Valuetainment - Episode 387： How Freeway Rick Ross Lost a Billion Dollars

00:00:00.000 30 seconds. One time for the underdog. Ignition sequence start.

00:00:07.000 Let me see you put them up. Reach the sky, touch the stars up above.

00:00:11.120 Cause it's one time for the underdog. One time for the underdog.

00:00:17.340 I'm Patrick Bedevi, your host of AITEM, and in today's episode I sit down with Freeway Rick Ross

00:00:21.500 and talk about how he made nearly a billion dollars in the 80s selling cocaine.

00:00:24.900 And we talk a lot about the African-American community, we talk about what the educational system is doing,

00:00:29.060 and the last 40 minutes could possibly be some of the most emotional 40 minutes of podcasts you can listen to.

00:00:36.180 My sit down with Freeway Rick Ross.

00:00:37.960 Thanks for coming out.

00:00:38.840 Man, I'm glad to be here.

00:00:39.920 It's good to have you out here, man.

00:00:41.080 Wow. I mean, I'm just blown away, man.

00:00:43.220 Yeah, I appreciate you for coming out.

00:00:44.840 You know, I got a lot of directions I want to go.

00:00:47.020 Obviously, I've seen your documentary and I want to talk about a little bit about your story for some that don't know.

00:00:51.920 But there's also an element of it that I want to talk about.

00:00:55.300 Are you familiar with Sammy DeBull Gravano?

00:00:57.300 I heard of Sammy DeBull Gravano.

00:00:57.980 So Sammy DeBull Gravano and I spent some time together.

00:01:00.440 We were having a conversation, and one of the things we talked about is that moment where a kid is growing up.

00:01:09.740 He's innocent.

00:01:10.460 She's innocent.

00:01:11.080 They don't know what's going on.

00:01:12.660 And then all of a sudden, they make a decision to go on.

00:01:15.480 They turn.

00:01:16.020 And it's that DNA.

00:01:18.420 It's that upbringing.

00:01:20.040 It's that fatherless environment.

00:01:21.960 It's that culture.

00:01:23.580 It's that, you know, experiences in life.

00:01:25.740 I kind of want to hear what you think about that.

00:01:27.080 Well, definitely culture.

00:01:28.400 You know, we have to give the environment that we brought up in a lot of credit because, in my personal humble opinion, is that we are an accumulation of everything we saw, heard, and been around.

00:01:43.440 We take all that information, and we try to come up with who we are, and that's what being yourself really is.

00:01:51.940 But, in actuality, you are an accumulation of everything that you've come in contact with and how you took that information and discipled it to be who you thought it should be.

00:02:05.060 So, you do think there's some of it that affects you?

00:02:07.080 I guess the part I would be curious about is how much of it is you're wiring the way you were born, how much of it is upbringing, how much of it is experiences, and what is it like?

00:02:18.740 You know, a Rick Ross in a completely different environment, what direction would you go?

00:02:23.760 Who would you be today?

00:02:24.580 Well, we can tell that now because I'm pretty much directing myself in the directions that I want to go in, and I'm no longer allowing outside forces to direct who I am and where I'm planning on going.

00:02:43.260 I'm old enough now and wise enough to make the decisions.

00:02:46.520 But, you know, with us as human beings, we're being bombarded with people who are trying to control our minds, our bodies, to perform the acts that they want us to perform.

00:03:02.500 I'm curious to hear about that.

00:03:04.940 Well, marketing.

00:03:06.560 You know, marketing is a form of convincing people to do whatever the marketer feel like they should be doing.

00:03:14.340 So let me ask you, before you're going into, you know, the drug route and you're being introduced to it, if I was in high school with you, who was Rick Ross?

00:03:23.240 I was a kid who thought that I was going to one day be playing in Wimbledon or U.S. Open.

00:03:27.380 I had aspirations of being a star tennis player, had never drunk a beer, had never smoked a cigarette, had never hit a joint.

00:03:37.540 Ever?

00:03:38.260 Not at that time, no.

00:03:39.360 Totally a virgin, you know, all the way around, you know, looking for guidings, looking for directions, you know, not knowing what choices I should be making.

00:03:53.180 And had some miscomings as well, you know, had some defects.

00:03:59.300 What I thought was defects but wasn't necessarily defects was a position where I didn't understand the principles and the rules of the game.

00:04:11.660 You know, it's like trying to play football and you've been taught basketball rules.

00:04:15.480 Of our life.

00:04:17.780 Now, your mother wasn't in the picture, obviously, and your father wasn't in the picture at all.

00:04:23.440 No, father wasn't there.

00:04:24.720 So who played the role of a father in your life?

00:04:26.960 Did you have a coach?

00:04:27.640 Did you have a mentor or a teacher?

00:04:28.660 Well, I've had many, many people come into my life and play roles of mentor, fathers, and I've adopted people, you know.

00:04:38.780 Did I pick the right people all the time?

00:04:40.900 No.

00:04:41.780 Now, you went to Dorsey High School, right?

00:04:43.680 Yes.

00:04:43.980 I was telling you earlier, I used to sell memberships at Valley Total Fitness and I would sell them at Foxo's Mall, which Foxo's Mall, you know, a lot of my friends went to Dorsey High.

00:04:51.860 Yeah.

00:04:52.380 And we were talking about Dexter, Sexy Dexter.

00:04:55.300 There was a guy selling memberships.

00:04:57.000 He played baseball.

00:04:57.880 My memory is not really that well from the past.

00:05:01.560 I'm more of a forward thinking guy.

00:05:03.340 Like, I could meet somebody last week and if I run into them again, I probably won't remember who they are.

00:05:09.700 You know, that's one of the reasons that with me, I always try to treat everybody right because if you treat them wrong, you know, you run into them again and you don't know how you treated them.

00:05:18.220 And then they'd be like, it's a funny story, you know, when I first got to prison to Lompoc, USP Lompoc, and I'm walking down the hallway and this guy comes up to me and he's about 6'2", 6'3", and looked like he lives on the weight pile, right?

00:05:33.780 He's all muscle.

00:05:34.480 He looked like that statue right there.

00:05:35.780 Almost that big, too, right?

00:05:39.660 And I'm walking down the hallway and he walks right into me.

00:05:43.680 He walks right into you.

00:05:44.960 Yeah.

00:05:45.500 Intentionally.

00:05:46.180 Intentionally.

00:05:46.980 And he was like, you don't know who I am?

00:05:49.880 And I was like, no, I don't know.

00:05:53.520 I don't know who you are, but I hope I didn't do nothing to you.

00:05:56.160 And it just so happened that he was a young kid that I had met when he was about 14, 15 years old.

00:06:03.060 And I did right by him.

00:06:05.200 And I was so glad that I had.

00:06:08.480 You were glad that you had.

00:06:09.740 Yeah, I was glad that I did right by him because, I mean, he looked like that statue right there.

00:06:14.260 I mean, the one thing with you is you didn't create a lot of enemies, though.

00:06:16.620 People liked you.

00:06:17.540 I mean, even your enemies liked you.

00:06:18.920 I hate enemies.

00:06:19.720 I don't want any enemies.

00:06:20.820 Yeah.

00:06:21.000 I want all friends.

00:06:21.960 What was your strategy for doing that?

00:06:24.360 Is it just, you know, respect everybody?

00:06:25.860 Was it a simple move as that?

00:06:26.420 You got to respect everybody.

00:06:27.940 I mean, if you don't respect everybody, then you're kind of disrespecting yourself because in the big picture, we're all kind of joined together.

00:06:37.000 You know, it's like we're all like sales on this planet that have to function with each other.

00:06:43.300 You know, nobody lives on this planet without help from somebody else, you know, and I learned that at an early age.

00:06:50.180 And that was one of my strong points, you know, just treating everybody the way that I wanted to be treated.

00:06:57.060 Now, so you're going up.

00:06:59.000 You're doing what you're doing with tennis.

00:07:00.600 At what point do you say, I don't know if I got a career with tennis, and then you go a completely different direction.

00:07:05.620 What happened there?

00:07:06.280 Well, it was when I was in the 12th grade.

00:07:09.300 It was getting close to being graduation time, and all my friends were filling out their college papers, and I'm saying, yeah, I'm going to go to college, too.

00:07:18.920 And this coach was like, man, I don't think you're going to make it in college, you know, like, you can't read, you can't write.

00:07:29.980 You can't read, you can't write?

00:07:31.500 Yeah, I couldn't read or couldn't write.

00:07:32.800 At all?

00:07:33.260 At all.

00:07:33.780 Zero?

00:07:34.400 Zero.

00:07:35.520 How did you get to eighth grade or, you know, high school without being able to read or write?

00:07:40.080 This just kept passing me through, you know.

00:07:42.760 I would do just enough to get by, you know.

00:07:44.720 I would cheat off of somebody's paper for a test, a spelling test, or something like that, and it would always be just enough, you know, to get by.

00:07:54.100 And the teachers liked me just enough, you know, to say, you know what, I ain't going to hold him back.

00:07:59.180 I'm going to let him go ahead.

00:08:00.480 And I think a part of their thinking was that they didn't want to hurt me, you know.

00:08:04.720 They didn't want me to be 16 years old in the first grade.

00:08:11.120 16-year-old first grader.

00:08:12.560 You know, because you imagine that you're 16 years old and you're sitting in the first grade in a little bitty chairs.

00:08:19.000 So I felt that the teachers had some sympathy for me.

00:08:25.300 You think that was a good thing?

00:08:26.560 No, no, no.

00:08:27.380 I mean, they could have had sympathy for me and say, you know what, I'm going to spend an extra hour with him.

00:08:33.820 You know, I'm going to spend an extra 30 minutes with him.

00:08:35.840 And I'm going to keep him out of the class and, you know, and show him what the principles that he's missing.

00:08:42.920 Because really, you know, with reading and writing and with anything almost, it's almost principles, you know, learning the fundamentals.

00:08:53.120 You know, I didn't know the fundamentals of reading.

00:08:54.680 I didn't know that you had to sound your words out.

00:08:57.260 And it was only when I was 28 years old, I'm in prison, and I'm looking at a life sentence, that my celly was able to convince me that I could actually read.

00:09:06.840 I didn't believe him.

00:09:07.980 At 28?

00:09:08.740 Yeah, I didn't believe him.

00:09:09.900 But did he spend time with you teaching you?

00:09:11.600 Or was it like self-taught?

00:09:12.540 He did.

00:09:12.940 We were cellies.

00:09:13.620 So, you know, I was in a, we're in a maximum security facility, you know, where you're locked down most of the time.

00:09:23.400 So, we had a lot of time to spend together.

00:09:26.920 And, you know, he saw in me that I had what it took to learn how to read.

00:09:31.800 It took about two weeks.

00:09:33.400 That's it?

00:09:34.080 That's it.

00:09:34.840 So, if the teachers early on would have put that time into you, you would learn how to learn in two weeks?

00:09:38.500 Absolutely.

00:09:40.100 How big of a difference would that have made in your life?

00:09:42.700 Oh, my goodness.

00:09:45.220 Wow.

00:09:45.980 I fell in love with reading.

00:09:47.600 Well, I'm in prison, so, you know, I don't have much to do.

00:09:51.140 You know, you can't chase women in prison.

00:09:54.240 You can't go shoot basketball whenever you want to, or football, or tennis.

00:09:58.220 So, you're kind of confined to this area where reading became my favorite sport.

00:10:05.400 What were some of the best favorite books you read?

00:10:07.540 I know I heard you read 300 books, which is great, but what were some of the books?

00:10:10.760 My favorite books is Richest Man in Babylon.

00:10:14.360 Wow.

00:10:14.840 Great book.

00:10:15.720 Oh, my goodness.

00:10:16.540 I read it over 25 times.

00:10:18.740 Excellent book.

00:10:19.020 Richest Man in Babylon.

00:10:19.860 Yes.

00:10:20.180 And you remember it until today.

00:10:21.700 Oh, man.

00:10:22.260 Come on.

00:10:22.700 And they had that in prison.

00:10:24.140 I bought it.

00:10:24.680 I bought the books.

00:10:26.200 So, when you bought the books, they sent it to you?

00:10:28.180 Yeah, they would send it to me.

00:10:29.280 What else?

00:10:29.660 So, Richest Man in Babylon is an incredible book.

00:10:31.640 What else would you say?

00:10:32.620 Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

00:10:34.160 One of the 40 million copies sold.

00:10:36.940 No, 100 and something million.

00:10:38.060 He even sold over 100 million copies.

00:10:40.120 100 million, maybe 60 million is underground, but I do know that number's a high number.

00:10:45.440 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:10:45.960 So, what else?

00:10:46.460 What other books?

00:10:47.420 Did you read Psycho-Cybernetics?

00:10:49.680 I didn't read that.

00:10:50.700 Okay.

00:10:51.040 Because it's part of that same family.

00:10:52.640 Yeah.

00:10:53.200 Yeah.

00:10:54.060 As a Man Think.

00:10:55.520 Great book.

00:10:56.220 By James Allen.

00:10:57.260 It's a great, it's an easy book.

00:10:58.540 After I read those three books, I really didn't need to read anything else.

00:11:02.040 I mean, I don't know.

00:11:02.980 Did you get to read the article they did on me in LA Magazine?

00:11:05.540 This is not Webb.

00:11:06.400 You're not talking about Webb's articles.

00:11:07.820 No, this is Jesse Katt.

00:11:09.320 Jesse Katt is the guy LA Times hired to go against Gary Story.

00:11:13.380 Remember, they did a rebuttal to Gary Story.

00:11:16.100 I mean, I read stories.

00:11:17.140 So, if this is one, I don't remember what publication it was.

00:11:19.100 No, no, this is a different one.

00:11:19.600 This came after I got out of prison.

00:11:21.460 Okay, 99.

00:11:22.180 In 99, he wrote what he called my obituary.

00:11:25.880 Basically, he was saying that the world was tired of me dreaming and they wasn't going

00:11:30.160 to be hearing from me no more.

00:11:32.920 But in 2013, he had to rewrite the story.

00:11:37.880 And inside of that story, he was talking about when I was in prison, how he thought I'd lost

00:11:43.800 my mind because I'm talking about how I'm going to be getting out and all the things I'm going

00:11:47.360 to be doing.

00:11:47.840 I'm going to be speaking at colleges.

00:11:50.660 You're telling him this.

00:11:51.820 Yeah, I'm telling him what, this is what I'm going to be doing when I get out.

00:11:55.020 How much of it is inspired by Richest Man in Babylon?

00:11:57.400 Thinking Grow Rich.

00:11:58.240 All of it.

00:11:58.440 All of it.

00:11:59.220 Because what I had did, those books allowed me to go back all my life and find out how

00:12:04.900 I got in prison.

00:12:05.560 So, you know, going back to the question I was asking is, what can happen to change the

00:12:11.100 direction of a Rick Ross at 10, at 12, at 11?

00:12:15.780 Whichest Man in Babylon would have changed it.

00:12:16.980 That's what I'm saying.

00:12:17.940 So, instead of reading, that was then, this is now, or Mice of Man.

00:12:23.840 I didn't care why Jack and Jill was going up the hill.

00:12:26.180 You know what I'm saying?

00:12:27.160 They weren't going to get no money.

00:12:28.580 I didn't want to know about it.

00:12:29.520 No interest for it.

00:12:30.800 None.

00:12:31.160 But once I started to see that, these books made me go back over my life, step by step.

00:12:39.180 That's how I wrote my book.

00:12:40.660 That's how my first book came out, because I went back over my life and I started to do

00:12:44.580 step by step.

00:12:45.600 Well, what are you doing here?

00:12:46.480 How did you get here?

00:12:49.220 And when I did that, I said, well, you know what, Rick?

00:12:56.100 You work your way in prison.

00:12:58.360 They just didn't put you in prison.

00:12:59.700 You earned it.

00:13:03.120 You earned to be here.

00:13:04.840 Like I tell kids all the time when I go to the schools and speak, I say, look, you can

00:13:09.440 go to the prison right now.

00:13:11.180 Go to the gate.

00:13:12.520 Ring the bell.

00:13:13.480 Knock on the gate.

00:13:14.100 They're going to come out and ask you what you want.

00:13:17.180 And you ask them, can you go in?

00:13:19.540 And they're going to say, no.

00:13:21.360 You can't come in here.

00:13:23.240 You have to go out and earn your position in federal prison.

00:13:26.900 They don't just take anybody.

00:13:28.200 You know, it ain't like the Army where you just go sign up.

00:13:30.460 No, you got to go out and earn your position.

00:13:32.760 So I went out and I earned that life sentence that I got.

00:13:37.140 You know, and when I figured out that I could earn it, then I figured out that I could dis-earn

00:13:42.660 it.

00:13:43.260 And that's what I did.

00:13:44.380 I started to work just as diligently in getting out of prison as I did to get in.

00:13:50.820 And this leads you to start studying law.

00:13:53.740 Start studying the law.

00:13:56.720 Politics.

