Speaker 1: Of Course, Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, Welcome to QLs Classic Episode twenty seven Mob
Speaker 1: Deep founder Prodigy May twenty seventeen. We were fortunate to
Speaker 1: have an amazing conversation with Albert Johnson aka Queensbridge Finest
Speaker 1: Prodigy from the infamous Mob Deep while he was still
Speaker 1: with us on this earthly plane. He passed away a
Speaker 1: month after this episode first debuted. He's promoting his Commissary
Speaker 1: Kitchen Prison cookbook at the time, but we also got
Speaker 1: to chop it up about his life growing up as
Speaker 1: a duop kid, the Duop parents, his grandmother's dance school,
Speaker 1: choreographer Michael Peters Queensbridge in the eighties, fights, beating and beats,
Speaker 1: a life of diamond and guns, wake up calls and
Speaker 1: yeah that's something. Jamescreen a special Encore presentation of QLs
Speaker 1: Classic with rapper Prodigy and his co author Kathy Ian Deale.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Suprema Son something supremo role called Suprema Son Son,
Speaker 2: Supremo role called Suprema.
Speaker 3: Some supremo role.
Speaker 2: Called Suprema Son Son Supremo roll.
Speaker 3: Called this is quest love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Supremo.
Speaker 3: So I haven't an roll.
Speaker 2: Called Suprema something Suprema.
Speaker 4: Role called Fonte's in the building. Yeah, check out my rhymes. Yeah,
Speaker 4: q L S Family. Yeah, your beef is mine.
Speaker 2: Supreme hate, Suprema role called suprema something something suprema roll call.
Speaker 2: Her name is Sugar, Yeah, Sugar Steve, Yeah, eat a
Speaker 2: sugar free Yeah, commissary Supremo, Suprema Suprema.
Speaker 3: Roll.
Speaker 2: My name's Boss Bill, Winter despising, but it's spring again now,
Speaker 2: temperatures rising, roll call Supremo something something Supremo, roll called
Speaker 2: Supremo Supremo.
Speaker 3: Roll called I'm unpaid Bill, Yeah, rapidly wrapped. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: hope you can hear me through these white roll.
Speaker 2: Supreme roll call Supremo Supremo roll.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm a little shook. Yeah, my verse will be better.
Speaker 5: Yeah if I read more books.
Speaker 2: Roll Supremo Supremo, roll call Supremo Sun.
Speaker 3: Supremo roll call.
Speaker 6: My name is Kathy, Yeah, I'll write those books. Yeah
Speaker 6: I can read them. Yeah, I've got no more hoss roll.
Speaker 2: Supremo, roll Supremo, So Supremo.
Speaker 3: On me p Yeah, h N I C Yeah we
Speaker 3: on this show.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's mother go Ma.
Speaker 2: Supremo, roll Supremo, Supremo, roll call Suprema, Son Son Supremo,
Speaker 2: roll call Suprema.
Speaker 3: So that was not bad.
Speaker 8: That wasn't That wasn't. Bed came through.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another edition of Questlove Supreme.
Speaker 1: Is this our first double uh? Kind of our first
Speaker 1: double guest Pete rocking smoke this Okay.
Speaker 9: He ain't talking much about this, so yeah it is.
Speaker 4: And that was also the episode where D'Angelo came in
Speaker 4: and was yeah, it's funky.
Speaker 3: It's more arm Well, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, it's a
Speaker 3: special episode.
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like every episode of Quest Love Supreme
Speaker 1: is a special episode, so I don't want to make
Speaker 1: make it like the Meredith Backs to Bernie episode, a
Speaker 1: special Meredith Back to Bernie episode Quest Love Supreme. We have, though,
Speaker 1: like one of my freaking heroes, like one of my
Speaker 1: rhyming heroes, a cultural icon in the world of music,
Speaker 1: not I mean above hip hop, above, I mean music
Speaker 1: just for me, like one of the Illis writers poets.
Speaker 4: As an MC to me, he has the best opening lines.
Speaker 4: Yes rap, Yeah, we'll talk more about but we will. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Like I tell him these all the time. You have
Speaker 4: like four balls to get my attention. But he kind
Speaker 4: of made it even worse because it's like, comes in
Speaker 4: the door. Yeah, you only got one bar, so right,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So yeah, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome prodigy of video.
Speaker 3: Yo yo, y'all. What up? Though?
Speaker 1: In addition, we have his co conspirator. Now, what makes
Speaker 1: it great is that our special guests. Kathy's kind of
Speaker 1: family to some of us quest Love supremers that have
Speaker 1: started on the ok player boards.
Speaker 3: She's my favorite Lauren Hill stand of all time.
Speaker 1: Right off, Well, I mean that's how you came to
Speaker 1: my attention. I was like, who I mean before the
Speaker 1: day of social media. I mean, Okay player was like
Speaker 1: the original Twitter, that was the original.
Speaker 3: That shit was gladiated school man. It was. It was
Speaker 3: like gladiat to school.
Speaker 1: I feel like we pioneered the social media game before
Speaker 1: social media was a thing, not for real, And I
Speaker 1: just knew that this person was standing taking Lauren Hill's
Speaker 1: stands to the next level. That's how you got my attention.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you've blossomed to your own as a writer.
Speaker 1: I mean you've written for a lot of periodicals and
Speaker 1: from bt U dot Com to I mean all the
Speaker 1: way to Billboard, Pitchfork, the p word pitchwork.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's but you've also collaborated with Prodigy on on
Speaker 1: his book.
Speaker 3: Yes, the proper title.
Speaker 6: Is common Sarry Kitchen, my infamous prison cookbook.
Speaker 3: This is the first book you worked on.
Speaker 6: No, but legally I can say this is the first
Speaker 6: book I've worked on.
Speaker 1: I see, well, welcome bout Love three. Yeah, I gotta
Speaker 1: say Prodigy that I'm I'm really not big on hip
Speaker 1: hop autobiographies.
Speaker 3: Actually haven't read one myself.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of books that have been
Speaker 1: written by hip hop luminaries, but I gotta say none.
Speaker 3: You said you're not a fan of hip hop, but autobiography, shit,
Speaker 3: you wrote one.
Speaker 1: No, I know that, but I'm just saying that it's
Speaker 1: usually for me, like most people that are in the
Speaker 1: genre really don't open up as much. It's almost like
Speaker 1: a moment of their childhood and then they came to
Speaker 1: music and then.
Speaker 3: And then got here. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1: It really doesn't really doesn't let you like inside of
Speaker 1: like the mechanics of what makes them work as a person,
Speaker 1: Like you know, them as a personality, Like there's really
Speaker 1: not much you learn from the DMX book or this
Speaker 1: Snoop book or like those things.
Speaker 8: So but I'm just saying that or even the ghost Facebook.
Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying, which.
Speaker 1: Exactly like this is more of a comedy book to
Speaker 1: you than like a life story book. But I guess
Speaker 1: that's read it like three years ago, like it's it's
Speaker 1: a gripping ass story.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 3: We listened to the audiobook on tour, like we ran.
Speaker 4: We had to do like a long tour run and
Speaker 4: we had the audiobook and that got us through the whole.
Speaker 3: Tour like that. Shit was crazy. What's up?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Prodigy, I'm not gonna say it was the beginning.
Speaker 9: I'm like all in this, you know.
Speaker 3: But actually, my this is this is a rarity.
Speaker 1: My my favorite part of a Prodigy story is actually
Speaker 1: his beginnings. I know we all like to, you know,
Speaker 1: to the good part. But I mean, you you come
Speaker 1: from a lineage that I didn't know. We have some
Speaker 1: in common. We're both products of do Wop. I don't
Speaker 1: I won't say a dynasty, but I mean, you know
Speaker 1: you grew up actually with two do Op parents.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, who was your father Bud Johnson?
Speaker 8: He you know, my grandfather's named Bud Johnson also, but
Speaker 8: my father was Bud Johnson.
Speaker 7: He was in a group called the Chances.
Speaker 3: Now your grandfather was a jazz musician, that.
Speaker 7: Bud Johnson Senior.
Speaker 8: He uh, he was a you know, big into jazz
Speaker 8: and like a big band like him and Quincy started
Speaker 8: a big being together with Dizzey Gillespie and a bunch
Speaker 8: of different people. Man Like my grandfather used to have
Speaker 8: all these jazz old gee's coming to the crib when
Speaker 8: I was a little kid. So I used to be
Speaker 8: in the crib and Dizzy used to make faceoalky for
Speaker 8: me and all that. Like I was crazy growing up
Speaker 8: around all that because I didn't realize what was happening
Speaker 8: until I got older and think back about it, like,
Speaker 8: oh wow, that's that was My grandfather had me around
Speaker 8: on jazz.
Speaker 7: Graates like you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: But I ain't really get to appreciate his style of
Speaker 8: music until I got older, you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: It wasn't I just didn't get it when I was
Speaker 8: a kid.
Speaker 9: Like I asked you, at what point in your life
Speaker 9: did it click?
Speaker 1: Like I was around no one ever gets it when
Speaker 1: like your parents' music when you're a kid, and only
Speaker 1: when you're older.
Speaker 5: But right, but a high school is it like I'm
Speaker 5: not even understanding until.
Speaker 8: I'm probably like probably like yeah, in high school when
Speaker 8: when I first started making beats, then I understood like
Speaker 8: the power of my grandfather's music because we.
Speaker 7: Would sample a lot of jazz records, you know what
Speaker 7: I mean.
Speaker 8: And he left me like his collection, his jazz record collection,
Speaker 8: and we made a lot of the first album, Infamous
Speaker 8: and Juvenile Hell that we did, yeah, from my grandfather's records.
Speaker 8: Shook Woms was made actually Hancock Records, my grandfather's records.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 8: So it was like once we got to that point,
Speaker 8: we was like actually researching the records and like using
Speaker 8: certain samples, and we was like, oh, just I understood
Speaker 8: the power of the jazz music. And I started listening
Speaker 8: to it like more in depth and paying attention to it.
Speaker 7: Then I started to, you know, appreciate.
Speaker 3: What did he take your seeing any of his shows
Speaker 3: when you were younger and.
Speaker 8: Hell yeah, man, I remember being at so many shows,
Speaker 8: but once one in particular that stand out a lot
Speaker 8: is that the blue note my grandfather used to perform there,
Speaker 8: and I used to sit at the ball with my
Speaker 8: pops and I should think I was drinking, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean, I possibly ordering a real drink and
Speaker 8: he would order me like a seven up with the.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I'd be sitting at the ball drinking like little kid
Speaker 8: like you know what I mean, at the ball. So
Speaker 8: I got memories like that and my grandfather performing while
Speaker 8: me and my pop sitting at the ball watching him,
Speaker 8: and yeah, you know, just different different shows and whatnot.
Speaker 8: And yeah, man I was I would definitely feel blessed.
Speaker 3: Got it.
Speaker 7: I got a chance to see him before, you know
Speaker 7: what I mean.
Speaker 3: I remember that.
Speaker 1: That even makes it more special because I know earlier
Speaker 1: you told me that you're about to do a residency
Speaker 1: at Bluenope.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy being in there.
Speaker 8: We did the first show last month, and it's crazy
Speaker 8: being in there because I just places like it feels
Speaker 8: small because you know, when you're a little kid, everything
Speaker 8: seemed bigger, like you.
Speaker 3: Know what I mean.
Speaker 7: So now me and I'm like, damn, this is smaller
Speaker 7: than my memories.
Speaker 8: But it's like it's so surreal being in there and
Speaker 8: performing in there because I just remember my grandfather doing it.
Speaker 8: So it's crazy how you know things turn, you know,
Speaker 8: come full circle.
Speaker 3: Was he a horn player?
Speaker 7: Yeah, clarinet and tenor saxophone.
Speaker 1: And even before that, I think your great grandfather started morehouse.
Speaker 8: Yeah, my great I think he was like three times
Speaker 8: great great great great grandfather.
Speaker 1: Was like, yo, you know how lucky you are to
Speaker 1: even know firsthand? Man, Like I just found out who
Speaker 1: my grades were like two weeks ago.
Speaker 8: Serious, man, But like the fact that you know the
Speaker 8: history of your great great great My mother she did
Speaker 8: the genie genealogy, and you know, she researched and if
Speaker 8: we have some other family members that did the same
Speaker 8: thing in research, and we we found our whole family,
Speaker 8: like you know what I mean. Plus we got a
Speaker 8: lot of my grandmother on my mother's side, she keeps
Speaker 8: a lot of family photos and just history and stuff.
Speaker 8: So we were able to like put pieces together to
Speaker 8: connect dots, like you know what I mean. So it's
Speaker 8: pretty It's pretty interesting, man. I learned a lot about
Speaker 8: my family while I was locked up. My moms used
Speaker 8: to write me and tell me, use this in your book.
Speaker 8: Put this in your book. This is important, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean?
Speaker 1: Or so, and your mother was a member of the Crystals.
Speaker 3: Yeap.
Speaker 8: My mom was like walking down the street somewhere if
Speaker 8: it was Queens or whatever wherever she was at, and
Speaker 8: somebody stopped her and was like, hey, can you sing?
Speaker 8: And she was like no, really, and they was like,
Speaker 8: you sure, we need an extra member for this group
Speaker 8: because one of the members had dropped out.
Speaker 7: So they convinced her to do it. She was only eighteen.
Speaker 7: They convinced her to do it, and she became a
Speaker 7: part of the group and went right on tour, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So it was it was kind of crazy how she
Speaker 3: in the mid sixties. She was a wow.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was just like random.
Speaker 8: Like somebody just she just so happened to be walking
Speaker 8: down the street and they stopped her, like because I guess,
Speaker 8: you know my mother she was very pretty, like with
Speaker 8: light eyes, so they she had to look so they
Speaker 8: stopped her. Yeah, can you sing? We want you need
Speaker 8: you in this group.
Speaker 3: Come on.
Speaker 9: And y'all like a generational New York family, Like is
Speaker 9: that weird? People?
Speaker 8: My whole family's from South Side Jamaica, Queens and before that,
Speaker 8: they come from like Texas.
Speaker 3: And Virginia, you know what I mean. Yeah, the crystals
Speaker 3: are for like our listeners.
Speaker 1: I would always say that like I grew up in
Speaker 1: an oldies duop family, but similar to like parents today,
Speaker 1: like I'll say, like comal from the roots. My keyboard
Speaker 1: player tricked his kids into thinking like Michael Jackson was
Speaker 1: brand new. You know, as a parent, you'd be trying
Speaker 1: to trick your kids into like, you know, like or Eve,
Speaker 1: like my production manager. Uh, like his sons think that
Speaker 1: like Eric being rock him is new. Even Kirk, my
Speaker 1: guitar player, would play slick Rick so much for his
Speaker 1: son that his son actually like the first time he
Speaker 1: ever had to reprimand his son about a school project,
Speaker 1: and I heard these words. He's like, son, you can't
Speaker 1: bite someone else's rhymes, Like I guess in kindergarten, someone
Speaker 1: was supposed to do it right in the sun, he said.
Speaker 4: I thought that was gonna go somewhere. So I thought
Speaker 4: I was about to tell him lick the ball.
Speaker 8: No, no, he said that he took like plagiarize like
Speaker 8: some of the children's story and made it like it
Speaker 8: was his own own joying.
Speaker 3: But like just I'm.
Speaker 1: Just fascinating how parents will trick you into thinking that
Speaker 1: that's your contemporary music. So I grew up just with
Speaker 1: you know, an oldies do op dad that would always
Speaker 1: play like the Crystals, Harvey and the Moon Clothes like
Speaker 1: all these groups. So like you know, I grew up
Speaker 1: thinking like he's a rebel. It was like some new
Speaker 1: ship when I came, like I had the forty five.
Speaker 3: At home self. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I was surprised to find that out so well, Like
Speaker 1: in the beginning, did you did you have any designs
Speaker 1: of being an entertainer? Were you just like observing it
Speaker 1: and just like that's their shit.
Speaker 8: That Nah, In the beginning, I really didn't know what
Speaker 8: I wanted to do until I told her, Like man,
Speaker 8: maybe like twelve thirteen and I first heard I think
Speaker 8: it was when I first heard you know, ll Cool
Speaker 8: J and Run DMC, the Sucking m Season, Rock the Bells.
Speaker 7: When I heard those songs, that just changed every thing.
Speaker 8: In my life, you know what I mean, that made
Speaker 8: me I was like, all right, this is what I
Speaker 8: want to do, This is this is what I like.
Speaker 8: I used to play the songs for my mother, like
Speaker 8: your mom checked this out. You know what I mean
Speaker 8: I used to play ah, you know, paid it full.
Speaker 8: Matter of fact, I used to say rock Kim's rhymes
Speaker 8: till my moms act like I wrote it?
Speaker 1: And did you always have this deep Deapan voice as
Speaker 1: a kid, just like you are, like vocal.
Speaker 8: I don't know, that's just that's just my voice. Yeah,
Speaker 8: hell yeah. So I used to say. I used to
Speaker 8: say rocking ron my mom's she used to be like,
Speaker 8: oh my god, you're really good. And I used to
Speaker 8: be like, I ain't say nothing to us, just like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: I'm raped. I'm an rap. But I first got turned
Speaker 8: on the hip hop. I mean when I was like
Speaker 8: twelve thirteen before that, you know, like like you said,
Speaker 8: it was a lot of there's a lot of duop
Speaker 8: in the crib, like you know, soul music, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying, A lot of church church music.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean. You were born was it?
Speaker 3: Were you born in Long Island or I was born
Speaker 3: in Hempstead, Yeah, long ago. I know that Chuck d
Speaker 3: and Flavor was talking about Hampstead and.
Speaker 7: They Chuck did from the town right next to.
Speaker 3: Me and Roosevelt.
Speaker 8: Okay, that's right next to Hampstead. So we all liked.
Speaker 8: I know that someone about PMD was Brentwood. It was
Speaker 8: from Brentwood. Hempstead. Remember Son of Berserk? Yes, yeah, wow,
Speaker 8: Son of Fromstead.
Speaker 3: Yes you wait, I love that you just brought up
Speaker 3: Like for me, Son of Berserk.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm the only person that got that
Speaker 1: record and worshiped the ship out of it.
Speaker 3: Like I used to see.
Speaker 8: I used to go outside to the store and Son
Speaker 8: of observed to be outside where he's like, yo, shutting
Speaker 8: up like.
Speaker 3: The old man voice. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: Because we was like the little dudes using the studio.
Speaker 8: It's a famous studio in Hempstead that Public Enemy.
Speaker 3: Started in their pre production out there.
Speaker 7: It was called five to ten.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, so that's what we all started. Buster would
Speaker 3: be out there sometimes, so that's what we all started.
Speaker 8: So everybody used to be over there, like and we
Speaker 8: used to see everybody over there. But yeah, man like Hempstead. Uh,
Speaker 8: I think messing Man from Hampstead. He's from Terrace Terror's ad,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. Trying to think of who
Speaker 8: else from out there, Rock Massy from Hampstead.
Speaker 7: You know, those are the few that I can remember.
Speaker 1: The top So like what eventually brought you to the
Speaker 1: city to Queens.
Speaker 7: When I turned like eleven twelve, my mom's moved to
Speaker 7: Left Rack.
Speaker 3: She moved to Left Rack City.
Speaker 7: My pops had split up because my pop said did
Speaker 7: some crazy shit.
Speaker 8: My pops was wild man. He uh, he had kidnapped me.
Speaker 8: Took me to Detroit. He was living in Detroit for
Speaker 8: a minute, balling out of control. He was working in
Speaker 8: the stock market, doing some crazy shit.
Speaker 3: And when did you live in Detroit? Man?
Speaker 8: This is like early eighties when scarfid what year the
Speaker 8: Scarface came out?
Speaker 3: Three? Three?
Speaker 7: Because my pops took me to the way.
Speaker 3: You three.
Speaker 8: My pops took me to the movies in Detroit when
Speaker 8: at the premiere when Scarface first came out.
Speaker 3: So that's when I was out there in age.
Speaker 4: When you were nine, I was not so the lyrics
Speaker 4: pop talked you try to shooting me?
Speaker 3: Was seven? That was real? That really?
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, the pop man, he was off the man
Speaker 8: that that that boy is something else?
Speaker 7: He was something else.
Speaker 3: Man. Was he a musician as well?
Speaker 8: Or like, yeah, he was a singer, you know what
Speaker 8: I mean? Like I said, he had group, the Chances
Speaker 8: do Our group. They had a couple of dope songs,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. But my father's things was
Speaker 8: computers from the early eighties. He I remember, being like
Speaker 8: probably five six years old. My father was working on
Speaker 8: Mcinitar's writing programs.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying. Really, he was really, really
Speaker 7: dope with it. I think it's a school called t
Speaker 7: c I. I think it's called t c I.
Speaker 8: My father went there and he actually got so good
Speaker 8: he became like a professor there. He started teaching. He
Speaker 8: was in the commercials and all that. Like after a while,
Speaker 8: he got really nice with it. And you know, that's
Speaker 8: what he was into. Computers, heroin, alcohol, karate. My father
Speaker 8: had an a doojo on Jamaica Avenue, you know what
Speaker 8: I mean. So he used to teach karate.
Speaker 3: You just said that convo back then. Computer. It's very crazy, man.
Speaker 3: My pop's life was wild. It was wild.
Speaker 7: That was his thing.
Speaker 8: He loved computers and he loved fighting and just doing
Speaker 8: wild shit.
Speaker 3: He was crazy, man.
Speaker 1: And I know that you have a closeness with your
Speaker 1: grandmother as well, that she was in the artist.
Speaker 7: Yeah, my grand My grandmother was ill.
Speaker 8: She was one of the first Cotton Club dances when
Speaker 8: they first opened the Cotton Club way back and you know,
Speaker 8: she was friends with Lena hornle Horn used to dance
Speaker 8: there early before she became famous, you know. And that's
Speaker 8: how my grandmother met my grandfather because my grandfather used
Speaker 8: to play in the band at the Cotton Club, so
Speaker 8: that's how they met. And you know, after my grandmother
Speaker 8: started a dance school business in the basement of crib
Speaker 8: on a god Brewer and she started with like five students,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean, And it just grew and
Speaker 8: grew over the years until to a point where she
Speaker 8: started renting the building and then it grew to a
Speaker 8: point where she actually bought her own commercial building in Queens.
Speaker 8: She was like the first black woman to own a
Speaker 8: commercial space in Queens. So you know, it was a
Speaker 8: dance school business, you know what I mean. She was
Speaker 8: that was her thing, dancing. So a lot of her students, man,
Speaker 8: she has some famous students that she, uh that she raised,
Speaker 8: like Ben Vereen is one of she raised, seen like
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. And uh, he used to
Speaker 8: you know, be in the house all the time, like
Speaker 8: you know what I mean, anytime he had something going on.
Speaker 7: We used to watch it in the crab. I don't
Speaker 7: seen roots thousands.
Speaker 3: Of times TV. You know what I mean.
Speaker 8: That's like everybody get together watch Ben ben is on.
Speaker 8: You know Michael Peters, he was the famous choreographer Michael
Speaker 8: Michael Peters was that's my grandmama's. That was one of
Speaker 8: my grandma's students.
Speaker 9: He did beat it.
Speaker 7: So like that was like events same thing like with
Speaker 7: Ben Veren.
Speaker 1: Matter of fact, Peters is the and the beating knife battle.
Speaker 3: He's the one in all white be the one that
Speaker 3: got their hands tied up there.
Speaker 5: When I was six, my dad introduced me to him
Speaker 5: and I was like, but you can't dance better than
Speaker 5: Michael Jackson.
Speaker 9: And he walked away with me with so much app
Speaker 9: toude like.
Speaker 8: Like I remember when I was a little kid, like
Speaker 8: we used to fly to Cali because a lot of
Speaker 8: her students live in Cali and whatnot, So we used
Speaker 8: to fly to Cali and visit them, and she used
Speaker 8: to take care of some business. And Michael Peter used
Speaker 8: to take me to Universal Studios all the time.
Speaker 7: That was my favorite place when I was a little kid,
Speaker 7: Like let's go again, Let's go again.
Speaker 8: I've been there like a hundred times. When I was
Speaker 8: a kid, that was my favorite ship, like you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. But yeah, so this is my grandma.
Speaker 8: This is like my grandmother's life. She uh you know,
Speaker 8: this is her her thing in the dance world. And
Speaker 8: she got a lot.
Speaker 7: Of choreograph choreographers and she h.
Speaker 8: She helped out a lot of people as far as
Speaker 8: that in that world. So I grew up a lot
Speaker 8: around her concerts. She would do these concerts every year
Speaker 8: at Lincoln Center, at the Apollo at uh Carnegie Hall,
Speaker 8: you know, every year she would do like a big concert.
Speaker 8: And so you were a backstage kid. Yeah, me and
Speaker 8: my cousins be backstage wild looking at the girls getting dressed.
Speaker 1: In my backstage, I used to watch old old ass
Speaker 1: dudes you know, smoke reefers in the well.
Speaker 3: Yo.
Speaker 8: But he had a better backstage experience. Yeah, especially at
Speaker 8: my grandmother's dance school, like hundreds of girls from Queens
Speaker 8: like that was like that was man.
Speaker 7: I used to love that place when I was a
Speaker 7: little kid.
Speaker 8: Man, we had so much fun running around Jamaica Avenue
Speaker 8: and you know, having fun, man with all the girls there.
