Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: James 'JJ'88' Jacobs, Contessa Gayles & Richie Reseda Talk 'Songs From The Hole,' Prison To Purpose

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INTERVIEW: James 'JJ'88' Jacobs, Contessa Gayles & Richie Reseda Talk 'Songs From The Hole,' Prison To Purpose · The Breakfast Club

0:01
Speaker 1: Every day A waiting up the Breakfast Club.
0:05
Speaker 2: You're fineish for y'all dump morning.
0:07
Speaker 1: Everybody is DJ Envy, just hilarious, charlamage.
0:11
Speaker 2: God.
0:11
Speaker 1: We are the Breakfast Club, long the Roses. Here today
0:13
Speaker 1: we got some special guest in the building from the
0:15
Speaker 1: documentary on Netflix, Songs from the Whole. We have James
0:18
Speaker 1: Jacobs JJ eighty eight. We have Contessa Gales and Richie Recida. Welcome,
0:23
Speaker 1: how you guys feeling.
0:24
Speaker 2: It's on Netflix right now, by the way, Yes.
0:26
Speaker 1: How y'all feeling?
0:28
Speaker 2: Feeling gravy to be here now.
0:29
Speaker 1: For people that haven't seen the documentary, break down what
0:32
Speaker 1: the documentary is about.
0:34
Speaker 3: Well, it's a documentary visual album. We tell the story
0:39
Speaker 3: of my life. When I was fifteen, I was incarcerated
0:41
Speaker 3: for a second degree murder and during that time I
0:44
Speaker 3: spent eighteen years in prison, and during that time I
0:47
Speaker 3: wrote an album. I met him, We produced and recorded
0:51
Speaker 3: that album in prison, and I wrote the visuals. We
0:54
Speaker 3: met Contesta and it's good of his film.
0:56
Speaker 2: Essentially. Also, I want to ask you something.
0:59
Speaker 4: You know, fifteen and you committed a crime it was murder,
1:03
Speaker 4: and then three days later your brother was killed. But
1:06
Speaker 4: how did those two events so close together, I guess
1:09
Speaker 4: shape your sense of identity and ultimately give you purpose.
1:13
Speaker 3: I guess, oh yeah, Well, at first it took me
1:17
Speaker 3: down like a really dark like mental place, and after
1:21
Speaker 3: coming through like you know, suicidal ideations, and just at
1:25
Speaker 3: first I just felt like, at first I just felt
1:31
Speaker 3: kind of purposeless. I took a life which at fifteen
1:36
Speaker 3: it's kind of hard to hold and really recognize the
1:39
Speaker 3: gravity of it. But by the time I was eighteen
1:42
Speaker 3: and in prison, I just kind of felt worthless and
1:46
Speaker 3: without hope. And losing my brother within that span was
1:51
Speaker 3: kind of like he was kind of who I was
1:53
Speaker 3: emulating and admiring growing up.
1:56
Speaker 5: So it really devastated me.
1:58
Speaker 3: And however, like through music is like it kind of
2:03
Speaker 3: gave me a place to talk about it and talk
2:05
Speaker 3: about what me and the homies was just experiencing what
2:09
Speaker 3: me and my family went through, and so through I
2:13
Speaker 3: guess through music is where I kind of found purpose
2:16
Speaker 3: in my story and where I could use it.
2:19
Speaker 4: I want to talk about when you was fifteen, man,
2:20
Speaker 4: because you said something that I often feel like with
2:23
Speaker 4: these kids, and all all of us were kids at
2:26
Speaker 4: once some point, you make a terrible choice a temporary
2:30
Speaker 4: decision at leads. I mean if temporary feeling leads to
2:32
Speaker 4: a permanent decision. You know, do you really understand the
2:35
Speaker 4: consequences of your actions at that time?
2:38
Speaker 3: I mean not in the way that I do now
2:41
Speaker 3: when you're fifteen, you know. I mean, I think when
2:46
Speaker 3: I was a kid, I knew if you shoot.
2:49
Speaker 5: Someone, they could die.
2:50
Speaker 3: Like I know that I've seen people die, I've seen
2:54
Speaker 3: violence in my community, but I don't think I knew
2:58
Speaker 3: what it meant for real, like the finality of it
3:01
Speaker 3: at fifteen. I don't think I knew truly at fifteen
3:06
Speaker 3: the impact it was having not only on this person
3:09
Speaker 3: but their family.
3:12
Speaker 5: When there's people.
3:13
Speaker 3: That I've like got back in touch with since I
3:16
Speaker 3: got home, who were you know, there that night and
3:20
Speaker 3: had to witness that, and that night altered their life.
3:23
Speaker 3: And I didn't learn that until I was in my thirties.
3:25
Speaker 3: So you don't at fifteen. You don't understand the gravity
3:29
Speaker 3: of it, but you do understand that it is serious.
3:32
Speaker 3: And the older I got, the more mature I became,
3:35
Speaker 3: the more I understood how serious it is, which is
3:38
Speaker 3: why we made this film.
3:41
Speaker 1: For real, there you were charged as an adult, not
3:43
Speaker 1: a child. Why was that.
3:44
Speaker 3: Because California is racist to put it simple.
3:49
Speaker 1: Yes, at fifteen serving eighteen years, it just seems like
3:52
Speaker 1: in any other state you would have been charged as
3:54
Speaker 1: a child and giving a second chance, another opportunity on.
3:58
Speaker 3: Nah, They doing it in other states too, They charged,
4:03
Speaker 3: They charged kids as adults because they want to take
4:07
Speaker 3: away futures and they have a belief in this like
4:12
Speaker 3: punishment system. We live in a culture where revenge is normal.
4:17
Speaker 3: We value it as a culture. Revenge is something that
4:21
Speaker 3: we explore. Me being a perpetrator of murder and having
4:25
Speaker 3: my brother murdered, it's something that I had to face
4:28
Speaker 3: for myself, you know. So the reason why they charge
4:32
Speaker 3: us as adults when we're kids is because they believe
4:35
Speaker 3: in revenge. They believe in retribution, They believe in eye
4:39
Speaker 3: for an eye.
4:40
Speaker 6: At fifteen years old, when you were sending it in
4:42
Speaker 6: front of the judge, not really understanding what's happening in
4:44
Speaker 6: your sentence. In the doc, you talk about looking over
4:47
Speaker 6: to your attorney and being like, so when am I
4:48
Speaker 6: going home?
4:49
Speaker 2: Yeah?
