The Bootleg Kev PodcastInterview with X-Raided on The Bootleg Kev Podcast.
Full video version of the episode is available on YouTube!
What's up, everybody, it's your boy. X write is Strange music in the building. Check me out on the Bootleg cav podcast Bootleg cap Podcast. Man Special guests in here.
After begging for him to come on the show for four fucking years, it feels like every time I see this guy at an event, I'd be like, YEO, what the fuck? Man? What the fuck?
Man?
Yeah, I got you, I got you, I got you. Well, he's finally here. X Rated is here.
Hey, man, I appreciate you. I always wanted to. I wanted to come when.
I was off parole.
That was a big deal for me, and also I wanted to make sure that I had some product lined up. I knew what I was working on, I knew what my mission was, and I still was trying to figure it out. Honestly, I viewed you as you were, you on my list your goals, so I just was like, man, I have to I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. And then bowl here you are and it's organic and it's dope.
First of all, when did you get off probation or parole or whatever.
I got off parole on March first, and then half a million dollar video with Tech nine. We stopped to eat lunch and I got my phone checking, you know, because we had our phone city side, and I got an email while I was holding the phone. I click on it and it's like my po like, hey man, congratulations you offer life for parole. Because I was on life parole, wasn't on smoke some weed and they overcrowded. They don't got nowhere to put you parole, life parole. I was on life for parol. So when I got out, I was still a lifer, and you're still a lifeer during parole. So you run around light that cop having a bad morning. You go right back to prison with a life sentence as a lifer, and they'll see you when they want to to figure out whether or not you should be released or kept. Yeah, so that was the experience I was having, Damn. Yeah. So March first, twenty twenty two, I got off and I kind of you know, turned in my album. Had to figure out now I could live where I want to live, had to figure that out, get situated, get an album out the way that just kind of let me wrap this up real quick. And so this album is kind of more of a deliberate result of those outcomes and being free. Yo.
It's crazy because like when I was growing up as a young kid, I remember discovering you through Brother Lynch, so I was a season of the Sickness is like one of my favorite albums ever. Shout to Brother Lynch, fucking classic album. Indeed, I've played it on the podcast for many people. I'm like, you don't understand. There was this guy who used to talk about eating babies when I was a kid, and I believe them, and they used to freak me the fuck out. Yeah, I'd be listening to Brother Lynch by playing Resident Evil just fucked up childhood, you know what I mean, Yeah, fucking killing zombies while this dude is talking about fucking killing babies.
Wow.
Anyway, shot to Brother Lynch. He's a legend pioneer of horrorcore hip hop too. But like I dived into like what you were doing, and then like me and my homie Rams, this used to just trip out. How this fool was like in prison recording fucking whole albums from the pen and they were dope as fussed over the phone. So you got locked up when you were seventeen, I did. Now you were already signed the black market. Yeah, as a juvenile. So what was the timeline between you signing your record deal and you going to prison?
Okay? So I ended up.
I was the first artist ever for black Market Records.
So I ended up.
Me and my homeboy, young Meek from the Gardens, Big Meek. We met up with Cedric, and then Meek and Cedric came up with a plan. Cedric had black Market Records in his pocket, in his brain, and Meek had the Bird You know what I mean. This is nineteen ninety one, Okay, nineteen ninety one, so I already have my niggas in black ep out, me Lynch and six already have the Endangered Species project that kind of became Nigga Deep, I believe. And then we started linking up with Cedric, me and Meek and and that's how we ended up turning in Psychoactive in like December of ninety one.
And then how much further after that was you catching your case and having to go sit down for two months? Two months?
I was arrested maybe ninety days later.
Yeah, damn.
Yeah. It was a wild set of summers.
Yeah, I mean, it's crazy because we hear about like Sack and how intense the violence is in Sacramento like now, and I feel like it's obviously guys like Mazi are huge coming out of the city. There's a lot of guys DP about the bag and.
Lavish.
There's a lot of dope shit coming out of sack Nty. Yeah ce bow see Bowl a legend for sure, fucking independent legend for yeah.
Sure.
But was it all because like obviously for people who don't know, like you went to prison for it was like a gang related homicide, right it was.
I was given gang relay homicide, first degree premeditated murdering use of a firearm. That's what I got. Felt good to.
Ye, Like, how crazy was the gang seen in Sacramento in the late eighties early nineties.
It was wild. It was very intense that the mid eighties. It was just people were representing what they were representing. My neighborhood got founded in the late seventies early eighties as a result of Compton Crips coming to South Sacramento to sell dope in our neighborhood, Nutty Blocks primarily, so the Garden Block is really a result of our ancestors being the Nutty Block Compton Cryps and some of the Santana blocks. So Garden Block came from that, among other things. I got a founding father from Garden Block here with me, Big Dooney. But we ended up seeing where people was just fighting. You know, our neighborhoods is all bloods and crips. We in a box where and Northerners were in a box. Franklin Boulevard, Medoview Road, Florin Road in Freeport.
That's kind of our box.
That would be the gardens a little bit above Franklin, though they Franklin is Franklin, but everything above it is the gardens. And you got the Metaview bloods in that box, you got the twenty nine Street cribs, twenty fourth Street, twenty first Street, who all together are nine one four Garden Block cribs. And so in the beginning, in that mid period, it was just a little bit of fighting because even the bloods are the homies. You know, Garden Block existed before Metaview did. Bloods wise, the Medaview always existed, like I'm from Metable, we all from Metaview, but the Metaview bloods kind of got born out of homies beating up people and been getting beat up by people who were technically homies. So the violence created, you know, where they started standing on their own ten They from the gardens too. They g two. It ain't no holes out there. They really with the shit. And so somebody get clapped, you know, and I tipped all the dominoes in the outside. I can't speak for olk Park or they'll pass o heist. That ain't I right. But they was with the shit as well, but specifically on the South Side. You know, in the late eighties, we had a homie get you know, we got one that got smacked and then now somebody else gets shmacked over there, and it just turned into trading bodies crazy and that's the season of the sickness was born from that.
Wild and so you catch that charge at seventeen seventeen.
Yeah, so you're a kid man. I am a kid man, just a baby. Now, looking back on that, I'm very empathetic to that little dude and everybody that was with me, everybody that all of us was babies. Were just some babies, man. This guy, the kids.
It's so wild too because the thing like to where we are now and like you know, the wires heu trial and how like artists are having their lyrics use against them actively. They used your album against you in court.
Right, Yeah, they used the lyrics to my song Still Shooting, which has a sample from Ultra Violet Dreams from Cypress Hill in it. You know, so it's dope to be able to talk to be real the other day. But yeah, I had made Psychoactive. Ironically, I'm being executive produced by a Medavie Blood who happens to be Siebo's little brother, Big Miko Yure, and he's there when I record that song. I recorded Still Shooting at the studio would have met of you Blood in December of nineteen ninety one, and they turn around by the summer of ninety two saying this song was about this incident that occurred ninety days afterward, and so they switched the title to this song. Clear that.
Was the guy who lost his life from that set he was.
Yeah, it actually was a woman, a woman a prominent figure in our community and the mother of people who you know those There was some disdaining and go alled so her children were not being viewed favorably on our side, and they didn't view us favorably. They was with the shit you know what I mean, and they just they was active, and so they take my song and say it's about this incident that it had nothing to do with. They changed the name to the Murder and call it the murder, even though that was the intro with the pizza man thing with me and brother Lynchon where we pull up, pretend to be the pizza man, dude open the door with gunning down. That's the murder. The song is called still Shooting. So they changed the name of the song to fit the narrative. Quote my lyrics broken up so that it says what they wanted to say a lot of context. Write those stories for the Sacramento b tell those stories on channel on ABC NBC, all of them, and then that gets picked up by the AP, and then hip hop journalism repeated those stories instead of writing it on like my home field. Advantage of hip hop like now, someone like you would have dug in it. You wouldn't have let that happen to me. You would hope a live wouldn't have let that happened to me. It would have been some people at Elliott Wilson who would have disagreed with that. Ironically, Elliott could have disagreed with it, then I think and didn't.
Maybe, yeah, I don't. I mean, I don't know what Ellie was doing in ninety one. He might have entered something I don't know.
Yeah, he might not have had the power in ninety one ninety two. That's true. But what I do say is that hip hop media did not tell the story themselves. They just repeated the story that originated from conservative news media in Sacramento, which is a republic Republican dominated environment at the time, it was an anti crime environment. It was a it was a different culture. And Sacramento also used me in a sensational way to have a viral story, what we would call a viral story. One of the first times there was something that Sack was on the map for that they could be proud for. Sack always been the little brother in California. Sure, and so you had the Doro, THEA Shuentez thing that gave Sack got his beak wet with national entertainment true crime kind of shit, and I think they got thirsty. And so when my thing happened, they sold that story and used it. It was ratings, it was you know, it sold papers, and that's what they did. They told they tore up a seventeen year old child.
That shit's crazy. Yeah, And that was also kind of like I feel like the era of like the demonization of hip hop because you got to think between like the two Lave Cruise ship n w A was a little before that, and just like there were so many politicians stopping on CDs, Piper Gore and uh, what's the lady from l A The lords lawis Tucker.
Yeah.
It was like there was like this real like anti hip hop agenda like on really to mo like the left too, Like it was a lot of democrats.
A lot of a lot of it, A lot of it was coming from that. It was both sides, both sides this ship. Yeah, the FBI on n WA for fuck the Police, Tipper Gore and all of them on two Live Crew. Here they come with band in the USA, the ghetto boys, Jay Prince coming under attack, so they got to make we can't be stopped, you know, Uh, Time Warner turning on Ice Tea crazy. It was a lot in this era. That's what I was talking about Mike Tyson and what he was going through. But I'll talking about now that entering that stage of Tupac, the demonization of Tupac and uh or the selling of his sensational story. It's kind of what they were doing. And so you had oj occurring. It was it was a rough time in this to be a part of the culture at the time.
What was your family like home like like like life like at home? Obviously being seventeen, rapping, being act in the streets with your parents around like so.
I had.
Earlier.
I had my grandmother, Miss Maxine, you know Tammas Sharner and Florn Road in South Sacramento. You know, my family all in the gardens Castelinda, Castelinda in twenty fourth Street, Nedra Court, And so that period in my life was beautiful up until my grandmother passed and she kind of was the glue to health the family together. And when she passed away leadership, you know, who's gonna take over, who's that next person? There wasn't really anybody in position. The people who were in position, like my mom, were in griev they were grieving. And so while they were grieving, I went outside and so I'm with my big cousins Artie Barnes AJ from twenty fourth Street, you know, dun play I'm with my family members, and so yeah, I didn't have a lot of supervision. My father's from Pritchard, Alabama. He met my mama in Sacramento. My uncle went to my uncle Bodic's house across from Oak Park Community Center back in the day, and so my cousin, Jimmy broad Knat lived right across from the Oak Park Community Center, and my mom would always be over there with my aunt, my grandmother's sister, and next door was my father's uncle, and that's how they linked up. And you know, here I am, but he goes home to Alabama. He was just visiting family, and so I didn't really have a two parent home. I probably spent a total of three or four years with my father out of my entire life, you know what I mean. And that's brutal. It's brutal. And what I learned from him in that period of time definitely is it has a lot to do with me being alive, you know what I mean. He didn't teach me a lot with his words, but observing the way he moved, he strapped up. You know, he got his he was with the bullshit right all of it. He owned his club, he was moving he had vendor machines. He was grinding. I remember I went to Alabama. My pops takes me on the trip to Pensacola. We get some fireworks. I think, you know, it's whatever. And I had a trip with my dad. We go to the beach, he meet up with some people. They put the fireworks in the trunk. We draw it back and then I can't use these specific fireworks, right, And then I got the other fireworks and shit. And then I see my pups was busting the bitches down and entering out all of the fireworks, you know, and he and there cooking and cleaning up and doing his thing. And so my pops had you know, I went with my pops on the on the pick up mission, and my pops was running, he was doing him. And so it wasn't unusual for me to see him cooking up in there and counting his money and doing his thing, and you know, being on ten tos, and how he communicated with his brothers, how he communicated with his friends. And so he didn't teach me a lot deliberately, but I saw a lot that later on. You kept me alive. Yeah, So I'm grateful to my father may rest in peace. And I feel like he didn't know what the fuck to do with the child. He didn't know what to do with no baby. And you know, I feel that way with my mother. My mother braised this the way she was raised, and that included teaching us a lot encyclopedias, dictionaries, puzzles, mind games. She had a lot of that type of stuff in in psychological games you could play the strength in your perspective. And but she wasn't too much that I needed male leadership in my life. And once we hit a certain age were that was it. You know, back then sixteen you I'm running around doing me wasn't no discipline at all, right, And so yeah, I didn't have a lot of support.
Well I was going to ask you, like, you find out you're going to prison for life? Yeah, as a kid, Yeah, that's got to be like your whole entire soul just gets snatched from your body.
Like not really, man, Like, how did I'm.
Saying, like, because you somehow turned that into like the perseverance of like having like a semi successful, like i mean very successful rap career while being in prison, which is very I mean, yeah, like, like how do you make that transition from being a kid to thinking maybe your life is over, and then you know your music career is just beginning in some sorts, you.
Know, Yeah, I think you hitting it right on the head, man. I I think the thing that kept me from feeling like my life was over that I lived for the music. Hip hop became everything to me. They couldn't take that I can write a dope ran, I can still be dope, and so that mattered to me to just be dope. And because I was just focused on that, I had so much material that when these opportunities presented themselves, Like the first thing I did was the twenty four deep with brother Lynch and Lynch. I was calling Lynch from juvenile hall and he was like, man, I got this song. I want you to record your part, and he did it on his answering machine. So I'm around the corner at the pay I got the photies and the thank I did that over the phone, and so that kind of even while I'm facing the death penalty at the time, they're in a fight. Am I being remanded to adult court to be tried and or am I going to juvenile court? I get remanded to adult court, then the fight is death penalty, capital.
Punishment or indeterminate sentence.
