E415 Bubba Sparxxx
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 17 minutes
Words per Minute
213.77402
Summary
Bubba Sparks has been a fixture in the rap and hip hop community. He was a part of a lot of our adolescence and young adulthoods. He s a new friend and I m grateful to spend time with him and hear about his journey as an entertainer and a human.
Transcript
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We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
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Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
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Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
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We got new merch, some new colorways in the Be Good to Yourself collection.
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We've also got t-shirts in lilac, moss, and blue mist.
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I want to let you know that we have some new tour dates to announce.
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January 11th and 12th in Grand Junction, Colorado.
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And March 1st, 3rd, and 4th in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Those are all available at Theovan.com slash T-O-U-R.
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Today's guest has been a fixture in the rap and hip-hop community.
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He was a part of a lot of our adolescence and young adulthoods.
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And I'm grateful to spend time with him and hear about his journey as an entertainer and as a human.
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That's a big thing, is trying to stay present for me.
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I get so caught up sometimes in thinking about everything that I need to do
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They always say, you probably heard it, some of the same places that we've been.
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Yeah, I bet we probably have a lot of the same.
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Because you and I kind of connected over like talking about sobriety and stuff.
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Yeah, so what's that been like in your life, man?
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That weren't necessarily like filled with great recovery.
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And sometimes I was just kind of white-knuckling it, you know.
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And then sometimes I'm kind of just either on the way to, you know, things getting bad
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or, like, on the way to things back getting good.
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At what point is, like, that turn four, you know what I'm saying, so to speak, on the racetrack, you know?
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I went to treatment back in February, you know?
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I did 35 days of inpatient, you know what I'm saying?
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And it was kind of weird because of all the COVID protocols.
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So, like, you know how normally when you go to treatment, you can, like, get to go to outside meetings
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You can find a sponsor that way and all that stuff.
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We were literally, like, stuck in this one house, like, for...
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It was cold months, so it was, like, kind of...
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It was a good deal to be stuck inside, but, man, it got kind of stir-crazy in the joint, for sure.
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No, there was some women, but they had, like, a different little house that they actually would sleep in.
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And they had to go there, like, after 8 o'clock, they had to go get in their house.
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But I ain't gonna say I heard tell of some intermingling after hours, you know what I'm saying?
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But, yeah, I definitely wasn't on that type of vibe.
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I have, you know, in other trips to treatment, I've kind of, you know, been all about the female patients.
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Especially, man, if I'm coming off of pills, I want to pet something, you know?
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Man, well, it's just anytime, you know, we fill that hole, that internal hole, external anything, you know what I'm saying?
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And so it's like, man, if you take away what my primary, like, tool I was using to try to fill that hole, even though it was just ultimately making the hole bigger.
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But if you just, if you take that, whatever thing I was using, I'm going to have to find something else.
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It might be cheeseburgers, you know what I'm saying?
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Dude, you hit me with the wrong eight ball, I'll fucking, I might meet some young fella, bro.
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If I was gay, I would just be gay, you know what I'm saying?
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It wouldn't really, I mean, I can't say that growing up it might not have been, like, kind of a tormenting type thing.
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Oh, yeah, you had to be real secret gay back then.
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But to be honest with you, like, being a white rapper from LaGrange, Georgia, you know what I'm saying?
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Man, it was, it was some of the same type of, like, you know, I don't want to say oppression, but just ridicule that you faced, you know?
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Yeah, I guess people, yeah, people probably really would, like, think you're trying to blacken up or something like that.
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Well, it was kind of, like, not really accepted by either side, you know what I'm saying?
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Because where I grew up, LaGrange, Georgia, shout out to Trapp County, but it's pretty much 50% black, 50% white, you know what I'm saying?
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And so, yeah, definitely the white side wasn't really too, you know what I'm saying, like, open-minded to the prospect of me being a rapper at that time.
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But, you know, the hood side, the black folks really wasn't too receptive either.
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It's not like they were just waiting, you know, with open arms as far as that, like, come be a rapper over here.
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Well, you were early until, I mean, you were like, I mean, you were dang, you were like the dang Neil Armstrong out there.
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You was, like, one of the first Wiggas on the moon, kind of, in a way, you know?
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No, I mean, as far as, like, you know, a country boy from the south, you know, or.
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No, and that's been part of the journey, like, is there was no reference point, you know what I'm saying?
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I was heavily influenced by outcast, goody mob, the organized noise, the dungeon family.
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So that was the closest thing because they were the first people to kind of, like, rep Georgia, you know what I'm saying, period, specifically Atlanta.
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But for me, I was brought up in the country about 60 miles down the road from Atlanta.
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And so, yeah, there was, and just being a white boy or whatever, there was definitely nobody for me to look at.
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Even though I did learn from a lot of other white rappers that were successful, starting with the Beastie Boys, you know, going on to, like, Everlast, House of Pain.
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But then Eminem, you know what I'm saying, it was right, Eminem was about a year before me, you know what I'm saying?
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And when he came, I was like, oh, that's perfection right there, the way that was executed.
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So, like, but I knew, you know, shout out to Vanilla Ice.
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Like, I've done shows with him, and we've had a ball.
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You know, but at that time, there was, like, after his Ice Ice Baby reign, kind of, like, when he sold, like, 15 million albums, which you can't take, everybody was listening, everybody was jamming Ice Ice Baby.
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Oh, even Vietnamese were like, you know, Ice Ice Baby, you know, everybody had it.
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Hey, you know, projects, albums don't sell 15 million, singles don't sell 30 million or whatever it sold without everybody liking it.
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When you really hit, when you affect people's, you know, when you go through their ears and come out their clothing.
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I mean, I remember so many white boys, and I wasn't quite old enough to attempt a stunt like this, but I remember white boys getting even, like, the little haircut that he had and shit.
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And it was just like, dang, man, you were so cool.
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You got a Vanilla Ice haircut, you know what I'm saying?
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But just to keep going, there was some kind of discrepancies with his story about where he was from and what he was representing as far as being a hood kid or whatever.
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And so after that, I kind of just learned it was like a lull.
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It was like a five or six year period where nobody was checking for white rappers, you know what I'm saying?
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But I knew, like, you just got to represent who you are, you know what I'm saying?
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Like, everything that's in the spirit of hip-hop and where hip-hop comes from and, like, the principles, you know, the guiding principles are based on, like, you know, just truly, truly, accurately, honestly represent who you are, where you come from, and what it was like there, and tell your story honestly, you know what I'm saying?
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And that's going to work, you know what I'm saying?
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If you do it and you figure out a way to make it dope.
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And so I had developed that within myself, because, like, my first raps I ever wrote, like, in 1992, like, at my mom's kitchen table in the ninth grade, were, like, was just rolling in the benzo, letting the bass drop when five motherfuckers roll by on a drop top, like, you know, talking about, like, boys in the hood, like, because I didn't know how to.
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And that was part of the, what you're talking about, like, the whole journey of me trying to figure out how within using hip-hop as the outlet, expressing who I was and where I came from, you know, growing up on a farm, you know what I'm saying?
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Yeah, farm, but some of the animals got gold chains on.
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I had an older brother that loved, like, metal bands, like Iron Maiden.
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Iron Maiden's his favorite band, all-time band, so he was into that type of music.
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Then I had my oldest brother, Jay, shout-out to Jay.
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He liked, like, Parliament Funk, Camelot, you know what I'm saying, George Clinton, all that kind of stuff.
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And then my dad likes, like, throwback country, you know, traditional country.
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And my mama just likes to dance, you know what I'm saying?
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So music was all around, but it just didn't speak to me, you know what I'm saying?
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But when I heard them, somebody say, hey, we want some putt.
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Then when I heard Boys in the Hood, when I heard Too Short, I was like, what the fuck is this?
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You didn't know you had, maybe you didn't even know you had that in you.
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When I heard Brass Monkey by the Beastie Boys, like, I heard it and it was just like, man,
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Like, I don't know, the raw expression, the 808 drum, like, man, it was a lot to do with
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that 808, honestly, man, like, for real, because that wasn't really a part, the boom bap was
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kind of like, like the New York wave of hip hop, but when the West Coast finally got its
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turn, it was like Too Short in WA, like, that 808 drum was rattling, you know what I'm saying?
00:11:46.420
Dude, I remember, yeah, when some of that shit came through our neighborhood, because I
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probably grew up, I didn't grow up country, I just grew up in like a rural kind of white
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area, because Louisiana doesn't get like a redneck vibe, Louisiana is just, it's a lot
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of like, grandchildren like pirates, you got Cajun people, you got a lot of mix, kind
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of like a lot of yellow skin, kind of like light skinned black dudes, you got some kind
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of dark, yeah, you got some people just fucking, you don't know what color they are, bro, they
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Nah, Louisiana's a different kind of place now.
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They got a lot of pirates, grandchildren are pirates and shit like that, you know, these
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guys got to, oh, Broadnecks, you know, there's a country rapper that's doing his thing right
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Yeah, John, I think it's John Broadnecks or whatever, but he's representing Louisiana,
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he's got that Louisiana flavor about the way he does his thing, but it's like kind of country
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white boy, you know, Louisiana type flavor, which I wouldn't call it like country, country,
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like farm type country, it's just more like swampy.
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So you, so you're, so yeah, you were just trying to express yourself really.
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And then it was just, it's kind of like a puzzle too.
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You're just trying to figure out how to fit the pieces together and make it seem cool
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Because, I mean, there are some pretty interesting dynamics to rural life, you know what I'm saying?
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That maybe some people just aren't typically aware of, you know what I'm saying?
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But just how to, it's not, I'm not trying to say that violence in a community and all that
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But ultimately, if you're representing yourself as a person that made it, persevered and made
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it through that and that's your testimony of like, you know what I'm saying?
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But basically, I just, I was like, well, this is it, you know what I'm saying?
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I got to just give it what I have to offer, you know what I'm saying?
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And I just told the story of what I had been through and what my life had been like.
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And, you know, there was enough people that related to it for me to be able to keep doing
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this as a job without having to get a real job for 20-something years, you know what I'm saying?
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Like, because, yeah, they just didn't have anything like you.
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All of a sudden, you're like kind of mixing two worlds.
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You're probably not like, yeah, maybe some, I could imagine maybe especially where you're
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from, some white people could see like, oh, this is too, this is too black for us.
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And the hood, the hood, you're never, the hood fucking, you're never hood enough.
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Even if you, like, the hood will always be like, you're never hood enough.
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You know, it's like there's always that, even in the black community, you know.
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But at the end of the day, when you just are being you, you know what I'm saying?
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Like, and I never compromised me, you know what I'm saying?
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There were some things that I might have done that I would have preferred to have highlighted
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But there's nothing I did that wasn't, you know, a certain shade of like who I am, you
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You know, I went through so much when I was younger as far as like trying to really just figure
00:14:54.840
out like, because I mean, to say that people didn't support me in my pursuit of this, of
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rap music, hip hop as a career, would be a pretty big understatement.
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You know, I would say more like people didn't even kind of like stop chuckling behind my back
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until I had actually like, I was on MTV, you know what I'm saying?
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And so I was well accustomed and adjusted to like people not supporting me, you know, to
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have to be that self-propelling, you know, type deal.
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Well, that happens, I think, with a lot of like, I remember when I was a comedian, like
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it was like, or until like you, somebody sees you on something, you are just some dude, you
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are like some guy that don't want to get a real job.
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And everybody just thinks you're full of, you know what I'm saying?
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Like everybody just thinks at the end of the day, because, you know, I mean, I'm a creative
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And I played football and that's like the big deal, like where I grew up, like high school
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football, you know, it's like Friday Night Lights type of deal for sure.
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My best friend, Steve Hernan, shout out to him.
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He was great at football, you know what I'm saying?
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He was one of the top 100 highest recruited players in the country, went to Georgia, was all
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Football is my first love, to be honest with you.
00:16:11.340
And it was interesting because music was actually his first love.
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And we ended up living vicariously through one another.
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But when I saw how I was like, man, he's what the deal deal is.
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And I'm just not quite that, you know what I'm saying?
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And I had never bumped my head on the ceiling as far as my potential with football pretty early.
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But I was like, man, I just really think I can do the music thing.
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I just, the first time I ever sat down to write a rap, I was like, man, I just got a knack
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for this, for just putting words together, making them rhyme and just being clever.
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And just, I don't know, I just always, somewhere deep down in my heart, even though I tried
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You know, we all crave being accepted, you know what I'm saying, on some level or another
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And nobody was really, my closest friends, like Big Steve, like he, he believed in me
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I'd be up at University of Georgia, I ended up moving up to Athens, Georgia, and being
00:17:10.980
up there, like, you know, freestyling after football games and stuff, and like, all the
00:17:17.280
Just like, Andy's what they called me back then, and just like, Andy, flow for him one
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And like, and just all the, all those guys being up there and just being like, that's
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And like, I, as far as battling, like, everybody would try to go back home and find the best
00:17:34.260
rapper in their little area and get him to come up.
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Get him, I'll bring his little ass out in a wheelbarrow.
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It just, so I would sit there and literally go back and just write and write, you know what
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Because I've never been a freestyler, because I didn't grow up around other people rapping.
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And so people develop that freestyling ability, I think, when they're in groups of people
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But it was a long time before I was around other people that were like, seriously even,
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you know, rapping, putting words together like that.
00:18:01.440
So when you like, so how did, didn't you start to take off?
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How did your career, how did you, how did it go from that where you're just kind of rapping
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and becoming like acclaimed amongst people in Georgia, amongst like after parties and stuff
00:18:18.100
That's a good question, because I always tell people now, like, this era the way it
00:18:21.700
is, I don't even, I wouldn't know where to start telling somebody how to get on, you
00:18:27.240
You know, just when people ask me for advice, I'd be like, look, just pray that this is
00:18:30.740
what God wants for you, if it's what you really want, you know, and burn bridges.
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Like, and I don't mean burn bridges in terms of relationships, but in the pursuit of this
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thing, if you leave yourself out, and I know, you know this as far as like the comedy
00:18:43.540
thing too, if you leave yourself out, at some point you're going to take one of them,
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you know what I'm saying, because it's tough, you know what I'm saying, you know, and so
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I, I burnt my, some bridges, or as coach of Georgia, Kirby Smart would say, burn the
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boats, you know what I'm saying, like, there was just nowhere for me to go other than this,
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you know what I'm saying, if this didn't happen, I, I shudder to think what, what might have
00:19:06.420
A certain number of years in, especially, it's like, once you get up to like 25, 20,
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people are like, what's going on, you're not in college, you don't have this degree, you
00:19:14.780
don't have a child, you don't have a family, people are like, you better show something.
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You know, and my best friend was like playing football at Georgia, and you know, he was on
00:19:22.920
the way to the NFL, and it was honestly, it hurt me so bad, because I loved him so much,
00:19:26.820
and was so supportive of him, and I now believe, believe that that was God preparing me, you
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know, because like, I learned how to not be a hater, you know what I'm saying, and a
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lot of people probably looked at me, definitely looked at me as like a hindrance on him even,
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you know what I'm saying, like, like, you know, Steve be alright if, you know, if, just
00:19:44.640
get away from old Andy, you know what I'm saying, like, kind of looked at me as like the loser,
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but Steve, he never bought into that, he never subscribed to that, you know what I'm saying,
00:19:51.200
he was always like, tell people like, you know, he gonna do something big, I don't know
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when it's gonna be, or what exactly it's gonna be, maybe this music thing, maybe not,
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he gonna do something big, you know, he always believed in me, never blinked, and then.
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Had you had that kind of belief before in your life, had you had someone you feel like
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believe in you that, like, like that, like, um.
00:20:10.400
No, other than him, honestly, I mean, it's not that my, my parents and his parents, they,
00:20:15.800
it was love, you know what I'm saying, but it was like, it was just so far beyond their
00:20:20.220
realm of comprehension, you know, that it might even be remotely feasible for something
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like that to happen, especially being a white boy and coming from down there, but I just
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always looked at it like this, I always had, like, this innate feeling like, hey, I'm just,
00:20:32.740
I'm gonna do something special, I'm special, I'm different, you know, I'm not, not in a
00:20:35.920
bad way, because I've never not been humble, but just like, you know, just really feeling
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like there's just something out there waiting for me that I just gotta find it and pluck
00:20:45.540
it out of the sky or whatever, and, um, and so I, um, I just basically, like, I didn't
00:20:51.780
never think, sometimes I, I felt like, you know, it was, it was gonna be something like,
00:20:59.180
because my, my, my fallback plan was being a, a high school history teacher and a, and
00:21:04.580
Oh, damn, I'd love to see you fucking remix, oh, bro, remix the Civil War, dog?
00:21:11.240
I'd love to see that, bro, fucking get, get, get, get, get, get, get, get, get, get.
00:21:14.240
Oh, I got a crazy theory on that, too, on, like, you know, like, you know, when you have,
00:21:18.480
like, the feeling, this is a tangential, but I think it's pretty interesting.
00:21:21.620
There's people listening just because, people right now are stacking shells, they're driving
00:21:25.100
to Amazon, they're fucking beating their spouse, they don't know what, everybody listens.