4:49
Speaker 6: Right, at that moment, as a kid, what did you
4:53
Speaker 6: need outside of just being locked away behind bars? Like
4:56
Speaker 6: what could they have given you that would have actually,
4:59
Speaker 6: like in that moment, help to reform.
5:02
Speaker 3: Do you mean, like after I've committed murder, Like what
5:04
Speaker 3: to offer a kid?
5:05
Speaker 6: Yeah? Like, what what should be the you know, the
5:08
Speaker 6: rehabilitation of a person that is fifteen years old, that
5:11
Speaker 6: murders a person.
5:13
Speaker 3: I don't know what it should be. I can tell
5:15
Speaker 3: you what I did. What helped me was like just
5:21
Speaker 3: having safe places to talk about it. So I didn't
5:24
Speaker 3: to talk about what I had done. I don't think
5:28
Speaker 3: I needed to necessarily be locked away once I committed murder.
5:31
Speaker 5: I knew it was foul. I felt the seriousness of it.
5:36
Speaker 5: It wasn't like I was.
5:38
Speaker 3: I wasn't celebrated by my homies, So I knew that
5:43
Speaker 3: this was not the move to make. But I needed
5:46
Speaker 3: to understand why, and I didn't get that opportunity in court.
5:49
Speaker 3: They don't give you an opportunity to understand why you
5:53
Speaker 3: are in this moment. How serious it is that that
5:56
Speaker 3: you have taken a life and there's no plan to
6:00
Speaker 3: help you mature through it and process it.
6:03
Speaker 6: You know, you said you weren't celebrated. You also talk
6:05
Speaker 6: a lot about how you thought, like you know, this
6:08
Speaker 6: is kind of like a song like we talked about it.
6:10
Speaker 3: In the songs the song is over.
6:12
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you had an idea of what you thought
6:14
Speaker 6: committing a crime would be like, and then you actually
6:17
Speaker 6: found yourself committing Yeah.
6:20
Speaker 3: I mean that's true for a lot of my homies.
6:22
Speaker 3: We listen to music and this is no, this is
6:24
Speaker 3: no like condemnation on like hip hop and the music
6:27
Speaker 3: we grow up on. I think it's just true that
6:31
Speaker 3: when I listen to music as a kid, when I
6:34
Speaker 3: watch films as a kid, and I saw violence, it
6:38
Speaker 3: didn't seem you know, the film cuts off and then
6:42
Speaker 3: I see the nigga on the red carpet. Excuse me,
6:44
Speaker 3: I see you on the red carpet, like it's regular.
6:47
Speaker 3: You don't really understand that that person in that story
6:50
Speaker 3: didn't come back in real life.
6:52
Speaker 5: And so as a kid, I thought, you know, in two.
6:57
Speaker 3: Thousand and three, two thousand and four, I was listening
6:59
Speaker 3: to get Richard, I trying, and like that was the
7:03
Speaker 3: epitome of being against And so once I realized after
7:09
Speaker 3: you know, as a kid, it's not it ain't you know,
7:12
Speaker 3: just a song. It's like when you go back to
7:15
Speaker 3: your homies, they gonna look at you and they gonna
7:16
Speaker 3: be scared of They gonna look at you and they
7:19
Speaker 3: gonna have real fear, Like what did you just do?
7:21
Speaker 5: The homies ask me what you just do?
7:23
Speaker 7: Fool?
7:24
Speaker 5: What did you do? Like, why did you do that?
7:28
Speaker 5: The homie?
7:28
Speaker 3: Everybody I know who had a murder in prison, like
7:32
Speaker 3: they none of them got dapped up when they.
7:34
Speaker 5: Homies found out.
7:36
Speaker 3: Everybody got what they might talk about it and and
7:41
Speaker 3: even like they tell they tell war stories, sure, but
7:44
Speaker 3: it's like not not after it happened. I don't know
7:47
Speaker 3: nobody who got dapped up directly after, like, oh we
7:49
Speaker 3: did that, Let's go. Them niggas is in that car, quiet, smoking,
7:56
Speaker 3: drinking them niggas is seriously quiet. It ain't no game,
8:01
Speaker 3: Like that's That's what I came to realize that, you know,
8:05
Speaker 3: you take a life.
8:06
Speaker 5: It ain't it ain't.
8:07
Speaker 3: It ain't fun, it's not it's not honorable to me,
8:12
Speaker 3: especially in the context of just regular street like.
8:16
Speaker 4: Ship contesting and Richie ill y'all can make with James.
8:19
Speaker 4: The album tell the story.
8:21
Speaker 8: So what what Adya didn't share was that he wrote
8:25
Speaker 8: the music that's in the film in solitary confinement after
8:29
Speaker 8: he got out of solitary. He transferred to the prison
8:32
Speaker 8: where Richie was at and that's how they met. He
8:34
Speaker 8: could talk about how they collaborated more on the music.
8:38
Speaker 8: But I met the both of them when I was
8:40
Speaker 8: filming a documentary for CNN. I used to work at CNN,
8:43
Speaker 8: and the last project I did for them was a
8:45
Speaker 8: feature called the Feminists on Cell Black Wife, and it
8:48
Speaker 8: was about a group that Richie had co founded in
8:50
Speaker 8: prison and was leading for his fellow incarcerated men with
8:55
Speaker 8: they're reading feminist literature like Belle Hooks and you know,
8:59
Speaker 8: learning about patriarchy and how it shows up in their
9:01
Speaker 8: lives and unlearning it. So Richie was leading that group
9:05
Speaker 8: and eighty eight was a participant and a co facilitator
9:08
Speaker 8: of that group. And that was the first time that
9:10
Speaker 8: I heard a little bit of eighty eight story. And
9:14
Speaker 8: it was the last day of filming that documentary had
9:17
Speaker 8: nothing to do with the group, but the two of
9:19
Speaker 8: them were in the prison gym and it was Richie's
9:22
Speaker 8: last day at the prison. He was about to be
9:23
Speaker 8: transferred to finish his sentence somewhere else, and they had
9:27
Speaker 8: the prison rental keyboard, and Richie had the keyboard on
9:30
Speaker 8: a trash Can and eighty eight was singing and rapping
9:33
Speaker 8: some of those songs that he wrote in solitary, and
9:36
Speaker 8: there was a group of the guys gathered around and
9:38
Speaker 8: like they knew all the lyrics, so you could tell
9:39
Speaker 8: like this is you know, something that they've been sharing.