Fight that beat the death penalty thing, and then now it's okay, these are your charges and you get to thirty one a life. I know that twenty five of life is what I'm dealing with. I'm aware, like that's my maximum outcome. And so even then, even being aware of that, like I technically just survived that they would have liked to have killed me if they could have found me guilty and give me given me the death penalty, they would have It's just the law and the judge's interpretation of the law. He decided not to allow that to occur because I was seventeen years old. But so I technically am also feeling like I just beat death in a way.
So it's like a small victory.
It was a small victory, and I'm not fully capable of dealing with the horror this shit, right, you know, missus Harris, and what happened in our community, how people were responding to it, How I'm being celebrated on one side for being g demonaged on another side for being evil, right, you know what I mean, and hated by rivals who feel like you know, they have to. They had to deal with that. That's just what you do. It's retaliation as a must. That's a part of the game. So I got all of this as a seventeen year old child that I got to deal with when I walk out of my cell and how am I projecting myself? So you have a mixture of shame, pride, ego, all this stuff active at the same time, and want my homeboys like, Okay. The safest place to go as a child was deeper into the place that didn't feel like I did nothing wrong, didn't feel like.
There was another It was what it was.
So it was a safe place to hang out for a minute until I got old enough to start reconciling. Brain development catching up and I had to start dealing with ugly truths within myself, and I started bleeding into my lyrics because that was the safest place for me to go. I was always honest in in my lyrics or for a while something.
Early on you like embraced, like you said the cybe where you were like sell braided, I guess I did.
Yeah, yeah, being ax rated, Yeah, you know what I mean. And Gordon Block crib ax rated from twenty fourth Street. That was a badge of It was like a bulletproof vest for me to put on to protect me from even my own thoughts, my opinions, or other outside opinions of me. I just stood on that to not allow none of the ugly stuff to penetrate my spirit, and I focused on working with Lynch on twenty four Deep made me like, damn, maybe I'll can get some shit done. And so I'm writing like a motherfucker. I transferred to the county jail and I run into mac Dre, and mac Dre and Kyrie had for years this man. I think it was like somewhere in the window in ninety three, ninety four. So mac Dre Sacramento is the hub for federal crimes. So if you committed, if you got a federal case, you're gonna get sent to the Sacramento County Jail to go to court because they handle it. So mac Dre Twenny.
Fed cases in like northern California. They would go to jail and sack.
Yeah.
I believe not even just Northern California period. I mean it's a capital too, right, Yeah, So like the unibomber was housed in the Sacramento County Jail. Like, was my neighbor going to going to court for his for his case? You ever talked to him?
Talking to him was weird?
You know what I mean?
I said, I said, hello, you know I'm a dumb ass.
Right.
So did he ever like break down his manifesto to you?
Like? No? No, I didn't get the top it up with him like that. We was in four hunter poss.
How to interview that motherfucker out of it? Like, Yo, so what's going on?
Bro?
Yeah?
Nowadays I definitely would have.
Wanted to know maybe we had had an offier podcast.
I reached out to our yell daddy and shit, he was in his South in mind. But he was a very meek dude, and he talked about fame, notoriety, what they call not the rod. Judges used to come and hang out at his door with their clerks and talk to him.
And you know, that dude was allegedly brilliant, you know what I mean?
No, he I mean, by all accounts, he was a smart guy.
Yeah, he was a very you can be so smart it could you could you get a little crazy? And so he was a very smart motherfucker. And the judges, all of them. They used to do tours and come by and you know, they're look at myself, here's the rapper X righted and they would go around a little bit and it's the fucking unibomer.
I'll be looking out my door and.
It just be a pack of people sitting in front of in front of itself. Yeah.
Man, it's crazy anyway.
Mac Dre so Mac Dre ninety three, ninety four ish.
Uh, they have recorded the live from Presno County Jail over the phone him and I believe Kyrie from Young Black Brother. So that Young Black Brother at the time, and I know he had done some stuff on mac Mal's stuff too, and so he was like everybody knew about twenty four Deep at the time. So it was like, yo, he gave me the game. This is how we did it, Like how did you do it? I was like, man, I just recorded it on an answer machine. He was like, nah, we did the phones and we ran the line into the board and did it directly through that. And I was like, damn. So I took that game and gave it to say and then talked to John Bots from Enharmonic Studios and Sack and uh, so they took a phone apart, soldered the wires to a mic plug, plugged it directly into the board. So when I called the phone, it was going straight into the board. And then they took another part of the phone apart, soldered the wires and plugged it in, so the audio was going straight into that so you could hear the beat on a different phone.
Got it.
So I had to call a phone right here and spit the rhyme.
Spitting here while listening to the beating the other.
One and listening to the beating the other one. And that's how I recorded excessist.
What we're like. People who were also on the phone like looking at you, like, yeah, this fool is fucking rapping, Like nah.
Our County jail was separated, you know. The crips was on the west side, the blood's on the east side. I think at the time was in three hundred pod. The pols are separated by a severity of crime at the time. So if you child support tickets, you go to one hundred pod. If you got a little bit of violence but nobody has who stitches, you go to two hundred pod. If you had if somebody somebody had Suture Stitches, Dead Funerals, three hundred pod.
And so I'm in this pod and it's start.
I got the homies out here and I'm doing some shit that people. I'm in Sacramento. I'm x rated in Sacramento, deal recording a saw. So there's motherfucker's in the day room rooting for this. Yeah, the white Boy's rooting for this. The Mexicans is rooting for this, The Niggas is root This is a victory for the criminals. We went and the police is rooting for this. They didn't bump Psychoactive. They done bumped twenty four deep. They don't bumped.
But you had cops who were like fucking with you, like the fans.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm in Sacramento. Yeah, I'm at home. Yeah, imagine they threw one of us in the county to come on, man, I'm in.
The carrying the recording. Yeah, I'm doing the whole album right now.
Like I ain't even got to tell them that because they it's the wild Wild West in the tank. So I'm in the tank doing me and and they can hear it, but also can't legally stop it. So when people were like why did y'all allow him to do it? They like, he's not convicted of a crime. He has the right to use the phone. We don't tell anybody else not to use the phone. So if he commits a crime on the phone, then we'll investigate that crime. But in terms of rapping on the phone, it's not illegal. It's not illegal for him to do that. So their spokesperson is in the Sacramento be explaining to people why they didn't stop it because they could, they weren't legally able to stop it. I could use my phone time to do whatever, and in there there wasn't a list to sign up, so you could be on the phone for seven hours if nobody cared, you know what I mean. And nobody cared, nobody could care. That was when them get your ass whooped over this. We were recording these songs the homies is tripping and it ain't wasn't the only ones it was at victory for the criminals.
How many projects did you drop that you recorded in while while incarcerated, just so people have an.
Idea, Oh man, so exorcists and we do six hundred and forty thousand copies of that, you know what I mean? Like in like maybe six months Billboard SpLD Wow, incarcerated God while incarcerated without a music video, without a music video, want to get high your certified classic mac.
Right back in the day, it was like the video was very important.
Yeah, no music videos and still gold. Anyway, six months Playboy Magazine, all that shit, And so I did Exorcists.
I go to the pen.
I remember, I think McGinnis, I think the spokesperson for the prison system, they were asking them before I got there, like X Rated just recorded Extorsists in the Sacramento County jail and he's on his way to you. He's been convicted. How were you guys planning to stop him from recording music over the phone? And they had all these reasons, and they had the beats to beat. They put all this shit on the phones, and dude, you are there, are on the call with the blah blah blah blah blah, so that I wouldn't be able to successfully do it. And so I got there and I was able to get some more you know, get some equipment in there, spend money again. Cops are fans, the laundry workers are fans, the kitchen workers are fans. I got allies in this bitch. Yo. The hummy been here for twenty years, this nigga that knocked this motherfucker over here to work in the library. You know what I mean. I'm putting a whole studio on the yard if I want to, I'm doing whatever I want to do. I didn't know that I was going to be like that, but I aged into it and lived into it. And so here comes Unforgiven. So you got extracists, unforgiven, nefarious, and think about the period of time ninety six I dropped Exorcists, Run it up, I take up it takes I think ninety seven, ninety eight, Me and boat work until my casket drops. I'm number three on Billboard, behind MARIOH. Carrey and Brian McKnight. Boom, Here Comes Unforgiving. I'm fourteen on the heat Seekers chart Billboard.
Boom.
That's nineteen ninety nine, maybe eleventh ninety nine. February Boom, I'm back on Billboard charts with the Nefarious album, and.
Then November Boom.
I'm back on bill Board charts, one hundred thousand copies first week on Vengeance's Mind Boom. February I'm back with Initiation I'm back up on the Billboard charts again, I'm move and and all that's happening while I was incarcerated.
So I think it's so you had like a like you had like a like a like a studio ish setup.
Oh yeah, repeated, like would you have? I had all kind of shit. I started off with just a mini dishrecorder. Then I would try and get something to have multiple tracks on it. Eventually, and then I started finding out about apps, and so I started getting phones and downloading apps that gave me four tracks and shit, and plugging in and recording on little laugh mics and shit like that, you know what I mean, talk show microphones and sending that shit home and letting them clean it up.
That's crazy.
Yeah, man, I had. I had adapt before I had a mini disrecorder or an R seven.
And they didn't care that you had all that in yourself.
Hell yeah, they cared. But the problem isn't that contraband. It is contraband. But this is the problem if you think about and I had a lot of issues because of this, But if you look at the rules, the CCR title fifteen and here comes X rated in nineteen ninety six, who the fuck recorded a song and the cell before right, whoever had a cell phone? And they sell before right, So there's no rule against this shit.
Because it's almost like new technology.
It doesn't exist.
That's like that's making a point of reference. Yeah, these are the rules related to UFOs and how they have to fly. It's like where are they, you know what I mean? Where we're gonna make a rule for some shit that we don't even know if it exists or not. So I'm getting caught. The niggas is telling and speculating, you know what I mean. If you a rapper on the yard, you don't want to be jay z right, you don't want to be Tupac, you want to be x rated, you want to I'm the one who's done it, so they look, I said a standard, and so people was talking about me a lot. So my cell get hit, I get busted with a phone, I get busted with a recorder that the cop thinks he got him. You know I had I remember one time I had a lighter in mysel. Well, the cop finds the lighter throws that away with all the garbage. He wrote it on the slip of stuff though that he took from me, but he threw it away. The homies now everybody know, they get the trash is gone. The police then win did what they had to do. He looks up the rules and tries to figure out what to write me up for in three thousand and six c contraband possession. The contra band was all he could come up with, which was like two weeks loss of yard. Just boys, boys being bad boys. Just slap on the wrist and send me back to the yard. But when they caught me, they thought they had me. They thought we're gonna put him under the prison. This is a shoe turn. We got him and it was a three tag. I would have got in more trouble if he wrote me up for that lighter. That lighter was a three year shoe term. He could have sent me to Corkoran. He could have sent me the Pelican based shoe if he wrote me up for that lighter, because it's a caustic substance and explosive device according to that rug. Yeah, so he threw away the way and wrote me up for some shit that didn't exist, and just they were mad. They were big mad, And so I get hit with the son of Sam lawsuit me O J. Charles Manson. They hit us all with the Son of Sam lawsuit?
What is that?
Just?
People don't know.
So the Sam lawsuit is to prevent an inmate from profiting from the notoriety they received as a result of their crime. I think it started in New York with the Son of Sam, who I guess was getting paid to do interviews people writing books.
He was.
He became a millionaire as a results.
I just saw Whack One was talking about that with the KFD thing, because I think he was trying to help get keffd out and they were trying to bring the Son of Sam thing up. And he's like, well, they haven't convicted him yet, so technically, you know, he's not guilty of anything.
Yeah, California struck it down, but I don't know if KEFD if that'll apply to him. They arrested him in Nevada, so I'm not sure what the laws are. But the California Supreme Court struck it down, and so you could so you were safe. So now you can ain't take my money. There's no rule against what I'm doing. And then even as they're trying to figure out how to implement those rules takes two or three years years while you're running it. They got to go through the Assembly bill. It got to be agreed we do the Senate Congress signed by a governor in order to change these rules. So I got this window where from nineteen ninety six to two thousand and two, I'm just whipping the asses and it ain't nothing they could do to stop it, and so I did. I ended up having a lot of angry police man. They just just been I couldn't talk about that shit while I was on parole, but like I went through it, and they were trying to figure out, you know, throw me in a dungeon. Man, I'm ready with a hunter songs. So I get a hold of a recording. I'm dropping a hundred. I'm dropping a hundred in a weekend. Get smuggling them bitches out come and get me. Put me in the hole. I don't give a fuck.
I'm sure. Once the iPhone gets introduced to the changed everything.
It did change everything. It sped me up. But as the technology grew, so did my awareness of the potential that I was going home. So I wasn't always sure about that, and it's there's stages now I know the stages of development of my understanding. First it started with hopelessness, and then it turned into ah, you know, I might not be here forever for the rest of my life. Maybe I won't. I don't know. You see laws, you hear everybody was always somebody coming man, this new this piece of legislation gonna change your life, asks I'm like whatever, man R all right? And so my big homie Dooney actually was one of the ones where he was at San Quentin. He got a murder with another of my OG's, the two founders but the founder of twenty four Street Garden Block and Doney as a founder of twenty nine Street Garden Block, and they caught a case. Dooney did gets fifty years. He ended up doing thirty one. And in the course of that you got these two men, one who taught me survival, how this is how you fight, this how you make a knife. He taught me that and later was able to teach me this is take your ass on. But Dooney was more educated on a on a from the perspective of hope faster than we were, because he got to do his time, some of his time at Saying Quentin, where they had all these programs and where rehabilitation was at the forefront. It was the darling of CDCR. Damn there still is. And so he was one of the ones who started saying, now you take your ass to school.
You know, I got my phone. It hit me on Facebook.
I seeing pictures of what he's doing on the yard, and it just made me feel like, damn, man, it ain't got to just be like this fucked up ass one eighty design I'm at or this two seventy yard, like it's a different you get different ways to do your time. And so he gave me permission. Really I needed it from somebody that I respected as against it to tech myas to anger management class, tech MIAs in there. I got my ged go to school.
