Welcome to Righteous Convictions with Jason Flomer, the podcast where I interview folks who see the wrong in the world and are driven to make it right. Today's guests are both road tested tour musicians who found a common purpose in sobriety and youth mentorship. One is a multi instrumentalist and producer who draws on his childhood experience with learning differently. The other a world famous hip hop icon and legend. My first record was I'm DMC in the Place to Be. I go to St. John's University and since kindergarten ourcquad to knowledge at the twelfth grade and went straight to college. When I roped that rum have been the attitude in the presentation that so much of negativity in Braces, I was able to touch change not only just in the neighborhoods in people's minds. With their organization Road Recovery, they used creative projects to empower at risk youth who are struggling with addiction, Road Recovery, creative staff mentor Static and the devastating Mike Controller himself, Darryl dm C McDaniels right now on Righteous Convictions, Welcome Back to Righteous Convictions. This is as you probably know by now the show where I have the privilege of interviewing change makers, people who are doing just badass ship in the world for no reason except for the fact that they can. And today we have not one, but two. And I'm freaking excited because we have Darryl McDaniels, also known as the Devastating Mike Controller from on DMC Darryl, Welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you. Glad to be here, Ja. And with Darryl we have his partner in do good illness, the opposite of partner in crime, another phenomenal musician and performer, and the stuff that they are doing together, I think it's gonna inspire a lot of people. Inspires me so static. Just glad you're here, man, I'm so happy to be here. And Darryl, I mean, look, everybody knows who you are and people have grown up to Your music has been the soundtrack of so many of our lives. I'll never forget the first time I heard King of Rock. I was in my little office I just started working Atlantic Records, and I was running around playing that record on ten for anybody and everybody. I was like, this is the craziest ship I've heard and and I grew up. For me, my favorite band, my favorite rock star growing up with Steven Tyler, my favorite band with Yeah Yeah. When I when I was growing up, um for me and people bug out. I was never in the soul music because you got to think about it like this, That's when my mom's and pops was still young and cool, so that was them music. I didn't have a music when I was growing up because I was too busy read comic books and drawing anyway. But there was something about the rock and the folk rock that attracted me, you know, groups like Credence, Clearwater Revival, The Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, but also Jim Crocey, Harry Chapin, those storytellers people. So I guess that was my attraction to music, because you know, I was in the comic books. I don't care about love and girls and stuff like that. Most of the R and B music was about love, you know, Al Green and Marvin Gaye, and that was my mother's in the music. But it was just phenomenal to me because I was a good student as a kid growing up, and the rock dudes would always talk about presidents and governments and stuff like that, so you know, rock and folk rock was like social studies are history and school of me. So that's what gravitated me towards the music. So long story show. When I let start making hip hop songs, I was like, everybody's samples and uses James Brown and jazz and funk, but nobody is using the rock records that I heard on the radio, and the rock records that were in the early crates of Graham, Master Flash and Africa Baan Bad and the grant was in Theodore So Larry Smith before Rick Rubin was our producer and Larry is the greatest hip hop producer ever that nobody knows about. So that's the movie to be made. But Larry Smith, he knew I loved rocks, so he was like, de what do you want to do. My thing was, I want to make a record that's like Billy Squire's Big Beat. So we made rock Box eighty four was rock Box, eight five was King of Rock and then eighties six let us make him walk this way. Ol Fare told you this. When I was like six or seven, I was obsessed with Michael Jackson for good reason in Prince and all that. And then a few years later when you guys came on TV, it walked this way. I already loved run DMC and like mom, Mom checked this out. She's like, that's Arrowsmith. I'm like, what's Arrowsmith? So I learned to be a rock guitarist from you and run DMC. It really was the world's colliding when you did that incredible groundbreaking collaboration. But when I take from that story too, Dren, was that you didn't have a type of music that was your own, so you invented it right, Yes, exactly, Yes it was. It was really more of a selfish act. You just needed something to listen to. You like, well, nobody else is going to do it, I'll do it myself. I think that was the beauty of Run DMC because it was Jay Down and Joe doing a bunch of stuff that related to so many people. Because prior to Rundy m saying, you know, hip hop was considered the black ghetto music. And you know, I grew up in Queen's you know what I'm saying, So when I came into hip hop, you know, previously hip hop was hip hop was the message, here's what's going on, you know, the reality, the truth of New York City because everybody, and well a lot of people don't notice, people thought that New York City was heaven. Why because they saw all of the images of what was going on in Studio fifty four in Hollywood. Everybody was coming from Hollywood, to ceo s, the entertainers, the movie stars, the athletes, to who's who of the world was coming to New York City. The party in Studio fifty four, and it was Rolls Royce's, and it was bent Lee's and it was diamonds, and it was sex, and it was jugs, and it was cocaine and it was fur coats and it was champagne everywhere, kind of like what hip hop is today. But on that note, it took some young brothers and sisters out the Bronx to tell the truth or no, don't get it twisted. What you see in the magazines and in the newspapers and on the news every night about how great Studio fifty four is, that's not the reality of New York City. So that's when I learned to yo these kids. And the Bronx was burning and was drugs and heroine and street kingtings that where. But for me, I knew that even in the darkness and despair and the death, in the dirt of the ghetto, there was fun, cool, creative things like crayons and comic books and skateboards and coloring books. So I took it upon myself and I did my hip hop music. You know what I'm saying. I didn't see it as just black ghetto music, because in the black ghetto and the poor as ghetto and the poverty and the famine, this kid's