Stephen A. Smith is a New York Times Bestselling Author, Executive Producer, host of ESPN's First Take, and co-host of NBA Countdown.
Rapper-turned-politician Moses “Shyne” Barrow joins the show to discuss his music career, relationship with Sean Diddy Combs, and his compelling HULU documentary, The Honorable Shyne.
My next Guest was a rising hip hop star in the late nineties with a distinctive style, signed.
The Bad Boy Records. His career was cut.
Short when he was convicted in the nineteen ninety nine high profile shooting at Club New York with Sean Puffy Combs. After serving almost nine years in prison, he's back with a compelling Hulu documentary called The Honorable Shine, which details his compelling journey from prison to politics. Lazier gentlemen, please welcome to the Stephen A. Smith Show, Moses Shine Barrow.
What's going on? Big time? How are you man? How's everything now?
I'm fine.
I'll try to bring some of that warm weather with me from Belize to the Disney studios here in New York.
But it's not really working out.
Other than that, manager, remember my days in Brooklyn, where I was prepared for this Richard weather.
But I'm happy to be here with a legend such as yourself.
I was getting ready to say stop line to the American public. You know you had no chance in hell of bringing that war on whether to New York City. Ain't never been here. You know it ain't coming to Brooklyn, you know, not the weather in New York, especially this Tommy. Yeah, you know that ain't coming right.
I tried, man, listen, last week, the weather was incredible, the weather was like in the sixties.
I feel you. I feel you.
Look, man, let me get right into it with you. First of all, I'm prior to you. Not only are you a politician, you look like a politician. Did you ever in your wildest dreams believe you'd be sitting here today as a politician talking to me and anybody else for that matter.
Well, you know, I'd like to be specific.
I'm the opposition leader of the Belice House of Representatives, so I'm not just a.
Politician and elected representatives.
I'm the opposition leader in the House of Representatives, which puts me in line to be the next Prime Minister of Belize. And you know, for me, I always knew that I was going to make an impact because I wanted to make an impact. I wanted to affect lives. I wanted to lead people in the right way. Even as a young kid on the street or a gun in my waist, defending myself and defending my community, everything that I was doing was geared towards a collective betterment. And if you listen to that first Shine album. The very first words that I uttered in the intro is their America. I'm only what you made me, young, black and crazy, Please save me. So that shows you where my mindset was at, speaking in those socio conscious terms, pleading to the system to provide an alternative to the systematic oppression that I, as a youth and many other urban youth were facing at the time, and saying, listen, if you would build schools instead of prison, I'll stop living the way I'm living. That's what I was saying at eighteen years old. So to fast forward to forty six year old Shine, who I've been politically active for the last ten years. I have an opportunity to be the system. And that doesn't always happen. You know, Jay z helped Obama become president. You know, Beyonce try to help the vice president, you know, to big jump, but it.
Doesn't always work out. You don't always have.
Someone who can go from the spectrum of entertainment to actually the oval office or the Prime Minister's office. In my case, and so in my work in the last ten years, it was a smooth transition from singing about all that was wrong with the society I was living in to being the person that can provide solutions for all that is wrong. And I don't think it's a stretch to go from, you know, an entertainer to a politician. Ronald Reagan did it, and I believe that all the musicians I grew up around, you know, we were all community oriented people. And you know that's what hip hop does. We give back. We get there and we give back. So giving back on the legislative level, to me is just the evolution of hip hop.
Is especially no doubt when you think when I think about the honor of Bushan, I'm thinking about this documentary that is the title of it, and I find myself wondering, I'm.
Guessing why now one.
Would easily surmise us because of what's happened to showing Diddy Combs. Others would sit up there and look at it and say, it is election time, after all, it seems the perfect opportunity for him to come out with something like this. How do you answer that question? Why now with this? With this document I.
Have been in and daunted with solicitations to do a documentary for the last twenty two years. To be factual, and walk Wahlberg offered me, I think like a million dollar deal back in two thousand and four, and I have that proposal.