00:13:57.800 You know, I started studying politics.

00:13:59.140 Why politics?

00:13:59.860 Well, in federal prison, if, say for instance, if all the judges would have denied all my

00:14:06.660 appeals, then I could have played politics to still get out.

00:14:10.180 In my thinking, and you know, I was thinking crazy too, right?

00:14:13.920 I was going to become so smart that the jails couldn't hold me, that the people of the United

00:14:20.720 States was going to cry out so loud for my freedom that the jails wasn't going to be

00:14:25.800 able to hold me no longer.

00:14:27.680 Whoever the president was, Congress, they all would have been like, let him out of there.

00:14:32.780 We need him on the streets.

00:14:34.140 You know, we need more of him.

00:14:35.780 And that was my plan.

00:14:38.020 The plan was get so smart that they need you in the streets rather than in prison.

00:14:42.600 Exactly.

00:14:43.260 Wow.

00:14:43.720 Now, if we go back, how did you get into the drug world?

00:14:46.660 How did that happen?

00:14:48.640 Well, you know, I just found out that I wasn't going to be going to college.

00:14:55.440 I didn't have any sponsors for tennis.

00:15:00.120 I didn't know what I was going to do with my life, you know.

00:15:02.260 I saw this movie one time called Superfly, where this guy had started selling cocaine

00:15:06.800 and he got rich and he beat the police and everybody.

00:15:10.340 And I was like, wow, what a great dude.

00:15:15.560 And it kind of just went over my head, you know, nothing.

00:15:18.900 You know, I didn't know about the self-conscious mind at that time.

00:15:21.780 You know, I didn't know that you can't be giving seeds to the self-conscious mind like

00:15:25.460 that, you know, because it'll work and act on it.

00:15:28.480 And then just one day, I was just sitting on my porch and I'm contemplating like, wow,

00:15:32.280 you got a miserable life, boy.

00:15:34.320 You don't have gas money, you don't have no food.

00:15:36.500 If your mama stopped feeding you, you're done.

00:15:41.020 And my friend called me and he was like, man, I got something new.

00:15:46.180 And I was like, he was like, come by.

00:15:48.540 And I went by and he put it on the table, some white powder looking stuff.

00:15:53.400 And I was like, what's that?

00:15:54.960 And he said, oh, that's cocaine.

00:15:55.780 I said, oh, yeah, what you doing with that?

00:15:58.920 And he was like, I sell it.

00:16:01.920 He said, see these gold chains I got?

00:16:04.280 And I got them.

00:16:05.400 And I was like, wow, is it really like that?

00:16:08.940 And he was like, oh, man, this is a new thing.

00:16:11.480 And that's how I got started.

00:16:12.740 How old were you at the time?

00:16:15.080 19.

00:16:15.800 19?

00:16:16.460 So how quickly after that did you start selling?

00:16:19.020 Well, I started that day.

00:16:20.340 That day?

00:16:20.820 He gave me $50 worth to go and see what I could do with it.

00:16:25.540 And I started going around asking everybody.

00:16:28.160 Really, I didn't know I was marketing.

00:16:30.320 You know, I'm asking everybody, hey, you know about cocaine?

00:16:33.060 And is this really cocaine?

00:16:34.640 And finally, you know, most people didn't know what it was.

00:16:38.380 And then finally I found somebody who did, Martin.

00:16:40.800 And that was my first getting beat.

00:16:45.960 I got beat out of that cocaine.

00:16:48.020 But that was my first sale as well.

00:16:50.720 First sale and first beating?

00:16:52.140 Yeah.

00:16:53.120 And so you go back and what happens there?

00:16:55.020 At what point do you start scaling it?

00:16:57.300 Well, after he used all that cocaine that I had and didn't give me any money.

00:17:03.040 But later on that day, he came back with somebody else that spent $100.

00:17:06.020 And some of my business started.

00:17:09.560 It just kept going after that.

00:17:12.400 But at what point were you, like, starting to make real money?

00:17:15.180 When did you start making real money?

00:17:16.380 That's 19.

00:17:17.180 It took about seven to eight months, you know, before I started to do maybe, like, $300 or $400 every day.

00:17:26.300 You know, it didn't start off like a lot of people.

00:17:28.980 Like now, you know, it's a little different now than it was when I first started.

00:17:33.880 And even we didn't have cocaine, what they call cocaine tracks.

00:17:39.420 You know, like now they have places that you can go and they already have people who are looking for cocaine at those areas.

00:17:45.880 So you could go there and you might make, you know, like we used to have a spot that would do $50,000 in one day.

00:17:51.940 You know, you could go out on the street, just stand out on the street and have cocaine.

00:17:56.520 And you might make $50,000 if you can beat everybody out on the block, you know.

00:18:00.160 You know, there's other people out competing for that same money, but if you were good, then you could collect all that money and most of it.

00:18:07.820 And that's how I started out, you know.

00:18:10.260 But I had to build that street up myself.

00:18:12.260 I built the street up and then other guys came.

00:18:14.380 The street that I built up probably used to do $100,000 a day, just that one street.

00:18:18.160 $100,000 a day.

00:18:19.020 Yeah, one street.

00:18:20.060 Now, you don't seem threatening.

00:18:21.740 You're not a big guy.

00:18:22.600 You're a small guy.

00:18:23.820 Why are people not bullying you out of the street?

00:18:25.920 You know, why are they letting you do it?

00:18:27.360 Why aren't people saying, hey, get out of here, you know, or beating you up?

00:18:30.200 Well, you have to, I mean, you have to have tact.

00:18:33.540 You know, it's tactful.

00:18:34.460 You have to be tactful, you know.

00:18:36.440 And what I always do is I share with other people.

00:18:39.380 You know, I don't take the money myself and just use it for me.

00:18:44.740 You know, I like to share.

00:18:45.720 And once you share with the other people, even some of them are stupid enough, though, still, you know, to take a knife and stab the goose to slam the golden eggs, you know.

00:18:56.620 But the majority of the people, they have a tendency to at least allow the goose to live, you know.

00:19:01.380 Oh, just run around and I get an egg every now and then, you know.

00:19:04.800 And that's pretty much the way that they allow me to function.

00:19:08.380 And what year is this?

00:19:09.460 You're saying seven months later.

00:19:10.720 You're 19, 20 years old.

00:19:12.160 What year are you looking at?

00:19:13.800 80.

00:19:14.480 This is 80?

00:19:15.060 Yeah, 80.

00:19:15.840 So scaling to you having hundreds of people working for you, how long did it take to get to that point?

00:19:20.980 Was there a new relationship?

00:19:22.280 Was there somebody that came in?

00:19:23.800 Well, most of my guys started to get involved, you know, like all my friends.

00:19:28.320 It's like when you start to find, I mean, you know, like hitting the lottery.

00:19:32.720 You know, somebody hit the lottery and all their family members want to be around, want to talk to them.

00:19:38.440 And it's the same thing in the drug business, you know.

00:19:41.400 Once people see you being successful, they want a part of it.

00:19:44.560 Some kind of way.

00:19:45.260 You know, they usually want a handout, but some of them will actually do a little work to get that handout.

00:19:50.860 How were you recruiting people?

00:19:53.220 I was looking for people in the same position that I was in.

00:19:55.780 You know, people that had all the skills, all the talents, but didn't know what to do with it.

00:20:02.120 And conversation, what's it sound like?

00:20:04.840 You're talking to me.

00:20:05.700 What are you telling me?

00:20:06.580 Well, I could walk in the gym, you know, going to play basketball, and it might be one of the, what we call young homies who would be at the gym.

00:20:13.080 And I'm going to use one of the ones who testified against me.

00:20:16.320 And he said he was sitting in the gym.

00:20:20.560 And when I tell his story, it seems almost similar to mine.

00:20:24.020 You know, when I was sitting on the porch and didn't know what I was going to do.

00:20:26.540 Well, he was sitting on the stage at the gym, and he didn't know what he was going to do.

00:20:29.760 And I was like, man, what you doing with yourself?

00:20:32.120 You know, you didn't make it in baseball, huh?

00:20:34.600 And this kid played baseball.

00:20:36.440 And I was like, so what you going to do now?

00:20:40.580 And he was like, I don't know.

00:20:42.060 I was like, why don't you go with me?

00:20:44.020 You know, we do pretty good for ourselves.

00:20:45.960 You know, we're feeding our families.

00:20:47.200 We got houses.

00:20:47.880 We got cars.

00:20:50.360 Try this route.

00:20:51.780 And he got off the stage, and he went with me.

00:20:55.520 How quickly did he start selling?

00:20:57.800 Oh, the same day.

00:20:59.340 It don't take long.

00:21:00.520 I mean, you know, selling drugs is easy.

00:21:02.560 A nine-year-old kid could really do it, you know, if they could defend themselves from the bullies, like you said.

00:21:10.360 It's simple.

00:21:11.920 In some ways, I mean, it's genius, but it's also a simple trade if you know what you're doing.

00:21:19.280 I mean, really anything, though, is simple once you know the rules.

00:21:23.460 It's amazing what you're saying is how subconscious mind, you're like, I allow that superfly message to get into my head for me to think about that.

00:21:30.860 So, but at what point, I guess the part I'm trying to get to is, was there a relationship you got where all of a sudden you went from making $300,000 a day to making $300,000 a day?

00:21:41.120 Well, first I was getting, you know, I was getting my drugs from my friend who went to college, who introduced me to it.

00:21:49.460 And then I started dealing with a teacher, Mr. Fisher, who had a connection that I didn't know about.

00:21:56.220 And when he turned me on to the connection, I went from, I think we were buying like sevens, you know, a quarter, quarter ounces.

00:22:05.740 And when we started dealing with him and his friends, our quality got better and our prices got cheaper.

00:22:17.320 So it started to escalate from there to where now we're doing $1,000 a day, you know, and it just escalated from there to $5,000 a day, $10,000 a day.

00:22:28.940 And it got to the point to where the first one that we were dealing with, he got paralyzed.

00:22:34.920 His wife shot him in the back.

00:22:36.240 He got paralyzed.

00:22:37.360 Why did his wife shoot him in the back?

00:22:39.040 Was it just a fight like that?

00:22:40.220 I don't know.

00:22:40.240 Cheating probably, you know.

00:22:41.260 Okay, got it, got it.

00:22:42.640 That makes sense.

00:22:43.160 No telling.

00:22:43.800 I never found out the reason.

00:22:45.740 But when he got paralyzed, his brother-in-law took over his business.

00:22:51.940 His brother-in-law wasn't really, he didn't really have an appetite for it, you know.

00:22:55.740 He wasn't really like a business guy.

00:22:57.980 So what he did is he sold me to the Connect.

00:23:03.200 He sold you to the Connect?

00:23:04.760 Yeah, he sold me to the Connect.

00:23:06.040 And he sold the Connect to me.

00:23:07.160 How did that conversation, how did the introduction?

00:23:09.620 He came to me one day, and he was like, he spoke broken English, too.

00:23:14.280 He was from Nicaragua, and he was like, man, I want out of this business.

00:23:18.020 I don't like this business.

00:23:19.580 Somebody had got busted.

00:23:21.320 One of his people had got busted, and he was scared that they might tell.

00:23:25.040 So he was like, man, I don't like this business.

00:23:27.060 I want to be out, but I want to introduce you to the Connect.

00:23:31.660 And I was totally for that.

00:23:34.600 Then, you know, price came up.

00:23:36.020 How much?

00:23:36.460 And he wanted $100,000, but I was able to talk him down to $60,000, where I gave him $60,000.

00:23:41.460 Just for the Connect?

00:23:42.440 Just introducing me to the Connect.

00:23:44.320 So you give him the $60,000, you get connected, then what happens?

00:23:47.440 We start booming.

00:23:49.580 How quickly?

00:23:51.320 Well, I was already, I was already, I mean, I was already ghetto rich at that time.

00:23:56.360 You know, I probably had a few hundred thousand dollars at that time.

00:24:00.640 How old were you at that time?

00:24:01.700 Were you in your early 20s, 21, 22?

00:24:03.520 22, 23, maybe.

00:24:04.900 Okay, got it.

00:24:05.880 Still young, but, you know, up in age, you know.

00:24:11.220 The day we met, me and Danilo first met, I think we did like 50 kilos that day.

00:24:16.740 Day one?

00:24:17.460 Yeah, day one.

00:24:18.120 What did you guys meet?

00:24:18.640 We already kind of knew each other, you know.

00:24:20.840 Like, it's like you know somebody, but you don't, you know, like, man, I sure wish I could talk to him.

00:24:26.000 But, you know, but we had never, out of respect, you know, you can't jump over your Connect, you know what I'm saying?

00:24:33.340 It has to be done properly.

00:24:34.500 So, I'd already knew who he was, so meeting him was just like, okay, this is what I've been waiting on.

00:24:43.860 So, he dropped the price a couple thousand dollars as soon as we met, you know, a couple thousand per kilo.

00:24:48.180 And, I mean, you're talking about a couple thousand dollars per kilo is a lot, you know what I'm saying?

00:24:55.960 You do 50 keys, that's a hundred grand extra.

00:24:57.740 That's a hundred grand, yeah.

00:24:58.920 Extra, not what you've been making, but this is a hundred grand extra.

00:25:02.080 So, you start making that kind of money every single day, every single day.

00:25:07.200 And then, you know, now some days we're doing 200 kilos, you know, one day.

00:25:13.760 A day, yeah.

00:25:14.440 And each kilo you're making, how much profits?

00:25:16.900 2,000, 2,500.

00:25:18.460 Yeah, I mean, it's according to who comes.

00:25:20.260 You know, the guys who are buying like 20 kilos at a time, you're probably making like 2,000 off of them, 2,500.

00:25:26.280 Who were your customers, Bob?

00:25:27.300 Were most dealers your customers?

00:25:28.780 Dealers, yeah.

00:25:29.040 Dealers were your customers.

00:25:29.560 I was dealing with dealers.

00:25:30.280 I kind of like created my dealers, too.

00:25:32.360 You know, I had come up with a formula where I would go into the community, and by me knowing, I grew up there.

00:25:39.740 So, I knew all the players, you know, I knew them.

00:25:42.740 So, I knew who would be basically what they call the influencers now.

00:25:47.740 You know, the guys who was telling people what to do, how to do it, and they ran their neighborhoods.

00:25:52.680 Shot callers is what we used to call them.

00:25:54.360 So, why did the shot callers allow you to keep the influencer Blandon and not go through you to get direct to the connect?

00:26:03.520 Well, they didn't know who he was.

00:26:04.960 I wouldn't let them meet Blandon.

00:26:07.000 See, I could buy my own drug, so they never had to see Blandon.

00:26:12.360 You know, when Blandon would come, I had the money to buy all the drugs, and then I could take the drugs and sell them to them.

00:26:17.820 So, when they're asking, you're like, hey, you know, Rick, who's the guy?

00:26:20.060 Who's the guy you're getting your stuff from?

00:26:21.240 No, no.

00:26:21.500 Nobody was asking?

00:26:22.280 No.

00:26:22.620 Literally, nobody was asking.

00:26:24.080 Why weren't they asking?

00:26:25.660 They were doing better than they'd ever thought about doing before in their life.

00:26:28.280 But greed gets some people to want to go through you and, you know, get even a bigger contract.

00:26:32.240 Well, they do.

00:26:33.180 I mean, what wind up happening is eventually, you know, when these guys become millionaires, and then other dealers come into the city, and that's why the price went down so low.

00:26:45.860 So, you know, before I went to prison, the first kilo I bought, I think I paid like $48,000 for it, the first whole kilo I bought.

00:26:53.440 But now, when I was buying ounces, I was paying $3,300 for one ounce.

00:26:59.660 So, you're talking about if you do 33 times 36, you're talking about paying something like $100 and something per kilo.

00:27:10.860 And when I first started buying my first kilo, I paid $48,000.

00:27:14.680 So, the price was substantially lower at that time.

00:27:20.360 But before I quit, the last kilo I bought was like $9,500.

00:27:25.160 Get out of here.

00:27:26.000 Yeah.

00:27:26.400 From $100 plus, $48,000 to $9,500.

00:27:29.260 Yeah.

00:27:29.520 So, that shows you how much the price came down.

00:27:33.140 And this is during the height of the war on drugs.

00:27:36.380 So, even though the war on drugs was going full steam ahead, the price of the cocaine was going down,

00:27:41.820 which was making it more accessible to more people.

00:27:44.900 How are you staying low-key at this time?

00:27:47.480 I just dress the way I always dress, you know.

00:27:49.580 I didn't need any jewelry.

00:27:50.700 I came to a point in my life to where I didn't need to show anybody what I was doing, you know, who I was or how I wanted to be perceived.

00:28:03.620 So, you take me the way I am or leave it.

00:28:07.060 Did you ever watch American Gangster?

00:28:08.920 I did.

00:28:09.400 So, when you watch it, what did you think about it?

00:28:12.460 They were pretty close, you know.