00:21:28.860
Y'all rock steady out there, but, um, but, um, as far as, like, man, I just, I feel
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like in the future, like, I think, you know how we get that feeling like, everybody says, like,
00:21:38.080
you just know something's in the room with you, or you, like, hear something crazy or
00:21:42.020
whatever, I've kind of developed a theory on this, and maybe you, I'd like to hear your
00:21:46.140
thoughts on it, so I think that in the future, you know, like, how in history class now,
00:21:52.780
you know, like, we go through books and look at pictures and listen to speeches or whatever
00:21:57.360
of these, that mark these certain, you know, historical events or whatever, I think in
00:22:01.540
the future, the reason that we hear these weird things and, like, it's like these, I don't
00:22:07.020
know what you would call it, not ghosts, but, like, some of them probably are mistaken
00:22:10.300
for ghosts, I think in the future, time travel is actually possible, and people come back
00:22:15.720
and, like, can actually be present, but it's, it's, like, in a different dimension, so they
00:22:19.600
can, like, see it, but they're not really present, they're, like, in danger, and actually
00:22:22.820
be on the battlefield at Gettysburg and stuff like that.
00:22:28.180
So you're saying, like, in the future, you could have, like, Gettysburg.
00:22:33.060
They're sitting there looking at the battle actually taking place.
00:22:35.680
But see, they're not, the, the whole back there.
00:22:39.080
And the whole, no, yeah, the people that are fighting the battle don't, but, like, the
00:22:42.000
whole back to the future thing, and, like, about, like, you know, messing it up and all
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that stuff, that's not, that's not a threat, because you're, like, in a different dimension.
00:22:51.360
So you're, you can observe it, but you're not actually present, but, man, I really think
00:22:56.200
Like, you threw some, like, secret drywall or something, like, they don't know you're there,
00:22:59.900
It's just, you're in a different, some kind of different, you know, like, thing.
00:23:04.600
I used to think that, so people had CDs and eight trays, you know, this and that.
00:23:08.600
People had, I always thought that they were going to come out with a dashboard that was,
00:23:15.020
like, some sort of a screen, right, in a vehicle, and you would put, you would just press
00:23:20.600
in whatever you wanted to listen to, and then, like, Bubba Spark would come and perform
00:23:29.040
I always thought that that would be the next thing.
00:23:31.180
Like, if you wanted to watch ACDC, you would just type it in, and then, damn, they would
00:23:35.580
come out there, and actually, you're just driving, and they're right there, you know?
00:23:39.200
I mean, it's, I mean, that's, that's, like, the next step in the evolution of just music
00:23:42.700
videos and, like, streaming period, though, you know what I'm saying?
00:23:45.780
It's probably not, it's probably, because they have those holograms, like, of Tupac.
00:23:49.960
I remember there was, like, that, that thing, so, I mean, we, technology, if you went back
00:23:54.400
a hundred years from, from this, like, so, if you went back to 1922.
00:23:58.660
I mean, but, like, so much more than you would if you went from 1922 to 1822.
00:24:08.320
But, that's just the evidence of the fact that technology is evolving at a much more rapid
00:24:21.080
Somebody was telling me about, I was talking with someone about this, and they had, what
00:24:28.960
You were talking about a guy with a ladder, and you, another guy said, hey, one day I
00:24:36.520
And this dude could only think, nah, we can't get to, we can maybe get to the top of a tree
00:24:42.100
But, I'm not doing a good job of explaining it.
00:24:47.500
It's like, sometimes we can't comprehend things.
00:24:52.500
And it's beyond our brain, even, because we're still thinking within the limitations.
00:24:59.480
One of the hardest things I ever saw was like, the way, I forget, I was watching something.
00:25:07.820
Because, you know, mathematics is like proving that there's like nine dimensions.
00:25:11.540
Like, we just aren't aware of them or haven't discovered them or figured out how to interpret
00:25:16.220
them or, you know, or just see them or be present in them, whatever the case is.
00:25:21.300
But, so like, you know, if we lived in a two-dimensional world, my finger coming at you would just look like
00:25:29.380
But, because it's a three-dimensional world, you can see all sides of my finger.
00:25:36.880
If there was some being, God, perhaps, some people might call it that being, that could
00:25:57.640
Yeah, this would be like, okay, this is like looking at it from, looking at 2022 from 2014.
00:26:03.680
Okay, now I'm going to go look at 2022 from 2036.
00:26:08.740
Yeah, I wonder if there's other realms we're going to crack.
00:26:11.120
Like, I feel like that has to be the next thing.
00:26:12.820
You would have to believe, that's what God would be.
00:26:15.520
Like, because I remember when I was real little, you know, my pops, I wouldn't necessarily
00:26:21.680
call him like an intellectual, but he's a pretty smart guy.
00:26:25.200
And he would say, I'd be like trying to get him to explain God to me, you know, like,
00:26:29.800
and all these, because I was a very inquisitive kid.
00:26:32.400
And he'd just be like, it's just beyond our realm of comprehension.
00:26:35.840
You know, and that would shut me up every time.
00:26:37.580
He'd be like, you just can't even understand it.
00:26:43.380
Like, whatever it is we're talking about, whatever might be or could be or could, we could
00:26:50.340
So, but I was listening to something the other day, I watch a lot of YouTube videos, you
00:26:57.060
Dude, I love that one with you and Randy Aikens.
00:27:10.140
I like wrecking, man, but I really, really did like right.
00:27:17.400
To me, that's something I don't normally do as far on the countryside.
00:27:29.240
Really, it should be called hip hop country because hip hop is the first thing that I've,
00:27:38.960
Or whatever, I'm country, hip hop, but I'd say I'm hip hop before I'm anything.
00:27:44.220
Because it's just that the hip hop music and culture has done so much for me.
00:27:53.640
But I just want to complete land on that thought about right.
00:27:59.820
Some guys like Big Smoke, Cole Ford, I would say those are kind of the like forefathers of
00:28:06.200
Like, where it's really just more like country music, just with some rapping on it.
00:28:12.760
Shout out to Noah Gordon, who worked on writing that song with us.
00:28:17.720
But yeah, and Rodney, I had just come to Nashville.
00:28:20.800
And that was kind of like the 2012 area of like when Florida Georgia Line was first blowing up.
00:28:29.380
And Nashville was kind of like getting that first like, oh, it was like becoming like
00:28:34.940
Yeah, it was putting this little skirt on for everybody.
00:28:36.500
Yeah, it wasn't just redneck Hollywood anymore.
00:28:38.940
And so like, you know, and I came up here and, you know, Rodney, he took a chance on,
00:28:45.860
It wasn't the cool, now like this genre bending collaborations.
00:28:50.660
Yeah, and now you got like Morgan Wallen, Lil Durk, you got, yeah, it's kind of like,
00:29:00.400
But back then it was, you know, it was actually kind of rolling the dice, you know what I'm
00:29:04.580
saying, with your career to try something like that and to step over that line.
00:29:08.220
And so I'm appreciative of the people that did because, you know, country, I always
00:29:11.900
sought to build a bridge between people, you know what I'm saying, between hip hop and
00:29:17.340
country, the hood and country, you know what I'm saying?
00:29:18.780
Because lower class people just aren't that different, you know what I'm saying?
00:29:24.540
I always wonder why don't, I feel like poor, because as a poor white kid, the first thing
00:29:35.820
I mean, I was a poor white, well, I'm not a poor white kid anymore.
00:29:40.040
You know, and I hate, some of the times I hate having even made any money because I'm
00:29:45.200
I can't, I can't have the same feelings I hate.
00:29:48.200
Yeah, no, there's something about that, you know what I'm saying?
00:29:53.180
At least I know what my friends here for, you know what I'm saying?
00:29:55.820
My mom used to say, she would say, if you don't have anything, they can't take anything
00:30:04.520
You really be about some shit when you ain't got nothing else.
00:30:09.400
When death don't even seem like that bad of an alternative, you know what I'm saying?
00:30:11.400
Yeah, sue me, fuck me, whatever you want to do, man.
00:30:16.860
But for some reason, yeah, I've related so much, I feel like, to poor black kids when
00:30:23.080
And I think that it's also just a thing like, we have Ms. Pat on, she says, she's like,
00:30:31.460
And I don't know if I agree about that with everything.
00:30:36.040
I mean, there's, you know, there's nothing that you could really, if you look at, you
00:30:39.660
know, I mean, all that's been created by black folks in America, I mean, it's a lot when
00:30:46.780
Well, they got more art kind of built into them, you know?
00:30:49.300
Even I feel like if you punch a black dude, a cool sound comes out of them, you know?
00:30:54.040
It's like, but I just, I'm always a little bit fascinated by what it is, even in my own
00:31:04.140
I think a lot of times, raw creativity comes from poverty and oppression, you know what
00:31:10.680
From just the struggle, you know what I'm saying?
00:31:13.480
Yeah, maybe I like the, or, because poor black people always had a, when I was young, they
00:31:22.000
Yeah, Bill Cosby, and maybe, like, the Dallas Cowboys, it felt like.
00:31:26.560
Yeah, and, you know, they probably weren't even that rich, like, you know, what you would,
00:31:30.600
what we thought was rich at that time, probably we wouldn't, they probably were making, like,
00:31:33.960
half a million dollars a year or something, you know, or maybe, because contracts weren't
00:31:37.400
even that lucrative back then, you know what I'm saying?
00:31:39.300
No, the producers were making all the money back then.
00:31:43.460
But even, like, I remember if they had, like, like, the best job a black person could get
00:31:48.480
in our town was probably, like, our teacher, you know, like.
00:31:57.740
Now you see a lot more, like, I went to the first black doctor, like, about maybe seven
00:32:02.420
months ago, I was going to the doctor, and it was a black doctor.
00:32:07.680
I know there's black doctors, but I just had never been to one, and I'm like, is this
00:32:12.480
going to, I just, I was like, and then I'm thinking black people, their whole life been
00:32:18.480
Well, you know, I mean, just growing up in, like, because, you know, this is, the South
00:32:23.960
Like, there's black folks in pretty much every major city.
00:32:27.880
The difference in the South and the rest of the country is, you go an hour outside into
00:32:32.700
the country in the South, and there's still a bunch of black folks.
00:32:35.000
You go an hour outside of, like, Minneapolis, you know what I'm saying, or Milwaukee, and
00:32:40.920
there's really not any black folks, you know what I'm saying?
00:32:44.400
And so I just, I think, like, Atlanta, especially, like, with Atlanta having spent, that's kind
00:32:49.940
of like my, that's my home major city, you know what I'm saying?
00:32:53.080
I lived in Atlanta for, that's where I live now, you know what I'm saying?
00:32:55.700
Oh, it's like February started a damn city over there, bro.
00:32:58.360
I mean, it's just, you know, and I always tell people, when I bump into, like, black folks
00:33:02.360
in Idaho or something that just have never been around a lot of other black folks, I say,
00:33:06.960
you need to go live in Atlanta for two years, you know what I'm saying, and go experience
00:33:10.120
a city that's a black city, not just in terms of, like, the metro population,
00:33:14.400
being a lot of black folks, but also the infrastructure, you know what I'm saying?
00:33:19.840
The city council, you know, a lot of the policemen, the sheriff, you know what I'm saying?
00:33:26.360
And I tell white people in those same areas that, you know, because you ever notice, like,
00:33:30.540
a lot of those, like, hate groups and stuff will be, like, in Idaho and, you know, the
00:33:35.460
And I'm like, there are no black, when have you ever been around black people to know you have
00:33:41.180
Like, you know, but I tell, I tell, you know, white folks the same thing.
00:33:45.440
See what it's like to be, for that shoe to be on the other, the foot.
00:33:52.440
Because I think that, that just evolves your perspective to a point where you might be a
00:33:57.000
little more sympathetic and empathetic of somebody.
00:33:59.340
If you really just looked at the world the way they had been forced to see it, you know?
00:34:07.440
I just, I guess I was really just, yeah, I'm just thinking about, like, why, I guess,
00:34:15.700
I wonder what it was that made me relate when I was real young.
00:34:24.980
Hip-hop shaped a lot of hearts and changed a lot of potentially racist, you know, hearts.
00:34:32.140
Like, I would say, like, broke that cycle in families in the South, you know, of a lot of,
00:34:37.280
because I just knew people that would otherwise, I'd be like, man, that joke was racist.
00:34:43.040
But they just love Tupac so much, they just couldn't be, you know what I'm saying?
00:34:46.360
And that one thing, because they just love Tupac, hypothetically.
00:34:50.480
Like, so much, it just slowly changed their whole perspective on just black folks in general.
00:34:57.660
Well, yeah, you'd have, like, I always had this vision, you'd have a dude out in his yard
00:35:00.680
just yelling the N-word, but then he closed the door and he's in there fucking moonwalking.
00:35:05.080
That's the MTV generation, you know what I'm saying?
00:35:07.980
Because you think about it, like, people that grew up in the, that's why these songwriters
00:35:11.620
here in Nashville, when they write, like, every genre is present, you know what I'm saying?
00:35:15.980
Man, they're bringing that tool bag of every genre because the MTV generation, and especially
00:35:20.940
now, the way streaming is, you know what I'm saying?
00:35:22.920
Because back in, you know, when you had to, like, seek out your music, you know what I'm
00:35:26.740
saying, you had to go to the record store and seek out your, whatever kind of music your
00:35:30.540
taste, you know, preferred, it was a little different, you know what I'm saying?
00:35:34.260
But then when MTV started playing everything, they'd have those blocks, I don't know if you
00:35:37.840
remember that, they'd have, like, the blocks where they have hip-hop block, a rock block,
00:35:42.900
a R&B block, you know what I'm saying, and, like, so if you're just sitting there watching
00:35:47.600
MTV, which during the summertime, you know, that's just what we did as kids, you were
00:35:51.620
going to see that NWA video, you were going to see that, you know, Will Smith summertime
00:35:57.320
video, and then you were going to see Nirvana, you know what I'm saying, and then you might
00:36:01.820
even see some Tim McGraw and some, you know, whatever, like, so this generation, that generation
00:36:06.800
and moving forward, everybody was just, everything was just that accessible, you know what I'm
00:36:12.460
saying, so everybody has been touched by every genre of music in some kind of way.
00:36:17.840
Yeah, and now you start to see, and this is interesting, too, you see a lot of black country
00:36:23.060
guys on TikTok, I see a lot of it, you know, it's kind of, it's getting kind of wild, dude,
00:36:28.440
like, I'll meet, like, everything is just a lot more mixed, I've always had this theory
00:36:32.320
that it's going to, like, in three generations, everybody's going to be beige, you know?
00:36:37.100
Well, I say that same thing, man, I said, we all started the same color, I believe, you
00:36:41.560
know, I mean, look, I wasn't there, I can't personally.
00:36:44.340
Well, what color is a zygote or whatever, like a baby when it's in that?
00:36:46.560
Well, I just think that in that part of the world, that particular part of the world where
00:36:50.160
the world was allegedly, based on what we've been told, born, you know, people look a certain
00:36:56.360
And then I think, as we migrated to different areas, you know what I'm saying, like, our
00:37:00.840
ancestors migrated to this cold place up here, and then had to be in caves for six months
00:37:05.320
out of the year, and, you know what I'm saying, so over thousands of years of that reduced
00:37:09.760
exposure to the sun, the skin just got paler, so we'd split up, but then, now, in the last,
00:37:16.040
what, 100, 200 years, everybody's come back together, so yeah, it's just a matter of time
00:37:20.220
for, we go back to that same color, you know, which is like.
00:37:23.220
Yeah, you ain't even be able to find anybody to hate, man, at that point.
00:37:26.360
You're going to need a chart if you want to be racist, dude.
00:37:28.200
That's why, like, some places you can't even be racist.
00:37:31.060
People still going to hate themselves, though, Theo, because ultimately, that's what it boils
00:37:38.960
The easiest person for me to hate is myself, bro.
00:37:41.040
Myself, and honestly, I can't hate anybody else unless I hate myself, and I can't love
00:37:46.160
anybody else unless I love myself, so, you know, that's just the way it is.
00:37:50.420
So what was, so when you're, you're, so you get, so get me to the point where you kind
00:37:56.820
Okay, so basically, I moved up to Athens, where Big Steve was at, and met Bobby Stamps,
00:38:02.840
who was my manager for 20 years, and he introduced me to a guy, he introduced me to Colt Ford,
00:38:09.060
and to a guy named Shannon Houchins, who owns a label, and him and Colt have a label here
00:38:13.240
in town called Average Joe's Entertainment in Nashville, and, but I started just, it was
00:38:20.800
a roundabout way, but I started just really finding myself in the studio, you know, because
00:38:26.320
I was, you know what I'm saying, the first time I ever went to a studio, I was working
00:38:31.320
as an electrician's apprentice, running conduit, bending pipe, and I saved up like $350 over
00:38:38.800
one summer, and the only other guy that I could find that was a rapper, you know what
00:38:43.840
I'm saying, that even, any inkling of like, wanting to be a rapper, oh, Rodney was his
00:38:48.620
name, he was, he was, he was a different kind of guy, you know what I'm saying, but,
00:38:53.540
No, he was just, he was just a different type of cat, I don't, I don't really know how
00:38:57.860
to put it, you know, he, he didn't come from like, he didn't, everybody played sports,
00:39:02.440
you know what I'm saying, that was like your biggest badge of honor you could have, and
00:39:06.000
he, he wasn't that kind of guy, he was, he was really like a, kind of like an Eminem
00:39:11.160
type, like when you hear Eminem talk about like the way he grew up, you know what I'm
00:39:14.120
saying, like, kind of like that kind of deal, you know, like in the trailer, like the little
00:39:17.840
small mobile home, you know what I'm saying, and, and.