All that looks good too. I'm sure when they.
And that was his point. But you know, I didn't really have that much hope in that. And so I remember Miller versus Alabama went to the Supreme Court, and Miller versus Alabama was a case about a juvenile in Alabama who was sentenced to the death penalty, and the argument was.
Is it a violation of.
Our Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a juvenile to death or even to sentence sentence them to life in prison without an opportunity for them to grow, and that neuroscience had demonstrated that at the age of twenty five we start seeing the results of maturation and development, and that these children should be allowed to have an opportunity to prove that they grew up and that they got a different perspective and maybe they're a completely different person. So the Supreme Court rule, they got rid of it death sentences for juveniles, but in their ruling they stated essentially, if a case reached them about life in prison for juveniles, they likely rule in favor for that as well. Yeah, and this is important when people don't understand why voting is important. The Supreme Court we had at the time was impacted by Clinton and then impacted by Bush, and then impacted by Obama. So the people making those decisions, you know, we end up Trump puts three people on the Supreme Court, and there goes Roll versus Way, there goes.
Yeah, the Supreme Court. I always tell people, like, if you could just remove all of the you know, antics about politicians and just wherever you feel you're aligned with the Supreme courts. What matters the most, Probably.
It really is, and the presidency matters because they're gonna they're gonna have points going to appoint them, and they're gonna color that Supreme Court the way they want to. Sure, And it's said there's an argument that if today's Supreme Court was the Supreme Court ruling on Miller versus Alabama, I'll still be I literally would still be in prison today's Supreme Court was ruling.
Well, that's why I think a lot of people were saying RBG before she passed away, she like she should have retired while Obama was in because then he could have you know. But she stayed in and then obviously was replaced with a more conservative judge.
Yep.
I think Trump might have got to put two or three on there.
He did.
I think I think it was at least it was at least two.
At least might have been three. Yeah, it was at least two, we know for sure. And it changed the dynamics. So the Supreme Court did make that statement. So when they said that and in in their ruling, the states started freaking out because they're like, there will a case is going to get up there for sure cases on the way up there, and people start filing cases. Of course, it makes sure so a case is on this way up there. The courts indicated that they're definitely going to rule in favor of it if it makes it up there, and if they do, it'll be like how we saw the gay marriage. The states had control of that, but when the Supreme Court said this is legal everywhere, it was legal everywhere. That once they make a ruling, that's the law of the United States of America. The decision individual decisions is out. It would have been the same thing with the decision versus the juveniles with life. Now, all these states would have to let these people out and figure out what to do with them and have no mechanism in place to control it because it was being dictated to them by the federal government. So as a result, they proposed Senate Bill to sixty. Senator Lonnie Hancock, a Democrat out of northern California, proposed that there's be a process called the Youth Offender Law that allowed the juvenile.
To go to board.
So if you were between the ages of if you were younger than eighteen, you would have an opportunity to go to board and be examined to find out if you were worthy of being released from prison, if you were, if you did not posing a reasonable risk for violent recidivism in the community.
So that's where all of the things that you had did helped you out. Gd Anger Management.
Owning my home. Yeah, like I was already ready to go home, and so they send doctor Lear to me. And now you got my big homie hit me like yo, the chop chop and the ogs and the law library. This is big news on the York for sure. So I'm working out in the sale mine of my business football game on and I remember I get called out to see it. So they like, hey, the psychologist is here to see you. And so typically, you know, I had signed up for these programs, so I would go to have a sit down with a psychologist probably once every two weeks or something like that. At least once a month, but that's normal. The staff to to the yard. So I keep dressed because I want to get a homie some time to himself. Let him have to sell for a minute. So I'm like, fuck it, I'm gonna go holler at this psychologist. Manager yourself. I'll be back because you know we locked down all that, you up around each other, saw me so a lot and so boom. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much the green light under your businessman whatever.
I'll be back.
And so I go over there to the program office and they send me to the bad news place.
You know do you usually go over there?
It's your mama died, you know, your daddy died, and the kid is sick. It's the bad news building. So I'm like, what the fuck? And uh. I walk in the room and it's just older gentleman sitting there by himself, dwarfed by the table, and I sit on the other side of him, and he introduces himself as doctor Lear and he says he's a forensic psychologist from the Border prison hearings. And uh. He asked me if I was willing to have a conversation with him, and I'm like yeah, And I'm two hundred and forty five pounds with a four percent body fat benching four h five you know what, I'm sweating. I just got through doing berbees. So I'm sitting here looking at him and he's like he takes me through my entire at my whole life, and he's like a fine tooth comb. There's no plan with doctor Leir. He's seen it all, he's heard it all, and he is here to decide on his own judgment if you're a sociopathic monster that needs to state right where you are or if you're going to go home. Lord, if you're going to go home. They had a lot to do. If he said I think this person needs further development, you're sitting there until he says, I think you did it. And so he talked about immutable factors, childhood issues, things you can't control that create who you become. He very much explained his understanding of how I ended up being his seventeen year old child in the circumstances that I was in, and there's no argument about that. It's do you understand it? Found guilty by the jury or peers. We're not retrying your case. This is factual to them legally. That's all there is.
Do you understand how you ended up?
You understand how you got there, and have you implemented measures that you can take to prevent you from being in that circumstance again? Period? And then you have a psychopathy examine. It essentially is a psychopathy examination, and you have to score in the twenty fifth percentile or under, or they're going to tell the parole board that you're a threat to the safety of others in society if they were to release you, which is what they did to Manton every time he went to board one hundred percent of the time. And so doctor Lear told me, Man, he said, well, at the end, when he had made up his mind about what he thought about me, he kind of just sat back and said, mister Brown, we're trying to let you go home, and I think you changed your life and you didn't care who did it, well, who knew you did it. It didn't matter to you. But it's time for you to care now that people know. I have my home, I own my home, I got my business set up, I've done anger management, I got my GED I'm enrolled in an AA program for for college credits. I'm attending arcotics Anonymous. At that point, I'm doing all kind of shit.
Did you end up picking up like a drug habit while in prison? I didn't, I think, because I know a lot of people do, because it's like you ain't got shit to do, like the shit get pats around like.
Yeah, but you know us culturally, But it's fround the plan to do certain hard drugs culturally from the era that I come from.
For sure.
You know, I know we got popular to sniff this or sniff that.
Everybody's sniffing shit these days. Yeah, yeah, all the rappers are high on real drugs.
Yeah it's too late for me, man. So yeah, I was. I attended those things because I have a lifestyle addiction, not necessarily a drug addiction. So if I did want to sniff something, which I've sniffed something before, if I wanted to sniff something, if I wanted to now I'm sniffing. Now I'm now I'm calling people because one time too many, I'm I'm tripping.
I got little triggers active.
Your fuse get shorter if my few and next thing you know, I'm I'm sagging. I'm moving a certain kind of way because I have a lifestyle addition, and that that kind of alcohol comes with that. Womanizing comes with that, Pistol packing comes with that, Get sniffing something comes with that.
Violence comes with that, And so I have to be.
Conscious of how to protect my lifestyle from relapse a lifestyle real shit.
I would say, like if you ever have like any addition to anything, you could kind of apply the NA or AA shit to like any sort of advice you might have.
At least the process.
And that's why I like a NA more than AA, because it was more philosophical than religious. Right, it's very very religious and the piece and blessings to anybody that needed that way, But I didn't. I didn't require that, and it turned me off, and so I was like, now i'mies, Like, no, no, Now I go there. They trust me, and it was a completely different experience. And then we had criminals and gang members anonymous. It was a lot of different groups available to me in that environment that I started attending. And uh, once I was like, you know, I had done my time as a gang member who went to prison as a rapper, right, and then made a shitload of money and got famous more famous while I was doing my time.
So I had the I mean, it was a part of like your fucking appeal, Like, Yo, there's this dude dropping albums in fucking prison. This shit is crazy.
Yeah, it was. It was a part of the magic.
And so I was anti administration and anti cop because I was operating as a criminal and as a game Reber, not no famous person or not no fucking celebrity, right, so I get I get classified. I got a letter from Monster Cody that they kept for like two months.
They finally brought it to me. It was a tour up.
They had tried to code it and shit, and I got flagged for receiving that letter.
And then I got a letter from Tuki.
So like when we dropped Deadly Game, they wanted to know man who wrote that? Whose spirit did that come from? So Wendy Day, Davy d Monster Cody, Tuki. They wanted to know what made me write that song. And then you got missaying to pe Land of the Loss. I had kind of started getting on the government's ass a little bit, you know. I started trying to talk about, you know, three strikes in your route. Motherfucker's getting twenty five of life is still in a slice of pizza, Like this happened to this nigga the next door to me. And so I'm starting to take these stances in my music. And so I got validated as a gang member. And then they made me high notoriety public interest case, and they made me a being a high notoriety public interest cases. The only it's what they give you as a celebrity, right, so the high notoriety is what they'll give like Charles Manson and a public interest case, Scott Peterson, Tuki a monster Cody. It's only some of us that they did that too. And so once they hit me with that that particular label, I think the La Times started calling the institution. You MTV start calling the institution coming in with cameras, news crewis and shit on the yard in the day room like this in the day room of the prison. Crazy and so it's like, yeah, it's just some celebrity shit. And so it was uh Loo Menendez getting with Loo Menendez. He was one of the first people to start telling me you using your You're you're allowing yourself to be defined by other people because you're not utilizing your celebrities.
Is that one of the Menendez brothers?
It is?
So you were you linked up with one of them or both of them both.
I'm the Melenindez brother, as they say, I'm a black Menindez brother. Like both Lol and Eric are two of my favorite human beings on the place.
Did they tell you where? Did they ever like tell you what really went down?
You know what. It's not appropriate to digging nobody business like that, right, But.
I wondered if, like you know, I'm not saying you got to share it, but like, like you guys, did you guys ever talk about.
I have significant insight about everything, Like I was their first time being put together on the yard, Like I was the only one they allowed in the room, you know what I mean where they had got their first conversation after not seeing each other since they were sentenced.
Yeah, how long do they keep them apart?
It's like twenty something years? Crazy? Yeah? Yeah we were Yeah, me and Love were there and Eric Eric got moved to us. Or me and Eric were there and Love got moved up.
You still write them or keeping communication with absolutely?
Yeah, I'm right now. I'm working.
Strange Music is working to uh I think you on a email, Richie. They're working to get me back into the facility that I parole from down at RJ. Donovan. It's from now. It's like how San Quentin is. That's what they're doing down there. And I'm going to go back in and do a concert, make a donation. So if you got some money for me, man, I need your money so I could give it to the fellas for this program. But uh, we're gonna go in there and me and Tech nine Travis Sogwyn and go to the facility, do a concert, talk to the boys about this is how far I came. You know, Scott Buttneck has programs there, the anti recidivism Coalition, the beautification program that they have, right and so we're gonna raise money for them. See if I can get them twenty thirty bands. If I could beat that, that's awesome. But twenty thirty bands real quick, that make a big difference in that environment. But also to walk teching Travis with the camera rolling in my cell that I left this cell to come free and as a result of that, I'm sitting here. So yeah, you know, we are working with Lyle and Eric to be able to pull that off. There their spearheading that program.
And then you guys connected initially because you guys are both high profile quote celebrity cases.
Yeah, that's kind of what happened. Like Lyle was on the on the yard we were playing football. Somebody elbowed him and I didn't like it, you know, they because it was the first time I ever saw somebody hit the yard like when I was with bo I still was operating on some gangster shit and both was just moving two guard block cribs, moving around the yard. We didn't give a fuck about we rappers, you know. And then we had a circumstance where like sug Knight, but Lyle was the first person I got to see and listen to how people perceived the famous person. And it was like, damn, is that how you niggas talk about me? Is you niggas talk about me like that? You know what I mean? So I felt protective of him because it was like selfishly protective of me, Like fuck that. And so he they he was playing on the line and he you know, he had hard and he works out. He's strong.
Motherfucker.
Elbowed him in his lip, and I just was like, Nigga the next motherfucker that tries to hurt somebody on purpose, as opposed to just football boss up, it's up, it's it's man and the whole team. Yeah, Nigga bother with everybody agreed and and he got to do his thing, you know. And he ain't to say he needed me to do that for him, but somebody needed to say something. Somebody had to fucking say something like Man, so you were.
Like kind of like protecting them loky, I mean high key.
I stood up for him. Lyle could protect itself. He's a sturdy man. You know, he's a good dude. Lyle could protect itself. But what was happening, you know, he was like it was being hey, like he was being hazed, and he was tolerating it because you know, he wanted to.
Prove ft shit. Yeah yeah, And.
I just like man could bus his lip, Like man, the next motherfucker to do something that I think is intentional, We're gonna get their ass whipped.
So because that's the thing is like when we always hear so much about like the politics of the California prison system, right, but if like someone like the Menendez brothers goes in, do they like who do they fall in line with? Or are they just separate from everybody because of their status of that?
So that goes back to the point I was making about the difference in my perspective as a criminal versus the person who was a public interest had I know the Roaddy case and I've been around Lyle by the time they decided Okay, this motherfucker the MTV interview in the Tuki Williams letter and the letter from Monster really pushed it over the edge. But Lyll and Air operate above the population and they move like politicians, not in a bad way, but they're very much hyper aware of the impact of their arrival and what that means and their influence. You know, they got the Secretary of Corrections on speed Now some of them were coos on the yard.
It's one of the most high profile cases ever ever.
And so did we talk about two very highly influential motherfuckers that could pretty much get whatever they want done done because they are doing it for the right reason, you know what I mean. They're not really trying to do some crazy shit. Most of the time. It's beneficial to the population and something that the warden could be proud to put in his hat. And so Law was the one who started saying, you're using your you're using your fame incorrectly, and you're having a rougher experience. So, like I went through smuggling and beating rules, there is no rule trying to record songs to spinning about four years of inside the University of Eric in louoman Indez right, and all of a sudden, I'm building studios on the yard now with permission of the fucking wharden. It went from it when we.
