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and Too $hort · Untraditionally Lala

• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Hello, my loves It is Lala Kent with Randal and
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: if you guys have forgotten, this is the Give Them
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: La La with Randall podcast. We've taken a couple of
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: weeks off.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, and we are glad to be back. I can
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: tell you that the thing is, you know we were
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: going to come back last week, and we didn't really know.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: I actually think we were ready. We just didn't know.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: I didn't know. I didn't know how.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I couldn't start. I couldn't like sit in this room
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: with a microphone in front of me and just fucking
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: speak when I knew that there were things going on
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: outside of this room that I could be a part of.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Well, you went. You went to a lot of protests.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: I went to a couple, but you were at a
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: lot of them. I mean, uh, And I just think
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: it would have just been irresponsible of us to come
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: back in here when we were still processing, when we
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: were still having conversations. I definitely was having a lot,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: and I know you were. We've been doing a lot
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: of listening and a lot of reflection, and we think
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: the best thing for us to do is to continue listening.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: So having said that we are back, today, and I
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: am very excited about our guests because our guest is
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: the amazing, insightful, incredibly talented and friend of ours. I
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: always say that long I would say everybody is a
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: fucking friend of ours.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: But Too Short, Too Short, Too Short, someone who I've
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: been a fan of since I was a young kid
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: living in Utah turning up to his music.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: And you've been asking have you been you been actually
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: actually since I introduced you to Too Short? What about
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know, a year ago or something. Yeah, you
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: were asked when we get our podcast going, you got
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: to get him on the air, And I was like,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: of course, I'll come on. So it's just really cool
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: that you know, he has become a friend. But at
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: the same time, I think Too Short is like in
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: my age demographic, and I think, you know, with what
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: is happening right now in the Black Lives Matter movement,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I just think he's going to have a lot to
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: share with us and for a lot for us to
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: learn from. And you know one thing I'm going to say,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Lala say it is that I talk a lot.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I know I've done nothing but listen since I just
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: introduced the reintroduced.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: The podcast, Lala, I'm still talking.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I know, Okay, keep going. So what I want to say,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: we wrap it up, keep going, say what you know.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: What I'm going to say is that today I really
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: want to do a lot of listening. And I think
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: it's important, even in my age, even at forty nine
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: years old, I think that this movement of Black Lives
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Matter is it's just time for everybody to listen, no
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: matter how you're raised or how diverse you are. You know,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I consider myself really, and I mean this very diverse,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: and and you know, and a lot of the work
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: that I've produced represents that, But that doesn't mean that
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: that's I think.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: There's always room for more education. I've throughout these past
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks, you know, I've gone to protests, I've
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: purchased a lot of books. I've listened to my black
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: friends and how they feel about this, and I just
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: feel like what we have been doing is not enough.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: It's not enough to just have the conversation once. It's
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: not enough to just go to a protest, like we
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: have to do better. Period.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: We are seeing a lot of people being held accountable now,
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: which I am so proud to see. I think It's
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: the first time for me that I've seen an uprising
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: in such a unified way. I mean, it moves me
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: when I'm watching these protests here in Los Angeles.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: And they've been amazing.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and just I mean seeing people from ten years
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: old with their parents up to you know, ninety something
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: years old. Tim, Did you see that There's a guy
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: that couldn't make it to a protest and I think
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: they went to his house and they they brought him
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: to the streets to because he wanted to be part
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: of it. I mean, to see amazing. I mean, it
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: just shows you that, you know, I have no excuse.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Nobody has an excuse to not participate time.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Sorry, if Jennifer Lopez is getting her ass out there
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: and protesting, you have no excuse, all right.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: The cool thing is it's not just happening in the
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: big cities. That's that's kind of what amazes me. There's
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: like towns of you know, a couple thousand people, yeah,
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: holding protests like on their main street, just holding signs,
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: and they're still out there showing their support and I
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: think are showing up.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: I agree. But even in even in the Valley of
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles, which we call the Valley shertman Oaks. I
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: was driving with my daughter and we came to the
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Sepulvida Ventura corner and there's like ten people on that corner,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: even though the larger protests were happening in downtown all that.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: And my daughter said, oh, Daddy, that's the Black Lives
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Matters protests, Like she knew. I've had the conversation and
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: she's watched TV and we've talked about it, but I
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: mean for her to just recognize, and she said, roll
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: down the window. And I rolled down the window and
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: they're saying honk, and she's, dad, honk, let them know.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: And it was just It's just one of those moments
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: that you're just so proud to be part of something
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: that has so overdue, and I'm just so glad so
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: many millions of people are being involved and not letting
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: this just be a weekend thing or a weekday conversation.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: This is every single day. I'm getting a message from
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: one of my friends saying, this is the meeting spot tonight.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: We're protesting it this time, and it's like it just
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: gives me chills. I feel like I've supported this movement
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: since it started. Even before it started. I love the
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: black community so so much. And to see every single
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I mean we down or Hollywood had twenty thousand protesters
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: over the weekend, and to think that this is this
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: is going to be a part of history, like when
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: I have children or my grandbabies, I'm going to remember
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: this time, be like we did something. We did something, yep, and.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: I think that you know, now I'm ready to you know,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: put a smile on people's faces. But also you don't happen.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Well, how should you not put a smile on someone's
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: face when you tell him that too Short is going
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: to be on the podcast? And so today, like I
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: really just want to hone in on like where he started,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: how he got his name too Short? Like where did
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: that come from? I want to know it all he's
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: worked with, I mean, he worked with the mac dre
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: king of Like, let's get Hyphi, come on, everybody, let's
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: all get down. You know, the Bay Area.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Myself very educated in hip hop, I do not know
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: who Mactra is.
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: I can't.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: I think that's bad. I'm gonna have to ask.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: I do like this, put a look on your face
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: like he's Miles some piece, you know, the Thiszle dance.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: You just gotta break it down, break it down, Okay,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I saw you know he he has had
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: a very amazing career and worked with artists that I
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: grew up listening to, and I just want to pick
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: his brain. I want him to mention it all. So
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: please try to not talk a lot, because I just
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: want to hear Too Short through my headphones the entire time.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't see the look on his face. He's eyeballing
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: me hard. Look at him. He's like, I don't know
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: if I can do this. He can't even respond special
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: baby for the first time ever?
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Should I just go home now?