00:39:22.680
Yeah, well, I mean, I wouldn't say that it was even that rare, but it just wasn't, most
00:39:27.940
people, he was just kind of like the kind of person that was just.
00:39:40.180
The first, dude, the first, the guy, the guy that was always wearing a North Carolina
00:39:46.100
jersey and hanging out with black people was always a redheaded dude, bruh.
00:39:55.940
Every, I don't know how it worked out, bruh, I don't know how the sun hit him or whatever,
00:40:00.280
But I kind of, I think our generation, at least where I was growing up, like we kind of were
00:40:04.100
the first generation to like just, we all kicked it, you know what I'm saying?
00:40:11.100
You know, and like if you play football, like we, the only color that matters is Navy, you
00:40:16.560
And so, you know, but, but, but as far as the story of finishing, we saved up and we
00:40:21.880
went to the studio, we get to the studio up in Atlanta, it was called Eight Ball Recording
00:40:28.260
So I had my $300, he had his $300, we got like a 12 hour block.
00:40:33.240
Now does that mean producers are in there with you?
00:40:35.700
Listen, so then we get in there and he's like, all right, where's y'all's beats?
00:40:41.740
It hadn't even occurred to us that we were going to need beats.
00:40:44.760
And so basically, so we, you know, saved up all this money over a period of months.
00:40:49.800
Oh, I'm sure that's a lot of money at that point.
00:40:51.480
And he's kind of representing to me, like he's, man, I know what to do, I know what
00:40:54.700
to do, but we get there and we ain't got no beats and we don't know how to make no
00:40:57.760
beats, but the guy was actually cool enough to sit there and kind of like allow us to
00:41:01.580
like, he basically made some garbage beat, but you know, like held our hands there when
00:41:14.000
It ain't nothing but game coming out my mouth, player, player.
00:41:19.360
There was like, the rap was like, right quick, I'm bringing tight shit for these jealous
00:41:23.320
marks to jock bailing through the parking lot when my partner sparked the chop.
00:41:27.560
Now I'm feeling kind of strange, like my state of mind done changed.
00:41:30.840
Off that hurricane and dank, I'm starting to think that I'm deranged.
00:41:36.620
Yeah, that's how to make you feel good though, huh?
00:41:43.660
I mean, I had something recorded on a cassette tape and we could ride around and listen to
00:41:55.540
Oh, man, it was just that, it wasn't that good.
00:42:01.440
But basically, like, I just felt like, man, this is it.
00:42:06.380
Like, I felt like I had already made it, basically, you know what I'm saying?
00:42:09.300
Even though I'm still working three jobs and selling mid-grade weed, like, but I'm like,
00:42:18.560
Oh, I'll play you my song, you know what I'm saying?
00:42:23.400
Don't let me, like, steal, like, a laminate from, like, a tour or something, like So So
00:42:27.600
Def, because Fat Shan, the producer that I ended up working with in Athens, and all
00:42:32.340
those guys, Bobby and Colt, were close to Jermaine Dupri.
00:42:34.840
They worked with Jermaine Dupri, and they had, like, all these stuff, jackets and stuff
00:42:39.900
So anytime I could, like, I would try to get that jacket for a night and go to this post-up
00:42:49.980
It's like feeling like I kind of, like, manifested certain things by, like, I would tell girls,
00:42:55.800
you know, the Dungeon family is a big, a very important, what's the word?
00:43:02.900
I mean, a musical family in Atlanta that consists of outcasts, goody mob.
00:43:07.400
I mean, just the forefathers are the pillars of, in my view, of hip-hop in Atlanta, as far
00:43:15.360
as representing Atlanta for real, for real, you know, in an accurate way.
00:43:21.260
But I used to tell girls that I was the white member of the Dungeon family, like five years
00:43:33.040
Yeah, like, and, and, like, there was, it was said, and I think it probably was said by Rico
00:43:39.120
from Organized Noise, who was kind of the, the, the Dungeon was his mother's basement,
00:43:46.900
His mother's house, so he was kind of the patriarch, is that a good way to put it?
00:43:53.340
And, and so I'd heard that he said white folks shouldn't be participating in hip-hop or something
00:43:58.260
like that, but I was always like, well, he gonna love me.
00:44:01.540
He gonna love me, because I'm, I'm, I'm for real, like, I'm real with my shit, you know
00:44:05.000
I'm, I'm representing who I am, you know, and some Georgia shit the right way.
00:44:08.160
He gonna love me, watch this, that's what I would tell, like, my friends, but I would
00:44:11.640
tell girls that, yeah, I'm, I'm in the Dungeon family, what do you mean?
00:44:14.420
Like, way before I could, it could have even been anything remotely, you know, resembling
00:44:19.500
reality, and I'd be damned if I didn't become a white boy in the Dungeon family.
00:44:26.660
So that's, I guess that's what I get from fake it till you make it, you know what I mean?
00:44:31.120
And, and, you know, me and Rico, that's my brother, you know what I'm saying?
00:44:34.900
And the guy that allegedly has said that, I mean, he's, he's as close to anybody, to
00:44:40.220
me as anybody I've met in, in the music business, period.
00:44:43.060
So, man, it's just crazy how life can unfold, you know, if you, but I, but I had so much
00:44:50.300
So you had faith in, you mean in God, you mean?
00:44:52.780
I mean, in God, but in, but in God's plan for me, um, just in that God had a plan for
00:44:59.720
To, to do something that was going to impact the world and that, you know, that I, I just
00:45:04.480
always felt like I had a spirit, man, that, that, you know, I, I want to be an extension
00:45:10.400
of whatever that, that ultimate love, you know, love based energy or spirit that God
00:45:17.900
I always just felt like an extension of that because, you know, I like to, to be a purveyor
00:45:23.280
of, of love and light, so to speak, you know, so, and I just felt like there was some plan
00:45:28.420
where I was going to like, just have an impact on the world in some kind of way, you know,
00:45:34.220
And, um, you know, in some ways it's worked out exactly how I could have drawn it up and
00:45:41.960
But it's been a hell of a journey, you know what I'm saying?
00:45:44.620
And I still do not for one second question God's, you know, like involvement in the whole
00:45:52.980
And people can, are welcome to believe anything they want, you know, in all of our experiences
00:45:57.720
and our, our, uh, upbringing, you know, and in our experiences as, as adults, everything
00:46:04.260
Our DNA, you know, is a part of that too, but I just, um, I just believe what I, what
00:46:10.160
I believe and I, it's something that I, that I feel and it can't be quantified in words
00:46:16.660
But I know when I'm being creative, Theo, like when I'm writing, when I really get in that
00:46:22.480
zone, I, there's nothing I can ever do to feel closer to God or, you know, to, to just
00:46:29.140
that, that energy source, that love, you know what I'm saying?
00:46:32.720
It's like, I'm in such harmony in a way time can just disappear.
00:46:36.260
It's like, I'm doing what I was put here to do, you know what I'm saying?
00:46:40.580
And, and whatever, whoever created me is pleased at this time, you know what I'm saying?
00:46:47.220
And then it's like, I feel some, uh, like internal, um, turmoil at times too.
00:46:53.600
And it's like, I'm not, I'm not, uh, doing what I was put here to do.
00:46:57.660
And, and, uh, that, that spirit's not pleased and I can feel that too.
00:47:08.720
I got a terrible, terrible, like, um, this is like the third podcast I've done and, uh,
00:47:17.260
It's like, I, I love talking about every aspect of my story, but I'm definitely trying to work
00:47:25.060
There's a couple of times we were like, well, let's finish this point before we go on to
00:47:28.660
Because I, I, I sometimes kind of forget what's, I don't forget what's going on, but it's hard
00:47:33.080
for me to like, uh, remember and be thinking at the same time.
00:47:38.920
So, but to go back to the, so at the studio, you know what I'm saying?
00:47:47.140
And he was, cause look, dude, I'm telling you this the first time they had a white dude that
00:48:06.080
Oh, he's still, he just got locked up for something.
00:48:16.680
I had social studies with him and he fucking, he was, uh.
00:48:18.920
But he done been on a hell of a journey, though.
00:48:22.540
He took those bullets, you know what I'm saying?
00:48:24.300
Yeah, he really, something happened to him, yeah.
00:49:13.560
He was just, he looked like he fucking was early and late at the same time, bro.
00:49:26.340
Who knows what his whole life was like that made it where he just, where he stayed that
00:49:31.480
I always, this is something I think about now, and I'm sure you got some insight and
00:49:37.620
What if we went back through history, Theo, and looked at every violent crime, every murder,
00:49:43.940
every, even rape, that's ever been committed in the history of planet Earth, going back?
00:49:50.360
I wonder what percentage of those violent crimes were committed by people that had, they had,
00:49:55.740
you know, a thorough psychiatric evaluation, or mentally, it was a mental illness.
00:50:02.060
It was something that, you know, at the time, just, obviously, there was no, there was
00:50:08.780
nothing, when did mental illness, mental health even become a thing, like, last 50 years?
00:50:15.200
And it's even been like a, like a slow and, you know, jagged, like, ascent to where we
00:50:21.820
are now, which, but, but I'm just, I thought about that.
00:50:25.180
Like, if we, you know, there's, there's just something to be said for that, though, that,
00:50:32.060
Well, they just had a guy on Joe Rogan, this guy, Gabber Mate, Gabber Mate, and he is like,
00:50:38.640
I want to say he's a psychiatrist, but he's like a really good thinker.
00:50:45.980
And he talks a lot about trauma, and trauma is kind of a buzzword that people use a lot
00:51:06.820
But he was saying how, like, that, like, pain and stuff can be transferred through DNA.
00:51:14.840
And maybe some of that's believable or not, but it can definitely be transferred through
00:51:18.740
the way that you treat people and the new things that have, like, the way that you, it's
00:51:23.460
so crazy how many times something happens to somebody when they're a child, and then the
00:51:33.740
And it's just a lot of, like, we're just now getting to the point, too, where we have
00:51:44.440
But it's like we have such a recording of how people operate and behave now that you're
00:51:48.660
able to see a lot of, like, okay, and compare it, you know?
00:51:54.520
So I think it's like we're getting to a point where it's like we're really documenting how
00:51:58.480
much pain has been, like, just in the damn gene pool of humanity.
00:52:06.680
And it makes you wonder kind of what the future will be like.
00:52:14.200
Because I don't think- We are more aware of, like, of just, you know, mental illnesses,
00:52:19.640
and- But I don't necessarily think that we've really figured out the best ways to treat them.
00:52:26.240
To give somebody, you know, because it's like, you know, I've been on meds before, you
00:52:34.000
And it's like, okay, I don't feel that way anymore, but now I feel this way, which is equally
00:52:39.800
terrible or it affects, you know, some other aspect of my being that just makes it either
00:52:45.880
worse for me, ultimately, or at best, like, just a trade-off, you know what I'm saying?
00:52:50.400
So, you know, I just- Treating everything with chemical, with man-made medicine, you
00:52:58.560
Yeah, it might not be, you know what I'm saying?
00:52:59.680
And we might look in- In 30 years, we might look back and be like, okay, we took a real
00:53:05.460
Like back in the late 1800s when they were, like, drilling, you know, screws in people's-
00:53:10.700
You know, at your temples, and they would, like, just kill that frontal lobe.
00:53:14.580
That's how it would make people, like, chill out.
00:53:19.720
And then you had to pay for that dude to come over.
00:53:21.580
Yeah, and your family's there, like, how did that work?
00:53:32.020
Damn, you got birds laying on a little nail on your head.
00:53:36.560
Your cousin come and hang his hat on that little fucking spike.
00:53:49.720
I hope that that was what that person, at some point in their life, I hope whoever thought
00:53:54.000
of that first and started doing that, I hope they had to experience it.
00:53:59.780
And they were also saying on that episode just about how people take care of their children
00:54:03.940
and stuff like that, like, just that there's not enough connection between families and
00:54:12.120
A lot of that has been talked about in the past 10 years, about how people used to be in
00:54:17.480
So not only did your mother see you, but your aunt saw you.
00:54:21.320
There was constant, like, attention and evaluation of what was going on with you and that they
00:54:30.820
I don't know if that's true, but it's just like a- it was a theory that that man was talking
00:54:35.440
You know, I just- I think that this- the gap between human beings, period, is just getting
00:54:42.720
And we were talking about it last night, like, social media, you know, it's designed to bring
00:54:47.320
us all closer together, but ultimately, it creates such polarized, you know, like, views
00:54:53.980
Like, social media is probably as much to blame as anything for the way our country has- it's
00:55:04.060
always been these two drastically different choices that we had when it came to political
00:55:10.380
And I just won't say, for the record, fuck both of them, but it's like- because that's
00:55:16.820
just not- that just doesn't make good sense to me.
00:55:18.980
Like, our two choices are these two radically different, like, viewpoints, and it's just
00:55:24.880
crazy, but, like, social media has driven that wedge.
00:55:29.180
It just made it that much wider, that gap, you know what I'm saying?
00:55:33.280
Because people don't seek information, they seek affirmation, you know what I'm saying?
00:55:36.100
So, they follow things that they know are going to continue to feed them the same thing
00:55:42.560
And sometimes, I think each side is right, you know, at different times.
00:55:45.720
I think the sensible compromise of the middle is kind of- it just makes a little too much
00:55:51.760
Like, sometimes, you know, this way of thinking is going to be the best way to go about it,
00:55:55.980
and then sometimes this way, I think, is going to be the best way to go about it, but, you
00:56:00.300
know, you'll have, like, these 280 character or less, like, you know, just- what do you
00:56:07.120
Hot takes, basically, like, of just saying something or reporting a certain event in a
00:56:12.320
certain way that's going to reaffirm to that group of people that, yep, see?
00:56:18.980
Exactly, and so- and then they- it's like the old adage, a lion will travel around the
00:56:26.920
world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on or whatever.
00:56:29.920
I would have butchered it, but, yeah, something like that.
00:56:32.980
Yeah, people share stuff, you know what I'm saying?
00:56:34.780
The next thing you know, it's just- it spreads so- like, wildfire.
00:56:41.060
Oh, yeah, like, sit there and whisper and tell this person, this person.
00:56:44.120
And then by the time it got to the end, it was-
00:56:47.940
This is kind of fucked up, but he would just yell the- when it came back to him, he would
00:56:55.240
This motherfucker, yeah, he was just- I don't even think he was- I think he was just mentally
00:57:05.260
But he- it would be like hurricane, and it would break around, and every time, and the teacher
00:57:16.120
He might- he also talked about, like, Egypt and the pharaohs a lot.
00:57:22.780
But- so take me through, so you- so the music is popping, things get going.
00:57:33.280
I don't want to de-emphasize, you know, the fact that I've had an incredible journey,
00:57:37.480
you know, through music, but- so yeah, so then I'm in Athens at that point.
00:57:41.780
I'm starting to make some connections, and we ended up putting out my first album, my first
00:57:46.680
major release on Beat Club, Timberland's record label, the first single, Ugly, was on this
00:57:51.880
You know, we put out an independent version of that album by the same name about two years
00:58:02.240
So that's what people started hearing on the ground.
00:58:03.900
Yeah, so it started spreading around Georgia, and it was like, people always talk about marketing
00:58:09.120
And like, we got to come up with the perfect, you know, when something's the shit shit, it's
00:58:14.360
just word of mouth is the marketing plan, and it was that kind of deal, you know, and
00:58:18.300
I'm just blessed to have been a part of it, and to, you know, to have had that clarity
00:58:22.800
at that particular point in time to be able to do something that people fuck with to that
00:58:26.600
degree, but literally, like, one person, two people, two people, four people, four people,
00:58:31.660
eight people, and so on, and so on, and so on, and yeah, so pretty soon, and there was
00:58:36.160
a lot of other, like, you know, interesting details, tidbits of information to the story,
00:58:43.560
but short story long, basically, we signed with Interscope Records.
00:58:48.300
You know, Jimmy Iovine, the same, after, in 1999, when I first saw Hi, My Name Is, I
00:58:58.980
I thought, at that time, as a white rapper, you pretty much felt like, ain't gonna be one
00:59:04.660
Like, if they ever, if one ever gets back in the door, it's just gonna be one, and then
00:59:10.180
it was like, I saw that, and I was like, well, he did it perfect, you know what I'm saying?
00:59:16.740
Yeah, and I remember my best friend, Big Steve, and I was just all depressed, and he
00:59:20.480
came, and he was like, man, I think you got it fucked up, man.
00:59:26.580
He said, but you Southern, you, it's different, you know what I'm saying?
00:59:30.560
Like, you, you still straight, you know what I'm saying?
00:59:34.780
I was like, keep it coming, keep it coming, all right, you know what I'm saying?
00:59:37.900
And then, I got back up, you know, eventually, and got back to work, and two years later,
00:59:42.720
I was signed to the same label as him and him, yeah.
00:59:49.620
I met him at the Anger Management Tour in 2003, it was a crazy experience.