9:43
Speaker 8: And I was just struck by, like how powerful the
9:46
Speaker 8: music was, how much storytelling there was in eighty eight lyrics,
9:51
Speaker 8: But I didn't know the context of you know, his
9:54
Speaker 8: story and the relationship between that and the music and
9:57
Speaker 8: how he came to the whole and writing that music
9:59
Speaker 8: in the whole. Fast forward a year after that film
10:02
Speaker 8: came out, they both approached me about, you know, would
10:06
Speaker 8: you want to work on a visual album using eighty
10:09
Speaker 8: eight's music? You know you heard some of it. I
10:10
Speaker 8: was like, some me what you got, and I once
10:15
Speaker 8: I like listen to the recordings and really like, over
10:18
Speaker 8: the course of our development, got to know more about
10:21
Speaker 8: how eighty eight came to the whole and then writing
10:23
Speaker 8: the music there, and then what they were able to
10:25
Speaker 8: do inside producing a whole album. I knew that we
10:29
Speaker 8: had something really special that could really be a testimony,
10:33
Speaker 8: like eighty eight story is a testimony, and the music
10:36
Speaker 8: is so impactful in being able to like hold the
10:41
Speaker 8: narrative and tell his story. So we started collaborating from
10:44
Speaker 8: there and really like evolved our relationship from this like
10:47
Speaker 8: kind of more traditional space of like journalistic. I was
10:51
Speaker 8: the filmmaker, they were the film participants to like co
10:53
Speaker 8: collaborators on this project, and it was a true collaboration,
10:56
Speaker 8: like eighty eight was onside the whole time. We were
10:59
Speaker 8: eight months into the edit when he was released, and
11:01
Speaker 8: we managed to figure out how to collaborate across the
11:05
Speaker 8: prison walls through phone calls, through letters, you know, fifteen
11:08
Speaker 8: minute phone calls at a time. That's how we met.
11:11
Speaker 2: I got a two paul question for you, eighty eight.
11:13
Speaker 1: We're gonna ask Richie how he met, because I know
11:14
Speaker 1: you asked both from Richie and.
11:16
Speaker 8: Yeah, che.
11:20
Speaker 7: I had met eighty eight while I was in prison.
11:22
Speaker 7: I had just released an album from prison, so everybody
11:25
Speaker 7: at the prison kind of knew me as a producer.
11:28
Speaker 7: So in eighty eight got to the yard, the people
11:30
Speaker 7: who knew him from other prisons were like, you got
11:32
Speaker 7: to meet eighty eight.
11:33
Speaker 2: You got to meet eighty eight, And you know, I.
11:35
Speaker 7: Wasn't a lot of everybody in prison think they can
11:37
Speaker 7: rap just like everybody on the streets.
11:39
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
11:43
Speaker 5: I was.
11:44
Speaker 7: I wasn't like in a rush to meet him necessarily.
11:47
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, But.
11:51
Speaker 7: When I did meet him. We have a homie named
11:53
Speaker 7: Taleb who was trying to put together a poetry book.
11:57
Speaker 7: So he was bringing all these artists together. And we
11:59
Speaker 7: had met in the in the law library and I
12:02
Speaker 7: heard him rap and sing, and I was blown away. Honestly,
12:07
Speaker 7: he could both rap and sing very well, which a
12:11
Speaker 7: lot of people can't do. Usually they do one well
12:13
Speaker 7: and then the other they kind of do for fun.
12:15
Speaker 7: And the story he was telling and the position he
12:18
Speaker 7: had on it, it's not an easy thing to make
12:21
Speaker 7: music that doesn't necessarily glorify or judge the streets. And
12:28
Speaker 7: I was like, Yo, let's let's let's make this album.
12:32
Speaker 1: You had only equipment in jail. You were able to
12:34
Speaker 1: have the equipment in jail.
12:35
Speaker 7: Nah, we broke the rules. The way that we made
12:37
Speaker 7: the album was against the rules. Well, yell out now,
12:41
Speaker 7: but I can't tell you because it's people in who
12:45
Speaker 7: still make music that way. But yeah, the way we
12:48
Speaker 7: made this album in prison was completely against the rules.
12:50
Speaker 7: The prison was against it in every way. They ran
12:54
Speaker 7: up in my cell. They threatened to send me to
12:55
Speaker 7: the hole for making music, and.
12:58
Speaker 5: But it was like they denied me at for making music. Really,
13:02
Speaker 5: I was able to be.
13:04
Speaker 3: A part of a collaboration that Richie was EPN and
13:09
Speaker 3: it featured incarcerated artists and free artists. And when I
13:13
Speaker 3: got to board, they named that It's like a reason
13:16
Speaker 3: why I was in danger to society is that you
13:18
Speaker 3: make music.
13:19
Speaker 2: Wow.
13:20
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's important to point out he had life. He
13:22
Speaker 7: wasn't sentenced to eighteen years. He was sentenced to forty
13:24
Speaker 7: years to double life. So you know, we didn't know
13:28
Speaker 7: when eighty eight was coming home. We knew spiritually he
13:31
Speaker 7: was coming home, but we didn't know when he was
13:32
Speaker 7: coming home. So when we finished the album, we were like,
13:35
Speaker 7: you know, typically you finish, you do an album, then
13:37
Speaker 7: you tore it, and we didn't have that opportunity with him.
13:39
Speaker 7: So we're like, let's do a visual album, and that's
13:43
Speaker 7: kind of how the idea began. Then we approached contestant.
13:45
Speaker 7: She built it out to an actual film.
13:47
Speaker 1: One other question, is it true that you can't profit
13:50
Speaker 1: off of a crime that was done?
13:52
Speaker 2: Is that true?
13:53
Speaker 7: Yeah, So in California, the way that the law is
13:55
Speaker 7: written is that basically you can't take if you're incarcerated
13:59
Speaker 7: in California, you can't talk about your crime in a
14:02
Speaker 7: way that makes you money. So you can't write a
14:03
Speaker 7: book about it and make money. You can't make music
14:05
Speaker 7: about it or a film or anything and make money.
14:07
Speaker 7: All of that typically has to go to the people
14:11
Speaker 7: who are impacted by about the crime. And eighty eight's
14:15
Speaker 7: case is unique in that he didn't. The album in
14:20
Speaker 7: the film is not about the fact that he harmed somebody,
14:22
Speaker 7: but rather that he had committed harm and he had
14:25
Speaker 7: been harmed, that his brother was murdered. So, but we
14:29
Speaker 7: also didn't release it until you got out.