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: No? No, no? I love I love you next to me. Okay,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: I love it all right you guys. When we come back,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have Too Short. I'm gonna have to show
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: my baby some love. I think I might have hurt
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: his feelings.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: You mean this time or all the time.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: I have a lot of making up to do. We
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: will be right back. Hey, babes, we are back and
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: we have my boy Too Short. What's up Short? How
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: you doing life?
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: I'm good, I'm good. Good to see you guys. What's up?
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: We're glad you're here, Grateful that you're here. Man.
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: Last time I saw you were in the club turning up.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Wait, how crazy is it in life? Short that that
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: we went from having a club party to being locked
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: down for three months so far, the first time we've
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: had a guest here post COVID, you know, even though
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: COVID still exists, but first time so that we're excited
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: to have you here live with us. Yeah.
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah, So the world has changed. Twenty twenty is is
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: going to be memorable.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: It's going to go down in history. So I just
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: want to start for people that don't know as much
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: as we know. Obviously, you're one of the biggest recording
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: artists in the world, one of the greatest tell us.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: I always like to start, like from the beginning, So
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: how does it happen? How do you get into music?
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Why do you get into music? And what was the
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: evolution to get you kind of to your spot when
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: you had your first song released and started the blow up.
• 9:26
  Speaker 5: Well, it starts in elementary school as a music student
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: and just always wanted to We always had like instruments
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: around our house, even though neither one of my parents
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: were musicians, but we just had like it would be
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: a guitar there and some drums and some boungos and
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: some just stuff to like, I don't know, tambourine, just
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: laying around out fun and I would beat on those
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: drums and I was, I was in my mind, I
• 9:53
  Speaker 5: was a drummer.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: So the first chance I got, I enrolled in music
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: classes and I started learning how to play drums. I
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: ended up being in the marching band for a couple
• 10:02
  Speaker 5: of years. And when I got to high school, tenth grade, Oakland, California,
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: I was in the band. And that's when I first
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: probably like you know, eighth, ninth grade, I was. I
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: cut school a couple of times. Tenth grade is when
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: I bravely ventured out and I said, I'm just gonna
• 10:20
  Speaker 5: take some time off and I might go to school
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: for a couple of classes, and I'm out of here.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: I was jumping the fence and in your guard and
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: running the streets and just wanted to run with the
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: bad kids for a while now. And I remember this
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: very distinctively. The band teacher came over to me and
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: he had already you know, praised my skills, and you know,
• 10:41
  Speaker 5: I was, I was talented, and he said that his
• 10:44
  Speaker 5: class was a privilege and that if I was gonna
• 10:47
  Speaker 5: be cutting school that after a certain amount of days,
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: you get dropped from a class. He said, if you
• 10:51
  Speaker 5: get dropped from my class, you can never take my
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: class again. I'm the only band teacher in the school.
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: You can never do it again. Wow, And I got dropped,
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: will I will admit it. I tried to play cool
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: because when you know, high school is like the band
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: is kind of funny, you know, like you could be
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: a cool guy in the band, but it takes a lot.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: So well, I gotta tell you one thing. So I
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: was a theater kid, so I understand, like I wasn't
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: cool like you. I was like what they call I mean,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: they called me like a theater gig. But you know,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: at the end of the day, I totally understand. I
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: was like, I tried to fit in the normal.
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: I'm already in with the crowd. But then you're cool,
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: You're what they find out. I love band, You're out,
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: You're right, like it'd be the butt of a lot
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: of jokes. So the band guy told me I can
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: I can never play play in the band again. And
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: I remember eleventh grade twelfth grade, just always seeing him
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: going like really like in my inside, like really like
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: going ship. I wanted to be in the band.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: That's really cute.
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: But rap music came along and right at the same
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: right around the same time, that love for music was
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: replaced with me trying to trying to be like the
• 11:56
  Speaker 5: hip hop record.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: You know. Wait, so so hip hop didn't into play
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: until you were about starting junior. Okay.
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: I first heard rap music in ninth grade.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Wait what year? What year was?
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: Nineteen seventy nine was ninth grade?
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Okay?
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: And what did you hear for the first time?
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: Rappers Delight was the first really rap song that I
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: heard that was on the radio. There were other songs.
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: Before that, but rappers Delight was the one that was
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: the banger.
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: It was like, you know, rotation on the radio. Just
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: wherever you went you heard rappers Delight. So I just
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: knew I could do it. In nineteen eighty, I went
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: to tenth grade and I just tried it. One day.
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: I just tried to put I put this instrumental record on,
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: like you know, twelve inch records used to have yeah,
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: yea yeah on the flip side. I put the record
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: on and I did it.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: That's it, And I just rapped, and I just you.
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: Know, from that point on, I would make little homemade raps.
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: But I think that was that filled in that void
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: of not being in the band, because I still get
• 12:53
  Speaker 5: that satisfation.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: So you start, you start doing your own like basically raps,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: your own records, and then you graduate. I mean, do
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: you graduate high school?
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: I didn't graduate by choice?
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Explain that. What does that mean?
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: I had a dream, Like I knew things were you know,
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: I was making money, I was doing stuff. Yeah, and okay,
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: the high school graduation thing is has a lot to
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: do with me growing up in private school. So I
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: went to Catholic school most of my years and you know,
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: pretty smart. Yeah, And I get to high school and
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: I go to public school, and they're guys, this is
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: you know, it's kind of like what we were talking
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: about before we got on the air, about just all
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: the ills of the world, and one of them is
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: the public school system in the inner cities. And it's
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: really something that I couldn't grasp at first. So I
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: get to tenth grade and I'm fourteen fifteen, and there
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: are guys fourteen fifteen who can't read. Wow, but they
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: go to school every day and they have special classes
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: to help, you know, they call them remedio classes. And
• 13:56
  Speaker 5: you can go to English math and you don't have
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: to learn shit. You go to math class and they
• 13:59
  Speaker 5: give you a calculator and all your work is plus
• 14:02
  Speaker 5: minus and subtraction division.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, you get a wow.
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: So when I got to twelfth grade, I was doing
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: my fair share of fucking up.
• 14:12
  Speaker 6: I love that I was doing my fair share the
• 14:14
  Speaker 6: fucking up escalator basically from I was keeping a chart
• 14:19
  Speaker 6: of how to graduate the right credits, and you know, oh,
• 14:22
  Speaker 6: you're working.
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: I was on my fair share of fucking up. I
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: wasn't fucking all the way.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Right, but you knew enough of how to get out
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: of high school.
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I was. I was maintaining a D average on purpose.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: It was pretty pretty easy. I was a D student
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: without with trying. So so that shows you a stupid eye.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Om but okay, go ahead.