Were sneaking around it was contraband, and now you got permission.
And now I'm building a fucking studio for anybody you got there, anybody who's if you're staying out of trouble, that's what you gotta be doing.
And you can get studio time.
You could get.
Studio time and a podcast on that yard. We were able to do it.
Wow.
Yeah, man, I was out there, little U terms there, the big homie Ron Ron Ron from sixties. Uh I had because a lot of those programs in wy Lyle and Eric started. Because Eric had a lot of groups that he was founding. He was found that there was no anger management group. He would create it and find a staff member willing to be the facilitator and get the cops to sign off on it, the wharden to sign off on it, get a space for it, and now he can pand in out certificates. He's like, man, people need this shit in their records when they go to board. So between Dooney and the Menendez brothers, they were the first ones to start allowing me to understand that this shit could go in my file, and so that's why I was butt naked with nothing in my file. Really the show for you know, he doctor Lear had to look for that ship. He was looking for it and finding it. Like this motherfucker got the title to a house in the central file because they have to they have to notarize it. So it's like you you you have a title to a home in your file, you have anger management slips, you have Like, how come why did I have to look for that? There's a section that could have just been in It's a section for in your file for that, and it's not there. I had to go find it. And people who wrote good stuff that I didn't know about counselor saying, you know, mister Brown is one of the most intelligent men you'll meet, and.
You know whatever they write knowing those guys, did you watch the FX shows that Nah?
I never watched it. I didn't have to. Yeah, you're like I kind of percent of all of that shit, Yeah, and all of it directly from them.
But do those guys like are they like pretty sensitive to like narratives that get put out about what happened, and like, you know, obviously there's ever. I mean, I feel like when you're that famous for such a huge case like that, you almost can't let the noise get to you because you'll fucking go crazy.
I'm sure you will er crazier because you're gonna get that experience is crazy, right, and so if you wasn't crazy, you're gonna be though, you're gonna.
Get you pay attention to all of that, and like what people think about.
You, and yeah, and so you they have impenetrable senses of self. Right, if you believe the cheers, you'll believe the booze. If you believe the booze, you're gonna believe the cheers. You gotta just kind of be right in the middle, skat in the middle man for sure. Yeah, man, it's the best way to do it. Even if you if I always say you can't read the comments or if.
You read them, you gotta read them. You gotta observe them.
Yeah, I can observe you don't have to internalize them. Yeah for su Yeah, this I don't know this motherfucker is like Oprah said, like they you not even talking about me. I don't know you, and you don't know me. You just talking about what you think and I don't have to give a fuck. I have to worry. I care what my bank account looked like. My babies is fed, so that's more important to me.
And they were like that.
They were they could be impacted, you know, or they would impact each other. One of them do an interview and didn't talk about it to the other one first or write about it.
It's like, man, when you do you know it.
Have a a little bit of intensity involved in that with the two of them, But for the most part, they taught me to be so centrally focused and obsessed with your primary goal, which for them was quality of life. Because I've always said, man, you motherfuckers are two of the best human beings I've ever met. You're going to get out of here. Because they were always talking to me about going home, but it was weird to talk to them about it because they had life without the possibility of Barak.
So them working so hard on me.
It's a trip when you think that these motherfuckers were sentenced in the way where they were never getting home, but they are the ones who are helping everybodybody else on their way home. It was it was them and nobody talked about it, and nobody stood on it, like don't. I wouldn't want to be associated with that ship on some gangster shit if.
I like, what the funk without?
You know what I mean? If I could sit in this chair and not talk about that, I would, But it would be some sucking shit because the truth is they was in there helping every fucking body, including me, anybody that was willing to do it. And so you go to board, they'll deny you for not having AA, they'll deny you for not doing NA, they'll deny you for not doing anger management, but they also not going to have that program. Right, So you out here on this yard and none of the ship. The board is asking you for us.
Yeah, yeah, you have any sort of access to do And now can you get a transfer?
When do you go to board? It's the transfer for the board. Can you transfer somewhere that does have any does they do they have it? Where you would transfer at? So the best solution is you gotta deal with this warden. You gotta write a memo and you gotta set that bitch up. And these are the buy I wrote to NA. They have agreed to give us. This applies and they're asking if we give them a space, they will send a facilitator in here, and like, okay, boom boardon signs that bitch boom and here it goes. And he's like, don't fuck me over right, I don't want nothing. Don't be in there fucking these bitches. Don't do some crazy shit. Don't smuggle nothing in my prison. I'm in a sign that I'm putting my name on this and you got to stand on that. And that's what they was doing. And uh, as a result, I ended up with ten million different kinds of certificates and all kind of shit in the right spot of my file. So by the time I went to board, it.
Was up YO, break it down to me, because you going gold while incarcerated is crazy, but you're also in a position that could be a vulnerable one where you're in jail, so you could be taking advantage of there's a lot of money, yeah happening. I mean even if you sell one hundred thousand records in the nineties, like that's like real money, right, Oh yeah, So how are you keeping track of the money that's coming in from all this music? And how how are you making sure that like your finances are aligned, you're not getting fucked like.
Yeah, man, I did it like against it for many years. You know, my own boys, big pool. You know, I have people in place from from Garden Block who were making sure shit was going away I wanted. And then my relationship with Cedric was different from a lot of other people. So Cedric protected me from a lot of things. And then you know, I would get fifty thousand transferred over here. And now, like what I like to say is they have a cup of water, but I control the spout, and so somebody could fuck off what I put there. But all they did was teach me I can't put nothing there. But even that was an expensive learning experience. So you got my aunts. My family started tripping like, hey man, such and such a set money on fire. Like one of my aunts had a real strong conversation with me about too. That same year that Vengeance's Mind comes out and does one hundred thousand copies and we're getting seven dollars a pop for these motherfuckers, right, So we talked about a week we made seven hundred thousand in a week before taxes and whatever, and so my aunt was like, listen to me, and so you know that I had a very strong visit with my sister and my family, and I hired a lawyer. So like, one of my guys came home from Afghanistan, and you know, he was writing to me, and I always wrote the military back still if I see in my eye acknowledged that, you know, they riding on him, been a hummer, strapped the fuck up, bumping You better bring your knight to the yard. They mean it. You know what I mean out here just do or die and they bump, bump do. I made do or Die music, So it's a lot of them move fucked with me. And so one of the guys that I was writing back and forth with came home and was like, man, I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do with my life. I was like, I got you. And he started just doing any and everything getting it done. And he went and found the lawyer, He went and found the accountant, and then I used the lawyer and accountant to build my LLC while I was still there. So in two thousand and five, block Start Entertainment Incorporated. I had That was my first iteration, and I got all my articles done and then my lawyer went and got the accountant. Really, so my guy Mike found the lawyer the Won Tribe Law Corporation. I got Scott Hervey from the Wine Tribe Law Corporation, and then I ended up getting the accountant. And then those two people. That was it. That was it, those two firms, the law firm and my accountant firm. I was good. And now if I want to send something somewhere, I will. If I don't, I want. And then attorney client trust account. So I started dumping all my money in there, because if the courts or anybody wanted to see it, they had to subpoena the records. You couldn't just say hit the bank or just decide you want to know what my finances are. I had it set up in an attorney client trust account where they would even have to notify us that that was something they wanted to do, or my lawyer would have the ability to say that this was something that he didn't have to reveal and fight over it. At least give us a chance to figure out what I wanted to do. So I got set up by two thousand and five. I was set up to have a life, you know what I mean.
And then I mean that's I mean, that's still like fifteen years later from when you go in, right, yeah.
About that, Yeah that was my fifteenth year.
Yeah, so that's like there's still a lot of money. So what do you get out of prison? And you're because you were able to take those you're you're fine, Like you have to least some sort of financial security.
Yeah. Absolutely, And I came home with you know, my ex wife was somebody who you know, and we had trained that way when we first met, she was in a small apartment, you know what I mean, just trying.
Was this someone you met before you went to jail?
Nah? We met while I was doing my time, And so how does that work? By the way, man, you want to be loved? Man, you trace fine love.
Nah.
Sometimes it's the hommies hooking you up or somebody you have a peripheral thing with. But for me, you know, I ran through every distraction that you can have in life. In that environment, I was like Solomon and Ecclesiastics. I did all the bullshit. So I got high, I got drunk. The homie sending me bitches me Lynch and six did a competition on who could get the most bitches to tattoo your name on them. I won from the pen, you know I won. We thought it was funny, you know what I mean, like on some gangster shit. So we in there. You develop a view of relationships based highly on getting things done. You need a runner more than you need a bitch to be in love with, you know what I mean.
For sure, you need someone who can trust to go, Hey, I need you to go call at the lawyer.
I need you to go yeah. And i'ma love that. I don't give a fuck what you do with your vagina. You get in the bitch trying to convince you I love you and all I and blah blah blah. Man, you know how many bitches got pregnant while I was doing my time from nineteen ninety two to two thousand and two. I had no less than six or seven bitches that was handling business for me up getting pregnant, tattoos and everything. It's bitch pregnant the motherfucker. You know what, bitch, You got my name all across your ass and nigga.
Then skeeter it on.
You didn't let a nigga skeat on my name, you punk ass bitch. No Diddy. Did they all tell you I'm gonna wait for you. Yeah, they all selling you the same bullshit you selling them. It is what it is, right and you you providing for them and they making runs and it's a job. They making some money, you making some money. Mutually beneficial, mutually beneficial. So you by the time I got to the point where, oh I'm gonna be in this relationship, you know, you feel you get you come in and that aware of all this trash and it is. It's trauma too. It's trauma. You might have liked a few of these bitches, so it's some trauma. So now you you got to a female that you're looking at, like, man, maybe I could maybe, maybe we may be able to do this real thing I want to do because now I got the accountant and the lawyer. I got a little bit of a bag. I can send her ten bands here, I could send her five bands there. It's different, you know what I mean. So it's like you gonna stand on business, you know what I mean. So you got somebody and she was the type of person who would graduated college was you know, I had a corporate psychology, and I'm instilling this gainst the shit in that and so by the time I got home, she had whipped them some ass, and the lawyers and we had whipped some ass. And you know on the seven hundred thousand dollars house here, you know, coming from a home that I think and we have one in Sparks. And when they built that Tesla Battery factory sold that and got a bag and used that bag to get the house. You know, the bigger the bigger spots. So I don't even know I'm getting out and I got a home in the gated community in Las Vegas.
And I'm I'm still in the pen crazy.
And the title for that is in my in my file because I had to you know, I had to notarize it, so the notary come in, you got to stamp at the record and that went in my file. So they knew that too. You know, that motherfucker out of the house. He got this, He got that. They was aware of it in the business that I built. So yeah, I started wanting to have a real life for myself. And now i'm your brain development. I hit twenty five, I knew, like, damn man, it's a lot of bullshit going on. I'm full of shit. Everybody's full of shit. But the music was honest. I was being honest in them lyrics, and so I just went into start adulthood.
Man.
I decided, like, I want to be grown. My body was already. I told one of my little homies this, nigga, you know, you could just wake up in the morning and be like, I'm grown and you would be right. He's like, what you mean. I'm like, what is your I said, nigga, your New Year's resolution is going to be to be a man, be an adult. Your body already did it. It's just now decision got to be mad and I had already done that. Oh two was when I started my tenth year. I'm rocking and rolling that whole time, any and everywhere I go, Right, it's Melee's all this bullshit, dope, smuggling shit in making music, rocking and rolling. I get to two thousand and two, two thousand and three, two thousand and four, two thousand and five, if I got the lawyer, I got the count, and I got a woman that's going hard on some adult shit. And I'm thinking, like, all right, if I got to do the rest of my life, I'm gonna do it like this. And then over the course of that from five to twenty twelve, you have I start going to the psychologist Doney tell me to do these programs right.
That becomes like, oh, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Potentially there's a.
Way of life. I didn't even I just wanted to if I was gonna be in there for the rest of my life, I wanted to do it like a g I wanted to be a grown ass man. I wanted to be in control of whatever part of my destiny I could control, and so I focused on that. And then Miller versus Alabama start popping up, and shit was on the cover of the USA today. I was like, ooh, we like nigga a big homie said. People started, hey man, hey man, oh Jesus talking, this is real. This is on the Assembly four and then boom, by twenty twelve, the legislation for Senate Bill two sixty member. My little hommy Bird, my young brother Bird actually brought that paper to me because they knew I hated that. Don't bring me this shit talking about I'm going home. Same way. I didn't want to do the lilon Eric's talking about this shit. I'm where, I'm fine, making my fucking burritos, watching Sunday night football. Bro, bring me this fucking bullshit have me down the street emotionally and my space. So I'm like whatever, and this nigga was like he was like, ak, listen to me, ax, listen to me. He's standing at the door and he's like, you're going home. You're going home. And he slid the papers through the door, even crying, and we took off so I didn't have to see him cry. And I read that shit. I was like, what the fuck. I went and jumped on the phone, called home and it's like an whatever. You know, we hear this all the time, and my lady called, uh, my lawyer. I had Charles Carbum and she caught the lawyer and he was like, yeah, this is real and we'll have him out of there. It's gonna take me about three years, but he's coming home.
And I was like, who, So now you got something to look forward to.
Yeah, so now we're hopelessness to maybe to hope to thinking. I was thinking, now, man, I think I might get the fuck out of here.
So you had an incident in twenty ten where you almost got killed in prison. They like to say it like I almost got killed when you got stabbed. Yeah, yeah, I did get Now this is in the middle of the hope, at the end of the you know you see, yeah, you know there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
It was a lot going on at that point.
Yeah, So what happened was it? So, from what I understand, you were essentially approached to like help put out some music from somebody in prison, and you said no, or so like give me the What happened?