14:32
Speaker 4: During your time in solitary of five in eighty eight,
14:34
Speaker 4: like you turned music into a lifeline, right, Like what
14:37
Speaker 4: was the moment you realized music was an escape for you?
14:40
Speaker 4: And I know that probably what kept you saying in
14:42
Speaker 4: the whole.
14:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, as soon as I got in and when I
14:44
Speaker 3: as soon as I got locked up, I knew I
14:47
Speaker 3: grew up with music. I grew up in a church,
14:50
Speaker 3: I grew up singing, I grew up rapping. I started
14:53
Speaker 3: like writing in about the seventh grade. So when I
14:56
Speaker 3: got locked up, you don't know what the hell to do.
14:58
Speaker 3: When you're a kid just in a box kind of
15:01
Speaker 3: you're just sitting there thinking, you're listening different sounds, and
15:05
Speaker 3: suddenly next to me, the cell next to me is
15:09
Speaker 3: the homie we calling Johnny West, Jonathan Marquez. He beating
15:13
Speaker 3: on a bed and he rapping, but he rapping radio songs,
15:17
Speaker 3: some of his you know, he was rapping some of
15:18
Speaker 3: his stuff, but mostly he was just rapping songs that.
15:21
Speaker 5: We all knew. And so I was like, hey, yo,
15:23
Speaker 5: I yelled through the.
15:24
Speaker 3: Vent, like yo, I could I could rap too, Like
15:26
Speaker 3: when we come out, we're gonna rap. We get to
15:27
Speaker 3: the day room, he beat on the table and when
15:29
Speaker 3: I perform, like these little chicken shit ass excuse my language,
15:33
Speaker 3: these little like you know, raps I wrote in this cell.
15:37
Speaker 3: The the you know, the kids is kind of like yo,
15:40
Speaker 3: you are, and it's it's like changing the environment. So
15:44
Speaker 3: when I when I realized, like, oh, I could impact
15:48
Speaker 3: people around me just by you know, occupying our time,
15:50
Speaker 3: They not like annoyed trying to get away from me.
15:53
Speaker 5: They like spit that song.
15:55
Speaker 3: I started to do it more and then I shared
15:58
Speaker 3: it with my father, who is an elder in the
16:01
Speaker 3: church and doesn't listen to hip hop, and he's just like, well,
16:04
Speaker 3: you know, son, music brings people joy. So if you
16:09
Speaker 3: share your gift with them and become their joy, they
16:11
Speaker 3: will protect their joy. And so share your gift with
16:17
Speaker 3: people and you'll see that.
16:19
Speaker 2: Is that the moment you realize that music can also
16:21
Speaker 2: be your voice?
16:22
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean, I've always known music was a medium
16:26
Speaker 3: to like express myself and use my voice. It was
16:30
Speaker 3: gonna come in some oratory fashion for me, my dad
16:33
Speaker 3: being a pastor, my mom being a singer. I knew
16:36
Speaker 3: like the power of my voice. I just didn't know
16:39
Speaker 3: the significance of it. Sometimes I still don't. But I
16:43
Speaker 3: didn't know that it could be meaningful to write what's
16:47
Speaker 3: happening in my life, to be meaningful that people would
16:51
Speaker 3: actually value it and care about it until I started
16:54
Speaker 3: to see the impact I was having on.
16:55
Speaker 4: The yard contested this footage in the doc that shows
16:59
Speaker 4: the time when eighty and his family was still fighting
17:02
Speaker 4: for him to get out of prison. What made you
17:04
Speaker 4: see the value in his story before knowing he'd be
17:06
Speaker 4: freeding it?
17:07
Speaker 8: M The value to me was the music itself, and
17:13
Speaker 8: you know, I think we can we can share a
17:15
Speaker 8: little bit. I hope folks go watch the film on Netflix.
17:17
Speaker 8: But the whole story is leading up to the moment
17:21
Speaker 8: where eighty eight realizes that he's incarcerated with the person
17:25
Speaker 8: who killed his brother. Knowing that and what happened after that,
17:29
Speaker 8: maybe that's the part I won't say, well, but that
17:33
Speaker 8: there was like so much power for healing and transformation
17:36
Speaker 8: if people heard this story to understand that, you know
17:40
Speaker 8: what we were talking about in terms of like our
17:42
Speaker 8: culture's obsession and reliance on retribution and punishment and revenge,
17:48
Speaker 8: like we can choose something else, and our interpersonal relationships
17:51
Speaker 8: and systemically, So that's what drew me to it. But no,
17:56
Speaker 8: we had no idea that eighty eight would have the
18:00
Speaker 8: opportunities that he had to come home. Like Richie said,
18:04
Speaker 8: he had forty years to life plus life, and we
18:07
Speaker 8: kind of structured the whole narrative arc of the story
18:09
Speaker 8: around spiritual freedom and like internal healing and freedom, and
18:15
Speaker 8: that's you know, each music video treatment kind of builds
18:18
Speaker 8: on that healing the younger self. We didn't know that
18:21
Speaker 8: we would have the ending that we would have in
18:24
Speaker 8: the film. When we started and once those opportunities started
18:29
Speaker 8: picking up, so we're following, you know, his family going
18:31
Speaker 8: to court. What's condensed down in the film was two
18:35
Speaker 8: and a half years of going to court and then
18:38
Speaker 8: commutation from the governor. We had to follow it in
18:41
Speaker 8: real time because it was so it was relevant to
18:43
Speaker 8: the story. But it really was never a film about
18:48
Speaker 8: because I think there's a lot of films about incarceration
18:50
Speaker 8: where it's centered on does the person get to come
18:52
Speaker 8: home and do we all get to celebrate at the
18:54
Speaker 8: end if they come home. We wanted to resist that
18:58
Speaker 8: because we really wanted it to feel like everyone watching
19:01
Speaker 8: this how to entry point into their own healing. So
19:05
Speaker 8: to make it about the spiritual journey was more satisfying
19:08
Speaker 8: for me creatively and I think for all of us spiritually.
19:12
Speaker 2: But then, you know, we got.
19:15
Speaker 3: The legal reason why I got home is irrelevant m hm,
19:20
Speaker 3: because it's not legality that's gonna get us free, for
19:25
Speaker 3: the incarcerated and for us as a people.
19:29
Speaker 2: I like, who you're going with this?
19:31
Speaker 5: Like, so.