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: So I got the twelfth grade and everybody's getting all
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: excited about being seniors and the events you get to
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: be participating in and not just I didn't have any
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: school spirit by twelfth grade. I was like, I don't
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: give a fuck if we win the next game. I
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: don't care about what's going on after school, you know,
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: I just didn't care anymore.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: And I had a dream, but at this point, your
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: dream is to be a rapper position or a pimp
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: or a pim. So it's one of the threat musician.
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: They were all. They were all very lucid, very bright,
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: and very lucrative.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: So this is amazing.
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: I was just I was so affected by my friends
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: who we would you know, the newspapers a big deal
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: and you like something would happened. He was like, let
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: me read it, and I let a lot of buddies
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: who couldn't read. And my one buddy, I remember him
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: staying to me, he was kind of like like rubbing
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: it in and I didn't have the right credits to
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: and he was gonna he was like, yeah, yeah, you
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: ain't even gonna be a graduation. And I'm like, dude,
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: you can't even say the word. You keep saying gratulation
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: and you can't even read it. You can't even read,
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: and it wasn't it's funny, but it's not.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: It's not funny.
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: And if the guys walked, they got their cap and gown,
• 15:50
  Speaker 5: they got their diplomas.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: But they can't read. But they can't read a book.
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: I was like, I don't even want that ship.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: That ship.
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: I was like two credits short of a diploma and
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: want that ship even like it counts is like, go,
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: do you get your ged? Fuck all this right, I'm
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: about to get money, dude, I love it.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Now what happens? So? Yeah?
• 16:09
  Speaker 5: So, I mean I had a plan. It never once
• 16:12
  Speaker 5: in my mind, like your parents put that fear in you,
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: and it never once affected me.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: You weren't ever worried you.
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: This was not going to work. I'm like, this shit
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: sounds good. This didn't. I just knew it. Like you,
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: a lot of us in life say this when you
• 16:25
  Speaker 5: ask us, when you look back and go, well, what
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: was the part where there was no curve? I just knew.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: You just knew, and you knew that you would do
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: whatever it took to get to that place.
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: Because everywhere I went, every time I got on the
• 16:35
  Speaker 5: mic at a party, they loved it. Every time Wow
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: all may tape, they loved it. I'm like, everybody loves
• 16:39
  Speaker 5: this shit.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: So what's the first moment now between eighteen and twenty
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: one that it happens for you? I had a professional
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: on a financial level. When does it happen?
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: And how I got an opening slot on a big
• 16:52
  Speaker 5: show that came through Oakland and it was probably like
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: somewhere in the neighborhood, about seven thousands, and the.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Crowd, Wow, that's a big crowd that's.
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: Never had a song on the radio. I never had
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: a record deal. I never had a record I never
• 17:05
  Speaker 5: had anything.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Did you have to like audition for this spot or
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: had someone heard you?
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: Promoter? The guy who his name was Lionel B. And
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: he worked for Bill Grand Bill Graham was a big
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: promoter and Lionel B did the urban stuff for Bill
• 17:18
  Speaker 5: Graham Bayry Productions, and h he put me on the spot.
• 17:21
  Speaker 5: He knew about me in the streets. He knew. And
• 17:23
  Speaker 5: I got up there with no radio, no nothing, no contract,
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: no nothing, and I started rapping these songs that I
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: would sell in the streets. And the entire crowd knew
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: all the words shut up and it shocked.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: They knew the word oh oh, so you were big
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: under ground kind of.
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: Everybody was in shocked. They're like, I got off stage
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: and people were going, who the fuck are you?
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Did you have any idea that you were so big
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: in like the underground world, or was.
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: Like, what was that moment I got the bus to
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: the show that day?
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Wow? You know what I mean?
• 17:52
  Speaker 5: Bo Wait, So I borrowed the clothes that I was wearing.
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: I wanted to look fly. I had to go borrow
• 17:55
  Speaker 5: some clothes from Oh my god, this is so cousin.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what happens after that moment?
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: So after that moment I had already I had to
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: dream the dream was real. Right, And a friend of
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: mine who he was a drug dealer's little brother, a
• 18:10
  Speaker 5: big time drug dealer's little brother, and he played football,
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: not the drug dealers, the little right, right, and the
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: little brother a little come around hours. He was the
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: guy who'd come around and he'd have like the best,
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: best weed and he'd be drunk.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: You always want to be friends with that guy.
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: He'd be driving one of his brother's brand new cars.
• 18:31
  Speaker 5: He was always and he'd just pull up on us
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: and he'd be you know, I'm talking like we're right
• 18:36
  Speaker 5: out of high school, we're eighteen, and he's like, yeah,
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: you want to smoke some of this week? He's got
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: the best fucking weed. And then he's like sprinkling a
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: little cocaine across and we're like, oh, this dude ship.
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: So he was the moment we knew he was a
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: little brother. He wasn't giving him credit for that. He
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: was on our level, but he was the little brother
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: who could do things right. And he was doing the
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: big Willie. I mean, he's like, yeah, you know, my
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: brother owned a label, man, and blah blah blah. His
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: brother's the kind of guy would ride by the brand
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: new Mercedes. It's like nineteen eighty five. He might wave
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: at you, you like, you know, you got an image,
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: you got a certain perception of him. So he said,
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna take you induce to my brother. He got
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: a label, and he takes me up there, and you know,
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: after a while, it didn't happen like right off the
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: back of his brother to just kind of shitty at first,
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: a little bitty. He wouldn't let us in the door,
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: like come first couple of times he's like, yeah, just
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: come back, come back twenty minutes. So finally he let
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: us in. Yeah, and you know, he showed me all
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: this shit. He had all this equipment, and you know,
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: all these fabulous people would come by, and musicians and
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: professional sports players, and all this stuff, and he took
• 19:38
  Speaker 5: me to the studio and the shit it just hit
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: from day one, It just it just worked. And I
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: did three albums with They had a label called seventy
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: five Girls. And this was the best experience. If I
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: looked at it like my internship to the music industry,
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: it was the best. It was the best. I mean literally,
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: like I think I could have been a drug addict
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: if it wasn't or that experience, because there were seasoned
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: musicians and people who are around who were really addicted
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: to like crack, some of them did heroin. It was
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: like like big musicians, like they were like I would
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: never drop names because it was literally people that played
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: for all three sports teams Oakland A's, the Warriors, oh
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: and the Raiders would stop by and it was just
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: you know, it was it was nuts. It was that lifestyle.