Speaker 8: And it was crazy crazy growing up, like you know
Speaker 8: what I mean.
Speaker 3: So when when did you officially you you moved to Queens, and.
Speaker 8: So I moved the Queens after Detroit or yeah, there
Speaker 8: had to be like eighty four, okay, eighty four eighty
Speaker 8: five and moved the left rack with my mom's. She
Speaker 8: got divorced from my pops after he kidding at me,
Speaker 8: and she was tight.
Speaker 3: She was like, man, I ain't doing this ship no more. Man, wait,
Speaker 3: how does she find you?
Speaker 8: My pops had actually took me on the robbery. Well,
Speaker 8: he went and robbed the jury store. I was in
Speaker 8: the car, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 8: That ship pisched my mom's off because you know what
Speaker 8: I mean. We got into the hospitation. National County Police's
Speaker 8: chasing us, and he finally pulls over because he realized,
Speaker 8: you know, I'm in the car. He jumps in the
Speaker 8: car and throws a big ass bag of jewelry in
Speaker 8: my hand. I'm like this hold onse, jurry sh and
Speaker 8: he's flying through himstead like it was out on Long Island,
Speaker 8: and you know, finally he pulls over. You know, I
Speaker 8: remember the cop put me in the back and my
Speaker 8: pop's hands was locked up on his back. I remember
Speaker 8: holding my pops hand. They had me in the back
Speaker 8: seat with him. I didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 8: I'm like, I was too young to even compute with
Speaker 8: the buck was happening. Get to the precinct. Police gave
Speaker 8: me a soda. I remember sitting there drinking the soda.
Speaker 8: My moms came to get me, and I remember her arguing,
Speaker 8: my pop's flipping on him, like and then my pop's
Speaker 8: kidnapped me right to that, you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: because she was like, I.
Speaker 3: Can't be with you no more.
Speaker 8: So he took me to Detroit, and my mom found
Speaker 8: out where I was at. She threatened, you know, call
Speaker 8: the cops on him, and so he sent me back
Speaker 8: or whatever my mom's Then we moved to left Rack,
Speaker 8: and then I went to school and left Rack and
Speaker 8: went and went to Junior high school and left right
Speaker 8: said he went to Halsey right across the street from
Speaker 8: you know, right across the street from the l I E.
Speaker 8: You got across the lie to get over to the
Speaker 8: high school.
Speaker 1: I'll say that the picture that I always think of
Speaker 1: when I think of Queens, there's more or less the
Speaker 1: picture that you guys paying it on the infamous. But
Speaker 1: was it always like that? Like when you first got
Speaker 1: to Queens. Was it that because you paying a dark
Speaker 1: what was Queen's Like?
Speaker 8: I mean that this is when crack first came out.
Speaker 8: When I'm over the Left Rack, crack just hit the street.
Speaker 8: It was brand new. You know what I'm saying. I'm
Speaker 8: in junior high school. I'm twelve years old. All the
Speaker 8: little kids my age was selling crack in the neighborhood.
Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: I used to go to school and she sees little
Speaker 7: niggas with rope chains and levees and ed max. I'm like,
Speaker 7: what the fuck.
Speaker 3: Is these niggas doing?
Speaker 8: Like you know what I'm saying, Like these little kids
Speaker 8: like you know what I'm saying, with big jewelry on
Speaker 8: looking like Eric being Rocky in on the cover of
Speaker 8: the album, Like you know what I'm saying. And then
Speaker 8: you know, I started getting cool with people out there
Speaker 8: and they started telling me what they're doing, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. And Left Rack was big time for
Speaker 8: like selling crack. Like It's well known that left Rack
Speaker 8: City was like big, big, big time cracked neighborhood, Like
Speaker 8: you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And left Rackets is proper name left Rack. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: because I always I think when right, Yeah, like I thought.
Speaker 7: That was did you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: They used to they call left rack IRAQ. That's that's
Speaker 3: what say. Left Rack is irack.
Speaker 7: Queens Bridge is Kuwait you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, but.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so left rack that's how I was out there.
Speaker 8: This is when crack first hit. So you know, all
Speaker 8: my friends I'm going to junior high school, they sell
Speaker 8: the crack. And you know, once I got cool with
Speaker 8: them and they told me what they was doing, I
Speaker 8: was like, man, you know, let me try my hand
Speaker 8: at that. I want someone want to chain too, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying, don't want a little fly like yeah.
Speaker 8: So I hooked up with one of my homies from school.
Speaker 8: He gave me a few vows.
Speaker 3: He was like, start with this. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: If you could do this off good come back. I
Speaker 8: gave you some more like you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: So I went out. I'm twelve years old. I'm looking
Speaker 8: like I'm eight. When I was twelve, a little like
Speaker 8: I was eight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So yeah, you definitely found the fountain of youth. Man.
Speaker 3: So figure in your thirties and forties now, like.
Speaker 8: I go outside with the little cracks on me and whatnot,
Speaker 8: and I'm super pad annoyed. I never sold a crack
Speaker 8: in my life, you know what I'm saying. So I'm like,
Speaker 8: I'm looking around, I'm nervous. Motherfucker's walking up to me like, yo,
Speaker 8: you guys. I'm like, I don't know. It's like that
Speaker 8: scene from Paying Full everyone he was like scared when
Speaker 8: he first old, just like that. I was fucking Parannoyd yoe.
Speaker 8: So anyway, I think I sold one vow and the
Speaker 8: police ran up on me, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: First time.
Speaker 8: First time police ran up on me, grabbed me. Yep,
Speaker 8: fuck you doing out here? Found the cracks. They was like,
Speaker 8: how the fuck? How old are you? I'm like, I'm twelve.
Speaker 8: They're like, what the fuck? You look like a little kid, Like, dude,
Speaker 8: like a real little kid, like go home, man, fuck
Speaker 8: you doing out here? And he just took the crack
Speaker 8: and sent me on. So now I gotta explain to
Speaker 8: this nigga what happened with the crack crack?
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: He like, Yo, what happened? I'm like, yo, police just
Speaker 8: took it and they let me go. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 8: now you gotta get me that brush. Son, So we
Speaker 8: have a scrap, you know what I'm saying. At school,
Speaker 8: he want to scrap. I lost, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: I was taking I'm taking my jacket off. He snuffed me.
Speaker 8: I'm like, oh shit, So these girls breaking up, some
Speaker 8: girls I knew from the hood broke it up, like
Speaker 8: leave him alone. Leave So anyway, I ain't fuck with
Speaker 8: the cracks no more. Why is this for a minute?
Speaker 8: Four minute?
Speaker 7: And you know, I just I just was just cool
Speaker 7: with everybody after that.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I wasn't trying to, you know, really sell on drugs
Speaker 8: and get caught. That was too much for me, Like
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. And then once I went
Speaker 8: to high school and I met half so they had
Speaker 8: brought me out to Queensbridge when I first you know,
Speaker 8: I went to high school when I first met him
Speaker 8: and he introduced me to that.
Speaker 7: Whole world was just different.
Speaker 8: Now, mind you, when I was when I was a kid,
Speaker 8: my mother, you know, my mother whole life, she worked
Speaker 8: for the housing Authority, So she worked in all the
Speaker 8: projects in New York, Brooklyn, Harlem, and you know what
Speaker 8: I mean. Queens and Queensbridge was one of the projects
Speaker 8: that she worked in. Her job was she would get
Speaker 8: people to approve for their apartments, you know.
Speaker 3: What I mean. So they come to her to apply
Speaker 3: for She worked in the.
Speaker 8: Office on the hill on Queensbridge, and you know, people
Speaker 8: gotta come to her, and.
Speaker 3: She decided we signed them.
Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying, if they make enough money
Speaker 8: to live in the projects or you know, subsidized rant
Speaker 8: or whatever how that works.
Speaker 9: Everybody wanted to be her friend.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So she worked in Queensbridge when I was a
Speaker 8: little kid, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: And I used to go with her to work in
Speaker 7: the summertime.
Speaker 8: This is before I met Halving all that, and I
Speaker 8: went to reach day camp, like when my mom's at work,
Speaker 8: she would drop me a day camp on the hill
Speaker 8: called Reese. So I was already out there for a
Speaker 8: few years when I was a little kid. I met
Speaker 8: a bunch of people and it just so happened. In
Speaker 8: years later, you know, once I moved to left right,
Speaker 8: went to high school in the city.
Speaker 3: Man. Half now I'm back in Queensbridge.
Speaker 8: I'm older now, and I'm saying people I remember when
Speaker 8: I was a kid from days from day camp and
Speaker 8: all that, right, but it was just being back out
Speaker 8: there and just seeing you know how Queensband was like
Speaker 8: just a whole nother world, like the fashion, the slang,
Speaker 8: like you know, just everything.
Speaker 3: It's just different.
Speaker 1: Okay, can you explain something to our listeners and by
Speaker 1: our listeners listeners, I mean me, what is the dumb language?
Speaker 1: And what is the genesis of the dumb language?
Speaker 8: Was that like done duney like done done, the done
Speaker 8: language that's like saying we send no cats.
Speaker 1: In Sweden that talked with done like after my deep
Speaker 1: s came up, Yo, what I've done?
Speaker 3: And I was like, what are y'all talking about?
Speaker 7: It's one of our homies from Queensbridge. His name is Bumpy.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 8: He got like a speech impetitive and he speaks with
Speaker 8: like a list a little bit, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: So you know that's where we call each other's son.
Speaker 8: Everybody like yo, what up son? What up son?
Speaker 7: And when Bumpy say it, he'd be like, what up thunk?
Speaker 3: What up thunk?
Speaker 10: So you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 8: So it's you, yeah, yeah, tears you in. But I
Speaker 8: had short when I write my rhyms. I tried to,
Speaker 8: like I write shorthand I try to write short as possible.
Speaker 3: So I used to write du in just to write.
Speaker 8: It real quick and get it out the way, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. So it's like two different spellings
Speaker 8: when I do it. But whatever, that's where it started
Speaker 8: with Bumpy, you know what I'm saying, and we just
Speaker 8: started calling out. He created the dumb language. That's what
Speaker 8: we you know what I mean, you, yeah, shout out
Speaker 8: the bump man. But yeah, once I got out there
Speaker 8: and I just seen how that world was in Queensbridge,
Speaker 8: and I remember being out there as a kid. When
Speaker 8: I was out there, it was like super early eighties,
Speaker 8: like probably the Juice Crew.
Speaker 3: Was popping, like back of those guys.
Speaker 8: I was too young back in the days, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying, when I was in day camp. But
Speaker 8: I remember how they used to dress. They used to
Speaker 8: have the shelter, they used to have the pumas with
Speaker 8: the you know the tall one suits can't go. I
Speaker 8: remember seeing people dressed like that when I was a kid,
Speaker 8: So I know that was like probably that Juice Crew era.
Speaker 8: And then when I came back out there later on.
Speaker 8: You know, it was it was new things happening, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. It was like their era was
Speaker 8: starting to change. You know what I'm saying, Things were
Speaker 8: starting to change. And you know, I was like right
Speaker 8: smack dab in the middle of it, man. And you know,
Speaker 8: it was just interesting to see being from Hempstead and
Speaker 8: going to school in Manhattan, you know where manha a.
Speaker 8: We went to high school with everybody from you know,
Speaker 8: different boroughs, Brooklyn, the Bronx, you know, Manhattan Queens. They
Speaker 8: was from everywhere in high school, art and design, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean. So we had friends with people
Speaker 8: from all over eight East Borough. So we used to
Speaker 8: hang out. You know, we used to party in the
Speaker 8: Bronx up by Yankee Stadium and Sheridan. We used to
Speaker 8: you know, hang out in Brooklyn and bed Style Marcy Tompkins, Sumner,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: We used to.
Speaker 7: We was out there, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So was there ever any hesitation whatsoever?
Speaker 1: Because I know, if you go to a different part
Speaker 1: of town that you're not necessarily from, it could be
Speaker 1: a caution thing, like you know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean you gotta be careful, man, I mean
Speaker 7: look growing up. You know what I'm saying. This is
Speaker 7: this is where things changed for me a little bit.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 8: My first year of high school, there was this game
Speaker 8: called The Decepticons, you know what I'm saying. And I
Speaker 8: used to come to school in the morning, and uh,
Speaker 8: I used to see people coming to school, my friends
Speaker 8: coming to school with big ass cuts going across.
Speaker 7: They face their arms hands like.
Speaker 8: Buck fifty days, face is spliced open, like you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: I'm like, what the fuck happened to you?
Speaker 3: Son?
Speaker 8: The're like, yo, the Deceptor car just caught us in
Speaker 8: the train station, you know they I'm like, whoa.
Speaker 7: I'm like, Yo, the niggas ain't cutting me like that.
Speaker 3: Dog.
Speaker 8: I'm buying a gun right now because I damn nigga
Speaker 8: try to cut me like that.
Speaker 7: These niggas was twisted, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: So that kind of it kind of forced me into
Speaker 8: position where I was like, i'ma protect myself, like you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. So that's when I bought my
Speaker 8: first gun because of that, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: Because I was gonna let the white cut me in
Speaker 8: the face like that, you know what I'm saying, and
Speaker 8: they was running around doing this on a daily like
Speaker 8: this is what they was doing. Like they was from Brooklyn,
Speaker 8: like you know what I mean. It was just a gang.
Speaker 8: It was called Decepticons. They had a female version called
Speaker 8: Deceptor Nets. They had another game called The Low Lives.
Speaker 8: They had another game called I can't think of it
Speaker 8: right now, but yeah, there was like this gang culture
Speaker 8: from Brooklyn, you know what I'm saying. And we had
Speaker 8: to deal with that, you know, because after school they
Speaker 8: would come up to different schools and terrorize motherfuckers, Robin
Speaker 8: motherfuckers like you know what I'm saying. So it forced
Speaker 8: me and my little tight friends to be on some bullshit.
Speaker 7: It forced us to be on some bullshit, you know
Speaker 7: what I'm saying. And that's that's where the bullshit started
Speaker 7: a little bit, like you know what I'm saying, you
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: And then you know, also just growing up in Hampstead,
Speaker 8: you know, that's like it's a hood, that's a hood
Speaker 8: out there, like you know what I'm saying. It's a
Speaker 8: residential area that got houses that looked nice. But that's
Speaker 8: the hood out for Hempstead. Wasn't the the cozy part
Speaker 8: of Long Island.
Speaker 7: That Nahmstead.
Speaker 1: When I think a Long Island, I think of like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a vacation spot or yeah, nah nah.
Speaker 3: Where'd you grow You grew up.
Speaker 1: In Hempstead, Bill, Now I grew up a few miles
Speaker 1: north of Hempstead, but a little bit a little different.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there's a differant part where you crossed the track.
Speaker 8: As soon as you cross the track called the track side,
Speaker 8: right as soon as you cross.
Speaker 7: The track is over. Oh you're in the hood.
Speaker 3: Certain to explain that on his episode that Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: I had a lot of friends out there.
Speaker 8: We did a lot of things, and you know, it
Speaker 8: put me on some ship mentally, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Just and my my pops already had me on some
Speaker 8: ship mentally. But then going to school Manhatan, you know
Speaker 8: that really kind of changed me because I started hanging
Speaker 8: out and on the different boroughs.
Speaker 3: I had friends from different boroughs and we.
Speaker 8: Used to deal with this type of ship Did you
Speaker 8: go to art and designer man the Fame school?
Speaker 7: That's what that's what that's all right, No, that's that's
Speaker 7: uh Guardia. Yeah, so there's another My mother went to
Speaker 7: to that school she graduated.
Speaker 9: So what did you are having both go to the
Speaker 9: school for?
Speaker 8: Because so Havelf was a grade ahead of me. He
Speaker 8: was there for architecture. He was dope. He used to
Speaker 8: build like scale models or like you know, apartment complexes
Speaker 8: or whatever, building like.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean. He could do that.
Speaker 8: It's nice I went to school there because this is
Speaker 8: all most of my friends was from left Rack.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 7: We used to sit around the summertime, where are you
Speaker 7: going to high school?
Speaker 3: Son?
Speaker 8: Well, we're going to Edison. Oh I'm going to this one.
Speaker 8: And most of my friends like, we're going on design.
Speaker 8: So I was like, fuck, I'm going there too. Then
Speaker 8: I'm going wherever y'all niggas is going right. So that's
Speaker 8: the only reason I wanted to go there. You know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying, I didn't really have I didn't think
Speaker 8: that I had any art skills, Like you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying. I had to take a test to get
Speaker 8: into school. You had to bring a portfolio up. So
Speaker 8: I was like, all right, what am I gonna do?
Speaker 8: How'm I'm getting school?
Speaker 3: I'm a guy. I got work my way in school.
Speaker 8: Somehow, So I thought and I was like all right,
Speaker 8: I'm a this is this is this group called the
Speaker 8: shirt Kings, like clothing designers and.
Speaker 7: Oh the airbrush yeah, and a brushing in the coliseum
Speaker 7: and queens.
Speaker 8: So you know, I grew up with them like I
Speaker 8: grew up with a little kid on Jamaica Avenue, like
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. So they know me all
Speaker 8: my life, like you know what I mean. So I
Speaker 8: was like, light bulb, I'm gonna just copy. I'm gonna
Speaker 8: bite the shirt Kings. I'm sure these I'm sure these
Speaker 8: motherfuckers art design.
Speaker 7: They never seen no ship like that before, you know
Speaker 7: what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Right, So I just got me some shirts, I got
Speaker 8: me some marketers, uh, some paint whatever, and I just
Speaker 8: drew some graffiti on the ship and I made a
Speaker 8: portfolio brought up to school and they was like, oh
Speaker 8: they liked it, and I got it.
Speaker 3: I got into school with that ship. I was shocked.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh shit, that should work. You know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying. This is crazy hearing this.
Speaker 9: This is that's your story.
Speaker 1: It's story, right because Tarik was was the art was
Speaker 1: the art design students. So he used to make like
Speaker 1: crazy medallions and those your baby, yo, Mickey mouse ship.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, man, sit like creative man creative.
Speaker 8: But you know, I guess uh, you know, I got
Speaker 8: a love for being creative by being at that school.
Speaker 3: Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I got a love for photography because we had photography class.
Speaker 8: There a love for you know, just design and ship
Speaker 8: and seeing what have used to do with the architecture.
Speaker 8: It's just, you know, open my mind something new.
Speaker 3: You know. So how did y'all how did you guys meet?
Speaker 3: You met in high school?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 8: We met my first year of high school and my
Speaker 8: photography class was a kid named Black from the Bronx,
Speaker 8: and we got real cool, kicking it every day in class.
Speaker 8: And one day he was like, yo, man, he was like,
Speaker 8: I used to wear mad jewelry like I used to
Speaker 8: have I thought I was slick, ricked dog.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I used to have hands full of rings, mad chains
Speaker 8: and ship stop. I was retarded when I was in school,
Speaker 8: Like you know what I'm saying. That's another reason why
Speaker 8: I bought a gun too, because I'm like, I'm a
Speaker 8: target with all.
Speaker 7: This ship on.
Speaker 3: You didn't feel like I was.
Speaker 8: I was bugged out as a kid, Yo, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. I didn't really care too much. So
Speaker 8: you know when I'm at half it was because of
Speaker 8: my man Black from the Bronx photography class. He was like, yo, man,
Speaker 8: you know you should meet my one of my friends
Speaker 8: the name Havoc. They're both rapped, you're both about the
Speaker 8: same height. You know, I'm gonna introduce you to him
Speaker 8: after school. So little did I know that these niggas
Speaker 8: were setting me up to rob me. Oh wait what
Speaker 8: Havoc boy? This had arranged marriage, that arrange.
Speaker 1: The greatest story, like the greatest life.
Speaker 8: They were setting me up that day. It was like
Speaker 8: a whole setup. They was gonna rob me, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying, and whatever. I ain't find this out
Speaker 8: till later, you know what I'm.
Speaker 1: Saying, Like lady, when you're on the proposal.
Speaker 3: But like, oh, yo, you.
Speaker 8: Remember when we first met, Maybe like a year later
Speaker 8: they came They was like, yo, remember that time. We
Speaker 8: was like yo, we's gonna rob you that day, son,
Speaker 8: But you know you was cool, so we was like, nah.
Speaker 3: I don't rob them. That's our story.
Speaker 7: That's real shit too, man.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. Wait, a minute, you're listening
Speaker 3: to the Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: Our guests this week are Prodigy of Mob Deep and Kaffyandali,
Speaker 1: journalists and co author of Prodigy's latest book, Commisary Kitchen,
Speaker 1: My infamous prison cookbook. And we got some messages from
Speaker 1: our sponsors. All right, So when you you're telling me
Speaker 1: that initially your meeting was a setup, you came in
Speaker 1: the name of oh, we should be in a group together.
Speaker 7: I was like, I'm cool, Black, we cool kicking. Seemed
Speaker 7: like a cool dude.
Speaker 8: He said he want to introduce me to somebody that
Speaker 8: wrapped to We about the same height.
Speaker 3: He was like, Yo, you should make a group.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna introduce you to him after school.
Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, bet.
Speaker 8: So after school we go outside and there's a fight
Speaker 8: right in front of the school. So I'm like, we're
Speaker 8: looking at the fight, and my man Black is like,
Speaker 8: that's that's havoc right there fighting. He's fighting that kid.
Speaker 8: So have I've seen that he was fighting some kid?
Speaker 8: Kid actually tried to stab had missed missed him. He
Speaker 8: was like leather jacket and like motherfuckers dropp niggas, like
Speaker 8: got the knife out of his hand.
Speaker 3: Had beat him.
Speaker 8: Up and everybody lifted half up in the air like
Speaker 8: he just like like he just hit.
Speaker 7: The winning game touchdown.
Speaker 8: There was dumping him in the air like this, I
Speaker 8: swear all the way to the train station after the fight. Damn,
Speaker 8: he's calling him Kiw because I was like his name, Like,
Speaker 8: his name is Keiwan. So he's like nickname in schools
Speaker 8: like Kiwi. The used to call the Kiwi and they
Speaker 8: used to call me pee wee.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: Because I was mad small Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: That would have been a better group named.
Speaker 8: So you know, we following him to the train station
Speaker 8: and I'm like this is crazy like all. So after
Speaker 8: they put him down, we get on the train, we
Speaker 8: meet each other. So I'm like, yo, where are we going?
Speaker 8: Like we're going to Ravenswood. I'm like ravens Wood. I'm
Speaker 8: like my grandmother from Ravenswood, my mother's mother, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. She had moved from South Jamaica projects
Speaker 8: to Ravenswood like some time ago. He was like a word,
Speaker 8: He's like my grandmother from Ravenswood. So both our grandmothers
Speaker 8: lived in Ravenswood. So right there, that was like we
Speaker 8: had a connection, like you know what I'm saying. Right,
Speaker 8: so we went to his you know, his craving Ravenswood
Speaker 8: and we chilled, and we went to Queensbridge walked around chilling, and.
Speaker 3: That was it.
Speaker 7: We just got cool that day, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: And we started making songs immediately, and we just clicked immediately,
Speaker 8: We just clicked, you know what I mean. We became
Speaker 8: really close friends and getting in the mad trouble together
Speaker 8: and just doing all this dope music and everything was
Speaker 8: just like so he was moving know how to make
Speaker 8: beats immediately or nah, nah, I actually taught Half how
Speaker 8: to how to make beats, how to sample and.
Speaker 3: Wait, you were the initial the person. What were you using?
Speaker 8: Uh EPs sixteen planet task scam set, four track ship
Speaker 8: recorder ship like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: We let the little mixed board. Yeah.
Speaker 8: So after I met Half, you know what i mean,
Speaker 8: and we started getting real cool and we started being
Speaker 8: like all right, this is this is we got something,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. We kind of looked good together,
Speaker 8: were the same height, we got the same style, like
Speaker 8: you know what I mean, And it's like, uh, we're
Speaker 8: making these dope. We made like fifty songs immediately. We
Speaker 8: made like fifty songs when we first met, in a
Speaker 8: week or in a month, a couple of weeks, you know.
Speaker 3: What I'm saying. OK.
Speaker 8: And uh, you know right after that, you know, we
Speaker 8: just realized like you're damn we got something here, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. And uh, we just started pushing
Speaker 8: forward with it, like, man, you know what, fuck school,
Speaker 8: let's do this.
Speaker 3: For You did the two Young record on No this
Speaker 3: is after I did that.
Speaker 8: So I did the Too Young Record when I was
Speaker 8: in junior high school.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, the boys and sound him what this is
Speaker 3: why I wrote a book.
Speaker 7: Man, There's so much shipped from different angles, Like.
Speaker 1: But the EPA won't listen to what I have said,
Speaker 1: these two of the biggest biggest R and B heads
Speaker 1: of all times.
Speaker 8: The fact that when I was living in Left Rack,
Speaker 8: I had made a U, I had a solo career.
Speaker 8: I was like trying to be a you know, a
Speaker 8: solo artist. My name was the Golden Child. My name
Speaker 8: was Lord T the Golden Child.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Because my family they called me choker. You know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying with the T, but the tea is silent,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. The tea come from choker.
Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying. Lord T. The Golden Child,
Speaker 8: I thought I was the Golden Chad. That was my like,
Speaker 8: my favorite movie.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 7: So Anyway, I had Little te the Golden Child, one
Speaker 7: of my homies from Left Frack.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 7: We used to make some music together or whatever whatever.