I could share it with you. I just was always looking for the right partner. I was just looking for the.
Right partner, and it had to make sense fiscally.
I'm a shrewd.
Businessman and I had to be the right partner. And being the right partner was not just a financial commitment. It was a story that we were going to tell. I didn't want to tell the ditty story. I did not want to tell oh, because that's not my story. My story's next Prime Minister believes. My story is power. My story is victor. My story is trying over tragedy. That's my story.
But allow me to interject.
Allow me to interject, because you emanate from the hip hop community.
It is I use this respect.
It's a rag to riches story because I like you get upset when we're always highlighting, you know, the rags to riches or the rags element of the rag the richest story because everybody seems like every story is about that, about that, But in your case, it's special because as you highlight it, you're an opposition party leader.
You're next in line to be the prime minister, and that is a huge, huge deal.
It's one thing to all of a sudden, it's you know, to go for rags to literally being successful in making money. Well, you did that in the nineties, okay, because you were making millions in the nineties.
But to be a politician, to be a.
Leader, to be in line to be the leader of a nation, I mean, that's something entirely different.
Wouldn't you say?
Yes? And and and that's the story.
Unfortunately, I think I should have I should have done a bio documentary maybe ten years ago, and this should have been another documentary focused on my political life and you know, the journey from maybe ten years ago to now. But I just didn't do it. And that's why I said it was timely. But it was all about finding the right partners and people that understood, Like when you look at this documentary, it's the first time in my life that I've relinquished a creative control in any type of entertainment project. And I had to trust the people that I was working with, you know, and it just doesn't happen like that. And when I found those partners, everything else just happens to be coincidence. You know, two years ago, we started shooting, We signed a deal, two years ago, we started shooting production maybe a year and a half ago, and all the other things that you see happening. I can't stop the world from happening. But you know, my story was bound to be told. And it's not like we just looked at what was happening and said, oh, come on, let's hurry up and tell the Shine story. That the Shine story is overdue. And as I said, it was about finding the right partners. And with these partners that I have, Marcus Clark and the Disney people who Little Landscape, Disney plus if you look at the documentary, I had no creative control. But the documentary doesn't tell the ditty story. It's not a gotcha sensational documentary in those terms of trying to exploit, you know, his tragedy. It's talking about what I've been through. And obviously you know we're forever linked. But we're forever linked, like I can never get away from that. I would prefer not to talk about it. I'll be honest with you. When I when I first saw the documentary, one of my first objections was why are you focusing so much.
On the trial? Right?
You know, we need to focus more on on believes. You know, Let's let's focus more on how I made the album. Let's focus more on the creativity. Let's get more people to talk about what a great musician I was. But unfortunately, a part of this story is that the pain. A part of the story is the sorrow. A part of the story is the defeat, is the devastation, and we just can't escape that.
Let me because and when I use this word educate, I mean respectfully, because obviously you're educated. Brother, you know what you're talking about. I'm talking about from a media perspective. From a media perspective, let me educate you on this level. You nobody did Hey's story will be told.
And no matter what story is going to be.
Told about did He, there's a popoia things to talk about about him for months and years to come. When some folks are talking and when folks are talking to Shine and they're talking about Shine, they want to know about Shine himself from his perspective, what he experienced. So tell us what exactly did you experience? People are gonna go to the Semmer twenty seven, nineteen ninety nine.
They're gonna look at things like that.
They want to know what happened to shine himself in your words, what happened to you?
Well, you know, in my words I said so many years ago, back in two thousand one. I believe that I was my first double ex cell cover. I had about six and cover his death before this honor. It was me talking about not snitching on Ditty and not getting him in trouble to get myself out of trouble. I said that, you know, twenty odd years ago. So I've always maintained in every interview I did until recently, when I healed and I moved on and I forgave. But for years I was saying, you know what a creep I thought he was, and how he destroyed my life, and one point I thought.
He was the devil.