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: So so I got to see people just sit there
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: and smoke coke and snorted and I was snorting a
• 20:33
  Speaker 5: lot of coke myself, and we put the cocaine and
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: the cigarettes and it was just it was all free
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: and ship. The studio sessions used to be drug laced
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: and it was, you know, just everybody was just but
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: it was also like like I'm eighteen, and when you're eighteen,
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: just getting out of high school. In high school, a
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: lot of times you know the girls at your school
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: date older guys, right, and it was a lot of
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: like the super fine ones, they I'll mess with little boys.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: They want the grown metal.
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: So here I am. I instantly end up in this
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: crew with these guys, these musicians, and this big dreg
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: dealer and we like he like takes me under his wing,
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: and all these chicks who, like I know, who are
• 21:12
  Speaker 5: like grown ass finance chicks are coming over his house
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: and like taking their pants off and just hanging out
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: in their panties and because they want to, they want
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: to get high and they want to kick it.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: And I'm just over there like a fly on the wall,
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: you know, just kind of like just seeing how it
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: all goes and player lifestyle and you know, the girls
• 21:29
  Speaker 5: in there dancing in their underwear and I'm like, you know,
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: guys like one of my heroes.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: And right, like you were more of an observer at.
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: This It's almost like I was trained to find the
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: things and that I liked, like what to do and what.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Not to do.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: It was like it was like, it was basically like
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: your graduation, your graduations. I got to see all that
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: shit without actually touching it, right, you didn't go down
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: that rabbit hole, because you saw it all happening in front.
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: I saw that the guy who got all the money
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: with the boss man. I saw the guy who did
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: all the work and just wanted to get high, was,
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: you know, riding around the fucked up car and just
• 22:01
  Speaker 5: coming over even if drugs are free. But I'm like,
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: I don't want that life, you know, right right? And
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: it just it really prepared me for the next thing
• 22:10
  Speaker 5: I did, which is wild start my own company.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, so now what happens with that?
• 22:14
  Speaker 5: How the seventy five Girls was nineteen eighty five. I
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: got at high school eighty four. In eighty five and
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: eighty six, I was in that environment. I was just
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: describing eight ten, nineteen years. I look back on it
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: as a treasure because at the same time all this
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: stuff is going on, the guy the boss band was
• 22:29
  Speaker 5: running an independent label, and literally he would go to
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: the studio, pay for the sessions. He would pay the musicians,
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: he would pay the engineers. He would take it somewhere
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: and get it all mixed down. He would take it
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: somewhere else and have it all manufactured and cassettes and records,
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: and then he would drive over to San rafael A,
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: cross the bridge and drop it off to a distributor.
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: Then he would take it to certain mom and pop
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: stores that took product direct, and then he would wait
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: a while and he'd go making rounds and he just
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: pick up money and pick up checks.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: So he was it's like a one man show.
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: But the whole way, he's telling me, I'm going over here,
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: We're gonna go over here and talk to George, we're
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: gonna stop by here, we're gonna pick up today, and you'
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: dropping on he takes. I'm just I'm just learning everything.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: So you're basically getting an education of how to run
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: a company, distribute your own product, go to the studio,
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: release it.
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: The whole thing, and the most important because a lot
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: of people didn't know that part. Go get your fucking money.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: It's just because you put out a song or put
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: out an album doesn't mean you're paid.
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: And a lot of artists when they're young, they don't
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: even want the money. They're like, you know, that's my guy,
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: My guy, he's got everything.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm on the radio.
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: Find out seven years later your guy is you know
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: he took off your body. Yeah, so I got that
• 23:42
  Speaker 5: was another lovely thing that everything I ever did in
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: business since that little experience was I don't care who
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: we're partners, what we're doing. I'm on the bank accounts.
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: I'm the money does not come to anybody. It comes
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: to either us or me, doesn't go it doesn't go
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: three other parties. You're not gonna tell me the account
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: and show me a piece of pain.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: By the way, my dad taught me as a kid
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: when I was starting my production company twenty four years ago.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: He said, always be the signer. Don't let anybody else sign,
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: no matter what. And I took that to heart, and
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: I even told you that lot like you always want
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: to be signing your own stuff. It doesn't even matter
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: if it's a.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: So no one's signing or doing anything on my behalf.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: I freak out if I lose the dollar.
• 24:24
  Speaker 5: I pick up any to this day. By the way,
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: I don't really collect anything. If I drop it, I'm picking.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: By the way, I respect I respect that. By the way,
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: if you want to talk about the cheapest person on
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: the planet is my fiance.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, Now, people said I keep stying for his money. No,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I'm as a.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Lot of money. She just keeps it all.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: No, I like it all myself.
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: Short.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: I gotta know real quick, when did you get the
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: name too short? Was that something you chose for yourself?
• 24:53
  Speaker 5: My room name is Todd. And when I got to
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: high school, I didn't have a nickname, and my brothers
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: was My brother was two grades ahead of me. So
• 25:04
  Speaker 5: I get to tenth grade. He's in twelfth grade, and
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: they're like the seniors of the school, and he and
• 25:08
  Speaker 5: I kind of the first thing I did when I
• 25:10
  Speaker 5: got to school was kind of clicked up with them
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: a little bit because they're already established crew and I'm
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: going to a high school. I didn't really know anybody,
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: and they I remember, I remember clear as day. We
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: was sitting around and they go, well, shit, we damn
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: sure're not gonna call you Todd. So and they started
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: these are older guys, right, They started throwing all these
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: names out, like they're gonna call men that ain't working,
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: that ain't working, that ain't working. And then this dude
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: came up who everybody knew. His name was Shorty and
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: he walks up to the group of people while the
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: joke is on, and he's a little bit taller than me,
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: and they're like, damn you, he can't name you. He's
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: shorter than Shorty, Like somebody said, you're just fucking short.
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: So my name was never too short. My name was
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: always short because there was a dude name Shorty that
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: was taller than me. So my name was short got it.
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: And I hated that ship is stuff well for you though, yeah,
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: and it just and it was just it was a joke,
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: like short was always a fucking joke with him, and
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: then I flipped it on him. One day, we went
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: to see this movie called Penitentiary and the league character
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: his name was too Sweet, and he was in jail
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: and he was boxing in jail, but they would let
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: him out of jail to go get pussy and everybody
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: he fought, he beat their ass. He was the hero
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: of the movie. So one day I was talking to
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: this bum, a homeless guy and I always hung out
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: with my brother and them, and they left me. They
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: went in the party. I was I was too little
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: to go in the party. So it's probably like a
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: Friday night and I'm hanging out of this party for
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: two three hours talking to this homeless guy. Yeah, because
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: my brother didn't will let me go in the party.