00:59:54.760
I thought you were gonna say Anger Management Meetings, that's what I thought you were gonna
00:59:58.900
You know, he was, I don't know, he was, he was a little, he was on the private plane
01:00:05.300
like level, you know what I'm saying, when I was, when I was still flying commercial,
01:00:09.240
you know, or I'm still flying commercial, but I was definitely, you know, up there in
01:00:12.760
first class and all that, but, you know, he, he jumped very quickly to private plane level,
01:00:17.360
you know what I'm saying, where he was just moving at his own pace, but, but we met, man,
01:00:22.220
and he, he was, he was very complimentary, you know what I'm saying, it was probably the
01:00:26.500
only time I've ever been starstruck in my life, when I, when I met Eminem, it was just
01:00:30.340
like, wow, that's really, that's the real Eminem right there, you know what I'm saying,
01:00:34.180
that's crazy, and, but man, he was extremely complimentary, you know, of me, and he always
01:00:39.680
has been, even when there was a diss song where he dissed me and Paul, Paul Wall, that
01:00:46.140
leaked, and even in the diss, he was, I, I feel like he was complimentary of me, you know
01:00:52.980
what I'm saying, like, he was, and he was actually, I don't know where the
01:00:56.420
information that he, but it was, it was wrong, the wrong drug, he said I was on,
01:01:00.980
or whatever, you know what I'm saying, oh yeah, I hate that when people get your drugs
01:01:03.600
wrong, yeah, man, it's like, come on, man, like, let he who is without sin catch the
01:01:07.820
first stone, you know, but, it is what it is, you know, Paul Rosenberg, his manager
01:01:12.920
was always super cool to me, and the whole Shady Records staff, I never had a chance to
01:01:19.580
get close to Eminem like that, as far as building like a super, you know, close personal
01:01:24.240
relationship, but, man, he would ask people about me, you know what I'm saying, anytime
01:01:29.980
he would see somebody that, like, he knew fucked with me, he would be like, how's Bubba doing,
01:01:36.240
you know what I'm saying, like, a couple times, so, you know, I got a number of respect for
01:01:40.820
him, man, love and respect, and so, but to go on back, so I was signed to Interscope Records
01:01:47.000
for about nine months, and after having so much success, Jimmy Iovine, shout out to Jimmy
01:01:53.100
Iovine, just an absolute iconic figure in music and entertainment, period, and that man believed
01:02:01.440
in me a great deal, I still don't even necessarily understand, you know, what it was about me that
01:02:08.160
made him believe in me so much, but he did, you know what I'm saying, and he's a genius, you know,
01:02:15.220
type of human being, so that always gave me confidence, just to know that, like, man, the
01:02:21.440
baddest motherfucker in this whole business, like, saw something in me, yeah, like, he believes in me
01:02:25.820
to the point where he's gonna push the maximum, the biggest button that Interscope Records, the
01:02:30.140
number one label in music, you know, could push, you know what I'm saying, six million dollars
01:02:34.520
spent on me in marketing, people know the name Bubba Sparks, you know what I'm saying, and
01:02:38.680
so, but he, after the Eminem and Dre success, he kind of was like, I might be on to something
01:02:44.320
with this whole, you know, the black producer, white boy, give him credibility, you know,
01:02:48.800
off top, and so, he tried a couple other routes, you know what I'm saying, as far as hooking
01:02:53.940
me up with people, and there was, the chemistry just wasn't there, and then, and then finally
01:02:59.740
he asked me one night, he called me, and he was like, I'm about to meet with Timberland,
01:03:03.420
and he's like, what do you think about that, I was like, oh, that'd be perfect, dude, I
01:03:06.600
was like, that'd be, that's it, you know what I'm saying, that's it, next morning, I was
01:03:10.500
on a flight out to LA, and the rest was history, and I was the first artist released that Timberland,
01:03:16.880
as far as it being his record label, and him releasing the artist, I was the first, yeah,
01:03:21.960
you was the first one, I was the first artist he ever released, the first one, yeah, overall,
01:03:26.220
right, yes, yeah, and so, what was your personal life like at that point, because life gets
01:03:30.960
crazy, bro, when you start getting where, I was a young country motherfucker with millions
01:03:36.740
of dollars, and pretty much whatever you could, in a budding, a spawning drug addict, and you
01:03:45.480
know what I'm saying, and just a kid, man, that just, you know, I just loved life at that
01:03:52.760
time, though, you know what I'm saying, we were just, were you happy, were you stoked,
01:03:55.720
at that time, man, on that first album, you damn right I was, yeah, you know, I was really
01:04:01.180
happy, man, I was going to London, and just, man, everything was so, like, you know, performing
01:04:06.320
on Saturday Night Live, man, you know what I'm saying, Derek Jeter's the host, you know
01:04:09.960
what I'm saying, me and Shakira are the musical guests, you know, and I'm in the green room
01:04:15.100
before, I perform on Saturday Night Live, and they knock on the doors about 15 minutes
01:04:20.560
before I go on, they're like, Mr. Sparks, there are two guests here that would just like to
01:04:24.540
say hello, if you, if you, if they're interrupting you or disturbing you, it's fine, they can come
01:04:29.440
back later, but if they could just say hello, it's Chris Rock and Jamie Foxx, you know what
01:04:34.040
I'm saying, so, I'm just kicking it, like, you know, and I'm just like, cut your ass boy,
01:04:38.720
you know what I'm saying, like, I'm just like, what's up, man, you know what I'm saying,
01:04:41.620
I don't know, no other way to be, you know what I'm saying, and like I said, I didn't
01:04:45.500
have a reference point of another example of, of somebody like me, you know, to show
01:04:51.440
me how to act a different way other than just being me, like, I just, and it's like,
01:04:55.580
sometimes it's just because I, for lack of a, uh, understanding of any other way I could
01:05:02.000
possibly act or be, I would just, fuck it, I'm just gonna be me again, I'm gonna keep
01:05:05.880
being me and keep being me, sometimes it served me well, sometimes it, it, it was fucked
01:05:10.000
up, but. Well, there's a lot of parts inside of you, obviously. No doubt, no doubt. So
01:05:16.140
those are, so that's really the highs, man. Yeah, that was great. Did y'all perform on
01:05:19.380
VMAs and stuff like that? I never performed on the VMAs, I, um, like, um, I went to several
01:05:26.080
VMAs, like. Did you go to the one with NSYNC at it, when Eminem came out with all the
01:05:30.560
different little, uh. No, no, that was, that, I came to, into the game the year after that
01:05:34.620
one. Dang. I tell you, when I came into the game, I was sitting right here at my first
01:05:38.420
VMAs, when Alicia Keys was at the VMAs playing Fallen. Beautiful. Falling on the, uh, on the
01:05:44.960
piano, and I remember just being like. I can't help falling. Is that one? Yeah. Oh. With
01:05:53.560
you. Oh, man. Dude, I was just like, I'm here, I'm in this bitch. Yeah. Dude, I remember
01:05:59.500
I sat, it was right after Chris Farley had died, I sat behind his brothers, and I sat
01:06:04.420
by Tim. God bless the dead man, Chris Farley, that was like, yeah. I sat by Shawshank Redemption,
01:06:09.340
the guy, the prisoner. And, uh. Which one, which prison, like, Tim Robbins? Tim Robbins,
01:06:14.400
yeah. What was his name in the movie? Christopher. No, that's Christopher Robbins I'm thinking
01:06:19.880
of. I don't know, bro. Anyway. That was a great movie, though. That was crazy, and I
01:06:24.000
fell asleep when NSYNC was performing, bro. I fucking fell asleep in my seat, bro. But Nelly
01:06:28.740
came by, and he fucking dabbed me up when he came by. That was pretty cool. You fell asleep.
01:06:32.020
So that was a highlight then. That's true. That's the craziest, bro. That's hard. Afterwards,
01:06:35.760
I got invited to a threesome with these ladies, and one of them gave me some cocaine, and I
01:06:40.860
got all fucking scared because I'd never done any cocaine. Is that the story you told on,
01:06:43.980
uh, on, uh, it was Joe Rogan or something? I watched where you were talking about, like,
01:06:48.360
the time you were, like, in New York. Now, you were supposed to do something the next morning.
01:06:51.540
Oh, that was with Daryl Strawberry. Yes, you were interviewing Daryl Strawberry. Man, that
01:06:56.200
was a tough night, man. That sucks, man. Well, just the- I know that feeling. The fun part
01:07:00.220
is fun, but the unfun part ain't fun, man. That inside-out feeling and just knowing that
01:07:04.240
you're functioning at about 36%. Oh, I get so much anxiety. But I was at this threesome,
01:07:10.240
but I wanted to remember it. So they had a bag of little sex toys in there. So I copped
01:07:15.600
one of them on the way out, right? I snuck one, and I put it in, like, my belt kind of,
01:07:20.740
you know? So then I was in New York City. I went to, like, a little key bodega to get
01:07:25.960
some snack or something, a little coconut water. They had just come out with coconut
01:07:30.260
water, and I tried it. And a little- I think I got a little thing of donuts or something.
01:07:36.580
But while I was in there, that little sex toy thing fell out on the floor in there, bro.
01:07:42.080
And, dude, it was like a migrant family, you know? There's no getting the shit back up in the
01:07:45.740
bull now. Oh, bro. It was a Vietnamese family owned it or something, you know? And they had
01:07:50.860
a little kid in there, bro, and he fucking brought it over to me. He didn't know what
01:07:55.320
it was, man. He just thought it was a toy. Oh, and I just- It was a toy, but- It was.
01:07:59.900
It just broke my- The whole shit was just bad. But anyway, man, so when- So you and I talked
01:08:07.440
about, like, when did you start to realize that you feel like you had, like, some addiction
01:08:11.720
issues? I was- Well, you know, I pretty much just kind of, like, partied, you know what I'm
01:08:16.600
saying? It's like, then I was in a snowmobile accident, ice fishing in Canada. It was, like,
01:08:22.020
you know, real fucked up. And I got prescribed, like, I mean, I had dabbled with, like, you
01:08:27.880
know, popping a Lortab or something, you know, not to mention specific drugs, but you know
01:08:32.180
what I'm saying? No, it's fine, man. I took some somas one time, and I drove into a driveway,
01:08:37.240
and there wasn't a driveway. Hey, them somas ain't no joke, boy. Flex for real and soma.
01:08:41.280
Dude. And my buddy, this gay fella, R.I.P., Billy Conforto, he was, like, one of the first
01:08:47.000
gay prize fighters in America. What is this? This is Celsius something.
01:08:51.780
Gotcha. See what the thing hitting on. And I thought, I don't know if he tried to take
01:08:58.600
advantage of me or what, but whatever. Anyway, bro, but what, yeah, so when do you start to
01:09:03.320
know that you had an issue? I was on tour with Blink-182. Shout out to what Trav, Trav Parker.
01:09:11.940
And I had been prescribed Percocets for about six months, and then they just cut them cold
01:09:19.640
turkey. You know, I knew nothing about addiction or, you know, or physical dependence or withdrawals,
01:09:26.760
dope scene. I knew nothing about shit. Then shit about shit. I knew shit about shit. And I
01:09:34.520
had run out, and I just think I'm just done with that. You know what I'm saying? And I remember
01:09:38.680
I had this process, you know what I'm saying? I would, the bus would get into wherever we
01:09:45.280
were going, like, that morning, and I would go in the hotel, and I would sleep till, like,
01:09:49.380
three o'clock. I would get up slowly, you know what I'm saying? I'd take a shower and
01:09:53.900
stuff. And then before I would leave the hotel at, like, five o'clock, I would take, like,
01:10:00.620
I think I would take two pills and then, like, four shots of Patron. And that would get me,
01:10:07.360
like, in the go be me in public and, you know, start angling towards showtime, you know?
01:10:13.300
And I remember I didn't, obviously didn't have the pills, and I laid down, trying to
01:10:18.240
go to sleep like normal. 30 minutes later, I wake up sweating, just, like, feeling inside
01:10:23.380
out. I'm like, oh, shit, I'm sick. This is crazy. Like, I think I'm just sick, like, cold
01:10:28.220
or flu or something. And I'm like, oh, man. And I try to lay back down. I maybe take some
01:10:34.780
cold medicine, lay back down, can't sleep. And I'm like, man, what is wrong? It's a unique
01:10:40.040
feeling. This is like a, I've never felt this exact type of thing before. And then
01:10:45.540
it hit me. Damn, it's because I ain't got no pills. It's like, damn, am I addicted to
01:10:51.480
these things? Like, what? And I remember I talked to somebody, like, probably my manager
01:10:56.360
or somebody, and was like, you think I'm addicted to them? He's like, I don't know. Maybe
01:11:01.540
so, you know? He's like, were you taking more of them than you were supposed to? And I was
01:11:05.200
like, yeah. I mean, of course. But I was just like, you know, I don't, I don't know. I
01:11:13.260
just, it was just a foreign concept to me. You know, it's just, that was definitely one
01:11:17.400
of those things. Like, I had known some, some addicts, you know what I'm saying? Some
01:11:22.480
drunks, a lot of drunks, you know what I'm saying?
01:11:26.100
Yeah, right. And, but for me, I just never, nobody ever thinks it's going to, it could
01:11:31.800
happen to them until it does. But I just remember being like, damn, I'm addicted to
01:11:35.620
these motherfuckers. But I was moving so fast, I said, you know, when I get to a
01:11:40.100
stopping point, you know, a resting, like, area, I'll take care of it and get on off
01:11:46.480
of them. But for now, I just need to buy them on the street, you know what I'm saying?
01:11:50.260
So I started buying them on the street, real heavy. My boy Trey, Chunky Trey, shout
01:11:54.460
out to Chunky Trey. He's like seven years sober now or some shit.
01:11:57.680
Big Steve's 15 years sober. I'm the only dipshit that just hadn't been able to, you
01:12:03.780
know, find that willingness or whatever, like to, you know, I'm a thinker, you know
01:12:08.560
what I'm saying? That can be, that can be a big fucking hindrance to, to recovery.
01:12:13.660
When you're creative, you create a lot of ways you can figure shit out of yourself.
01:12:17.720
That's the same. I got, I just got like, I think I'm like one, maybe 150 days maybe.
01:12:22.320
Yeah, I remember talking to you, we were both at the same time.
01:12:26.640
We're on the, it's the same journey. I don't know if I'll have, you know, these days forever.
01:12:33.420
So people, so you started having to get them like behind the scenes?
01:12:35.960
Yeah, so I was buying them on the street and short story long, that was like in 2004,
01:12:42.320
I think. And, and then I ended up finally going to rehab, like pretty much at the peak
01:12:48.380
of Miss New Booty. You know what I'm saying? Of that. I did not enjoy that. You know, you're
01:12:53.180
asking did I enjoy the, the, when I first came into the game, the Ugly, when Ugly was
01:12:58.740
my first number, first ever release as far as a single and my first number one record.
01:13:04.000
And, and that was a great time. But the Miss New Booty time, man, it was just trying to
01:13:12.820
be in places, traveling around, running out of pills, just having to white knuckle it, be
01:13:18.500
tough, you know what I'm saying? Like, and get through, you know, just big shit, you know
01:13:23.760
what I mean? And things that I should have, you know, I should have been enjoying, you
01:13:28.140
know what I'm saying? It was a huge record, you know, and just so many blessings came from
01:13:32.820
it, you know, but my, my perception at that time was, was really fucked, you know what I'm
01:13:38.680
saying? But I remember I had like half a million dollars worth of shows over like a two month
01:13:45.820
period. And I told my manager, Bobby, I was like, man, I got to go. You know what I'm
01:13:51.880
saying? I said, I can't do it anymore, man. I said, I'm about to get on, about to check
01:13:56.300
out of here or something. I don't know what's, and.
01:13:59.620
Like how was it, did it get pretty like, cause I've had, like I've had some time where I
01:14:06.160
probably went to some strange, you know, I've been in some strange places trying to get
01:14:10.140
some cocaine. You know what it was for me? Getting chumped by people like meaning like
01:14:14.340
I got the number one song in the world at this time. And these motherfuckers got me
01:14:19.200
sitting in this bowling alley for six hours. Yeah. And it just, I couldn't take it anymore.
01:14:23.600
You know what I'm saying? It was just like, man, I can't be a punk ass motherfucker, but
01:14:27.080
so long, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's just the way I'm, the way my account is set
01:14:31.660
up. Oh, I want to do what I, that's hilarious way my account is set up. I want to do what
01:14:35.740
I want to do, man. That's all. I've always been that way. Have you always been that way?
01:14:39.140
But especially just to know that somebody, they on the phone laughing to their homeboys
01:14:42.320
talking about, man, I got, but man, I got him sitting up here at this bowling alley, man,
01:14:46.800
this shit crazy, you know, that kind of shit. And I'm just like.
01:14:49.880
Do you mean waiting for drug? Yeah, I'm just sitting there like, they're like, give you
01:14:53.920
the money and then they, they gonna ride up whatever. And I'm sitting there for six hours
01:14:58.280
on a Saturday and probably missing some shit that I'm supposed to be, you know what I mean?
01:15:01.560
And just, just, I, you know, I just couldn't, I couldn't do it anymore. You know what I'm
01:15:07.040
saying? And then just tired of being dope sick, man. Like, you know, that was, that was
01:15:12.540
the deal at that time. You know what I'm saying? It was the opiates, you know what I'm saying?