19:34
Speaker 3: What what I'm saying is like, we we participate in
19:36
Speaker 3: this system, we vote, we pay our taxes, we do
19:40
Speaker 3: the thing, and it's not working. It's not working for nobody,
19:45
Speaker 3: So it's it's it's working for the people who set
19:48
Speaker 3: it up.
19:48
Speaker 5: That's true.
19:49
Speaker 3: It's working for for you know some, but it's for
19:53
Speaker 3: for us.
19:54
Speaker 2: Is working for people who was designed to work for right.
19:56
Speaker 3: For us, it's a different story. And so it my
19:59
Speaker 3: life to tell me it ain't gonna be that that
20:01
Speaker 3: get me free.
20:02
Speaker 2: No, I agree with that.
20:03
Speaker 4: I've been I've been running that thought in my mind lately,
20:06
Speaker 4: like I think that we're just past the point of
20:08
Speaker 4: any political solutions.
20:10
Speaker 5: No, you know, we need freedom, freedom now.
20:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:14
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask, you know, about to say something.
20:16
Speaker 7: I was just gonna quickly say, it's it's if you
20:18
Speaker 7: think about it, like, it's kind of silly to even
20:21
Speaker 7: believe that a system that was also set up by
20:24
Speaker 7: other flawed human beings is perfect and not just by
20:28
Speaker 7: following the rules or voting or just like following the
20:30
Speaker 7: system that someone else set up, that that's all that's needed.
20:33
Speaker 7: And when our problems are so great, like actually, I
20:38
Speaker 7: think it calls upon us to say, okay, we can
20:41
Speaker 7: look at how this system is an improvement from you know,
20:45
Speaker 7: the feudal system and kings and queens and surfs, and Okay,
20:49
Speaker 7: we've improved from there, and there is much more improvement
20:52
Speaker 7: that needs to be done if we're going to live
20:53
Speaker 7: in integrity with each other and the earth.
20:56
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask, you know, it's hard not to
20:58
Speaker 1: talk about this because you really want people to see it.
21:00
Speaker 1: You want people to see the ins and outs of
21:01
Speaker 1: this documentary. But I do want to ask about forgiveness.
21:05
Speaker 2: Right.
21:07
Speaker 1: I was talking to Lauren earlier and she was like,
21:10
Speaker 1: certain things I just can't forgive. Right, She was like,
21:13
Speaker 1: I can't, Like you know, my family can and I can't.
21:15
Speaker 1: And I think Charlamagne knows me. There's certain things I
21:17
Speaker 1: ain't forgiven. It's like, it's just is what it is.
21:19
Speaker 1: It's just how did you find I would say, I
21:23
Speaker 1: don't even want to say the courage, But how did
21:25
Speaker 1: you break down and be able to forgive somebody, especially
21:28
Speaker 1: the person that you know killed your brother? How like
21:31
Speaker 1: when did that happen? Was it immediately? Did it take
21:33
Speaker 1: some time? Was it talk to me your dad who
21:35
Speaker 1: was a pastor? When it?
21:40
Speaker 5: When I met him, I had to make a decision.
21:43
Speaker 5: It is not a superpower.
21:44
Speaker 3: It is not an impossibility to to you know, all
21:48
Speaker 3: due respect to the things you say you can't forgive.
21:52
Speaker 2: I'm just not there yet.
21:53
Speaker 1: I'll get there one day. I'm just not there yet.
21:55
Speaker 3: But truly it's a matter of choosing it. It's a
21:58
Speaker 3: matter of saying to me, this is how I define
22:01
Speaker 3: forgiveness for myself in that moment.
22:05
Speaker 5: You kill my brother? Right, how you get that back?
22:10
Speaker 5: How he gone? Can't gone?
22:15
Speaker 2: Do?
22:16
Speaker 5: What do you owe me now?
22:17
Speaker 3: Because that's what we're talking about in retribution and in
22:21
Speaker 3: a retaliatory like system. It's like, now you owe me?
22:25
Speaker 3: So this man Jay killed my brother, Now you owe me?
22:29
Speaker 3: What do you owe me? You owe me my brother?
22:31
Speaker 3: What's the value of my brother's life? It ain't even yours.
22:35
Speaker 3: It ain't even your life. For real, your life is
22:38
Speaker 3: value differently than my brother. So I can't just take
22:40
Speaker 3: your life. So now I know you can't pay me back.
22:44
Speaker 3: So what I'm gonna do?
22:44
Speaker 5: Be mad my whole life.
22:46
Speaker 3: I know you can't give it back. I know you can't.
22:49
Speaker 3: That's first for forgiveness. I know you can't pay that debt.
22:52
Speaker 3: So forgiveness to me is releasing within myself what I
22:55
Speaker 3: think you owe me because you hurt me. It's just
22:59
Speaker 3: letting go this idea that you going to somehow give
23:02
Speaker 3: it back or you're gonna somehow realize that you owe it.
23:05
Speaker 3: It has nothing to do with you. It has everything
23:07
Speaker 3: to do with me letting go of what it is.
23:09
Speaker 3: I think you owe me because you did me sour
23:12
Speaker 3: right now, add to that, I did somebody file. I
23:17
Speaker 3: did a number of somebody's file throughout my life. And
23:22
Speaker 3: I am not like, that's not my legacy that I
23:26
Speaker 3: want to leave. It's not something that I want to
23:28
Speaker 3: be like. I want to be known for hurting people.
23:31
Speaker 3: Nobody wants to be known for hurting people. And when
23:36
Speaker 3: you hurt someone as seriously as I have, and you
23:40
Speaker 3: you want to be accountable for it, then you gotta
23:43
Speaker 3: look at all the parts of your life.
23:44
Speaker 1: But you were accountable. If that individual wasn't accountable.
23:48
Speaker 3: No, no, no, if he wasn't accountable, it don't make no difference.
23:52
Speaker 5: Are you accountable? Yeah?
23:55
Speaker 4: Question, don't you got to give? You would have to
23:58
Speaker 4: give the person who killed your brother the same grace
24:02
Speaker 4: you would want the people the family that you know
24:05
Speaker 4: you give you.
24:07
Speaker 3: Right, that's true, and and I think that was clear
24:11
Speaker 3: for me.
24:13
Speaker 5: But I do not think that that.