I think even the approach to give music was a red heerent. What really happened, and then we could talk about this now, was that I went on an attorney visit. I read the rules, and then the rules your attorney can do a deposition and bring a recording device. Okay, And so I'm still on my shit and this time what I'm motivated by is I wanted to record from songs that represented my current philosophy. Yeah, where your head is courtly, Yeah, I felt like I was being the kid with the gun to his head was sixteen when he took that picture that unforgiving x raighted. You know, I was a different person. So I'm like, I wanted to make sure I could get some music done. So I go out with my lawyer and I'm recording the music and the rules. They can't listen to your attorney visit, but the cop in the room can hear me rapping in there, and so he don't know what to do. And they don't know the fucking rules. They learn the rules by fucking the rules up and getting corrected. They don't know the fucking book. We know the book better than they do, right, And so this dude calls his sergeant like, man, I don't know what to do.
But this dude is in there recording.
He's rapping, he's recording raps, and the sergeant busts in the room and he picked all the equipment up and he took the fucking raps and he cuts my lawyer out. And I'll tell him, hey, man, you're making the mistake stards, you're making the mistakes stars.
He's like, yeah, you get.
The fuck out of here. The fuck you think you're you and take your eyes back to your cell. I said, you don't have to talk to me like that, Sir. You're making a mistake, Sarge, You're making a mistake. So I go back and they put me in my cell. About thirty minutes later, they called me to the program office. Or walk in the program office and I can see the people standing there. Now, the lawyers are here, I can see the higher ups are here, and I sit in the chair. Nick Large and is standing there looking like he fucking got a canary in his mouth because he got checked. And the captain is there, and they got these fucking papers they want me to sign, and I'm like, yeah, what we're doing and they like, well, mister Brown, looks like we have ourselves a pickle. Whatever you may have been doing is not against the rules. I was like, that's why I was doing it.
Yeah, I'm aware.
I'm aware of that, But what they would like is for me to talk about it outside of that fucking legal visit, because I'm only protected that in that legal visit. So I'm aware of that, so I'm not about to acknowledge nothing that I was doing. So they were like, well, how many songs did you record? And I didn't answer the question, and then I finally said it is do you think I'm stupid? Like DoD we think I'm stupid. I know what's going on here. You got checked. I told you to leave me alone. I told you you were making a mistake. And when I'm done with you, you're gonna be working in the tower outside of the prison by yourself for eight hours with a pair of binoculars watching tumbleweeds when I'm done with you, cause you should have left me the fuck along. So they don't like that. They don't like that. That's too much power. They got to leave this dude the fuck alone. And he got a lawyer, and he's got he's got some money. I'm too protected. We can't send me back to the yard and X ray it dies and that's gonna be okay, Like it ain't that kind of circumstance. So what what can they do? The Son of Sam lawsuit didn't work. The San of Sam Long got struck down by the Kyle count your Supreme Court. This is not against the rules. What I just tried to do. I don't even have possession the contra man. And you can't even say that you heard even you heard that. You can't even if you say you heard it. You're in the checkmate, right. So give me my ship and I'm I'm going back to my cell correct, and it's like, yeah, that's what it is. So I go back to this cell. Sergeant's up in that tower, you know that version of that tower, and his friends are mad about that. So now I got this crop of angry cops who who are upset that they just got defeated like seos, and I get warned about that. Get I get warned that hey.
There's they ain't fucking with you.
There are there's cops who are fans of me and that are hearing the talk, and they're like, man, these dudes are advocating for something to happen to you. Man, be aware of that. Be aware. And I'm like, I don't give a fuck. Like if somebody think I did all that time and I'm standing on that yard that day and don't know that this is going down, then they they ain't never did no time. So I'm outside because I didn't give a fuck. Bro, I've seen worse than that. To me, these was kids trying to they was playing, they playing tough. They had everybody had an opportunity to go be tough. I didn't change my life, got my shit together. I'm just dropping me some rhymes. So approaching me about doing anything for them. Was we used to do that to people, you know what I mean, Like, Hey, hommie, what's that? And you got my my five dollars, you get mad de yoda in that tooth paste I gave you. Ain't man all we with and we was gonna anyway. It was gonna happen. It wasn't no getting out of it. So when them dudes started that whole make an album for me thing, or we need two grand or this or that, I was like, man, I'm not giving a nigga a souper on. I'm not doing nothing I don't want to do. And again, I'm the biggest motherfucker on the yard, right. I didn't start peeling the weight off until I got to board and my lawyer was like, you're a black man with all this hair and all these muscles and all this. You're terrifying to look at to the people you were about to. My lawyer told me to cut my hair. My lawyer told me to lose some weight. My lawyer told me the guy the perception is everything.
And then my health told me keep it this way.
You know what I mean. Now that I'm fifty years old and free, but at the time. I'm not worried about nobody doing nothing and me and not because of no tough shit. I just believe, man, I believe in something greater than me. Man. They call it God, people call it the universe. Man, Alahuac bar is how I feel. Nigga, if it's meant for me today, let's go. I want to know. I'm not waking up and thinking this nigga could whoop me. You gotta come and do it. You get taking a life, they call it you. I'm not giving you shit. And so we was outside and niggas walked up and I see that these you don't have no business coming this direction. I'm at a table for Cripson blood. You know what I mean. It's a piru from Cedar Block over here, it's in San Diego, Keyway, it's a brother from the Bay. It's just a it's a black table. And so I just my instincts is the nigga got too close. I went straight at him and back back bap, and he got dropped. And it turns out that that was the person that had that the primary weapon that would have been most harmful. So like D the biggest threat. Yeah, and it was good because he was the tough one. And so now everybody else is thinking now and you're supposed to run. Somebody pulled the knife on you, you're supposed to run. But burying Dony and others, I knew that if you turn your back, you're done. You gotta nigga, we gotta do this. And then doing so, you could look that man in his eyes, keV. You could look him in his eyes and see after position Nigga's on the ground, you could see they made him do it. You didn't want to come up to do it. You don't know we doing this now. I'm talking to people. We in the same amount of trouble. If we stop right now or if we keep going this up, it's this is it. And I'm kind of it's a couple of them that I wanted to do something too for a while, and I wasn't in a position in my life to be able to start nothing, to just jump off. I couldn't start nothing, but you could defend yourself. But I could defend myself. And so I got to beat a couple motherfuckers up, and I got a couple scratches and scrapes and bruises, but ain't nobody. He damn, they're killed nothing.
Damn.
That's a motherfucking lie.
And so the reason they think that lie is because when I was getting so I'm in the room and they looking, they examining, and I got a motherfucker asking me questions, and he's and the cops are mad about it. The nurses and shit are angry at this dude, and they like, hey, man, excuse me, and they were, you know, checking out to see if I'm in immortal danger right now. And he's like, who did it? Who did it? And so I closed my eyes and leaned back. I swear to God, I swear on my mother's life, fully, fully, conscious fully, fucking fine. Other than these scratches and whatever adrenaline through the roof, I don't feel no pain, of course, And I leaned back and I just just quietly, just left, just very quietly. And they responded like, oh my god, he's crashing, and so they start trying to take care of me. I was listening to this whole thing happened, and that was how the investigator got ran out the room, and so everybody ran with that. X almost died, like whatever, if that makes me, people feel better than good for them.
Yo, at what point in time, because you know there were five people involved in the initial incident that led you to go to prison. Anytime somebody loses the life, right right, right right, there's at what point in time do you face that and kind of come to peace? Like you said you had empathy, you eventually ended up getting empathy for what happened, Like, yeah, like myself as a child. Yeah, like at the end of the day, like it was a crime that had a victim. So at what point in time did you kind of like come to terms with the incident that night that changed your life forever?
I think I came to terms with that around two thousand and two, in that window where you know too, I don't know how old I was by the end.
Maybe I'll take thirty and four.
So yeah, I'm twenty eight, so I'm old enough to have had that brain thing happen, and I'm old enough to know it happened because I can like, doesn't look the same, colors, don't look the same. Motherfucker.
Once you hit a certain age, it's like you put a dupe pair of glasses on. You see the whole world different it really is.
And I felt like going from twenty five to thirty and then going from thirty to thirty five, thirty five to forty. I've had these stages where life looked different, and so I had I had trying to reconcile that within myself. I did a total of nine years of solitary confinement over making music, you know, getting locked up. Three years here, two years here, bust therapy transfer me, I get off.
And that's when it's just you and your thoughts.
It's just you and your thoughts.
When the door closes you either I can hear so like I'm in the hole at corkorand I'm in the shoot, and so they have said, I'm in the ASU. I'm into what they call Z unit. And there's a window that's just a slice, right, it's a slice a rectangle and standing up and you go look out that window and there's a white wall and that's it.
Left and right, that's it.
And I got another one of those slits in the roof, and every now and then I see the sun passed by and magneto shit. And so I'm in this room and the bed is just stell is a is a concrete slab built out of the wall like a cave. They built out of concrete and it has a mattress on it, and then the wall itself where the sink is is steel, and you have a sink and a toilet. And I was and that was me in that room and mail and in some books, you know what I mean. And so I'm listening to people crack. I can hear the dude down there that can't take it no more. And I hear them running down there to go in there. You gotta come back. They got to come with the shield and the masks on and open his door and go wrestling. And maybe he smears shit all over his body and water all on the floor trying to get out slippery, and they fighting. I can hear him down there, and next thing you know, they got him on Senna Kwon. He running around ruling, you know what I mean. So I can see the options. I can see the options. So the options were, I'm waking up in the morning, I'm gonna say a prayer, I'm gonna work out, I'm gonna drink my coffee. I'm gonna work out, and got my little pack of coffee, little steak coffee pack, and I'm gonna work out. I'm gonna take a bird bath. I'm gonna clean up my mess. I'm gonna get my reading in. I'm gonna finish my reading. I'm gonna write my letters. I finish that. I'm gonna write me some songs. I finish that. I'm gonna do some reading and go to sleep, and I'm gonna do this.
This is just that Roustie routine, like a machine.
Like a machine, and I'm gonna put in what I want to put in. So I started reading anything that had to do with Solomon, anything that had to do with Jesus, anything that had to do with Mohammed, anything that had to do with Buddha, anything that had to do with like John F. Kennedy, RFK, Martin Luther, King, Malcolm X. I'm like, I'm constructing a father figure for myself out of historical figures and quotes in Winston Church the most g But what the fuck was wrong with Hitler? If any was something wrong with Hitler? Was he was he right?
Or was he tripping? I read mine Camp.
I read it like I want to know if I think you were tripping, Like, oh yeah, money was tripping. Money was tripping a little bit but I wanted to know. I wanted to understand historical figures, the Prince, Nicolo, Machiavelli, uh, everything, everything that I could get my hands on, the play, those caves, the Socratic method, fucking Malcolm Gladwell. When the roots dropped, the tipping point, like I went into I did a deep dive. I went in the rabbit hole, the tipping point. Oh, Malcolm Gladwell, Like, who the fuck's Malcolm Gladwell? What else did he write? And you know, Freakonomics. I went from Freakonomics and got to tipping Point and then I got to Outliers, and Outliers changed my fucking life when I read that book.
So like being in the hole, like that's the approach people should take, but the other approaches you let like you can't take it, and then you end up going crazy to try to get out to what to maybe go to the fucking like if you end up like yeah, because at least that's you're getting out.
Yeah, at least you.
Got your pudding and you got you and take your little pills and it's better than that. Maybe, I guess, I don't know. I didn't want nothing to do with it. I felt like they couldn't have my brain, Doctor Markle. I've read what he wrote about surviving a concentration camp and what he had that the last thing he had left when he didn't know if he was getting gassed tomorrow, all he could do is control what was going on here and here. That was it, and that's how it felt like. I'm in the corner and I'm not going under the bed, so we gotta fight. If you keep coming this way, we're gonna have to fight. I'm not going under the bed, you know. And it's a still slap. You can't go under the bed anyway, so like it's a concrete slab. So that was my philosophy.
You and brother lynch Man, obviously you guys are tied together forever.
Forever, Doctor Dry and Snoop Dogg in Northern California.
Can you give me an idea of you know, because Lynch ended up working with Strange, right he did. I don't know if he still is or not, but he but he you know, he had signed with Strange And was that kind of your introduction to Tech and Travis? And because when you got out, did you already have a situation figured out with strange music.
So while I was still incarcerated, and this will bring us to a couple of people we mentioned before. I was still incarcerated making music, and Brian Shafton actually ended up putting out music for me while I was incarcerated. So Brian Shafton gave me a deal in twenty ten eleven, twenty eleven, like, I'm coming right off of this shit, because I did get my songs recorded and out, So I'm coming right off of this big old fight, and which was the police sent the niggas at me, right, so I get up because I put the sergeant in that in the corner of the earth. So I come from that to I get to the hot desert, which at the time is the most dangerous yard. So I get my reward for not getting in trouble because I was attacked, right. I didn't even gotta say shit, it's all this happened on camera. And think about this an attempted murder if the speculation is a trip. So anybody that's against that have been through some gangs, the shit, we just gonna do it like this, kiv An attempted murder on a prison yard, That'd be like an apartment complex that has' there's cameras everywhere, but these cops have also been on this yard with all of us for seven years, five years at a time. Right, we know whoever?
You know all these guys. I see you guys every fucking day.
Yeah, I know the motherfuckers at my gym. Now it's only been two years, but I know who that is. I know Bruce, I know Miss Tina Hi. Good morning, Miss Tina Hi. On the ray right right, same thing, so on camera, located weapons, they didn't disappear. Cops identify everybody. No, all parties involved and attempted murder. And there's no there's no court case.
That shit's crazy.
No court case King's County right, Colinga, California. There's no court case. Not one person ended up in court because you have an uncooperative, uncooperative victim, right, victim, So if don't matter if you won. So I did nine months locked up for nine months as a result of that for escalating to the point of not being a victim. That's what they were trying to do to me.
So because you defended yourself, you no longer became a victim. And because you weren't going to necessarily cooperate into the extent they wanted to. It didn't become a case.
I didn't I did, I didn't. I wasn't enough of it was I wasn't enough of a victim. I defended myself too well. When your choices are to die right or or or or win, which is to live, it's literally a life in that morning. How closer to everybody they would have Maybe, yeah, I had to get I had to want me to die out here, But.