coloring and doing poetry and dancing and doing good things. I just hate the fact that, you know, to be in a gang or to have been to jail and to be a drug dealer is considered street. Because even in the streets that I grew up in Queens, you know what I'm saying, we did creative things. Hip hop allowed me to say, no, the truth is coming from these places that you don't have to go to jail, you don't have to be in a game, you don't have to do or sell drugs to be powerful. And that was the whole clashing of all of these cultures, you know, rock and folk rock, um Harry Chateman and Jim crow Chy and Neil Young and John Fogerty. They taught me as Coola have fun with this music, but we have a responsibility to be the representatives of the communities that we come from. So while a lot of people prefer to rhyme about selling drugs and going to jail like it's a badger honor, I'm so gangs and powerful. I'll make a record about Christmas time and make it one of the most powerful forces on the face of the earth. My first record was I'm d MC in the place to be. I go to St. John's University and since kindergarten, I acquired the knowledge. At the twelfth grade, I went straight to college. When I rocked that rhyme, the kids in my neighborhood who was like seventeen and younger, they came to me, was like, Daryl, how the hell are you doing hip hop? And you cool and got deaders and gazellas on and and and catillacts and stuff, and you go to school. And that was an opportunity for me to say, not only do I go to school, young brother a sister, I get straight these and this and that, and I don't curse, and I'm obedient, and I listened to my parents and teachers, and by me having the attitude and the presentation that so much of negativity in praces, I was able to touch change, alter the states of what was going on in our neighborhoods. But not only just in the neighborhoods and people's minds. Daryl, in your memoir Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide, you talked about a lot of these things that influence you growing up, comic books and the different types of music and stuff. But you also talked very openly about your struggles with alcohol, addiction and depression, and it almost killed you, right, I mean almost killed me too by the way. I ended up in and rehab myself when I was twenty six. But can you talk about how that influenced your work that we're gonna turn to talking about now, um, where you're helping so many people and leading by example. You know, everybody knows Daryl from the God has told the world to walk this way and their Adidas. So they saw, you know, everything from Raisin Hell, King of Rock Rock, everything that we did. They saw that, but they didn't see the side of me that was no different from who they are, and especially that side. Even as a young kid, when I got into the music business, it was like, oh shoot, you can tell stories about who you are over music. That was my thing. It was like me writing a comic book. But within all the pressures and struggles that anybody in any given occupation or career a situation gets, I got all this anxiety and all of this stuff. I started to look for stuff outside of me to survive. So, to make a long story short, I became an alcoholic suicide of metaphysical spiritual wreck who almost died, almost odeed, almost drunk myself to death. Then when that wasn't working, I was thinking about jumping off a roof and all of that. But my saving grace came from after people telling me over and over, Darrol, this isn't good behavior, this isn't good for you, over and over. And I was functional, you know, I was a functional drunk. You know. I was never late, always showed up one time, completed my task. But what was going on inside of me was the thing that was destroying and killing me. So a long story short, the thing that saved me is when I went to rehab to stop drinking, and the reason why that happened was in the midst of being an alcoholic suicide of metaphysical spiritual record was about to jump off the roof. When I was thirty five years old, I found out something about myself that was known that everybody in my family and neighborhood, in the schools that I went to. I found out that I was adopted at age thirty five, which totally, totally, really made me want to jump. But then somebody brought to my knowledge that, um, yo, you could find your birth mother and you could find your birth father and you could solve that mystery. So that was the thing that made me say, Okay, if I'm gonna do this, if I'm gonna go through this, I gotta get sober. So when I went to rehab to stop drinking, I discovered the most powerful thing in existence that any man, boy, woman or girl could do for themselves. I discovered the stink card therapy, and therapy was the thing that set me free. And when I got out of rehab, and when I got out of therapy, I would run into people and people would have pro me on the d m C. King of Rock level, Like, Yo, you changed my life, walk this way, my dita's all of that, and it was basically like, Yo, we always see Run, we always see Russell, we always see Camor and the kids. We never see you. And they would ask me, and this's what led me to coming into contact with people like Row Recovery. They would say, we never see you where you've been at? And I'm always an honest guy. Everything I always said on my record was true, and if you come to me, I'm never going to front because hip hop, to me and rock and roll is about keeping it real. So they would ask me D where you been and I would go, well, I just got out of rehab. Or I would go well I just got out of therapy. And these people would stop and I would see a total change on them and they would go, what do you mean by that? And I would tell them my story. In a hundred percent of the time, two things would happen. The people who I would speaking into they would look around first, like to see I am was after them, and they would go, I've never told anybody this DP, but me too. If they didn't say that a hundred percent at the time, they would go, I've never told anybody this D but my mother, my daughter, my wife, my girlfriend, my aunt, my grand everybody was dealing with a mental health issue. And then it all came to me, Jason, the King of Rock thing, to discovery that I was adopted, to all the things that happened to get me to that point. I realized this whole King or Rock thing was just to set up for Darryl McDaniels to be put here to do what he was supposed to do. Static you've had a crazy journey as well to get to this point. I know you overcame like severe learning disabilities. My mom actually started what many people considered the best school in the country, four kids with severe learning disabilities. My brother was the first student at the Gateway School, and he went on to get a PhD in psychometrics. And you know, I turned out to be