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: But I'm my mother. My mother probably like, well, if
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: you want to go, you gotta take him. So it
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: was that type of thing. Oh, I didn't mind. So
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: I'm hanging outside. I'm asking us. I used to always
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: ask homeless people questions. I still do. Really, just how
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: was life? You know, that's nice, but you get a
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: lot of information.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been through some ship.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: Well. I went to school, prit Art High School in Miami,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: in downtown, and it was filled with all those people,
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: and I used to have conversations. I used to you know,
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: wh I hear things. Maybe not as a death, but
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: I definitely always was opened mind.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: So I can see it in Short's eyes. He gives it.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Damn about it.
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: I was gonna say, it's cool to give a fuck.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know you give a lot of fus. I
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: can tell by his eyes.
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: Okay, So I told them. The homeless guy asked me
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: what my name was, and I didn't want to say Todd,
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: so and I didn't want to stay short. I didn't
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: have ship to say, so I thought of the movie
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: you're too sweet, and I thought the joke was short,
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: and I said, yeah, my name is too short, and
• 27:38
  Speaker 5: that's how yeah, and so he kind of, uh when
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: my brother name came out the party, he kind of
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: was like saying, all right, all right, you know, like
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: we like we homies and were saying goodbye, yeah, and
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: he yelled out my name and then it just it.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Just took off.
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: It just took off, like he called me too short
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: in front of him and they were like that that's it,
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: and he said it kind of cool, like too so
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: it put a little swag on.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: It, and I really got some swag.
• 28:05
  Speaker 5: And then I started rapping. I started rapping. I'm like,
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: I'm too short. Was it was initially sir too short?
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Oh. I.
• 28:11
  Speaker 5: I went to the mall one day. I got me
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: a hat. It was a black hat with gold letters.
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: It said sir too short. And when he got the jacket,
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: the match with the too short, it's an international on
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: this sleeve and player on that sleeve, and I was
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: instantly too short.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: At the end.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: That homeless man single handedly put you in the direction
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: of being too We.
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: Killed the joke that day.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: It was no, it was never the joke was over
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: from that day on International Superstar. All Right, we're gonna
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: we're gonna take quick break because we have a lot
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: more to talk about, uh, and we'll be right back
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: with too Short, Too Short.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: All Right, y'all, we are back, and we have too Short.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: He is talking to us about the good old day.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Is I like, I feel like I'm sitting here cheesing
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: because like you're a great storyteller.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Short, Yeah, really good.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Listen to you for hours. It's life, a great life
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: I can tell.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: I just want to ask a questions. So, and I
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: don't know if this is factual, but people say that
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: you're likely the only rappers who have recorded with both Tupac,
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: b I G and jay Z. I mean, I just
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: want to have a story to the greatness of your
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: ability mixing with their ability. Just something.
• 29:27
  Speaker 5: Well, I know there's there's a combination of artists. There's
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: a lot of artists who have a combination of you know,
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: two of the three or whatever. But no, I've been
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: on I was on two Biggie albums and two jay
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: Z albums, so oh, I don't think anybody's done that.
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: And then also, you know, during the during the so
• 29:46
  Speaker 5: called East Coast West Coast Beef and all that stuff.
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: I was neutral. I was kind of like I lived
• 29:52
  Speaker 5: in Atlanta at the time, and you couldn't bring that
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: to me, Like it just it wasn't I was not
• 29:58
  Speaker 5: a part of that thing because had a lot of
• 30:00
  Speaker 5: friends in Atlanta, a lot of friends in New York,
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: a lot of friends in la and a lot of
• 30:05
  Speaker 5: friends at Death Row and a lot of friends at
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: Bad Boys.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: So you were in every you were part of everything,
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Like relationships.
• 30:11
  Speaker 5: I was really cool with Tupac, Snoop Dogg and Shig Night.
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: I was really really cool with uh Notoris Big and
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: Puff Daddy and BIG's crew. And it was just a
• 30:21
  Speaker 5: thing like if you were positioned properly at the time,
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: that thing was between them and other people started going back.
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: Ride with Tupac man, I ride with Big. I'm the
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: East Coast on West Coast. But if you were positioned properly,
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: like I was with the bosses and you know, as
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: well as with the artists, and like, right, I don't
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: think I'm not in your politics. I'm from I'm I'm
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: from Oakland. We have it right, and we byry We're
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: not East or West Bay. That's how we played it.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: How was what What's I mean? Do you have a
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: story from two backed Share that was like special or
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: I mean these are legends obviously to all of us
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: sitting here listening.
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: I'm older than all these guys. I'm the big homie.
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: Like I'm like platinum millions of records. So before any
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: of these guys get in.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: The game, oh shit, So you know I didn't know
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: that before.
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: Jay Z, before Big, before Snoop and Park, I'm platinum
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: out there already. These guys literally grew up listening to
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: two Short like literally, so you were.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Like the godfather to them. As they were coming up.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: They looked up to you and me as an artist,
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: I can't.
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, I had the success, but Tupac was
• 31:31
  Speaker 5: really good friends with people that I worked with. I
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: worked with a guitar player named Shorty B. He also
• 31:39
  Speaker 5: worked with Digital Underground. Okay, I worked with a keyboard
• 31:42
  Speaker 5: player named pee Wee and he also worked with Digital Underground.
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: So Digital Underground is a very funky band that made
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: the Humpty Dance and songs like that, and the leader
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: of the band was a musician, he was a keyboard player,
• 31:57
  Speaker 5: and we did a lot of stuff together. Are clicks
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: were really close. I knew the management. Excuse me, I
• 32:04
  Speaker 5: knew the DJ knew you know, we were close. You
• 32:06
  Speaker 5: can go back and look at a DVD. It sounds
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: funny to save it.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: I know, I know.
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: It's like I did a thing called short Dogs in
• 32:16
  Speaker 5: the House, named after one of my albums. We used
• 32:18
  Speaker 5: to always have like a little video thing to go
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: concert or whatever to go with the album. And I
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: didn't notice it two years later. But Tupac's like a
• 32:25
  Speaker 5: little guy in the background, just like dancing and kicking,
• 32:27
  Speaker 5: and he's you know, shot g is the leader of
• 32:29
  Speaker 5: digit Underground. He was hosting my party. So he's going
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: around a microphone interviewing people. And Tupac was like, you know,
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: he's a little homie and we were always close.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Like that, So wait, how can we see this?