Speaker 8: But he used to send me some beats and I
Speaker 8: used to go record him and I used to shop around.
Speaker 8: My mom's was like, yo, shop your demo around. She
Speaker 8: was like, write your lyrics out mailing to yourself. That's
Speaker 8: the cheap man copy copyright, man, poor man copyright like
Speaker 8: I was doing.
Speaker 3: My mom was teaching me what to do.
Speaker 8: She was like, do this, do that, take a shit around,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. So we got my music
Speaker 8: to jive somehow. I don't even remember how, but job
Speaker 8: gave me a demo deal and a demo dealer is
Speaker 8: do you remember?
Speaker 3: Nah, I don't even remember how I answered that time.
Speaker 8: This is nineteen ninety, correct, Na, this is like eighty eight,
Speaker 8: eighty nine. Okay, you know what I'm saying. So I'm
Speaker 8: in job working in battery studio. You know, they got
Speaker 8: their own studio, So they gave me a studio. They
Speaker 8: was like, all right, let's see what you could do,
Speaker 8: you by yourself. That's what a demo deal is, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. They put you in the studio.
Speaker 8: All right, let's see what you If you could come
Speaker 8: up with something dope within the next couple of months,
Speaker 8: we'll sign you to you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: So that's the kind of.
Speaker 3: Deal I had.
Speaker 1: So so you by yourself, Me by myself with the
Speaker 1: German scene and you writing your rhymes, doing your own music.
Speaker 8: No, I wasn't making beats at that point. I was
Speaker 8: getting beats from people, and you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: just trying whatever I could do. So while I'm dead,
Speaker 8: I used to I used to flirt with the girls
Speaker 8: at the front desk, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: A couple of girls worked at the front desk.
Speaker 7: You know, they was cool with me.
Speaker 8: So one day I'll go to job to go to
Speaker 8: the studio and the girl at the front desk, her
Speaker 8: name was Kim. I remember her name because she hooked
Speaker 8: it up for me. She was like, yo, I want
Speaker 8: to bring you to the back. You need to meet somebody.
Speaker 8: They working on the soundtrack. I'm gonna get you on
Speaker 8: his soundtrack.
Speaker 3: Come on.
Speaker 7: So she brought me in the back office. She was like, Yo,
Speaker 7: this is this is little tea whatever da da da dah.
Speaker 3: He rapped.
Speaker 7: You should get him on this song.
Speaker 8: So they was like, all right, go ahead, you write,
Speaker 8: write some balls. See what you could come up with.
Speaker 8: And I wrote that too young, you know what I mean?
Speaker 8: And they put me on the song.
Speaker 3: So crazy. I was just thinking about that. I was
Speaker 3: really thinking about that song last week. All the stuff
Speaker 3: about about Trump, you know, defunding the E p.
Speaker 4: A and all that, that lyric kept coming in my head.
Speaker 3: It's crazy crazy.
Speaker 7: I never knew that then.
Speaker 3: You know. My first year of high school, Mett Half.
Speaker 8: Still working at Battery at this time, so I used
Speaker 8: to bring Half with me. I was like, yo, I
Speaker 8: got a studio we could work at. So I used
Speaker 8: to bring Half with me. The Battery, we used to
Speaker 8: get beat. We used to like use recording polls on
Speaker 8: the tape and make our own beats. And that's we
Speaker 8: made a lot of beats like that.
Speaker 3: And where y'all going by the poetical prophets at this time.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we still didn't figure out the name out this time,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. But uh, you know, Job
Speaker 8: gave me that studio then. Now I'm not supposed to
Speaker 8: be having other people in there.
Speaker 1: So does the story sound familiar? Is the black version
Speaker 1: of search, This is the third base got started.
Speaker 3: So take this out so now you know.
Speaker 8: Job was like, all right, we want to sign you
Speaker 8: after the boys and the hood Ship and all that.
Speaker 8: And I was like, look, I got a partner now.
Speaker 8: I was like, if you want to sign me, you
Speaker 8: gotta signed him. And they was like, na, we just
Speaker 8: want you, you know what I mean, we don't want
Speaker 8: your partner. And I was like, all right, well.
Speaker 3: See you later.
Speaker 8: You walked away from that, that's oil. I was like, man, listen,
Speaker 8: because what we were doing, it was just it was
Speaker 8: just a vibe.
Speaker 7: You could just feel it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: You could feel the power of what and we just
Speaker 8: like met and just started and through our conversations and
Speaker 8: just hanging out and the music we was doing, you
Speaker 8: could just feel like, this is what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 8: You know, I'm not supposed to be a solo artist,
Speaker 8: you know, what I'm.
Speaker 9: Saying, knowed you walked away?
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, you know that because I was trying to
Speaker 7: get both of us signed the job, you know what
Speaker 7: I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But they was like nah, So like I mean, by
Speaker 1: this time, there were other groups that were of your
Speaker 1: age or I mean, y'all look mad young at least
Speaker 1: on the Juvenile Health record, y'all look young and shit.
Speaker 1: So I thought y'all were in the kids group realm right?
Speaker 1: So were they trying to mold y'all into that ABC
Speaker 1: criss cross kind of bandwagon?
Speaker 3: Like they trying to make y'all kids group?
Speaker 8: The ill part about it is we never had anybody
Speaker 8: telling us to do anything nor ever, like I said,
Speaker 8: they put me in that room like all right, let
Speaker 8: me see what you can do.
Speaker 3: That's crazy. So nobody artist development, no do that. Nobody
Speaker 3: ever told us what you able to teach yourself.
Speaker 7: All we just did it, Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: We just did it.
Speaker 8: And you know, after job was like nah, I was like,
Speaker 8: all right, we're out of here, and uh we just
Speaker 8: continue to make songs and shop our demo around and
Speaker 8: you know, try to get on you know I'm saying.
Speaker 7: And that's when we met you tip after a while.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: All Right, I'm sure you've told this story a good
Speaker 1: jillion times, but can you please tell that death jam story?
Speaker 1: So for our listeners, you've not heard this is the
Speaker 1: illest story ever ever.
Speaker 8: Yeah, man, then let me say something real quick to Okay,
Speaker 8: just something clear, real quick. A lot of motherfuckers they
Speaker 8: read my book or they hear these stories.
Speaker 3: This nigga dry snitching.
Speaker 8: Now, let me tell you something, right, there's nobody being convicted,
Speaker 8: arrested or anything. From what I'm saying. I'm saying, ship
Speaker 8: with the I'm saying ship with a what do you
Speaker 8: call it? The thattual limitations.
Speaker 7: Is done already.
Speaker 8: So it's like this is our life, Like this is
Speaker 8: ship that happened in our life, and it's it's a
Speaker 8: blessing that we're able to talk about.
Speaker 7: It right now and that we made it out of
Speaker 7: certain ship.
Speaker 3: And you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: So when when when you hear people saying only they
Speaker 8: don't know what the fuck they're talking about the dog
Speaker 8: like that, that's that shit really pisses me off. But anyway,
Speaker 8: I'm gonna tell you the story. Thank you, So after
Speaker 8: the job, ship me and has started making mad songs,
Speaker 8: and we took our new demo around and what we
Speaker 8: used to do is look on the back of albums
Speaker 8: to our favorite labels. So our favorite label, of course
Speaker 8: was Death Jam at that time. So we used to
Speaker 8: be like, all right, where's death Jam? All right, here's
Speaker 8: the address. All right, come ons, cut out of schools,
Speaker 8: take the train, go down to death Jam. So we
Speaker 8: used to go down to death Jair with the headphones,
Speaker 8: walk in, and we should to just stand outside the
Speaker 8: door like this and wait for the rappers to come out,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean, or whoever to come out.
Speaker 8: And we've seen, you know, a bunch of different rappers
Speaker 8: come out. We'd be like, yo, listen to our demo tape.
Speaker 8: And he was like, man, I got time of this ship.
Speaker 1: See who in front of your who's the minor? Who's
Speaker 1: the minor of the story on three guests last week?
Speaker 1: And now I feel bad.
Speaker 3: I'm like, Yo, they're gonna be biggest sit like we
Speaker 3: was outside of thirty Rock for you.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna tell you it was i'ma I remember clearly
Speaker 7: who it was. I don't got no.
Speaker 8: Personal ship against him. I don't care about that ship.
Speaker 8: This is like but it definitely was the Afros.
Speaker 11: Remember the damn hurricane Hurricane you could have had Hurricane
Speaker 11: was like, what come on, watch out, shorty, you got
Speaker 11: time for this shit.
Speaker 8: So I'm like, word whatever. So we wait outside. We
Speaker 8: waited outside, We see people coming out. Nobody would give
Speaker 8: us a listen. The Q Tip came out the building
Speaker 8: and you know, they was on fire at that time.
Speaker 8: That was the try call question ship. We're like, oh,
Speaker 8: ship tip right here, Yo, could you listen to our demo?
Speaker 7: Son like check us out? Something from Queens dah da
Speaker 7: dah dah.
Speaker 8: He's like, work, check your ship out. Put on listen,
Speaker 8: playing him a couple of songs.
Speaker 7: He took it off. He was like, come on, come
Speaker 7: inside the office with me.
Speaker 8: Dumn brought us in the office, introduced us to Chris Lighty,
Speaker 8: introduced us to man. It was called RUSS associated label
Speaker 8: at that time.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 8: It was like a management management thing and plus the
Speaker 8: associated label thing, and you know, he introduced us to
Speaker 8: people in the office and Sip was like, Yo, these
Speaker 8: dudes are dope. Help them, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: He was like, help them get them, do something with them.
Speaker 8: He was like, yeah, he's like your center.
Speaker 7: He's telling Chris, he's telling everybody office.
Speaker 8: YO, set up a meeting with Russell. Set up a
Speaker 8: meeting with YO. Get them, you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: get these kids music hurt they dope yea. So after that,
Speaker 8: you know, we, uh we had a meeting with h
Speaker 8: They set up a meeting for us with Russell Simmons.
Speaker 7: So we go to the office to have a meeting
Speaker 7: with Russell and uh, it's supposed to be at Russell Cribb,
Speaker 7: which was around the corner on Broadway, Rob McDonald's somewhere
Speaker 7: down that area.
Speaker 3: So we get to Russell Creb.
Speaker 8: Matter of fact, I had the gun on me, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, the little one shot daarreage. I
Speaker 8: had bought a school, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 8: I wasn't trying to get cut. I had left it
Speaker 8: in the deaf jam office because I didn't want to
Speaker 8: bring a gun in Russell house, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I was like trying to beat respectful. Respectful.
Speaker 8: I was like, I don't bring no weapon in this
Speaker 8: crib let meet. I was talking my man office. Hold
Speaker 8: us in the drawer for me until we get back
Speaker 8: from the mean. So he said, all right, put in
Speaker 8: the drawer, walked around the corner with the Russell crib.
Speaker 8: Russell was a no show. They're like, oh, Russell got
Speaker 8: caught up. Y'all gonna meet with Leo instead in the office.
Speaker 3: Everyone has a Leo story.
Speaker 8: So we're like, all right, bet So we go back
Speaker 8: to Death Jam. We meet with Leo. We play Leo
Speaker 8: our music. He listening, then he stops the music. He's like,
Speaker 8: I can't do nothing with y'all. We're like why. He's like,
Speaker 8: how old are y'all? So we were about fifteen sixteen
Speaker 8: at this time. He's like, y'all, First of all, y'all
Speaker 8: look like y'all nine years old or something. Y'all cursing
Speaker 8: like sailors, y'all talking about criminal crazy shit.
Speaker 7: He said, I'm gonna get sued. They're gonna sue Death.
Speaker 8: Jam for putting this on the radio and do all this,
Speaker 8: that and the third like, there's no way I can
Speaker 8: get this played on the radio. There's no way I
Speaker 8: could get this. They're gonna ban y'all. Basically, he told
Speaker 8: us like he's like, I can't do nothing with you.
Speaker 8: I'm sorry, and We're like.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 8: We like what We was like, what the fuck is
Speaker 8: wrong with this dude? Like he didn't understand the music.
Speaker 8: He didn't I don't know. He didn't get it. He
Speaker 8: didn't like it, that's his choice whatever. So we was like,
Speaker 8: all right, fuck it. We wasn't mad at anything. We
Speaker 8: was a little upset, like I fucked this nigger. He
Speaker 8: don't know, but we didn't give a fuck. We was like,
Speaker 8: all right, on to the next label. We're gonna go
Speaker 8: to it. We're gonna we're gonna finally find someplace. So
Speaker 8: we go downstairs and uh, before we leave, you know,
Speaker 8: they had all these posters hanging up in the office and.
Speaker 7: They had like the Great Adventures of Slick Rick frame.
Speaker 8: They had like big Daddy cane ship everybody shit framed
Speaker 8: in it, and uh, daylight just dropped, uh de los
Speaker 8: Solo's dad. So I wanted one of those posters. They
Speaker 8: had the ill dey Lo Soulo's dad post. I wanted
Speaker 8: hanging up in my room. You know that was that
Speaker 8: back in the day, shit hanging sh up in your
Speaker 8: room or whatnot. So I told my man that helped
Speaker 8: the gun for me.
Speaker 3: Drawer.
Speaker 8: I was like, Yo, get us some posters before we bounced.
Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying. He said, ah, right, I'm
Speaker 8: hook go up. So he went, got up some posters.
Speaker 8: So me and Half is at his desk. So I'm like, oh, Ship,
Speaker 8: the gun is in the drawer, son, So Half get
Speaker 8: the gun out of the drawer. He points it at me.
Speaker 8: I'm like, yo, chill, Son, that she got you know
Speaker 8: what I mean, she got bullets. And he's like, I'm
Speaker 8: just playing with you, my nigga. I ain't head, I'm
Speaker 8: just playing. Calm down. I'm like, chill, don't point guns
Speaker 8: at people, my nigga.
Speaker 3: Chill.
Speaker 7: So did my man come back with on the posters.
Speaker 8: He's like, yo, here he put the posters down to
Speaker 8: half point the gun at him, like, YO, give me
Speaker 8: them posters, nigga.
Speaker 9: By mistake, they got to go. They got to yo.
Speaker 7: You think, my nigga. Everything went in slow motion after.
Speaker 3: That, literally literally.
Speaker 7: Everything turned misty and went slow motion.
Speaker 8: I remember literally like I don't know why that happens,
Speaker 8: but I guess in the heat of moments like that.
Speaker 8: Just so Half drops the gun like he we both like,
Speaker 8: oh Ship, what the fuck? Like being shocked? You know,
Speaker 8: what I mean, have boats out? The boats out, the door,
Speaker 8: runs downstairs like, oh ship, I'm out.
Speaker 7: So I'm like, oh, you're not leaving me in here.
Speaker 3: I start tasting.
Speaker 10: I start chasing behind.
Speaker 1: Him, like wait, my dumb man one, did you at
Speaker 1: least take the poster because that day are so supposed to.
Speaker 10: I wasn't even thinking about no more at that point.
Speaker 3: Oh, you're not hard to sit on eBay right now.
Speaker 3: I was like, not, you're trying to get low.
Speaker 7: He trying to get the fuck out of it at
Speaker 7: that point.
Speaker 8: So half ran out the door, knocked d M C
Speaker 8: damn m running was coming in the building, knocked the
Speaker 8: One of the niggas fell on the floor. I don't
Speaker 8: remember who because he busted. He like ran out and
Speaker 8: busted through the door.
Speaker 3: So one of them fell down. We and we're running
Speaker 3: up the block and crazy way to meet.
Speaker 8: By the way, I heard somebody screaming behind me. Stop
Speaker 8: them kids, Yo, stop them kids.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, look, and it's sucking. At least he is.
Speaker 11: Chasing Oh god, so he's chasing us.
Speaker 3: Oh he cheaps chasing me.
Speaker 10: I'm like, yo, this is chasing us.
Speaker 7: So we get down to Houston, right we get down
Speaker 7: to the house and have stop have his.
Speaker 8: Wild like, Yo, son, it was a mistake. I didn't
Speaker 8: mean to do that. It was a mistake. I'm like,
Speaker 8: you cal him down. Cal him down, my nigga, dona
Speaker 8: al right, this chill relaxed. He's wounding though. He's like
Speaker 8: ter because he didn't mean to do that. Ship like
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. So he's woulding. I'm trying
Speaker 8: to get him to calm down. And I see a D.
Speaker 8: I see a detective call pull up a mall car.
Speaker 8: You know, we know what the DS look like. So
Speaker 8: I've seen the D. I said, oh, I said, you
Speaker 8: have till the jeesus there because have it screaming like
Speaker 8: I ain't mean to shoot him, I ain't chips on
Speaker 8: the Z right here, chill, my nigga. So they see
Speaker 8: him bugging, so they stopped the car. They get out,
Speaker 8: they're like, Yo's what's going on. He's like, Yo, I
Speaker 8: didn't mean to do it. I didn't mean to do it.
Speaker 8: I'm like, oh my god, here come alist yo. Get
Speaker 8: the They put the handcuffs on half because half is
Speaker 8: sitting there basically confessing.
Speaker 3: He's like, I didn't mean to do it. It was
Speaker 3: a mistake. They're like, oh no, it's gonna be all right.
Speaker 3: Put your hand body back. Lord. I'm like, oh my god. Man.
Speaker 8: So they let me and my man Prince a d
Speaker 8: that was our DJ at the time. They let us go,
Speaker 8: took half. I go home, go to sleep right, wake
Speaker 8: up the next morning, and go to school. My mom's
Speaker 8: always got w b LS playing on the clock radio
Speaker 8: in the morning. So I heard on the radio they like, uh,
Speaker 8: yesterday there was a shooting in this jam office over
Speaker 8: contracts the artist some artists. Uh they wouldn't sign the
Speaker 8: artist or the artist shot somebody in the office. That's
Speaker 8: what they said on the radio. So I'm sitting there
Speaker 8: listen to it. I didn't even tell my mom putting
Speaker 8: two and two together. I don't even know what's going on.
Speaker 8: So when I heard that, I was like, I was like,
Speaker 8: oh my god. So now like reality is hitting me
Speaker 8: because I'm just waking up and I'm like, it's a
Speaker 8: new day right now. I'm like, Reality's hit me. What
Speaker 8: just happened yesterday? So now my brain kicks in the
Speaker 8: how we're gonna get out of this mold?
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 8: And I'm like all right, and right away I just
Speaker 8: came out with a story. All right, we thought it
Speaker 8: was a lighter.
Speaker 10: In the village downtown.
Speaker 8: They got the little lighters at the smoke shops, little
Speaker 8: gun lighters, Razelle used. So I'm like, yo, and my mom,
Speaker 8: I'm like, all right, we got to think of something quick.
Speaker 8: So right away, I'm like, yo, we thought we found
Speaker 8: it outside. We thought it was a lighter. We was
Speaker 8: playing with it and shit went off, you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying. So you know, I had to go to
Speaker 8: the hospital kick it with the homie. They got hit
Speaker 8: and you know, let him know, like, listen, man, you
Speaker 8: know that was an accident. Man, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: You guys to this story. You know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 8: otherwise it's gonna be bad for half. Like he was like,
Speaker 8: all right, you know what I'm saying. He looked out,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying, because you know it was
Speaker 8: it was a terrible mistake.
Speaker 3: But where a bullet goull man.
Speaker 7: Stomach after So yeah, that that that craziness happened.
Speaker 3: Y'all did not get signed to death jam presum nah?
Speaker 8: Then uh like or I leave about this like later,
Speaker 8: like now, But Nikki d remember.
Speaker 3: That everything because she was there at the office, right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And after that she would always remind me. She
Speaker 8: would always remind me about that day. She'd be like, Yo, y'all,
Speaker 8: little niggas is bugged the fuck out. Ya, what's wrong
Speaker 8: with y'all? The cat got shot? He survived, Like, yeah,
Speaker 8: he was good man, you know. Fortunately, you know, everything
Speaker 8: worked out. And that's a crazy story he'll tell for
Speaker 8: the rest of his life. It's definitely a crazy story though. Man,
Speaker 8: after that Death Jam had security. You couldn't even walk
Speaker 8: in the building anymore.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, because when I went to Jam,
Speaker 1: it was like freaking yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So how long is it till Fourth and Broadway comes
Speaker 3: in the picture?
Speaker 8: Fourth from Broadway is a company on the record company
Speaker 8: on island Death Jam, you know. So right after that,
Speaker 8: we uh, you know, after everything with that Death Jam ship,
Speaker 8: we uh, you know, we continue to make demos and
Speaker 8: just Q tip had brought us like into the industry,
Speaker 8: so we started meeting different people and finding out. We
Speaker 8: started finding out about industry parties, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: because they would tell us there was a party over here, Tonight,
Speaker 8: Party of It Tonight. So we started being in the
Speaker 8: loop of all the industry parties at that point, UH
Speaker 8: talent shows. Kick Capri would do these talent shows or
Speaker 8: whoever got the best verse a song, you get one
Speaker 8: hundred dollars. We won one of those one night. We
Speaker 8: were just going around different functions New York City, talent shows,
Speaker 8: different party, industry parties, and a homie from a high school, Derek,
Speaker 8: that put us together. That kid that was in my
Speaker 8: photography class. His moms used to work for w ball
Speaker 8: Les and she was like cool with Puff, so he
Speaker 8: arranged the meeting with us in Puff. So we got
Speaker 8: real cool with Puff right away, and Puff would invite
Speaker 8: us to all his parties he was that's when he
Speaker 8: was a club promoter at that time, heavy doing club promotion,
Speaker 8: and we used to go to all of the Puff parties,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean, at the building the Red Zone.
Speaker 8: So we started really being at all the functions and
Speaker 8: hanging out and people started knowing us, you know what
Speaker 8: I mean.
Speaker 7: And Maddy c got a whold of our demo.
Speaker 3: Mattie see from the source. Yeah, he got a.
Speaker 8: Whold of our demo and he put us in the
Speaker 8: Unsigned Hype column that he did. And because of the
Speaker 8: Unsigned Hype column and Maddie See's other homeboy Bones alone, yep,
Speaker 8: they was like they found interest.
Speaker 7: In us from that, and they was like, Yo, we
Speaker 7: want to have a meeting with y'all.
Speaker 8: Bones brought us up there, Maddie and we met Cookie
Speaker 8: Gonzales and uh we met uh Chris Blackwell, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. So they brought us in to meet Chris.
Speaker 8: We sat down with Chris. Chris was an interesting dude.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what was that like?
Speaker 7: Because Chris is like that was very interesting.
Speaker 8: He was sitting there rolling up some hash and I
Speaker 8: ain't I've never seen hash before.
Speaker 7: He had a big roll of black hash and I'm like, Yo,
Speaker 7: what is that? It's hash? Smoke it. So I'm like
Speaker 7: all right. He was like, want to try it.
Speaker 8: I'm like, hell yeah, were smoking hash with Chris Blackwell
Speaker 8: in the office.
Speaker 7: He's like, y'all, I really like y'all, man, I want
Speaker 7: to sign y'all up.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Do it deal with y'all?
Speaker 1: Did he ever interject I've never met Chris Blackwell without
Speaker 1: at least him interjecting Bob Marley's story.
Speaker 7: I'm sure he did.
Speaker 8: I'm sure he did, especially when we were smoking, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, he probably said something like that.
Speaker 8: But at this time, you know, they had rock him,
Speaker 8: every being rock him before, not at this time, but
Speaker 8: they had in the past every being rock Him and
Speaker 8: the newer, more updated artists on fourth from Bro excellent
Speaker 8: was mop you know what I mean. They had a
Speaker 8: song called the Hill that's real. Uh And how about
Speaker 8: some hollcore that was on fourth from Bro. At this
Speaker 8: time when Chris is signing us, so he offered us
Speaker 8: a deal. He was like, hell, yeah, we want that.
Speaker 8: We're taking it, you know what I mean. So we
Speaker 8: did the deal with Alan and basically it was the
Speaker 8: same thing. He ain't tried to tell us what to do.
Speaker 8: They basically just.
Speaker 7: I mean Cookie and Bones was like, you know the.
Speaker 3: Bones, that's dope. No Bones know us.
Speaker 7: Like he started hanging out with us and seeing how
Speaker 7: we are.
Speaker 3: He like, just leave.
Speaker 7: Let them niggas do them. They know what they're doing
Speaker 7: and they know what they want.
Speaker 9: Like, you know what I mean, how old are you doing?
Speaker 9: At this point?
Speaker 7: We're like sixteen?
Speaker 9: Are you going to school still?
Speaker 3: And were in high school?
Speaker 8: But at this point it's like I'm about to drop
Speaker 8: out because now I'm one day, I'm like sleeping in
Speaker 8: the crib. My mom's wake me up, like I'm gonna
Speaker 8: be late for school. I woke up, I said, Mom,
Speaker 8: I'm not going to school.
Speaker 9: And how did she take that?
Speaker 3: She was like, oh, she was like okay, what she left.
Speaker 5: And then when she came back from work and she
Speaker 5: thought about it, she said something, are you going to
Speaker 5: pay some risks?
Speaker 8: She just she was just like okay, because she's I
Speaker 8: guess she's seen what I was doing with my career,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: She was helping me, like do it.
Speaker 9: You don't have any resistance in your family.
Speaker 3: Nah, not with like, you know, I come from an
Speaker 3: entertainment family, so.