the one who didn't excel at school. After all, you didn't have to, Yeah, exactly and uh and that became my my muse. Tell us about your childhood and how you got involved with road recovery. The backtrack a little bit. You know, I had lost struggles in school. I thankfully found guitar after I still walked this way, but um, I found guitar. In middle school, I felt like I could finally do something like Wow, I get this instrument. And I couldn't learn like everybody else. I couldn't read music at all. I just put the records on and learn it, play it back. And then around that early part of high school, I was struggling so bad, you know, I was pretty much gonna fail out. And I really love that story about your family in the school because we didn't really have that even in New Jersey too much, Like they had a great education program, but they didn't have how to deal with everybody's differences in learning. You know. The truth is I wanted to be a rock star at that point and play rock and roll that whole vibe. So I was following and emulating maybe the wrong aspects of rock and roll, drinking and experimenting with drugs as well. But that got me through. You know that I was the kid who always compensated. So now it was fast forward. I end up joining an awesome band in my early twenties called Hours, and I was in the band for almost sixteen years and we actually got to make a record of group in as well, so we got that in a common dy. I did develop a bit of an alcohol and substance abuse problem. I got sober around thirty four years old. To be it was a little about nine years in March, and I always knew Road Recovery in Jack and Jeana way back, even with the band I was in. We always supported their events, and I wasn't you know, like like D described, I was functional, but I did my thing. I had a reason why I needed to get sober. So I mentioned Gene and Jack. So it's Gene Bone and Jack book Binder are the co founders of Road Recovery. They both had full careers in the music industry and they created this amazing organization. We do these programs where we go to either clubhouses or group homes and we do this art music. But really what's going on. We're trying to teach communication and life skills through our own experiences, and it's not about addiction only. He reminded me of that. He was just about showing up, being vulnerable and meeting them where they're at. So I show up, I'm like, I guess I'm still in my thirties at that point. I'm like a little over a year sober. And I realized when I walked into that room and this group home that even though my you know, getting through sobriety and working at was almost secondary to the fact that when I related to these kids, I brought me right back to high school when I dealt with these learning disabilities, and that's how I was able to relate. So it got under my skin. And now we're talking years later. I mean, I guess I've been with Roll Recovery since two thousand thirteen. In two thousand fourteen or thirteen, D and I met, but in fourteen we collaborated on a local group home organization New Jersey. We did a benefit to help kids in therapeutic foster care, so we already had that bond. When when Static was like, Yo, I'm working with these people called Role Recovery, I was like, what do they do? They was like, Yo, we keep kids out the streets, we educate them, we give them an opportunity to be creative. And anybody struggling with any substance abuse to drugs and mental things. I mean, because that was me. I see myself in all those kids. So Road Recovery it's just another form of rock and roll or just another form of hip hop. Without having to specifically only use music. We use music as debate, but we get a man and we recreate these souls and spirits. Basically, road Recovery is it's entertainment industry professionals. It's a nonprofit and everybody is considered like we kind of become mentors and Road Recovery creates a way for young people to communicate and build up their life skills. But we use music, like the says, like like a bait. But we use music or dance, or poetry or painting or any form of art or expression. But the idea is the way we line out the programs with the creative staff mentors. We always have like a check in meeting, so we want to create the dialogue and it's like a business meeting after that of like life skills, so we say, well, you're working on that project. That is great, but to do that, can you at least commit to next week that we have this much done. So even though these kids are brilliant and we love the quality of the work they do, it's not necessarily about how good the final product is. It's about being engaged in that journey. So it sets everybody up with life skills and even me as a creative staff member after doing the cycle, I have better life skills just from communicating to the young people and getting like we're all learning from each other. But that's that's essentially what you know Road Recovery does and the project we were doing in the Bronx But that's why I contacted you, like, hey, Jeane wants to meet up and Daryl comes down to you. I guess it's Clay Street. We worked in the organization at the time. Road Recovery was partnered with Bronx Connect. It's called RTG. We're doing the show, Darrel. The shows up and he's talking to all the young people. They know who you are. They know and you're saying when I it was snowing, and I was when I walk outside, the snow that falls on me is the same snow that falls on you. And that vulnerability, which is everything we try to do with the creative staff at Road Recovery. Daryl is embodied in seconds enough for a bunch of the young people to walk up to him and say, hey, hey, DMC, we have a song. Do you think you could be on it? Because because he was that open and vulnerable and Key says yes. They basically wrote the lyrics Twinkle Twinkle, Little Start. They changed it and they talked about stopping the violence on the streets. The phenomenal on they came up with and allowed me to participate on. It's called Twinkle Twinkle. RTG released the grip tell you I don't drink anymore. I am done with coals, being sober every day. It's brunder full before I get I gotta pay my duels. I can't turn the battle and come to loose. You can't have a world that's rumber fold took hands in the head yet run but chose I'm here to fix it, So I come with two. I got a message for the kits when I comes to school, don't rock put a shit on rock at all. I walked on. I said, I did not fall. To call me a bowl because I don't fall. Call me better but the better than y'all, or something like a poll in his overall so as he trump, the guys said it over y'all. If you need a superhero, come who to call. I'm not simper one of the tipping all the dome. I'm on the road to recover bread just like cool you want to discover me, you gotta be shotting like the thums to