But because of the power of Ditty, which is so loud as far as a pop culture icon, nobody listen. So I moved on, and I pivoted my life to healing, to forgiveness, and to taking accountability for what I can control. And I can't control what someone did to me decades ago. I can't control them, not wanting to pay reparations, not wanting to make right. You know that people say, oh, did he gave me millions.
To go to jail?
Nothing, probably made to what I thought were offensive contributions over the last twenty something years, which led to a breakdown in the relations.
But I moved on. So, yes, was I the sacrificial land? Of course? Did I take the fall? Yes, there was no quick pro quote.
There was not Listen, We're going to have ten million dollars waiting for you when you come out.
Just do the right thing.
I did that on my own, you know, and I've been saying that it's not anything new. But in the documentary, just like in this interview, I can't say to you, steven A, I don't want to talk about did it. Let's talk about me becoming the prime minister. Let you know, I can't talk about only what I want to talk about. I have to be fair and transparent to the audience. But I've been saying the same thing, if you do your research.
But he listened. He also mentored me.
In the year or so we spent working together to make one of the greatest hip hop albums ever. You know, I learned a lot as far as being an entrepreneur, as far as being you know, a disruptor and a trail blazer. And so I got exactly what. I went to the university a bad boy with Didi as professor when it comes to entertainment and even things that I've been able to carry with me as far as work ethic, as far as you know, manifesting the greatness that you want to achieve. You know, there were some positives, but obviously going to jail for ten years when that could have been avoided, or someone that you know, my mom entrusted, you know, her nineteen year old son that they would do right by me, you know, to to send me to prison when we could have avoided that. You know, there's nothing we can ever do to change that. And so when I'm telling the story, I can't whitewash that. I can't sanitize that that's not necessarily story I want to tell us. I hope the next documentary of the next movie I do will be about, you know, my riose to become prime minister when.
You heard and I want to move on from this because I want to I'm transitioning to who you are. I want to be very very clear. I'm not going to be unfair to you and just focus on this. I'm transitioning to who you are and where you stand right now. But I'm just trying to paint a picture.
When you heard.
Them sentence you to prison for ten years, could you take us back to that moment and what kind of effect you thought that would have on you at that moment in time.
I was devastated, but I'm such an eternal optimist that I just kept thinking, you know, I'm going to get a bell. I'm going to get a bell. I'm going to get a judge to give me a bill pending appeal, which is what Tupac got. When Tupac had his case, death Row was able to get him out on bail pending his appeal. And so I just kept living every day with hope that I'd get a bail pending a pill or or I'd have a successful appeal and get out. And I never gave up hope. And I was very spiritual, you know, I was orthodox to Still I'm still spiritual. I don't I'm not as observant as I used to be, Still wrapped the feeling and still observe Young Kipoor and all the high holidays in Shavati. But I was always optimistic. But you know, listen, the first night in prison, I got on my knees and I cried, and I said to God, you know, listen, I'm not I'm not even gonna I'm not even gonna question you, because I didn't question you when I when I was driving at Bentley last week. I didn't question you when I was driving that for Raden. I didn't question you living on the fifty first floor of the Trump Towers, which is where I was living at the time. This is before Boga and all that stuff. I didn't question you when I sold a million records, going from a poor kid in Belize that didn't even have a toilet system and used to have to take the waist bucket to the canal. I had never questioned you how you took me from that to a millionaire at the age of eighteen, to one of the most popular rappers in an American the world. I didn't say, well, why me, God, So I'm not going to say why me God. Now, all I'm going to ask you is to give me the ability to endure this the same way that you gave me the ability to make it through everything I made it to this point and to accomplish the things that I accomplished. I felt this was my biggest test to date, and the same way God blessed me to be able to not just survive, but to thrive through all of the adversities up to that point. I knew that God would be able to give me the power to get through this, and so I did that every day.
So I was present every day.
I never closed my eyes and try to get away from what I was facing because I knew instinctively. I knew that it's just like if you want to win a world championship, whether it's baseball, whether it's football, whether it's basketball.
It's grueling.