Speaker 5: They like they was encouraging the family trade, right, but
Speaker 5: it's still hip hop, so you know, it's so different.
Speaker 8: It's definitely different. So they my mom was scared. She
Speaker 8: was like apprehensive. When Chris wanted to sign us and
Speaker 8: he actually did some kind of thing where we didn't
Speaker 8: need our parents consent. Wow, that pissed my mom's off.
Speaker 8: She was like, all that, he's a piece of ship.
Speaker 8: He did say, went around our backs and signed y'all.
Speaker 3: Without uh.
Speaker 7: But we was like, ma, chill man, you know what
Speaker 7: I'm saying.
Speaker 9: So the new edition story ain't happening to y'all.
Speaker 7: Y'all used to manage us, took.
Speaker 9: And then how do they go behind her?
Speaker 7: That's crazy at this time, she's managing us for a minute.
Speaker 3: And then we fired her because.
Speaker 8: Because she was like, we did the talent show right before,
Speaker 8: right before we got signed the fourth row. We did
Speaker 8: the talent show. It was like a New York City
Speaker 8: some towns show New York you used to do all
Speaker 8: the time. And we we had through like auditions, rehearsals
Speaker 8: or whatever it is, and we're going through our song
Speaker 8: and our song got curses in it.
Speaker 3: The chorus of the song go oh.
Speaker 8: Ship, here we go, Yo, oh Ship, here we go.
Speaker 7: That's the whole chorus, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 7: we put it on.
Speaker 8: We like doing our ship and they're like, oh stopped
Speaker 8: the music stopping. They was like, yo, you can't curse
Speaker 8: in this talent show. We're like what they like, you
Speaker 8: can't curse you you have to change the curses or
Speaker 8: doing the song. We're like, we're not changing nothing, man,
Speaker 8: We're not doing this man. Fuck your show and we
Speaker 8: we walked up. My mom was like, what's wrong with y'all?
Speaker 8: So she sat us down like right after that, she
Speaker 8: was like, you can't do that. You can't you can't
Speaker 8: disrespect people like that. You just can't take the curses out.
Speaker 8: We was like, yo, listen, we're gonna stick to what
Speaker 8: we do.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 8: We don't want nobody trying to change us. We was
Speaker 8: hard headed, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Have pridect. I gotta say.
Speaker 1: Three times I've heard you easily walk away from some
Speaker 1: shit that could sort.
Speaker 3: Of maybe sort of change your life.
Speaker 1: What I've never heard nihilism to this level where it's
Speaker 1: just like I'm out, I can walk away.
Speaker 8: What is it in you? Like, what's in your head
Speaker 8: that just be like all right, I walk away. I
Speaker 8: think we just we believed in what we were doing
Speaker 8: so much, like like I said, it was like a
Speaker 8: vibe that we had. We could just feel it. It
Speaker 8: was gonna work and nothing was gonna stop it. It
Speaker 8: was just a feeling, you know what I'm saying. Like
Speaker 8: we was like, oh, we got some shit. He don't
Speaker 8: know it, she don't know it. None of these people
Speaker 8: don't know what they talking about.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying, we got some.
Speaker 8: Shit because usually people by this point, people will either
Speaker 8: have a side meeting.
Speaker 1: Okay, maybe we can meet him at the fifty yard line.
Speaker 1: Let's compromise a little bit, you know what they want.
Speaker 7: And then you know, now we were really we were
Speaker 7: really hard headed.
Speaker 3: You were just like, oh.
Speaker 7: Really, we were really just stuck on what we were doing.
Speaker 7: Tunnel vision. We wasn't trying to hear nobody.
Speaker 8: We had something that didn't really exist, like you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: It was like the vibe that we had, you know, just.
Speaker 8: The the energy and the words and the style, the slang,
Speaker 8: everything was just it wasn't nothing like that, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. And it was just like an changing
Speaker 8: of the guard at that time almost because you know,
Speaker 8: it was like you had the.
Speaker 7: Rock cams and the big daddy canes.
Speaker 8: And you know, the sent knees like when the Symphony
Speaker 8: came out, like that was what was popping when we
Speaker 8: was learning how to do rap. And then once we
Speaker 8: started getting in the studio, we started catching on how
Speaker 8: this ship works.
Speaker 7: And we was like, oh, we got this ship, Like
Speaker 7: we know how to do this ship.
Speaker 8: Right, we thought we did, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: but it just it just made our minds like, oh,
Speaker 8: this is we want some new ship. Were a new generation.
Speaker 8: These motherfuckers don't know what they talking about. We got
Speaker 8: some ship.
Speaker 7: We're not trying to hear nobody, so that wasson. It
Speaker 7: was a fucked up attitude to have. But you know
Speaker 7: what I'm saying. So my mom was like, yo, you
Speaker 7: can't do that.
Speaker 8: So we was like, listen, if you if you're not
Speaker 8: gonna follow what we're saying and believe in us to
Speaker 8: the maximum and fuck everybody else, then we can't work with.
Speaker 3: You no more.
Speaker 8: Mom get sixteen and she was like she was like
Speaker 8: all right, She was like all right, cool. See when
Speaker 8: I get home, she was like, she was like, that's
Speaker 8: a very bad attitude to have. You know what I mean,
Speaker 8: that was a very bad attitude to have. You're not
Speaker 8: going to get fun life with that attitude. She gave
Speaker 8: me the whole spiel of that whole thing, but we
Speaker 8: wasn't trying.
Speaker 3: To hear it.
Speaker 8: So it's like when you fire your moms, what happens
Speaker 8: when you get home?
Speaker 3: Like is it just normal?
Speaker 6: Like? Right?
Speaker 8: I mean at that time, I wasn't I was kind
Speaker 8: of I wasn't going home anymore.
Speaker 3: I was at the out the house already, you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I would stay at half crib, I would stay at
Speaker 8: my grandmother crib. I would pop up my mom's crib sometimes.
Speaker 8: Like we were just bouncing everywhere. I was staying in
Speaker 8: the in the Bronx with my homie from school, staying
Speaker 8: in Brooklyn with my homie Illog from school.
Speaker 7: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: We were just everywhere.
Speaker 8: Man were young, active, trying to get on like you
Speaker 8: know what I mean. I wasn't thinking, but I adn't
Speaker 8: want to be in the house with my mom's Like
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying, I'm out of here. We're
Speaker 8: going to Coney Allen, we popping, we stay in the weekend.
Speaker 8: We was just having fun and doing what we're doing
Speaker 8: and creating ourselves.
Speaker 1: So even even though Juvenile didn't, Juvenile Hell didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: do the numbers. I mean it did get you guys,
Speaker 1: so notice amongst industry people.
Speaker 8: So check this out. Our arrogant asshole attitude. Right, That's
Speaker 8: why that album came out like and underperformed, and it
Speaker 8: was like not really, we didn't put our heart in soul.
Speaker 8: We didn't put our We didn't understand that this ship
Speaker 8: is not a joke, Like you can't just do whatever
Speaker 8: and people supposed to kiss your ass and like it.
Speaker 8: You got to make timeless, you got to make some
Speaker 8: ship that's standing and test the time.
Speaker 7: And we didn't understand that.
Speaker 8: We was very arrogant. We was very you know, cocky
Speaker 8: on some bullshit. And that's why that product came out.
Speaker 8: And then a couple of months later, Naves dropped Illmatic
Speaker 8: that brought us down to reality.
Speaker 3: Have you met Naves before?
Speaker 8: Like to on the block together. We're all trying to
Speaker 8: get on at the same time, you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: We're all trying to get on. Nas had Love at
Speaker 8: the Barbecue. He had the song on the Zebra soundtrack
Speaker 8: the halftime, So this is all at the same time.
Speaker 8: While we're doing Juvenile Hell, Nas had the Zebra halftime
Speaker 8: ship and you.
Speaker 3: Know what I mean.
Speaker 8: And we go off on a little promo run and
Speaker 8: we up we're doing an in store one day in DC.
Speaker 8: We're doing an instore for Juvenile Hell, and we walk
Speaker 8: into the instore and Illmatic is playing. We never heard
Speaker 8: it before. So we listen, we're sitting there like this.
Speaker 8: We look at each other like you hit the ship.
Speaker 8: We're like, oh ship, yeah.
Speaker 3: Packed this ship up. Were like, yo, pack this ship up.
Speaker 7: Man.
Speaker 8: We went about this all wrong, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: And that brought us down to reality. Basically, that gave
Speaker 8: us that was a reality.
Speaker 3: Good thing because that was a reality.
Speaker 8: It was right point, you know what I mean. But
Speaker 8: you know, right right then, we've seen it. We've seen
Speaker 8: it before before we even got dropped. We already knew,
Speaker 8: oh all right, we fucked up, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: because we can hear the difference.
Speaker 7: We can hear it. There was a big difference.
Speaker 8: Between the you know, the thought that was put into
Speaker 8: making the music, you know what I'm saying, The thought
Speaker 8: that was put into making writing the lyrics, making the beats.
Speaker 8: He put some serious thought into that, and we didn't.
Speaker 8: We were just fucking around being little dumb ass kids
Speaker 8: like you know what I'm saying, like feeling ourselves.
Speaker 7: Yeah we got a wrap deal, Yeah I got gold tooth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So how far like when did suddenly become like okay,
Speaker 1: this serious business so we got a lot of people
Speaker 1: still feel as though that's your first record.
Speaker 3: When we got dropped.
Speaker 8: That's when when we heard the ill Matic Alum and
Speaker 8: then we got dropped maybe a couple of weeks later
Speaker 8: or whatever whatever.
Speaker 3: We were just like in the sunken place.
Speaker 8: It was like, we gotta get the funk out of here, Yo,
Speaker 8: we gotta. We was like, no, no, this can't happen.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: So you be making a second album and then.
Speaker 7: Yo, our hearts was broken. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Because we was like, Yo, this is what we want
Speaker 8: to do with our life. We're not playing with this ship.
Speaker 8: We just went about it the wrong way. We had
Speaker 8: the wrong attitude, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: So we was like hold hold no, It's like we
Speaker 7: was like no, you know what I'm saying, Like, we
Speaker 7: gotta we gotta show people who we are.
Speaker 8: We gotta tell our story the right way. We gotta
Speaker 8: put like I said, put thought and put meaning and
Speaker 8: put your soul, put your heart into the music, like
Speaker 8: you know what I mean, tell your story, man, like
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So we was just.
Speaker 8: We went in and we had that attitude like yo, listen,
Speaker 8: this is what we want to do for our rest
Speaker 8: of our life.
Speaker 3: We just got dropped.
Speaker 8: We feel like the biggest losers ever were going to
Speaker 8: the hood.
Speaker 7: Everybody laughing on us on the lower end.
Speaker 3: Na just drop.
Speaker 10: The man.
Speaker 8: Just now was looking at us like like you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying, Like they laughing at us on the low.
Speaker 8: So we we like went in regroup and we had
Speaker 8: the attitude like you know, we're not We're not gonna
Speaker 8: this ain't gonna happen again.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: One for sure, this is never gonna happen again, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. And so did you have the
Speaker 8: the well, I know that at that point, uh Matt
Speaker 8: started working at loud correct Uh yeah, right or right
Speaker 8: around that time, Matt got a job at loud Loud.
Speaker 8: They was just like a cubicle inside the r c
Speaker 8: A office, right, They had pm D I think his
Speaker 8: first solo album. Yeah, they had the Alcoholics and they
Speaker 8: had just signed Wu Tang you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: So, uh yeah, we we regrouped after that with that mentality.
Speaker 8: We was like, oh hell no, that's when we really
Speaker 8: started going in making our own beats. That's when I
Speaker 8: was like, I was teaching half, you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: during that time the juvenile hell and transitioning over to
Speaker 8: making this new demo. I was teaching half how to
Speaker 8: do the beasts and shit, and he was getting nice
Speaker 8: with it. So at first it was like I would
Speaker 8: make a baseline or some of some drums or something
Speaker 8: and then have her come add some shit to it,
Speaker 8: you know what i mean, and I'd.
Speaker 7: Be like, yo, yo, let me add, let me add something,
Speaker 7: let me change something. They'd be like, oh yeah, right,
Speaker 7: let me ask. So that that's how it was at first.
Speaker 3: After a while, I started.
Speaker 8: Listening and looking and have started looking possessed, Like you
Speaker 8: could just see it. He was fucking possessed, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying, And you could hear it. So I'm like,
Speaker 8: after a while, I was like, I don't even want
Speaker 8: to bother him, you know what I'm saying. Like I
Speaker 8: didn't want to be like, yo, let me add because
Speaker 8: he was in his groove, like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: So I was like, let me just let him work,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying, and I'll just sitting he
Speaker 8: him right to run, you know what I'm saying, so
Speaker 8: it got like that. And plus he was hogging it
Speaker 8: a little something too. He was definitely hogging you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. He was like, holdo, hold up, said
Speaker 8: hold on, hold up, Uh Yo, come on, let me
Speaker 8: add you let hold on hold up.
Speaker 7: After a while, I'm like, all right, go ahead, man,
Speaker 7: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna just I'm gonna go to store get a
Speaker 8: forty I'll be right back, come back to beat is done,
Speaker 8: and then I just write around to it. But then
Speaker 8: I also seen that. Have I seen Havoc become Havoc?
Speaker 8: I seen it, you know what I mean. I've seen
Speaker 8: it in his face. I heard it in the music.
Speaker 8: I just seen it look in his face while he
Speaker 8: was sitting there making the bees. I was like, wow,
Speaker 8: he's really he's really tapped in right now, like you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So that's how that happened.
Speaker 8: And you know, Maddy brought us over to Steve.
Speaker 7: You heard our demos. He was like, Yo, yeah, motherfuckers,
Speaker 7: I got some shit now, I got a new job
Speaker 7: over here.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna bring I'm gonna bring you up to the office.
Speaker 8: Meet Steve Rifkin Ba boom Steve. He played music for Steve.
Speaker 8: Steve was like, y'all, I love it. He's like, I
Speaker 8: want to sign y'all, you know what I'm saying. But
Speaker 8: at the same time, we hanging out with Puff every day.
Speaker 8: So Puff is telling us about this new company that
Speaker 8: he wants to start called bad Boy, and he's like, yo,
Speaker 8: I want to I want you to be the first artists.
Speaker 3: I want to sign y'all the bad Boy WHOA.
Speaker 8: So we like, we hanging with Puff every night, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying at the clubs, he like, you
Speaker 8: want to sign us?
Speaker 7: Steve want to sign us. So we now now we're
Speaker 7: telling them, let's get some.
Speaker 8: Paperwork videos in those videos. Yeah, yeah, okay, I get
Speaker 8: it in the video. So basically, the deal that Steve
Speaker 8: offered us basically was more money.
Speaker 7: And that's the only reason why we took to Steve.
Speaker 5: What was the trade off, like, because usually with those
Speaker 5: things more money but less control power and something.
Speaker 8: Nah, it was it was it wasn't. It wasn't actually
Speaker 8: any trade off. I guess trade off was.
Speaker 3: The trade off was they probably got the key.
Speaker 8: They got to Maybe the trade off was also we
Speaker 8: didn't have to do all the glossyat other ship. Like
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying, that was one good trade off,
Speaker 8: Like you know what I mean. But Puff had a vision,
Speaker 8: he had a vision for this company, and he wanted
Speaker 8: us to be the first artist on bad Boy. But
Speaker 8: Steve just so happened to offer us maybe like ten
Speaker 8: thousand dollars more than where Puff was offering.
Speaker 3: So we we just went with the Steve deal.
Speaker 8: Sou Steve was talking like, yo, listen, I'll give you
Speaker 8: all this deal to do what I want. It sounded
Speaker 8: like you already got your game mastered. Just do what
Speaker 8: I'll do, you know.
Speaker 3: What I'm saying.
Speaker 8: So we took the Loud deal, and you know, we
Speaker 8: started working on the Infamous album, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: And you know, shout out to Mattie c. You know,
Speaker 8: shout out to Bones Malone, you know, Cookie Gonzales and
Speaker 8: you know Chris Blackwell and everybody that helped us out
Speaker 8: in the beginning and got us to that point, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, where Steve Risker wanted to sign us.
Speaker 4: How did Q tip come back into the fold working
Speaker 4: working with y'all on the Infamous So.
Speaker 8: After we had you know, it was like eighty percent
Speaker 8: probably done, maybe sixty percent done maybe with the album,
Speaker 8: we was like, yo, let's call Tip. We want some beats.
Speaker 8: We want some beats fro Tip. So we reached out
Speaker 8: the Tip.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 8: He came and picked us up and he brought us
Speaker 8: his Crible Linden and uh, he was basically just played
Speaker 8: us mad records. He was like, tell me when you
Speaker 8: hear something you like, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 8: he was playing Mad Patresse Russian and he was playing
Speaker 8: all kind of ship that we so I think it
Speaker 8: was the Patris Russian one.
Speaker 7: With that LL did the song Pink Cookies in the
Speaker 7: plastic Bag.
Speaker 3: That's alright with me, yeah.
Speaker 8: So uh so, uh, he plays us that record and
Speaker 8: right away I recognized it from LL song.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 8: But in my mind I was like, Yo, let's make
Speaker 8: a new Let's make a different version. Let's use that
Speaker 8: beat and make a different version the.
Speaker 3: Right way, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: So uh, we picked a bunch of beats from him
Speaker 8: and we did some songs and basically we finished the
Speaker 8: album up. And when the album was done, we brought
Speaker 8: Qute to back in the studio to tweak.
Speaker 3: Up the mixes.
Speaker 8: Like you know what I'm saying, Like because he was
Speaker 8: nice with Dad, Like you know what I'm saying, fix
Speaker 8: the sounds here and there, do little things here and there,
Speaker 8: touch the knobs and shit, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: And he basically like took what we did and like
Speaker 8: made it sound good. Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Hooked us up with the good mix engineer is you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. So that was that was really
Speaker 8: good that we was able to work with him at
Speaker 8: that point.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. Where you're listening to the
Speaker 3: quest of Supreme, we're here.
Speaker 1: We are a Prodigy of Mob Deep and Kathy Ianderley,
Speaker 1: journalists and co author of Prodigy's latest book, Commion Sary Kitchen,
Speaker 1: My infamous prison cookbook. Okay, I have to say that,
Speaker 1: you know the glory of hip hop and being alive
Speaker 1: doing the classic, doing the Renaissance and the classic period
Speaker 1: and all the periods of hip hop is you know
Speaker 1: when a song stops you in your tracks, yo, I
Speaker 1: will say. And the thing is, I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: is really properly put in context.
Speaker 3: Why shook ones? It's so culturally important? All right?
Speaker 1: Take it take it for someone shelter, someone sheltered like
Speaker 1: me that like, just listen to hip hop to really
Speaker 1: find out what's going out there, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like I'm one of the I'm one of the dudes
Speaker 1: that the marketing people of def jam would have loved,
Speaker 1: because like when Onyx came out, I was like, Yo, this.
Speaker 3: Is real hardcore. Or like when Niggas for.
Speaker 8: Life came out, that was like, Yo, you were n
Speaker 8: w A saying this is so but I didn't realize
Speaker 8: that it was so over the top hardcore.
Speaker 3: Its cartoonish. It was cartoonish.
Speaker 1: And when I heard shook ones they did, I feel
Speaker 1: like if if Robert de Niro and al Pacino were
Speaker 1: making hip hop.
Speaker 3: That's what it would be.
Speaker 1: Well, because the glory and Robert de Niro on al
Speaker 1: Pacino's work is the fact that they're so dead seating.
Speaker 3: Yeah it's dead pan.
Speaker 1: You're more scared of someone that's silent and just deadpan
Speaker 1: as opposed to like someone's cartooning over the top. Then
Speaker 1: I don't take them serious. I'm like, oh, your your
Speaker 1: bark's worst thing, your bite, You're just being a cartoon.
Speaker 1: But the fact that they were saying the shit they
Speaker 1: were saying and such so deadpan about it. And too
Speaker 1: it was the visuals too, like the visual like that video, honest,
Speaker 1: see the video until later so I heard the song.
Speaker 1: It's just like yo, I saw we.
Speaker 3: Saw the video first. I saw the video first, and
Speaker 3: so for us.
Speaker 4: It was it was seeing the video and literally probably
Speaker 4: about a month after the video came out, I remember
Speaker 4: kids in my school come my homies had the Hennessy jerseys.
Speaker 3: Straight up. But yeah, it was something.
Speaker 4: It was just something that came through in that video
Speaker 4: that was like, I mean, being in the South, even
Speaker 4: though y'all were in New York, guys, that was just
Speaker 4: something I don't know, that was just.
Speaker 1: That was more New York to me, even any Wu
Speaker 1: Tang product any like to me, even even even on
Speaker 1: even on New York, New York, where like if you
Speaker 1: listen to the very h the first twenty seconds, but
Speaker 1: dark pounds New York, New York. I mean they're basically
Speaker 1: mocking what.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Like so for me, that's like lightning in a bottle
Speaker 1: you can't even capture. Like I guess the theme of
Speaker 1: Quest of Supreme is that whenever like these these monumentals
Speaker 1: hip hop moments happened. It's always an afterthought, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we made this in like five minutes. What was the
Speaker 1: process behind shook ones or at that part too?
Speaker 4: It was part yeah because it was part one first,
Speaker 4: I had the master single with one on Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like why wasn't that push And I don't know it
Speaker 3: just it just happened the way it happened. I don't
Speaker 3: even know.
Speaker 8: Man, we made Paul one and uh I think we
Speaker 8: made we might have made they both of them around
Speaker 8: the same time. And then we put the part one
Speaker 8: out first, put the second one out and.
Speaker 7: Uh yeah, like we shock happened like that.
Speaker 1: We ain't shocked that at at it's the reception.
Speaker 8: And you know, every time we would make songs, this
Speaker 8: is how we would test our music. We'd be outside
Speaker 8: on the block with everybody. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Queensbridge is like I said, ninety six buildings is big.
Speaker 8: It's a big projects, a lot of people outside. Like
Speaker 8: we had a lot of friends, like you know what
Speaker 8: I mean, you know Brooklyn hanging out in Brooklyn and Bronx,
Speaker 8: same thing. We would hang out with all our friends
Speaker 8: and we would play our music and we want to
Speaker 8: see how people react to it, like you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So you know what I'm saying. We and we got you.
Speaker 8: Know, our PIDs, people like Knaves spitting crazy, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean, people like Cormega was spitting crazy like
Speaker 8: it was.
Speaker 3: A lot of people that was dope.
Speaker 8: The whole Juice Crew thing, the Symphony like that, that
Speaker 8: was like shit that we that was around us.
Speaker 3: So it was like, you know, we were.
Speaker 8: Trying to spit that level of shit. These are the
Speaker 8: people that we had to deal with. These are people
Speaker 8: that are gonna laugh with us if we make some bullshit,
Speaker 8: like you know what I mean, if we talking some bullshit,
Speaker 8: if we talking some shit that's not true, like you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying, if we like, we had to
Speaker 8: deal with people like you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 8: so that's how we would test a lot of our music.
Speaker 8: We would play it outside on the block, see how
Speaker 8: people react to it, and we would see how friends,
Speaker 8: our friends would be like, oh, shit's fire, you'll bring
Speaker 8: that shit back, You'll bring that shit back. And we
Speaker 8: would walk around different blocks in the hood and just
Speaker 8: like I said, take it to Brooklyn, take your head,
Speaker 8: take it dead. See how everybody feeling it, and that's
Speaker 8: how we would know, oh, we got.
Speaker 3: Something, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: If motherfuckers didn't react and we were like, we can't
Speaker 8: fuck with that, But if they reacted, we knew we
Speaker 8: had something.
Speaker 7: So we did the same thing. We shook ones.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 7: Most of the songs was like that.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 8: We would test it out on the block and see
Speaker 8: how people would react, and then we.
Speaker 7: Were like, all right, we got one. Put that out,
Speaker 7: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I think another part of the formula that really made
Speaker 1: that album work is the fact that the musical backdrop
Speaker 1: it was like so it wasn't ass hardcore, like even
Speaker 1: for like up North Trip, Like I remember my uncle
Speaker 1: used to always that came from a Spinner's record, Spinners eight,
Speaker 1: So you used to always play the spinners I'm tired
Speaker 1: of living on his eight track, right, So that's how
Speaker 1: I always remembered it. But now it's like I meant,
Speaker 1: even though the subject matter that song was more like
Speaker 1: a it's kind of like a fuck my friends, like
Speaker 1: I can only trust me sort of things, Like I
Speaker 1: always had happy memories of being in my uncle Junie's
Speaker 1: card listening to that song, but then like y'all just
Speaker 1: took it and just made it into like yeah.
Speaker 4: It was like a position of like smooth like soothing
Speaker 4: sounds and then like the most murderous shit on top
Speaker 4: of it, like lyrically even like drink record like drink
Speaker 4: a Way to Pain, Like that's like a happy ass hit.
Speaker 3: On the song.
Speaker 4: But then right then y'all slow it down and like
Speaker 4: spit that shit over it.
Speaker 3: It becomes something to you know, we caught our drift
Speaker 3: we called a drift.
Speaker 8: We was on it, like you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: and once we locked in, that was it.
Speaker 3: We wasn't. We was like, all right, we got it,
Speaker 3: we got it.
Speaker 8: Let's go like you know what I'm saying, we get
Speaker 8: in the reaction that we want from people.