the supercol inside of you. I'm on the road to recover bread, just like, Oh, you want to discover me, gotta be shotting like the dumas to be supercool inside of you. Don't tell you, you still tell you now listen on this show, we have a couple of traditions. The first one is something we call the magic wand question, and that means I'm gonna ask you first, Darryl, if you had a magic wand and could wave it and to fix one thing, what would it be? Oh? Man, I would fix poverty. I wouldn't make sure kind of um Harry Chapin's mission and I work with World Hunger and all of those people shout out to the mountain in Long Island. I wouldn't make sure that the last thing people will be worrying about is where they could get a meal, because once they're nourished, they can use the fatality of the physical because the men too will be empowered, and then we could fix everything that's needed to fix with our hands in our minds. I would fix poverty. How about you? Static? Wow? So magic? I would Basically, if there's a way to have people, whenever they encounter anybody have complete sense of empathy and openness and only view that person with no other prior knowledge, like lose all sense of prejuice. I go even beyond like bigotry, like just you encounter a person with an open heart and empathy and you just wait and pause enough for two people to figure out who you are. And if you're carrying empathy in your heart even if you're in need, I would hope you wouldn't, because people sometimes do bad things that disparity. A lot of our our horror has come out of desperate situations and misunderstanding. So if you could just encounter everybody with a sense of empathy in that open heart understanding just to grow, I think a lot of things would come out of that as a ripple effect. Those are great answers. So if people who want to get involved with the great work that you guys are doing, how do they do that? Is there? A website? Is there? And Instagram or any other way they can get involved. Road Recovery dot Org is the website at road Underscore Recovery is our Instagram and the Instagram is awesome because it's growing more and more due to lockdown era, because we've gotten so much amazing cottage of young people creating stuff. So just expect that to be a great place to see what we actually do. Yeah, for anybody out there wondering, you could find us on a Facebook, Twitter, YouTube at Road Recovery, and we're gonna make it super easy for you. There will be a link in our bio to all the information you need to join the movement, get involved, volunteer, teach sing right, do whatever it is you can do to help these kids and to help Darryl and Static in their mission. And please tune in next week when we speak with the Lieutenant Governor of the great state of Pennsylvania, who I hope we will all soon be calling U S. Senator John Fetterman. And now the closing of our show is something we call words of Wisdom, and it's super simple. This is where I first of all, thank you both for being here and just for doing all the incredible stuff that you're doing. And so words of wisdom works like this. I just turned my microphone off, kick back in my chair, close my eyes, my headphones on, and let you share anything else at all. That you would think we didn't cover and then maybe we should have. So static, why don't you go first and we'll let Darryl that clean up. Right before I do that, I just want to thank you in mind that UM, you came to actually do something with us at Road Recovery in the Bronx and that was a great day for those kids, for young people, and I really appreciate that the whole organization does UM. For me, I want to kind of sell up some of the things that I heard from Darryl, and I think normalizing mental health asking for help is so important and UM in this it's just that feeling like if you could just it's tough, we're in it, we don't we isolate, but if we could just get out of it and reach out to others, there's so much that could come out of that. And when we bring in this WE factor, you know, like a lot of recovery programs that are WE programs and road Recovery just power of WE as UM for good reason, because when you're not alone, you don't you just feel like you can face anything. And I've benefited off that feeling even again with this world of you know, navigating a d h D as an adult found the support groups first thing I did, and I literally listened to you know, ten or twelve different people sound just like me, And I really think that's that comes from thoughtful communication, that comes from being open and vulnerable. But the more people could just, I guess, be open to the idea of like finding that first tribe to let you rejoin the rest of the tribe. So whatever is eating at you, whatever is bothering you, like, just go for the help. Because whoever you are, I don't know all of you, but I want everyone to be on this planet as long as they're supposed to be here, and just don't be afraid to ask for help. That's pretty much it. Let's normalize mental health. That's awesome. Um, yes, thank you, Jason, because you've gotta understand how important you are in all this, because you're giving us a chance to have dialogue, You're giving us a chance to be heard. What I want to say is this, here's some words of wisdom. Every problem that we face in this world today can be solved in the blank of an eye if we all sit down, come together and work together to solving the problem. And one of the first ways to have victory in all communities, across all racial boundaries, race, creeds, colors and nations. Is the o GS and the Young Geez doing what we do at wrote Recovery, getting together and sharing the dialogue to the young people out there. Old people are not old, They are walking experience. That means they didn't die, they didn't know d and they're not in jail. They didn't get destroyed in the wars and the struggles of this human experience. And the O g s listen to the young people because they have the new ideas. In order to solve the problem, government has to change, politics has to change, and religion has to change. You learn from the elders, but you also learn how to execute from the young people. If we combine those two things, we can eradicate all of the problems that we have across the boarder words of wisdom. We gotta come together and work together every day. You just can't give out turkeys on Thanksgiving, and you just can't give out gifts on Christmas and expect things to get better. M thank you for listening to Righteous Convictions with Jason Flam. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall Jeff Clyburne and Kevin Wardis. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Twitter at wrong Conviction, and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Righteous Convictions with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one