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: How can I see this called short Dogs in the House?
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: Probably you or something like that.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I have to see this.
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: So Tupac would come around. He'd be around at times
• 32:50
  Speaker 5: before he was really really famous. He'd be around because
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: he used to hang out with Richie rich which is
• 32:54
  Speaker 5: another one of my homies, and Richie rich was like
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: his kind of Oakland mentor so to speak. Like his
• 33:00
  Speaker 5: big homie from Oakland that took him around and you know,
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: and got him accepted. Because if you go back and
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: look at those videos, Brenda's got a baby and when
• 33:07
  Speaker 5: my homies called, Like the video when my Homies, that's
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: probably Tupac's first video before. That's he's in the car.
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: That's Richie Rich. That's Richie Rich's car. That's you know,
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: that's the that's the hommy. So Richie Rich is my
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: hommy homie, and Tupac will come around. He'd be like
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: the little hommy. You know, I'm Raisy. I'm like short dog.
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: So I can't. I can't really Tupacs every time he
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: ever appeared on the song it was the ship. So
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: I'm a fan from day one. Brenda's got a baby.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: He's very prolific.
• 33:38
  Speaker 5: He's a young cat, and he's saying these things that
• 33:41
  Speaker 5: are big, big things to say, you know, I'm talking
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: about teenage pregnancy. And then he does interviews, and in
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: his interviews he's a voice. He's like really speaking on
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: unjust thinks. Like from the start. So I'm admirer and
• 33:53
  Speaker 5: admirer of his from the start, but when he comes around,
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: I can't tell him.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: That he's like one of the greatest poets. Sound like
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: we're knocking out.
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: I'm like, what's up, homie?
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: So we had that kind of relationship where we ended
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: up on a few songs together because we hung out
• 34:07
  Speaker 5: in the same circles and we get around each other.
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: We would never He's one of those guys that I
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: I do it with Snoop too. When I hang around
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: those kind of guys, I kind of fade away because
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: they're so fucking popular and so famous and so magnetic
• 34:24
  Speaker 5: that they get all the attention, and I love it
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: because I'm I never wanted to be famous, So when
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: I get around those real famous guys, I kind of like, just.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: You're pretty famous. So I have all the hard time
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: with this, I know, but.
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: I didn't want to be meaning I don't want to
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: be face recognized.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: You just focus, you just kind of pull back.
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: So I get around guys like that and I just
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: take it off. I'm cool with that. So it was
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: it was that kind of thing. We'd all get around
• 34:50
  Speaker 5: each other, and I wouldn't I wouldn't try to be
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: the loud guy in the room right or the or
• 34:54
  Speaker 5: the you know, the one with all the glow So
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: and those guys, those guys like Tupac would take over
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: a room. If he came in the room, he'd take
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: over big, same thing with big.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: They just right. Yeah, I didn't know either of them.
• 35:07
  Speaker 5: And jay Z's on the quiet side. He doesn't. He
• 35:08
  Speaker 5: doesn't really do a lot of loud ship talking.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: I met him and he seemed really really quiet and mellow.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: He's very calculated, very calculated.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: He's observing the room.
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: But when they when they depict Tupac in movies, it
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: kind of bothers me because I saw him quite often
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: in my life, and he never was the same person twice. Like,
• 35:30
  Speaker 5: he never was. He wasn't like I probably sounding like
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: that once or twice maybe a lot of times he'd
• 35:37
  Speaker 5: come up and he'd be very introspective or in an
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: intelligent mood, or he'd be militant, or he'd be you know, gangster,
• 35:43
  Speaker 5: or he'd just be quiet. He'd be smoking a cigarette,
• 35:45
  Speaker 5: drinks and here, and like, he was never this person because.
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: Oh I know how Tupac is, like you can, I don't,
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: because it was just always different.
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: He was a very multi faceted person. Yeah, listen to
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: his music. One minute, he's saying, oh, you know, it's
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: keep my sisters up, hold your head up next to
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: me and saying, bitch stuck my dick.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: The next minute he's saying, I fucked your bitch, you
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: fat motherfucker.
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: I saw Tupac the night he got shot in Vegas,
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: and uh, I mean, we're always at the fire he
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: went to the fight.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Okay. Uh.
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: We stayed at that same hotel, the Luxor, and they
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: were they had probably gotten to the altercation at the
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: thing and went back to the hotel and we bumped
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: into them on their way to the club. They said
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: they had to they weren't wearing the clothes that they
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: got shot, and they were wearing different clothes, and they said,
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: we're gonna go about Sugarhouse changed and then go to
• 36:38
  Speaker 5: the party. Come to come up to the clubs. You know,
• 36:41
  Speaker 5: he's like, it's gonna be open, like everybody getting on
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: the mic tonight. So you know, he figured me one
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: of those nights where DJ spending different people's tracks and
• 36:48
  Speaker 5: we all rock at the crowd and it's not the
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: club wasn't that big and it was just probably it
• 36:52
  Speaker 5: would have been the ship. Oh my god, it never happened.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's fucking epic. God, yeah, you were there. I
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: mean you were there are hours before this last time
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: been probably about them.
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: Not two hours later we heard.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: About the shooting. Oh my god. And and not to
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: you know, harp, but I mean, I know that moment
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: changed the world for everybody. And obviously what's going on
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: today we'll get into, but that that moment when you
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: heard where were you when you heard it? Were you
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: in the club?
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: Were you We were on our way to the club,
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: and there were run around pretty quick, and and even
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: the crime scenees, you know, like it was all that
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: whole intersection.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: It was a big deal.
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: But but it was you know, there was there was
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: a buzz in the air that night that that it
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: was going to be some friction, because really, I would
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: I'm wondering, like, was it from the time of the
• 37:43
  Speaker 5: fight until the time of shooting. It could have been
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: like two three hours or something somewhere in there, and
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: it was in the air. It was like death row
• 37:50
  Speaker 5: got into it with some cribs and blah blah blah.
• 37:52
  Speaker 5: So it was people who were saying, it's probably gonna
• 37:55
  Speaker 5: be a thing at the club.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, so you you knew there was something going to
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: have it, but nobody back to this right. It was
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: just like and I mean we're still going to the club. Wow.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: My old theory back then was like you go to
• 38:13
  Speaker 5: a place where you think it might be some violence.