00:28:14.160 It wasn't bad on mine.

00:28:16.080 I enjoyed some of the other guys on there that I watched.

00:28:20.460 And I learned lessons from them as well.

00:28:22.900 I mean, you know, it's like a lesson, you know.

00:28:26.640 You can take lessons from it.

00:28:28.300 But on my particular documentary, matter of fact, you know, I'm working with Reginald Hutland right now, the guy who did and greenlit American Gangster Series for BET.

00:28:38.840 We're working together right now on my movie.

00:28:41.240 On your movie?

00:28:41.920 Yeah.

00:28:42.260 So, I felt pretty good about the job that he did.

00:28:45.700 He was pretty fair.

00:28:47.080 You know, he didn't slam me, you know, the way he could have, I guess.

00:28:54.480 Now, you and Frankie have done events together.

00:28:56.760 Yeah, we did.

00:28:57.280 When he was alive.

00:28:58.000 Yeah, we did an event together.

00:28:59.240 How was that when you saw Frank?

00:29:00.560 What's the conversations like?

00:29:01.820 There was no conversations.

00:29:03.160 We had a little conversation.

00:29:05.180 Me and Frank are kind of different people, you know.

00:29:07.320 Frank was more grittier than I was, I think, you know.

00:29:10.620 He treated people a little different than I treat people.

00:29:14.260 I didn't really like the way he talked to people, as if he put himself on a pedestal.

00:29:21.080 And I don't believe that any of us should be on a pedestal.

00:29:24.520 I don't care how much money you got.

00:29:25.880 I don't care what your last name is, you know, what movie you played in.

00:29:30.820 You're just like me.

00:29:31.840 You know, you got to go to the bathroom and take a piss, just like I do.

00:29:35.360 How did you stay humble with all that?

00:29:37.360 I mean, you got $300 million of net profits in the 80s.

00:29:40.640 What's the most cash you ever had to yourself?

00:29:43.440 Cash.

00:29:43.740 I had like $3.2 million cash counted.

00:29:47.600 I still had money on the street.

00:29:50.320 That's the most cash I ever had.

00:29:52.020 $3.2 million.

00:29:52.980 Yeah.

00:29:53.380 Got it.

00:29:54.060 So then you got cash on the street that's doing its work.

00:29:56.940 You're making your money.

00:29:58.000 You're living large.

00:29:59.340 People at that time sometimes are tempted to do crazy things.

00:30:02.060 What was your vice?

00:30:03.160 I didn't want to go to prison, you know.

00:30:05.360 And I knew that if I would do something stupid, you know, like maybe somebody owed me, like

00:30:09.920 a couple people owed me, like one guy owed me like $360,000.

00:30:13.940 And my guys want to go and drag him out the house and demolish him, right?

00:30:18.080 And I'm like, okay, okay, let's talk about it first.

00:30:21.200 Because you got a good point.

00:30:24.100 Now, I take your point in consideration, but like I said, we do that.

00:30:29.600 And then we kill him.

00:30:31.380 Then homicide going to come in.

00:30:33.320 And they're going to be investigating.

00:30:34.660 They're going to try to figure out who did it.

00:30:36.760 And maybe they won't find out it was us.

00:30:39.580 Maybe they will.

00:30:40.720 Maybe they're just suspicious that it was us.

00:30:42.760 And they come and arrest us.

00:30:44.000 How much is that going to cost?

00:30:45.660 How much bail is it going to cost?

00:30:46.880 You know, one of them will say, oh, probably about $50,000 each one of us.

00:30:51.200 And then what is Alan Fenster going to cost to fight the case?

00:30:56.660 He's probably going to want $80,000.

00:30:58.980 I said, okay, so it's six of us in here.

00:31:01.540 That's $50,000 each.

00:31:03.520 You know what I'm saying?

00:31:04.720 So that's $300,000 plus Alan's $80,000 just for one.

00:31:08.120 And then we got to get everybody else lawyers.

00:31:12.000 We ain't going to get that money back.

00:31:14.340 So were you a math guy?

00:31:16.420 If you were not, if you couldn't read or write.

00:31:18.460 I love math.

00:31:19.440 It's very obvious.

00:31:20.280 I mean, you're just doing math right in front of me, talking to me.

00:31:22.680 Yeah, I love math.

00:31:23.640 Math.

00:31:24.040 I think math and science is really all we need.

00:31:27.000 You know, if you can do math and science.

00:31:29.300 Why do you say that?

00:31:30.540 Well, you know, the art of science is breaking things down to figure out their origins or

00:31:36.420 what it's going to do, you know, in the future.

00:31:38.980 You know, like when you plant a seed in the ground, you are looking for it to perform a

00:31:43.640 certain function in the future.

00:31:45.360 And that's pretty much what life is about.

00:31:49.060 You know, the thing that I think that I do well is I can take what's going on today and see

00:31:57.820 what's going on, what's going to happen tomorrow.

00:32:01.120 You can take what's going on today and see what's going to happen tomorrow.

00:32:04.040 Yeah, I can predict what's going to happen tomorrow.

00:32:05.900 Like I can go to a street and I can look at the street and I can pretty much predict what

00:32:10.200 type of building should be there, what neighborhood is going to be there.

00:32:14.140 You know, I don't know where I get it from, but I can just do it.

00:32:17.240 And I do the same thing with people.

00:32:18.580 You know, I can look at a person and I can kind of tell like, this is what you should

00:32:22.780 be doing.

00:32:23.380 I'm telling you, you might not listen to me, but that's your calling.

00:32:27.840 Interesting.

00:32:28.200 Interesting.

00:32:29.040 So your vice at the time when you're coming up, it's what?

00:32:32.880 It's purely women because you're not using drugs yourself.

00:32:35.240 No.

00:32:36.360 Did you ever try crack cocaine, any of that or no?

00:32:38.480 I tried crack a couple of times.

00:32:41.260 I think I might have used for about a week straight.

00:32:43.660 You know, when I got to an ounce, right, I got to an ounce, I think I'm rich.

00:32:49.000 An ounce at that time was worth about 9,000, broke down, you know, to the last term.

00:32:54.560 You know, you sell every 20, you make about 9,000.

00:32:58.480 So when I got my first ounce, I was like, oh, yeah, I'm here, I'm there, baby.

00:33:03.000 I made it.

00:33:03.960 And I'm thinking I'm rich, right?

00:33:07.660 And so my cousins, who I didn't really understand addiction at that time.

00:33:11.900 You didn't understand addiction at that time?

00:33:13.320 No, I didn't.

00:33:14.640 They were already using.

00:33:16.380 And they was like, well, man.

00:33:17.720 They're older than you?

00:33:18.300 Yeah, we're all around the same age, maybe a year, you know, one or two of them.

00:33:23.260 Some of them were a little younger.

00:33:25.520 They convinced me to try it.

00:33:27.680 Like, man, you've been doing all this sacrifice and you got all that.

00:33:31.200 You know, I got like a little handful of dope.

00:33:33.800 You got all that dope.

00:33:34.760 Now you might well try it and see what everybody else like.

00:33:36.900 And I was like, because it does get curious.

00:33:40.160 And that brings me to another one of my points.

00:33:42.800 I believe that our dope problem centers around people trying to make money.

00:33:48.580 It doesn't center around people trying to be drug addicts.

00:33:51.540 Most people who use drugs right now don't start off to be drug addicts.

00:33:57.560 They start off trying to be hustlers.

00:33:59.540 And they fall victim to their own product.

00:34:04.540 So when we're sitting there, they convinced me to try it.

00:34:09.560 And I tried it.

00:34:10.480 Nah, not too bad.

00:34:12.620 Lucky for me, though, I got sick.

00:34:15.600 And by me being an athlete, I was like, man, you knew you weren't supposed to be doing that.

00:34:20.600 And all of the older guys who I was selling to had already told me, if you don't use, you're going to get rich.

00:34:29.200 If you don't use, you're going to get rich.

00:34:31.040 If you don't use.

00:34:32.060 So when I finish and I come up out of this coma that I'm in, this drug high coma that I'm in, I might have had $300.

00:34:41.040 And I was like, no, Rick, this is not what you got into this for.

00:34:45.860 You are never using again.

00:34:47.480 I told myself that.

00:34:48.540 You are never going to use again.

00:34:50.600 And I just never did.

00:34:52.400 Interesting.

00:34:52.820 I started smoking weed, though, later on.

00:34:54.680 Later on?

00:34:55.280 Yeah.

00:34:55.580 How old?

00:34:56.940 Probably six months later.

00:34:58.440 Six months later?

00:34:59.380 Yeah.

00:34:59.520 Permanently, regularly?

00:35:01.000 Yeah, every day.

00:35:01.820 So weed is a regular thing for you?

00:35:03.440 Not now, no.

00:35:04.420 I mean, it was then, yeah.

00:35:05.580 Okay.

00:35:06.160 Well, now I do edibles.

00:35:07.880 Now you do edibles?

00:35:08.560 I do edibles, yeah.

00:35:10.020 It's, what's the biggest difference for you?

00:35:12.040 Edibles versus smoking it?

00:35:13.900 Cheaper.

00:35:14.740 Cheaper.

00:35:15.140 Like, you eat the edibles, you stay high all day.

00:35:19.860 I can buy, like, a bag of edibles.

00:35:22.060 I buy a bag of edibles for, like, 15 bucks, and that lasts me for a week.

00:35:26.440 A bag of edibles?

00:35:27.260 Yeah, like, I might take one, one, they got these little chewies, and I'm going to do

00:35:33.440 my own chewies, too, for vegans.

00:35:35.360 And they got vegan chewies, too.

00:35:36.580 Interesting.

00:35:36.960 So I'll get a bag of those, and I'll take one every day, or, you know, if I want to go

00:35:40.660 to, some days I don't do it, and I do it at night when I go to bed, and it just puts

00:35:45.240 me in this space where it allows my mind to kind of, like, drift down a little bit, because

00:35:51.040 one of the things about me is my mind is constantly going, you know, it never stops, it never rests.

00:35:57.900 It's just, like, all the time coming up with this idea, that idea, this formula, you know,

00:36:03.700 and sometimes I like to, like, shut it down, you know, like, just relax it and try to calm

00:36:08.580 it down.

00:36:09.320 Interesting.

00:36:09.760 And it helps.

00:36:10.600 So you're on fire.

00:36:12.220 You're doing great things.

00:36:13.060 Now, are you guys using force at that time?

00:36:15.280 Are you guys, like, you know, the whole killing thing?

00:36:16.840 Is that happening or not?

00:36:17.940 No, I don't.

00:36:18.000 That's not your world.

00:36:18.880 Kill no more.

00:36:19.460 For what?

00:36:19.800 No, for no, but now you guys got guns because Blandin's bringing guns.

00:36:22.740 Oh, no, no, no, we got artillery, but it's self-defense.

00:36:26.100 Purely self-defense.

00:36:27.080 Yeah, well, you figure, you know, you're running around L.A., you're doing, you know,

00:36:30.460 two and three million dollar cocaine deals every day.

00:36:33.300 Every day I'm doing it.

00:36:34.340 So every day we're carrying duffel bags of money.

00:36:37.280 You know, I'm talking about, like, those big army bags.

00:36:40.080 How is it that your net profits in the 80s was 300 million, but the max you ever had was

00:36:44.460 3.2 million?

00:36:45.860 3.2 million is not a lot of money.

00:36:47.280 Are you spending a lot?

00:36:48.580 Are you buying a lot of property?

00:36:49.660 I'm spending.

00:36:50.480 I got a lot of people that is eating off the plate, too.

00:36:54.140 You know, it's not just me eating.

00:36:56.680 I probably, my average profit every day was about 200, 300,000.

00:37:02.900 Per day?

00:37:03.540 Per day.

00:37:03.920 So how do you have only 3.2 million?

00:37:07.420 Well, you spend, I got property.

00:37:08.580 But you're not buying cars, though.

00:37:09.860 No, I'm buying property.

00:37:10.740 You're buying property.

00:37:11.080 I got cars, too.

00:37:12.160 I got cars.

00:37:12.980 Not personal cars.

00:37:15.560 You know, I got cars because when you're in the drug business, you want to switch cars.

00:37:19.200 I probably, at that time, I probably had about 25, 30 cars.

00:37:23.140 But not your name.

00:37:24.660 No, not in my name.

00:37:25.840 And they're not fancy cars.

00:37:27.620 They just switch cars.

00:37:28.800 You know, like a car you drive because you don't want nobody to know what you drive.

00:37:32.160 So you're all strategy at that time.

00:37:33.760 Yeah, all strategy.

00:37:34.500 Well, it wasn't a time for play.

00:37:37.080 You know, this was all work.

00:37:39.020 I was building motels.

00:37:40.820 You know, I had a motel.

00:37:42.360 I think I built my motel.

00:37:43.300 I was like 22 years old when I built my first motel.

00:37:45.980 Because my mom kicked me out the house.

00:37:47.440 She found out I was selling drugs, so she kicked me out.

00:37:49.860 So now I'm living in motels.

00:37:52.020 And I was like, wow, these motels are $45 a night, and I can't get a room.

00:37:57.000 You know, I'm sitting outside the hotel room, and they don't have no rooms.

00:37:59.980 And, you know, I got $100,000 in my pocket, but I can't get a hotel room.

00:38:03.460 And I was like, that room can't be that expensive to build.

00:38:06.540 You know, why don't you build one?

00:38:08.800 And I started, and I built a motel.

00:38:12.880 And before I got arrested, I was in the process of building, like, three more.

00:38:16.220 And that's really where I spent my money, you know, buying houses.

00:38:18.680 You know, I would be driving down the street, and I'd say a house that was abandoned, boarded up.

00:38:24.160 And I'd be like, oh, I'm going to buy that and fix it up.

00:38:25.960 This house should look like this.

00:38:27.860 At the max, how many properties did you own?

00:38:29.980 Max, max.

00:38:30.740 Probably about 30.

00:38:31.720 30 properties, max.

00:38:33.380 Yeah.

00:38:33.620 If I would have had all my properties right now that I had,

00:38:36.260 I'd probably be worth about $150, $200 million right now.

00:38:39.620 Well, it's a commercial property.

00:38:40.640 You're not talking about regular, like, homes.

00:38:42.680 No, I didn't buy a home for myself.

00:38:44.300 Okay.

00:38:45.060 I didn't want a home yet.

00:38:46.760 So you're living out of what?

00:38:47.960 You're living out of an apartment, or you're living?

00:38:49.940 Apartments, houses.

00:38:50.800 One of my places, you know, I would have, my girlfriends had houses.

00:38:55.540 You know, I bought them new houses.

00:38:57.240 But it wasn't the kind of house that I saw myself living in forever.

00:39:01.580 You know, it was like, you know, a nice neighborhood.

00:39:03.820 You know, just a nice house.

00:39:05.680 You know what I'm saying?

00:39:06.220 But they were young, too.

00:39:07.140 You know, 22 years old, 21 years old.

00:39:09.780 They got a house, and their mama didn't have a house.

00:39:11.840 You know, so they felt good about themselves.

00:39:15.500 And at this point, you're running in 42 cities.

00:39:17.440 Is that the right number?

00:39:18.380 Is it about 42 cities?

00:39:19.680 Not me personally.

00:39:20.900 I probably personally did about six or seven, maybe.

00:39:26.620 Six or seven.

00:39:27.340 Yeah.

00:39:27.680 How come you don't want to scale?

00:39:29.200 Did you have any desire of scaling, going into a different state,

00:39:31.880 going to Nevada, going to New Mexico, Arizona?

00:39:35.360 It's hard to do it, you know, by yourself.

00:39:38.080 You know, it's crazy.

00:39:41.620 And, you know, I don't really want to, you know, be dumping on my friends.

00:39:46.320 But I was almost like I was doing everything myself.

00:39:49.480 You know, when I was sitting in prison, and I was like,

00:39:54.820 you know, your guys ain't sending you no money.

00:39:57.780 Your guys ain't looking out for you.

00:39:59.180 And I was a little mad at them, you know, like, wow, I come in here,

00:40:04.800 you know, didn't say nothing about nobody, kept my mouth shut,

00:40:08.920 nobody got arrested, but nobody really, like, looked out for me.

00:40:14.120 You know, the only person who really came and seen me was my mom.

00:40:16.980 My girlfriends came, you know, the first couple months, you know,

00:40:19.860 but they were wild fast.

00:40:21.660 So then now you find yourself, you're imprisoned by yourself,

00:40:26.300 you know, nobody, and you start to, like, analyze your company,

00:40:31.820 you know, the people that you kept company with.

00:40:34.020 And you're like, why aren't they doing more for me?

00:40:39.140 You know, why aren't they trying to help me accomplish my missions?

00:40:42.220 You know, and as I analyzed them, I started to see defaults,

00:40:47.860 you know, things that they didn't have, and it was almost like

00:40:52.560 I was kind of, like, propping them up, you know.

