,
Speaker 2: we get to a point where writers are not only compensated,
Speaker 2: but first in line to be well.
Speaker 1: Care and care of. You've worked with a long list
Speaker 1: of greatness. Any actors or actresses you've yet to work
Speaker 1: with the g'd be interested in working with?
Speaker 2: That's a good question. Uh would you say, who is it?
Speaker 2: Who is it out there? That?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: No, you know it's funny because I could see someone
Speaker 2: on a TV show, an unknown actor or talent, and
Speaker 2: that really turned I go, who is that? You know
Speaker 2: when you think of like, obviously, yeah, it would be
Speaker 2: great to work with de Niro and you know, but
Speaker 2: I don't think those guys are all like in their
Speaker 2: eighties now, they don't give a fuck you know. I
Speaker 2: mean not that they wouldn't work with me, but like
Speaker 2: this ain't like we're all like in the same sandbox
Speaker 2: at the same age, at the same time. In today's generation,
Speaker 2: there's some talented people out there, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 2: but it ain't what it was as far as where
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people you can point towards and go,
Speaker 2: you know, it's becoming it's becoming a fame game now.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And again there are some talent, really talented actors out there,
Speaker 2: but none that In fact, I'll tell you this, I
Speaker 2: never wanted to work with Denzel till I saw a
Speaker 2: man on fire now training date, Like my eye went up.
Speaker 2: I'm like, wait a minute, like something going on here.
Speaker 2: But when I saw a man on fire, then I
Speaker 2: was like, I got a wave man on fire. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So that's that's how I'm wired. I'm like, looking at
Speaker 2: you can feel the energy, no matter if they're unknown
Speaker 2: or known, you go, oh shit, what's this? You know?
Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? I'm gonna throw a few names at you in
Speaker 1: the black director space and just give me your thoughts.
Speaker 1: Rest in case to the late great John Singleton.
Speaker 2: Man, the only thing that makes me sad about John's
Speaker 2: journey is that he wasn't here to see his show
Speaker 2: become the success that became. God bless him for that
Speaker 2: because it was a full circle moment. And if it
Speaker 2: wasn't for him, we wouldn't have schee.
Speaker 1: You a fan of Snowfall, Yeah, yeah, late too, like
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Yeah, Jack l Jack. Jack put
Speaker 1: me on he was on and early put me on
Speaker 1: Light and I fell in love with it. Ryan Coogler,
Speaker 1: I even made my own character. Oh I g.
Speaker 2: Ryan, like, Wow, here's a guy that not only did
Speaker 2: his thing in the independent world, but in the Marvel
Speaker 2: space with the Black Panther. For so many years people
Speaker 2: say in this business, black doesn't travel. Black doesn't travel,
Speaker 2: meaning black doesn't make money international. African American films don't
Speaker 2: make money international. And for many years I always said, well,
Speaker 2: put him at the same table, with the same resources,
Speaker 2: the same marketing, and it will make the same And
Speaker 2: Ryan proved that with Black Panther. That's a billion dollar franchise.
Speaker 2: And they didn't treat him or that character any different
Speaker 2: than any other Marvel character. And you see what happened.
Speaker 1: In Success, I got a quick store. So Ryan used
Speaker 1: to play junior college football with my little brother. So
Speaker 1: when I was in the league playing for the Warriors,
Speaker 1: like he would be spending the night in my house
Speaker 1: on the couch with my brother and his homeboys. So
Speaker 1: when uh Fruitville Station came out and I was into it,
Speaker 1: he's like, you know my homeboy made that. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: He's like, no, you remember, dude, you to sleep on
Speaker 1: the couch with the dreads. I'm like that's him. I'm
Speaker 1: like what, it's crazy. So then from there we became
Speaker 1: cool and I went to set when he was first
Speaker 1: doing the First Black Panther. I went on Disney Wow,
Speaker 1: and we went and he's like, look around. He's like,
Speaker 1: you don't see no one that looks like me here,
Speaker 1: And we walked all over. He showed me all over
Speaker 1: the Disney campus and he was like on the very
Speaker 1: first Black Panther and s was dope. You know what.
Speaker 2: There was another thing with him that I really love
Speaker 2: is he's not out there just no.