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: I'm like, shit, it's gonna be bound people. The bullet
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: ain't gonna hit me.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Wow. That was my theory. Oh well, let me let
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: me pivot here for a second. Uh. You know, I
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: you know, you've been a friend, You've showed up for us,
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: and you've uh performed for us when you didn't have to,
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: you know, and and we're very generous, you know. And
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: I think that now the last week, what we've all
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: been through with you know, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter,
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: you know, obviously has changed the world. You know, I
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: hope for the better. And uh and I hope a
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: lot of people uh open their eyes you know to
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: things that you know, we're artists, we were talking about
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: it before. You know, as artists, you know, you grow
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: up and you don't see the things that maybe other people,
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: how other people treat each other. Because we work with everybody.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: You know, whether you're black, white, purple, green, female, male, gay, straight,
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. It's at least the way I was
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: raised and grew up in the arts. But today, you know,
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: but that's not the world everywhere else you were telling me,
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: you know, you were just saying, how that's one percent,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: you know, of LA is.
• 39:25
  Speaker 5: A different a different thing when you specifically, specifically talking
• 39:30
  Speaker 5: about Hollywood and being on video sets and TV sets
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: and movie sets and in the offices that running production companies,
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: and it's it's very, very diverse in Hollywood and all
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: aspects of from the highest to the lows, as far
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: as directors and producers and all the casting directors.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: You never know, right, it doesn't. But but then you
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: go outside the rest of the country and the world
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: and that doesn't exist. And so now here we are today,
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: you know, with the protests going on, and I think,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't even know, if not how the
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: numbers compare it to other big but to me, it
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: feels like the world is gonna have to wake up, right,
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, they're gonna have to wake up and and
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: it make change.
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: We're gonna keep doing the same thing, and if we
• 40:16
  Speaker 5: don't do something different, it's gonna be the same thing.
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: And the same thing is it always comes to a
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: point where we go, oh my god, let's discuss this, right,
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: and we come with all these solutions, and it just
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: seems yeah, it just you know, because this has been
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: serious for about this has been a serious, Okay, we'll
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: fix it for about ten plus years, like seriously, Like
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: cops are unjustly choking people out. That's been a thing. Yeah,
• 40:44
  Speaker 5: and it doesn't seem to go away, like it's just
• 40:48
  Speaker 5: and to me, it's like a cycle. Yeah to me,
• 40:51
  Speaker 5: you know, I'm I'm fifty four, and I came up
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: at a time where in Oakland, California, where as young
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: black man, we got harassed, Like harassment was not unjust.
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: It was the norm, you know what I mean. It
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: was like it's not it's not like oh man, I
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: just got handcuffed on the way over hears and somebody
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: be like, man, I got a handcuff yesterday, like you know,
• 41:14
  Speaker 5: like it was normal.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: And then you know in recent years when in New
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: York with the stopping frisk it's it didn't have to
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: have a name. It was always stopping frisk. It was
• 41:23
  Speaker 5: always a fear of when you get when you're in
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: your car and you get pulled over, you have to
• 41:30
  Speaker 5: get out the car to get searched, and it's always
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: that fear while they're searching your car, like I there's
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: nothing in my car. But I've heard from so many
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: people that they come out with this bag and go, hey,
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: what's this and you're like, it's not mine. Yeah, this
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: shit happens. It's just you have this fear of You
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: don't have fear of white people, you don't have fear
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: of society, you have fear of police, right, And it's like,
• 41:52
  Speaker 5: this guy could fuck my day up.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Well, I want to tell you something. It's you know,
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: growing up in the arts like you and and being
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: in such a diverse universe my whole life. You know,
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: it exists. You know that the world, some of the
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: world is stuck in a time warp. And I'm glad
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: that that we're gonna wake up the world that is
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: still sleeping. What I think that shocked me, even somebody
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: who's forty nine years old and has been around for
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: a long time, When that police officer sat on his
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: neck for eight plus minutes, I don't I can't even
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: comprehend that. Mentally, I can't even get my I still
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: think about it. I listened to the words that he
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: was saying, Wow, how the fuck could this happen?
• 42:40
  Speaker 5: He got it out pretty clear. I can't breathe right right,
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: I can't breathe.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Along with a bunch of other people that were standing
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: in a position telling him that something is happening and
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: to stop and it's the video is horrific. And I
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: want to know that when when you were a child,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: did your mom ever have to have those conversations with you?
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Well?
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: Is it thing that's sort of like in the context
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: of the Willie Lynch letter, whatever the you know, the
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: Willy Lynch the thing is where you don't have to
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: be the slave. You don't have to discipline them. You
• 43:16
  Speaker 5: just have to convince his mother that if you don't
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: control him, I'm going to kill him. So if my
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: mother didn't have to say, these are the rules of
• 43:27
  Speaker 5: you as a little black kid going out in the world.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: This is what you do.
• 43:30
  Speaker 5: Like the fear is instilled from day one. It's like,
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: if you know it's this this fear like like from
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: I can remember from the seventies, been a little kid
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: like you. The fucking police like you. They come down
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: to block and you don't go hot miss to officer.
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: You yeah, you like, that's almost like that's definite enemy,
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: that's the enemy.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: But that that and that and that's that's disgusting to me,
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: that that's how it is. That one and I and
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: I think that this, you know, with what's going on,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: I think even somebody like myself, who has been isolated
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: in a very open world, uh now is starting to
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: see things that I didn't even see the conversation. Even
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: for me, hearing things like this, it's just it's just
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: disgusting on every level and out. And I'm happy the
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: world is standing up so.
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: That the argument about the police and their authority and
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: abusing it has a lot of layers. And I think
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: that's something very important, is that a lot of the
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: reason why the police are needed in high crime areas
• 44:38
  Speaker 5: and inner cities is because of conditions that were created,
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: not things that just happen, Like you take away opportunities
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: or you don't even give opportunities, and this is what you.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Get, zero opportunity, Like this is what is there's no opportunity.
• 44:54
  Speaker 5: If you go to send if you're going to send
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: a kid the kindergarten and not teach him, shit, what
• 44:57
  Speaker 5: do you think he's going to be in fifteen. You know,
• 44:59
  Speaker 5: I'm just saying, what then are you gonna give? You're
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: gonna get nothing in return. So it's not it's not
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: the people by a whole, it's it's definitely the system.