Welcome to Righteous Convictions with Jason Flomer, the podcast where I interview folks who see the wrong in the world and are driven to make it right. Today's guests are both road tested tour musicians who found a common purpose in sobriety and youth mentorship. One is a multi instrumentalist and producer who draws on his childhood experience with learning differently. The other a world famous hip hop icon and legend. My first record was I'm DMC in the Place to Be. I go to St. John's University and since kindergarten ourcquad to knowledge at the twelfth grade and went straight to college. When I roped that rum have been the attitude in the presentation that so much of negativity in Braces, I was able to touch change not only just in the neighborhoods in people's minds. With their organization Road Recovery, they used creative projects to empower at risk youth who are struggling with addiction, Road Recovery, creative staff mentor Static and the devastating Mike Controller himself, Darryl dm C McDaniels right now on Righteous Convictions, Welcome Back to Righteous Convictions. This is as you probably know by now the show where I have the privilege of interviewing change makers, people who are doing just badass ship in the world for no reason except for the fact that they can. And today we have not one, but two. And I'm freaking excited because we have Darryl McDaniels, also known as the Devastating Mike Controller from on DMC Darryl, Welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you. Glad to be here, Ja. And with Darryl we have his partner in do good illness, the opposite of partner in crime, another phenomenal musician and performer, and the stuff that they are doing together, I think it's gonna inspire a lot of people. Inspires me so static. Just glad you're here, man, I'm so happy to be here. And Darryl, I mean, look, everybody knows who you are and people have grown up to Your music has been the soundtrack of so many of our lives. I'll never forget the first time I heard King of Rock. I was in my little office I just started working Atlantic Records, and I was running around playing that record on ten for anybody and everybody. I was like, this is the craziest ship I've heard and and I grew up. For me, my favorite band, my favorite rock star growing up with Steven Tyler, my favorite band with Yeah Yeah. When I when I was growing up, um for me and people bug out. I was never in the soul music because you got to think about it like this, That's when my mom's and pops was still young and cool, so that was them music. I didn't have a music when I was growing up because I was too busy read comic books and drawing anyway. But there was something about the rock and the folk rock that attracted me, you know, groups like Credence, Clearwater Revival, The Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, but also Jim Crocey, Harry Chapin, those storytellers people. So I guess that was my attraction to music, because you know, I was in the comic books. I don't care about love and girls and stuff like that. Most of the R and B music was about love, you know, Al Green and Marvin Gaye, and that was my mother's in the music. But it was just phenomenal to me because I was a good student as a kid growing up, and the rock dudes would always talk about presidents and governments and stuff like that, so you know, rock and folk rock was like social studies are history and school of me. So that's what gravitated me towards the music. So long story show. When I let start making hip hop songs, I was like, everybody's samples and uses James Brown and jazz and funk, but nobody is using the rock records that I heard on the radio, and the rock records that were in the early crates of Graham, Master Flash and Africa Baan Bad and the grant was in Theodore So Larry Smith before Rick Rubin was our producer and Larry is the greatest hip hop producer ever that nobody knows about. So that's the movie to be made. But Larry Smith, he knew I loved rocks, so he was like, de what do you want to do. My thing was, I want to make a record that's like Billy Squire's Big Beat. So we made rock Box eighty four was rock Box, eight five was King of Rock and then eighties six let us make him walk this way. Ol Fare told you this. When I was like six or seven, I was obsessed with Michael Jackson for good reason in Prince and all that. And then a few years later when you guys came on TV, it walked this way. I already loved run DMC and like mom, Mom checked this out. She's like, that's Arrowsmith. I'm like, what's Arrowsmith? So I learned to be a rock guitarist from you and run DMC. It really was the world's colliding when you did that incredible groundbreaking collaboration. But when I take from that story too, Dren, was that you didn't have a type of music that was your own, so you invented it right, Yes, exactly, Yes it was. It was really more of a selfish act. You just needed something to listen to. You like, well, nobody else is going to do it, I'll do it myself. I think that was the beauty of Run DMC because it was Jay Down and Joe doing a bunch of stuff that related to so many people. Because prior to Rundy m saying, you know, hip hop was considered the black ghetto music. And you know, I grew up in Queen's you know what I'm saying, So when I came into hip hop, you know, previously hip hop was hip hop was the message, here's what's going on, you know, the reality, the truth of New York City because everybody, and well a lot of people don't notice, people thought that New York City was heaven. Why because they saw all of the images of what was going on in Studio fifty four in Hollywood. Everybody was coming from Hollywood, to ceo s, the entertainers, the movie stars, the athletes, to who's who of the world was coming to New York City. The party in Studio fifty four, and it was Rolls Royce's, and it was bent Lee's and it was diamonds, and it was sex, and it was jugs, and it was cocaine and it was fur coats and it was champagne everywhere, kind of like what hip hop is today. But on that note, it took some young brothers and sisters out the Bronx to tell the truth or no, don't get it twisted. What you see in the magazines and in the newspapers and on the news every night about how great Studio fifty four is, that's not the reality of New York City. So that's when I learned to yo these kids. And the Bronx was burning and was drugs and heroine and street kingtings that where. But for me, I knew that even in the darkness and despair and the death, in the dirt of the ghetto, there was fun, cool, creative things like crayons and comic books and skateboards and coloring books. So I took it upon myself and I did my hip hop music. You know what I'm saying. I didn't see it as just black ghetto music, because in the black ghetto and the poor as ghetto and the poverty and the famine, this kid's