24:14
Speaker 3: Is a requirement for forgiveness that you have to do
24:17
Speaker 3: an equal harm in order to forgive somebody who has
24:19
Speaker 3: harmed to you. Because the truth is we all commit
24:22
Speaker 3: harm daily in some form or another. And I think
24:28
Speaker 3: when for me to forgive, I knew I wanted it
24:33
Speaker 3: in my life. I was I was trying to be
24:35
Speaker 3: as accountable as I could be growing up in prison.
24:40
Speaker 3: But I knew I wanted forgiveness more than I wanted anything,
24:45
Speaker 3: because forgiveness symbolized being restored back to my community. It
24:49
Speaker 3: symbolized me being restored back to my value that my
24:52
Speaker 3: grandmother sees when she looked at me.
24:54
Speaker 5: You know.
24:56
Speaker 3: But I know, the more and more I become accountable,
24:58
Speaker 3: it's not Forgiveness isn't something I can ask for. It's
25:01
Speaker 3: not even I just took everything, or I took a
25:04
Speaker 3: lot from you and now I'm gonna ask you to
25:05
Speaker 3: give me something else, like give me grace. That's not
25:08
Speaker 3: something I feel willing to ask for. However, what I
25:11
Speaker 3: can do is plant the seed in the universe. I
25:15
Speaker 3: can plant the seed in my daily walk and in
25:17
Speaker 3: the way I live, and maybe it'll come back. Maybe
25:21
Speaker 3: it'll come to somebody who needs it.
25:23
Speaker 5: In my life.
25:25
Speaker 3: But either way, a friend of mine, Chris Wachnick, used
25:29
Speaker 3: to always say, so is seed from your greatest need,
25:32
Speaker 3: what you need the most, go give it to somebody.
25:34
Speaker 2: Man.
25:35
Speaker 4: I just want to stay here for one second of
25:37
Speaker 4: eighty eight because it's such an interesting space. How have
25:41
Speaker 4: you navigated the tension between accountability and self forgiveness?
25:48
Speaker 5: Again?
25:49
Speaker 3: Like?
25:49
Speaker 5: What do I owe? Can I pay back what I owe?
25:54
Speaker 3: Even when I think I owe to myself or I
25:58
Speaker 3: you know, I'm faithful in God that he will forgive me,
26:01
Speaker 3: and that He has forgiven me and to me, that's enough.
26:06
Speaker 3: All I have to do is be honest about where
26:09
Speaker 3: I was at when, when, when I did whatever I did,
26:14
Speaker 3: Where I'm at when I do whatever I do. Being
26:16
Speaker 3: accountable is key, being having integrity to that accountability is
26:22
Speaker 3: the goal. I'm not trying to be like a saint
26:26
Speaker 3: and say like everybody should forgive, and I have the
26:29
Speaker 3: story on how to learn how to forgive. This is
26:31
Speaker 3: a This is like an opportunity for people to discuss
26:34
Speaker 3: if forgiveness is necessary. Do we want a society of
26:38
Speaker 3: forgiveness or do we want one of revenge? So far
26:41
Speaker 3: we have chosen revenge. Where has it gotten us. My
26:46
Speaker 3: dad stood up in court and looked at looked at
26:49
Speaker 3: Jay gets sentenced, and he was like, this does nothing
26:52
Speaker 3: for me, this does It did absolutely nothing for my
26:57
Speaker 3: family that that young man got life in prison, nothing nothing.
27:00
Speaker 3: They son was still going and they other stunts still
27:03
Speaker 3: had forty years to life plus life. What could you
27:06
Speaker 3: give my parents besides an opportunity for healing and reconciliation.
27:12
Speaker 6: You know, what is the journey been like for your
27:14
Speaker 6: parents now that the documentary is out and they can
27:16
Speaker 6: kind of look back and watch it. I know in
27:18
Speaker 6: the documentary your mom talked about kind of like the
27:21
Speaker 6: guilt that they felt when everything first happened with you
27:23
Speaker 6: and ye felt like you were crying out and things
27:25
Speaker 6: of that nature. Like, what is it like now for
27:27
Speaker 6: them being able to see it in a documentary?
27:29
Speaker 3: I think I think they're proud that the three of
27:32
Speaker 3: us have found a way to tell our family story
27:36
Speaker 3: in a way that's like building something and adding value.
27:40
Speaker 3: I guess when you go through it, it can sometimes
27:43
Speaker 3: feel like what is all this for?
27:45
Speaker 5: Why am I? Why am I? Especially for my.
27:47
Speaker 3: Parents, who, in my opinion, have done all they could
27:51
Speaker 3: do for their children for their lives providing a good
27:55
Speaker 3: life for us, and they suffered great loss. So I
27:59
Speaker 3: think now when they see it in the in the film,
28:01
Speaker 3: they're incredibly proud of us in the way that we've
28:05
Speaker 3: been able to like share.
28:05
Speaker 2: This story answer that.
28:07
Speaker 7: Yeah.
28:08
Speaker 8: I actually just talked to eighty eight's mom yesterday and
28:11
Speaker 8: she was encouraging me that this film is doing what
28:16
Speaker 8: we had hoped it would do out in the world,
28:18
Speaker 8: like it is healing people. It's allowing people to feel
28:21
Speaker 8: seen and heard, that what they went through mattered, and
28:25
Speaker 8: I know that that was their experience. You know, at first,
28:27
Speaker 8: they were apprehensive and they were just kind of like
28:29
Speaker 8: listening to their son be like, oh, we're making this film,
28:32
Speaker 8: but you know, he's locked up, and me and Richie
28:34
Speaker 8: are on the outside coming to their house and starting
28:36
Speaker 8: to do the interview process and spend all this time
28:39
Speaker 8: with them, and I think they were apprehensive at first,
28:43
Speaker 8: but they came to realize, I think pretty quickly that
28:48
Speaker 8: their story mattered, and that their story would reflect a
28:52
Speaker 8: lot of family stories and help a lot of people heal.
28:56
Speaker 4: There's a scene in a dock when actors are portraying
29:00
Speaker 4: james family and the family of the young men that
29:03
Speaker 4: James killed in the courthouse.
29:05
Speaker 2: They're both played by the same actors. Was that intentional?
29:08
Speaker 8: It was intentional that that choice was really about that
29:12
Speaker 8: family standing in for all families, no matter what side
29:16
Speaker 8: of harm they find themselves on, because you know, eighty
29:20
Speaker 8: eighth story is not, unfortunately unique, and that you can
29:25
Speaker 8: experience harm and cause harm in the same turn. And
29:28
Speaker 8: so to choose just one set of actors and to
29:31
Speaker 8: place them in all of the different ways that we
29:34
Speaker 8: place them, they actually they work as multiple families throughout
29:37
Speaker 8: the course of the film. And that was that was
29:39
Speaker 8: eighty eighth's idea.