The guys that win the chips are the guys that don't go to the clubs when they're you know, traveling on the road. It's the guys that are in the arena practicing, you know. It's the guys that don't sleep because they're practicing. It's the guys that go through excruciating training to make sure that they're conditioned, you know, for the championships. And so for me, I looked at what I was going through as me graduating to the next level.
Whether I was convincing myself and.
I was being delusional, it worked because I did graduate and I am on the net.
When did you begin studying Judaism? That was in prison? Correct?
I became.
Spiritual in a monotheistic way album before I was incarcerated. So I always believed in monotheism, and that's why I changed my name to Moses, because Moses was always my hero.
You know.
Moses was a person that was wealthy, powerful, you know, worked with Pharaoh.
But Moses had a moral crisis and because of the moral crisis, has spo was right and wall and how to treat human beings. He left all his money, all this power, and he went into the wilderness and he led the Israelites to freedom. But he did all that talking to God. So when I was fifteen years old, one of my friends got his brains blown out right in front of me. And he was one of the toughest guys that was around us. He was the toughest guy that I knew. And when I saw that happened to him, I became, you know, just awoken by mortality. And I said, if that could happen to him, there's no way that I'm going to survive these streets of Brooklyn. And that's when I started praying, and I started talking to God the same way that my grandmother told me about this Moses. And you know, that's how I learned about God, not through intermediary I'm not judging anyone in their religion, because we all there's a different route. You can flatter Los Angeles. You can take the train, you can drive. Everyone has a different route to where they need to arrive as a human being. But Monotheism spoke to me. Moses from the Five Books that is in the Quran and in the Torah spoke to me. And so I started having this conversation with God every day because every day was life or death for me in Brooklyn.
Literally, well, I'm from Hollis Queens. I'm from High Squeen's a bunch of relatives in Brooklyn, a bunch of relatives in the Bronx. I know what you're talking about. Listen, we're running out of time. I'm so mad. It's only gonna be third man because I could have sat down with you for two hours with the stuff you talking about, because I got a whole bunch of stuff.
That I want to get to.
But I want to ask you this, Howard, how on earth did you become the leader of the opposition party in Belize? I know your dad, if remember correctly, correctly if I'm wrong, according to my research, first black prime minister in Belize, I mean, how did you become how'd you become the leader of the opposition part?
How did you climb that high?
Well?
Remember, I grew up and I left Believe when I was a grow up in Brooklyn with my mom.
So I love my dad. Him and I, you know, I have the best relationship than you've ever had. Obviously, we've had our difficulties.
In the documentary, you see him being honored a person that he is and owning up to that. But when I got involved in politics, like everything else in my life, my dad didn't have anything to do with it. You know, he was surprised when he heard from the media.
So how'd you get in it?
When I went back to Belize, I was living in Paris about in twenty thirteen, and I went to Belize to visit for my mom's sixtieth birthday. And you know, I would always go back to my community, see how people are living go visit. You know, different relatives and people.
Will be complaining. We don't know where we're going. You know things about the change, and we don't know about the new leaders that are going to take over. You know, why don't you get involved?
And there was a friend of the family that said, Shine, this is your time. You need you. You have this global experience, you have your own wealth.
You're not like these corrupt politicians that are going to get involved in politics to get rich and to get famous, because.
You already had that. You actually mean wealth for the people. And these are the type of leaders that we need. And I said to myself, you know what am I doing in Paris? Belize needs me. I'm going to come back home and I'm gonna get involved.
And I was in twenty thirteen, about eleven years ago, and I was working ever since then. I started off as the vice chairman of the constituency and I opened the resource center and I just.
Kept working every day.
Ironically enough, my uncle who held the seat that I had, told me that he wasn't going to support me because he already made a promise to one of his friends and that you know, he's going to beat me in the convention, and so I better find something else to do, because I'm never going to become the airing representative as long as he's there, because he already made promise to someone else. I fought the same way I did in Brooklyn to become Shine the rapper, dodging bullets, chasing down street teams, jumping over the desk at death jams, so that the A and L would hear me.