Speaker 1: He's wave but rarely speaks, doesn't like doesn't even like this.
Speaker 2: He lets his work speak for him.
Speaker 1: So Antoine Fuqua.
Speaker 2: Antoy was like one of the greatest shooters of the bunch,
Speaker 2: Like the way the way his ship looks, the way
Speaker 2: it feels. Obviously training day, but you know he's a
Speaker 2: he's a world class shooter like Tony Scott. So he
Speaker 2: takes black cinema to another level because of the way
Speaker 2: it's moving and sounding, and it's like on some rock
Speaker 2: star shit. So I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And you get a chance to see emancipation, I haven't.
Speaker 1: Oh that was good, I have it.
Speaker 2: Spike Lee, Spike is the you know, Spike likes to
Speaker 2: think of himself as the godfather and he's he's the
Speaker 2: uncle of black cinema. And you got to give him
Speaker 2: credit because there are there are gentlemen in the seventies,
Speaker 2: Melvin ban People's being the one that comes to mind
Speaker 2: that are like the godfathers of black cinema, right, But
Speaker 2: Spike is the great uncle of modern black cinema. And
Speaker 2: without him, all this stuff that's happening right now wouldn't
Speaker 2: be happening right now. He had to go take all
Speaker 2: the bullets in the eighties when there were none. There
Speaker 2: weren't none of us around directing and writing films, and
Speaker 2: if they were, we didn't know of them. So Spike
Speaker 2: was a trailblazer and obviously, you know, and they're now
Speaker 2: giving him as flowers later, you know, with the Black
Speaker 2: Clansman in the Academy. He won for that that ward,
Speaker 2: he went for that, and I'm glad he's here. And
Speaker 2: we've had our our complex relationship with Spike as well.
Speaker 2: But I'm real thankful because without Spike, I remember when
Speaker 2: She's Got to Have It came out that fucking opened
Speaker 2: us all the way up, you know, like and how
Speaker 2: artistic it was because Spike started as like a real
Speaker 2: crafty art artist, independent filmmaker, you know, and that challenges
Speaker 2: he had to even bringing Malcolm X to the screen,
Speaker 2: by the way you were think in ninety one, that
Speaker 2: wouldn't be that much of a challenge. He suffered a
Speaker 2: lot for that.
Speaker 1: Wow. F Gary Gray. F Gary Gray.
Speaker 2: Got to give a lot of props to I came
Speaker 2: up with all time. The same time. We're shooting music
Speaker 2: videos at the same time, and when you look at
Speaker 2: I mean there's ones in between, but we look at Friday,
Speaker 2: one of the most original comedies ever done. Forget black
Speaker 2: comedies period, very original on his shout out the DJ
Speaker 2: Pooh and ice Cube and whatever. But what Gary showing
Speaker 2: up and doing his things. Same thing with Straight out
Speaker 2: of Compton, you know, like all the way over there,
Speaker 2: like to understand that that that needed to be seen
Speaker 2: by the masses. He didn't water it down, but he
Speaker 2: made it accessible. He made Straight out of Compton that ole,
Speaker 2: that whole movement is hard to make it so people
Speaker 2: can get into it outside of the people that love
Speaker 2: the music. And I think that was the brilliance he
Speaker 2: brought to that project.
Speaker 1: Any projects that you can speak on that you're working.
Speaker 2: On, I'm working on Snoop, Spile Picnics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's work. Yeah, talk to us about that. I
Speaker 1: don't need to hear about that.
Speaker 2: You know. I was been developing things with Snoop for
Speaker 2: years and then all of a sudden he drops this
Speaker 2: idea that Universal Pictures is all over it, and they
Speaker 2: fast tracking and he brings it to me and I'm like,
Speaker 2: how did I not even think of this as a film,
Speaker 2: a scriptive film? And I said, you know what, over
Speaker 2: the years, a lot of people have been wanting me
Speaker 2: and my brother to go back and do a hood film.