29:42
Speaker 6: What do you hope that this film does for young
29:45
Speaker 6: men or women that are in it right now, just
29:47
Speaker 6: trying to survive the way that they know how best,
29:50
Speaker 6: Like in the streets, like they trying to just day
29:53
Speaker 6: by day all they know is survival, trying to get through.
29:56
Speaker 6: What do you if they get a chance to watch this, like,
29:58
Speaker 6: what do you want them to stop in their and
30:00
Speaker 6: think at the end of the documentary?
30:06
Speaker 5: I think I would want them to.
30:08
Speaker 3: I hope I hope that they can see the process that.
30:14
Speaker 5: It took to heal.
30:16
Speaker 3: It took community, it took Richie, it took contessa. It
30:21
Speaker 3: took my homies in prison that I was around to
30:24
Speaker 3: hold me accountable to who I said I wanted to be.
30:26
Speaker 3: So my advice to them as they watched this film
30:29
Speaker 3: is to think about that and think about who in
30:32
Speaker 3: your life is gonna hold you accountable to who you
30:34
Speaker 3: say you want to be, Not you know, and not
30:38
Speaker 3: in a way that's gonna shame you or guilt you
30:40
Speaker 3: back into doing the right thing or being correct, but
30:43
Speaker 3: truly gonna be like I remember you said you wanted
30:45
Speaker 3: to do X, like how is that going? And checking
30:49
Speaker 3: in with them, and to surround yourself with people who
30:52
Speaker 3: will do that, who will hold you accountable to who
30:54
Speaker 3: you say you want to be.
30:56
Speaker 5: That's the way. That's the way out of trying to survive.
31:01
Speaker 2: Richie. Why do you put all your the letters lower
31:04
Speaker 2: case in your name?
31:06
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's on purpose.
31:07
Speaker 2: I did that.
31:07
Speaker 7: I was inspired by Belle Hooks to do that. I
31:11
Speaker 7: think it's like English is such a ego centric kind
31:15
Speaker 7: of language, and I liked I think Belle Hooks does
31:20
Speaker 7: it from an anti capitalist space. Dream Hampton does it similarly.
31:24
Speaker 7: Dream Hampton is one of our EPs and and and
31:26
Speaker 7: a friend of mine, and I seen she do. Yeah,
31:31
Speaker 7: very she's a genius. And yeah, so I was just
31:36
Speaker 7: inspired to to model after people who I feel like
31:39
Speaker 7: kind of mentored me. And I think it has everything
31:41
Speaker 7: to do with what this film is about, Like we have.
31:45
Speaker 2: All committed harm, and.
31:47
Speaker 7: We have all survived harm, and when we have the
31:54
Speaker 7: kind of like this film is not saying everybody has
31:57
Speaker 7: to go forgive that's quote unquote the right thing to do,
32:00
Speaker 7: as much as it's saying, like, what else is possible
32:03
Speaker 7: besides revenge? I don't know, It's just it's just a
32:05
Speaker 7: let it takes our ego out of being the center
32:08
Speaker 7: of it.
32:09
Speaker 2: What else is possible other than revenge? Yeah?
32:12
Speaker 4: I think that that is very hard to explore when
32:16
Speaker 4: you probably are dealing with a lot of your own
32:19
Speaker 4: unheal trauma and allowing your own pain and allowing your
32:21
Speaker 4: own hurt. Like, I think it takes a lot of
32:23
Speaker 4: a person that's already done some work to even know
32:28
Speaker 4: what that is.
32:28
Speaker 2: What is there other than revenge because that's what you
32:31
Speaker 2: think is naturally automatically.
32:34
Speaker 7: That's just I think this story is so powerful because it's
32:37
Speaker 7: just going to the to the capital letter thing. It's
32:40
Speaker 7: it's just about humility. Like knowing that I committed harm
32:44
Speaker 7: puts me in a position that when someone harms me,
32:46
Speaker 7: I'm like, Okay, this doesn't feel good. But this person
32:49
Speaker 7: is not different than me. I'm not better than them.
32:51
Speaker 7: I'm not better than nobody. And therefore, how the kind
32:54
Speaker 7: of the kind of accountability we're talking about in the
32:57
Speaker 7: film and in our community is not who is wrong
33:00
Speaker 7: and who needs to be punished. It's what happened and
33:03
Speaker 7: what needs to change so that I can show up
33:06
Speaker 7: the way that I want to show up, and when
33:08
Speaker 7: we have, our people hold us accountable to that because
33:10
Speaker 7: we need each other.
33:11
Speaker 2: That's the other thing.
33:12
Speaker 7: The system has convinced us. We don't need each other.
33:15
Speaker 7: It's convinced us that as long as you have money,
33:16
Speaker 7: you don't need nobody. That's what makes the police even
33:20
Speaker 7: quote unquote necessary to begin with. Is this idea that
33:23
Speaker 7: we need to be scared with guns to treat.
33:26
Speaker 2: Each other well.
33:27
Speaker 7: But when we know we need each other back, when
33:28
Speaker 7: we when we know we need each other, we don't
33:31
Speaker 7: need to be scared into treating each other well. And
33:36
Speaker 7: when we move from that more humble place, it's not
33:39
Speaker 7: so like you wronged me, and now I need to
33:41
Speaker 7: wrong you, and I'm the.
33:42
Speaker 2: Good guy and you're the bad guy.
33:43
Speaker 7: It's like you wronged me as people, I feel or
33:46
Speaker 7: rather I feel hurt by you, and I know I
33:49
Speaker 7: have hurt other people. And what needs to change so
33:51
Speaker 7: that we're not hurting each other?
33:52
Speaker 2: Why it's so hard for men to admit that another
33:54
Speaker 2: man just hurt their feelings?
33:56
Speaker 7: I think men are even more addicted to this, to
34:00
Speaker 7: this system. We're like more addicted to the ego based
34:03
Speaker 7: system because we're like privileged by it. That's why the
34:06
Speaker 7: people who get the most out of it are the
34:07
Speaker 7: ones who are the least likely to let go for anything.