Think about how many how many times that happens in prison, where just that kind of shit just gets swept into the rug, and like, people don't have justice, and there's family members out here that you want to know what happened to their.
Fucking kid, and oh I saw a lot of that.
Yeah, And then it's like it doesn't really matter because they look at you as second class citizens at this point, and you're never gonna get your your true justice, never for that family.
It's a difficult environment to have empathy for it, right, So to get people to realize that if you're too defiant and the cops want you to die, because the existence of a neo out here, there's somebody walking around we can't fucking punish, right, We can't stop him from making music. We can't we write him up as a slap on the risk. We can't take his money. He's going to visit, he's he's got his lawyers. He's like, what the fuck do you do? Right, Well, we're gonna get him what we're gonna whacking. We're gonna smut you up, accuse you of a bunch of shit.
How do you get away? We're recording that album.
People who can't read the rules, who can't even really understand, are easy to manipulate for sure, because if he did, yeah, how did he get away with that? Because there's no rule, dumb ass, it's not against the rules. But I'm not explaining that to motherfuckers who come up to me, because again, I'm a black male who comes from a crypt background. I don't got to explain myself to no motherfucker that ain't from what I'm from. I don't owe you no fucking explanation. And if I did give you an explanation, you want to know how I got it in here? You want to know how I did whatever you want? What do you want to know that for? And who the fuck are you you know what I mean, And I'm big on that. I can go find out nigga even told on all your homies, Like I'm not telling you how public. Yeah, I would have gave somebody some game. Hey man, you want to do your music. I respect that. I've done that before, where somebody was busting and I see him and I'll be like, hey, check it out. And I pulled somebody.
We locked up with any other artists who ended up kind of getting out and doing something.
Well, I mean, Razkas was there, you know me and I remember writing back and forth to Flesh and Bone man Stack a good dude, and so like me and Stack, we both you know, I started going to uh Islamic surfaces services. I started going to Juma and doing Ramadan, and so so was Flesh, and so we both had took Shahada, which is a part of my story y'all never really told. So, like a part of what changed for me was was getting into Islam, really really digging into Islam.
And like you kind of dug into every religion, I dug.
Into all of them and land because I really did. I did dig into all of them. Yeah you should, but I landed in a place of I kind of liked how heat, I like mono theism, I like I liked the concept of of this this particular construct. So I hung out there if the point of studying all that stuff was to find somewhere to hang out, and I just thought, you know, the earliest oldest philosophy that I could find, that was what I wanted to rock with, you know what I mean, And so I kind of landed there. But yeah, we used to be given, you know, get a letter to the e man and you take it over there, and they were like, yeah, man, you know, it was beautiful to be in touch with everybody like that. But like dope ass people, the dopest rappers I ever met in prison never got out, Like there's a there was a cat from Compton. There's a cat from content fuckers, because man, there's a cat from Compton who I think was arguably the dopest rapper I ever ran into. Like I think he was doper than it niggas on the streets, like right at that if motherfuckers had heard him and we because you know, we go back and forth, he spit a rhyme. Everybody that thought they could rap was gonna be my rapper to the point I was a battle rapper like you had to be. And so yeah, I ran into a lot of motherfuckers with a lot of talent, but not necessarily who came home and did nothing with it.
Can you talk about just like how important you and Lynch's French has been to just yeah everything, man, like I'm sure you.
Know, yeah, that's my brother. I love Lynch. So so what I'm fifteen h.
Sixteenth, So December seventeenth, nineteen ninety one, nineteen ninety excuse me. We have a party for my grandmother's death day. And my cousin Nicole brings six with her and six six and Lynch and all of them were older than me, so you know, we were trafficking in different circles. I would come up to fuck with the big homies and go back into what I was doing. And Lynch was, you know, into hip hop that it was with the dancing and flipping and the rough busting rhymes, you know. But he from Tama Sharon and Kirk Waite, like he from the gardens. He was outside, but he was outside doing some shit that some dope shit, while we was doing dumb shit. And so like me, and Bo are like, I say, Ozone, but they was like, well they was like Ozone and Turbo and me and Bo was like old dog and can okay, you know what I mean? And so six showed up and I had all my rhymes on the walls, you know, thumb tacked and sheet protectors and shit, write a new one, put it on the wall, read them and I would just read my rhymes. That was kind of a thing for me. I kind of steal a tape of paper to the wall and just do free form righting and shit.
And so, uh, six is like who wrote this shit? And it was like, you know, it's my shit.
And I've been working with DJ Tantrum, Percy Hunter from Flat Dog Crip, and so me and Percy was working on what ultimately would become the first half a Psychoactive and the entire niggas in Blackie Pee that I did. And Six was like, oh, nah, man, tomorrow, I'm gonna bring my brother over, you know. And then Lynch was like had the name Ice Cold. His hip hop name was Ice Cold, and six is was stroubbed like he was you know, them niggas was tickers, and so he bring them over. We get there and I'm like, it's Kevin. Nigga's Kevin Man, you know what I mean. So I know, but Lynch. We look at Lynch like, oh, that nigga was talented out there on some it was our little Michael Jackson outside and so uh we bust rhymes all night and they like, man, if you could pay for your studio time, we'll put you in a real studio. So I'm like, hell yeah. I went to the big homies and told him what I wanted to do. I talked to Donkey Kong from PJ Watt shout out to shout out to my niggas from pj's Donkey Kong gave me you know, he hooked me up. I went to my big homie Ken, Big Ken Martin BK. He hooked me up, and I grind and grind and grind and grind. I was slinging on in the fifties, slanging in the Cadillac apartments, slanging in and flat in the flats, and I paid for my studio time. And what we would do is like I'll get six hours and I'll do four hours, and Lynch would help us. We had all my samples, like almost everything came from Percy, and then Lynch will be like, hey, we should do this or we should do that. But Lynch gave us the process. He sat there in the engineering chair with the engineer next to him and kind of made sure everything. He doctor drake my shit, you know what I mean. And so the difference is I came out first because of I had access to money and I'm selling dope and I was on some gangs and shit, so I really was the baby.
But I was just moving faster than everybody.
And then bo came home while I was like halfway through psychoactives. So like Bo's first times in a real studio was with me going in there to work with me, work with Lynch and yeah, Lynch Lynch, Lynch was right there. So Boom. I ended up going to juvenile Hall on a joy ride. I'm joy riding. We was gonna go clap some shit up and we got pulled over. So I got a joy ride, the hommy got joy ride, the homey took a pistol, and the honey got a GTA Boom. I'll spend a weekend in juvenile Hall. My mam would come and get me Monday. And during that weekend. Big Meek actually was in Juvenile Hall with me, and Big Meek is like got the cut list, he got the staying, he got.
The guy who helped finance.
Yeah what Cedric was doing right right?
And he Sebo's little brother, and so like, I'm on twenty third Street and bad bad in the gardens, which is really a red street. It's like going toward the blood side in twenty fourth Street right next to it, right, So I'm slanging coke at Tracy Butler House and Meek is right next door. I used to see him all the time, but they was. I always thought this nigga is a grown ass man. So I found out he was a kid when I went to Juvenile Hall and the nigga was in there and I was rapping and shit. So people don't know who x Rate it is because my cover was drawn by brother Lynch and it was like, well I didn't that wasn't even my name. I had just said it in a line and a rap and people just started calling me ax rated, like how Scarface got his name?
And then.
Lynch was like, nah, I gotta be r AI D E D And he drew my first logo and drew my first cover. So that shit is on consignment and Tower Records. I'm in Juvenile Hall and I'm spitting rhymes and shit and it's like, Nigga.
You asked Righted.
I was like yeah, he was like, Nigga, this is what we gotta do. Blah blah blah. So me Meek had been looking for me. So I go home and I on a humbug reach out to Meek. We ended up rolling all over to town, me and my met of you brother, and we just he started paying for every motherfucker thing, and then you know, he kind of put us with Cedric, so we was in the thick of it. By the time. I literally had ten out of eleven songs for Psychoactive done the day we met with Cedric Wo. So I made one song. I made that Sickness, the last song on the album, was the only song left and Meek had. We did the first six by ourselves, and Lynch got involved, and then the next five happened with Meek and Lynch and all the way involved, and that was that was how we ended up taking that shit to Cedric. But so when you get locked up, Lynch is still with you throughout the whole yeah, he wrapped the whole time like we just always was together when it when it musically. When we came for twenty four Deep, Lynch called him. You know, I had me do the verses and shit, I called Lynch. Rather, he had me do the little little part of the verse for on the answer machine. He said my name everywhere he did five me really in it. And then I go from that to Season of the Sickness. So Season of the Sickness was actually the name of my Exorcist album. See, I had been working on what would be So I was going from Psychoactive to Season of the Sickness. That was my plan. And when I got locked up, I think like I was dead. Really, I was gone. It's like this niggas facing the death penalty.
It is for sure. So I'm gone, Why all count your life's over?
And Exorcist is like this mythological thing that nobody believes is real, you know what I mean. And so I'm like, or what Season of the Sickness? So I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm gonna do Season of the Sickness. Blah blah blah. I'm talking to Cedric. I'm kind of telling Lynch. I'm blessing rhymes on the phone with Lynch and shit. And so before I get the game from mac dre and I start recording what became got renamed the Exorcists. They made they titled Lynch's album Season of the Sickness, and so that is how that happened. But that was that was one hundred percent the name of what people now know as Exorcists.
I'm wondering, like, like when you guys would was there like a conscious effort to make sure that the content was extremely dark and edgy and like kind of crazy at times?
Yeah, I think that me as in MC originally initially were picking all that up.
Can we be it's funnest, funny, funny, my bad.
So you end up in a circumstance where uh, where were were we at the Season of the Sickness? The co conscious effort to make crazy shit. So we end up doing where I have n w A straight out of Compton and n W A Niggas for Life. And they started getting a little extreme for sure, to kill a hooker, to kill a prostitute easy, he was a little extreme for sure.
And then the ghetto boy joes hell extreme.
Yeah, like my playing tricks on me was like a real like dark record. Low kis like you know what I mean, grip it on that other level. It was a dark album.
The entire album was tricky, and so you had Chucky, you had all of that going on, and so we end up in a circumstance where we were influenced by that, you know, and I know about Sean, I know about gangs, the nip, you know, it's people doing ship, and so we were we were we kind of mixing this game banging ship with that crazy ship. And I was deliberate. So me and Lynch kind of got into this thing, met him and six of who could say the wildest ship. It just was really us amongst ourselves because you know, I with the nigga nuts and guts, I came up with that, and Lynch just was like he came up with this baby killer ship and six. So we kind of just humans and ship. Lynch Lynch did that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, what was the the you better pray when't you see we put that down up? We were talking about feed this kid someone else's Yeah.
Yeah, so yeah we did. And I think that's where the fracture happened where Lynch Lynch kept going extreme, and I maybe because of my circumstances winning to some gangster shit.
Yeah, because you also like couldn't be talking about certain shit. And then someone the jail, here's the shit, like, yo, you want that crazy shit dog like you know what I'm saying.
Like I wasn't impacted by that.
I was. I think we we had we diverted in intent. I think because I was writing fantastical songs all the way up until we got to Duce Fat of Life got it. So I was still in that psychology. But when it got to the point to start my trial, it was a sober thing. I got splashed through the cold bucket of water. So now you got that's where I show up as an individual. So now Due Fat of Life is the first Honorey Brown song. That's the first song I wrote without a character when I wasn't in a character, even if it was informed by my life experiences, and sure it still was for sure, you know what I mean. So Due fot of Life happened. Then I write Deadly Game, then I write Missaying to p Then ILL write Land of the Loss. You know what I mean. I started going in a different I became more and Scarface did this too, and that helped me, Like.
Yeah, like Scarface became Brad Jordan.
Yeah, he moved more. He merged Brad Jordan's Scarface, right, and then also like what.
He started to do on his own was very different than what you would hear with the Ghetto Game exactly.
And I was inspired by that as an MC because I wanted to where am I going, you know, And I'm looking at Ice Cube, I'm looking at Scarface. Here comes Tupac, I got Here's Eve forty, you got Spice one. I'm looking at everybody, and I'm like, what am I doing? You know?
And I wanted I just I wanted to be dope as fuck.
And the ingredients to that to me was I had to get into I gotta start telling some of this shit, this the truth, right, you know what.
I mean I'm going through that's on my brain.
Yeah, And I moved myself and other people into that direction. You know, Bo was always because of why having issues with the police. He always had a of a militant thing going, you know, he was super ice Cube influenced, and so he had a little bit of that militant thing going. And then I ended up politics popped into my music because I was in a political pressure cooker. Also, you're reading a lot a lot, yeah, and under attack by the media and watching Time Warner, watching all these cultural things and feeling stuff about it, and it started pouring into my music.
And that was where me and Lynch diverted.
That went in different directly musically, Yeah, yeah, philosophically.
For sure, you get out, you end up. Well, it's crazy that your first strange album was last year, right, yeah? It well, yeah, how big of a moment was it for you to because Tech nine is somebody who was probably just starting to get active when you went to prison, because he was coming out to LA doing the wake Up Show. I want to say, what was the soundtrack he was on, Richie Gang related? Yeah, yeah, exactly, and then this strange music thing comes and it's kind of like a new version of what like black Market was like in the early nineties. Said, and then he ends up kind of becoming like the I mean not kind of quite literally, like changing the game for independent artists and the biggest independent rapper ever. How like aware and hip are you to what text doing? I'm sure you're hearing about it through Brian or through Brother Lynch, Like yeah, but to get out connect with him, Like, how aware were you of the Strange music I guess legacy that was being built while you were incarcerated.
I watched the whole thing happen. I watched all of that. I watched the when he popped up with devastatingly with questions. He had already been through the quest thing. You know, different groups he was a part of.
Earlier Exangelic and that's the whole era and like almost like a similar thing where like we've seen Tech kind of grow from being like the crazy guy with the face paint and then like you know, kind of like like he's kind of brought us into like who he is a lot more over the l of the years.