Speaker 2: I said, I don't want or do menace. I said,
Speaker 2: this is the way to do a hood film, but
Speaker 2: make it inspiring and transcendent, and I think I always
Speaker 2: tell Snoop, I go, You've got the same energy that
Speaker 2: Muhammad Ali had. It's like this world wide international love,
Speaker 2: this energy that if you're eight or your eighty, don't
Speaker 2: doesn't matter what country you're from. People smile when they
Speaker 2: see Snoop. So he's a success story. And he's also
Speaker 2: he uses that word understanding a lot, trying to get
Speaker 2: an understanding. He is always trying to broker some kind
Speaker 2: of peace or understanding. And I'm like, we almost lost him.
Speaker 2: I mean, he was that close to going to prison,
Speaker 2: this close for life for that murder trial, and look
Speaker 2: what we gained from it. You know, look at what
Speaker 2: an international icon he's become. And he's heavy in his
Speaker 2: community and doing great things in the community. And I
Speaker 2: just every time I sit with Snoop, my tank fills up.
Speaker 2: I'm inspired. He's a great listener too. It's rare you're
Speaker 2: sitting around a real rock star that you know, a
Speaker 2: Snoop listens. He goes hm hmm. He feels it. If
Speaker 2: you ask my long question, I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: ever noticed this. You ask him like a long winded question,
Speaker 2: he goes hmm. He'll answer it chronologically the way you
Speaker 2: asked it interesting.
Speaker 1: I think I think it's interesting you you spoke to
Speaker 1: communication and understanding with him, because that's what you see
Speaker 1: when you talk to him, just communication and once understanding
Speaker 1: and and he listens.
Speaker 2: He's also taught me I'm gonna embarrass myself with him
Speaker 2: right now. Snoop listens with his heart. He doesn't listen
Speaker 2: with his ego, you know, And that's rare for someone
Speaker 2: who's been through what he's been through, and it's just famous.
Speaker 2: He goes in there and he's like really taking it
Speaker 2: into his spirit, and he's such a sage. Now maybe
Speaker 2: he always was, but the should he be saying, You're like, God, damn,
Speaker 2: that's deep.
Speaker 1: Any of the movies you've made, you've ever do a
Speaker 1: part two? Tope?
Speaker 2: Oh, we're doing a prequel series to book ELI Really?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Because that makes sense, like how did this?
Speaker 1: How you get there?
Speaker 2: When did he learn these skills? Was he blind? When
Speaker 2: was he blind? How do he go? You know when
Speaker 2: he learned it?
Speaker 1: You know, any advice you'd give up and coming young
Speaker 1: aspiring filmmakers.
Speaker 2: Man, that's a tough one. It goes back to what
Speaker 2: my mother said and easy e taught me this, like
Speaker 2: again through osmosis, like be yourself, find out who you
Speaker 2: are and stay true to who you are. No one
Speaker 2: can be you, but you right find out what your voice.
Speaker 2: A lot of people don't realize they haven't even discovered
Speaker 2: with their voices. That's a big deal, Like, like what
Speaker 2: is it you're here to say and do even if
Speaker 2: you're not a talker, because some people think you gotta
Speaker 2: be talking to have a voice. Sometimes it's a guitar
Speaker 2: that's your voice. Sometimes that basketball that's your voice. But
Speaker 2: find out what your what your particular brand of That's
Speaker 2: what Easy taught me is like what is it that
Speaker 2: he never said this? I just saw it? What is
Speaker 2: it that makes you unique? And how do you leverage
Speaker 2: that into the thing where people can You're taking moving
Speaker 2: the medium too. I'm a big believer in studying your
Speaker 2: history too, because you know what they say, past is prologue,
Speaker 2: So like study your history so you know where you
Speaker 2: are and your place is and what you're doing to
Speaker 2: move the game forward. And because you got to keep
Speaker 2: pushing the medium, pushing the game. And even when I
Speaker 2: was studying a Fanny's Journey, Tupac's mother I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 2: where was she in the timeline of civil rights? What
Speaker 2: happened before her and what was happening during her? And
Speaker 2: any great is going to study the game and study
Speaker 2: like the ogs and like and what made them great?