34:11
Speaker 7: You know, if there's a fucked up situation but you
34:14
Speaker 7: kind of benefit from it, you're probably more likely to
34:16
Speaker 7: let it keep going on. And this system, this culture
34:22
Speaker 7: also a key element of it is defensiveness. So it's
34:26
Speaker 7: like the more addicted to what you are, the more
34:29
Speaker 7: defensive you are about it. And I think, man, I
34:31
Speaker 7: don't think it's like in our nature to be like that,
34:33
Speaker 7: but I think it's how we're raised to be in
34:35
Speaker 7: this system for sure.
34:36
Speaker 4: I also think you know when a person forgives, when
34:39
Speaker 4: the aggressor forgives, right, like the person that can actually
34:43
Speaker 4: do you harm. It's easy to forgive when you're in
34:45
Speaker 4: the weaker position, like, okay, I got no choice, but
34:46
Speaker 4: you give me a beat my ass, right. But when
34:48
Speaker 4: you are a person that could actually do the harm
34:49
Speaker 4: and they forgive that to me, that's a different level.
34:53
Speaker 7: It's like Gandhi said, we don't choose non violence because
34:56
Speaker 7: we're scared. If my followers were scared, I would tell
34:58
Speaker 7: them go fight. We choose non violence because we are
35:02
Speaker 7: choosing non violence.
35:06
Speaker 2: Check out songs contest you and Dream. Why did y'all?
35:09
Speaker 4: How did you connect a dream? Because I Dream is
35:11
Speaker 4: very intentional about what she decided to do. How did
35:13
Speaker 4: she decide she wanted to be a part of this?
35:15
Speaker 8: Dream is actually a mentor of Richie's. So you know,
35:18
Speaker 8: Richie was going to be hot if.
35:19
Speaker 7: We called her a mentor though.
35:22
Speaker 3: Friend.
35:23
Speaker 7: But she has obviously been in this business a lot
35:25
Speaker 7: longer than I have, and I've learned a lot from her.
35:28
Speaker 7: From Detroita, No, I'm from La. I met Dream while
35:31
Speaker 7: I was in prison through Patrese dreaming. Patrice knew each other.
35:34
Speaker 7: Patrise colors knew each other for a long time, and
35:36
Speaker 7: then Patrice connected us and we started writing while we
35:40
Speaker 7: were in prison, while she was working on the R.
35:42
Speaker 2: Kelly stuff got you.
35:44
Speaker 7: Wo yeah, So she came on as an ep as
35:49
Speaker 7: one of the first people the ep it. She had
35:51
Speaker 7: saw Contessa's first film The Feminists on sub Block Why
35:54
Speaker 7: which eighty eight and I are in as well. She
35:56
Speaker 7: was talking about kind of following our our work doing
35:58
Speaker 7: integrity work with other men in the and she was
36:01
Speaker 7: a fan of that film. So when I had approached
36:02
Speaker 7: her and be like, do you want to support this film.
36:06
Speaker 2: She was all for it.
36:07
Speaker 4: I got two more questions. Eighty h you kept your
36:09
Speaker 4: original prison recorded vocals.
36:11
Speaker 5: Right, yeah?
36:12
Speaker 2: Yeah? Why?
36:14
Speaker 3: I mean that was the voice I used. We took
36:17
Speaker 3: great risk, we risked our freedom to make those recordings,
36:22
Speaker 3: and that was the album Richie and I wanted to release,
36:26
Speaker 3: so we thought it was important.
36:28
Speaker 2: You probably couldn't recreate that rowness.
36:30
Speaker 3: Yeah no, no, no, no, no, no, yeah, definitely you can't.
36:35
Speaker 3: You can't recreate it. It was a moment in time
36:38
Speaker 3: that was like, you know, really spiritual, really really a
36:42
Speaker 3: blessed experience for me, one of the few blessed experiences.
36:45
Speaker 3: And while I was inside to be able to record
36:47
Speaker 3: that music with Richie, and it just shows.
36:48
Speaker 7: How incarcerated people are worthwhile us in our early twenties
36:52
Speaker 7: in prison making music, like the fact that that music
36:55
Speaker 7: is now on Netflix right and on streamers and on
36:58
Speaker 7: like vinyl and being her all over the world. I'd
37:01
Speaker 7: be looking at our stats on the distributor platform and
37:04
Speaker 7: seeing people are listening to this music in Brazil and
37:06
Speaker 7: we made it in prison. It's so affirming to me,
37:08
Speaker 7: to us, but also to other people who are in
37:10
Speaker 7: prison right now, Like, you can be whoever you want
37:12
Speaker 7: to be. You don't have to be who they tell
37:13
Speaker 7: you got to be, whether that they be the prison
37:16
Speaker 7: system or the streets. You could be who you want
37:18
Speaker 7: to be, not who they tell you.
37:20
Speaker 2: And contested what do you want people to take away
37:23
Speaker 2: from this store.
37:26
Speaker 8: What Richie said? I mean, I saw like I saw
37:30
Speaker 8: my brothers when I came into the prison. And I
37:34
Speaker 8: also grew up in church like eighty eight, and so
37:38
Speaker 8: we really connected on like the music, you know, growing
37:40
Speaker 8: up in the church, listening to gospel music, having that
37:42
Speaker 8: type of family, and that's why I connected so deeply
37:46
Speaker 8: to the music because it's it's also so it's hip hop,
37:49
Speaker 8: but it's so spiritual and I want people to know
37:54
Speaker 8: that healing is possible.
37:58
Speaker 2: And that.
38:00
Speaker 8: It can come in different forms. And our film, I
38:02
Speaker 8: think is an offering in that regard. Like there's multiple lanes,
38:06
Speaker 8: there's multiple portals, there's multiple entry points into people finding
38:10
Speaker 8: their healing and and that's why I made the film.
38:13
Speaker 1: As a label reached out until they wanted to sign
38:16
Speaker 1: you or not as yet a few couple you're thinking
38:20
Speaker 1: about signing on independent.
38:22
Speaker 5: I like being independent right now. It's mine.
38:25
Speaker 1: To do what you want to do, how you want
38:27
Speaker 1: to do it, when you want.
38:27
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you know I take a call.
38:31
Speaker 2: Well, there you have it.
38:32
Speaker 1: Songs from the whole of Documentary Net on Netflix right now.
38:35
Speaker 1: Definitely check it out. And we appreciate you guys for
38:39
Speaker 1: James JJ eighty, Jacob's Contested Gales and Richie small R receiving.
38:48
Speaker 2: Every day breakfast Club you don't finish for y'all done,