00:40:56.680 Matter of fact, I had a speech with them a couple weeks ago,

00:40:59.120 and I was telling them it's like that sometimes I feel like

00:41:02.060 I'm working with the bad news bears, you know,

00:41:04.020 the guys who can't run.

00:41:06.600 They can't bat, they can't run.

00:41:08.280 It's like, wow, man, when you do, it's going to pick your axe up.

00:41:11.760 And it's hard to find good people.

00:41:15.380 I mean, you know how that is.

00:41:16.260 Who's friends with you till today, out of the guys you ran with?

00:41:18.140 All my friends, all my friends.

00:41:19.360 Out of the guys you ran with?

00:41:20.460 All of them.

00:41:21.120 I can call any one of them right now if I need whatever.

00:41:24.320 They'll do whatever for me.

00:41:25.140 So the same guys didn't show up or are still friends till today with you?

00:41:28.120 Yeah, and when I say they didn't show up, it's not necessarily a bad thing

00:41:34.860 that they didn't show up, they just didn't know.

00:41:37.440 They just didn't know that they should be showing up.

00:41:39.900 They didn't know.

00:41:40.920 Like the other day, I was talking to my friends and my families,

00:41:44.780 and I was telling them, like,

00:41:46.740 I work right now so that if my friends need my help,

00:41:55.040 I want to be in a position to where I can help them.

00:41:57.720 They would help me if they could, but they can't

00:42:06.880 because they're not putting themselves in a position to be able to,

00:42:13.180 if that makes any sense.

00:42:14.980 So you don't put any of it on them?

00:42:16.900 You're not even putting any of it on them?

00:42:18.580 You don't have any—you have zero expectations of human beings in the world?

00:42:23.060 Is that a fair statement?

00:42:23.980 Yeah, pretty, pretty fair statement.

00:42:26.440 And because of that, you're relaxed, you're free, you're happy.

00:42:29.180 Nobody can disappoint you.

00:42:30.560 No, they can't.

00:42:31.460 No one can disappoint you.

00:42:32.560 No.

00:42:34.840 Were you always like this, or did you work to get to this point?

00:42:37.120 I don't know if those books kind of, you know, reading all those books kind of, like,

00:42:42.700 put me in a space that, you know, we're supposed to pursue knowledge as human beings,

00:42:49.400 and those books allow me to really, like, break down everything, you know.

00:42:57.800 It's almost like this book right here.

00:42:59.900 You know, this book right here, this book is going to be amazing.

00:43:03.880 This book is about my first six months out of prison, and the guy who wrote it with me,

00:43:10.080 Coley, he started writing me when I was in prison, when I was here in Texarkana prison.

00:43:15.660 And he was like, man, I want to put you on the cover of my magazine.

00:43:19.500 I said, okay.

00:43:20.840 I like that idea.

00:43:24.220 So I got out.

00:43:25.620 He flew me to New York.

00:43:26.700 We did the interview, and so he was like, man, I want to be around you more.

00:43:31.020 I also told him about those three books.

00:43:32.460 I was like, man, how are you an entrepreneur if you ain't read these three books?

00:43:35.480 You ain't no real entrepreneur.

00:43:36.820 You faking the game.

00:43:38.160 So he read the books.

00:43:39.780 So when he came out to hang out with me, because I really didn't have no friends.

00:43:44.640 I mean, my old friends was there, but, you know, they're homeless.

00:43:48.120 How old are you at this time?

00:43:50.040 I got out when I was 49.

00:43:51.740 49.

00:43:52.420 Yeah.

00:43:53.200 This is September 29th.

00:43:54.540 So we're riding around, and I look at him, and he keeps jotting down in this notebook.

00:44:05.120 And I was like, man, what are you doing?

00:44:06.600 Every time we come out of the meeting, you're always jotting down in the book.

00:44:11.160 He was like, oh, I was just documenting the meeting.

00:44:12.960 And I was like, Coley, you've been documenting every single day, everything that I've been doing.

00:44:21.500 He was like, yeah, man, I like the way you work those principles.

00:44:24.340 I said, Coley, that's a book.

00:44:27.700 I said, everybody's going to want to know how I was using these principles and how I took the stuff that I got out of Richest Man in Babylon and Think and Grow Rich and As a Man Think, along with my past experiences, and came up with another strategy for myself.

00:44:45.280 I said, man, that's a book.

00:44:46.560 And that's how this book came about.

00:44:47.920 Yeah, interesting.

00:44:48.600 Riding with Rick.

00:44:49.860 Riding with Rick.

00:44:50.920 That's the name of it.

00:44:51.660 And here's his documenting.

00:44:51.900 He documented it for six months.

00:44:54.340 So did you ever have a moment where you're kind of sitting out there saying, man, I don't know how much good we're doing.

00:45:00.060 I may be making my friends money.

00:45:02.000 There's a part of the documentary where one of your friends talks about when the baby was born, and the doctor asks, did you ever use crack, cocaine?

00:45:12.020 He says, no.

00:45:13.220 Then he asked the wife, you know, and he says, I'm holding my baby, and she's got a scar.

00:45:16.960 Every time I see the scar, it's a reminder of me.

00:45:18.680 He says, that's the day when I decided to stop doing any, selling anything.

00:45:22.380 Right.

00:45:22.620 Did you ever have an experience like that?

00:45:24.520 Because he tells a story about a 10-year-old comes to his door because he wants some crack cocaine.

00:45:29.480 And he was sold the drugs by a 13-year-old, then a 16-year-old.

00:45:32.980 Did you ever have a guy like you that's very calculating?

00:45:35.920 You're a thinker.

00:45:37.180 You don't like to use violence because of your mom killing your uncle, George, when you were younger, right in front of you with a gun.

00:45:42.180 Absolutely.

00:45:42.440 Because you hit her one time with a stick over, and she lost her eye.

00:45:46.160 No, you got it.

00:45:47.340 So, are you in this point at ever sitting there saying, dude, I may be making a lot of money, but I'm hurting a lot of people?

00:45:55.520 Did you ever have that moment?

00:45:56.960 It took a while.

00:45:57.020 It took a while before, because in the beginning, it was all about everybody making money.

00:46:02.860 And there were no crackheads.

00:46:06.600 If you can just vision.

00:46:08.740 Can you envision everybody that smoking crack got enough money to pay for it at first?

00:46:14.280 One of the worst things about it is that you can't get enough.

00:46:19.660 You're not going to OD, but you're not going to get enough.

00:46:23.820 I mean, if you sit here and you got $4,000, not going to be enough for you.

00:46:28.200 You're going to keep going, keep going, until the whole $4,000 is gone.

00:46:31.320 It's just like their mentality of people who use crack.

00:46:35.480 They want to burn up all their money.

00:46:38.540 When I first started, it was really crazy.

00:46:41.000 You know, you would hear people saying, yeah, I blew $500 last night.

00:46:45.020 And I'd be like, what?

00:46:45.840 You blew $500?

00:46:47.560 So, the main thing was, in the beginning, was they weren't sleeping on the street.

00:46:55.340 They weren't prostituting.

00:46:58.080 When did that happen, though?

00:46:59.680 I mean, it wouldn't take a while.

00:47:00.040 It took a couple of years.

00:47:01.480 Even a couple of years later, though.

00:47:03.580 Like, did you have, I guess what I'm trying to find out from you is, from that perspective,

00:47:09.140 is, are you purely a logical guy where, you know, you're cold to the point where I don't

00:47:16.660 see any of this stuff?

00:47:17.540 Oh, no.

00:47:17.980 No, I started to see it.

00:47:18.300 Because that's not you.

00:47:18.960 I saw how you got emotional about your kids.

00:47:20.820 I started to see it.

00:47:21.920 But it took a while to see it.

00:47:23.520 You know, you just don't see it.

00:47:24.200 What was the first time?

00:47:25.040 What was the first time where you were like, oh, we're actually hurting people?

00:47:27.180 Well, the first time that I really, let me say this here.

00:47:32.920 I started to feel like a hypocrite is when I noticed that I started to change my mindset.

00:47:38.840 Because at first, I used to give it to my girlfriend.

00:47:41.600 I used to give it to my brothers to get high.

00:47:43.760 You know, I had enough.

00:47:44.680 Here, go and get high.

00:47:45.960 You can't smoke all the cocaine I got.

00:47:48.040 So here, go get high.

00:47:50.640 But it came to a point to where I no longer would give them cocaine.

00:47:55.360 And then I didn't want them getting high anymore.

00:47:57.040 So at that point that I knew it was addictive, once I knew that I didn't want my family getting high, then I started to understand what I was doing to other people's families.

00:48:12.740 You know, I didn't want my girl, my brothers, my sisters, my mom, my aunties getting high.

00:48:22.640 And I didn't feel that it was right for me to be selling cocaine to other people's family members.

00:48:28.360 And did you stop at that time?

00:48:29.680 Was it kind of like...

00:48:30.380 A few months later.

00:48:31.360 You know, you don't just kick the habit.

00:48:33.140 You don't go cold turkey.

00:48:34.200 Most people don't.

00:48:36.180 Not able to go cold turkey just immediately.

00:48:38.900 How much of it to get away from it do you think it's knowing that you can outsmart anybody?

00:48:43.100 Is it kind of like to the point where I think I'm invincible?

00:48:45.860 I think I can't smart anybody.

00:48:47.640 I think I'm strategically smarter than these guys.

00:48:49.900 Was it...

00:48:50.760 Yeah, I felt like that, too.

00:48:52.120 You know, I didn't feel that the police could catch me.

00:48:54.920 I thought that I could stay ahead of the police.

00:48:58.180 I could stay ahead of the streets, you know, the guys who do the robbing.

00:49:01.740 And, yeah, you feel like that, you know.

00:49:05.620 But I quit about a year before I went to prison, you know.

00:49:09.260 This is when you went to Ohio?

00:49:11.500 Yep.

00:49:12.020 Cincinnati?

00:49:12.580 But after I came back from Ohio.

00:49:14.500 Because I started back selling.

00:49:15.440 I started back selling when I was in Ohio.

00:49:18.160 Because you came back here trying to buy the motels, and I think you were trying to do some of the real estate stuff.

00:49:23.580 Yeah, I was already doing that, though, when I was selling the drugs.

00:49:26.020 The drugs financed the real estate.

00:49:28.640 But when I went to Cincinnati, I went to just chill out.

00:49:31.760 And then I started back selling drugs.

00:49:33.880 So that was part of me trying to pull away.

00:49:38.200 You know how you're trying to pull away, but you just don't do it.

00:49:42.860 It took Cincinnati, getting in trouble in Cincinnati.

00:49:47.560 One of my guys got caught at the bus station.

00:49:50.020 And I did everything I could for him, and he's still got 20 years.

00:49:54.820 So that was when I was like, you know what, this is the time.

00:49:57.960 So, were they the ones that ratted you out first, ratted you out first, Cincinnati, or no?

00:50:03.220 Like, how did they find out about who's behind this entire?

00:50:06.860 He didn't rat me out.

00:50:08.180 The one who got caught and got to 20, he didn't.

00:50:11.180 But the guy who was on the stage that I was telling you about earlier, he did.

00:50:15.260 When I quit Cincinnati and went back, what they did is they went and started working all of my connections.

00:50:22.060 You know, I had houses down there, I had cars.

00:50:23.960 Because when I left, I just left my houses and cars and everything.

00:50:26.620 I didn't take no furniture out.

00:50:28.900 You know, I just left the place.

00:50:31.420 And what they did is they went back and they started using all of my resources and all my connections and everything.

00:50:38.220 So, one of them started messing with a DA agent that eventually busted him.

00:50:45.420 No connection to Blandon?

00:50:47.140 No, no.

00:50:48.160 So, at this time, you and Blandon are still good.

00:50:50.400 You're still doing business regularly.

00:50:51.860 Yeah.

00:50:52.340 He is financing what he's doing for the Freedom Fighters, the whole CIA conspiracy.

00:50:57.240 Yeah.

00:50:57.540 You know, with Nicaragua, he's doing what he's doing.

00:50:59.760 He's being allowed to do what he's doing.

00:51:01.840 What happens for you to get caught and go to prison, first time?

00:51:06.380 They told on me.

00:51:08.220 They got busted down in Cincinnati.

00:51:10.200 And when they got busted, they threw me in the operation.

00:51:15.420 I mean, it was pretty easy, you know.

00:51:17.140 I mean, it's pretty easy for how the feds work, you know.

00:51:19.760 The feds can work off of almost what they call circumstantial evidence.

00:51:25.340 The way they do it is they draw a picture.

00:51:28.860 And they will explain to the jury that this picture is not going to be totally complete.

00:51:35.240 You know, it wasn't captured on film.

00:51:37.100 It was just a picture that was drawn.

00:51:39.300 And in this picture, there's going to be elements that's not going to be totally complete.

00:51:43.280 But it's going to be enough of a picture to where you can emphasize.

00:51:47.300 And as a jury member, you're allowed to emphasize.

00:51:49.660 So, what they did is they came up with evidence.

00:51:52.520 First, they proved that I was in Cincinnati.

00:51:55.440 You know, they had, like, some rental agreements.

00:51:58.520 You know, one that had my fingerprints on it.

00:52:00.720 I also had a fake ID from Cincinnati.

00:52:03.340 They had that.

00:52:04.260 Then all the guys that had got arrested stayed in my general area, you know, showing that we were friends, that we were connected.

00:52:15.860 Then they would show the jury that you can believe that this guy really knows Rick.

00:52:22.980 And if you believe what he's going to say about Rick is true, then you can convict Rick of what he said Rick did.

00:52:33.080 And they were talking about, oh, I was with Rick one day, and he sold 10 keys, and he sold it to this guy, Ronnie B., and he sold five to this guy, Jerry, and, you know, and so forth and so on.

00:52:45.240 And he went to New York one time.

00:52:47.060 I went with him, and we picked up.

00:52:48.460 We stayed at this hotel one night, and we did this deal.

00:52:52.520 And that's how they built a case up.

00:52:55.380 So, now, how much time did you do it the first time?

00:52:58.020 I did five years and, like, four months.

00:53:02.220 Five years and four months.

00:53:03.320 Yeah.

00:53:03.560 When you get out, do you have any cash still left?

00:53:07.140 No.

00:53:07.540 I really got out.

00:53:08.220 I was broke.

00:53:08.840 I think I had a couple pieces of property left.

00:53:11.100 I still had the theater that I was trying to build.

00:53:14.900 What else?

00:53:15.900 What city was that in which theater?

00:53:17.200 Los Angeles.

00:53:18.120 Which part?

00:53:19.320 In Crenshaw or?

00:53:20.460 Right off of Crenshaw, yeah.

00:53:21.840 By the mall?

00:53:22.740 No, not by the Crenshaw.

00:53:23.860 It was right down the street from the Crenshaw Mall.

00:53:25.140 Oh, okay, got it.

00:53:25.820 Crenshaw and Adams is where it was at.

00:53:27.460 Crenshaw and Adams, got it.

00:53:28.940 On the other side, not by the mall.

00:53:30.860 No, right by the freeway, right by the 10th.

00:53:34.680 You know, the first speech I ever gave was at the Sizzlers by Crenshaw Mall.

00:53:38.040 I don't know if you remember the Sizzlers by Crenshaw Mall.

00:53:40.440 I don't.

00:53:40.580 Right by the theater.

00:53:41.500 I don't.

00:53:41.640 Because the theater, that magic, the theater right on, first message I gave.

00:53:47.720 Yeah.

00:53:47.920 It was 21 years old.

00:53:48.780 I got out of the military.

00:53:50.080 It was the Sizzlers.

00:53:51.160 I was nervous as hell.

00:53:52.300 I got up and spoke, and the guy asked me to give a message.

00:53:55.100 Oh, you know what?

00:53:56.560 A Sizzler used to be on Overhill.

00:53:59.900 I mean, visually, I can tell you exactly where it's at and where I parked the car.

00:54:03.300 Yeah.

00:54:03.680 I'm trying to picture where it was.

00:54:04.660 I drove my Mitsubishi Eclipse.

00:54:06.600 I'm trying to think of where Sizzlers.

00:54:08.320 It had to be behind the mall, right?

00:54:10.200 It was behind the mall.

00:54:11.300 Okay.

00:54:11.560 Like, it wasn't at all by it.

00:54:12.960 It was completely behind the mall.

00:54:14.120 Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

00:54:14.900 This was in 99, though.

00:54:16.020 We're talking about 20 years ago.

00:54:18.100 Yeah.

00:54:18.320 Right after the military.

00:54:18.940 I just went to prison.

00:54:20.340 99.

00:54:21.480 Oh, no.

00:54:21.880 99, no.

00:54:22.820 No.

00:54:23.460 89.

00:54:24.660 Yeah, 89 is when I went on the first.

00:54:26.380 So you do five years and a few months.

00:54:27.880 You get out.

00:54:28.380 When you get out, now what happens?

00:54:31.100 This is when I'm going to live a clean life.

00:54:33.140 I'm not going to do nothing.