01:15:15.940
And, you know, I've, I don't go down the same street, you know what I'm saying? Like, like,
01:15:21.980
multiple times very often, you know what I'm saying? As far as that goes. But I, I would have
01:15:26.940
never, at that time, I could have never seen there being a day, a six hour period where
01:15:32.920
I didn't use like some type of opiate at that time. And I thought I, I would never be able
01:15:38.260
to get beyond that, you know? And I, and I did, you know, and I, suboxone is a part of
01:15:43.460
my journey. You know what I'm saying? I can say that's the only way I was able to, to stop
01:15:48.040
and, uh, and stay stopped as far as, and people say like, you just traded one addiction for
01:15:53.180
another. Yes and no. Because the difference is if I'm out here taking, uh, Roxie's and
01:15:58.780
Oxycontin and whatever else, especially this fentanyl world that's, that's, that's, uh,
01:16:05.020
that's going down out here now, that's, that's a whole different level. But, um, but when you
01:16:12.600
take suboxone, you can take four milligrams a day. This is just my experience now. You know
01:16:17.340
what I'm saying? I'm not the judge, jury and executioner on, on anything. You know what I'm
01:16:20.380
saying? In my opinion, in 250, I'll get you Coca-Cola. But. Man, you sound like Riff
01:16:25.080
Raff, bro. Y'all got some of the same thing, man. It's real interesting. Man, you know,
01:16:29.180
I ain't never met Riff Raff, man, but I, I, I know I've, I know it's just certain people
01:16:33.400
you didn't know you would fuck with them. You know what I'm saying? He's a special guy,
01:16:35.880
man. He's cool. He's real creative too. Nah, man. I seen him do the shit he did with a tennis
01:16:40.500
rack at that time, man. Some of the most unbelievable shit I've ever seen, man. He's a deep
01:16:44.060
dude. And we've got several mutual, you know, but anyway, so, um, but you know,
01:16:49.220
your tolerance doesn't go up on the Suboxone. You can take the same amount and it's never
01:16:53.580
gonna, your tolerance is never gonna like, you know, force you to take more where, whereas,
01:16:59.180
you know, when, when you're taking the other stuff, like your tolerance is just going to
01:17:03.360
slowly build and build. I've always wanted to do methadone. I've never done it. Yeah. I,
01:17:07.600
I've taken some methadone, but not as like a solution, but just as a, that's all you got.
01:17:12.560
But, um, um, but yeah, so, and, um, did you think a lot of times, like I, I've been in and out of the
01:17:21.800
program for maybe six years, right? Six years. I've been in and out since 2007. So what's that 15?
01:17:29.240
And I never thought I had this problem. I thought everything was pretty normal in my life, you know,
01:17:33.500
and it came on really later in my, you know, I thought for me, but when people came in with
01:17:39.040
opiate addiction, I always thought to me, it seemed like you had people that were real
01:17:45.500
alcoholics that were in there, but then some people just got so, like somebody goes in cause
01:17:50.960
they hurt their back. That's not a person that's, and then they get, I mean, people were getting so
01:17:57.320
But your mind doesn't know the difference is the thing. You know what I'm saying? Like if it's
01:18:01.700
just like, I know people, my old sponsor, shout out to Steven K down on the grains, but he, uh,
01:18:07.420
he was like, I ain't taking nothing. He said, I don't care what happens to me. I ain't taking no
01:18:11.300
pain medication. He said, cause my brain's not going to know the difference. You know what I'm
01:18:14.520
saying? That shit gets in my system. It's going to do what it does. You know what I'm saying?
01:18:17.860
Regardless of the reason being righteous or, or, you know, it being prescribed by a doctor
01:18:22.900
or anything like that. You know what I'm saying?
01:18:24.560
It feels like they made a cheat code when they made, uh, opiates though, when they made
01:18:29.020
like some of these opiates, it feels like the, these companies, I mean, it's like they made
01:18:38.780
Oh man, you can't tell me it was, and I, you know, I could break it down even, even on a
01:18:43.180
more freakier level, man. It's just like, it's very interesting to me that 2000, up to say
01:18:49.880
2008, there were pain pills everywhere. And you could, you could, there's about three
01:18:54.740
or four cities in America you could get heroin in, port cities type stuff. Like, you know,
01:19:00.400
New York, LA, uh, maybe Baltimore, New Orleans, you know what I'm saying? Like you just couldn't
01:19:06.280
get heroin in a lot of places, you know what I'm saying? Um, and I would know, you know,
01:19:12.220
especially like anything that was actually anywhere close to resembling actual real heroin.
01:19:18.020
And, um, and then I don't know, we go fight a war, you know what I'm saying? In the golden
01:19:24.860
trial or where the poppy fields, the most poppy fields are in the whole world. And I'm not saying
01:19:31.840
that's the only reason that that, that war took place or there's a primary reason, but, but
01:19:35.600
here, fast forward to now, hell, it's damn difficult to get a pain pill. You know what
01:19:41.180
I'm saying? Like a lot of, um, you know, uh, parents of, of, you know, uh, kids that
01:19:48.800
had overdosed and died, started going to Congress, you know, started basically letting their presence
01:19:54.100
be felt and letting their, you know, feelings be felt, you know, and, and voicing, you know,
01:19:59.000
their angst and, and sorrow, you know, and, and I think some pressure was applied, you know
01:20:04.980
what I'm saying? For the, as far as the pain pills to, to tighten up on that. But then
01:20:10.380
now here comes this fentanyl shit. But even before that, I mean, they got selling heroin
01:20:18.740
in Huntsville, Alabama, you know what I'm saying? Like it's, it's, it's all over the
01:20:22.220
place, but the, the, the pills were cleaned up to a, to a large measure, you know what
01:20:27.620
I'm saying? But, um, and it's just interesting, you know what I'm saying? I mean, you know,
01:20:32.360
I wouldn't be shocked if our government is selling our own drugs to it. I wouldn't, or
01:20:36.640
somebody is, some bigger picture. Or it may not, who knows who it could be. Like, you
01:20:40.260
know, it could be some corporation that just has that much pool and, you know, they just,
01:20:44.800
you know, funded this one campaign of this one person who has influence. Who knows? You
01:20:49.580
know what I'm saying? Like I'm, like I said, I just, I can only speculate because they damn
01:20:53.540
sure don't invite me to the meetings or whatever kind of shit they're running.
01:20:57.040
I got an email. Yeah, for real, you know? And, um, and so I don't, I don't know, but
01:21:04.240
those, those things, what Arsenio Hall used to say, things that make you go, hmm. I got
01:21:09.920
to go on his show one time. That was a real highlight for me.
01:21:12.920
When his show came back on, that was the first show I ever got to do standup comedy
01:21:16.980
Arsenio, man. That was so epic when I was young.
01:21:19.380
Dude, it was huge, man. And then in Living Color, bruh.
01:21:22.920
Yeah, Living Color. You know, I used to watch Johnny Carson too. I actually remember watching
01:21:29.800
You know, and that was, and I remember when he, when Jay Leno took over for him and I
01:21:36.140
Yeah, and Jay Leno used to do the Cool Ranch Dorito commercials. But, um, yeah, man, David
01:21:41.480
Letterman did David, man, that's just, what a blessed journey, man.
01:21:44.680
Yeah, you've gotten to have so many unique experiences, especially for, you know, somebody
01:21:53.400
Man, you know, my old high school football coach used to say, guys, you don't have to
01:21:58.120
take a backseat to anybody. Rest in peace, Jim Holly. You know, and that's something
01:22:02.140
that just stuck with me through life. You know what I'm saying? Anytime I feel overwhelmed
01:22:06.020
or feel like, oh, I'm not worthy of this. No, no, you don't have to take a backseat
01:22:10.060
to anybody. You know what I'm saying? Anything or anybody. You know what I'm saying? You worked
01:22:15.820
hard to get here just like everybody else. You know what I'm saying? Like they say, you put
01:22:19.380
your socks on one leg at a time just like everybody else. I take shits, they take shits. I fart,
01:22:24.980
they fart, you know. You know, I like chalupas. They may or may not.
01:22:29.260
They may or may not. Yeah, sometimes I think my thing I struggle with sometimes, I mean,
01:22:33.840
I struggle with a lot of stuff, but I really struggle with, I think, like making, like what
01:22:41.660
other people think of me. Yeah. You know, that's always been really hard. Anybody that
01:22:46.180
says that they don't is either just not cursed with any self-awareness. And some people are
01:22:51.720
just like that. Some of the biggest stars just, they don't have self-awareness. They
01:22:55.520
don't. Right, so they're not even thinking about the beginning of it. Yeah, about how
01:22:58.260
do they, how are people perceiving them? You know what I'm saying? It's like. Oh, it'd be
01:23:01.460
a blessing. Yeah. And a curse. It would be a curse and a blessing. You know what I'm
01:23:04.540
saying? That's just the way it is with everything, but. But yeah, I wish that
01:23:07.440
didn't, because here's what I wish. I had a little bit more of my own. I wish I'd
01:23:13.500
had a bit more somebody helping me build my own self-worth when I was young, so I
01:23:17.600
had a little bit more. It just wasn't a part of the culture of growing up, you
01:23:21.940
know, like that. Yeah, but some people got it because they're, you know, somebody
01:23:25.620
told, I just feel like some people got it. I'm not like having a pity party. No, I
01:23:29.780
understand. I just wish that I had a little more of it. That's the reason, and it's tragic that
01:23:33.300
you don't have kids. You know what I'm saying? It's tragic that I don't have. I
01:23:37.240
know a lot of, and that's what we talk about, that gap between males and females
01:23:42.720
that keeps getting wider and wider. You know what I mean? Like in the way that we
01:23:46.240
connect with one another, it just, what's your cash up? You know, like, you know what
01:23:50.320
I'm saying? Like it's gotten a lot more like just out front transactional, it seems
01:23:55.520
like, you know what I'm saying? And so I don't, since I got divorced in 2019, I
01:23:59.640
haven't seriously dated anybody because I don't know how to fucking date in this
01:24:03.080
world, but that's a whole nother story. But, but I'm saying like, we're over 40,
01:24:07.520
you know what I'm saying? And so like, bro, I mean, like, I just know, man, we
01:24:10.700
gotta get a fucking kid, bro. I know a lot of real deal men that need to have
01:24:14.520
kids, you know what I'm saying? Because I would like to know what a child with my
01:24:18.280
stuff, and I love my parents, man. This isn't no, they, they did the best they
01:24:23.700
could with, with what they were equipped with, you know what I'm saying? What
01:24:27.640
they'd been given and they did a great job because, you know, I've done a lot of
01:24:31.420
things and they, and they're a part of that, you know what I'm saying? And, and
01:24:34.220
they love me, you know, but as far as just like believing in a, in a, in a child
01:24:40.120
and like giving him the freedom to really like express himself and encouraging
01:24:44.080
him, you know what I mean? Like, and still being stern, you know what I'm saying?
01:24:47.860
And being, being a disciplinarian, but, but just, you know, not discouraging dreams
01:24:53.680
and, you know what I'm saying? Like, and they were just trying to protect me, you know what I'm
01:24:57.420
saying? By discouraging dreams, by saying, you know, that's just, that's just silly
01:25:01.640
foolishness, you know what I'm saying? Like you, you need to, you know, have a
01:25:05.280
different plan, you know what I'm saying? You need to have a practical plan, one that's
01:25:08.360
realistic, you know what I'm saying? They were just trying to, you know, but I know
01:25:12.900
now that all that's bullshit, that's programming, you know what I'm saying? That's
01:25:16.760
fear-based programming, you know, and we can, we can do a lot in this world, you know,
01:25:22.100
you know what, you're evidence of it. And so I would, for us to have children and be
01:25:27.140
able to just, and it might go all, you know, awry.
01:25:32.180
Like, cause we might, they might, cause there's some craziness to the way we're wired too,
01:25:36.380
you know what I'm saying? And they might, a little too much love and not quite enough
01:25:40.420
rigid upbringing might make it where they just go be hellions or something.
01:25:44.960
Yeah. But, you know, I just know a lot of men that, Paulo De Don, Cliff Kingsbury, friends
01:25:59.260
We got to be real cool when he was coaching at Texas Tech before he got that job, man.
01:26:05.020
And that's, that's a great fellow right there, man.
01:26:09.300
I'm saying, every, every area. I think Cliff Kingsbury should run for president, honestly.
01:26:14.480
I mean, he's just that kind of guy, like, man, he, he can just relate to anybody.
01:26:18.480
He's, he's a principled guy. His principles don't get compromised for anything, you know
01:26:23.460
what I'm saying? He stands on what he stands for. And, you know, I'm just using him as
01:26:29.280
Like, Paulo De Don, great guy, you know what I'm saying? He's a brother of mine, like,
01:26:34.060
not a friend, but a brother, super producer, produced 32, 33 number one records. You know,
01:26:39.600
you don't have kids. I don't, I don't have kids. You don't have kids. It's just, that was
01:26:43.260
almost unheard of, you know, like, in the 1950s or whatever, you know what I'm saying?
01:26:47.540
Oh, you had the cabin kids, the only thing you did.
01:26:50.260
You know, I worry sometimes that, honestly, I think I worry that if I did have kids, that
01:26:56.500
there would be a, I'd somehow do the same thing, I think. I think there's probably some
01:27:03.560
My girlfriend was pregnant at one time. This is like 2006. Yeah, like, right around that
01:27:10.920
same new booty time when everything was coming to a head. And she had a miscarriage at, I
01:27:17.560
think it was like four months. And just in those four months, I know the way I felt, thinking
01:27:24.960
I was getting ready to be a father, man, it's a different feeling, man. Like, it's like, I
01:27:31.520
got to get my shit together. Because I can let myself down. You know what I'm saying?
01:27:35.660
But I can't let a mini-me down. You know what I'm saying? I got to get it right, get it
01:27:40.480
tight for this little joker right here. You know what I'm saying? I can't be playing about
01:27:43.460
another life that's, you know, and I can only imagine a child being born and looking at that
01:27:49.740
child and seeing yourself in it. Like, some physical thing, your eyes or something. I can
01:27:54.280
only imagine how that would feel. And I never thought I wouldn't have kids. But I was kind
01:27:59.160
of careful back in the quote-unquote heyday. Because I had so many friends that had multiple
01:28:03.140
baby mamas. And everybody's life was just miserable when that was the case. You know
01:28:07.560
what I'm saying? Like, three baby mamas. And, you know, they got two other baby dads. You
01:28:12.700
know what I'm saying? And it's just, it's not good on a child.
01:28:16.540
So I didn't want that. I didn't want to be a part of perpetuating that type of deal.
01:28:22.000
And so I was, you know, and then God bless my ex-wife. I think maybe with us, just by the
01:28:27.600
time we actually got married, maybe we were already kind of coming unraveled. And it just,
01:28:32.940
spiritually, it just never lined up the right way.
01:28:37.060
You think it'll still happen? Do you think about it?
01:28:39.500
I haven't given up. I'm not too, like, thrilled about the prospects of being 86 years old at
01:28:44.360
my child's high school graduation. But, you know.
01:28:47.680
My dad was 70 when I was born, which is crazy, man.
01:28:53.280
I only say that is because I keep finding myself talking to guys who are, we getting
01:28:58.120
older and we don't have any children yet. So I started, I used to think my dad was crazy
01:29:01.380
and I'm like, damn, I just, if I could beat him by 10 years, that'd be good.
01:29:03.540
You think it was just because we were just dream chasing, man? Like, you know.
01:29:05.960
That's a good point, man. You know what? Dream chasing was like, other things to me seemed
01:29:13.140
It was like, you know, I could go have a family. I pop, somebody had me and they ain't doing
01:29:17.580
shit out here. I could go fucking do that in half hour if I want.
01:29:21.580
I wanted to like, what can I do? I want to fucking.
01:29:24.540
I just did not. I was scared to death of being in my 20s or something and feeling like my
01:29:31.380
whole life was planned out. Like, okay, so I'm going to do this for like 46 years and
01:29:37.480
then retire. Like, oh my God. Like, hey, much respect to anybody that works like that because
01:29:43.440
I'm not cut out for it. You know what I'm saying? I'm not.
01:29:46.580
Right, right. I'm not saying, yeah, I'm not saying it was horrible. I'm just saying I'm
01:29:51.240
It was not for me. You know what I mean? It just was not, I would, I would have, if
01:29:54.740
I didn't have create creativity, you know, this outlet of creativity that I have with
01:29:59.800
writing, you know, recording music and stuff like I, um, I would have probably already
01:30:05.700
like checked out of here. You know what I'm saying? It's, it's that vital to me. And
01:30:10.360
so just to be able to live that way, you know what I'm saying? And make a living that
01:30:14.460
way crucial, you know what I'm saying? But that's why I always tell people like, man,
01:30:19.640
I'm, I'm going to be 90 years old rapping. Like, fuck. I don't give a fuck what you
01:30:24.460
like or don't like, like what you say about me. And you know, oh, you're old. Who cares?
01:30:30.680
Like still don't make more money than you ever going to make your whole life. But sorry,
01:30:36.340
A lot of people never get a chance to make millions of dollars.
01:30:38.920
But my point is, this is like, it's not a job. It's not a hobby. It's not like
01:30:43.060
it's a, it's at the core of who I am. It's a function of my spirit, man. Like, you know
01:30:50.240
what I'm saying? It's, it's, I remember Jay-Z had a line where he said, get a grip,
01:30:54.220
bitch. This is how I get through life. You know, but how I get through life and how I always
01:31:00.080
related to that is this, you know what I'm saying? This is, you know, this was a, man,
01:31:07.380
it's just been so special. Like, like this, this art form, you know, shout out to those
01:31:12.760
people, you know, the black and brown people in the Bronx, New York in the seventies that,
01:31:17.700
you know, were doing what they was doing and living the way they was living. And that all
01:31:22.220
that formed this perfect storm that, you know, um, that this, this music and this art form,
01:31:29.420
I mean, in this culture, you know, sprung from, man, I'm just, I'm so grateful. It found
01:31:35.540
me, you know, on a dirt road, 20 minutes North of LaGrange, Georgia. And it's kind of
01:31:40.420
wild, huh? Changed my life, man. Like, you know, so I, I honor that at every turn, you
01:31:45.300
know what I'm saying? Like, there's nothing I put ahead of, I think hip hop is a religion.