So yeah, even while I was there, when I left black Market, I would have wanted to be as strange. I remember having an interaction with Dave Warner in like two thousand and nine or twenty ten. I don't think I forgave him for that until like twenty nineteen or twenty eighteen, where he essentially said that minus being able to tour and not being able to do videos, that my music coming out on Strange Music wouldn't have been He couldn't see the potential value in that. But that he saw in terms of this had nothing to do with dopeness, but had something to do with the inability to finish it, which was true. You know from a fantastical place in there. You don't know what you don't know, and how much goes in it is and that was I was big boys. Shit. I think what I was doing was to keep my sanity. I was writing and making music to keep my sanity. Is almost cute looking back on it now, Shit, I wish I never recorded because I could could record him. Now I got twenty year old song on a Prayer and Hell my last album, that is one of the dopest songs on THEREZ some shit I wrote in oh two. It's like two songs on there from two thousand and two and two thousand and three, the life sentences and to whom it may concern, And it's like I wish I had a held on of that. But at the time Dave Warner had did. His response to us was he didn't think that would be something that we could could we could start the game, but couldn't finish it.
Yeah, interesting tour the touring aspect is.
So important to yes, being in that machine. Now I understand exactly that that was the literal truth at the time. I think Dave was responsible responsible for strange music West. He was working right under Traves, the man making the decisions as strange music at the time regarding you know anything that was happening mostly with the West Coast artists and uh so Brian Shafting. Like two years later, it gives me the deal with RBC, and you know, I'll drop some music and stuff and I'm paying attention to take a drive.
I see, I can see everything. It's my business.
I have my little football team and I'm watching the bigger football teams, and like.
Do you get access to YouTube and like double XL and all that shit in there, Like yeah, we get double XL.
We had all the magazine so I could see Murder Dog. Like I'm twenty eleven, Me and Tech are on the cover of the Murder Dog together, so like I'm he has a Murder Dog magazine in his house with me my face on it next to it, right, you know what I mean. So like it was like that I was aware. We were all aware of each other, and we know who too's dope, so they knew I was dope. And then I come home and I think the June eleventh, twenty twenty one, I fly to Kansas City, me and Lynch, and it really started with a dispute between Lynch and Tech that ended up kind of turning into a little bit of back and forth a little bit, and people got.
Too excited about it.
I didn't like it. I got a habit of jump in in front of bullets for Lynch, and I just was like, I feel like everybody need to just mind their business. If you got pomp pomps, you cheering for potential Lynch and Tech nine beef, then I'm not fucking with you no more. So I'm watching. I'm looking at all of y'allf y'all doing. Let them to handle their business and stay out of it. Because everybody wanted to all of a sudden pile in on Lynch. And I'm like, I just always I take phase on behalf of Lynch my entire career. I've always done it. I've always been the one either saying, hey man, that's my brother. You know what I mean? They can't have cav Lynch ain't want it. Ain't Lynch ain't trying to bother nobody, and ain't nobody about to be bothering him. Were not going for that, And so that's it just kind of I did that, and Tex saw it, and he was like, hey, I appreciate that, bro broh and we go see each other man much love. And I was like, all right, you know, I just acknowledged him, like I feel you and thank you and blah blah blah. Because and so I got Lynch a bag to go to KC. I got a decent bag. We flew out, my brother Knox with me, Eric. We all fly out there and me and Lynch, dude, we go to the show. My phone started blowing up, people like, man, Tech is trying to get a hold of you. Ironically, all these crips I call them technologe crips. How I know that about technologe crips, people will underestimate that Tech nowin got all these crips and bloods that fuck with him for real.
And so I'm like, who the fuck is you know?
Man? You going to the barbecuters. The crips were throwing the barbecue, you hear? And Tech one to note because he's gonna pull up, and I was like, I don't know, I'm tough them to call me or something or whatever. I don't even believe this shit. So I'm in my suite. I keep doing what I'm doing, and then Tris called me, and I love Trids, so I was like, what's up, bro?
He's like, where are you going to eat?
And I was like, I'm about to hit this place blah blah blah in the a little while, and Trick's like, cool, I'm gonna pull up at fifteen. Tech could be there in thirty. I was like, all right, so we all mob over there. We sitting down chilling, and Tris walked through the door and then boom, Tech walked up in that motherfucker and he gave me.
He said, I told you I was going to see you. Gave me a hug.
We sat down, had a meal, chopped it up, vibed out, spitching bars and just you know, had fun, had a good night. And he excused himself and he popped back and I can hear him walking up like yeah, man, really good people, really good energy man. And there I just think you should meet him. And he hands me the fall and it was Travis and uh, Trav's like, what you're doing Monday? Man? And I was like, shit, whatever you want me to be doing Monday, you know, because we were getting the fuck out of here. We got the bag. We were like we're we're going to Vegas. Yeah, and uh yeah, he was like all right, So Monday we re changed our flights and shit and kicked it that weekend and uh, that weekend changed my life. Man. I met the mother and both my children that weekend. Wow, I met I met Tech nine. Because Trav wants us to come Monday, I actually am running around Kansas City. I meet the mother and my children. I go to that meeting with Travis blows my mind. We spent four hours touring Strange music and still didn't see it all. So to put that in perspective, he took us on a tour of the facility. It took four hours and we still didn't see all of the building. Right.
Still it's that big.
And so we're all like, okay, all right, you know, and jump on the plane go back to Vegas. Like man, it's just something to think about. And Tech came to Vegas, flew out to see me. He really was doing him in Vegas. But the homies started calling me this nigga. So people starting to see pictures and shit of me and Tech together, and so this nigga's walking through the mall, this girl and my phone start blowing up. People like, man, your boy just walking around them all out here, like you know, and we don't motherfuckers don't know what to do. What should we do? I was like, just make sure he's straight. So I called Tech was like, hey, man, but like this is the fifth time somebody told me you was walking around them. All niggas could call me one hundred times. They could call niggas with that shouldn't be called. So like, I'm at the homies just gonna follow you around them all. So if you see some niggas that they with me and it's good. And he was like okay, he's like I was wondering about that. Man, These crip niggas kept looking at me. Yeah, he was in Vegas, and so the hommies stayed with him, and you know, we just kind of hung out on their phone's, minding their business while he shopped with his girl and got him out of there, and then I ended up pulling up at the Aria. We hung out, had a great meal, and you know, I did some shit for the birthday, for his lady's birthday.
I go back, he goes out.
Trave flies in tech calls me, hey, man, my partner's coming to Vegas to do some business. But he's there to see you. He's like, I don't care what he says. Travis came to Vegas to see you, bro. He's like, tell him what you need, tell him how you need it. Let's get this done. I need you with me. I was like, all right, cool, So sure enough, Trav lands. He comes to my building, he sits, he sits down, talks with my business partners. I put him with the city manager, the deputy city manager to talk about a few things that we're doing in Vegas, and we had all kind of shit going on. So Trav left all of that feeling like I love what you're doing. He talked to me. He told me, I love what you're doing, and you're gonna pull this off, but it's gonna take you longer than it needs too. I want to fast forward you. I want to hit fast forward over for you. So let's it's all right. Cool boom text sing me a song. I gave other artist semi songs. I ended up getting the Asonine Tour and drav sat me down. Boom Boom signed my deal. You know, he went back and forth the lawyer. Boom got my contract the way it needed to be went, did the Asonin tour, got my chain at at Red Rocks in front of ten thousand people. Man crazy on a stage. Michael Jackson been on the Beatles.
You know, one of the most legendary venues in the world.
Insane.
So like all of that happened, and yeah, it's just been it's just been a beautiful thing. So that weekend and like the twelfth of June twenty one, I ended up taking Lynch to a meeting until we went to jack Stackson. We had a big old table and take all these people showed up and so come to find out, you know, Tech's Sun is a huge X rated and brother Lynch, I'm fan. We're his favorite rappers. Crazy, it's nuts. So Tech's son came other members of his family. We all broke bread, bro Knox and Eric all of them with me and let you Tech out to discuss They shit, you know what I mean. Niggas gave each other a Hug said they loved each other and you know, and that was how we resolved that. And Tech just really respected that shit. He was like, man, that was some dope ass shit. He's like, I really appreciate that. And we've just been thugging it out on some g shit ever since. I love him. I love technok ain't gonna lie. That's my dogg guy. Man, that's my dude. I fuck with him and I fuck with Travis. The long way Drive to me is a genius. I've been in the room with a lot of people, you know, who do think well, and this motherfucker is a genius.
Dave Warner is a genius.
You know, Brian Shafting, this group of people who all kind of circulate each other, Mark Markoff and you know, it's a bunch of them and there's some brilliance involved in that shit.
And I just marvel at it.
And Travis stood on ten toes about me, and I really appreciate that about him, and my relationship with technis phenomenal and I love it.
Man, can you I want to talk about Sack for a sec because I have a great relationship with Mazzi, who I know has had friction with certain artists over the years. I think he might have friction with Brother Lynch at a certain point in time. I know he had some friction with Cebo.
Yeah, I put that. I didn't allow that to the Lynch thing. I was like, nah, man, you know I talked to Lynch.
Well, I know Manzi to be like a great guy, and he's got a great team like Dave dave O, and you know, he's one of the new faces of the West Coast. And he's obviously a very talented guy. Have you guys had any opportunity to conversate.
Or we've had interactions I sent him.
I remember after that thing happened where it was like, I'm I think the comment was, I'm funking with Cibo, I'm funking with a brother Lynch, I'm funking with an x rit it and you know, it pitsed some people off, It ruffled some feathers that he worded it that way, and uh that was kind of me and ce Bo's disagreement that we ended up having was really over the fact that I stood on what I believed in regard to what my intention to say.
Well, yeah, and that also like that's how he talks like, I don't I don't think. I don't think that was meant in a disrespectful way.
It was not. It was not meant a disrespectful way in my humble opinion. And I remember saying like, I'm on Facebook. I jumped on Facebook. I'm in the pen. But I go on Facebook and say, hey, man, uh, is it possible for me to be funking with a kid who might have been five when I left the streets, if he was alive at all. We've never been on the yard, So can it be how is it possible I'm funking? Or was it him? If he prefaced this statement with just like I gotta respect what they did and their genom for their era, they gotta respect what I did. In mind, so I felt like he was identifying as standard because the question was essentially why was he so dupe? And his answer was because we're dope. That was what he was fucking saying. And that's how I took it. And so when I said that I know Mazi, even with all his people and who could feel something about that, he were posted reposted what I said and threw one hundreds across it. I said, Mazzi know every word in Macafam Malama Mazzi's first album Covers is honored a tribute to my first album cover. First time they saw him with the fingers to the head. What is that guy? Yet?
We have it man, We've just the DM exchange.
You know.
I told him what I thought about.
I told him about how I was the most disrespectful rapper in the history of Sacramento. So you have a blood dominated city who had itself being represented by crip rappers for nationally yeah, international identity.
Yeah it was hey cebo X rated brother Lynch.
Yeah yeah, Tiloni were the predominant. And I was super disrespectful in my music regard to other sets and the Psychoactive Exorcists. It was very much gangee. And then I got to unforgiven. And I remember I had a conversation with a brother for Oak Park who told me, Man, we love your music, ex if you would let us, if you would let us, Man, we'll slap your shit if you would let us. And so I was like, damn, So, who is y'all new booty nass niggas, you know what I mean. I'm like, we're twenty fourth Street criit. But even Blood Niggas God Does and my shitting stud niggas in the South Side and slam X righty local. When they all riding, I started kind of allowing people to be able to bump my music if they wanted to. It was a deliberate thing, and so I kind of I dropped that on MASI y'all just said, I feel like I didn't have anybody to tell me this, but a lot more people could be receptive to your music if you let them. And if you can not do these things or if I could have not done those things, it would have done this for my career. And so that was really the.
Last I think he's did a good job of doing that too. Real. Yeah, I think so because I think, like, you know, that's one thing about him, like just knowing him as well as I do, just like his personal evolutions. I met him in twenty seventeen, right, and it was like he used to come to the radio station on like fifty dudes. Yeah, and now when he comes he's got a tight crew, he's about his business, he stays out the way, you know what I'm saying, Like, yeah, man, So I just think it would be dope to have you guys have some sort of shit, do a song together.
Man, it's inevitable.
What I would. I don't I think music. I think music is a secondary thing. I would, and I'm not opposed to that being an outcome of the other thing.
But if it need to just be.
An organic dialogue or organic because right now, my whole neighborhood is united, all of it. We got some stuff we gotta deal with, but me cbo Lynch, Looney Nutty or all together, and that block movement project is gonna happen.
That's happening. And so from the perspective of what's best.
For Sacramento, like, come on, bro, we can't celebrate the nigga brought a Grammy home. He brought a Grammy to Sacramento. You can't fake goosebumps, bro. But like a nigga from where we farm when won a Super Bowl while we going, I gotta act like I didn't just I don't think that's dope, Like, get the fuck out of here. The Black Panthers soundtrack was to me as an MC from my hometown and a OG from my hometown. That nigga being on a Black Panther soundtrack, I thought that was dope for sure, him having Kendrick acknowledge him while he just one fucking rap album of the Year on the stage at the Grammys. I was watching that with a burrito and I was like, oh shit, Like I thought that was dope. This is what the fuck? What the fuck? Are we doing a bunch of rappers rapping for each other in the hood or are we trying to penetrate the pantheon? Are we trying to get to Mount Rushmore? Are we trying to get to Mount Olympics. I just had Rock Kim post my shit, right, fuck we doing? And so I feel like if we can't get to the point of just even being able to say that human being from Sacramento, California just did some shit for us that happened really for us, that was we did that. Sacramento just smacked some hip hop shit. We just did some milestone type shit. I think you got it. That gotta be celebrated, And I think politics prevent a lot of things from being celebrated.
That should be all over California.