Speaker 1: Now, So what is life like now that the album
Speaker 1: is taken off? I mean, y'all got four and a
Speaker 1: half mics in the source. I'm one of those people
Speaker 1: that actually believe that four and a half mics is
Speaker 1: better than a five because when you when you, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can have a five, but then it becomes a burden.
Speaker 1: Like I feel like for Nas that five is a
Speaker 1: burden on him because it's like everybody's always going to say, well,
Speaker 1: in the beginning of nineteen ninety four, this is when
Speaker 1: you know they kind of I feel like four and
Speaker 1: a half is like the highest accolade you can get
Speaker 1: where you don't get that much jealousy or scrutiny from
Speaker 1: your peers or whatever.
Speaker 3: I see.
Speaker 1: Definitely, did you feel some sort of way, do you
Speaker 1: feel like, oh man, we should have got a five
Speaker 1: like yell madic or at that time.
Speaker 7: We didn't really we didn't really care. Like the sauce was.
Speaker 7: The source was definite, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 8: I was like the Bible, hip hop Bible, like you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying, Like that's how we got our
Speaker 8: break was from the source like unsigned hype, but that
Speaker 8: you know what we were making, you know, we knew
Speaker 8: the power of what we were making, like we felt it,
Speaker 8: we seen it, we heard it like we've seen people
Speaker 8: were reacting to it. So we didn't really once we
Speaker 8: got in that zone, it was just just go time.
Speaker 8: We ain't really care, you know what I mean too
Speaker 8: much about or they gave us four mice and whatever.
Speaker 3: Because we still had that attitude a little bit in us.
Speaker 7: Like they talk about like you know what I mean,
Speaker 7: But it was a little bit more polished.
Speaker 3: The attitude was a little.
Speaker 7: Bit more polished, but it was still there, you know
Speaker 7: what I'm saying. It was still there.
Speaker 8: So we didn't really we didn't really care too much
Speaker 8: about anything. Once we got our ship off and running
Speaker 8: and shook one Survival of the Fittest, there was like
Speaker 8: we out of here. Fuck everybody, Now, let's just do
Speaker 8: what we do, stick to what we do, stay in
Speaker 8: the studio, stay working, just keep dropping these fucking albums,
Speaker 8: keep dropping his music. And it was just like that,
Speaker 8: that was it.
Speaker 3: It was over.
Speaker 1: So now that it's more active for you as far
Speaker 1: as the reception and I'm sure the touring is ramped
Speaker 1: up and just the overall activity, how are you able
Speaker 1: to deal with your health issues and still maintain a
Speaker 1: busy like itinerary promoting?
Speaker 3: And I was fucking up bad.
Speaker 8: I didn't even realize what I was doing to myself
Speaker 8: because I didn't learn about health and dyeing until like
Speaker 8: my mid twenties, Like you know what I'm saying, my
Speaker 8: little mid to early mid twenties, Like you know what
Speaker 8: I mean.
Speaker 7: So I was like I didn't even realize.
Speaker 1: So there wouldn't be times where like right before a
Speaker 1: show you might have an attack or it's like.
Speaker 8: There was plenty of those times because I didn't I
Speaker 8: didn't realize that I was making myself sick. Like we
Speaker 8: would get up in the morning and have ian J
Speaker 8: for breakfast, like you know, oh shit, like literally every day,
Speaker 8: like you know what I'm saying, and Harolds for breakfast
Speaker 8: Like that was I think, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: Like it's crazy as a sound, that's what we were doing.
Speaker 5: And why was that Because a lot of people don't
Speaker 5: really understand sickle cell like that. So why was that
Speaker 5: like so bad for you?
Speaker 3: Because I learned later.
Speaker 8: I didn't know at this time, but I learned later
Speaker 8: that alcohol dehydrates you know what I mean, your blood.
Speaker 7: It takes all the oxygen out your blood.
Speaker 8: It drives up your blood cells, so that when oxygen
Speaker 8: is missing out of my blood, that's what triggers a
Speaker 8: sickle cell crisis, Like.
Speaker 9: You know what I'm saying, So you were having a
Speaker 9: lot back then.
Speaker 8: I didn't even realize that I'm doing it to myself.
Speaker 8: I'm thinking, because the doctor always told me all my life,
Speaker 8: you got sickle cells.
Speaker 3: None you could do about it.
Speaker 8: You're not gonna live past forty, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: That's what they told me all my life. You know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. There's nothing you could do about it.
Speaker 8: It's no cured.
Speaker 3: That's it. You got to deal with this shit.
Speaker 1: So do you think a part of the the Neilists
Speaker 1: kind of I don't give a fuck attitude is just
Speaker 1: the fact that inside you felt, maybe, well, sit, by
Speaker 1: the time I'm forty, I'm not even gonna be here anyway.
Speaker 7: So but it's just it wasn't so much.
Speaker 8: I mean, maybe subconsciously that, but I I never I
Speaker 8: never thought like.
Speaker 7: I'm going to die when forty because that's what they said.
Speaker 3: But I used to hear that all the time.
Speaker 8: So maybe subconsciously, yeah, you know what I mean. But
Speaker 8: definitely the pain that I was going through made me
Speaker 8: off a little bit, you know what I'm saying a
Speaker 8: little bit.
Speaker 3: What is the stomach like the logic?
Speaker 8: Well, man, it's like pain in the blood. It starts.
Speaker 8: It starts like, all right, you know, blood cells around
Speaker 8: you know what I mean, look like a life sab
Speaker 8: or whatever. And when my blood is missing oxygen, when
Speaker 8: there's not enough oxygen with my blood. My blood cells
Speaker 8: change shape and turned into like crushing moon shapes sickle shapes,
Speaker 8: and they start interlocking with each other like this, and
Speaker 8: it causes like chain reaction.
Speaker 3: And when when they start.
Speaker 8: Interlocking with each other, it just builds up and I
Speaker 8: guess creates pressure.
Speaker 3: Or I don't really use like a headache or matter.
Speaker 8: It's like like somebody took a hammer or sledgehammer and
Speaker 8: just like bo like you know what I mean, whatever
Speaker 8: the pain is that That's what I said. It's like crippling,
Speaker 8: like you know what I mean. I can't even walk,
Speaker 8: I can't move. Sometimes my friends had to carry me
Speaker 8: to the hospital like get crazy, like so you know.
Speaker 3: What I mean.
Speaker 8: I've been I remember that. I can remember being a
Speaker 8: little baby laying in the hospital looking up at my
Speaker 8: family looking down at me. I don't even I probably
Speaker 8: was like three years old, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: And I can I remember those memories, just laying in
Speaker 8: the hospital, looking up in my family, being sick in
Speaker 8: the hospital. I ain't understand what was going on. I
Speaker 8: just nominally pain. I don't know what the fuck is happening.
Speaker 8: So this pain been with me all my life and
Speaker 8: it definitely, you know, had an effect on you know,
Speaker 8: my mentality and maybe angry.
Speaker 7: I ain't believe in God, you know what I mean,
Speaker 7: because I asked the prey it.
Speaker 8: Suffer and make the pain go away, and it's not
Speaker 8: going away. So I was like, oh, it ain't no God.
Speaker 8: Then you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: This might be a dumb, non celebrity question, but did
Speaker 5: you ever Were you ever in the same room with
Speaker 5: like tea Boys, because I feel like y'all would have
Speaker 5: some of the same issues y'all overre on tour Lie
Speaker 5: and she seemed like she really went through.
Speaker 3: It a lot. Yeah, we had a conversation.
Speaker 8: We were gonna do a song on my H and
Speaker 8: I c album, but she said her label would and
Speaker 8: let her do a song whatever you can never feel
Speaker 8: my pains on it. Yeah, she was supposed to get
Speaker 8: on that with me. I had made that song for
Speaker 8: me and her and I went down. I flew down
Speaker 8: to Atlanta and for her to hear it. She came
Speaker 8: to the studio and.
Speaker 3: She liked it.
Speaker 8: She was like, my label's not gonna let me do
Speaker 8: it because they're not gonna let me get on a
Speaker 8: hall core rap song. So I don't know, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean, But yeah, the Sicker Cell was crazy.
Speaker 8: It was a crazy thing to grow up with. And
Speaker 8: you know it definitely he made me angry, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. I was an angry, pissed off kid.
Speaker 8: And then my father, you know, he didn't help all
Speaker 8: the shit he was teaching me. And you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying. So you know, by the time I got
Speaker 8: to high school and they half I was, it was
Speaker 8: I was insane. I was an insane kid, like you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. I was very fucking insane man.
Speaker 8: And uh, you know, going on tour, I didn't realize
Speaker 8: I was chilling my myself, like I we would get
Speaker 8: off the plane, I'm sick.
Speaker 7: I gotta go right to the hospital. You can't even
Speaker 7: do gott to cancel the show. I have got to
Speaker 7: perform by myself. This is when Infamous, you know what
Speaker 7: I mean, Infamous came out. We was like touring overseas
Speaker 7: immediately when shook ones and all that, and uh, you know,
Speaker 7: I get sick. I got sick in Paris. I had
Speaker 7: to go to the hospital in Paris. I had to
Speaker 7: go you know, different places overseas.
Speaker 8: And you know, I just thought it was normal because
Speaker 8: this is what I did all my life, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean, Get sick, go to the hospital, get
Speaker 8: better after a couple of weeks, come out. But when
Speaker 8: it started affecting the shows and started affecting the money
Speaker 8: and people booking us, and.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, that affect your relationship with
Speaker 1: with with habit, No, I really nah, Like would he
Speaker 1: be on you like yo, man, like you know if
Speaker 1: you do this da da da, he's going to mess
Speaker 1: up the money?
Speaker 3: Or yeah, he didn't know. You know, we just thought,
Speaker 3: you know, I got sick of sell I get sick.
Speaker 7: Okay, we didn't.
Speaker 8: I didn't realize, din't connect it's because of my diet
Speaker 8: and all this drinking or just smoking all this. We
Speaker 8: didn't know that, you know what I mean. So we
Speaker 8: just think he gets sick all the time. I hope
Speaker 8: he doesn't get sick tonight. I hope he doesn't get
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 3: What I mean.
Speaker 8: So after a while, or the money getting fucked up
Speaker 8: and promoter scared, the book us, that started making me
Speaker 8: think different, Like all right, hold up, this is fucking
Speaker 8: up the business. I keep getting sick. What's going on.
Speaker 8: So you know, I started doing research and I started
Speaker 8: finding out that, like you know, you could control the
Speaker 8: sick of cell just you know, from having a proper diet.
Speaker 8: It's all about diet and what you put into your body.
Speaker 8: And and also also you're like your spirit, your mentality,
Speaker 8: like because once you change your mind and your spirit,
Speaker 8: it kind of has a domino effect. Everything has a
Speaker 8: domino effect once you start making change in your life
Speaker 8: little things, whether it's diet or whether it's spirituality. But
Speaker 8: once you start making changes everything else you look, you
Speaker 8: start looking at other things. All right, Well I eat clean,
Speaker 8: I eat vegetables, all right, So what else do I
Speaker 8: need to clean up in my life? Like you know
Speaker 8: what I mean, Oh, I need to stop this or
Speaker 8: I need to stop hanging out with these people, you know,
Speaker 8: I mean get me in trouble. I need to stop
Speaker 8: thinking like this. I need to start having negative thoughts.
Speaker 8: So it's like a domino effects.
Speaker 3: Is it easy to do that?
Speaker 1: I mean, well, we didn't even get into how you
Speaker 1: guys went from political profits to mob deep. But even
Speaker 1: the first time I met y'all, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember, like the you guys did an in store
Speaker 1: or maybe ILL were just there.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: When do you want more? Our second album came out
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia at Tower Records. We did an in store
Speaker 1: like played inside of inside of that store, and you
Speaker 1: guys were there, and I was kind of shocked.
Speaker 3: I was like, because you know, even then for us,
Speaker 3: I guess people sort of.
Speaker 1: Looked at us like alternative rep outside kind of didn't
Speaker 1: accept us into the fold until like way later.
Speaker 3: But I was shocked. I was like, damn mob D
Speaker 3: saying like, damn, okay, maybe maybe we're doing good.
Speaker 1: Like I know that you guys were in town at
Speaker 1: night to do Power ninety nine at night before, but
Speaker 1: I also knew that y'all rolled humongous like big, Like
Speaker 1: how how do you if you decide, okay, maybe I
Speaker 1: need to break away, Like how do you separate yourself.
Speaker 3: From church and state if you will?
Speaker 8: I mean, I mean, you know, it's it's very tricky, man,
Speaker 8: It's very tricky navigating through that whole lifestyle and do
Speaker 8: that whole like you know what I mean, communities that
Speaker 8: we grew up in, Like you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: It's it's not easy, man, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Like on the average tour, how many people are rolling
Speaker 3: with y'all now or back back then?
Speaker 8: Back then if we was in the States, maybe like
Speaker 8: fifteen twenty May, it could be more. Sometimes if sometimes
Speaker 8: we would drive to like Genetic Chi will drive to
Speaker 8: Boston or something, and we had like fifteen calls with us,
Speaker 8: they like.
Speaker 3: So I got people.
Speaker 8: So I got to ask because we're dropping, like you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, it's nothing. So I got to
Speaker 8: ask because any of us sleeping in a room, like
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So when when drop a gym, when them came out
Speaker 1: and I first heard that on a mixtape, I mean
Speaker 1: that was like at the not even at the hype,
Speaker 1: but at the beginning of what would soon become a
Speaker 1: very unnecessary you know, Fable talked about uh East West
Speaker 1: rivalry thing, which you guys were like caught dead in
Speaker 1: the middle. What was what was your reaction because I know,
Speaker 1: I mean, in hindsight, I know that Tupac was just
Speaker 1: basically like just calling out any and every name. I
Speaker 1: mean even Daylight Soul and the Fuji's got.
Speaker 3: I was like, what are the right exactly?
Speaker 1: So I know they were just calling out he was
Speaker 1: just calling out any and everyone. But when you first heard,
Speaker 1: when you first heard hit him up, Like, what was
Speaker 1: your reaction? You're feeling like, did y'all ever have a
Speaker 1: relationship with Tupac before?
Speaker 3: Nah? We never. We never met Pac.
Speaker 8: We've been in the same room a few times, but
Speaker 8: we didn't. We didn't have any connection. We didn't know
Speaker 8: each other. Like you know what I'm saying. Yeah, so
Speaker 8: when you know when to hit him up ship came out,
Speaker 8: we was like, oh shit or word. So immediately, you know,
Speaker 8: I'm already thinking like, oh, he's standing up for a
Speaker 8: snoop because we just made a song going back at
Speaker 8: snoop and Pocket is the brand new artist on on
Speaker 8: death Row. I forgot about New York. Okay, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. Pocket is the brand new artist on
Speaker 8: death Row.
Speaker 7: So he feels like he gotta show y'all what I'm
Speaker 7: I'm death roll now watch'll snoop. You know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 7: I'll hang through these niggas for you. I'm the new artist.
Speaker 3: Let me.
Speaker 8: It's my job to do this, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: So that's how park mentality was. I think, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean? He was like, fuck that he got
Speaker 8: to show him proof to death row He's gonna hold
Speaker 8: it down, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So he went at us for snoop.
Speaker 8: That's what I think, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 8: also a lot of people say that. On an album
Speaker 8: on Survival when our homies have his cousin, he says
Speaker 8: in the chorus, Doug life, we still live in it,
Speaker 8: Doug Life, were still living it.
Speaker 7: Like on the chorus, we wasn't dissing Park. That was
Speaker 7: just like a slang in the.
Speaker 8: Street, like the thug Life probably probably coined the phrase, right,
Speaker 8: but it was.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, so this is how we was talking, like,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: So I heard that Park took offense to that, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, because we were saying thug life
Speaker 8: is still living it, you know.
Speaker 3: What I mean. So not knowing you just adapting what
Speaker 3: he It wasn't. No, we wasn't even taking those shots, right.
Speaker 1: So what drop drop a jim on him. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, for for most East Coast rappers, going to
Speaker 1: LA is like, yo, that's some fun shit. I mean,
Speaker 1: at least for now now that weird, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, But not back then, Yeah, like how I mean,
Speaker 1: just to be caught up in that shit. Were you
Speaker 1: guys like very cautious and coming to Los Angeles for
Speaker 1: fear of like some shit might go down?
Speaker 3: Or was it just like.
Speaker 8: When the La La and New York New York came
Speaker 8: out and then Pop dropped Hit Him Up. Our song
Speaker 8: La La was number one on LA radio, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. For whatever reason, we had a big
Speaker 8: fan base in Cali early, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: So we had fans out there and the song became
Speaker 8: number one in LA radio and they was requesting for
Speaker 8: us to fly out there and perform it. So we
Speaker 8: were flying to LA. We would bring like all our
Speaker 8: boys with us, you know what I'm saying, and we
Speaker 8: would go perform this song. And we had the mentality
Speaker 8: like you know, yeah, we wore already we're gonna bring
Speaker 8: our niggas with us. Something pop off. We're gonna pop off,
Speaker 8: like you know what I'm saying. That was our mentality,
Speaker 8: like you know what I'm saying. And we was out
Speaker 8: there performing that shit, you know what I mean. In
Speaker 8: the middle of all that.
Speaker 3: Damn, I'm glad nothing escalated, yeah.
Speaker 8: Because you know it can get bad. Anyway, LA's bad.
Speaker 8: New York is bad, like everybody bad, like you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. So it could have gotten nasty, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, But you know it is what
Speaker 8: it is, man like. That's I'm just saying how it
Speaker 8: went down, Like you know what I mean. We were
Speaker 8: performing out there the La La record and it felt weird,
Speaker 8: but we did it. It felt like, yeah, we was
Speaker 8: in danger, but we didn't give a fuck because we're
Speaker 8: in danger back home too, you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: When we hang out with the clubs, we hanging in
Speaker 8: the hood, our friends are getting shot. So what's the difference, right,
Speaker 8: And that's how that was our attitude, like you know
Speaker 8: what I mean, what's the difference, Don't give a fuck,
Speaker 8: Let's go perform.
Speaker 1: Like I happened to read the source article, uh for
Speaker 1: your solo project when you were explaining that, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole snoop crust, the buildings line or whatever, I mean,
Speaker 1: I got the perspective you were coming from saying, like basically,
Speaker 1: like we out here on the front lines, you know,
Speaker 1: we're out here repping where we came from and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So it's just the whole takeover situation,
Speaker 1: like in hindsight. I mean, how do you feel like,
Speaker 1: have you guys spoken sense or is it just like
Speaker 1: is it water under the bridge now or.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's basically you know, water under the bridge.
Speaker 8: Of course, we still we still got that little you know,
Speaker 8: competition in us, like you still be looking at like,
Speaker 8: you know, Jay don't really fuck with nobody.
Speaker 7: He don't do.
Speaker 3: Songs with nobody like badly. I'm surprised when Jay did
Speaker 3: the joint with Fabulous.
Speaker 8: I was like, oh shit, he did the joint with
Speaker 8: fab Yo, that's dope, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: I was happy for fab when that happened. But you know,
Speaker 7: Jay don't do songs with nobody.
Speaker 1: So it's like I know that him and Nas sort
Speaker 1: of you know, people basically see taking over as as
Speaker 1: a Nas.
Speaker 3: Jay Z situation.
Speaker 8: So let me let me let me let me start
Speaker 8: from the top right right. I was already thinking when
Speaker 8: I first heard Jay said that line. I was in
Speaker 8: the club and Queen's and it was all my boys
Speaker 8: and I heard the song money Cash Holes was playing
Speaker 8: in the club. I was like, it's dope, that beat
Speaker 8: his crazy but with the piano shit right. So I
Speaker 8: heard the line, I was like, because you know we
Speaker 8: listened to we like really be scrutinizing rat like you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, we like what he just said,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Who we talk about like what?
Speaker 8: You know what I mean, we'd be overanalyzing shit. Like
Speaker 8: So when I heard that s I was like, huh,
Speaker 8: I caught that shit right away.
Speaker 7: I was like New York and Snoop. Ever since Snoop
Speaker 7: came through, and I was like, what the fuck is
Speaker 7: he talking about? So, you know, the thought just went
Speaker 7: past my head.
Speaker 8: So I ain't think nothing of But really after that,
Speaker 8: and I was in the office one day and Loud
Speaker 8: and Pun was dead. Fat Joe's dead and I was
Speaker 8: just kicking in the office chilling, and I overheard Fat
Speaker 8: Joe said, Yo, you heard that line.
Speaker 7: He was talking to somebody.
Speaker 8: Yo, you heard that line? Jay said, New York be
Speaker 8: And so I was like, words, son, I feel the
Speaker 8: same way. I was like, Yo, that's crazy. You said that.
Speaker 3: So I feel the same way. He's like, word, that's
Speaker 3: kind of crazy. He said that.
Speaker 8: So you know, when when doing the Sauce, I did
Speaker 8: the Sauce interview and I was like, man, Jay z
Speaker 8: a bitch ass. Nigga for saying that, Like how you're
Speaker 8: gonna say that?
Speaker 7: Like you know what I mean? That was some bitch
Speaker 7: ass nigga shit to say that, like come on, man,
Speaker 7: cut it out man, like we was holding it down.
Speaker 8: We was out there performing, We've risking our life like
Speaker 8: it was serious, like you know what I'm saying, And
Speaker 8: that come years later saying some shit like shut the
Speaker 8: fuck up, like you know what I'm saying, just rap nigga.
Speaker 8: Why are you talking about that that has nothing to
Speaker 8: do with you, Like you know what I'm saying, just
Speaker 8: rap nigga. So I was pissed, and you know I
Speaker 8: was on my bullshit. You know what I'm saying When
Speaker 8: I was young, I was on my bullshit. I feel
Speaker 8: I said I said something. I was like, here a
Speaker 8: bitch ass nigga for saying that, you know what I mean?
Speaker 8: And you know he he I got the wordy back
Speaker 8: from Dame Dash. Dame was like, yo, Jay was you know?
Speaker 8: Jay said, you know he wished you just would have
Speaker 8: reached out and spoke to him instead of saying it
Speaker 8: in the magazine.
Speaker 3: I'm like, man, whatever, man, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: So then, uh, I actually had a conversation with Nas
Speaker 8: right right before this article. I had a conversation with
Speaker 8: Nas and uh because me meet what's his nigga name,
Speaker 8: Memphis Bleak.
Speaker 7: Memphis Bleak was taking shots at Nas. You know what
Speaker 7: I'm saying.
Speaker 3: He was, if you fall, I can help you out.
Speaker 3: He was just saying little.
Speaker 7: Slick shit here.
Speaker 3: It was like your life was written? Who you kidding?
Speaker 3: Some shit like that. Whatever.
Speaker 8: So you know, I took offence to that. Anybody talking
Speaker 8: about NOAs, I'm taking offence to it. You know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying, Like everybody you know Queensbridge.
Speaker 3: Is like, that's the crew, that's that's out cruel. So
Speaker 3: I talked to Nas one day.
Speaker 8: I was like, yo, son, I was like, you heard
Speaker 8: you heard you hear these niggas And he was like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: He's like I ain't worry about that ship though.
Speaker 7: I was like, your son, man, fuck that, Let's go
Speaker 7: out to these niggas.
Speaker 8: Son, what's up? He like nah, he like that, fuck
Speaker 8: the niggas. Don't go out to the niggas, man, fuck them.
Speaker 8: Niggas ain't nobody. I'm like, your son, fuck that, Let's
Speaker 8: go at these niggas trying to pop ship.
Speaker 3: Son.
Speaker 8: You hear this ship they popping man ship. He's like, man,
Speaker 8: I'm telling you man, fuck that ship man that it
Speaker 8: ain't about nothing. So I'm like, I'm you were, and
Speaker 8: I'm like, Yo, I'm gonna just do it by myself
Speaker 8: then fuck it. He was like all right, you know
Speaker 8: that's when I did the article ship said the ship
Speaker 8: about him, blah blah blah. And then he do the
Speaker 8: Summer jam ship. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, So
Speaker 8: how that happened is uh earth gott He is cool
Speaker 8: with uh, you know with Jay right and a Shati
Speaker 8: used to go to my grandma's dance school.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. Okay, and and Uh at
Speaker 3: the time, we had did a song with Vita called Burn.
Speaker 3: You know. We was like that was my Yeah, we
Speaker 3: were like my favorite.
Speaker 8: We was going at it with Jay like we was
Speaker 8: going at it like you know what I'm saying. I
Speaker 8: was going at it with Jay like little ship a
Speaker 8: mixed tapes. I wasn't taking it as serious. I wasn't
Speaker 8: like being like a rapper, like being like I gotta
Speaker 8: write some bonds like I was on some writing like Nigga,
Speaker 8: when we see you, we're gonna beat you while we're
Speaker 8: gonna I'm gonna shoot.
Speaker 3: You in your foot.
Speaker 7: Don't remember that ship?
Speaker 3: Like you know what I'm saying, Like that was my mentality.
Speaker 8: I'm not even thinking like I gotta write immaculate balls,
Speaker 8: I gotta make a battle rap.
Speaker 3: Like I'm not even thinking like that at all.
Speaker 8: I'm just thinking like, yo, nigga, I'm just writing like nigga,
Speaker 8: I'm angry, writing like we're gonna see this nigga, so
Speaker 8: fucking you.