01:31:49.600
I mean, what, aside from like the quote unquote traditional religions, name something that's
01:31:56.220
brought more people together from different walks of life worldwide. Man, it's, it's had,
01:32:04.040
it's had quite the impact on this globe, man. You know, music, music has. Yeah. I mean,
01:32:10.300
but, but especially hip hop, because like I said, it's hip hop unified, you know, maybe
01:32:16.040
it was just part of the, just the timing of like, um, when hip hop kind of exploded, you
01:32:21.420
know, onto, onto the scene. But man, it was just a lot of, like I said, a lot of racist
01:32:25.960
hearts, potentially racist hearts that could, or hearts that could have developed into, you
01:32:31.220
know, being exactly what their, their parents and their grandparents, you know, and going
01:32:36.580
on back down the line were in the way they thought, you know what I'm saying? But, um,
01:32:42.640
I know people, you know, that, that, like I said, it might just be that one thing they
01:32:48.380
could hang their hat on. Man, I love podcast so much, you know what I'm saying? I want to
01:32:53.100
be racist, but damn, man. Yeah, man. Like, yeah. Cause then you, cause the, the lesson
01:32:56.940
to be learned is. Yeah. The three, six mafia that shakes me up. Yeah. 1,000%. Like, and
01:33:03.280
the, the lesson to be learned is, is, you know what? There's, we're all human. You know what
01:33:09.280
I'm saying? So we all have flaws and you can't, them sweeping indictments and broad ass generalizations,
01:33:16.920
you know what I'm saying? Trying to lump everybody that looks a certain way into any kind of, you
01:33:21.360
know, like bold that just says, all those people are just like this, you know what I'm
01:33:26.120
saying? That's, I know there's no fruit on that tree. I wish, I wish you could definitely
01:33:30.380
make things easier. Yeah. But, but you know, I, I just don't, you know, I, I have brothers
01:33:35.980
that, that look a lot of different ways. Charlie's my brother. He's, you know, he's a black guy,
01:33:40.600
you know what I'm saying? I, I, I got a lot of black brothers, you know what I'm saying? I
01:33:44.660
got some white brothers too. You know what I'm saying? I got some Mexican, Mexican, Puerto
01:33:48.120
Rican brothers, you know what I'm saying? Oh yeah. And so, you know, that's, I, a brother
01:33:52.840
to me is someone that shares the same ideals and principles that, that I, that I have, that
01:33:57.280
I try to live. Yeah. It's funny, man. I got this new fitness guy or the, this athletic
01:34:02.280
coach, man, this black guy. And I've, man, I just love, he's like, I love being around
01:34:06.820
the dude, bro. Yeah. Energy, man. He, I mean, he like inspires me up. He inspires
01:34:11.760
me. He like, and he's like one of the best fitness coaches, man. That's what a trainer's
01:34:15.240
got to be too, man. He got to make you just want to be there, like to be near it and just
01:34:19.300
get in, get in the thick of the shit with it. Yeah. He does that, but it also, it's on
01:34:22.600
like even more of just like a, I don't know. Right in general. Yeah. It's like, man, it
01:34:26.600
makes me, I feel inspired by him. That's awesome, man. That's great, man. I love, I love
01:34:32.640
being, like, that's really my, that's my drug. That's my true drug. That's the reason
01:34:37.560
I would ever do drugs or, you know what I'm saying? Like, because I don't, man, if I'm
01:34:42.400
inspired, if, man, there's not much I couldn't do, bro. You know what I'm saying? Like, if
01:34:46.680
I'm inspired, I really feel like I could have been president or something. Like, but if I'm
01:34:50.100
not inspired, you might want to get somebody else to help you carry the groceries in from
01:34:54.360
the car. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm pretty useless.
01:34:57.960
At, um, so after, so going through, do you feel like that having a,
01:35:02.640
addiction and struggling with it that it had an effect on your career? Do you feel
01:35:05.960
like your career has played out just kind of how it has?
01:35:09.120
Yeah, it's 100% because, um, first of all, right after New Booty and after that, that
01:35:15.940
because that was a top one, that was like a. Oh, no, that was a number one record, man.
01:35:19.720
Like, like, I, you know, my Wikipedia, there's some. Oh, I didn't even look at your
01:35:24.480
Wikipedia. Well, I've tried to change stuff on there, man. Like, I don't, they change it
01:35:27.680
back. It's just crazy. Oh, they're fucking, that's a mafia, bro. I don't know what's going
01:35:31.360
on with that. But anyway, and I'm not fucking five, nine either.
01:35:34.680
And take that ugly ass picture off of there. Bro, my picture's horrible, bro. Bring my
01:35:39.400
shit up, bro. It's the worst. Look at my Wikipedia, dude. I don't look like that.
01:35:42.520
Look, let Charlie decide who uglier. You know what I said? Whoever's uglier. Whoever controls
01:35:46.460
the gates of my page, I must have fucked their girlfriend or something at some point. Like,
01:35:50.060
I'm sorry. I didn't know. Who's the bad? Both of us got a bad one. Look at this picture. Look
01:35:55.980
at it right down on the right. Oh, dang, bro. Click on it. Oh, my God. Dude, you look like
01:36:01.420
a hitman at an Asian restaurant, bro. Damn, bro. Vladimir. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You look like
01:36:08.880
a Russian. It's like I'm in America trying to kind of dress cool, but like, it's like flea market
01:36:12.940
shit. Like, now bring mine out there. My shit looks horrible too, bro. I look like
01:36:18.720
I've been struggling, man. Damn, my shit hugger look bad. Damn, look at me. I look fucking
01:36:24.440
retarded, bro. It just don't look like you. I look mentally retarded, bro. No offense if
01:36:29.360
anybody's retarded, bro. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, I am sometimes. Me too.
01:36:33.260
What do you remember when you took that picture? I just remember. I look at my, I look at them
01:36:37.080
cross-eyed. I look something wrong with me. I wonder how old that picture was. It was probably
01:36:41.900
six years ago. Shit, I mean, that picture of me, that's another, that's the fucked up
01:36:46.260
part about it. You got a nice outfit on. 2005, yeah, but I, like, you always say, like, he's
01:36:53.200
like, don't ever shave your fucking beard again. Like, that's what people say. I'm
01:36:56.780
like, well, somebody should have told me that a little earlier in this process. There's
01:36:59.840
a lot of pictures out there of me, but anyway, and I had this egghead, like, I used to have
01:37:04.680
this, I would be lazy and not want to go to the, to the, like, real barber. I'm big
01:37:08.860
on haircuts and shit now, but, uh, I just shaved my own head, you know, like, down to
01:37:13.520
the scalp. Oh, yeah, to do whatever. Yeah, I cut my hair for, like, probably 32 years,
01:37:17.200
man. Yeah, man, that's, you know, but it's. Or whenever I could, so probably only about
01:37:20.660
16 years. But, man, you, uh, you don't look bad there. I feel like I look bad, but I feel
01:37:27.120
like right there, you just don't look like you. It just didn't, that doesn't even look
01:37:30.580
like you. Yeah, I went through a period I was trying to fit in in Hollywood and look more
01:37:33.740
clean cut. Yeah, you look like, uh, you know what you look like? You look like, uh, Dane
01:37:37.720
Cook's, like, little brother, out-of-shape brother or something like that. Yeah, like
01:37:40.900
Shane Cook. Shane Cook. He look like, uh, Dude Daddy. Who? Uh, Blow Move, John Depp Daddy.
01:37:49.200
He don't look like Ray Liotta. Man, right there on that part right there. Oh, I could maybe
01:37:53.080
see him. Yeah, I seen him. Like, the younger, like, Goodfellas Ray Liotta. I can kind of
01:37:57.400
see that. Yeah, kind of good. Rest in peace, Ray Liotta, by the way. I know, nobody even
01:38:02.100
cared that he died, bruh. That's just the world we fucking live in, man. Nobody even
01:38:06.000
cared. These days, nobody, it's like, it used to be like, man. It's just like, even
01:38:09.120
a hit song now, man. It's like, you know, it goes up to, yeah, it's like, you get a
01:38:13.340
week, you know what I'm saying? And then everybody's on to something else. Well, dude, I remember
01:38:16.400
we went camping one time when I was a kid with, like, uh, Boy Scouts or somebody. I
01:38:20.680
don't know. Could have just been a damn pedophile, bruh. Oh, Lord. But we was out there.
01:38:24.180
Oh, Lord. And, uh, I told everybody before we left, I said, you know, Jay Leno died. And they
01:38:30.080
didn't have any social media. And so everybody, the whole weekend was like, damn, Jay Leno
01:38:33.860
died, man. And people were talking about it. Some guy, some, some kid's dad was even crying
01:38:39.080
about it. And then we got back and everybody's like, this motherfucker lied, bruh. But nobody
01:38:44.240
knew for three days, but it was like, wow. What's the point of doing that? Like, I think
01:38:48.540
just, I wanted to create some ambiance or something, you know, and, uh, create some like, uh, what
01:38:54.080
do you call it? Like, uh, not nostalgia, but like morale, like everybody. Yeah. We're in
01:38:58.100
this, huh? Let's do it for Jay. Yeah. And, uh, but I don't know what I was even talking
01:39:03.820
about, but, uh, so take me through. Yeah. So let's just, so I want to be able to relate
01:39:08.560
a lot of our audience struggles with, uh, addiction and just different things. That's
01:39:12.360
a lot of our audience. A lot of people do nowadays, you know, they were saying the other
01:39:16.420
day, uh, 70% of, uh, of adults in America are on one medication or at least one medication.
01:39:23.700
Um, so what effects did you feel like it had on you as you started to realize?
01:39:29.460
Man, all right. So the, so when I first went to rehab and I got out, like that was the height
01:39:34.600
of my career, you know what I'm saying? I just, you know. How hard was it to be in rehab
01:39:38.280
while your career was going? Well, I mean, at the height. That's the time when I was like,
01:39:41.640
like trying to fuck everything with a, with a vagina and breasts and stuff like, you know
01:39:46.400
what I'm saying? So I was kind of on that tip. Like I, I remember like, but that's when
01:39:50.940
I honestly, when I got over, um, you know, being a homophobe, you know, because there
01:39:57.400
were a lot of people, you know, I kind of went down there on some arrogant stuff. I'm
01:40:00.160
withdrawing and I'm like, yeah, I heard y'all like to make people rule with gay people
01:40:05.020
too. Put me in no room with no gay people. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I was, man,
01:40:08.960
I'm from, you know what I'm saying? I'm from the South, man. Like I, I'm, I'm pretty
01:40:13.700
enlightened guy, but I just, I'd never been around any gay people to be honest with you.
01:40:17.380
Oh yeah. Yeah. I remember we wasn't around any gays until later.
01:40:20.680
So we fear what we don't, you know, what we haven't been exposed to, what we don't
01:40:23.900
understand, what just a certain like, um, presentation and depiction of something
01:40:28.800
that we received. And, you know, and one of the, you know, coolest, a couple of cool
01:40:34.480
cats that I was in, in, uh, in treatment with were gay, man. And they, some of the best
01:40:39.400
people I've ever known to this day. And it just, you know what I'm saying? It's like, I was
01:40:43.720
always so focused on black folks and white folks. Cause that's really what I was, you
01:40:48.020
know, in the, in the mud with, you know what I'm saying? And so, but then I would be, could
01:40:53.020
be judgmental in some other way to some other group of people. It just, it was just so flawed
01:40:57.460
me, you know what I'm saying? But, but I'm being around that experience and, and, uh,
01:41:01.960
and meeting those guys and then countless other gay folks since then that, that I've, that
01:41:06.840
I've had the pleasure of knowing, you know, it's, I'm just not fucked up with it. I don't
01:41:10.660
care. As long as you don't harm, um, children, elderly people, mentally handicapped people,
01:41:16.820
animals, or just people that can't defend themselves. I'm not really judging a lot in
01:41:21.980
this world. You know what I'm saying? Cause I don't know what the hell you've been through.
01:41:24.880
You know what I'm saying? I don't know what it's like inside your head and what your experiences
01:41:27.640
have shaped you into, into becoming, you know what I'm saying? So, but there's just certain
01:41:31.940
lines you can't cross, you know what I'm saying? And that's just the way it is.
01:41:34.900
Cause if you do, we got to get you out of here. You know what I'm saying? Like you
01:41:38.160
can't be messing with children and, you know, you just can't be, you know, just, just, um,
01:41:44.000
recklessly go, you know, just pillaging humanity, you know, helpless humanity. But, um, so after
01:41:52.820
you went to the rehab, yeah, I blamed the music industry and music for, so I went two years
01:41:59.100
without doing music. Then I didn't go really go to the studio one day. I was going to NA
01:42:04.660
meetings. I mean, I was going to, you know, uh, 12 step recovery meetings and, um, were
01:42:11.320
you getting better? Yeah, I was, but, but at the same time I wasn't, I was pretty much
01:42:17.500
just, I had some pretty good at that time I had some pretty good recovery. Um, but you
01:42:23.200
know what it was, man, I just wasn't, I was just sitting there, you know, and it got to a
01:42:28.640
point where I started going to do shows and it was kind of tormenting, like, you
01:42:33.880
know, going in these clubs and, and just not being that, that, uh, atmosphere of recovery
01:42:40.800
internally. It just, it just got weaker and weaker and weaker. And, but it got to the point
01:42:45.880
where clean and sober, like I really wanted to check out of here, you know what I'm saying?
01:42:50.140
Because it just, I guess I just hadn't stuck around long enough for the, for that no spiritual
01:42:56.540
change to happen or whatever, even though it was, you know, a long time, you know what
01:43:02.080
I'm saying? Over a year. And, um, I don't know. I just, it just was really, really excruciating
01:43:09.560
and I was just white knuckling it. And I mean, finally I was just, I had no, it was either
01:43:14.860
pick up a pistol or pick up a drink, you know? And, um, but you know, I can, I can say that
01:43:20.840
like, you know, I, then the next time it was like drinking really became an issue. You know
01:43:27.420
what I'm saying? I didn't go back to the pills or anything like that, but you know, being an
01:43:32.180
addict, like I'll make anything enough if that's, if that's all there is, you know what
01:43:36.700
I'm saying? Or if I, if I've got myself convinced that that's all, um, you know, all that, that
01:43:42.340
I, that I can allow myself to do, you know, I can make anything literally like sex, you
01:43:48.120
know, like any external thing, man. Like if, if I like something, I'm probably going to
01:43:53.460
do it till it makes me sick. You know what I'm saying?
01:43:55.880
Yeah. Meet the, yeah, man. I can do that. I can totally relate to that, man. I will find
01:44:01.080
anything to take me out of the present moment, you know, to kind of take me away from having
01:44:04.940
the McRibs are back for a month. I'm just going to eat them until I vomit McRib every, you
01:44:09.600
know what I'm saying? Whatever. You know what I'm saying? Like I just, oh man,
01:44:12.320
if you had that new, this or that, this new thing Taco Bell's got, you know, I'm going
01:44:15.800
to go, if I like it, I'm just going to eat it until I hate it. Yeah. You know, a person,
01:44:20.680
a woman like, come here. Oh, I love you. I love you. I love you. You know what I'm
01:44:24.420
saying? Like, oh, we hate each other cause you know, cause we're toxic and you know,
01:44:29.060
we're, we're like around each other too much and you know what I'm saying? It's like we melt
01:44:34.320
into each other and you don't, you've lost perspective on who you are as a person. I, you know,
01:44:38.380
because we, I just wanted to just give me, give me, give me, you know what I'm saying?
01:44:42.860
Fill up this hole inside of me, you know? And, and, uh, as I've learned, you know, that hole
01:44:48.240
can only be filled with, you know, the spiritual component really like when that can mean a lot
01:44:52.900
of different things to a lot of different people. But, uh, cause really all, I think all we want
01:44:57.360
is peace, you know, this wasn't peace, man. You know, at this point, I, I, I don't know.
01:45:03.780
I, I just, I know that I have given a lot to my addiction. You know what I'm saying? I, I can't
01:45:09.440
say I lost it to my addiction. I say, you know, I volunteered, you know what I mean? Yeah. But, um,
01:45:14.260
but at the same time, like I, I couldn't just, because it's been what it's been, I couldn't
01:45:20.040
imagine it any other way. You know what I'm saying? Because I don't know, you know, my best
01:45:24.800
friend, big Steve always says that, you know, when he went into rehab the first time and
01:45:29.840
he's been, he went to rehab one time and he's been sober. So he, oh six, so 16 years. I mean,
01:45:36.020
he works in recovery. Oh wow. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and he quit playing football and, you know,
01:45:43.740
and started a whole new life. And he says, if I kept playing, if I hadn't just like abruptly
01:45:49.080
just started a whole new chapter, he said, I wouldn't have been able to stay sober, you know,
01:45:53.640
but me, because you don't, it's not like Brett Favre. If your body starts letting you down
01:45:58.880
and you age out of, you know, making music, you still in it. Yeah. And so like, you know,
01:46:02.920
I, I kept going, you know, it's just like, I don't know what else to do. It's like, you
01:46:08.620
know, it's just so it's ingrained in me, man. It's just a fun, like I said, a function of
01:46:13.140
my spirit. And so then you start going back to other parts, you know, of it as far as like
01:46:18.060
doing because I really, the studio I can handle, but it's, it's that road, man. It's hard. Yeah.