Indeed, indeed, but especially in Sacramento. And Cedric Singleton had a relationship and I don't not for me to say what their relationship continues to be. But from what Cedric has communicated to me, he loves Mazi. So for Cedric, the potential of like Cedric was the first one like hey man, you know I don't want you. I don't want you doing none of that. And he told me, you know that's my baby boy man, just like i've he's Cedric is runs oak Park. He not runs oak Park, but he came from oak Park, you know what I mean? He runs red and is if he defaults and you say, it's smoke and we'll do you look around, see who's gonna pop up for Cedric. It's gonna be it's gonna be a lot of old Park and it's gonna be a lot of I'm gonna give it. I'm gonna be there. I'm a care and so we share a godfather. It's like Cedric saw j Prince in a way, you know what I mean, he created him and Meek Meek is our here yo, Cedric saw Shug not, you know. So it's like we're not gonna play about that. The og heart would be broken if I was on some function in relation to Mazi.
So I think it got played the way it got played.
I've seen recent interviews where bol talked to Court about, you know how he felt like he just felt like it was a little bit too much and not enough respect involved in it. Everybody gotta speak for themselves. But what I think is the healthiest thing for Sacramento, California, and the healthiest thing for the kids watching right now, hoping that they got an opportunity to give get involved and be the next one to pop this ship off, that they know that they're gonna get this of the ogs. They gotta know that La Crips and Bloods get on stage October of twenty eleven and pass a torch to Kendrick Lamar who cries on stage and it's Snoop Dogg. Corrupt the game, DJ Quick, Doctor Dre. They did that in twenty eleven.
Fast forward to Pop Out happens. Everybody's on stage.
Man, we ain't understanding what the fuck we're doing? Is that Willie Lynch shit. It's a lot of reasons why, bro, But I'm like, what are we doing? Man? If I feel very strongly about that, what the fuck we doing? Bro? We're not gonna We're not gonna we gonna hate when it and it's real reasons. It's real reasons, so like to the indefense of even the homies, it's real reasons for bitterness on both sides, you know. But it's like, if we're gonna wait for who who, if we're gonna tip for tatted, this can't stop.
It'll never stop.
It can't stop because who's scoring as it's forever And some shit is like you know, some shit people just can't get over ain't gonna never get over. But in terms of hip hop what it means to the culture, I think a se Bow and a Masi having a conversation could be healthy for the culture. I think, you know myself, brother Lynchong, I think that this is the type of shit that I would like to organically occur, you know, with input from other people. But I think it would be devastating to the psychology of people who are waiting for their turn. I think it would be beautiful to inform them that they could choose better pathways than we did and and be supported. Maybe you we maybe we stand on the stage and we're giving the torch to the next motherfucker, you know what I mean. For sure, Yeah, I think it's necessary. You're a new album.
By the time this comes out, it'll be out.
Yep. You know.
The artwork's dope, Sit in Heaven, Thank You, your second album on strange. Yeah, what's the oldest song on this album that you write.
You're in jail? Wow, that's a good question. Twenty four tracks? What do I got on there?
I don't think so.
So it's all new ship, new perspective, if you have a whole.
New Can't Hold Us Down? I wrote can't hold Us Down in the pen about nine. I wrote that in two thousand and nine in the pen, so that my my three track three, So track three was nine in two thousand and nine in the penitentiary.
Can you kind of give me? I mean you say twenty three tracks, twenty four twenty four tracks, that's damn near double album twenty two Street, which is.
Twenty twenty four exits the twenty fourth letter I did twenty four years before All Earth Coming Home?
Was this on purpose?
Vers song is twenty four hundreds? Yeah, for sure, that's fire.
That What about this album? Because I feel like, you know, putting out this is your second album in a year almost right year and a half.
No, it just feels that way because it's been NonStop, Like I did, me and Tech, I cracking on as and nine and then you know, I had some splashes that happened.
The fucking music video you guys did that was like in the middle of the fucking sand.
That's the one where I found was off parole, still right here. That shit was crazy.
Yeah, it was a beautiful experience.
Man. That was the day I got off parole. We were filming with March first to twenty twenty two, me and Tech together making that video crazy. Yeah, so you got that big moment that wasn't from an X rated album. And now my album starts coming right behind Tech because I'm in the cycle where it's almost I'm almost always sandwiched between what Tech is doing right, and that's you know, I don't know if that's some shit him and Travis plotted on, which I would think that none of this shit is an accident, right, So, but but here comes Tech and they kind of always have me right behind that. So it's like race cars and I'm in his drag, you know what I mean, And no, Diddy, I mean, I mean it's still wind and so yeah, you got still right here. You get to my album Stratosphere with me in Tech and then here's Tech coming back on Blue and I got knocked with him and Joiner Lucas and Conway, and then my album drops, you know what I mean. And then here comes Tech on Nuthouse and I'm on there. And then here comes my first single, Here comes roll Call for Collabos. I'm on their two point five million views, two million streams. Here comes my second single, King Crook rass Cast. Here comes another Tech single, I'm on their text Collabo's album drop, I got three songs on there, rock Him drops there, and then here comes my album. So yeah, it's like I never even though it's just one album in that calendar year, because we're over a year since my last album came out June second of twenty three, and uh, but I just was never not there. I've been there the whole time.
Would you it feels like your life story should be a Netflix show or a movie or something. Yeah, I think you need it right book. I'm sure you've probably probably started. I feel like, if you're in jail long enough, you've started to write a book.
Yeah, you got that. I like that. Take your eye you like. I feel like I got to know you real.
Quick, Like I feel like you got to at least half a book finish.
I actually have three, so I have. I broke my autobiography into three parts, and so there's the life all the way up until I think it was where I stopped two thousand and two, and then there's twenty two to twenty twelve, and then there was twenty twelve, and I didn't know where to fuck the end. And I found out about sending bill to sixty and I was like, it's time for me to I put that stuff away and I started working on music still, but mostly was focused on getting out. So I spent six years, basically four years the equivalent of a college education, learning about what to do with board and how to do it board, and then two years in addition to that to get out. And that's how you get that twenty four years and me finding out knew I was going home. So I went from hopelessness to hope to maybe to thinking to believing I was getting out to.
Twenty twenty, where I knew it was happening. I was gotten neew, I was.
Going to Yo.
We've like politically, I'm certainly in the middle, I'm probably I don't know who I'm voting for, be honest, But there is this narrative that Kamala Harris locked up a lot of people in California. Yeah, but she also co sponsored the bill that freed you.
Her name is Incentive Bill two sixty and then as attorney general, she could have fought that and so she you know, it's the Democratic Party pushing if people don't think that she had a hand in that, and that the Attorney general just was like, oh Okay, they're gonna let all the juveniles with life out and didn't defend it, didn't fight that at all, just like let it come in.
Well, I'm just curious, like from your perspective, somebody who's like well versed in the law and like obviously did a ton of research on what was going on politically in California that would affect people going getting freed or going in Do you feel like she is the hell she gets for the amount of people she quote unquote locked up? Is a fair affair criticism or do you feel like it's overstated.
I think it's overstated. It's being exaggerated. Was she responsible for locking people up? She was the district attorney.
Well, everybody who's the district attorney's going to be responsible.
It didn't matter who right, right, And it's the district attorney, elected politician, district attorney in the courtroom and all these cases like come on, man, So with those of us who've been to court, know that the district attorney's not in here.
It's it ADA or a DDA.
It's a deputy district attorney or assistant district attorney in the room prosecuting the case. The figurehead district attorney that's running this office doesn't necessarily have nothing to do with all of that. But like, far be it for me to defend a district attorney. They locking people to fuck up, because that's what the fuck they do, you know what I mean.
So, I mean it's an economy too that comes with all of this. There is free labor, I mean, cheap labor, whatever you want to call. It's once you start peeling the slavery, it's like, yeah, it's what it.
Is, right.
I mean, there's privatized prisons all over the country. There's a lobby for that. Yeah, it's good business to put more people in prison.
And then you know, you end up in a circumstance where I say, if I can look at myself as say, I went from a seventeen year old game banger who thought it was perfectly appropriate to enter people's dwellings attempting to kill people, and then by the time I'm twenty five, I changed my life. And then at the age of thirty year old, thirty years old, I'm doing something completely different. By forty I got an AA degree and I'm majoring in psychology. I'm still locked up on my houmet and I'm ten million miles away from who that kid was, right, And I think we like to just keep people static. So it's like, yeah, if you look at the whole career and see where it started changing, where did she start doing the programs for people who was coming home?
Because there's plenty of information.
Available that she was actually helping people will come home successfully. So it's like, it's hard if you feel like the people stabbing you are the ones yelling at you to stop bleeding, it's hard to say thank you when they stop stabbing you, right, like, thank you so much. So it's hard to say thank you, Kamala Harris for not stabbing us anymore. You know what, I mean, so it's a lot of people hesitant. But the truth of the matter is that that that party came into power when Jerry Brown got elected, and we saw immediate change in that environment. The grievance system, how to follow a complaint about it, something that you had going on. It needed to be dealt with real stuff, family physics, so you could go see your mother, the funeral arrangements and you want to real things. The processes that got implemented from between twenty eleven to being sworn in to twelve twenty thirteen, you.
Saw the real change.
We literally saw that shit like forty eight hours, go to sleep, wake up and it was like damn, and then go to sleep and wake up again and be like what the fuck different? The forms were different, the way the police training was different, the way they spoke to you was different. When the leadership changed, they fucking changed. We saw it.
And so I don't know.
I'm one of those people who understand that the people who caused the bleeding stopped the bleedings. And you know, I feel like the Republican Party, Pete Wilson had control of California, Pete Wilson and then put in the three strikes after the Tripoli class, they add a three percent parole grant rate when they took over, I think out of twenty four years to four of demo of Republican power in the state of California, going back as far as Duke Maging to Grey Davis finally getting in there. So Grey gets four years, gets re elected, get recalled, and they gave us determinated right. So in terms of like who he was stabbing us, there's a question about who was doing the stab it because the people who stop the bleeding aren't necessarily the people who were doing the stab And so I think that's the difference for me in my perspective of understanding that I want the person willing to do the most for the people who are still in the situations that I was in.
Yeah, I mean, I think like at the end of the day, like if there's ever humans in our society, they get treated like second class citizens. It is people who are incarcerated, it's felons. Even when they get out, they gotta wear that. It's like a scarlet letter they got to wear every time they go do a fucking job interview. And now former president is.
An ex felling ain't that something.
Ain't that shit crazy?
Ain't that crazy?
Whether or not you think he should be a whole other discussion, right right, but technically he is.
They're running for and running for the biggest job in the United States of America, in the world, the biggest job in the world.
But somebody would have felt they want to go work.
Yeah, and look, I like, I don't think you should be a felon. I think they went after him like for sure, but he's still felon. So it's like now it's like, hey, guys, like weish really because I just feel like putting that shit on. I mean, obviously, if you own a business and you want to do your own background check before you hire somebody, that's on you. But like, I feel like that whole that box that you got to check on the application. Have you ever been convicted of a felony? It's just as soon as you hit yes, you're fucked. You're not getting the job.
And now Gavin new Some gets rid of that too.
For us, I think, man, well, Gavin news Some is a fucking chameleon.
Bro.
Yes, he's a fucking lizard person.
For sure.
He will do whatever he has to do to hold on to that power. He's a wild boy. Man that gave is a wild boy.
Hey man, you know, it's an interesting world, for sure. I think that man, A lot of people have to make decisions based on what they think is gonna be gonna have the best outcome for as many people as possible as possibly fair. That's really what it comes down to. And I want people in my former circumstance is to have a legitimate opportunity to get their laws together, rehabilitate, get out, be productive in the country. We're the only developed country left in the world that actually takes citizenship from people like you can't vote anymore, right, not being able to vote, your rights agains, search and seizure, your constitutional rights actually get taken from you and you essentially almost can't get them back. Whereas anywhere if you go to Germany, Germany out pacing us in this regard, you get in trouble, you get incarcerated, you get rehabilitated, and they reintegrate you into society, so you're fully restored, and they're saying, go be a member of society, integrate, participate in the game. Play the game. We're gonna teach you what the game is. Maybe you didn't know, this is what the game is. We get a good education, you got a job, maybe you build a business. That's your choice, but these are the options. And you go and integrate and get your money and take care of your family and mind your business, and that's it. And our country we get you into our system because our criminal justice system was created to replace the loss of economic power. They got a slavery which was not abolished, it was modified, and slavery is hereby abolished ironically in these United States of America, except it's punished for punishment for those duly convicted of a crime, not felingy, not misdemean.
No, it's just been rebranded for sure.
Yeah, they changed slavery from working in the field, you know, and now you can grow itams and spirituals. To any of you poor motherfuckers. You wanted to fight over this, You motherfuckers wanted to fight about it. You wanted some of this, then any of you, you poor motherfuckers, then can come on over there, go commit a crime, and I'm gonna give you fifty million reasons to do it too, because this is you're hungry out here, and this shit is expensive. It's crazy right now, and you can't get a job. Vagrancy loss. This machine was literally created to supplement or to replace money that America was losing as a result of the so called abolition of slavery. They created another labor force to go do work. There was no proud man that wanted to go the white your poorest white man was too proud to go pick cotton right and not picking a fucking cotton. Fuck you think this is so who's gonna do it right? So we gotta put you motherfuckers back in jail. I'll put you in jail, and now I can put you back in the field.
Shit's crazy.
It's simple.
Well listen, man, your album is out. Like I said, by the time people watch this, it'll be out, So go get the album. I'm sure tours coming soon because that's how you guys do a red Strange the tours always yeah, were.
About to run around. It's gonna be a whole lot of activities as Sending Heaven available everywhere. Strange music curated on behalf of block star t Nutty on their bleedze on there Ali Alioxen free dropping.
That's out.
It should be out already all this should be the night really and tomorrow morning. So yeah, man, Ali, Ali Oxen, Free Myself, Tech nine T, Nutty bleedz all. I hope y'all enjoying that at Send in Heaven is a phenomenal album. I really wanted motherfuckers like you to be proud of it. I want Voter like it. I want MIZI to like it. I want niggas to like it. I want rock him to like it. I want Tech that I know Tech likes it. I made an album. I made some hip hop music that's up and we're doing what we're doing on there.
Well go get it. I appreciate to sit down. Finally, man, and it's doe X rated boom