Speaker 3: Know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: So we did the song with Vita called Burn, and
Speaker 8: Vita signed it, you know, to IRV Gotti. So it's
Speaker 8: trying to shoot the video for Burn, and you know,
Speaker 8: Burn is getting a lot of play flexes playing the
Speaker 8: ship out of his record. It becomes a hit, and
Speaker 8: we try to shoot the video. We holler and we
Speaker 8: forget a word from Vita that she can't do the video.
Speaker 8: So I called her because I was like, you know,
Speaker 8: Vida was kicking it. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: I had a number. I'm called her.
Speaker 7: I'm like, yo, what's going on.
Speaker 8: She's like, yo, pee, let me tell you. She was like,
Speaker 8: IRV told me I can't do the video. Because Jay,
Speaker 8: you know, it was like, yo, don't let her do that.
Speaker 8: I was like, word, he was like yeah, they hating
Speaker 8: on you over there right now, and this, that, and
Speaker 8: the third she was like I can't. I'm sorry, I
Speaker 8: can't do the video. I'm like, word, they really did that.
Speaker 3: She was like yeah. She was like they over there
Speaker 3: like you know.
Speaker 8: What I'm saying, They like, don't let her do it.
Speaker 8: So I'm like, all right, it's cool, I understand, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Whatever. So Vida never got in the video with us
Speaker 3: because of that. Right, So, then the.
Speaker 8: Whole summer jam shit happened and he puts this picture
Speaker 8: up me dressed like Michael Jackson.
Speaker 7: You know, I thought was Michael Jackson when I was
Speaker 7: a little kid.
Speaker 3: Who didn't think we all thought we did.
Speaker 8: So right away I knew where it came from right away,
Speaker 8: you know, right he put Immediately I was like, oh wow,
Speaker 8: he did some real ill other shit, like he went
Speaker 8: and got a picture. He lied on the picture said
Speaker 8: it was Prodigy nineteen eighty nine and some shit like
Speaker 8: you know what I mean, he lied about the year.
Speaker 8: So whatever, I thought it was funny, you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying. That like my nigga was in the audience
Speaker 8: a Summer jam My man elogy. He called me like, Yo, Pie,
Speaker 8: you know, I told you that picture was gonna come
Speaker 8: back to haunt you. She had seen the pictures years
Speaker 8: ago and shit when he was like working on music,
Speaker 8: he was looking through the books.
Speaker 3: He's like, oh shit, look at this shit.
Speaker 8: So whatever, He's like, Yo, I told you that picture
Speaker 8: come back to haunt you. I was like, what you're
Speaker 8: talking about? He said, Yo, son, Jay, just put your
Speaker 8: picture up.
Speaker 3: In Summer jam. I'm like what.
Speaker 8: So now we dying laughing on the phone, right, So
Speaker 8: now I'm like, Wow, that's crazy. So I'm like, all right,
Speaker 8: that's what's up. He got jokes, He got jokes. All right, cool,
Speaker 8: it's funny, you know what I'm saying. And that was that,
Speaker 8: and then he made you know, he was going at
Speaker 8: Nas and and me. He was like, as Nas, you
Speaker 8: don't want it withhold, So basically talking to me, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying, like, as Nas, you don't want
Speaker 8: it withhold. This that I got money stacks bigger than
Speaker 8: you and all this shit. He talked about me the
Speaker 8: whole song.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: He took a little jabbed knaves, but he's talking about
Speaker 8: me the whole song. So now I'm like, all right,
Speaker 8: this is it fucked that it's warm? You got you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying, Fuck this shit, Fuck this nigga,
Speaker 8: Fuck everybody.
Speaker 7: They down with da da dah. So you know, I
Speaker 7: was on my ship and Nas dropped ether you.
Speaker 8: Know what I'm saying, and it just I was like, whoa,
Speaker 8: he took it serious, he took the beef and you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying, making the Yeah, I was like, oh,
Speaker 8: I wouldn't have wrote some ship like that. I was.
Speaker 3: I was too angry. I was just mad.
Speaker 7: I wanted to catch this nigga like and do something
Speaker 7: to him, like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Did you ever talk to Knas after he did either
Speaker 5: about that? Because like he changed his mind and then
Speaker 5: he changed his mind to a major extent.
Speaker 9: So what was he thinking? Was it that he got
Speaker 9: mad for the attack on you or the mad for
Speaker 9: the attack?
Speaker 3: I think no. I think Nas did the well all
Speaker 3: said to defend his title.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, I think Nas did eta and the song
Speaker 8: called Building Destroy number one because Jay mentioned his name,
Speaker 8: so he like, I not fucked that and plus we
Speaker 8: was me and I was already talking about I was like, yo,
Speaker 8: let's go at these niggas, like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: But now I guess he heard that song and that
Speaker 3: drew the line. He was like, man, fuck that.
Speaker 8: So he made a song called Building Destroyer also at
Speaker 8: the same time, and he shipped on me talking about
Speaker 8: your pology get robbed? You know what he was talking about.
Speaker 8: Knives was saying some things that he doesn't have no
Speaker 8: idea what really happened. He thinks he knows, but he
Speaker 8: really doesn't know. So he was something I got robbed
Speaker 8: this that a third and at the end of the
Speaker 8: song he apologized to me, you needed the song, yo,
Speaker 8: p I love you man, Just get away from them
Speaker 8: fake ass niggas.
Speaker 3: That's what he's saying on the song, like you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying. After he just shot it on me
Speaker 3: the whole I'm like, Yo, where did this come from? Oh?
Speaker 9: He hits you like, yo, I got this joint.
Speaker 8: Building Destroyer was just in a studio with him, Like
Speaker 8: I was mad that they was rapping about nas.
Speaker 7: I'm like, yoyo, fuck that, Let's go out to these niggas.
Speaker 7: They rapping about you, son, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: And now he had a song this on me. I'm like,
Speaker 7: where did this come from? I don't have no beef
Speaker 7: for nos.
Speaker 3: I hate to ask this. What album is that one?
Speaker 3: No it was on? Was it still madic? I think
Speaker 3: I think show was still mad? Really? I think I.
Speaker 8: Found out that Nas was mad at me because I
Speaker 8: did the song with cor Mega right, and I didn't when.
Speaker 3: I did this, which is one of my favorite fucking
Speaker 3: mob D songs on Murder Music.
Speaker 7: Right, no, no, no, no no, it was one of
Speaker 7: the Mega songs.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 7: When I did the song with cor Mega, he didn't
Speaker 7: have a verse on it. It was just a beat.
Speaker 7: I went wrote my verse to it.
Speaker 3: I left. When he puts the song out, he writes
Speaker 3: his whole verse this and notas Oh.
Speaker 8: So I didn't know that before three one situation, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. I didn't know that, So then
Speaker 8: I found out later That's why Nas. I guess he
Speaker 8: thought my verse was about him because he heard that's
Speaker 8: fall from you.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. I didn't.
Speaker 7: I never.
Speaker 3: Find out that.
Speaker 8: I guess making changes verse without you even knowing. I
Speaker 8: guess years later after me being vocal about it and
Speaker 8: talking about it.
Speaker 3: That's why I said, that's why I wrote.
Speaker 7: That's why I.
Speaker 8: Wrote the book because the story is so much complex,
Speaker 8: pieces to everything. I want people to understand how everything
Speaker 8: transpired and how it went down. I communicating that was
Speaker 8: one of the main reasons I wrote that book. And
Speaker 8: plus I looked at it like, this is my youth.
Speaker 7: I'm a grown man now.
Speaker 3: That book is my youth. That's my youth, that's.
Speaker 7: Me growing up.
Speaker 8: I'm a grown man now. I Don'm not like that
Speaker 8: no more, you know what I mean. I was very
Speaker 8: hard headed and ignorant and all my bullshit, and I
Speaker 8: grew up. So I was like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 8: gonna write a book and I'm gonna just like you know,
Speaker 8: I'm gonna explain how I grew up, and I'm explaining
Speaker 8: certain situations for people so they can understand why this happened,
Speaker 8: How did that happen?
Speaker 3: How did you?
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying? Like, there was so many questions,
Speaker 7: and I'm sure that fans wanted to know, why is
Speaker 7: y'all beefing?
Speaker 3: Why did this?
Speaker 8: How did this start with it? That was the main
Speaker 8: reason I wrote this book because I want people to
Speaker 8: have a clear picture of how it actually went down. Like,
Speaker 8: oh yeah, I see Nas everyone again. I've just seen
Speaker 8: him recently at New York Fashion Week. We kicked it
Speaker 8: like you know what I'm saying, and we were talking
Speaker 8: about doing some new music together.
Speaker 3: So we're cool.
Speaker 7: I don't got no problem with nots. We never really
Speaker 7: had it.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, how come like a Queen's Bridge,
Speaker 1: like just Summit Meeting album never went down.
Speaker 7: There's too many Yeah, it's too many egos. There's too
Speaker 7: many people like.
Speaker 1: Thinking like my deep Nas like like yeah, like eight
Speaker 1: some of the most incredible as MC.
Speaker 3: One day.
Speaker 7: I was on the phone with Pharrell and Pharrell was
Speaker 7: like our first conversation ever.
Speaker 8: At second conversation, who's on the phone And he was like, Yo,
Speaker 8: you gotta ask you something. He was like, what's wrong
Speaker 8: with y'all Queensbridge niggas? Why don't you to fucking stick
Speaker 8: together and just do music? My nigga's wrong with your niggas?
Speaker 3: Ouh?
Speaker 7: Like I'm like, yo, son, it just is what it is.
Speaker 7: My niggas just hood ship, Like that's what happens.
Speaker 9: Man.
Speaker 7: Everybody don't get along.
Speaker 8: I mean, I'm sure everybody wants to be lovey dovey
Speaker 8: and picture perfect, but it's not like that, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying, Like.
Speaker 4: What's the what's the deal now with I'm thinking about
Speaker 4: other queenslandsh cats like Mega Nature, Littles, balls and hooks,
Speaker 4: Like what's what's.
Speaker 7: They're all doing anything?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
Speaker 8: They doing aything and you know, we doing our thing,
Speaker 8: and that's It's just is what it is. Everybody is
Speaker 8: doing their own separate things like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I mean, especially for me, I look at it. I
Speaker 8: went through a lot of shit, you know what i mean,
Speaker 8: just like being out there because I'm like an outside
Speaker 8: out there, you know what I'm saying. So a lot
Speaker 8: of people treated me like that. They was like he
Speaker 8: ain't from the hood. I always had to deal with
Speaker 8: that attitude a little bit. A lot of people might
Speaker 8: have been scared to say it or they didn't want
Speaker 8: to say it, but I could just feel it, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, And a lot of people did
Speaker 8: say it, so it kind of turned me off a
Speaker 8: little bit. It made me really want to just do
Speaker 8: my own thing. Like I never said I was from Queensbridge.
Speaker 8: Always say I'm from Hempstead, like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: and these a lot of a lot of different people
Speaker 8: from Queensbridge would like to would like to have you
Speaker 8: think that I'm a fake Queen like I like I
Speaker 8: say I'm from Queensbridge, like p ain't rarely from the hood,
Speaker 8: like I never said I was. You just want people
Speaker 8: to think that, like you know what I'm saying. Stop
Speaker 8: brutting that in people's minds, like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: So I had to deal with that attitude all the
Speaker 7: time with a lot of rappers, a lot of regular.
Speaker 3: People in the hood or whatever whatever.
Speaker 8: So it kind of turned me off and made me
Speaker 8: just like you know what, I kind of I kind
Speaker 8: of I just do my own shit cause I gotta
Speaker 8: show it made me like I have to show you
Speaker 8: now that I don't care about none of this. I'm
Speaker 8: my own person, I'm my own entity. Y'all don't control
Speaker 8: anything I do. Y'all don't scare me. I don't give
Speaker 8: a fuck if from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queensbridge, Bare, queens.
Speaker 7: La, I don't give a fuck where are you from?
Speaker 7: This is my life.
Speaker 8: Everybody live their life, and I don't live my life
Speaker 8: in fear, you know what I'm saying. So it made
Speaker 8: me back up over everybody. It made me back up
Speaker 8: over everybody and just want to do my own thing.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 8: That's why I started doing, you know, my own shit, man,
Speaker 8: because I started dealing with a lot of that, a
Speaker 8: lot of that, you know, just just weird shit people
Speaker 8: like he's not from out here, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Don't you think it's ironic that like amongst that, all
Speaker 5: those mcs who look at you like that in that way,
Speaker 5: It's like, now they're raising children and they're bringing them
Speaker 5: up in a way that you were brought up in
Speaker 5: your childhood, like culturally and all that stuff. And I
Speaker 5: even thought that now would looking at the video you
Speaker 5: doing bad landing like that, now that we have the
Speaker 5: context of where that come from, it adds to the
Speaker 5: dopeness of who you are, right And now I look
Speaker 5: at even a blue ivy and I'm.
Speaker 9: Like, that's her. She's growing up in that environment. So
Speaker 9: do you see that now as clearly?
Speaker 8: And I just think that, you know, it's not everybody.
Speaker 8: Everybody's not a bad person, Like everybody didn't have that attitude.
Speaker 8: It was only certain particular people and yeah, I mean,
Speaker 8: it just is what it is.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 8: I'm me, Man, you know what I'm saying, And I'm
Speaker 8: the type of person. I was trying to get everybody together,
Speaker 8: and you know I'm that type of person. I'm like, Yo,
Speaker 8: all right, come on, you're gonna rap. We made Annoyed
Speaker 8: and Twin and everybody rap, like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: We was like, nah, you're gonna rap Nigga and Nigga Annoyed,
Speaker 8: Like I don't want to sell drugs.
Speaker 7: I don't want to rap, you know what I'm saying, Like, no,
Speaker 7: come to the studio with us. Come on, you're gonna
Speaker 7: rap son. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I used to help Anoid write his shit, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. And we used to all help each other,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. And then it was just like,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. I'm that type of person
Speaker 8: to try to, you know, keep the team strong and
Speaker 8: keep everybody together. I shot a movie for Queensbridge, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, called Murder Music. I put everybody's
Speaker 8: in the movie. Nah's, everybody's in that motherfucker, Like you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. That's the type of person I am.
Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying, Like, I try to do
Speaker 8: shit the right way, get it together, and then you
Speaker 8: got niggas that's hate us. They don't want to see that.
Speaker 8: Like he ain't even from out here.
Speaker 3: Why was he doing that? I should be doing it?
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. All right, So you listened
Speaker 3: to the quest of Supreme.
Speaker 1: We're into our last hour Prodigy of mob Deep and
Speaker 1: Kaffe Yonderley, journalist and co author of Prodigy's latest book,
Speaker 1: Commisary Kitchen, my infamous prison cookbook, And we'll be right
Speaker 1: back after quick message from our sponsor. So, I feel
Speaker 1: like your journey, it's probably you, of anyone has had
Speaker 1: a kind of a parallel journey to that of like
Speaker 1: Malcolm X, where like you, you had your Detroit Red experience.
Speaker 3: Literally Detroit, right, Oh damn, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you you you you had your your Malcolm
Speaker 1: little Detroit read experience. And then in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight when you had to do your bid you know,
Speaker 1: you said and that that that really change that saved
Speaker 1: my life. Explain that because what I want to know
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to ask it away because I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people have a tendency especially in the press,
Speaker 1: they have a tendency to like fetishize jail. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: or just like people had experience, so tell me what
Speaker 1: was it like or whatever. But I'm I'm personally curious,
Speaker 1: like to be a celebrity going into that environment, like
Speaker 1: what is it what is your first day like when
Speaker 1: you're when you're going there.
Speaker 8: All right, let me let me just back up a
Speaker 8: little bit and say because I always think of it.
Speaker 8: I always think about people comments when they you know
Speaker 8: what I mean, hear the podcast or like people with
Speaker 8: what they say, and a lot of people like to say,
Speaker 8: why is he talking about all this is over? It's
Speaker 8: in the past, Like why you keep saying It's like,
Speaker 8: because this is the questions I'm being.
Speaker 3: Asked, So I have to answer the question.
Speaker 7: All right, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I just want to make that clear real quick for
Speaker 8: the listeners to shuttle that call shit down, Like I'm
Speaker 8: being asked questions.
Speaker 7: That's why I'm talking about this, Like you know what
Speaker 7: I'm saying. And you know, I wrote a book about
Speaker 7: my life and my youth.
Speaker 8: I wrote a book about my youth and my book
Speaker 8: it talks about all these things, and you know what
Speaker 8: I mean, that's my past. I'm a grown man now,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. So I put my I
Speaker 8: put my youth out there for the people so they
Speaker 8: could see all the fucked up shit. And now I
Speaker 8: grew up in all the fucked up shit that I
Speaker 8: did and been through, and you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: all the good shit and what got me to this point.
Speaker 7: So that's why I did this book. That's why I
Speaker 7: do these interviews.
Speaker 8: And talk about past things a lot, because these are
Speaker 8: questions that people ask and they want to know the
Speaker 8: answers to. So going when I got locked up, it
Speaker 8: was the best thing that happened to me because at
Speaker 8: this time I was dealing with a lot of hatred
Speaker 8: coming from people from certain people from Queensbridge. You know
Speaker 8: what I mean, certain people from uh, you know, wherever, wherever,
Speaker 8: but mostly from Queensbridge. A couple of individuals that have
Speaker 8: few problems with that. They just didn't like me.
Speaker 3: Can I ask a.
Speaker 1: Quick question, so after the infamous, are you still living
Speaker 1: in the queens Bridge area or did you like we
Speaker 1: We probably moved.
Speaker 8: We probably moved like around right after Infamous came out,
Speaker 8: you know, I mean, I was living with having Queensland
Speaker 8: for like two years when we was working on the
Speaker 8: Infamous you know what I'm saying, Right, we would stay
Speaker 8: at his crib or that we would take the equipment
Speaker 8: back to Long Island Hempstead changed the scenery for a
Speaker 8: little while, then we go back to queens Bridge, like
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. So after the Infamous drop
Speaker 8: and we was doing tours and shit, we kind of
Speaker 8: like but we would still go back all the time
Speaker 8: because that's our peoples is on the block, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. And we grew up with the mentalities.
Speaker 8: You don't shit on your people, okay, you always take
Speaker 8: care of your people, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: You don't run away from problems. You don't run away
Speaker 8: from anything. You deal with it, You face it, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, and you deal with the shit.
Speaker 8: That's how we grew up. So that's why I was
Speaker 8: still there in these communities dealing with my peoples that
Speaker 8: I grew up with my pizs because I'm not the
Speaker 8: type of person that's gonna run away from shit that
Speaker 8: gotta deal with, Like you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 8: we were just learning how to navigate, uh, being celebrity
Speaker 8: and all that shit, and so.
Speaker 1: It's never awkward going back there, even though you're obviously
Speaker 1: established as a celebrity rapper and.
Speaker 7: Nah, because that was just like home base. That was
Speaker 7: like the block. You know what I'm saying. We go
Speaker 7: to the block, have fun, like drink all night.
Speaker 3: We used to.
Speaker 8: I just fall asleep on the bench, wake up in
Speaker 8: the morning, little kids going to school, you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying, Like I'm waking up like, oh shit, Like
Speaker 8: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So it's just like that was the block. That's why.
Speaker 7: That's why our friends is at. We made something monumental
Speaker 7: from this block. We created Infamous, Mob Deep, we created
Speaker 7: all this shit. So this is our ship, this is
Speaker 7: our people, like, this is our home team. So that's
Speaker 7: how mentality was. But you know, after a while, you know,
Speaker 7: we deal with a lot of jealousy people black pink
Speaker 7: Pee coming around with a jewelry on.
Speaker 8: He ain't from out here, right, Oh nigga rapping about
Speaker 8: my life while you rapping about my life, Like that's
Speaker 8: what they like to say. Like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: Rapping about my life. Everybody likes to say that that's
Speaker 8: so crazy. But anyway, I was dealing with people that
Speaker 8: didn't grow up with me. Have it, grew up with
Speaker 8: all these people, you know all I knowying twin, they
Speaker 8: grew up with all these niggas.
Speaker 3: I didn't grow up with these people, you.
Speaker 8: Know what I'm saying. So they don't know me. I
Speaker 8: don't really know them. We're figuring out each other. I'm
Speaker 8: seeing who scared who not, who's putting pressure on people
Speaker 8: who're doing this. I'm like, oh, word, that's how these
Speaker 8: niggas get dawn Like word, that's how it's.
Speaker 3: Out here in the world.
Speaker 8: Like you know what I'm saying, I'm learning. I'm kids still,
Speaker 8: like I'm learning as I go. And you know, we
Speaker 8: got to the point where we were just dealing with
Speaker 8: a lot of jealousy and we had to click up.
Speaker 8: We had to strap up, like you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: it's on Like we had to strap up, like we
Speaker 8: got beef with niggas that shoot people. You know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying, Like these niggas shoot people like and that's it.
Speaker 8: So they cut people, shoot people like That's who we
Speaker 8: was dealing with. So I'm protecting my myself, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean, I would carry the hammer. I'm not
Speaker 8: out doing no harm to nobody, you know what i mean.
Speaker 8: At this point in my life, I'm just protecting myself.
Speaker 8: So you know, it just got bad, man. It got
Speaker 8: to the point where you know, I started just just
Speaker 8: losing it, man, Like you know what I'm saying so
Speaker 8: much negative, negative.
Speaker 7: Thoughts, so much all the time, Just ready to shoot somebody.
Speaker 8: Every time I get out my car and walk into
Speaker 8: my crib or what whatever, I'm like, all right, it's
Speaker 8: somebody gonna try to run up on my car or
Speaker 8: be in the bushes or I'm on point, Like you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying, Like certain shit that we used
Speaker 8: to do to people back in the days.
Speaker 3: We was bad kids, Like we was bad growing up
Speaker 3: in high school. We was like Carma would come back there.
Speaker 7: We was foul niggas. We was doing foul shit to people,
Speaker 7: were robbing people.
Speaker 8: Doing foul you know, young young shit, right, So I
Speaker 8: got the mentality already, like that's how niggas get down,
Speaker 8: and I'm not gonna let that happen to me. So
Speaker 8: I'm like, you know, carrying guns, I'm dealing with this
Speaker 8: mentality or time, and that shit rots your fucking brain
Speaker 8: and your your spirit. That shit rots you keep thinking
Speaker 8: like that and keep living like that and moving like that,
Speaker 8: it just takes away from your spirit. Man, It just
Speaker 8: makes you a foul person after a while, Like you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, because you're dealing with all this
Speaker 8: negativity and people saying they gonna do this to me
Speaker 8: when they see me and making threats, and then I
Speaker 8: gotta stand up for myself.
Speaker 7: Like, nigga, you ain't doing nothing when you see me,
Speaker 7: Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: And that's just what it was.
Speaker 8: So unfortunately, this is the you know, the crazy life
Speaker 8: that I was growing up living and the shit that
Speaker 8: I had to deal with, and it got to the
Speaker 8: point where you know, I was just out of control,
Speaker 8: man smoking, man weig, just drinking heavily, like I was
Speaker 8: already learned that shit fucks up my sicker cell when
Speaker 8: I do that. But I was so angry and just
Speaker 8: wanting to hurt somebody, just always like trickle finger, itchy,
Speaker 8: like ready to show a nigga, like don't play with me,
Speaker 8: like I'm just trying to. I'm going about my business,
Speaker 8: doing my music I'm making my money. Don't come over
Speaker 8: here playing with my life, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: because you're gonna find out what happens.
Speaker 3: So this is my mentality every day.
Speaker 8: And that's just started to like I said, it started
Speaker 8: to ride away in my spirit, my brain. Everything was
Speaker 8: just like h it felt disgusting. And I didn't realize
Speaker 8: how disgusting it was until I got caught with the
Speaker 8: gun in my car, got locked up, and I just
Speaker 8: started thinking about everything, like damn, just just living that
Speaker 8: life and just not thinking being young minded, and it
Speaker 8: was just it was just bad.
Speaker 3: It wasn't good, man.
Speaker 8: It was I was I was gonna eventually get killed
Speaker 8: or some or I was gonna kill somebody or hurt out,
Speaker 8: and I would have went to jail.
Speaker 7: One of the other was definitely gonna happen.
Speaker 8: That was definitely, for sure, one thousand percent gonna happen
Speaker 8: eventually if I didn't go to jail. You know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying. It was like serious, and it's sad to
Speaker 8: say it's like that, you know what I mean? And
Speaker 8: I know a lot of people who listen to this interview,
Speaker 8: Like I said on the album, like you know what
Speaker 8: I mean.
Speaker 3: Pete think he tough? Pee talking tough? Nah, you real.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. I think it's tough.
Speaker 8: But I like to address the people that think that
Speaker 8: so they can hear me say that. So save your
Speaker 8: little pee think he tough comment, because I'm already ahead
Speaker 8: of you. Though I know that's what you're thinking. I doubt.
Speaker 3: We have a bunch of nervous some people.
Speaker 8: They hear that and they be like, oh this. You know,
Speaker 8: this guy think he's talking tough. He trying to make
Speaker 8: his he trying to portray his life that something that
Speaker 8: is not. I'm just being honest with you.
Speaker 3: You know what it was.