I thought to get here, and so I first won my seat in ause representatives. Then I won a convention, a national convention, a party convention to become the party leader. And that's how you become, you know, the opposition leader and now representatives. And I'll fight to win sixteen seats to become the next prime minister in the next elections.
And you so, in other words, you're on the verge of being the next prime minister of Belieze.
And it's not easy.
Yeah, you hear you're here.
I'm going to I'm a step away from it. And I believe the economy inflation similar to what happened here in the United States. Uh, you know that's what people are looking at. You know, people's lives are not better in Belize over the last four years of this new administration. So we're going to continue to take that message to all belizings, and we're going to continue to work to formulate policies that have solve their problems.
And how long again, that election would be win two years, three years, what what?
What time?
That election could be as early as as as ninety days. I've been I've been in the House of Representatives for the last four years, and so elections could be anywhere from ninety to the next maybe one hundred and eighty days.
We suspect ninety days.
And obviously people are going to be watching the honorable Johan, We're going to be watching this documentary when they ask you, because inevitably, at least in the United States of America, they're going to ask you, did you hear anything about p Diddy? Did you hear what happened? How do you feel about what happened? What are you going to say about him? If anything?
All this, I pray. I pray for the victims.
I pray for people like Cassie who has been proven that she's a victim, and everyone else, I'm not sure the credibility of everyone else. I pray for the victims, and I pray for Diddy. I pray that he's able to do some soul searching. And even if he's not guilty of the accusations, there's a reason he is where he is right now, and it's up to him to communicate with God and to try to cleanse his soul and pivot and move forward and redeem himself.
And I pray that he's able to go through that journey and that he has success.
Because the same way I was rehabilitated and I reform myself, I'm not here to condemn anyone in perpetuity.
I hope that that justice has served.
If he's not guilty, the judicial system will decide that. If he is, I hope that he is contrite and he turns his life around. And I hope that the victims can get closure.
Direct question, when you've made it very very clear, and the people who love you have made it very very clear, you got a bad rap, you took the rap you suffered because of it unfairly? Is that aroundabout way or not an indirect way of saying it wasn't you, it was Diddy who did that shooting.
In nineteen ninety.
Nine, I was defending myself, So I would never say that.
Did not fire in self defense. But the question is who else fired? The reality is the fact is there were showcases found from two other guns in addition to mine, showcases that did not obviously match mine. The forensics never took the the ballistics out of the victims, so we don't know who shot the victims and according to one victim, and those are just the facts. I maintained that I was acting in self defense and I continue to say that, so I'm innocent in the sense of I did not intentionally try to hurt anyone. I was defending myself. But what complicates it is that two other people or two other guns were fired, and the victim says did he shot her? So that's the reality.
So listen, I got news for you. I gotta let you go. I thank you for your time with this interview. My man.
At some point in time, I'm not gonna put it past me to come to belize, uh.
You have an open invitation.
I'm about to roll out there.
Tell you, I'm excited about that possibility. Even even though I'm not in government. I try to work with the Minister of Tourism to promote belize and bipartisan ways, some sort of tourism ministry with We're got happy to welcome you, and we can hopefully time it around my memoir because I'm coming out with a book. I gotta I gotta.
Write this and consider it done.
Unlike the documentary that I relinquished creative control, the book is going to be all me.
So maybe you could time it around the memoir.
But maybe you could come before, check it out, and then come back again for the memoir.
I want you down and I want you to. I want you to build a house.
Listen.
I want you to take some of that money from that from that new contract you're getting and coming investing.
Plee, no problem, man, I'm looking forward to I'm gonna come down, but I want more than thirty minutes. I want more than thirty minutes. All right, we got to hang out, all right, man, all the best. I'm so proud. I'm so proud of you, so proud of all that you've been doing. All the best to you. May keep making big things happen, all right.
Thank you. God bless you, and God bless your viewership. God bless Please, God bless America.
God bless you no doubt my thanks to the one and only Moses shan Borrow, the Honorable Sean Premier is November eighteenth on Hulu.
Do not miss it. Make sure you check it out. Trust me, it will be worth it.