01:46:24.420
That road is, is what's going to ultimately always take me back, back to, to drinking and
01:46:29.320
you know, then ultimately some type of drug or whatever. Yeah. You know, that's one of
01:46:33.600
the toughest things, man. I was, uh, I was in so much pain. I remember sitting in my, in
01:46:38.840
my garage one day and saying, man, I'm just, I wasn't even doing anything. I was just sick
01:46:44.720
of myself. Yeah. I was like, man, I'm so, how do I, I'm just, I am literally sick of
01:46:53.620
myself. Man, I love myself. All I could think about was myself and it was kill. It was just
01:46:57.640
like, I don't know what it was, man. I'm so, I'm in awe of how great I can be, like how
01:47:02.560
amazing I can be. Yeah. And I'm in awe of the piece of shit that I can be as well. You
01:47:06.520
know what I'm saying? And it's like, it's crazy, man. I just, I, I know other people must
01:47:12.380
be like, what the fuck is wrong with you, man? Because like, you know, because people,
01:47:17.560
the people closest to me have been experiencing it just like I have, but even me, I'm like,
01:47:21.500
what the fuck? You know what I mean? Cause I've never, the only thing I've ever been consistent
01:47:25.560
at is being inconsistent. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And, uh, I don't know what it
01:47:30.000
is, man. It's just something about something within me. It's like, uh, I had a therapist,
01:47:35.780
shout out to Richard Lee, Richard Lee Nielsen in Atlanta. He said, um, he called it the
01:47:40.020
saboteur. You know what I'm saying? Like this, there's just something in it. He said,
01:47:44.000
you just, there's a part of you, you know, inside of you that just wants you to be unhappy.
01:47:49.060
Just, there's a part of you that wants you to be unhappy. So like, that's like the self
01:47:54.620
destruct mechanism, like things are going great. You know what I'm saying? Met this new
01:47:58.460
girl, you know, got this new situation, whatever things are going great. Ooh, things are going
01:48:02.780
great. I need to fuck some shit up. You know what I mean? Like, and it's not a conscious
01:48:06.900
thing. Yeah. It's not even a conscious thing. That's what's amazing sometimes is I got this
01:48:11.940
little motherfucker inside of me that wants to, you know, just likes to get it riled
01:48:16.140
back up. Yes. It's the same reason why I told people Jay Leno died, man. It really
01:48:21.320
is, bro. But it really is. It's because something inside of me, there needs to be, I need something
01:48:29.500
to be messed up. Cause it's the, I gotta have somebody to fight. You know what I'm saying?
01:48:34.060
Like an idea that I'm fighting. Like that's the, if I don't have that, I'm pretty much
01:48:38.100
useless. Like if I gotta have the edge, you know what I'm saying? Something to light that
01:48:41.620
fire. You know what I'm saying? I've made up stuff and trick myself into thinking shit
01:48:46.180
and whatever, like just to come on, let's get going. But yeah, that's crazy, man.
01:48:51.040
But it's funny because it's, it might be just, this is exactly the way ever. That's why a lot
01:48:57.480
of times I believe I am exactly where I'm supposed to be because even if I behave that way,
01:49:02.620
that's the same way I behave that got me to where. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The double
01:49:08.060
edged sword. You know what I'm saying? And I think about that all the time too. It's
01:49:11.840
like that it serves us and it just, it destroys us too. Like it's like balance, I think is
01:49:17.460
the thing that if we have like an ultimate purpose as far as internally, what I feel like
01:49:22.100
we're supposed to accomplish while we're here is to learn some balance. You know what I'm
01:49:27.960
saying? Like in some, some discipline, you know, like they say, we're going to suffer
01:49:32.280
pain. It's either the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. And I've suffered the
01:49:36.320
pain of discipline at times and I, and I reap the benefits and I, and, and I've not been
01:49:41.920
disciplined at times, you know, and, and unavoidably the other pain of regret, man.
01:49:48.020
Yeah. It's hard, man. It's also hard, you know, it's not also like it's easy, but I, man,
01:49:54.420
I can just totally relate. You know, and nobody's got like, everybody is, is saddled
01:49:58.160
with something, you know what I'm saying? So just because a person doesn't have the
01:50:02.460
same issues that I have and that's, that's, you know, that's true humility. You know
01:50:06.740
what I'm saying? Is that self-awareness of understanding that, you know, I used to think
01:50:10.220
humility was like acting inferior when you really thought you were superior, like being
01:50:14.820
sheepish, like, Oh no, this whole thing, you know, or just whatever. Like, no, I'm not,
01:50:20.180
I'm not cute, whatever the fuck, you know what I'm saying? Just not, not taking compliments
01:50:24.000
well, all that kind of shit. Like that's being humble to me, you know what I'm saying?
01:50:27.080
Like, um, but I've, I've come to learn, you know, as I've grown and experienced life
01:50:33.620
that, um, humility is more like just kind of like a true understanding of self. Like
01:50:40.240
I got some good qualities about me, you know what I'm saying? I got some good shit going
01:50:43.680
on, man, but I also got some, some fucked up shit like that I need to work on, you know
01:50:48.620
what I'm saying? And I'm in the process with it, with, with working on those things and I'm
01:50:53.580
okay with where I'm at. And I understand that I'm no better or worse than anybody else.
01:50:57.620
You know what I'm saying? People just have, some people don't ever identify their strengths,
01:51:02.680
you know, or, you know, they, it doesn't register with them that, dang, this is how I can benefit
01:51:08.120
from my strengths. You know what I'm saying? Like I can make a living or help others or whatever,
01:51:13.340
you know what I'm saying? And so they just never turn them up or, or like shine that light
01:51:17.540
on them and get them all the way, you know, hitting on all cylinders. But you know, I,
01:51:22.260
I've just been in instances where other people, you know, like I'm good in a social setting,
01:51:28.420
you know what I'm saying? Like a cocktail, I'm a cocktail party superstar, you know what
01:51:32.520
I mean? Like, you know, just, I can shoot the shit with anybody, man. I get that from my
01:51:36.280
pops, man. And, um, and so people that aren't good in those types of settings that, that aren't
01:51:43.020
like personable people like that. I used to kind of maybe like look down on them a little
01:51:47.900
bit. Like, oh man, you just ain't fly with it. Like me, you know what I'm saying? Like
01:51:50.920
until I was in a situation, I'm not going to speak on what the, what the situation exactly
01:51:57.180
entailed, but where I was completely lost and a person that maybe I looked down on because
01:52:04.520
they didn't have a social quote unquote social skills that I had was in their element and it
01:52:10.400
saved my ass big time. You know what I'm saying? And it just, that just further like hammered
01:52:15.160
that point home. Like we all, we all got some shit that, that, that we're good at. You know
01:52:20.220
what I'm saying? We all got some shit we need to work on, man. We're all humans, you know,
01:52:23.280
it's, it's all going to need each other. Yeah. I mean, I promise you we are, man. I know. I
01:52:28.180
promise you, you know what I'm saying? It's just like anytime, whatever group that you
01:52:31.700
say, you know, like they're the problem. I promise you, you're going to be in a situation
01:52:36.860
where you need somebody from that group. I promise you, I've seen it too
01:52:40.360
many times. I mean, it's just, that's just the way the universe sorts shit out or God
01:52:44.840
sorts, sorts things out. Like however you want to look at that, you know, but I've seen
01:52:48.840
it pop up repeatedly in my life and just, you know, other people that wanted to be judgmental,
01:52:55.580
you know, cause we just, we all, it makes us feel better to some degree to be able to
01:52:59.040
just blame other people for, you know, something that is not going right, you know, in our own
01:53:04.420
lives, but you know, it's bullshit. Life just gone life, man.
01:53:07.900
Yeah. And it's interesting, like you said, in the beginning, like if you could look at
01:53:11.640
life through a whole spectrum of time, it's unfortunate. We're only able to see life a
01:53:16.420
lot of times, but a lot of us are just as right now, we're not able to see the past 3000 years.
01:53:22.720
We're not able to see it. It's always right now.
01:53:24.960
Right. And if we could get a whole, if we could really spend life like this and look at the
01:53:29.620
spectrum of things, it would give us all a unique perspective. And maybe that's the perspective
01:53:33.800
that's coming along in the future, like you were saying. Yeah. Cause I think even like
01:53:37.400
when I was talking about like visiting battlefields of old battles and stuff, I think there's obviously
01:53:42.120
becomes like a sicko element to it. They just go back and just like, they're just there with
01:53:47.060
like this hot chick or something. You know what I mean? I'm going to take this broad out to
01:53:51.500
the, uh, to the Ying dynasty or something. Now this joke is going to figure out, not even that
01:53:56.020
though, but like people going back in time, like jerking off. Yeah. Type shit. Oh, dang,
01:54:05.480
bro. That's going to be sad, man. But that's just humans, man. But you're going to have some
01:54:09.940
dude going back. The ultimate beauty humans, humans, we encompass the ultimate beauty, you
01:54:15.240
know what I'm saying? Like in the ultimate fucking ugliness, man, it's like, you know, our greatest
01:54:20.600
gift is probably like if, if you were some like evolved, like alien species, you know what I'm
01:54:26.180
saying? Look, just looking at us, you'd be so envious of the fact that we can feel the way we
01:54:31.660
feel. Cause if you'd evolved to a point where we can't even feel, yeah, you don't have, there's no
01:54:36.840
love. There's no emotion in you. It's all just like logic and survival. You know what I'm saying?
01:54:42.200
Yeah. Imagine the alien comes back just to see like a mother hug a child. Yeah. Or to see somebody
01:54:47.940
crying because their girlfriend broke up with them. Yeah. And they can't even have
01:54:51.040
tears. And they've actually evolved into just being one gender and they, they like spawn every
01:54:55.880
spring. And that's how the new, you know, the new, the gene pool, like that's how the
01:55:00.140
new, new booty, new people come. Yeah. Like, so there's no, it's just one gender. Like it
01:55:05.440
evolved into that. Like that's ultimately what it feels like we're kind of being prompted
01:55:09.000
towards, you know, but, um, somebody come all the way back in time just to see a breast
01:55:13.680
or a, somebody's dick. Yeah. Cause they don't have it. Just envious of just like, but also
01:55:19.460
like, man, y'all are stupid as hell. Yeah. You know what I mean? Y'all feel shit. Why
01:55:24.320
y'all want to feel shit? Y'all still feeling? Yeah. Damn, y'all, that's so played out. Man.
01:55:29.020
Look at these people still feeling. That's why y'all keep damn blowing up shit and doing
01:55:32.760
everything is y'all being y'all's feelings and shit, you know? So there's something to be said
01:55:36.660
for, you know, you couldn't imagine a life without emotion and feelings and cause it kind
01:55:41.060
of what drives us, you know what I'm saying? But I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's just the
01:55:46.500
double-edged sword that pretty much comes along with anything. If you think about it. Like,
01:55:50.860
dude, I think, uh, you have such a, I just am fascinated by your perspective, man. The,
01:55:57.240
the perspectives you've been able to live through and the perspective that you've been able to,
01:56:01.920
uh, um, not create for yourself, but, uh, learn and evolve into as you've, as you've, uh,
01:56:12.220
grown around. I don't rule anything out, man. And I, and I just, I, I'm teachable. You know
01:56:17.240
what I'm saying? That's one thing that I, I committed to, to always just be coachable and
01:56:20.720
teachable because please present me with some, I beg anyone out there, present me with some
01:56:26.040
new information that either improves upon some bad or dated information that I'm using. You know
01:56:32.680
what I'm saying? Like, please give me some new information. If my information's wrong,
01:56:37.500
I welcome it. I encourage it. I need it. You know what I'm saying? So, and, and sometimes it may not
01:56:42.540
come from the people that you would want it to come from and the way you would want it to come,
01:56:46.300
but Hey, I can't tell help how to help me. You know what I'm saying? Like, so, you know,
01:56:51.080
and that's just, and it's just about, I just wish more people would just be unconditionally
01:56:55.340
open-minded, you know, because man, it's just, I, you know, I, I got into astrology recently,
01:57:01.820
you know, or in the past couple of years and really started learning more about it. Even
01:57:06.580
though for most of my life, I was like, you know, whatever. I just use it as a way to pick
01:57:10.600
up girls. What's your son? What's your son? Or look at that. A conversation starter, but
01:57:15.340
it's starting to make sense to me that in the future, it could be certain aspects of astrology
01:57:23.700
could be looked at as science because it only makes sense to me that now, if you were born
01:57:28.600
at a certain time of year, in a certain place, the air pressure was, you know, this at that
01:57:34.220
time, the humidity level, like all these things that we may not know, they could have a major
01:57:39.720
impact on, on the way a human mind and body and spirit develops. You know, I just think
01:57:46.960
that it's, that it's going to be in the future at some point, it's going to be a lot more
01:57:50.980
credence to stuff like that. You know what I'm saying? Like, and, and I think whereas
01:57:54.940
religion, not religion, I don't even, religion is just some man made, in my opinion, just
01:58:01.980
something that man made as a way to, you know, to try and connect to a higher power.
01:58:08.300
Yeah. But, but, but I don't even think it was that I think man can connect to a higher
01:58:13.320
power by himself, you know, or by herself. But I think in some ways, religion was just
01:58:19.600
to control people. You know what I'm saying? It's like, um, when you look at like various
01:58:25.600
religious institutions, I mean, it's hard to say that I, what did they say in that movie?
01:58:32.660
The, um, the Da Vinci Code or something like that.
01:58:37.320
Well, he was like, he was like, um, asked the guy about God and he said, no, don't tell
01:58:42.460
me what, what man has told you about God. Tell me what you think about God. You know what I'm
01:58:47.880
saying? And it's like, man, it's like any, anything I'm told by a man, I'm just, I'm
01:58:53.360
just no men are flawed. You know what I'm saying? Men and women are very flawed. So, you know,
01:58:58.200
who knows what kind of bullshit might be attached to, you know, the reason that they're telling
01:59:02.140
me this, you know, and that's not to say that I'm just would rule it out, but it's just
01:59:06.040
to say, I can't just accept it as just what it is, as my concrete fundamental truth, you know,
01:59:11.720
but, you know, religion's helped a lot of people, you know what I'm saying? And, you
01:59:15.800
know, my, I come, my mother and father are Christian, you know, and I, and I, I'm a Christian,
01:59:20.580
I would say, you know what I'm saying? But, um, I'm just not going to just, you ain't going
01:59:26.540
to just piss down my back, tell me it's rain and me be like, okay, no, it's rain. You
01:59:30.060
know, I'm going to investigate things for myself. I'm going to think for myself.
01:59:36.540
Yeah, it's warm. And why three y'all standing back there, man? Why three or four y'all
01:59:43.660
I know y'all been drinking damn beer all day. Like y'all ain't got out the pool one
01:59:47.480
time, bro. I've got, you and Riff Raff got to get together and talk, man. I would listen
01:59:59.820
Dude. Uh, yeah, I just, uh, I feel so grateful to have gotten to spend time with you and, um,
02:00:04.920
yeah, it means a lot, man, that we finally got to do this cause it's a long time coming
02:00:09.600
Yeah. We should go have something y'all going to eat or something.
02:00:13.080
We'll go right down the street. If you want to check out more music, what else is, what
02:00:18.260
I mean, honestly, I've, I've put out music with the exception of the two years that I was,
02:00:22.960
that I was talking about, which really set me back. Cause that was at a time when the
02:00:26.320
internet was starting to dictate, um, music, musical styles and trends evolving at a much
02:00:31.800
more rapid rate. So, and that was like the worst time to take two years off. So it took
02:00:36.600
me a while to just get caught up. And, and I honestly, I feel like I'm better now than
02:00:40.540
I've ever been. You know, I was blessed to work with some really great producers early
02:00:43.760
on. And, and so I was good, you know, always, but I benefited from working with some great
02:00:49.600
people, you know what I'm saying? Whereas now I'm kind of like able to be a more self
02:00:53.700
contained entity, you know, almost I can go in the studio by myself and, and, and
02:00:58.760
right ahead. You know what I'm saying? Like every aspect of it. But, um, I'm putting
02:01:03.400
out music pretty consistently, man. Like I'm about to, I'll get kind of like in a lull
02:01:08.300
for a year or so, you know, maybe do some other stuff and then just at some point I'm
02:01:13.600
gonna get riled back up on it, man. Cause it just calls me, you know what I'm saying?
02:01:17.080
It's, it's, it's that real to me. And you know, you're fortunate as long as I'm breathing
02:01:21.980
on this planet, if you, if you like listening to my music, if it just doesn't make you
02:01:26.960
vomit, you know what I'm saying? I, the good news is I'm, as long as I'm breathing,
02:01:31.440
as long as my mental faculties will allow me to do so, I'm going to be rapping.
02:01:35.620
Are there other, uh, yeah, cause there's no one that sound, there is no one still that
02:01:42.420
sounds like you. I was listening to a bunch of your music this week and there was, uh,
02:01:46.440
there's, I can't even explain it. And I don't think it needs to be explained. That's
02:01:51.060
Well, you know, man, it's like what I like about the way you do your thing, man, is it's like
02:01:54.920
the, honestly, the first episode I ever saw was Boosie.