coloring and doing poetry and dancing and doing good things. I just hate the fact that, you know, to be in a gang or to have been to jail and to be a drug dealer is considered street. Because even in the streets that I grew up in Queens, you know what I'm saying, we did creative things. Hip hop allowed me to say, no, the truth is coming from these places that you don't have to go to jail, you don't have to be in a game, you don't have to do or sell drugs to be powerful. And that was the whole clashing of all of these cultures, you know, rock and folk rock, um Harry Chateman and Jim crow Chy and Neil Young and John Fogerty. They taught me as Coola have fun with this music, but we have a responsibility to be the representatives of the communities that we come from. So while a lot of people prefer to rhyme about selling drugs and going to jail like it's a badger honor, I'm so gangs and powerful. I'll make a record about Christmas time and make it one of the most powerful forces on the face of the earth. My first record was I'm d MC in the place to be. I go to St. John's University and since kindergarten, I acquired the knowledge. At the twelfth grade, I went straight to college. When I rocked that rhyme, the kids in my neighborhood who was like seventeen and younger, they came to me, was like, Daryl, how the hell are you doing hip hop? And you cool and got deaders and gazellas on and and and catillacts and stuff, and you go to school. And that was an opportunity for me to say, not only do I go to school, young brother a sister, I get straight these and this and that, and I don't curse, and I'm obedient, and I listened to my parents and teachers, and by me having the attitude and the presentation that so much of negativity in praces, I was able to touch change, alter the states of what was going on in our neighborhoods. But not only just in the neighborhoods and people's minds. Daryl, in your memoir Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide, you talked about a lot of these things that influence you growing up, comic books and the different types of music and stuff. But you also talked very openly about your struggles with alcohol, addiction and depression, and it almost killed you, right, I mean almost killed me too by the way. I ended up in and rehab myself when I was twenty six. But can you talk about how that influenced your work that we're gonna turn to talking about now, um, where you're helping so many people and leading by example. You know, everybody knows Daryl from the God has told the world to walk this way and their Adidas. So they saw, you know, everything from Raisin Hell, King of Rock Rock, everything that we did. They saw that, but they didn't see the side of me that was no different from who they are, and especially that side. Even as a young kid, when I got into the music business, it was like, oh shoot, you can tell stories about who you are over music. That was my thing. It was like me writing a comic book. But within all the pressures and struggles that anybody in any given occupation or career a situation gets, I got all this anxiety and all of this stuff. I started to look for stuff outside of me to survive. So, to make a long story short, I became an alcoholic suicide of metaphysical spiritual wreck who almost died, almost odeed, almost drunk myself to death. Then when that wasn't working, I was thinking about jumping off a roof and all of that. But my saving grace came from after people telling me over and over, Darrol, this isn't good behavior, this isn't good for you, over and over. And I was functional, you know, I was a functional drunk. You know. I was never late, always showed up one time, completed my task. But what was going on inside of me was the thing that was destroying and killing me. So a long story short, the thing that saved me is when I went to rehab to stop drinking, and the reason why that happened was in the midst of being an alcoholic suicide of metaphysical spiritual record was about to jump off the roof. When I was thirty five years old, I found out something about myself that was known that everybody in my family and neighborhood, in the schools that I went to. I found out that I was adopted at age thirty five, which totally, totally, really made me want to jump. But then somebody brought to my knowledge that, um, yo, you could find your birth mother and you could find your birth father and you could solve that mystery. So that was the thing that made me say, Okay, if I'm gonna do this, if I'm gonna go through this, I gotta get sober. So when I went to rehab to stop drinking, I discovered the most powerful thing in existence that any man, boy, woman or girl could do for themselves. I discovered the stink card therapy, and therapy was the thing that set me free. And when I got out of rehab, and when I got out of therapy, I would run into people and people would have pro me on the d m C. King of Rock level, Like, Yo, you changed my life, walk this way, my dita's all of that, and it was basically like, Yo, we always see Run, we always see Russell, we always see Camor and the kids. We never see you. And they would ask me, and this's what led me to coming into contact with people like Row Recovery. They would say, we never see you where you've been at? And I'm always an honest guy. Everything I always said on my record was true, and if you come to me, I'm never going to front because hip hop, to me and rock and roll is about keeping it real. So they would ask me D where you been and I would go, well, I just got out of rehab. Or I would go well I just got out of therapy. And these people would stop and I would see a total change on them and they would go, what do you mean by that? And I would tell them my story. In a hundred percent of the time, two things would happen. The people who I would speaking into they would look around first, like to see I am was after them, and they would go, I've never told anybody this DP, but me too. If they didn't say that a hundred percent at the time, they would go, I've never told anybody this D but my mother, my daughter, my wife, my girlfriend, my aunt, my grand everybody was dealing with a mental health issue. And then it all came to me, Jason, the King of Rock thing, to discovery that I was adopted, to all the things that happened to get me to that point. I realized this whole King or Rock thing was just to set up for Darryl McDaniels to be put here to do what he was supposed to do. Static you've had a crazy journey as well to get to this point. I know you overcame like severe learning disabilities. My mom actually started what many people considered the best school in the country, four kids with severe learning disabilities. My brother was the first student at the Gateway School, and he went on to get a PhD in psychometrics. And you know, I turned out to be