Speaker 2: And what do you what are you taking from them
Speaker 2: into your game? But you can't be Michael Jordan. You
Speaker 2: can't be Lebron. You can only be the You can
Speaker 2: only adopt the things that work for you right and
Speaker 2: make them yours. So study, study, study, study, study. People
Speaker 2: don't study enough. I don't think it's south boring. I
Speaker 2: think it comes like that before we get you out
Speaker 2: of here. I mean, you've had the opportunity to be
Speaker 2: friends and work with so many great people in this industry.
Speaker 2: You spoke to EASYE being someone who you was a mentor.
Speaker 2: Can you speak to to Easy and what your guys
Speaker 2: relationship was like? Easy was his name was Easy for
Speaker 2: a reason. He was so laid back. And I think
Speaker 2: Easy taught me a lot about theme too, Like what's
Speaker 2: the what's the theme of this thing we're doing? What's
Speaker 2: the theme of the first n w A album, Fuck
Speaker 2: the Police, that's the thing?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: The second in w A album, His whole thing was
Speaker 2: like where we're like, uh, they wanted to be guns
Speaker 2: and roses and and the whole theme of it was
Speaker 2: like excess and like punk rock beyond punk rock where
Speaker 2: it was where man that Niggas for Life album is
Speaker 2: ill like they they he knew that that. I don't
Speaker 2: know if the word is theme because it wasn't like
Speaker 2: this overarching theme, but it was a concept easy, wasn't
Speaker 2: the concept like And he taught me a lot about
Speaker 2: like what is there's that whole thing? What are we doing?
Speaker 2: Why are we doing it? Those two things come with right,
Speaker 2: but the how is the thing most people forget, like
Speaker 2: how are we executing this? What's different about how we're
Speaker 2: doing this? Because they've all said it before, like all
Speaker 2: stories have been told. I don't really believe that, but
Speaker 2: I get it, like the you know, the beats of stories.
Speaker 2: We've heard them all. So now it's how are you
Speaker 2: executing that story? That makes it different? And I'll, oh,
Speaker 2: dear Mama, like, let's make it a duel story. Let's
Speaker 2: make the timelines blend, let's innovate this so people understand
Speaker 2: Tupac more through his mother's journey, kind of like the
Speaker 2: Godfather too veto and Michael back and forth right, So
Speaker 2: I think that's what Easy taught me, the what, the why?
Speaker 1: And now all right, quick hitters. First thing to come
Speaker 1: to mind. Top five most impactful films in your opinion?
Speaker 2: God damn you. This is some tough ship. You guys
Speaker 2: gonna be editing this shit so I can take a
Speaker 2: break right now.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: When you say top five most impactful films, you mean
Speaker 2: to me, to the culture, to you, I mean this
Speaker 2: is so I mean I sound like a cliche now,
Speaker 2: Scarface the Godfather for me, uh, personally Raging Bull. That's
Speaker 2: my personal favorite. Uh impactful films feature films to you?
Speaker 2: Whatever got you going? Good fellas got us going? Am
Speaker 2: I four? Now it's funny because IM gonna regret this
Speaker 2: because I forget the one? What was the one? What
Speaker 2: was the one? You know what? I gotta give American
Speaker 2: meat credit American me James Edward James almost directed to
Speaker 2: one about the Mexican gangs.
Speaker 3: Come on, man, you gotta you know. If you haven't
Speaker 3: seen that, go check it out. Man, you haven't seen American.
Speaker 2: That changed us because we had wrote the script minutes
Speaker 2: and we thought we had it and we would and
Speaker 2: saw that movie with Tiger Williams or writer. We went
Speaker 2: back to the drawing board after.
Speaker 1: That and blood in, Blood Out. That's right, they on
Speaker 1: the same thing. First thing you do in the morning,
Speaker 1: last thing you do at night.
Speaker 2: Shit showering shape. The first thing I do in the
Speaker 2: morning when I'm home is jumping the cold punch. Ooh,
Speaker 2: jumping that ice water.
Speaker 1: Fuck.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's better than coffee.
Speaker 1: That was the worst part about being an athlete was
Speaker 1: getting that ice in the cold punch.
Speaker 2: Did it work?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, great, It brought that inflammation lowly.
Speaker 1: It's just good for you.
Speaker 2: You guys came up with that. We're just now getting
Speaker 2: that science right. Didn't getting the sauna and at night?