Speaker 1: I really thank you for this, because the thing is
Speaker 1: that hip hop really doesn't allow for its figures to
Speaker 1: come uh in a kind of a three dimensional, flesh
Speaker 1: and blood tone like this is the first time I'm
Speaker 1: really hearing your story. Like I've known of you for
Speaker 1: twenty plus years as an artist, and I've read lots
Speaker 1: of articles, but you know, I've never ever known about
Speaker 1: your life or your experiences like this is the first
Speaker 1: time I'm really, really really hearing you as a human being,
Speaker 1: even speaking complete sentences. So no, no, no, I mean
Speaker 1: I think the contrary. I think, if anything, you know,
Speaker 1: it's more you really showing a human side to your
Speaker 1: life journey and your experiences.
Speaker 8: You know, I was going down a a bad role
Speaker 8: man because it was just like shit was escalating, The
Speaker 8: drama was escalating, the threats people were making threats to
Speaker 8: us was escalating. Like it was getting really crazy, especially
Speaker 8: with at the gu and the deal and the money
Speaker 8: got even bigger. A lot of people was like, all
Speaker 8: these niggas are stupid. While they signed fifty, now they
Speaker 8: looking as like we stupid. They don't even understand that
Speaker 8: we got a relationship with fifty, Like you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying, Fifty from sulf Side, just like my family,
Speaker 8: Like you know what I'm saying, Like we got friends
Speaker 8: in common, you know what I mean that, Like me
Speaker 8: and fifty got friends in Carmon, Like you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying.
Speaker 3: It was just meant to be.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: He got in a position where he was able to
Speaker 8: put you on, reach back in to some of his
Speaker 8: favorite all this or whatever, and he was like, mom, deep,
Speaker 8: come on, you coming with me.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. Come on?
Speaker 7: We was like hold up, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 7: Like what we're gonna get out of this?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? He was like, You're gonna
Speaker 3: get this. You're gonna get this.
Speaker 7: You're gonna get this. We was like, where do we
Speaker 7: sign up?
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 7: Like, we was like, where do we sign up?
Speaker 3: I was queen. I was. I was one of the people.
Speaker 3: It's funny. I was on the people like years ago,
Speaker 3: uh that I wrote a review.
Speaker 4: It wasn't even review. I was just on our little
Speaker 4: website and I was talking about the album.
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 5: What it was.
Speaker 3: Okay, I was on the lawn. It was like just
Speaker 3: just right, but then the lawn. But then it went
Speaker 3: to okay player and then no, I was just a dude.
Speaker 4: I'm all my message, but were just talking whatever. I'm like, man,
Speaker 4: ain't nobody gonna read this ship. It's like thirty people
Speaker 4: here whatever. Then this ship goes okay player. Then like
Speaker 4: two three days later XXL, this is mom, what the
Speaker 4: fuck are you serious? So then like a couple of
Speaker 4: years later it was I guess it was right before
Speaker 4: you went in and like he wrote, he wrote a blog.
Speaker 3: He was like, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 3: He was like, this is me back. I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: well else so so then like it's like for guests
Speaker 3: in a row.
Speaker 4: So dude, so so and be and you this is
Speaker 4: our first time like really talking talking like we met
Speaker 4: like once I met you once an OL's crib like
Speaker 4: years ago. But but yeah, but we was, uh this
Speaker 4: first time we really talked. And so afterwards the joint
Speaker 4: came out and then you did the blog and then
Speaker 4: you went on your in your bid. So then Ol
Speaker 4: was on tour with us for a minute.
Speaker 3: We was touring.
Speaker 4: Uh it was LB little brother and Evidence was with
Speaker 4: us and he our with and so being out on
Speaker 4: the bus like we just chopping up about everything, were
Speaker 4: just talking whatever and he was he asked me, He's like, yo,
Speaker 4: the the album, Like Yo, why you go? I was like, dog,
Speaker 4: it wasn't that, I said, first off, I did you know,
Speaker 4: listen back to it? Like at that point, I said,
Speaker 4: it was better much like Phrenology. I think it aged
Speaker 4: better than it was than it did.
Speaker 3: Critique the album myself.
Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying. When I when I read
Speaker 8: what you had said, it made me think that shi
Speaker 8: it hit me. I was like he said, he said,
Speaker 8: we got rich and stopped trying.
Speaker 1: When I suggested yesterday, I suggested that gonna be on
Speaker 1: the show your first start. I was like, I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: but but it weren't gonna.
Speaker 9: Be nothing if it's real, beef.
Speaker 3: Was I was just like, it's not like. It ain't
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 8: But when you said, Look, when you said that, it
Speaker 8: made me think, like and being being locked up that
Speaker 8: shit just made me think about everything. Made me think
Speaker 8: about life and decisions that we would make in just everything,
Speaker 8: because you know, I'm sitting there without nothing else to
Speaker 8: do but think, so I'm not just thinking about my
Speaker 8: own life and decisions.
Speaker 3: We made business decisions.
Speaker 7: And then I read I read that, and I would
Speaker 7: listen to the album and hear other people talk about
Speaker 7: it was mad.
Speaker 8: We signed a gu on it, but that but you
Speaker 8: were coming from a different perspective. It was other people
Speaker 8: that was like just mad we signed G and they like,
Speaker 8: y'all mom yo, I was. I was on Ah Street
Speaker 8: one day and this old black lady, she had to
Speaker 8: be like seventy years old, she seen me.
Speaker 3: She was like prodig No. I was like yeah, she
Speaker 3: was like, yo, why the fuck y'all signed I said
Speaker 3: that shit shocked down.
Speaker 8: I was like, yo, she was like, y'all mob deep.
Speaker 8: Y'all supposed to be just mob deep. You don't sign
Speaker 8: nobody else. I'm like, yo, it's just a business move
Speaker 8: like on me, like it's a queen's think, like nah nah.
Speaker 3: She was upset what it was. As a fan, it
Speaker 3: made sense for me, like I thought he was from Queens.
Speaker 3: They from Queens. He looking out.
Speaker 4: I got that, I guess just for me at that
Speaker 4: time as a family grant, this is ten years ago,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. We all have grown whatever
Speaker 4: it is then.
Speaker 3: But my thing was because y'all was coming off the
Speaker 3: Free Agents Joint and that was my ship.
Speaker 7: I was like, yo, actually we was coming off America's.
Speaker 3: That's right. It was a job, That's right. It was
Speaker 3: because we went from jobs.
Speaker 4: And so with that, I was just like, I mean,
Speaker 4: the stuff that y'all was doing with alchemists, particularly like
Speaker 4: you and Alchemi, is just the chemistry y'all had and
Speaker 4: still have, like with Return of the Mac.
Speaker 3: And I was like, yo, they just do that. I'm like, man.
Speaker 4: So then so for me, just coming from that perspective
Speaker 4: where I said that got riches I was just like,
Speaker 4: man like, to me, it just felt like like I
Speaker 4: understood on paper and business wise wise work, but just
Speaker 4: to me, just as a true hardcore fan.
Speaker 8: I was just like, and they could have just did them.
Speaker 8: When I thought about it, I was like, he was right.
Speaker 8: Because I'm sitting there listening to Yo. I examined that
Speaker 8: album that you Union album. We did so much, And
Speaker 8: what I got out of it is when I when
Speaker 8: I was in jail, when I was just like listening
Speaker 8: to it and listening to it and trying to figure
Speaker 8: out why people were saying things that they were saying,
Speaker 8: and I was like, I was like, Okay, the first
Speaker 8: thing I noticed that it was too much G on
Speaker 8: it on the album.
Speaker 7: They was on almost every song.
Speaker 8: I didn't realize that whow with making it, we were
Speaker 8: just having fun, like oh Ship, come on do this,
Speaker 8: Oh Buck, come on, Buck, get on this song.
Speaker 3: You know, Banks get on this one. Like you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: We're not even thinking, like we're just having fun moving
Speaker 8: so but you know, being in jail, sitting there with
Speaker 8: nothing to do, I'm just like listening analyzing the album,
Speaker 8: I'm like, oh, okay, it's too they on too many songs.
Speaker 8: Not only that, but it was it was too many,
Speaker 8: like beats from like outsiders that wasn't really like mob
Speaker 8: deep sound and beats, you know.
Speaker 9: What I mean.
Speaker 7: But we didn't realize that while we sitting there making it.
Speaker 3: We was like so caught up on the G five
Speaker 3: on going up to it, and we like, you know,
Speaker 3: we were just living a high life, like you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Like we was already used to, you know, having fun,
Speaker 8: living that life on the road, but now it was
Speaker 8: just like living that life on stepoids, like you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying, with the inner school money now and
Speaker 8: the big budget and the private jets and arenas every night,
Speaker 8: like you know.
Speaker 11: What I mean.
Speaker 7: So we was just lost, man, Like we was lost
Speaker 7: at that point, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: And I was officially lost because I'm already I already
Speaker 8: got the attitude like I gotta defend myself like it's
Speaker 8: mad threats going on. So the threats is even higher
Speaker 8: that because they know we got bread. They know we
Speaker 8: you know, fifty, I bought a bulletproof truck. I'm like
Speaker 8: these niggas know what I'm saying. I'm like fifty moving
Speaker 8: right I'm about to do the same thing because we
Speaker 8: getting threats like that, and we kind of got beef
Speaker 8: with like the same niggas almost like you know what
Speaker 8: I mean.
Speaker 3: So it was like, you know, I just wasn't living right.
Speaker 8: So not living right plus access to all of that,
Speaker 8: no money and high life, it was just like a
Speaker 8: recipe for disaster.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: I was I was gone. I was gone, dog, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean? Like, I was gone.
Speaker 3: So I had to get locked up that first that
Speaker 3: first week or the first day, like.
Speaker 1: It is the goal just to be under the radar
Speaker 1: and do your time or like for people that are
Speaker 1: notable and and doing time. Is there a thing where
Speaker 1: the judge is like, okay, I know, because I know
Speaker 1: in Tupac's case he was they gladly threw him in
Speaker 1: Jim Pop, Like all right, you go to Jim Pop,
Speaker 1: no no.
Speaker 3: Protection, you know what I'm saying. So is it a
Speaker 3: thing where.
Speaker 1: Like what is your goal or what is your thought
Speaker 1: mentality that first week there, especially with your condition, which
Speaker 1: leads to the book.
Speaker 7: Which when I when I got locked up, when I
Speaker 7: realized I had to go to jail.
Speaker 8: And serve three and a half years and I got
Speaker 8: locked up. I was like, all right, need to deal
Speaker 8: with this, right, I gotta do this time, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. And I went in there with the
Speaker 8: attitude like you know, I don't want to make friends
Speaker 8: like you said, fly under the radar through my time,
Speaker 8: get the forge out of there, get my shit. And
Speaker 8: I went in there with the mentality to get my
Speaker 8: shit together.
Speaker 3: Because I already knew what my problem was.
Speaker 8: I already knew what the downfall was as far as
Speaker 8: like streak shit I was going through in my health
Speaker 8: and just my spirituality.
Speaker 3: I was my spirit wasn't right, you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: So I went in there with the plans to get
Speaker 8: my spirit together, get my body together, get my health
Speaker 8: in order come and try to come out a better person.
Speaker 7: So I really went in there and went to school
Speaker 7: with my I went to school to learn myself.
Speaker 8: How much time did you have to prepare from the
Speaker 8: time that your sentence to the time that you're going
Speaker 8: in because I know that you have a family take
Speaker 8: cut care of and that sort of thing. So it
Speaker 8: was like it was about maybe a few months, like
Speaker 8: three four months maybe, okay, you know what I mean?
Speaker 8: And Yeah, I went in there with the attitude like
Speaker 8: I'm going in here to get my shit together.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna learn.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna discipline myself as far as diet, as far
Speaker 8: as uh, you know, just spirituality, my thoughts, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. I started reading a lot of books
Speaker 8: on you know, your thought patterns, and you know that
Speaker 8: if you have negative thoughts to change it immediately into
Speaker 8: something positive. And once you practice, when you practice that,
Speaker 8: it becomes normal. You know what I'm saying. Once you
Speaker 8: practice getting rid of negative thoughts as soon as you think,
Speaker 8: it becomes normal. And just you know everything, man, just
Speaker 8: getting better with myself and just trying to become a
Speaker 8: better person. And like I said, I was listening to
Speaker 8: the albums and seeing what we did wrong, what we
Speaker 8: was doing right. I was just analyzing everything, like and
Speaker 8: it took me some time to adjust because I was
Speaker 8: writing blogs and you know what I mean, still popping
Speaker 8: shit and talking crazy shit. But then after a while
Speaker 8: started being like, Okay.
Speaker 3: I'm going about this all wrong. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I gotta I gotta be more, you know, I gotta
Speaker 8: be more humble, humbling, like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: humble myself from calm down, and you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I was sitting in the date room one day with
Speaker 8: my one of my young homies in there, his name
Speaker 8: is Fresh, and were watching BT and somebody video came
Speaker 8: on and I was, man, that shit is garbage.
Speaker 3: You like this shit?
Speaker 8: He was like, yo, Pee, why you say everything is
Speaker 8: garbage when you're like, like, give people a chance. Son,
Speaker 8: He's like, why you don't give nobody a chance? Like
Speaker 8: when he said he said he was dead serious and
Speaker 8: said it just like that.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 8: He made me look at myself. I never thought about that.
Speaker 8: I was like, I was like, damn you right, Like
Speaker 8: I never like.
Speaker 3: I was like, you're right.
Speaker 8: He was like, Yo, the dude just trying to get
Speaker 8: his money. My niggas like everybody, you know, not the same,
Speaker 8: everybody got different tastes. Just let that man get his money,
Speaker 8: like stop shitting on everybody.
Speaker 3: Like you know what I'm saying. And it made me.
Speaker 8: That shit made me. That shit changed me. I was like, oh,
Speaker 8: I was like, I never thought of it like that.
Speaker 8: Somebody nobody ever said that to me before. You know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. They were just letting me be me.
Speaker 8: No one challenged you, right, didn't never say that was
Speaker 8: wrong with you? Like why you shut the fuck up?
Speaker 8: Like you know what I'm saying, Let that man get
Speaker 8: his money, like you know what I'm saying. And I
Speaker 8: was made me look at myself. I felt stupid when
Speaker 8: he said that, you know what I mean. I was like, damn,
Speaker 8: I had the wrong attitude this whole time.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Now, how does how does someone survive in that system
Speaker 1: with uh dietary restrictions? Like is it possible to be
Speaker 1: a vegan in jail or a vegetarian? And does the
Speaker 1: private prison complex even allow for those types of foods
Speaker 1: to for you to even have access to that?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 7: Everyoneor do they care? Every prison is different.
Speaker 8: Every prison allowed different things, and every prison you know,
Speaker 8: won't allow certain things, and so every prison is different.
Speaker 7: One will let you know, a whole chicken, and the
Speaker 7: other they won't let you let it in.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean. It's just so.
Speaker 8: You have and like the packaging, the way it's packaged,
Speaker 8: the way it's sealed, the color on the packaging, Like every.
Speaker 3: Jail is different.
Speaker 8: It's real specific, you know what I mean, for each
Speaker 8: individual jet some jails you can have CDs.
Speaker 7: Other jails you can't have CDs. You only have cassettes.
Speaker 7: Some jails, you know what I mean, that's they still
Speaker 7: got Yeah, they still got cossetts.
Speaker 3: In certain jails.
Speaker 7: You canna only have cassettes because they I was in mistake.
Speaker 8: As far as that from it's like four hours four
Speaker 8: hours from here, okay, driving up, you know what I mean?
Speaker 7: And uh yeah, so every every prison is different.
Speaker 8: The food that they that they serve, you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying, and what they allow in the package from
Speaker 8: your family, it's all different. So you know, they have
Speaker 8: a special diet in prison for like kosha kosha or
Speaker 8: halal diet, you know what I mean. You got to
Speaker 8: prove that you know, that's your religion, and you got
Speaker 8: to have a special diet sugar.
Speaker 5: Because one of my prisoner friends asked me, were you
Speaker 5: going to do a book for the folks to mean
Speaker 5: for the non sugar.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I don't really know too much about that.
Speaker 1: But uh side uh for the very few people in
Speaker 1: this room that know my day manager's era, she loves
Speaker 1: the ship out this book because her diet is that
Speaker 1: fucked up. She's like, I like this, like she saw
Speaker 1: it as like college survival food.
Speaker 3: I'm like, not quite eat ship.
Speaker 9: Okay, it's like hipster that's cute there.
Speaker 1: No, I mean she's the type of person that actually yes,
Speaker 1: she looked at him like but yeah, so and bringing
Speaker 1: Kathy into this, how are you?
Speaker 3: Hey? I'm glad you here.
Speaker 9: Forgot she was here, so thanks?
Speaker 3: So what what is the research process in.
Speaker 1: Trying these uh, these recipes out that you you you
Speaker 1: made in the in the book and and I guess
Speaker 1: the trial and era of it all, like how do
Speaker 1: you even I guess with very little instrument, instruments or tools,
Speaker 1: you know, it becomes you know, creative, creativity is is
Speaker 1: your is your best instrument?
Speaker 3: So how do you test these things out to see
Speaker 3: what works and what doesn't work?
Speaker 6: Well, there's two like completely different parts of the cookbook.
Speaker 6: There's the stuff that that p always cooked and then
Speaker 6: there's the stuff that most people in prison cook.
Speaker 3: So you know, so were you allowed special No, he
Speaker 3: just chose, Like see.
Speaker 6: The thing that's kind of the thing that's pretty interesting
Speaker 6: about the Commissary Catching cookbook is everything that was cooked
Speaker 6: was what you could purchase and commissary but you know,
Speaker 6: p he had been through what was it, five different
Speaker 6: prisons in three years because he always had to have
Speaker 6: an infirmary like nearby, so you know he was moved,
Speaker 6: but I think he spent the longest at Mid State, right.
Speaker 6: So in doing that research, I went through the commissary
Speaker 6: that was available at mid State to know what some
Speaker 6: of those items were.
Speaker 3: And then so what's a typical meal. What's a typical breakfast?
Speaker 6: Well, typical breakfast at chow is different from see because
Speaker 6: you know they would give the breakfast would be at six, right,
Speaker 6: Lunch should be at ten, So.
Speaker 3: You got to wake up at five.
Speaker 6: What was it like like quarter to six, You're like
Speaker 6: six thirty, six.
Speaker 7: Thirty breakfast and they go to yard are like seven.
Speaker 6: Yeah, lunch would be at ten. Four o'clock was dinner
Speaker 6: and you were done.
Speaker 3: So when you had Jesus Christ.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So when it came to the commissary, that was
Speaker 6: the thing that that people used to to fill to
Speaker 6: fill them up for the rest of the day. So
Speaker 6: if your family doesn't have a lot of money to
Speaker 6: fill the commissary, that's where you get those traditional prison
Speaker 6: meals like mashing up cheetahs and pouring chili on them
Speaker 6: because those are the cheapest things in commissary and also
Speaker 6: there's a pound limitation to what like family could mail
Speaker 6: you as well. And he would make most of that
Speaker 6: those deliveries of nothing but canned vegetables. But because they're
Speaker 6: in a can, they weigh more. So it wasn't like
Speaker 6: he was able to get like tons of spinach, you know,
Speaker 6: because he would mostly get spinach delivered like that. But
Speaker 6: it's by can, So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can even though I mean the potential of that
Speaker 3: being a weapon.
Speaker 6: Can you could use the race is a knife too,
Speaker 6: you can get it taken away so stupid.
Speaker 3: They won't allow CDs, but you can have yeah.
Speaker 6: So you know, in going through and going through this book,
Speaker 6: you know, and we were going through some of the
Speaker 6: recipes that he actually made, there was just this whole
Speaker 6: other part that, you know, I feel is like this
Speaker 6: this voice to culture of people wanting to know about
Speaker 6: those kinds of traditional prison meals. And in doing that
Speaker 6: research and seeing some of those things, and the thing
Speaker 6: that I thought was really important about putting it in
Speaker 6: the book was, you know, on peace first day, he
Speaker 6: had food poisoning because one of the inmates wanted to
Speaker 6: make him a welcome meal, which was one of those
Speaker 6: traditional prison dishes, but peace stomach obviously wasn't trained to that.
Speaker 6: It's like going to Mexico and drinking the water.
Speaker 3: You know what.
Speaker 6: Prison surprise, which is Jack mac mashed up cheetos to
Speaker 6: make a cheese sauce poured over like ramen. Right, it
Speaker 6: was something like that, And by the end of the
Speaker 6: night he had an ivy in his arm, so because
Speaker 6: you know, he wasn't used to eating.
Speaker 7: And I mean the thing is why I woke up
Speaker 7: sweating bullets throwing up.
Speaker 3: It fucked me up.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And you learn about certain things and doing this
Speaker 6: research where like, for example, they only give you fruit
Speaker 6: punch and iced tea, but if you want water, they
Speaker 6: give you an empty jug and you have to go
Speaker 6: get it. So it's like, if you want to lead
Speaker 6: a healthy lifestyle, you have to actively pursue it in prison.
Speaker 6: So there's there's also you know, there's this there's prison
Speaker 6: tea that a lot of inmates drink, which is just
Speaker 6: simply a Ramen packet in water, and the average Ramen
Speaker 6: packet has like seventy five hundred milligrams, so you're.
Speaker 3: Drinking salt water.
Speaker 6: That's prison tea, it's called prison tea.
Speaker 3: And how are you able to how are you able
Speaker 3: to cook the food on your own in your cell?
Speaker 3: Like are you loud?
Speaker 6: No, there was a there's a common area where there's
Speaker 6: a microwave and a toaster oven, which is that's why
Speaker 6: so many of these meals are so simple, which is
Speaker 6: why so many people in dorms will gravitate toward it
Speaker 6: because of just the availability of those just two devices
Speaker 6: and a couple of other things. So, you know, but
Speaker 6: in doing the research, you really learn the way the
Speaker 6: prison system kind of controls the situation. And and you know,
Speaker 6: for me, the reason why I even you know, I
Speaker 6: was part of this project was over over, Like you know,
Speaker 6: the ten fifteen years that I've been a rap journalist,
Speaker 6: I've had this kind of like unique privilege of speaking
Speaker 6: to a lot of artists right when they get out
Speaker 6: of prison. And I spoke with p like right when
Speaker 6: you get got out. But I also spoke with Bousy
Speaker 6: and come to find out it was diabetic, right yeah,
Speaker 6: but he had also cancer. Oh shit, so I believe
Speaker 6: it was kidney cancer. So and they blamed it on
Speaker 6: the lean. But I started to like, you know, you
Speaker 6: start putting two and two together, how people can enter
Speaker 6: somewhat healthy and leave like completely a mess. And you know,
Speaker 6: in talking with p about it, like literally when he
Speaker 6: got out and he was just telling me these stories
Speaker 6: and I'll never forget it was one of your guys
Speaker 6: gave me one of the cassettes that were available in prison,
Speaker 6: and it was a Jadakiss The Last Kiss and like
Speaker 6: a prison catalog, and he's like, yeah, this is what's
Speaker 6: a available. So you know, I was just like going
Speaker 6: through the what was available, and I'm like, how can
Speaker 6: anyone survive on this stuff? So, you know, we were
Speaker 6: putting this together and you just look at the nutritional
Speaker 6: information and then I started to dig even deeper and
Speaker 6: you look at what was available in like the UK
Speaker 6: in the fifties, a typical prison meal was like prime
Speaker 6: rib and like mash potatoes and glazed carrots. That was
Speaker 6: like a typical prison meal. Yeah, and you start you
Speaker 6: see what happens over the years, and especially as it
Speaker 6: made its way, you know, to this country, and and
Speaker 6: like what was available, I mean even in the past,
Speaker 6: what was available here was so fundamentally different than what's
Speaker 6: available now. And you know, when we were touring this book,
Speaker 6: the biggest prison strike in history was happening, so it
Speaker 6: was kind of like this perfect storm. But it was
Speaker 6: also pretty funny because some of the stuff that we
Speaker 6: were discussing, like, we didn't make it too politically heavy,
Speaker 6: but if you start to read about some of these
Speaker 6: recipes and what's available and all this other stuff, you
Speaker 6: can kind of put two and two together and be like, oh,
Speaker 6: you know, trying to kill you in there.
Speaker 3: You know. Well, the book did get banned in some person.
Speaker 6: They got banned in California because yeah, but they said
Speaker 6: it was because there was a hooch recipe, like who
Speaker 6: doesn't know how to make hoots at this point? But
Speaker 6: you know, and I think I think there's also parts,
Speaker 6: you know, especially when it comes to pop culture, the
Speaker 6: way people like glamorize prison, especially because of Orange is
Speaker 6: the New Black and just make it seem like this
Speaker 6: like cool place for camaraderie. And there is some of
Speaker 6: that in the book, you know, because that some of
Speaker 6: that is true, but there's also something real. I mean,
Speaker 6: there's an episode of Orange Is the New Black where
Speaker 6: they they use the prison packets for currents for like currency,
Speaker 6: so that they could season their food. But it's like, yeah,
Speaker 6: but the sodium, like you know, or there's a joke
Speaker 6: that one of the inmates pretends to be Jewish, she
Speaker 6: could so she can have a kosher meal. But like
Speaker 6: because the kosher meal is the only meal that actually
Speaker 6: has fresh vegetables in it. So you know, there's there's
Speaker 6: things that they that they put in there that I
Speaker 6: think are it's pretty cool. But if you don't do
Speaker 6: your research on why those things are even incorporated into
Speaker 6: those episodes or whatever, you know, you don't you don't
Speaker 6: really understand what's going on. So uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 6: the kosher meals are like amazing in prison and the
Speaker 6: only fresh thing that that in in peace facility, you
Speaker 6: were allowed to have as an apple.