00:54:34.100 And then you get back to the church.

00:54:34.580 Yeah, I'd already came up with a few strategies of what I could do.

00:54:39.660 My plan was to go into the music business.

00:54:41.560 I still had the theater.

00:54:42.940 I felt that this theater would be like the Apollo.

00:54:46.040 Because, you know, when I started to analyze my life, I looked at that.

00:54:49.480 I could have been the king of hip-hop.

00:54:51.660 King of hip-hop?

00:54:52.540 Yeah, I could have been the king of hip-hop.

00:54:53.460 What do you mean by that?

00:54:54.540 Well, I had the opportunities to do deals with some of the biggest people ever in hip-hop.

00:55:02.400 80s?

00:55:03.180 In the 80s, yeah.

00:55:03.800 Kind of like what Shook did.

00:55:05.320 Yeah, but before Shook.

00:55:07.020 Okay, so like N.W.

00:55:08.200 And maybe even bigger than Shook.

00:55:09.540 You think so?

00:55:10.060 This was before, yeah, I had money before Russell had money.

00:55:13.440 You know, I remember when Russell was running around L.A. with LL Cool J and Run DMC and

00:55:18.460 he didn't have no money.

00:55:20.620 And he was looking for money, you know.

00:55:22.720 And I could have went to him and gave him money.

00:55:25.360 Which one of the hip-hop guys in L.A. knew you?

00:55:27.640 I know Warren G. was, you know, maybe an associative friend.

00:55:31.180 Well, I knew him before Warren G.

00:55:32.920 This was before Warren G.

00:55:33.980 This was like DJ Pooh, Dr. Dre, when they were barely being known.

00:55:40.060 And at that time, the hot rappers was like King T, Master Spade, Tiny T.

00:55:46.680 Master Spade talked about you.

00:55:47.860 The old $300 into $900.

00:55:49.420 Yeah.

00:55:49.920 He talked about you.

00:55:50.780 Yeah, yeah.

00:55:51.520 So I was right there when those guys were first learning how to work the drum machines.

00:55:56.680 And then I also had the other end where I knew the guys who were distributing music.

00:56:03.260 You know, I knew Otis Smith.

00:56:04.280 I knew Dick Griffey.

00:56:05.620 I met Barry Gordy one time.

00:56:09.060 So it would have been very easy for me to-

00:56:11.100 Why don't you do it?

00:56:11.680 Why don't you get into it?

00:56:13.380 Well, I did.

00:56:14.260 You know, I gave Otis Smith $600,000 to do Anita Baker's first album.

00:56:19.140 But I still had my foot inside the dope game and I wasn't really, like, putting my energy

00:56:25.940 into the music.

00:56:27.260 I didn't really understand that- where music was going at that time.

00:56:31.060 You know, I couldn't see that hip-hop was going to blow up.

00:56:35.500 And I'm also listening to Otis and Dick and these guys who were telling me that hip-hop

00:56:42.680 was a fad, that it wasn't going to be-

00:56:44.240 They told you hip-hop was a fad?

00:56:45.560 They told me hip-hop was a fad.

00:56:46.780 Literally.

00:56:47.380 Literally.

00:56:48.220 Yeah.

00:56:49.300 Wow.

00:56:49.640 They are the reason that I'm not the king of hip-hop.

00:56:52.480 Unbelievable.

00:56:53.700 That I listen to them.

00:56:54.560 Because they have platinum and go albums.

00:56:57.140 You know, I think Otis had found Rick James and Bobby Womack and Johnny Taylor and Dick

00:57:03.600 Griffey.

00:57:03.920 You know, he found Babyface and Midnight Star.

00:57:07.920 Midnight Star.

00:57:09.040 Midnight Star, you mean like Reggie Calloway?

00:57:10.920 Yeah, yeah.

00:57:11.580 Dick Griffey found him.

00:57:12.100 Jay King, some of these names.

00:57:13.780 Yeah, Dick Griffey.

00:57:14.160 Remember Jay King, Club Nouveau?

00:57:15.580 Yeah, I know Jay.

00:57:16.260 I got Jay number on my phone.

00:57:18.220 I sold Jay an insurance policy 15 years ago.

00:57:20.800 Is that right?

00:57:21.540 Jay one time says to me, he says, hey.

00:57:24.840 I said, Jay, what do you want to do?

00:57:26.580 He says, you want to sell some policies?

00:57:27.820 I said, I do.

00:57:28.340 He took me, Jay took me to, if he's listening to this, he's going to crack up.

00:57:32.100 We went to Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel.

00:57:36.140 We sat down.

00:57:37.160 LL Cool J came.

00:57:38.480 Suge was there.

00:57:39.900 I said, Jay, I can't sell a policy to Suge Knight.

00:57:42.080 No one's going to sell Suge Knight a policy.

00:57:44.000 See, I met Suge when he first got started.

00:57:50.240 How was he?

00:57:50.860 Was he a tough guy?

00:57:51.740 Was he rugged or no?

00:57:52.800 Was he?

00:57:53.300 I believe he took a lot of Harrio's traits and a lot of Harrio's ideas of how to really

00:58:00.000 do the business.

00:58:01.840 Me and Harrio were sellies when we were in prison.

00:58:03.660 And I was there when he told David Kenner, it was me, him, and David Kenner sitting in

00:58:10.780 the attorney room.

00:58:11.440 And he was like, I'm going to teach you how to make more money than you ever would have

00:58:16.780 made during law.

00:58:20.500 And I was sitting right there with him.

00:58:22.300 Interesting.

00:58:23.220 So now you're out, okay?

00:58:25.700 Five years, few months, you're out.

00:58:27.500 You're getting back into it pretty quickly.

00:58:29.620 Or are you kind of taking a break from it?

00:58:32.740 From what?

00:58:33.480 The drug business?

00:58:34.000 The drug business.

00:58:34.500 Oh, no.

00:58:34.820 I'm not doing no drugs.

00:58:35.940 At all?

00:58:36.400 At all.

00:58:36.980 And then how does Blanding come in?

00:58:39.240 How does that hold?

00:58:39.920 Well, he started calling me the same day I got home.

00:58:43.120 I guess, you know, DA probably told him, okay, we're letting him out today.

00:58:47.280 Get started.

00:58:48.740 So what I'm doing now, I'm running around.

00:58:51.580 And my goal now is because I saw Deferro.

00:58:54.240 I saw Harrio and Suge did Deferro.

00:58:56.160 So I'm working on the music industry.

00:58:59.380 I'm going to do the same thing.

00:59:01.180 While you're creating your youth center.

00:59:02.920 Because I know you were creating a youth center.

00:59:04.080 I was doing a youth center.

00:59:06.380 And that was a whole little strategy, too, that I put together.

00:59:09.440 The youth center was going to be, it could be a youth center slash concert hall where all

00:59:15.260 the rappers, my theater would have held like 4,000 people.

00:59:20.320 4,000 people?

00:59:21.280 Yeah, it had a stage big enough to put like four cars on it.

00:59:24.000 4,000 people?

00:59:24.940 It was a 40,000 square foot building.

00:59:26.560 That's a good size.

00:59:27.620 Yeah.

00:59:27.980 I paid a million, what did I pay for that?

00:59:29.900 A million, two?

00:59:30.760 With what money, though?

00:59:31.660 You said you came out, you didn't have money.

00:59:33.080 No, I bought it before I went to prison.

00:59:34.400 Oh, got it, got it.

00:59:35.260 So that's one of the properties you still had?

00:59:37.020 Yeah, I still had that.

00:59:37.620 Okay.

00:59:37.940 And I paid, I've been paying for that $6,000 a month while I was in prison to keep it.

00:59:42.180 Because I put $900,000 down on it, and I still owe $300,000.

00:59:47.740 And the way that the thing got rolled up, because my girl finished the deal, I didn't finish

00:59:53.240 the deal.

00:59:53.700 I started buying it, and I got arrested in between me buying it and finishing the deal.

00:59:59.960 So she allowed them to write the paperwork up for $6,000 a month, which was too much.

01:00:06.300 I shouldn't have been paying that much.

01:00:07.360 So the whole time I was in prison, I was paying $6,000 a month on a building.

01:00:11.740 So when I got out, my intention was to create like a West Coast Apollo for rappers.

01:00:17.320 And it was on Crenshaw, on Adams.

01:00:19.720 So what I saw is this grand place where every rapper in the country would be saying, man,

01:00:24.680 I want to go to Rick's place.

01:00:25.880 What year is this now?

01:00:27.880 94.

01:00:28.320 94.

01:00:29.720 Yeah.

01:00:30.120 So did you have any runnings with Tupac?

01:00:32.360 I never met Pac.

01:00:33.640 Pac, I didn't meet Pac because I was messing with Rodney and Joe Cooley.

01:00:37.460 I knew Rodney and Joe Cooley.

01:00:39.280 And when I got out, Pac and Cooley, Pac and Joe had just had words.

01:00:46.460 And so before I met Pac, Joe was telling me that he had just dissed him or something.

01:00:55.180 You know, Pac dissed him at one of the shows.

01:00:56.660 So I didn't have no intentions on going to meet Pac.

01:01:01.880 You know, it was like, if we meet, we meet.

01:01:04.260 But I'm not pursuing a meeting with Pac.

01:01:08.760 He knows of you at the time, obviously.

01:01:11.080 I'm pretty sure he did.

01:01:12.260 Yeah.

01:01:12.400 I'm pretty sure he did.

01:01:13.220 So you're trying to do this part.

01:01:15.780 Blanding calls you.

01:01:16.660 He keeps following up with you.

01:01:17.820 Then what happens?

01:01:18.800 Well, he's trying to get me to do a drug deal.

01:01:21.360 This is you and Chico.

01:01:22.100 Well, this is before Chico came in the picture.

01:01:25.320 Chico came in the picture later.

01:01:26.760 He had been trying to get me before Chico had even came in the picture.

01:01:29.800 Chico came in the picture because one of my old friends, Chris, who had been one of my main guys when I sold cocaine, had came by.

01:01:41.540 And he was like, yeah, man, my young boy, he's like, my young boy, Rick, you probably remember him.

01:01:47.520 He was young when you left the streets.

01:01:49.340 You know, he's doing good now.

01:01:50.620 He got studio equipment and blah, blah, blah.

01:01:53.380 Chris had just got out of jail, too, from Texas.

01:01:55.880 He was out on bail.

01:01:56.680 And he was saying, you need to hook up with him because he's doing the music thing, too.

01:02:02.460 He got all the equipment and blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:02:04.540 And I was like, okay, cool, hook us up.

01:02:06.440 So he hooked us up.

01:02:07.640 And matter of fact, the day that Blandon, that Chico met Blandon, we were coming from Dick Griffey's office doing a record deal.

01:02:17.360 When you met with Blandon?

01:02:19.180 Right.

01:02:19.460 So what we did, we was coming from Dick Griffey's office.

01:02:21.780 Blandon called me.

01:02:22.540 I was like, oh, man, let's just go by there and get a couple burritos from his restaurant.

01:02:26.440 And, you know, we ain't got to buy no food today.

01:02:29.260 And so we really stopped by to do that.

01:02:31.460 And then he started talking about cocaine.

01:02:33.960 And Chico was like, man, let me do it.

01:02:37.020 Let me do it.

01:02:39.640 How much after that did he do it?

01:02:41.080 I know it's a $300,000 deal or $350,000.

01:02:43.480 No, it was supposed to have been a million dollar deal.

01:02:46.100 It was supposed to have been a million dollar deal.

01:02:47.940 The $300,000 was just a down payment.

01:02:50.580 On a million dollar deal.

01:02:51.880 Correct.

01:02:52.180 $10,000 per.

01:02:53.520 Yeah.

01:02:54.380 100 kilos.

01:02:55.720 A million dollar deal.

01:02:57.240 $10,000 per.

01:02:58.740 So is it that day?

01:03:01.600 Is that the day when the deal was made and everybody showed up or no?

01:03:05.400 No, no.

01:03:06.000 No, it took a couple weeks after that.

01:03:07.760 You know, he kept probably about two or three months after that.

01:03:09.860 Were you paranoid?

01:03:10.720 Why is this guy keep following up or no?

01:03:12.320 I didn't really, you know, what I credit myself, it's almost like a drug addict who's trying

01:03:23.400 to kick the habit and, you know, you keep dangling, come on, man, just try one time, come on, come on.

01:03:31.120 And I look at it that that's what eventually happened to me because my whole intention was to never sell drugs again, to never be involved with a drug deal again.

01:03:41.440 Tell me, you promised your kid.

01:03:44.540 You said, I'm not going to touch it again.

01:03:46.060 I promised my kids and I promised myself, too, you know, just like I did when I said I was never going to use again.

01:03:51.440 But what I notice now is that I had never totally ruled out never selling drugs, you know, like I still had, I still had some things, you know, like, oh, my kid get hit by a car and they need a surgery for $50,000.

01:04:07.400 I'm going to get that $50,000.

01:04:08.880 I don't care how I got to get it, you know.

01:04:11.680 And I almost looked at the theater as if it was almost that important to me as, like, one of those kids.

01:04:22.260 That was kind of like my last stronghold that I had from the game, you know, that I felt would have given me a boost in life that I wanted.

01:04:34.040 Walk me through the day, the event, the day where the FBI and everybody comes, like, what was they like, the day like?

01:04:40.240 Well, it started off with us getting on the 405 freeway, going to San Diego.

01:04:46.840 Danilo didn't want to do the deal in L.A.

01:04:48.780 I would have beat this case if I would have stayed in L.A.

01:04:51.640 My lawyer told me that if I would have stayed in L.A., that he would have won this case for me.

01:04:56.540 I would have got acquitted.

01:04:58.020 If you would have, why is that?

01:04:59.060 Why in L.A.?

01:04:59.820 Well, I would have had some black jurors.

01:05:01.760 Got it.

01:05:02.900 He said that blacks would have never convicted me of this crime that they had me.

01:05:06.700 They had me, they had tape recordings where he's dangling the price.

01:05:13.760 Oh, it's $17,000 a kilo.

01:05:15.920 Oh, it's $14,000 a kilo.

01:05:17.560 Oh, it's $12,000 a kilo.

01:05:18.920 Oh, it's $11,000 a kilo.

01:05:20.040 So those are all inducements to induce you into, which is illegal.

01:05:26.700 They're not supposed to, the law is supposed to be to catch criminals.

01:05:32.480 It's not for, to entrap a law-abiding citizen, but the people who wrote the laws were smart enough to know that innocent people can be duped into doing a crime.

01:05:52.840 You know, you know, right.

01:05:54.880 Say, if, you know, somebody's been walking for two or three days and they walk down the street and this guy's like, hey, man, there's some keys in that car.

01:06:04.100 And you never even thought about the car.

01:06:05.940 But now he just put that on your mind.

01:06:08.160 That's inducement.

01:06:09.000 That's inducement.

01:06:09.600 Yeah.

01:06:10.080 And it's entrapment.

01:06:11.240 So $17,000, $14,000, $12,000, $11,000, $10,000.

01:06:13.160 Yep.

01:06:15.380 And at 10, I broke, you know.

01:06:20.940 What would you have made on that deal?

01:06:22.640 On that million-dollar deal, 100 kilos, how much would you have made?

01:06:25.120 I think they were going to give me $50,000, I mean $150,000 each for setting the deal up, for hooking them up.

01:06:34.000 Well, they were going to pay you.

01:06:35.160 I got it.

01:06:35.640 So you're not part of it.

01:06:36.980 Kind of like you paid the other guys $60,000.

01:06:39.160 They would have paid you $150,000 here.

01:06:40.880 Correct.

01:06:41.580 I got it.

01:06:42.200 So Chico's going to do the deal.

01:06:43.660 He's doing a million-dollar deal.

01:06:44.620 You're not involved.

01:06:45.780 Well, technically, I wasn't.

01:06:47.720 But, I mean, going by federal law, I was.

01:06:49.880 I ate and abetted.

01:06:51.340 With aiding and abetting, if I know you're doing a dope deal, and I hand you the keys to my car, and you go to do that dope deal, then technically, I just ate and abetted you in that car.

01:07:06.280 Got it.

01:07:06.560 Got it.

01:07:07.360 So now what happens?

01:07:08.380 Blending comes.

01:07:09.760 Well, we get to San Diego.

01:07:12.200 Does he seem nervous?

01:07:13.580 Is he?

01:07:13.820 I couldn't tell, you know, because I hadn't done a dope deal.

01:07:18.540 I've been out of the game for seven years now.

01:07:21.880 You know, I haven't done a dope deal in seven years, so I'm totally out of my element.

01:07:26.100 And it's crazy.

01:07:27.020 You know, people might not understand what that means, but it's like when you haven't done something for a while, you're not practicing the way that you always practice.

01:07:36.260 I mean, your timing is off.

01:07:38.060 You know, it's just not you.

01:07:39.760 You're not the same person you used to be.

01:07:41.880 So we get there.