the one who didn't excel at school. After all, you didn't have to, Yeah, exactly and uh and that became my my muse. Tell us about your childhood and how you got involved with road recovery. The backtrack a little bit. You know, I had lost struggles in school. I thankfully found guitar after I still walked this way, but um, I found guitar. In middle school, I felt like I could finally do something like Wow, I get this instrument. And I couldn't learn like everybody else. I couldn't read music at all. I just put the records on and learn it, play it back. And then around that early part of high school, I was struggling so bad, you know, I was pretty much gonna fail out. And I really love that story about your family in the school because we didn't really have that even in New Jersey too much, Like they had a great education program, but they didn't have how to deal with everybody's differences in learning. You know. The truth is I wanted to be a rock star at that point and play rock and roll that whole vibe. So I was following and emulating maybe the wrong aspects of rock and roll, drinking and experimenting with drugs as well. But that got me through. You know that I was the kid who always compensated. So now it was fast forward. I end up joining an awesome band in my early twenties called Hours, and I was in the band for almost sixteen years and we actually got to make a record of group in as well, so we got that in a common dy. I did develop a bit of an alcohol and substance abuse problem. I got sober around thirty four years old. To be it was a little about nine years in March, and I always knew Road Recovery in Jack and Jeana way back, even with the band I was in. We always supported their events, and I wasn't you know, like like D described, I was functional, but I did my thing. I had a reason why I needed to get sober. So I mentioned Gene and Jack. So it's Gene Bone and Jack book Binder are the co founders of Road Recovery. They both had full careers in the music industry and they created this amazing organization. We do these programs where we go to either clubhouses or group homes and we do this art music. But really what's going on. We're trying to teach communication and life skills through our own experiences, and it's not about addiction only. He reminded me of that. He was just about showing up, being vulnerable and meeting them where they're at. So I show up, I'm like, I guess I'm still in my thirties at that point. I'm like a little over a year sober. And I realized when I walked into that room and this group home that even though my you know, getting through sobriety and working at was almost secondary to the fact that when I related to these kids, I brought me right back to high school when I dealt with these learning disabilities, and that's how I was able to relate. So it got under my skin. And now we're talking years later. I mean, I guess I've been with Roll Recovery since two thousand thirteen. In two thousand fourteen or thirteen, D and I met, but in fourteen we collaborated on a local group home organization New Jersey. We did a benefit to help kids in therapeutic foster care, so we already had that bond. When when Static was like, Yo, I'm working with these people called Role Recovery, I was like, what do they do? They was like, Yo, we keep kids out the streets, we educate them, we give them an opportunity to be creative. And anybody struggling with any substance abuse to drugs and mental things. I mean, because that was me. I see myself in all those kids. So Road Recovery it's just another form of rock and roll or just another form of hip hop. Without having to specifically only use music. We use music as debate, but we get a man and we recreate these souls and spirits. Basically, road Recovery is it's entertainment industry professionals. It's a nonprofit and everybody is considered like we kind of become mentors and Road Recovery creates a way for young people to communicate and build up their life skills. But we use music, like the says, like like a bait. But we use music or dance, or poetry or painting or any form of art or expression. But the idea is the way we line out the programs with the creative staff mentors. We always have like a check in meeting, so we want to create the dialogue and it's like a business meeting after that of like life skills, so we say, well, you're working on that project. That is great, but to do that, can you at least commit to next week that we have this much done. So even though these kids are brilliant and we love the quality of the work they do, it's not necessarily about how good the final product is. It's about being engaged in that journey. So it sets everybody up with life skills and even me as a creative staff member after doing the cycle, I have better life skills just from communicating to the young people and getting like we're all learning from each other. But that's that's essentially what you know Road Recovery does and the project we were doing in the Bronx But that's why I contacted you, like, hey, Jeane wants to meet up and Daryl comes down to you. I guess it's Clay Street. We worked in the organization at the time. Road Recovery was partnered with Bronx Connect. It's called RTG. We're doing the show, Darrel. The shows up and he's talking to all the young people. They know who you are. They know and you're saying when I it was snowing, and I was when I walk outside, the snow that falls on me is the same snow that falls on you. And that vulnerability, which is everything we try to do with the creative staff at Road Recovery. Daryl is embodied in seconds enough for a bunch of the young people to walk up to him and say, hey, hey, DMC, we have a song. Do you think you could be on it? Because because he was that open and vulnerable and Key says yes. They basically wrote the lyrics Twinkle Twinkle, Little Start. They changed it and they talked about stopping the violence on the streets. The phenomenal on they came up with and allowed me to participate on. It's called Twinkle Twinkle. RTG released the grip tell you I don't drink anymore. I am done with coals, being sober every day. It's brunder full before I get I gotta pay my duels. I can't turn the battle and come to loose. You can't have a world that's rumber fold took hands in the head yet run but chose I'm here to fix it, So I come with two. I got a message for the kits when I comes to school, don't rock put a shit on rock at all. I walked on. I said, I did not fall. To call me a bowl because I don't fall. Call me better but the better than y'all, or something like a poll in his overall so as he trump, the guys said it over y'all. If you need a superhero, come who to call. I'm not simper one of the tipping all the dome. I'm on the road to recover bread just like cool you want to discover me, you gotta be shotting like the thums