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: It's definitely that you're not giving a certain a certain
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: group of people a chance, and then you don't want
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: to give them a chance because you're biased against him
• 45:18
  Speaker 5: because of race or color or religion or something. And
• 45:22
  Speaker 5: then you this goes. This is not just black white
• 45:25
  Speaker 5: in America. This is every religion dispute, every race or
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: neighboring country dispute, all over the world. It's the same
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: fucking idiots it everywhere when you get to the root
• 45:37
  Speaker 5: of it, like why do you hate your next door neighborhood?
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: Like it's no fucking.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: Reason, right, there is no reason.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: Well, I I really, you know, having watched you know,
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: I'm an optimist. I've always been. Some people are pessimist,
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: but I'm an optimist. And I feel like this is
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: something that was long overdue and and and I do
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: pray and hope and will fight for you know that change.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: So and I don't mean it just in some politically
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: correct bullshit, because you know me and you know my
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: work and what I've done, and I just I just
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: think that other people have to, you know, change. I
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: mean the world has to change. And there are people
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: who you know, you know, have changed for decades, but
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: there are too many people that are stuck in their ways.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: And I really hope the Black Lives Matter movement, the protesting,
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: the standing up, the blocking off streets, the education that
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: I think people that were so uneducated because they lived
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: in a bubble maybe and I pray that this will
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: move the thinking forward and change.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, I mean real change, not just well short,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: you're you're a mentor at Youth Uprising.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: I was for a while.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: And what did that entail when you were doing that?
• 46:57
  Speaker 5: There was there is a place Oakland call Youth Uprising
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: that was built in the neighborhood in the you know,
• 47:06
  Speaker 5: right next to a high school. And it was just
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: so that kids, I think it was the ages were
• 47:12
  Speaker 5: like twelve to eighteen nineteen somewhere like that. Yeah, I
• 47:15
  Speaker 5: can't remember the age group now, but they were allowed
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: to come there and participate in a lot of things.
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: You know a lot of cities have this, but of course,
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: but I like that place because it focused on a
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: lot of things artistic. It was had a lot to
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: do with music and dance, and so you felt like you.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Were a part of something instead of after school, you know,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: you're going and getting into trouble. You had a place
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: where you could go and focus on music or I
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: was just.
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: You know, I just wanted to be a part of
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: the solution. And not so much as I looked into.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: What they do.
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: Like a lot of people people go get these grants
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: and all this stuff and they do it in the
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: name of the kids, and we're gonna have these programs
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: and stuff. But they to me, I looked at a
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: lot of stuff and I'm like, you're not really impacting
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: the kids firsthand. So I wanted to be a part
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: of something where I interacted with them. I literally made
• 48:06
  Speaker 5: music with them. I literally, you know, they put on
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: shows and I even you know, took some of them
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: out to do shows to perform on stage with me.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: And if you look and eat for these videos, most
• 48:17
  Speaker 5: of those kids that do the dance and I'm from
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: youth up rising, like wow, like we you know a
• 48:22
  Speaker 5: lot of them, you know, grew up into society to
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: do stuff with their talents that they learned at Youth
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: up Rising so it continues to this day, and I
• 48:31
  Speaker 5: applaud all places like that that, you know, just give
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: inner city kids opportunity to play sports, to make music,
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: to do something other than just go home and do nothing,
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: like you know. And I had the one thing that
• 48:44
  Speaker 5: touched me at Youth Theft Riising that I never forget
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: is a kid, A little kid asked me did I
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: know where he could buy a gun? And you know,
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: I didn't want to go tell on him or scold him,
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: so I asked him why, Like, we't need a gun.
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: He was like, well, I live on such and such street,
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: and he said the guys that I got to walk
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: past on my way home are enemies with the guys
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: that I live by. And he's like, the guys that
• 49:14
  Speaker 5: I live by don't like me because I don't want
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: to be a part of what they're doing. He's like,
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: so it's dangerous to go home, like just from school
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: to home. He's uh, is playing with his life. Wow,
• 49:26
  Speaker 5: And he's like, I just need a gun to get home.
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: And what what did?
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: What do you even say to something like that?
• 49:32
  Speaker 5: So what you thought Uprising would do is Youth Uprising
• 49:34
  Speaker 5: had guys that worked there who were you know, X
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: street guys, and these guys would find out about situations
• 49:41
  Speaker 5: like that and they would go talk to all parties involved.
• 49:43
  Speaker 5: They will talk to the guys who are both the
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: enemy side, and they say, look, you guys are enemies.
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: I ain't trying to get in your business. It's done
• 49:51
  Speaker 5: what you're doing. Because a little guy who's got to
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: walk home from school every day, he don't want to
• 49:55
  Speaker 5: be your enemy. Can you guys not fuck with him?
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: And it weren' sometimes sometimes and it works and they go, okay, we.
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: Seen a little honey, you thought he was with them,
• 50:04
  Speaker 5: and you get it all clarified and just leave alone.
• 50:06
  Speaker 5: And he wants to be a good kid. And a
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: lot of times bad kids will allow the good kid
• 50:11
  Speaker 5: to be good. They'll allow you to play sports, they
• 50:13
  Speaker 5: will allow you to be excelling academics, the like, he's
• 50:16
  Speaker 5: not one of us. Take care of him. He might
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: make it out of here. They understand.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: Okay, I just want to say, because we're basically out
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: of time, I want to I want to know anything
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: that you have coming up that I need to know about,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: because I know you do.
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: Do you ever want to hear some good music.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: Always always too short, drop it, go to Spotify.
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: I do a weekly playlist. It's called Trunk Tuesdays Drunk
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: Tuesday like this, and I keep it like one hundred
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: songs in rotation. A lot of it is new, too
• 50:44
  Speaker 5: short stuff, a lot of it's just stuff. It's the stuff,
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: you know, the trunck is. You know, I got woofers
• 50:47
  Speaker 5: in the trunk of my car and it's all that stuff.
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: It's the ship that I ride too. So I've been
• 50:51
  Speaker 5: introducing a lot of my new music on There's something
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: I just started probably like a month ago, so just
• 50:55
  Speaker 5: now growing it. Trunk Tuesday is on Spotify, and it's
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: about new artists. I'm working with new artists that I'm supporting,
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: and I'm just trying to help, just help the industry,
• 51:04
  Speaker 5: you know.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: So so everybody listening on this podcast, all hundred thousand
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: of you, go to Trunk Tuesdays at Spotify. I'm not
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: playing because this is one of the greatest.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Artists and I'm gonna hustle my way into two shorts
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Trunk Tuesday playlists. All right, dude, sure, it was truly
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: a pleasure to have you on. We're so grateful.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for everything.
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: Thanks Davie.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: Always takes coming through all right, Thanks guys,