01:07:43.740 It was nighttime.

01:07:44.880 We was probably doing the deal as soon as we got there.

01:07:46.880 And he's, oh, no, I can't get to the warehouse right now.

01:07:50.580 You know, we got to do it first thing in the morning.

01:07:52.500 So we wind up having to get a house.

01:07:54.580 I mean, get an apartment and spend the night there.

01:07:56.780 I was still on parole, too.

01:08:02.080 Wasn't supposed to be in San Diego.

01:08:03.760 That was a violation for me to even be in San Diego.

01:08:08.180 So we woke up the next morning.

01:08:11.940 We went and met with him at a Denny's.

01:08:14.160 He asked for the money.

01:08:16.520 I told him we want to see the drugs.

01:08:18.320 He had this white guy with him who was a DA agent posing, you know, as another one that connects.

01:08:27.440 Chico handed him the money.

01:08:29.180 They told us where the car was.

01:08:31.980 Danilo handed me the keys to the car.

01:08:34.380 I threw the keys to Mike.

01:08:36.500 Mike jumped in the car.

01:08:38.820 I opened up the back of the car and looked at the boxes where the kilos were supposed to be.

01:08:44.260 I saw some packages that looked like kilos.

01:08:46.580 They were wrapped in tape and everything like normal.

01:08:49.660 And I told Chico, okay, everything good.

01:08:53.320 I jumped back in my car and I commenced to taking off.

01:08:58.060 When I pulled out, this car tried to cut me off.

01:09:02.500 And I swerved and went around it, not really paying any attention.

01:09:05.960 But then when I got up a little ways further, two black and white police cars blocked the intersection.

01:09:11.840 So I had to swerve, turn from this and them, and I knew it was a setup from there.

01:09:17.660 I looked back in my rear view mirror.

01:09:19.520 I saw him had Chico and Curtis out the car, spread it out, you know, handcuffing him.

01:09:26.740 And I saw him have Mike.

01:09:28.240 And then I saw Danilo standing on the side with the DA, you know, laughing and, you know, like a job well done.

01:09:36.920 What are you thinking at that time while you're driving?

01:09:41.140 Unbelievable.

01:09:42.060 You know, I'm looking at a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

01:09:46.140 You know, I knew the law because I saw other guys get the same thing.

01:09:51.860 At that time, I had a conviction from Cincinnati and Texas.

01:09:54.580 So it looked like, in my mind, I was a three-striker.

01:09:59.600 I thought I was a three-striker.

01:10:02.480 So that was going to be my last day on the street probably, more than likely.

01:10:06.800 And then, too, see, I'm still young in my mind.

01:10:09.800 You know, I don't really, you know, I don't really understand a lot of stuff.

01:10:14.200 You know, I was smarter than I was when I went to prison, but I was nowhere near at the level that I was going to be on.

01:10:24.580 So now you go in, you get out, you get life, you start reading, studying law.

01:10:32.180 And this is when you realize the whole three-strike and you negotiate.

01:10:36.140 And did you represent yourself to get out of it or did you have somebody else?

01:10:38.940 No, I had a lawyer.

01:10:40.160 You had a lawyer.

01:10:40.520 I had a lawyer.

01:10:41.080 What point did you know when you said, I think I can get out of this?

01:10:44.260 It was probably after about three years of being in.

01:10:46.860 And we were getting ready to get sentenced.

01:10:51.680 And I told my lawyer, I was like, look, man, you know, well, I felt, first we felt that we were going to get the whole, we should have got, my whole case should have been reversed.

01:11:02.120 Because, you know, Danilo Blando had an illegal green card that the jury never knew about.

01:11:05.660 I felt that had the jury known that his green card was bogus, that one of the agents forged his green card, could have made a big difference in front of the jury.

01:11:16.580 But, you know, the appeals court and everybody said it wouldn't have made a difference, you know.

01:11:21.140 But technically, he shouldn't have never been allowed to testify.

01:11:24.500 He shouldn't have never been allowed to testify?

01:11:26.100 No, no, because he shouldn't have been allowed to do the setup.

01:11:29.680 The law states that if you are an alien that's convicted of a drug crime, you must be deported.

01:11:37.580 Not that you can be deported.

01:11:40.540 You must be deported.

01:11:42.660 Can the government, through immunity, give him the freedom to say, it's okay, we're not going to deported?

01:11:46.220 They can.

01:11:46.940 They can.

01:11:47.640 The attorney general or the president of the United States.

01:11:51.080 Those two.

01:11:51.740 Only once.

01:11:52.520 Interesting.

01:11:53.740 Happens all the time, though, with these immunity deals.

01:11:55.840 Very interesting deals.

01:11:57.060 They break the laws, their own laws.

01:11:59.000 Right.

01:11:59.400 But the only person that can allow him legally are those two people.

01:12:04.580 Not an INS agent, not the chief of INS.

01:12:08.640 So who's the president in the late 90s?

01:12:10.780 Bill Clinton was.

01:12:12.160 Bill Clinton was.

01:12:13.180 He didn't do it.

01:12:14.240 Attorney General did it.

01:12:15.320 She didn't do it either.

01:12:16.160 Then who did?

01:12:17.800 A DE agent, an INS agent forged his green card.

01:12:22.940 How do you know that?

01:12:24.700 Well, we got a tip.

01:12:26.320 My lawyer was in his hotel room, so an INS agent calls him and says, Mr. Finster, I got

01:12:33.060 some information for you.

01:12:34.140 I don't like what they did to Rick.

01:12:35.840 I think what they did to him was wrong, and I got some information for you.

01:12:40.820 So my lawyer said, what you got?

01:12:42.320 He said, well, I don't really know what they did to get this green card, but it was illegal.

01:12:49.380 He said, it's almost impossible to get a green card for a convicted felon, especially somebody

01:12:55.040 who was sold as many drugs as he is sold.

01:12:57.380 I think they convicted him for over 10,000 kilos of cocaine.

01:13:02.040 So when my lawyer get this call, the next day we go to court.

01:13:06.980 We're going to trial.

01:13:07.780 This is doing trial.

01:13:09.260 What year is this?

01:13:09.880 What?

01:13:10.540 96.

01:13:11.580 96.

01:13:12.040 Now, we should have had this information in Brady versus Merlin.

01:13:15.640 Brady versus Merlin is saying that the government's supposed to turn over any information that's

01:13:20.480 favorable to my defense.

01:13:22.340 You know, if it makes the cop look bad, make the informant look bad, they're supposed to turn it over to us.

01:13:27.460 But they haven't turned anything over to us.

01:13:29.480 They hadn't told us how he got his green card or none of that.

01:13:32.040 So we go to court.

01:13:32.980 So my lawyer, we're sitting in court, and my lawyer is telling me about it.

01:13:35.280 Man, I get this strange call last night from this guy.

01:13:38.500 Weird call.

01:13:39.520 You know, my lawyer, he's straight by the book, one of those bookers.

01:13:43.280 And he was like, this guy tells me that Danilo shouldn't have a green card.

01:13:48.880 I said, yeah.

01:13:49.700 He said, yeah.

01:13:51.660 He said, you want me to question him about it?

01:13:53.080 I said, yeah, ask him about it.

01:13:54.900 Let's see what happened.

01:13:56.460 I said, you know, I'm looking for anything.

01:13:57.780 I'm drafting for straws.

01:13:58.880 I'm in the middle of the ocean.

01:14:00.380 Boat went down.

01:14:01.380 Sure, of course.

01:14:03.000 So he starts to question Chuck Jones, the DA agent, about it.

01:14:08.020 How did this guy get a green card?

01:14:09.560 Oh, I don't know how he got his green card.

01:14:11.100 But I know it was done right, but never committing.

01:14:18.320 Oh, I didn't do it.

01:14:19.100 The INS agent Tellus handled all of the green card stuff, and my lawyer, he blew it.

01:14:25.600 He blew it?

01:14:26.460 He blew it.

01:14:26.940 He should have put Tellus on the witness stand.

01:14:29.180 Had he put Tellus on the witness stand, Tellus would have lied.

01:14:33.860 Tellus would have got on the witness stand and told him, and told the people that, oh, yeah,

01:14:38.680 I did the green card right.

01:14:40.320 Everything was done to the letter of the law.

01:14:42.900 And then when we came...

01:14:43.180 Why didn't he do it?

01:14:43.760 Why didn't he put him on the witness stand?

01:14:45.960 I don't know.

01:14:46.620 He thought that...

01:14:47.380 He thought that the jury saw the conflict and the non-direct answers by the DA agent,

01:14:59.460 and that that would be enough for them to have some doubt.

01:15:08.700 But after we know...

01:15:09.920 Because we got a hearing about the whole thing.

01:15:11.660 We came back, and the chief of INS came in, and Tellus' supervisor came in.

01:15:16.080 Oh, no, Tellus told me that the guy's green...

01:15:18.400 Tellus never told me that the guy had a conviction.

01:15:20.540 Because his supervisor signed off.

01:15:24.520 So had the supervisor did his job and went through all the paperwork,

01:15:27.920 he would have known that the guy was a convicted felon.

01:15:29.680 He never would have gave him a green card.

01:15:32.120 But by him knowing Tellus had been an agent for all these years,

01:15:37.340 he said that he knew that Tellus knew that a convicted felon couldn't get a green card.

01:15:42.220 Got it.

01:15:43.280 But now it's his word against Tellus' word.

01:15:46.700 So then you end up getting how much time for that?

01:15:49.140 You get 20, you get life.

01:15:50.620 I get life.

01:15:51.480 And then you somehow, some way, you get yourself out of it.

01:15:55.200 The three strikes.

01:15:56.000 I beat the three-strike law.

01:15:57.820 You beat the three-strike law.

01:15:59.480 You're out.

01:15:59.800 How much time did you end up doing on the second time around?

01:16:02.860 14 years and like 7 months, 18 months.

01:16:05.860 8 months, something like that.

01:16:07.120 14 years, 7, 8 months.

01:16:08.600 Yeah.

01:16:09.100 Now, at this point of your life,

01:16:10.540 how certain are you the CIA was involved in the whole thing in the 80s?

01:16:15.580 Well, I mean, when it first, you know, when the story first came out,

01:16:18.720 I didn't really give Gary's story much credibility.

01:16:22.240 You know, I was like, ah, it was only after I started to dig and do the research

01:16:28.780 and Danilo's green card and just, you know, all the stuff surrounding it.

01:16:33.620 You know, like, how did this guy get caught with 10,000 keys and do 28 months in prison?

01:16:38.320 You know, when they got guys that got caught with two ounces that's doing life

01:16:42.520 without the possibility of parole.

01:16:43.720 So, how did this all work?

01:16:47.280 You know, and I guess the really convincing point for me was when the CIA did their,

01:16:53.900 they report and they said that, yeah, we knew these guys were selling drugs.

01:16:59.780 Yeah, we filed a report, asked an attorney general that we not have to report them

01:17:04.840 to law enforcement, that I knew that Gary was onto something.

01:17:09.280 Didn't director of CIA show up to Crenshaw or L.A. or something like that?

01:17:13.360 I think Chico called him out.

01:17:14.980 He came to Locke High School.

01:17:16.780 Yeah, he came to it.

01:17:17.480 They did a town hall meeting where he said that he was going to be getting to the bottom of it.

01:17:24.760 Did the people believe him?

01:17:26.680 No, well, you know, that's when Chico confronted him.

01:17:28.780 You know, Chico told him something like, well, you're saying that you guys don't know if he was involved,

01:17:35.120 but you sent a letter to our judge telling our judge that you knew absolutely that he wasn't involved

01:17:41.840 and we're going to be getting sent this Monday on the premises that he wasn't involved

01:17:47.580 and now you're telling the people that you don't know if he was involved or not.

01:17:51.780 Which was it?

01:17:53.000 You know, it was like a double standard.

01:17:54.940 Yeah, Chico, he said, I'm facing seven and a half and you're facing life.

01:17:58.940 Right.

01:17:59.300 Yeah.

01:18:00.400 I was just impressed that he showed up.

01:18:02.500 I just don't know if the people trusted him.

01:18:05.400 If you're sitting there saying, well, maybe it's-

01:18:06.820 They didn't trust him.

01:18:07.360 They didn't trust him.

01:18:07.940 No.

01:18:08.300 Yeah.

01:18:08.780 I think that was, I mean, they gave it to him that day.

01:18:11.640 They gave it to him.

01:18:12.080 I bet they'll never do that again.

01:18:13.920 Yeah.

01:18:14.720 Yeah.

01:18:15.260 So when you got the news with Gary, how did you react when the whole suicide?

01:18:19.640 Oh, he shot himself in the head twice.

01:18:21.980 You know, I've never heard of anybody shooting themselves in the head twice.

01:18:25.060 No, I mean-

01:18:25.300 When you got the news, what did you say?

01:18:26.580 Well, you know, I was doing a documentary with Kevin Booth.

01:18:29.620 I don't know if you ever heard of it.

01:18:30.500 Kevin's from Texas, too.

01:18:32.220 Matter of fact, Kevin is the guy that introduced me to Alex Jones.

01:18:36.280 Kevin was doing a documentary called The Great White Hope, and he wanted me to be in the documentary.

01:18:41.880 So we had been talking for about a month on that documentary.

01:18:45.960 And in jail, you know, you only get 15 minutes on the phone.

01:18:49.260 So my 15 minutes was up that hour.

01:18:51.700 And so I was waiting on the next 15 minutes to come.

01:18:54.320 And when that 15 minutes came, I called Kevin so we could resume our conversation.

01:18:59.540 And that's when he told me what had happened to Gary.

01:19:03.040 I was totally blown away.

01:19:05.340 Couldn't believe it.

01:19:06.200 It was just, like, strange for me.

01:19:11.020 Like, you know, how could somebody who is such a champion for justice, you know, how could he be gone like that?

01:19:22.060 You know, and he was in the middle of his life work, I guess, what I would call it.

01:19:28.280 Did anybody investigate it or no?

01:19:30.520 Did anybody pursue to see, you know, who it was, anything like that, or not really?

01:19:35.780 I don't really know.

01:19:37.280 You know, I think people were fast to have it done with, you know, to be over it and to be gone to the next thing.

01:19:51.260 And I know the government was definitely glad that Gary wasn't around.

01:19:57.280 I mean, Gary was, I mean, not just what he did with that case.

01:20:01.860 I mean, Gary did so many great articles and things for society.

01:20:05.740 He pushed the envelope.

01:20:06.500 He did.

01:20:07.060 But even Michael Levine told him, he says, listen, I don't think this is a good idea one day when I'm on Tell Williams and the whole thing took place.

01:20:12.720 Oh, yeah.

01:20:13.420 Levine told him, says, I don't think you're doing the right thing right now because it's too much exposure.

01:20:17.380 Yeah.

01:20:17.640 And then eventually, you know, guy ends up shooting himself twice.

01:20:21.380 You know, at this point, the one question I do want to ask you is the following.

01:20:25.480 And this will be the last topic I want to kind of talk before we get into your book and some of the projects you're doing.

01:20:31.040 So I grew up in Iran, okay?

01:20:32.960 I lived there 10 years.

01:20:34.880 You know, when I talk to other people in Iran who experience war, being bombed on, the fears, the anxiety, that always stays.

01:20:40.860 The whistling sound when you watch the movies, you have flashbacks because I come from that world.

01:20:45.460 Two years, I live in Germany at a refugee camp.

01:20:49.940 My parents split up.

01:20:51.740 My parents get a divorce.

01:20:52.980 I don't see my dad for a year and a half.

01:20:55.160 Then I come to Glendale, California, and I see my dad once every other week for one day.

01:21:03.820 So I saw him two days a month for six years.

01:21:06.680 Then I joined the Army.

01:21:07.520 I didn't see him for two and a half years.

01:21:09.940 And then I saw my friends going back and forth.

01:21:12.820 And a lot of times people ask me, they say, Pat, how come you didn't become a drug dealer, drug addict, all this other stuff?

01:21:19.420 One of my best friends became the biggest drug dealer, biggest seller of Pat in Glendale.

01:21:26.880 I go to the Army.

01:21:27.860 I come back.

01:21:28.320 This guy's like, we get in a car one day.

01:21:31.100 Literally, we're in a car one.

01:21:32.100 It's a black Mustang.

01:21:32.840 We're driving the car, me and him and a friend of ours.

01:21:35.260 If he's watching this, he would remember this.

01:21:37.040 This Z4 BMW shows up right next to us, red light, okay?

01:21:42.060 We're on Los Phillies.

01:21:43.440 And the guy goes like this, light to light.

01:21:45.560 We race.

01:21:46.900 He beats him.

01:21:48.260 The guy shows a badge.

01:21:50.100 My buddy gets pissed.

01:21:51.880 He says, pull over the car.

01:21:52.840 The cop realizes who he is.

01:21:54.540 He runs off.

01:21:55.700 He chases him down, pulls him over in the middle of 5 Freeway.