02:02:01.000
And it was just dope, man. I was like, well, this is weird to me. Like, why is, like, this
02:02:05.560
is just strange to me. And then you started talking and realizing from Baton Rouge, like
02:02:08.940
everything. And I was like, this is fucking new South as fuck, man. This is like dope
02:02:14.280
as hell. You know what I'm saying? And I started getting into just the, the authentic
02:02:17.520
way because look, every person that's ever been born into this world has something unique
02:02:22.700
about them that sets them apart from every other person that's ever been born into this
02:02:26.920
world. You know what I'm saying? We all have something in us that just separates us from
02:02:31.500
everybody else. Doesn't make us better or worse. Just makes us us. And to me, great art, whether
02:02:36.820
you're a quarterback, a painter, you know, a musician, a comedian, great art is about the
02:02:43.760
ability to make whatever it is that makes you unique and different from everybody else and
02:02:47.800
special translate into your art. You know what I'm saying? And, and so I just really get
02:02:52.220
off when I, when I encounter people or when, when I'm able to observe cats that, that are
02:02:57.720
doing that, you know what I'm saying? It's like, dang, man, like nobody can compete with
02:03:01.020
that. You know what I'm saying? If you just truly like get in your own lane and keep the,
02:03:05.940
even the attempt to compete with it is a loss, you know what I'm saying? It's like, you know,
02:03:10.380
you just can't be another person, you know? And we're all inspired and influenced by, by
02:03:14.600
others. That's not to say, you know, I have influences, many influences. I get influenced
02:03:20.160
by things every day and I, and I'm not scared to, like I said, acknowledge that. Give me
02:03:24.180
some new information, like, you know, inspire me in a different way, whatever. Yeah. But
02:03:28.000
to really be, it's, that's the scariest thing I think is to try and be yourself. And that's
02:03:34.240
so fascinating. Yeah. So, so when you do finally learn who you really are and embrace it and
02:03:40.220
accept it, you cherish it, man. You know what I'm saying? You cherish it. Like, and, and
02:03:45.280
you definitely, I, I'm, I'm sympathetic and empathetic to people that, that haven't been
02:03:49.840
able to, to, to discover themselves or, or embrace, you know, who they truly are. Because
02:03:54.560
I know people out here that can't, that haven't been able to do it for themselves. So they,
02:04:00.180
they, they, uh, vent that, that angst from not being able to figure it out for themselves
02:04:05.340
by, you know, judging and throwing stones at other people, you know, that, and that's just
02:04:10.580
the way it's going to go, man. You know, it's just hurt people, hurt people, but lost people
02:04:16.140
get people lost. Yeah. I would love to see you. I feel like you have such a calling to
02:04:23.140
be able to just, I mean, you always, you're already doing it, but your ability to communicate,
02:04:27.040
man, is really strong. And it's not a, I didn't know, I didn't have a super strong idea of what
02:04:33.420
you would be like as a human outside of what I've seen of you or heard of your music. I've done a pretty
02:04:37.600
bad job, honestly, of just, you know, I've, I've kind of hidden, you know, it's been, it's been a
02:04:44.840
rough, you know, like I'd say last five years and I was, you know, us being, you know, the way we are
02:04:52.160
as, as, you know, addicts or, or whatever it is that we're saddled with or blessed with, however
02:04:58.720
you want to look at that. We isolate, you know what I mean? Oh yeah, man. You know, and I, I get away
02:05:03.820
from, from people and places and things or anything that could potentially cause more discomfort,
02:05:09.820
you know, that, that gnawing self-centered fear, that fear of nothing in particular is just like,
02:05:15.220
if I go out there, I'm going to melt, you know, like just baseless. But yeah. And I, and I'm,
02:05:21.500
and you know, I got some, some good people I work with, Charlie, you know, it's also a brother of
02:05:26.000
mine, my boy, Boogie Jason, like just people that are some good people around me, man. When,
02:05:30.880
um, when not necessarily, some people left me, a lot of people left, some were justified, some
02:05:36.860
weren't. Um, but there were also a lot of people that I walked away from, you know what I'm saying?
02:05:42.660
I withdrew from everything and everybody at a certain point. And so the people that were still
02:05:48.400
around me, like, and they weren't, that's not something they signed up for, you know what I'm
02:05:52.800
saying? To, to be, to have this responsibility of fucking like salvaging or trying to get,
02:05:58.440
you know what I mean? Oh yeah. Yeah. We're confusing folks, man. You know? And it's like,
02:06:02.360
and it's like, all I can ever promise somebody like that is the goods going out way to bad,
02:06:07.640
but you know, it's, it's, um, I just been blessed, man. Like that man sitting over there,
02:06:12.140
man, I would not be here on this planet breathing. Really? He saved you a couple of times,
02:06:16.580
huh? I mean, not like, not like literally, no, but just, you know what I'm saying? Like
02:06:20.820
just, there was nobody else. Yeah. There was just nobody else. He was just ended up, you
02:06:26.780
know, with that baton. Um, and it's sad cause I don't know sometimes if I could do that is
02:06:32.560
if I'm real, I don't, I don't know if I could love somebody that, you know, cares. Oh, he
02:06:36.020
didn't. I mean, trust me, he didn't want to. Like he, I think he at certain times, you know what
02:06:41.020
I'm saying? Like we done been into it, you know? And, and, uh, but he, you know, he ain't perfect
02:06:45.440
either. You know what I'm saying? So it's like sometimes, sometimes the quote unquote sick one
02:06:50.180
can, you know, can, yeah. Yeah. The sick one gotta be there for the sick one. Yeah. You know,
02:06:55.320
cause we all just some old stupid ass human motherfuckers, man. I'll tell you this. I won't
02:07:01.480
listen to well people a lot of times. I can only hear. That's not like somebody that's bullshitting
02:07:06.500
to me, like a well person. Yeah. I got to hear from somebody that's sick. We were talking about
02:07:12.240
that last night. We were talking about how, you know, just that therapeutic value, you know, of,
02:07:15.880
of one act helping another. Like when you know, somebody has been through that shit, you know,
02:07:20.040
the same, you know, and, and, and just attraction over promotion, you know, just, we were just
02:07:25.020
talking about all these, these different principles and concepts and, and, uh, yeah, I can, I can, you know,
02:07:30.520
God bless anybody that's, this, that's coming from a good place and trying to help, but I really can only
02:07:37.200
be helped by somebody that I, that can relate, you know, cause I've just, you know, we just feel
02:07:43.680
like terminally unique and was it terminally unique and fatally cool or something like that. Like
02:07:49.520
basically like I, I've, as I've always felt like not, did they just, I couldn't just relate to, to
02:07:58.520
people that, that just hadn't experienced like a, and we all experienced pain. That's not what I'm
02:08:04.400
saying. But it's almost like somebody that's like would inflict pain on themselves. Like we do,
02:08:09.600
you know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, yeah, I'm a superior, I'm a superstar with an
02:08:13.960
inferiority complex. I mean, I'm a people pleaser that don't give a fuck when nobody thinks about
02:08:17.840
me. That's the real deal. But the egomaniac with the inferiority complex, egomaniac, the inferiority
02:08:24.380
complex, man. Just a crazy sumbitch. A lot of us are out there, man. And a lot of us don't even know
02:08:29.560
that we have this, that, you know, that they, that they have some element of it. You know,
02:08:33.620
my old sponsor again used to say that he was the people that pick up the drug or the drink or
02:08:40.760
whatever. They're the blessed ones because that gets us that much closer to the solution, whether
02:08:44.980
we pick it up or not. But some people go through their whole lives and they never find the thing
02:08:50.120
that brings everything to a head where they do identify the fact that they got some shit wrong
02:08:54.940
with them. You know what I'm saying? So they just go through their lives red, restless, irritable,
02:08:58.440
and discontent and no idea why. You know what I'm saying? God, that is a, that is almost like a hell.
02:09:05.160
Yeah. I mean, I know, I know some, some people very close to me, I would say they fall into that
02:09:10.420
category and there's just nothing. And they'll talk at you all day about, you know what I mean? Like,
02:09:17.080
you know, you just got to be strong and all this stuff, you know, but it's like,
02:09:20.140
I'm just sitting there seeing the quote unquote disease, like all manifest itself in that person's
02:09:26.380
life. And, and that's just not even a conversation they're willing because they attach it to the
02:09:30.960
drug. You know what I'm saying? Right. You know what I mean? Well, really, that's just a symptom.
02:09:34.880
You know what I'm saying? The product is the, it's the us problem. You know what I'm saying?
02:09:38.180
Oh, I never had an issue with drinking, man. I never, I like, I didn't like drinking. I had to go pee.
02:09:43.080
Like we probably all have to right now. I had to go pee, bro. And I hated having to go pee because I didn't want
02:09:48.740
to miss being around people. Right. And so I never liked drinking, man. Wow. Now I liked something,
02:09:53.440
I did start to like cocaine because it, and drinking was, it took too long to feel some type
02:09:58.980
way. I wanted to, cocaine, it was like, you could feel this, you could feel this. And that hangover
02:10:02.560
is awful though. Oh yeah, it was horrible, but I never, so it took me so long to realize that I had
02:10:07.860
all these alcoholisms, that I had all this restless irritable. I, self and me. Yeah. It took,
02:10:13.900
because there was no, like, it was so hard to pin the tail on the donkey, man. Yeah.
02:10:18.220
Um, cause you want to attach it to a certain substance or something, you know, really it's
02:10:22.580
just, that's your solution for a while. You know what I'm saying? Whatever you pick up that,
02:10:27.920
that gambling, that food is at first it's your solution. It, it quiets the, the beast. You
02:10:34.600
know what I'm saying? Yeah. Cause I don't want to sit here with myself. I don't want to sit in the
02:10:37.940
fucking moment, bro. Because at some point in my life when I was a kid or a baby or whatever,
02:10:42.380
the moment wasn't, it wasn't good for me. Right. So it was not a safe place to be.
02:10:48.700
So anything that keeps me, cause the moment can see you clearly. The moment is a fucking
02:10:54.780
mirror, you know? And I don't want to be right there, man. Cause I don't, you know, I mean,
02:10:59.900
we could go all day about it. I literally just thought that made me break out of sweat.
02:11:03.600
We could go all, we could go all day about it, man. No doubt, man.
02:11:06.140
But look, man, I'd love to chat again sometime. And I just think you have such a, uh, I'm
02:11:11.700
great. I feel grateful to have heard some of the things you said today. And I mean that
02:11:15.200
I appreciate that. And, um, and I'm glad that, you know, we don't, you don't need
02:11:18.820
isolate cause we need you. Thank you, man. Thank you for real Theo. Thank you for giving
02:11:25.460
me this opportunity. Oh yeah, dude, you, you coming in, man. I've had so many people that
02:11:29.300
were so excited, bro. So it's a blessing, man. You know, cause you know, that's another
02:11:33.240
thing too, is just, you know, in your head, you're like, I don't know about it. I got
02:11:36.480
this thing where I think people, when I, at my shows that people pay just cause they hate
02:11:40.980
me, like it's, it's sickness, you know what I'm saying? Utter sickness. So I don't think
02:11:45.420
nobody gives a damn what I got to say or nothing, you know, that's just where it takes me. You
02:11:49.480
know what I'm saying? But it's good. It's good to hear that. And it's good to hear you say
02:11:53.360
all those kind of things. Yeah, man. I just think because there's not, you, there's no
02:12:00.760
other you, man. Like you said a minute ago, there's no, I mean, I look, man, I was listening
02:12:06.260
to some of your verses a couple of days ago and it's like, nobody has whatever this is.
02:12:12.000
Now they have different versions of it and shit and they got newer and older versions.
02:12:15.840
And they got some things I don't have. Right. Agreed. Yeah. But, but I got some, I mean,
02:12:20.040
you know, it was, yeah. I mean, you know, I, I, I, Hey, I'm blessed, you know, and we
02:12:24.840
all are, you know what I'm saying? That's the, that's the unique, that's the great thing
02:12:29.160
about, you know, the, the way humans are set up where our accounts are set up, you know,
02:12:34.460
it's like, man, if you just, we all got some qualities, man, that can, that can be redeemable.
02:12:39.820
You know what I'm saying? It can, we just got to, you know, what we feed will flourish
02:12:44.640
and what we starve will die in our own spirits. Yeah, man. I got to, uh, I got to start feeding
02:12:51.980
the good spots, man. We all do. We, we all got to, you know what I'm saying? That's
02:12:55.720
got to be vigilant as far as that goes. I damn sure I'll tell myself a fucked up story
02:13:00.400
and what they say, whatever story you're telling yourself is true. You know? So, um,
02:13:05.760
I know when I get tired of living my old story, man, that's what I, you know, I get tired.
02:13:10.560
Sometimes I start to realize, man, is this, you know, whether it was your story or whether
02:13:15.500
it was your truth or not growing up, how long you want to keep telling yourself that just
02:13:20.320
because of what it makes you feel like today? This is just who you are. This is just what
02:13:23.940
it is. You know what I'm saying? That's the big, you know, that's the biggest cop out,
02:13:27.460
you know, and I, and I'm very guilty of it. You know what I'm saying? It's resignation
02:13:30.760
almost, but it's like, but it's hard when it's giving you also the, the flint and the
02:13:36.180
steel. Cause you feel like you're going to lose it all. Yeah. You know what I mean? If I,
02:13:39.780
if I, if I, if I diminish any aspect of it, then it's all gone. If I don't have my story,
02:13:45.600
then who the fuck even am I? And it's kind of, it's kind of happened to me like
02:13:48.740
that before too. Like I just, I'd rather die than I'd rather keep going way beyond
02:13:54.060
the gates of insanity and hell than just sit there mundane and just like, that ain't
02:13:59.260
it, bro. Like that's not, you know, and, and like I said, sometimes maybe I didn't
02:14:04.920
put in enough work, you know what I'm saying? Inside the, you know, the program,
02:14:08.600
whatever, you know what I'm saying? And so I didn't ever reach that point where I
02:14:12.560
could feel that peace and that freedom and, and still have my good shit. And then it's
02:14:17.720
an ongoing process even from there. It's not like it just, it just happens one
02:14:22.860
No, then it's an ongoing process too. And it's like, how much do I want to take
02:14:26.520
care of myself? Cause there's a part of me that don't ever want to take care of
02:14:29.100
myself. Cause it ain't even my fucking job to do it. And that's the part too,
02:14:32.700
inside of me sometimes that, uh, this is somebody else's job. Why do I have to do it
02:14:38.360
every day? You know, I still think like that sometimes. And some of that shit's hard to
02:14:42.340
kill, bro. Um, but I felt like I was in nine meetings today, man.
02:14:47.080
No, that's what I feel like too, bro. I really do. I feel like that too, man.
02:14:49.920
And I've been in the program for five and a half years, six years. And I've only,
02:14:52.960
I'm still on, I just got to step nine two days ago.
02:14:55.940
That's crazy. So we'll see, you know, the, the particular fellowship I was in,
02:14:59.860
like they, just the steps are worked slower, you know what I'm saying? You know,
02:15:04.460
uh, with the workbook and stuff. And, and, uh, that's the fellowship I prefer, but I
02:15:09.580
know like, you know, some of those, some in other fellowships, you know what I'm
02:15:14.060
saying? Like they, like, you know how they used to do in the old days, like you
02:15:17.300
worked all 12 steps over the weekend, you know what I mean? But, um,
02:15:23.160
Yeah. I mean, you know, cause it's, it, when you break it down to its simplest form,
02:15:27.360
you know, what, what the, the, the steps are actually trying to accomplish. Um,
02:15:31.360
it, it, it's really not that complex a process, you know what I'm saying? It's
02:15:35.120
just, um, you know, cleaning up and, you know, and, and, um,
02:15:44.740
Cleaning house, you know, doing, taking a real, realistic inventory of yourself,
02:15:49.220
trying to make amends for the wrong you've done, you know, and, and then trying to
02:15:55.500
Well, you helped me today, Bubba Sparks. Thanks so much for spending time, bro.
02:16:00.360
Hey man, tell Riff Raff, I'm, I'm only, I'm looking for him.
02:16:03.260
I'm going to send him this link, man. He'll fucking love it. He'll love it, bro.
02:16:06.420
He's one of us. Hey, look, he loved to hear his name, you know,
02:16:09.380
he loved to hear people care about him. He's one of us.
02:16:10.980
Man, there's no, it's just, it's a joke that me and him hadn't, you know,
02:16:14.360
that we hadn't, uh, connected already because I know we got several mutual friends and stuff, so.
02:16:22.060
Now I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be.
02:16:32.180
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.
02:16:39.020
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite, and welcome to Kite Club, a podcast where I'll be
02:16:52.840
sharing thoughts on things like current events, stand-up stories, and seven ways to pleasure
02:17:00.260
Sometimes I'll interview my friends. Sometimes I won't. And as always, I'll be joined by the
02:17:10.360
A lot of people are talking about Kite Club. I've been talking about Kite Club for so long,
02:17:18.940
Hi, sweetheart. Here's the deal. Anyone who doesn't listen to Kite Club is a dodgy bloody wanker.
02:17:37.760
Anyway, first rule of Kite Club is, tell everyone about Kite Club. Second rule of Kite Club is,
02:17:43.920
tell everyone about Kite Club. Third rule, like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts,
02:17:51.480
And yes, don't worry. My Brad Pitt impression will get better.