to the supercol inside of you. I'm on the road to recover bread, just like, Oh, you want to discover me, gotta be shotting like the dumas to be supercool inside of you. Don't tell you, you still tell you now listen on this show, we have a couple of traditions. The first one is something we call the magic wand question, and that means I'm gonna ask you first, Darryl, if you had a magic wand and could wave it and to fix one thing, what would it be? Oh? Man, I would fix poverty. I wouldn't make sure kind of um Harry Chapin's mission and I work with World Hunger and all of those people shout out to the mountain in Long Island. I wouldn't make sure that the last thing people will be worrying about is where they could get a meal, because once they're nourished, they can use the fatality of the physical because the men too will be empowered, and then we could fix everything that's needed to fix with our hands in our minds. I would fix poverty. How about you? Static? Wow? So magic? I would Basically, if there's a way to have people, whenever they encounter anybody have complete sense of empathy and openness and only view that person with no other prior knowledge, like lose all sense of prejuice. I go even beyond like bigotry, like just you encounter a person with an open heart and empathy and you just wait and pause enough for two people to figure out who you are. And if you're carrying empathy in your heart even if you're in need, I would hope you wouldn't, because people sometimes do bad things that disparity. A lot of our our horror has come out of desperate situations and misunderstanding. So if you could just encounter everybody with a sense of empathy in that open heart understanding just to grow, I think a lot of things would come out of that as a ripple effect. Those are great answers. So if people who want to get involved with the great work that you guys are doing, how do they do that? Is there? A website? Is there? And Instagram or any other way they can get involved. Road Recovery dot Org is the website at road Underscore Recovery is our Instagram and the Instagram is awesome because it's growing more and more due to lockdown era, because we've gotten so much amazing cottage of young people creating stuff. So just expect that to be a great place to see what we actually do. Yeah, for anybody out there wondering, you could find us on a Facebook, Twitter, YouTube at Road Recovery, and we're gonna make it super easy for you. There will be a link in our bio to all the information you need to join the movement, get involved, volunteer, teach sing right, do whatever it is you can do to help these kids and to help Darryl and Static in their mission. And please tune in next week when we speak with the Lieutenant Governor of the great state of Pennsylvania, who I hope we will all soon be calling U S. Senator John Fetterman. And now the closing of our show is something we call words of Wisdom, and it's super simple. This is where I first of all, thank you both for being here and just for doing all the incredible stuff that you're doing. And so words of wisdom works like this. I just turned my microphone off, kick back in my chair, close my eyes, my headphones on, and let you share anything else at all. That you would think we didn't cover and then maybe we should have. So static, why don't you go first and we'll let Darryl that clean up. Right before I do that, I just want to thank you in mind that UM, you came to actually do something with us at Road Recovery in the Bronx and that was a great day for those kids, for young people, and I really appreciate that the whole organization does UM. For me, I want to kind of sell up some of the things that I heard from Darryl, and I think normalizing mental health asking for help is so important and UM in this it's just that feeling like if you could just it's tough, we're in it, we don't we isolate, but if we could just get out of it and reach out to others, there's so much that could come out of that. And when we bring in this WE factor, you know, like a lot of recovery programs that are WE programs and road Recovery just power of WE as UM for good reason, because when you're not alone, you don't you just feel like you can face anything. And I've benefited off that feeling even again with this world of you know, navigating a d h D as an adult found the support groups first thing I did, and I literally listened to you know, ten or twelve different people sound just like me, And I really think that's that comes from thoughtful communication, that comes from being open and vulnerable. But the more people could just, I guess, be open to the idea of like finding that first tribe to let you rejoin the rest of the tribe. So whatever is eating at you, whatever is bothering you, like, just go for the help. Because whoever you are, I don't know all of you, but I want everyone to be on this planet as long as they're supposed to be here, and just don't be afraid to ask for help. That's pretty much it. Let's normalize mental health. That's awesome. Um, yes, thank you, Jason, because you've gotta understand how important you are in all this, because you're giving us a chance to have dialogue, You're giving us a chance to be heard. What I want to say is this, here's some words of wisdom. Every problem that we face in this world today can be solved in the blank of an eye if we all sit down, come together and work together to solving the problem. And one of the first ways to have victory in all communities, across all racial boundaries, race, creeds, colors and nations. Is the o GS and the Young Geez doing what we do at wrote Recovery, getting together and sharing the dialogue to the young people out there. Old people are not old, They are walking experience. That means they didn't die, they didn't know d and they're not in jail. They didn't get destroyed in the wars and the struggles of this human experience. And the O g s listen to the young people because they have the new ideas. In order to solve the problem, government has to change, politics has to change, and religion has to change. You learn from the elders, but you also learn how to execute from the young people. If we combine those two things, we can eradicate all of the problems that we have across the boarder words of wisdom. We gotta come together and work together every day. You just can't give out turkeys on Thanksgiving, and you just can't give out gifts on Christmas and expect things to get better. M thank you for listening to Righteous Convictions with Jason Flam. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall Jeff Clyburne and Kevin Wardis. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Twitter at wrong Conviction, and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Righteous Convictions with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one