01:21:58.780 You know, 5 Freeway, right by the Dodger Stadium, if you know, the old Griffith Park right there.

01:22:04.920 Pulls him over right there.

01:22:06.340 Gets out of the car.

01:22:07.000 I said, what are you doing?

01:22:08.000 I'm on vacation from Army.

01:22:10.160 I'm on leave.

01:22:11.100 He goes and spits on the guy's face.

01:22:13.080 He's like, I'll turn your kids into drug addicts if you ever do that to me ever again.

01:22:17.180 The cop takes us to 7-Eleven.

01:22:19.580 Bison says, what can I get you?

01:22:21.680 Gives him a car.

01:22:22.440 Whatever you need, I'll take care of you.

01:22:24.060 I mean, I vividly remember this, right?

01:22:25.980 Yeah.

01:22:26.740 Vividly remember this.

01:22:27.640 And I go back and I say, what the hell happened in the last nine months since I went to the Army?

01:22:32.160 What happened to you?

01:22:33.380 You were a 3.5 GPA kid.

01:22:35.320 And I go back to see what made him turn, right?

01:22:39.480 So for you, my community is Middle Eastern.

01:22:41.600 I grew up with Latinos, African Americans.

01:22:43.300 I joined the Army.

01:22:44.600 In the Army, I got along with African Americans and Latinos because I kind of feel like we're minorities, right?

01:22:49.800 Right.

01:22:50.180 And then now I'm in insurance.

01:22:51.820 It's a Caucasian industry.

01:22:53.400 And I probably run, so it's kind of conflicting.

01:22:55.240 But I ask you, you've seen a lot.

01:22:58.500 You grew up in L.A.

01:22:59.260 You grew up in Crenshaw.

01:23:00.340 It's the pinnacle, right?

01:23:01.620 What do you see being the solution for helping a lot of this, crime, gangs, drugs?

01:23:12.280 What do you see being a way to find a way to minimize it?

01:23:16.560 Economics.

01:23:17.360 Tell me what you mean by that.

01:23:18.400 Well, when you have people who can't sustain a basic living, rent, food, shelter, clothes, maybe a car,

01:23:34.000 when you don't have those elements to be possible, then you allow the mind to wonder and try to figure out ways to accomplish those goals.

01:23:48.160 I don't think drug dealers are bad people at all.

01:23:55.400 And I know a lot of people.

01:23:56.460 I said that one time and somebody went crazy on me.

01:23:58.940 I don't think they are either.

01:24:01.180 I don't think I see them as, you know, you have an opportunity.

01:24:05.200 They're just entrepreneurs.

01:24:06.200 They're trying to make money.

01:24:07.000 Yeah, they saw opportunity.

01:24:08.060 I want to see the seed because for me, trying to process an issue, you know, this is, the drug dealing is a final product.

01:24:16.640 Right.

01:24:17.060 You know, that's the results of, I want to know the seed.

01:24:20.540 I want to know the seed, what happened here.

01:24:23.640 This is what I want to know.

01:24:25.160 And you're in that world, so.

01:24:27.080 Well, he wants to be, he wants to be a member of society.

01:24:31.360 He wants to be somebody of means, somebody that gets respect, you know, just like everybody else.

01:24:38.060 I mean, everybody, we all literally almost think the same things in life.

01:24:44.220 Some of us take different avenues to get there.

01:24:47.140 And sometimes that, those avenues become circumstances that happen in your life, you know, like with you.

01:24:53.520 I mean, who introduced you to insurance for the first person?

01:24:56.740 I met a girl named Jean-Vier.

01:24:58.200 We were at Venice Beach.

01:24:59.780 Her and I started dating.

01:25:01.200 She picked me up in a different car all the time.

01:25:03.600 I was trying to be a bodybuilder.

01:25:04.940 I just got in the Army.

01:25:05.960 I was broke.

01:25:07.200 I was making $4.75 an hour, $5.25 an hour.

01:25:11.880 And, you know, I said, what do you do?

01:25:13.900 She said, I work on Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.

01:25:15.540 I said, I want to be able to work there.

01:25:16.800 She said, you need a degree.

01:25:18.100 You can't.

01:25:19.300 So then eventually I got a job on Morgan Stanley Dean Witter six months later, the day before 9-11.

01:25:23.680 And that's how I got into, I got my Series 7, 66, 31, 26, life and health.

01:25:28.000 And a life went that direction.

01:25:29.900 And that's the same way with me.

01:25:31.120 That's the way I started selling cocaine.

01:25:32.440 That's the way I started selling weed.

01:25:34.380 With weed, when I got off parole, you know, I was getting eviction notices at my house because I wasn't selling enough books and T-shirts to sustain, you know, the lifestyle that I was living.

01:25:46.400 And one of my friends came over and he was like, man, they're having this big convention at San Bernardino Fairgrounds and it's a weed convention.

01:25:54.360 You ought to come, man.

01:25:55.240 You ought to parole now.

01:25:56.720 Loosen up, man.

01:25:58.040 And what I noticed at that time is that I hadn't even saw the weed industry.

01:26:02.360 I never calculated on myself being in the weed industry when I was in prison.

01:26:06.620 It was the furthest thing from my mind.

01:26:08.220 Do you think you're going backwards if you go back, go back into cannabis today?

01:26:11.460 You don't think you're going back to the same thing?

01:26:13.560 No, I don't think so.

01:26:15.280 I look at cannabis as a benefit for us.

01:26:20.800 It has medical benefits.

01:26:24.280 It puts people in a space of peace.

01:26:28.160 You know, I mean, if you ever get a chance, you've got to go to one of those cannabis events.

01:26:34.200 And I mean, everybody there is just so peaceful and happy, you know, and loving.

01:26:39.140 I'm not questioning cannabis.

01:26:42.140 I'm not.

01:26:42.500 I had a marijuana debate a month ago.

01:26:44.780 I brought the commander of U.S. Navy intelligence and I brought the developmental director from

01:26:50.200 Normal.

01:26:50.860 Is that, is it normal?

01:26:52.140 And I had him debate right here.

01:26:53.640 It was an hour and a half debate, intense debate, back and forth.

01:26:56.500 So you understand marijuana already?

01:26:57.820 I understand marijuana, but I'm not talking about marijuana.

01:27:00.600 I'm talking about you and marijuana.

01:27:03.360 Well, I'm no different than nobody else, though.

01:27:04.760 No, but I'm talking about you, you know, the next level and how much more the profits can be.

01:27:09.500 Don't you think for you it's more playing with fire than the average guy?

01:27:12.400 Oh, no.

01:27:13.160 You don't think so?

01:27:13.920 Mm-mm.

01:27:14.840 I would never go back to selling cocaine.

01:27:18.080 No matter what happened.

01:27:18.720 Why do you say that?

01:27:19.640 Because I only sold cocaine because I had no other avenue.

01:27:24.040 Of making money?

01:27:24.840 Of making money.

01:27:25.980 I was stuck.

01:27:26.800 But don't you think you could have been a sales manager and put a team together and gone selling like...

01:27:30.580 But I didn't know that at the time.

01:27:31.880 Can you imagine if you have somebody who think that they're dumb, stupid, they think they're a gangbanger, they think they're a thief?

01:27:42.580 You thought all those things about yourself?

01:27:44.780 Absolutely.

01:27:45.820 But you're incredible in math.

01:27:47.740 Yeah, but I didn't understand that.

01:27:49.200 I didn't understand that you could be incredible in math and I didn't know I was incredible with people.

01:27:56.680 I mean, at that time, I probably had about 15, 20 guys that followed me everywhere I went.

01:28:02.300 If I said to do something, they would go and do it.

01:28:04.800 Yeah.

01:28:05.280 What if you grew up in Beverly Hills 90210, 15 miles away from Crenshaw, okay?

01:28:11.420 18 miles away, whatever the number is, 18 miles away.

01:28:14.460 I got you.

01:28:14.920 To a completely different family.

01:28:16.580 I would have been a different person.

01:28:17.780 You would have been a different person.

01:28:18.720 Absolutely.

01:28:19.160 So when you're going back to economics, so going back to some of these communities, pick Crenshaw, pick Southside Chicago, pick some parts of New York, pick some parts of Miami, pick some parts of even Dallas here.

01:28:31.880 You know, there's some bad areas in Dallas here as well.

01:28:34.620 I come here and speak to them.

01:28:36.040 I spoke in Dallas.

01:28:36.800 There's a real good guy from Dallas.

01:28:39.920 Oak Cliff.

01:28:40.620 Yeah, Oak Cliff.

01:28:41.620 That's right.

01:28:42.320 So what can the community and the government do to inject hope in those areas?

01:28:49.320 Anything?

01:28:50.040 Well, we got to offer opportunities.

01:28:52.540 You know, people, when they don't have opportunities, they get hopeless.

01:28:56.280 And, you know, a hopeless person, they don't care if they live or die.

01:28:58.920 You know, when you got somebody who don't know if they're going to have a place to sleep, they don't know if they're going to have food, you know, they don't have a girlfriend, they don't have family members that care about them.

01:29:12.140 Then they get hopeless, you know, and I think so much centers around.

01:29:17.960 I mean, just look at like the guy who just did the shooting the other day.

01:29:21.460 He just lost his job.

01:29:23.460 They don't think that that had any effect on him committing the crime that he committed.

01:29:31.760 Absolutely, because when you feel hopeless, then you don't care about yourself, so you can't care about anybody else.

01:29:39.740 And I think that that's the same thing that our kids are going through right now in these areas.

01:29:46.640 And that's why I do my job right now.

01:29:48.400 Let me ask you this.

01:29:49.500 Take the bottom 20 worst communities in the U.S.

01:29:53.940 Okay?

01:29:54.480 Okay.

01:29:54.860 Take bottom 20.

01:29:56.060 I want to hear what you're going to say about this.

01:29:57.460 Bottom 20, it's a required reading to read those three books before fifth grade.

01:30:03.760 Absolutely.

01:30:04.560 Let's just say we do that.

01:30:06.260 And let's do the math for those kids.

01:30:08.720 Bottom, it's 100,000 kids.

01:30:11.180 Let's just say it's a small number, 100,000 kids.

01:30:13.320 If they were required to read Richest Man in Babylon, Think and Grow Rich, as a man, think it, right?

01:30:19.480 Right.

01:30:19.980 Before sixth grade, if they were required to read that, how big of a difference do you think it would have made percentage-wise?

01:30:26.840 Tremendous.

01:30:27.760 Tremendous.

01:30:28.140 What is tremendous on 100,000, percentage-wise?

01:30:31.220 Probably 90%.

01:30:32.340 You think that big of a number?

01:30:33.960 I think so.

01:30:34.560 That's a big number you're talking about.

01:30:36.120 So let me ask you, how come our politicians aren't recommending kids to read books?

01:30:40.280 How come we're not recommending some of these books for us to read?

01:30:43.220 Well, a lot of them don't really know the community.

01:30:45.180 They never go in the community.

01:30:46.400 We have people making decisions for us that have never been in the community.

01:30:50.000 Like, we have people who make laws that have never been to a jail.

01:30:54.000 Like, how can you tell how much time a person should spend in prison when you've never been to the prison?

01:30:58.980 You don't know what it's like to go to prison.

01:31:01.240 They never come to our communities.

01:31:03.100 They never get out to meet.

01:31:06.720 Do you think you have to go to jail to be able to know how to influence you?

01:31:09.080 I mean, it's kind of like saying, I'm a gynecologist, but I'm a man.

01:31:12.020 I've never had a kid.

01:31:13.560 The reason why I don't want to use that is because they'll use that as an excuse.

01:31:17.520 What I'm saying is, why aren't they creating opportunity?

01:31:21.840 Myself, okay?

01:31:23.360 I'm a math kid.

01:31:24.440 I had a 1.8 GPA in high school, okay?

01:31:27.240 If I was in your community, I'm probably running with you.

01:31:30.700 Right.

01:31:30.940 But my savior was Army, because a guy named Jesus Guerin came and told me, he says, you're headed towards that side part of your life.

01:31:38.140 And he signed me up for the Army.

01:31:39.200 I went to the Army.

01:31:39.800 Life changed.

01:31:40.520 Right.

01:31:40.900 I was working at Burger King.

01:31:42.160 I'm like a regular guy doing nothing, right?

01:31:45.200 But the reason why I ask that is, I'm trying to see, one, I rarely ever hear any campaign, any politician talk about, let's have our kids read the right books.

01:31:56.300 They don't.

01:31:57.080 They don't.

01:31:57.660 I totally agree.

01:31:58.360 I mean, even my book, I've had teachers read my book, and they ask me, why am I so blunt in my book?

01:32:04.860 And I said, because our kids are tired of BS.

01:32:07.340 We've been BSing them all their life.

01:32:08.820 Don't do this.

01:32:09.400 You can't do that.

01:32:10.100 This is good for you.

01:32:10.860 That's bad for you.

01:32:11.540 And then when they come up, like I told you before, most people who start to use drugs, I did a survey.

01:32:18.700 I was in, I just left Kansas City last week, and I spoke at a couple schools, alternative schools.

01:32:24.420 And I asked all the kids in the schools, who introduced you to drugs the first time?

01:32:30.680 Guess how many said a stranger?

01:32:32.800 How many?

01:32:33.520 None.

01:32:34.580 Come on.

01:32:35.480 Not one.

01:32:36.480 Everybody said, oh, my brother, my father, my auntie, my sister, my cousin.

01:32:43.260 Now, one person said that some strange guy came up and introduced me to the drugs.

01:32:47.920 It's not going to happen.

01:32:49.180 It's usually somebody you love, somebody you trust.

01:32:52.160 What's your point, though?

01:32:53.020 Well, the point is, is that our influences is the reason that we do most of the things that we do.

01:33:01.960 So do we go to the influencers to help them, or do we go to the kids?

01:33:05.980 Well, we go to both.

01:33:07.460 We attack both.

01:33:08.860 How do you help the influencers?

01:33:10.140 How do you help the kids?

01:33:11.300 Well, most of the influencers got involved with drugs because they wanted to, what?

01:33:16.800 Make some money.

01:33:17.640 Yeah.

01:33:17.780 They wanted to make some money.

01:33:19.000 Sure.

01:33:20.420 They got hooked on the drugs because they experimented with it.

01:33:25.000 So if we can help them become financially stable, where they now feel good about themselves,

01:33:33.620 where they feel that their life matters, because most of them don't feel like their life matter.

01:33:38.440 Nobody cares about my life.

01:33:40.060 My life is worthless.

01:33:41.800 Then they can start to also influence the people that they normally introduce to drugs.

01:33:51.320 What are your thoughts about the fatherless kids?

01:33:54.520 I mean, you know, the stats you hear about from the Census Bureau.

01:33:57.760 Definitely have an effect.

01:33:58.780 I was a fatherless kid.

01:34:00.780 In prison, 65% of the guys don't have fathers.

01:34:05.280 In prison?

01:34:06.040 In prison.

01:34:07.580 65%.

01:34:08.100 And it's about the same number for the ones who can't read.

01:34:10.380 So there's a direct parallel to not having knowledge and going to prison.

01:34:17.800 I did a radio show.

01:34:19.160 I was in St. Louis about four or five years ago, and I was doing a radio show.

01:34:23.980 And the guy that was doing the show with me, he had did a survey on the people who got killed in St. Louis.

01:34:31.280 You know, St. Louis at that time was, I think, leading the country in murder rates, and he wanted to know why.

01:34:35.860 So he did a survey.

01:34:38.640 He said all the guys that got, all the people that had got killed that year, none had a high school diploma.

01:34:43.380 So what that told me was not being smart was a direct connection to you being killed.

01:34:53.000 So you having a father figure growing up with you, you would have been, you would have possibly been a whole different human being.

01:34:59.960 Oh, absolutely.

01:35:00.900 Absolutely.

01:35:01.360 Anybody, I mean, because my whole thing is that I was looking for, I was looking for knowledge.

01:35:07.860 I wouldn't have took cocaine if I wasn't looking.

01:35:10.560 You know, I would have missed it.

01:35:11.720 But I was looking for an opportunity to build my cell phone.

01:35:18.280 Yeah, you know, Don Lemon once said from CNN, more than 72% of African-American birds are out of wedlock, is what he said.

01:35:27.780 Wow.

01:35:28.360 72%.

01:35:28.760 That's a big number right there.

01:35:30.560 How much do you think values and principles plays a role?

01:35:34.180 Oh, man, values and principles are the keys.

01:35:37.360 You know, if you've got values and principles, then you can do anything.

01:35:40.720 But without those values and principles, then you'll do anything the other way.

01:35:46.340 You know, Chris Rock, is it Chris Rock, the comedian one time, he's telling this joke.

01:35:49.760 He says, you know, the one thing about men and women, you know, the media is trying to make women say, you don't need men, you can be independent, all this other stuff.

01:35:57.620 He says, go try raising a kid and you go tell your boys what to do.

01:36:00.960 Then let the father say something.