Speaker 2: I like to do the same thing cold plunch.
Speaker 1: Son, Okay, yeah, I like that soundtrack to Your Life.
Speaker 1: Give me three songs. Damn you said three songs.
Speaker 2: Goddamn Jimmy Hendrick's machine Gun, twelve minutes anything, Curtis Mayfield, Uh,
Speaker 2: after seventy one and before seventy five, I'll just say
Speaker 2: give me your love. Let's just say that in the
Speaker 2: third song. Damn, I'm gonna be pissed about not remembering
Speaker 2: this one either. Minnie Rippleton loving you.
Speaker 1: Five dinner guests that are alive.
Speaker 2: Five dinner guests U.
Speaker 1: Plus five talking about anything at the table, cigars, weed, alcohol,
Speaker 1: good food.
Speaker 2: Mark Twain, that's the first. George Carlin, that's the first.
Speaker 2: Richard Pryor Muhammad Ali is that? Four?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: And boom Maley?
Speaker 1: Who Bob Marley? Mother?
Speaker 2: I should have put more conflicting motherfuckers in there.
Speaker 1: Though, No, you gotta you've had enough confliction. Just enjoy
Speaker 1: your dinner.
Speaker 2: Being biracials or conflict in itself.
Speaker 1: And talk to him. And if people don't understand, you
Speaker 1: never black enough, you're never white enough, so you just
Speaker 1: gotta fight. Hence all the scars on my knuckles.
Speaker 2: There you go. Barack synthesized it, though, right, he decided that.
Speaker 2: She's like, wait a minute, hey, I got it, I
Speaker 2: got it, I got it.
Speaker 1: But even him, he's not the first biracial president. He's
Speaker 1: the first black president.
Speaker 2: It's crazy, yeah, right, it wasn't one one?
Speaker 1: What was the rule? One? One? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Some bulls?
Speaker 1: One drop of blood and you're black? Go ahead, sta,
Speaker 1: could you actually black?
Speaker 2: I like laid back. You just to be sitting there
Speaker 2: like some wrong.
Speaker 1: Who would you like to see on all the smoke.
Speaker 1: But but you have to help us get your answer
Speaker 1: on this. It's gotta be someone in that.
Speaker 2: In my rolodex. Yes, sir, I just work with him.
Speaker 2: I just work with him. I want to see Arnold
Speaker 2: the Governator Schwartzenegg. I want to see him.
Speaker 1: Just did something with him.
Speaker 2: I just did a three part documentary with him. Uh,
Speaker 2: I produced and put it together. And yeah, he loves cigars,
Speaker 2: so there's smoking ball. But to see him with you guys,
Speaker 2: that would be amazing.
Speaker 1: Anything you mean before we get out of it, you
Speaker 1: have that anything else you have coming out currently that
Speaker 1: we need to stay tuned for, obviously, dear mama, right now,
Speaker 1: make sure you check that out. Incredible.
Speaker 2: Arnold Schwarzenegger is coming out. He say that name.
Speaker 1: Said that last name, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 2: I always have a hard time.
Speaker 1: I'm Schwartzenegger, Schwartzenegger.
Speaker 2: June seventh.
Speaker 1: That drops, Okay, where you know?
Speaker 2: Netflix, look at me fucking up already?
Speaker 1: There you go, Well man, Alan, we appreciate your time.
Speaker 2: How random was that one?
Speaker 1: Though? That was a good one. Though I wasn't expecting that.
Speaker 1: I was expected a different pigment.
Speaker 2: See That's what I say. Like mix it up.
Speaker 1: We got some some gear for you that store, you
Speaker 1: can catch that. But we really just want to, you know,
Speaker 1: give your flowers, your greatness, what you've meant to the culture,
Speaker 1: the lines and dots you've connected for us, and and
Speaker 1: and the greatness you've given all of us. Continue success
Speaker 1: to not only you, but your other half, your brother,
Speaker 1: Give him, give him our best and man, thank you
Speaker 1: for your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Man, Thank you. Man. That's a wrap. Alan Hughes all
Speaker 1: the smoke. Catch us on Showtime Basketball, YouTube and the
Speaker 1: iHeart platform Black Effects. We'll see y'all next week.