Speaker 3: Damn.
Speaker 6: Yeah until the day that you you rated little Puns.
Speaker 7: You rated the CEO the correction office refrigerating little pun.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they call the little Pung because you look like.
Speaker 3: A little version.
Speaker 6: But he would eat the inmates food, Like he would
Speaker 6: come in there and he would eat their meals.
Speaker 1: Like why he would eat is there is there someone
Speaker 1: to be an advocate for better health? There's there's some
Speaker 1: stefs that I know in California that are now leaving
Speaker 1: their respective I mean these are like Michelan uh, Michelin
Speaker 1: level chefs, James Beard chefs that you know, kind of
Speaker 1: felt in a moral ways and moral for them to
Speaker 1: you know, learn fine cuisine and then charge people two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to eat it.
Speaker 3: And so they're going to be opposite. They're they're going
Speaker 3: to the hoods.
Speaker 1: They're going in like South Central, opening up healthy versions
Speaker 1: of fast food spots. And even Magic Johnson said the
Speaker 1: reason why he, you know, opened up for Fridays was because, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's one of the few places where you
Speaker 1: can get a garden salad or that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Don't nobody, I'm going to Fridays for the solid.
Speaker 1: But a woman approached Magic and said, yo, I hope
Speaker 1: this is like when he opened up his movie theater.
Speaker 1: She's like, yo, I really hope you open up a
Speaker 1: restaurant and bring it to the hoods so we can
Speaker 1: have fresh sautlets, because you'll be shocked at the fact
Speaker 1: that you cannot find I mean now that most hood
Speaker 1: spots are being gentrified.
Speaker 3: I mean even with the locks.
Speaker 1: They opened up a juice bar in Young you know,
Speaker 1: giving people their first taste of healthy options. So it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, for for a lot of for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, especially like I mean, even the idea of
Speaker 1: soul food is inaccessible, inaccessible now, like you go to
Speaker 1: find Southern cuisine spots at least in the northeast, not
Speaker 1: not in North Carolina, no, but I mean soul food
Speaker 1: right now, and most hoods are takeout Chinese food, like
Speaker 1: what people had the experience of, like oh, Kylli greens
Speaker 1: and chicken and grits for dinner, like in the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies. Now it's gravy white, yeah, rice and wings
Speaker 1: front to five.
Speaker 3: So it's like, do you you in order specially so
Speaker 3: after you experience.
Speaker 1: A right mother, I'm just I'm just asking, do you
Speaker 1: feel that it's almost necessary that someone advocates, uh or
Speaker 1: speaks on the behalf of of getting better conditions because
Speaker 1: I often hear of the conditions in prison being horrible
Speaker 1: and you know, substandard, and of course you know you'll
Speaker 1: you'll hear these these you know, right wing Republicans just
Speaker 1: being like, you know, it's prison, that's what it deserves.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's still like you still got to
Speaker 1: treat a person human, and so like, is there any
Speaker 1: is it, Is there any step or do you realistically
Speaker 1: see reality where that could be changed.
Speaker 6: I think it's getting I think it's getting every one
Speaker 6: on board, but having you know, their own reasons for it,
Speaker 6: like a lot of a lot of right wing Republicans
Speaker 6: have you know, hit me in my d MS along
Speaker 6: with craze mob deep fans, but you know, kind of
Speaker 6: trying to challenge me in this discussion. And you know, well,
Speaker 6: their prisoners, like you know, they can eat whatever, whatever.
Speaker 6: And even if you take away like the humane aspect
Speaker 6: of it, right, someone enters prison healthy, they leave with diabetes, hypertension,
Speaker 6: you know, poor liver functions everything, right, when they get sick,
Speaker 6: they go to the er.
Speaker 9: You pay for the er.
Speaker 6: So if you want to, you don't want to even
Speaker 6: look at it for anything other than selfish financial like reasons.
Speaker 6: Look at that, look at that at the heart of
Speaker 6: it that it's still it's ultimately costing you money for
Speaker 6: these for people to to get better essentially, so you know,
Speaker 6: which it's a horrible reason to have to it's a
Speaker 6: horrible argument to even present. But there are some people
Speaker 6: that's yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well people don't also realize, you know, when when you
Speaker 1: hear people arguing against the idea of private prison industry complex.
Speaker 1: People don't know that if you're one of the commissary owners.
Speaker 1: There was a webs there was an article I was
Speaker 1: reading about I guess one of the CEOs of of
Speaker 1: I don't know if Bonton is a thing here. It's
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: It's real big.
Speaker 1: It's like little Debies Bonton. It's like these local snack companies,
Speaker 1: but they are.
Speaker 8: Making a killing being the exclusive provider of all these
Speaker 8: high end snacks.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like I feel, I mean not even
Speaker 1: I feel, I almost know that it's like the cheapest
Speaker 1: high sodium, high sugar amount which keeps you almost.
Speaker 5: And what's funny is even when you go visit, y'all
Speaker 5: just made me think about something because I've been the
Speaker 5: way too many prisons in Jersey. Even when you go
Speaker 5: to visit, they don't even provide, Like the snacks are
Speaker 5: the same as for the visit. Like, say you're there
Speaker 5: and his families as kids and they want to eat
Speaker 5: something while they're there, you better go to the vender
Speaker 5: machine and get you as of chocolate or something.
Speaker 9: Not even like the trail makes nothing in that area.
Speaker 9: Is it, Kathy? Is there not one person that's worth
Speaker 9: working on their dietary situation?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 3: I think I know that Martha's sorry, Martha Stewart changed.
Speaker 9: Her spot in West Virginia and she's still.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's still. But hers is like a minimum security.
Speaker 6: A federal women's prison. I think it's Morgan. That's not Morgan.
Speaker 5: I know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she still actively sends them fresh vegetables and fruit, and.
Speaker 6: You know what, what what's going to ultimately happen in
Speaker 6: my opinion, I mean, I'm seeing some of it that
Speaker 6: they're they're talking about doing it in New York. It's
Speaker 6: going to take someone trying to do it in such
Speaker 6: a kitchy way, because that's what's gonna end up. It's
Speaker 6: going to become trendy to do it because I was
Speaker 6: reading some articles and they're like, check out the farm
Speaker 6: to table prison whatever, and it becomes it's gonna have
Speaker 6: to take that brand like rebranding. Yeah, it's gonna have
Speaker 6: to be that unfortunately, and the same way that you
Speaker 6: got to like change the argument for Republicans on the
Speaker 6: whole prison system in general. But it's gonna have to
Speaker 6: be something cute see for them to.
Speaker 3: Their kids are doing is like wait a minute, right, right?
Speaker 3: So kind of like the way Heroin got rebranded.
Speaker 6: I mean, but you know the the jump from OZ
Speaker 6: to orange is the new black, how one? You know
Speaker 6: what took off by making it like hey, what happens
Speaker 6: when you put you know like that kind of Yeah,
Speaker 6: So I think I think that's going to be the
Speaker 6: thing that well, we'll have to do it. You know,
Speaker 6: it's it's not not similar, but you know when people
Speaker 6: started to advocate for better snacks and offices and schools
Speaker 6: and all these other all these other things where those
Speaker 6: things had to change, but it had to be a
Speaker 6: slow build. It's a harder argument in prisons.
Speaker 9: Oh, Kathy, are you saying Michelle Obama missed out on
Speaker 9: that one? Because I just ooh, like she was supposed
Speaker 9: to cover that.
Speaker 3: No, I love that.
Speaker 9: All praise due to the Queen, but the clue just
Speaker 9: went off in my head. Right, she did schools, she
Speaker 9: didn't what a bow?
Speaker 6: Well, you know the thing that Michelle Obama did that
Speaker 6: I think was wonderful too was you know, there's a
Speaker 6: school in particular, I forget the name. You know, my
Speaker 6: mom had consulted for them in nork. They had a
Speaker 6: garden at the top on the roof, and the kids
Speaker 6: would grow the vegetables. They would pull down the vegetables,
Speaker 6: and they would cook with the vegetables for their lunches.
Speaker 6: So she did some amazing things, But that kind of
Speaker 6: stuff doesn't translate into prison, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 6: think that the initiative that she did was it was
Speaker 6: making nutrition fun, because that was the problem. Kids weren't
Speaker 6: having fun with nutrition. Your brustles sprouts are gross, like
Speaker 6: you know, dipp them in chocolate like whatever like that
Speaker 6: you're making you're making you're making nutrition fun. But convincing,
Speaker 6: convincing inmates whose families are maybe putting five dollars into
Speaker 6: their commissary and they finish eating at four pm, and
Speaker 6: they're starving by eight o'clock and they're hanging out in
Speaker 6: the common area and all they have is like enough
Speaker 6: in their commissary for ramen noodles. Convince them that nutrition
Speaker 6: is fun, because what happens is it's not the it's
Speaker 6: not the commissary necessarily, that's the problem. It's the quality
Speaker 6: of the food that they're eating in chow too. I mean,
Speaker 6: the sodium levels of some of those things, but also
Speaker 6: it's expired food sometimes, you know, they'll leave cans for
Speaker 6: however long. I mean, there's rat poisoning in certain prisons,
Speaker 6: and some of the food they found glass pubic hair.
Speaker 6: I mean, these are things like these are real issues
Speaker 6: that just the quality of the food alone, and what
Speaker 6: will end up happening is a lot of the inmates
Speaker 6: just don't want to eat the food. You know, who's
Speaker 6: gonna want to eat that? So it becomes a matter
Speaker 6: of all right, well I'll just eat some chips. There's
Speaker 6: a lot of artists that I've spoken to who when
Speaker 6: they got out of prison, and even before meeting Pee
Speaker 6: and hearing that story, I would say, what did you eat?
Speaker 3: I got?
Speaker 6: You know, most of the time it's some chips, like
Speaker 6: living off like freedoms, you know. And then I remember,
Speaker 6: I forget the artists. Was it thirst and hell? The
Speaker 6: third who did the prison cooking shows and he would
Speaker 6: do this like show where he would like, you know,
Speaker 6: mash up all like the food and he would like
Speaker 6: make these prison dishes, and I was just so fascinated.
Speaker 6: I'm just like, yeah, I get it, because if like
Speaker 6: if someone said to you, okay, every day, all you
Speaker 6: can eat the bag of Cheetos, bag of Doritos, one
Speaker 6: of those packets of chili, and a pack of Ramen noodles.
Speaker 6: Of course by week three, yeah, you're you're trying to
Speaker 6: deep fry your ramen noodles in the toaster and you're
Speaker 6: trying to make a burger out of the chili patty,
Speaker 6: like you're gonna try to get creative. So and that
Speaker 6: that chapter that we put in the book.
Speaker 3: I remember.
Speaker 6: I remember talking to Pea about it and he's like,
Speaker 6: you know, some of the things were going over and
Speaker 6: he's like, oh, fucking disgusting, because like, you know, he
Speaker 6: he was one like he just made a concerted effort
Speaker 6: to not touch any of that stuff because for him
Speaker 6: it was like it could it's life, you know. There
Speaker 6: he caun't eat that stuff, right, So, I mean, I
Speaker 6: remember when you know, there was like a lot of
Speaker 6: the guys would go and they would cook together, and
Speaker 6: I remember, you know, asking Pee like what was the
Speaker 6: main thing, and he's like, no, I would just have spinach.
Speaker 6: Like if I didn't if there was if I didn't
Speaker 6: want to cook, I would just keep eating canned spinach.
Speaker 9: But you didn't even have to.
Speaker 6: Wash that off it's like packed with sodium. So there's
Speaker 6: like really no way out if you don't sit and
Speaker 6: think about it, which is why we put this book
Speaker 6: together because it's like, listen, I get it. You know,
Speaker 6: maybe your commissary is lower than the next guy, but
Speaker 6: there's ways around what you're choosing to buy and how
Speaker 6: you're choosing to prepare it.
Speaker 3: You know, can I ask what was the first then
Speaker 3: you ate? When you got out?
Speaker 8: I went to this Korean barbecue spot Corwoulo, Okay downtown
Speaker 8: and Soho Korean Barbecue. It was really good, and I
Speaker 8: thought about it the whole big ship. Every time I
Speaker 8: sat down to h child, I was like, yo, man,
Speaker 8: if I was home right now, I'll be eating Korean barbecue.
Speaker 8: Everybody was like, what the fuck is that?
Speaker 3: You make it yourself? Was me? Rust me?
Speaker 7: So as soon as I got out, we drove straight
Speaker 7: to the restaurant and I couldn't wait to eat some
Speaker 7: more of that good food.
Speaker 3: What's your diet and stuff like on the day to
Speaker 3: day now? You know, I just try to my favorite
Speaker 3: thing to eat it.
Speaker 8: I try to like grilled chicken, like Kathy said, a
Speaker 8: lot of green vegetables, a lot of water.
Speaker 3: Brown rice.
Speaker 8: You know, I try to just eliminate fried foods and
Speaker 8: red meats. You know, it takes time to get to
Speaker 8: that point, a lot of time and discipline. Some people
Speaker 8: don't like water, you know what I mean. It took
Speaker 8: I mean about a year or two to really get
Speaker 8: used to, like I could just guzzle water and I
Speaker 8: love how it tastes.
Speaker 7: Before that, I was always craving for a juice or you.
Speaker 3: Know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Soa it takes time to develop and discipline your body
Speaker 8: and your mind and your taste buzz to, you know,
Speaker 8: to do the right thing. So you know, after a while,
Speaker 8: you know, even before I went to jail, I was
Speaker 8: I was already learning that stuff in my twenties, like
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying, And you know, just being
Speaker 8: locked up it made me like, all right, I want
Speaker 8: to see what happens if I'm on some military discipline.
Speaker 3: Shit.
Speaker 8: I want to see what happens, how my body is
Speaker 8: going to react, how my mind, how things are going
Speaker 8: to be different if I, like, on some military discipline.
Speaker 7: Straight water every day, green vestable. I wanted to see
Speaker 7: the outcome of that.
Speaker 8: So I did it, you know what I mean, Because
Speaker 8: of doing that, I was able to work out, Like
Speaker 8: you know they tell doctors told me all my life,
Speaker 8: I can't work out, I can't do any physical contact
Speaker 8: or streng you with exercise because the triggered is sicker cell.
Speaker 8: And it's true, like certain things I do, like if
Speaker 8: I'm running around too much, my heart rates start going
Speaker 8: too fast, I get to hype my adrenaline and start pumping.
Speaker 7: It triggered my cikeret cell. It can trigger my cigret sells.
Speaker 8: So you know, once I cleaned out, changed my diet
Speaker 8: and was very very very strict with it and with
Speaker 8: the water, very strict with the with the vegetables and everything.
Speaker 8: I noticed that I wasn't getting sick. I didn't feel
Speaker 8: sick at all. I was able to work out, not
Speaker 8: feel sick like you know what I mean. I was
Speaker 8: able to get strong and it felt great. It felt great.
Speaker 7: I was like, Wow, this is l like you know
Speaker 7: what I'm saying, Because I was already doing it in
Speaker 7: the streets.
Speaker 8: Like I said, I learned. I learned how to do that.
Speaker 8: In my twenties, I kind of fell off, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. Right before I went to jail, I
Speaker 8: started going a little down with Spirals going through some
Speaker 8: bullshit in my life. But you know I was already
Speaker 8: with that discipline. I had already changed my life five
Speaker 8: six years straight no smoking. This is from two thousand,
Speaker 8: I mean, excuse me, from ninety eight, ninety seven, ninety eight,
Speaker 8: like two thousand and two, something like that, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: On two thousand, maybe two thousand and three. You know,
Speaker 7: I was on some strict diet shit.
Speaker 8: I was like learning how to heal myself through diet
Speaker 8: and spirituality. So I did that already and I felt
Speaker 8: the effects of it. And then I kind of, like
Speaker 8: I said, I kind of went on Darren spir right
Speaker 8: before I got locked up. So when I got locked up,
Speaker 8: I was like, you know what, I want to try
Speaker 8: what I did, I want to do it to the maximum.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 7: I want to really do this shit now, like I said,
Speaker 7: straight military discipline with it.
Speaker 1: So what spirituality do you mean? Like meditating, deep breathings.
Speaker 1: I mean, like just the powers in your thoughts, affirmations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like just the power of your thoughts.
Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying, Negative thoughts, like if somebody, like,
Speaker 8: especially being in jail, everybody got bad attitude. Nobody wants
Speaker 8: to be everybody's upset. They in jail, like everybody wakes
Speaker 8: up in the morning pissed off. Nobody even to see.
Speaker 8: Even the correction officers are pissed off. They gotta work
Speaker 8: out to be there, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 8: everybody got an attitude in that motherfucker, and especially correction officers.
Speaker 8: They talk to you like the go do this, go do, go,
Speaker 8: go wash the toilets, go do like. They boss you around,
Speaker 8: like they fuck with you, especially when they first meeting
Speaker 8: you and you didn't know who you are.
Speaker 3: They fuck with you. They try to press your buttons
Speaker 3: and see how you react. So I use that as
Speaker 3: this is.
Speaker 7: Gonna be my training. I'm gonna control my thoughts as soon.
Speaker 8: As he or anybody gives me a bad attitude instead
Speaker 8: of me saying fuck in my mind. My first thought
Speaker 8: in my mind used to be going to fuck this nigga,
Speaker 8: like you know what I'm saying, piece of shit. But
Speaker 8: then now I started practicing. As soon as that thought
Speaker 8: pops in my head, change it. But like you know what,
Speaker 8: I pray for him, you know what I'm saying, Hopefully
Speaker 8: he'll get his thing together. You know what I mean,
Speaker 8: he don't know what he doing, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: He's just angry. He got work here. So I pray
Speaker 8: for this person, that's what. And I've changed my thoughts
Speaker 8: to that. So I started practicing that in there, and
Speaker 8: that was like the perfect place to practice that, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying, because you're.
Speaker 7: Dealing with all his tension and foul shit every day.
Speaker 8: So I would practice that every day every day, practice
Speaker 8: changing my thoughts immediately as soon as the thought popping mind,
Speaker 8: I changed it to something else. And then when I
Speaker 8: kept doing it, it just it happened naturally, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. I don't have to think about it
Speaker 8: no more. And through eating right and you know, thinking different,
Speaker 8: it changed like spirituality, that changes your spirit. Once you
Speaker 8: start thinking different, you know, you more at peace. You're
Speaker 8: more at peace with everybody else and yourself. You know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: You you walk peacefully, like you carry yourself peacefully, you
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: At the same time, you know, I'm who I am.
Speaker 8: I grew up how I grew up, So it's not
Speaker 8: like I turned into some soft sucker motherfucker. I just
Speaker 8: know how to control my thoughts.
Speaker 7: Now, you know what I'm saying. Fine, I was gonna.
Speaker 4: Say too, man. I hear that in the new record too.
Speaker 4: I listened to it on the plane on the way
Speaker 4: over here.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 4: And shit is dope, man, I can hear like just
Speaker 4: the the I don't want to misquote the liquid. It
Speaker 4: was one joint in particular you were talking about. You know,
Speaker 4: it ain't about black and they don't care if you're white.
Speaker 4: You know, it ain't about your religion. You were just
Speaker 4: you know, just kind of speaking to tyranny joint tyranny. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and you're saying, I just tyranny. You tuk about none
Speaker 4: of that.
Speaker 8: You know, race don't matter, Yeah, that was it. Your
Speaker 8: faith don't matter. The enemy is government, tyranny, all that
Speaker 8: other shit don't matter.
Speaker 3: Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: You rich, don't matter, you broke, don't matter. The enemy,
Speaker 8: they threaten our liberties, all that other shit don't matter.
Speaker 3: Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: That's what I'm trying to get because they try to
Speaker 8: like divert our attention with like a lot of racial issues. Now,
Speaker 8: don't get me wrong, there's a lot of racial issues
Speaker 8: with this country. Like for a long time, but they
Speaker 8: magnify that ship on the news, and they magnify so
Speaker 8: much to.
Speaker 7: The point where we think it's more than what it
Speaker 7: really is. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: And if people only knew we all have a common
Speaker 8: enemy that's really trying to destroy our spirit and our
Speaker 8: soul and control our life. We actually have a common enemy,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. That's what I was trying
Speaker 8: to get it cross the point. I was trying to
Speaker 8: get close on that song. So yeah, you know, I
Speaker 8: would practice that in jail, and it just it changed me. Man,
Speaker 8: that's it felt great. I was like, oh shit, this
Speaker 8: is ill. I was like, this is a great way
Speaker 8: to think. Like I'm glad I was doing this. I
Speaker 8: was like, man, this is great man meditation. Well, I
Speaker 8: was like, I told you this, you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: It just made me feel better. I felt better every
Speaker 8: day as a person, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Well, Priory, we are going to have to close the show. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we could talk to you forever. I do have one
Speaker 1: last question, what up though? Are we going to get
Speaker 1: one more reunion an album out of you and have it?
Speaker 8: We definitely, man have like crack things when it comes
Speaker 8: to hip hop, like it's like we that's good ship
Speaker 8: to know, like rock him like my fiend.
Speaker 1: So you're about to do something your I know that
Speaker 1: you're gonna do. Uh, you're doing a few projects with
Speaker 1: live musicians. You're doing your residency at Blue Note. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's every month. Yeah, we do it once a month.
Speaker 3: Did So how can people find out like news about
Speaker 3: upcoming dates with you and that sort of thing?
Speaker 8: I always tell people, like, you know, you can always Google,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean? Hit hit up Google, like, Yo,
Speaker 8: are you on Twitter?
Speaker 7: Or yeah, yeah, I'm on.
Speaker 8: Twitter, Mob Deep, Instagram, Prodigy, mob Deep. But I forget
Speaker 8: sometime myself. If you want to know what any of
Speaker 8: your favorite artists is performing, or when a new album
Speaker 8: is dropping, you could go right on Google and just
Speaker 8: be like yo, all Deep new album or Prodigy new
Speaker 8: concert or you know what I'm saying, like and it'll
Speaker 8: all pop up like you know what I'm.
Speaker 3: Saying or you you I guess.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Cleverly released the Hegelian Dialog Dialectic on January twenty inauguration,
Speaker 3: which was yeah I.
Speaker 7: Was gonna say and I was planned out. We did
Speaker 7: that on I figgured as much.
Speaker 3: Oh his birthday and your birthday.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's all about you, right, Okay, Well, Kaffy
Speaker 1: and Prigy, I thank you very much for uh yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. I don't even think I'll go through the
Speaker 1: customary what we learned thing because I think we learned
Speaker 1: everything at the same time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Man, shout to everybody too. Man, I always got to
Speaker 7: do this.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 3: Shout to jay Z, shout to NAS, shout. Oh my niggas.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying, so love you know I
Speaker 7: funk with your niggas.
Speaker 10: Man.
Speaker 7: He is like, Man, I'm a fan of jay Z.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: We went through our ship. I'm a fan. I love son.
Speaker 7: He's one of the illis.
Speaker 8: I learned so much from him watching him do business,
Speaker 8: carry yourself saying with NASM so much by how he
Speaker 8: writes his songs and make his music. Like, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. It ain't no, ain't no beef, ain't
Speaker 8: no none of that ship. Man, were grown.
Speaker 7: We're nowolved.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying, Yo, But you gotta get
Speaker 5: out the comments. Don't read them comments no more.
Speaker 3: The comments be better than the articles.
Speaker 5: When they're taking him down too much. I remember none
Speaker 5: of the positive. You don't remember the negative.
Speaker 8: Joe the listeners out there, man, you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: Anybody can go to jail. I was locked up with
Speaker 8: a lot of characters from different walks of life. Bill,
Speaker 8: anybody could getting locked YouTube can go to jail.
Speaker 3: I was in there with judges, das, detectives.
Speaker 5: My prisoner friend just said that the other day he
Speaker 5: and there with engineers, barmbers.
Speaker 8: I was in the millionaires engineers. Anybody could get locked up.
Speaker 8: Mistakes happy, You know what I mean. You can make
Speaker 8: a mistake, a fatal mistake, and end up going to jail.
Speaker 8: And from any walk of life. Look at Martha Stewart.
Speaker 8: So when I'm saying that is just you know, stay
Speaker 8: out of jail, man. You ain't got to eat that
Speaker 8: crap man.
Speaker 9: Out the corner store. Stay out the corner store.
Speaker 7: Man, stay as in the street man.
Speaker 3: Do the right thing. And on that note, on b
Speaker 3: A for Prodigy Kathy Yndly, I got it.
Speaker 1: Finally, Sugar Sugar Steve, Damned Sugar Steve.
Speaker 3: We didn't even bring up your Sugar Sugars book exactly.
Speaker 3: And get diabetes.
Speaker 1: But you can just hang out with you and get
Speaker 1: that no, no, whatever whatever, Fay Bill Bossonville, Fan Ticolo,
Speaker 1: and Margaret.
Speaker 3: Are you Margaret? How many prisons you've been to in Jersey?
Speaker 3: Like five? Mar everywhere? You know prison tool.
Speaker 1: This is Quest Love, Quest Love Supreme. We will see
Speaker 1: you on the next around. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Ye see it.
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production i Heeart Radio. This
Speaker 1: classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For
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