01:36:02.340 Immediately they listen.

01:36:03.460 He was obviously telling a joke about it.

01:36:04.800 Yeah, well, you know, women are a little, because I got two babies now that I'm raising, and women are lighter on their kids than men are.

01:36:11.720 You know, a man is more firmer, more stiffer, and, you know, he's probably going to be the breadwinner.

01:36:19.600 You know, usually the male is the breadwinner.

01:36:21.500 So when you don't have that person to teach you how to bring in the bread, then you become lost in not knowing how to bring in the bread.

01:36:30.160 And when you run into the male figure, the other thing, too, you know, like when you're growing up in the ghetto, the first entrepreneur that most black kids, Spanish kids are going to meet in the ghetto, entrepreneur, is a drug dealer.

01:36:46.860 You know, and then the next one might be a robber, a car thief, a pimp.

01:36:53.300 You know, these are the role models.

01:36:55.620 I was sitting in prison one day, and I was just playing with my mind, and I was saying, what if they would have had an IQ test on criminality?

01:37:06.660 You know, how well would I have scored?

01:37:10.540 Because all the crimes that I hadn't committed, I knew how to commit them because guys in the neighborhood had told me how to do it.

01:37:16.960 Wow.

01:37:17.480 So when you look at the career choices that our people are having, you know, a lot of times they're feeding our kids BS.

01:37:28.440 And then you top that.

01:37:30.260 That's a good point.

01:37:30.780 It's not like you're not willing to learn.

01:37:32.080 It's just what's being fed to you to process in your mind.

01:37:34.480 Exactly, and then we're letting street dudes outwork the people that are supposed to be teaching.

01:37:42.940 You know, most teachers don't want to be there.

01:37:44.920 You know, they want to be somewhere else.

01:37:46.380 You know, I really want, I spoke at a school in L.A., and I did a survey.

01:37:52.020 I spoke to all teachers.

01:37:52.880 It was an all-teacher's conference.

01:37:54.940 I spoke to the kids, and then I told the principal, I said, man, I want to talk to your teachers, too,

01:38:01.160 because your teachers have to have that concern for the kids that an artist has for his art.

01:38:15.280 And a lot of times these teachers don't have it.

01:38:19.560 And when I did the survey with the teachers, I was asking them, I was like, what was your first choice of career?

01:38:25.480 Did you want to be a teacher?

01:38:27.460 And most of them didn't want to be teachers.

01:38:29.540 They're just doing teacher teaching until they get to the point to where they can go to their next field.

01:38:35.020 And if you have these type of people, if you got somebody that wanted to be a rapper or a singer,

01:38:42.080 and they're teaching your kids, or your kids getting that undivided.

01:38:50.520 It's like when I go teach, I teach tennis.

01:38:53.620 Until today?

01:38:54.560 Yeah, right now today, I taught tennis this summer to kids for free, just because I love it.

01:38:59.920 You know what I'm saying?

01:39:02.020 You're glowing right now just talking about it.

01:39:05.020 And my partner, who was on my tennis team with me, it's his camp,

01:39:11.280 but he said that he saw the kids give me something that they don't give him.

01:39:17.040 And he recognized it was behind my passion that I put in it.

01:39:22.880 You know, like I put my tennis shoes on, I go out there and hit balls with them.

01:39:26.060 He do a little bit, but not to the point.

01:39:28.860 Like when I hit balls with them, I'm hustling like they should be hustling.

01:39:32.320 And people have a tendency, they recognize that.

01:39:36.340 Our kids recognize that, like, I really care about you.

01:39:40.600 You know, I really love you.

01:39:42.000 And if they don't feel the same way, you know, they go to class and they go home and they tell,

01:39:46.660 I don't like my teacher, don't like me.

01:39:49.540 You know, once they say that, then that teacher can't.

01:39:51.660 You know, it's crazy you're saying this.

01:39:52.840 Let me tell you, I got three kids, okay?

01:39:55.120 My oldest, since the day he was born, he was serious.

01:39:58.960 He's three months old.

01:40:00.100 This is his pictures.

01:40:03.040 He wouldn't talk to everybody.

01:40:04.240 I'm like, what is wrong with your kid?

01:40:05.780 He'd look at everybody like, let's just say he just met you.

01:40:08.280 This is what he would do to you.

01:40:10.120 He'd just look at you.

01:40:10.800 I'd say, that's not appropriate.

01:40:11.760 You can't look at people like that.

01:40:13.320 So he's getting older.

01:40:14.660 Nothing's changed till today.

01:40:16.180 He's serious.

01:40:16.440 So he goes to kindergarten to this teacher he has.

01:40:19.840 I'm not going to say the name, but so every day the teacher says, your son is not this.

01:40:26.660 Your son is not good at this.

01:40:27.660 Your son is not good at this.

01:40:28.540 Your son's not good at this.

01:40:29.440 All this stuff.

01:40:30.500 By the end of the year, she recommends out of the eight kids for seven to be held back one year.

01:40:37.160 Your son is not ready to go to first grade.

01:40:39.480 And I said, I'm sorry?

01:40:40.480 Yeah, your son's not ready to go to first grade.

01:40:42.560 So one day I sit down with her.

01:40:44.340 I said, let me ask you a question.

01:40:45.240 You have eight students.

01:40:47.200 Seven of them you're allowing to stay back.

01:40:49.660 One of them you're advancing as your grandkid, right?

01:40:52.420 Because you know who I'm talking to.

01:40:53.420 He says, yes, I do.

01:40:54.760 I said, do you know how to lead creative kids?

01:40:59.180 Or do you just know how to lead people who follow your orders?

01:41:02.600 Is this private school that we're paying $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 a month able to lead private creative kids?

01:41:09.200 Right, right.

01:41:09.840 She didn't have an answer.

01:41:10.660 So I go to the principal.

01:41:12.040 I tell the principal.

01:41:12.940 I said, that's the worst teacher I've ever seen in my life.

01:41:17.180 A teacher like this can hurt a kid because a kid can't think he has problems.

01:41:20.560 One day my son comes here.

01:41:22.860 Right here.

01:41:23.880 I have the picture.

01:41:24.520 We should put this picture up, by the way.

01:41:26.340 He comes right here.

01:41:27.400 My wife says, he's got a seal.

01:41:29.380 I don't know what's going on with it.

01:41:30.240 He thinks he has problems.

01:41:31.760 Because the teacher told him, you're different.

01:41:33.540 So he comes to me, sits here, says, Daddy, everybody tells me I'm different.

01:41:39.060 Everybody tells me I'm different.

01:41:40.720 I said, of course you're different.

01:41:42.180 Your daddy's different.

01:41:43.760 Buddy, we're different.

01:41:44.700 We're the same.

01:41:45.720 But you don't want to be like everybody.

01:41:47.400 No.

01:41:47.640 That's why we're special.

01:41:48.780 He cries.

01:41:50.020 And my wife is sitting there crying in motion.

01:41:52.500 She took a picture and she got it.

01:41:54.460 And we're both crying together in that moment.

01:41:57.320 Then next year, my son, we keep him in the school.

01:42:00.800 Next year has this other teacher.

01:42:02.600 During that year for that teacher's class, one of the classmate girls gets cancer, dies at six years old.

01:42:09.420 Kid dies at six years old.

01:42:11.180 The other kid gets cancer.

01:42:12.880 She goes on chemo for three, four months.

01:42:15.240 This teacher gets teacher of the year award.

01:42:17.440 She changed my kid's life.

01:42:19.500 She understood how to deal with a creative kid.

01:42:21.680 One teacher almost screwed his thinking at that age, thinking he has problems.

01:42:25.100 The other kid says, no, you got gifts.

01:42:27.020 The other teacher.

01:42:28.020 I think one had hated teaching.

01:42:31.620 The other one loved teaching.

01:42:32.860 Goes back to what you're talking about with tennis.

01:42:34.420 Absolutely.

01:42:34.920 So, you know, it's interesting you're saying what the points you're making with the challenge being teachers.

01:42:39.020 You know, to wrap it up, you know, I don't know if you remember, Calvin Obutz, Calvin Otis Obutz.

01:42:47.620 Remember Reverend Calvin Obutz, the guy that came out and said, we're not against rap.

01:42:51.900 We're not against rappers, but we are against those thugs.

01:42:55.420 Do you remember that whole?

01:42:56.260 I don't remember.

01:42:56.900 And then, you know, Bone Thugs and Harmony put it in the song.

01:43:00.560 It's the thuggish, ruggish bone.

01:43:01.940 It started at the beginning.

01:43:03.480 So that was the beginning of the pastor.

01:43:05.460 So based on what you're saying, my biggest thing is prior to somebody becoming a thug, man,

01:43:09.880 they were a regular kid that have the ability to do so much big.

01:43:13.320 And based on some of the ideas you got, I can only imagine what things would happen if people applied some of these ideas.

01:43:18.220 Last thing to do with you, speed round.

01:43:21.280 I'm going to give you a name.

01:43:22.340 You tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.

01:43:23.840 All right.

01:43:24.160 Okay?

01:43:25.180 I tell you a name.

01:43:25.980 You tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.

01:43:27.340 Okay.

01:43:27.860 Arthur Ashe.

01:43:29.500 Great.

01:43:30.400 Officer Robert Juarez.

01:43:34.020 Corrupt.

01:43:36.360 Tupac.

01:43:38.660 Genius.

01:43:39.960 Ronald Reagan.

01:43:42.020 Thug.

01:43:43.900 Gary Webb.

01:43:46.940 Humanitarian.

01:43:47.340 Humanitarian.

01:43:48.860 Yes.

01:43:49.440 Bill Clinton.

01:43:52.220 I don't know.

01:43:53.320 Jury's out on Bill.

01:43:54.340 Jury's out on Bill.

01:43:55.480 Oliver North.

01:43:58.400 A patriot.

01:44:00.480 Rapper Rick Ross.

01:44:02.680 Fraud.

01:44:04.680 Obama.

01:44:06.840 Politician.

01:44:09.760 25-year-old Rick Ross.

01:44:13.540 Lost.

01:44:14.140 Danilo Blandin.

01:44:19.040 Lost.

01:44:20.980 Pablo Escobar.

01:44:22.100 Pablo Escobar.

01:44:23.700 Rich.

01:44:25.040 Powerful.

01:44:26.040 Rich.

01:44:26.600 Rich and powerful.

01:44:27.660 Rich and powerful.

01:44:28.660 Maxine Waters.

01:44:30.880 Courageous.

01:44:31.920 Courageous.

01:44:32.760 Daniel Ortega.

01:44:34.600 Daniel Ortega.

01:44:35.560 I guess he was a patriot.

01:44:37.880 Who's a patriot?

01:44:38.780 Daniel Ortega.

01:44:41.340 Man, it's interesting to see talking to you because, you know, you have experiences that

01:44:45.360 people don't have and you can give perspective from a standpoint where everybody can get smarter

01:44:49.820 to know how we can make a difference in a lot of kids' lives so they can take a complete

01:44:53.020 different direction in their lives.

01:44:54.120 So, I appreciate you opening up your book.

01:44:58.340 We're going to put links below to your book.

01:45:00.120 Okay.

01:45:00.520 As well as you got some real cool shirts you sell out.

01:45:02.920 I love what Rogan did, man.

01:45:04.200 A lot of respect for Joe.

01:45:05.340 Shout out to Joe Rogan.

01:45:06.600 Yeah, Joe helped me.

01:45:06.900 He ends up selling the shirts.

01:45:08.680 He wears it.

01:45:09.880 You know, the real Rick Ross is not a rapper.

01:45:11.940 Do you still sell that shirt or no?

01:45:13.340 Still.

01:45:13.840 It's still the day.

01:45:14.800 It's a classic.

01:45:15.520 Let's put a picture of it up.

01:45:16.840 You know, the real Rick Ross doesn't sell.

01:45:18.680 You know, they counterfeit that shirt.

01:45:21.060 Who did?

01:45:21.760 People on the internet.

01:45:22.740 Really?

01:45:23.000 Just being counterfeited.

01:45:23.720 Yeah.

01:45:24.220 Well, we're going to sell yours.

01:45:24.720 So, I'm like Nike.

01:45:26.880 That's a compliment.

01:45:27.880 Yeah, it's a compliment.

01:45:28.800 We're going to put yours below for people to be able to buy.

01:45:31.440 When you get counterfeited, you know you can't.

01:45:33.440 You made it when you get counterfeited.

01:45:35.700 So, Freeway Rick Ross, appreciate you flying out here.

01:45:38.620 Thank you.

01:45:39.000 Be willing to open up and be a guest on the entertainment.

01:45:41.180 Thank you for allowing me this opportunity and speaking to you was from a totally different

01:45:46.300 perspective.

01:45:47.480 You know, so often people, you come in and you talk to people and they just go over,

01:45:53.700 over the same things, over, and oh, you sold drugs.

01:45:56.800 And it's like this thing is more complicated than that.

01:45:59.980 You know, a lot of people, they want to blame me for the drug problem.

01:46:03.240 But then I say, well, maybe you might have to blame Mike, the guy that put it on the table

01:46:07.860 for me the first time.

01:46:08.900 And then you could even go even deeper than that and say, well, maybe we're going to blame

01:46:12.840 the guys that made Superfly because that's the seed at first.

01:46:16.380 It's a whole different conversation, man, because movies have such a big impact on kids.

01:46:20.720 Rap, rap, rap, rap, rap.

01:46:24.700 So much to be talked about about that, you know, where our kids are getting their influences

01:46:28.900 from.

01:46:29.720 And then, you know, it's so funny.

01:46:31.820 I know we're getting ready to wrap up, but, you know, I go to school sometime and I want

01:46:35.660 to speak to our kids and they won't allow me.

01:46:38.440 They don't want our kids to get that experience.

01:46:40.240 It's, you know, what it was like and how you got started and who's going to introduce you

01:46:44.560 to drugs.

01:46:45.460 Because now your kid is running around.

01:46:47.200 Say if your kid is running around and he's thinking, oh, it's going to be some strange

01:46:50.380 monster that's going to come up and introduce me to drugs.

01:46:52.980 But then it's his uncle or his brother or his cousin, you know, somebody that he genuinely

01:47:00.720 cares about or his best friend at school, you know, somebody that's the macho man, you

01:47:05.240 know, whoever, whoever it is, but it's not the way that they're being taught.

01:47:10.560 So they're not prepared for that conversation that's going to come.

01:47:15.560 You know, you're not prepared for when your uncle offers you drugs, you know, you're prepared

01:47:20.440 for when this monster comes up, this guy in the park who you never saw before and he got

01:47:24.180 a hood over his head.

01:47:25.440 He comes in and he's like, hey, little boy, I got something for you.

01:47:29.320 He's probably going to run because that's how we teach our kids.

01:47:33.220 Don't talk to strangers.

01:47:35.240 But now when Johnny, his best friend at school, he walks to school with every day, whose uncle

01:47:42.040 just turned him on and he didn't know no better, now Johnny, who don't see the effects yet, because

01:47:49.740 it takes a while for the effects to come, he automatically, he turns your son on.

01:47:55.780 And that's what's happening to our kids.

01:47:58.900 Well, I'm hoping the right people watch this, man.

01:48:00.900 I'm hoping the right people, because all basic things about the right books can change

01:48:05.220 people's lives.

01:48:05.840 It did it to you, it did it to me, man.

01:48:07.060 Oh, absolutely.

01:48:07.540 I read 1,500, 1,600 books, completely changed my life.

01:48:10.680 I mean, you see the bookshelf over there.

01:48:12.180 I don't have a four-year degree, I don't have a two-year degree.

01:48:14.780 Somebody simply, my sister recommended me How to Win Friends and Influence People.

01:48:19.440 I read that one, too.

01:48:20.720 Robbie Solomon recommended me How to Master the Art of Selling by Tom Hopkins.

01:48:24.660 And for me, I got addicted.

01:48:25.740 I said, I cannot believe this information's in books.

01:48:28.620 And the rest is history.

01:48:29.620 That's what I said, too, when I started reading.

01:48:31.940 Brother, again, thanks for coming on, man.

01:48:33.320 Truly.

01:48:33.800 Really enjoyed it.

01:48:34.600 Thanks for coming on.

01:48:35.120 All mine.

01:48:35.680 All mine.

01:48:36.300 It was wonderful.

01:48:37.500 Likewise.

01:48:38.180 Thank you.

01:48:38.680 Thanks, everybody, for listening.

01:48:40.060 And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.

01:48:44.660 Give us a five-star.

01:48:46.080 Write a review if you haven't already.

01:48:47.560 And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat,

01:48:51.640 Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.

01:48:53.460 Just search my name, Patrick MidDavid.

01:48:55.620 And I actually do respond back when you snap me or send me a message on Instagram.

01:49:00.320 With that being said, have a great day today.

01:49:02.240 Take care, everybody.

01:49:02.960 Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - November 06, 2019

Episode 387： How Freeway Rick Ross Lost a Billion Dollars

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