Latest / Corpus Christi Originals Podcast / #90 | Guest Host: Isaac Sanchez | PharaohTrip: From Corpus Christi Streets to Global Beats

Transcript

#90 | Guest Host: Isaac Sanchez | PharaohTrip: From Corpus Christi Streets to Global Beats · Corpus Christi Originals Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: What's going on, y'all?
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_03: Corpus Christi Originals back at it again.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: Today we got a special episode.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: We got Isaac Sanchez as guest host, interviewing Trip.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: But real quick before that, I wanted to give a shout out to our sponsor, uh South Texas Lacrosse, nonprofit organization, veteran-owned and operated.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um they are the next event is September 27th at 10 a.m.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_03: Walden Field.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh learn the basics of lacrosse before the fall season starts, October 22nd.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: He's got a link tree, South TX Lacrosse.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: Check him out.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: But uh yeah, so without further ado, I got Isaac to come on the stage so he can uh go ahead and uh host this uh podcast for us.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Man appreciate it.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Man, I just want to say thank you for uh allowing me this opportunity, man.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is really cool.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um this is uh when we started the conversation started, I wasn't expecting this all this to come from it, but I'm glad to be here.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Grateful for this opportunity, and I'm glad to have our guest here, man.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: I you've been somebody I've been wanting to like kick kick it with and like talk to for a minute.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I honestly I found you at the or first time I saw you was at the the zoo's MC battle.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: I never and you're local, so I was like, when you asked like if you were gonna interview somebody, who would it be?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I you you were at the top of my list already.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So appreciate that.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you give yourself an introduction, man?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us about yourself.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_04: I'm tripped born and raised here.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_04: Uh spent a lot of time here.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_04: Uh later chapters of my life ended up being overseas, pursuing some work opportunities.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but yeah, this is this is home.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_04: This is always gonna be home.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_04: It's where my roots are are growing in.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_04: And um, man, I love the opportunity, be able to share, kick some knowledge.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, just spread some stories, man.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of a lot of life that's been living.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: We got a lot of so that night, that night with the MC battle, I didn't know if I was gonna make it or not because I got driven down from Alabama.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_04: I was doing a job in Alabama, some side work, and I was trying to make it down in time, and we literally came straight into the event, uh, dropped me off.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_04: I changed clothes on the sidewalk right there, hopped into the event, and uh I was just ready, man.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_04: Being in the car that long, yeah, you know, you're ready to let out some aggression.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_04: So, first opponent, good luck.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and I got to battle my brother Indy in the finals.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_04: I've never thought of battling Indy because you know he's he's a staple here, man.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: He was in here like talking about how we he uh he didn't win because uh people were saying we rigged it and all that would not I was like that one rigged, and he getting smoked in the end.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Love you, bruh.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: But that was uh ended up being a good battle.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that I mean that's a stick, that's a little stitch that gets annoying when you hear it because you know Public Zoo has been putting on shows for more than 25 years, of to my knowledge, of just my existence with within the the group, and and they've always shown mad love.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_04: I've always um been comfortable doing shows and knowing where their hearts are at when it comes to music, expression, the dancing, DJing, you know, the whole element of the matter.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think I don't know when I even just the little bit I I have seen and heard of you, like you you're one of us as far as the purity of it.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like when we talked about on our episode, uh, and I want to dive into that here in a bit, but I would say you you come from a purist heart, like style similar to all of us in that sense.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I think a lot of us share the same cloth of uh, especially internally, we love to fraud check people.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_04: We love to see something happening, be like, uh we could tell when someone just learned it last night and trying to, you know, the first time they read a book, now they want to be the first one on the mic to say they learned something.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_04: Like, calm, calm down, man.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_04: There's a there's a lot to it because I mean I I got my I mean, my first hip hop album that I ever own was a CD.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_04: And uh it was Bone Thugs and Harmony, East 1999.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_04: Man, I'm like that's what kicked it off.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna ask, but I want to circle back a little bit though, and just curious, because this is Corpus Originals podcast.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the ideas I had is uh because when you're hanging out like with random people, one of the things, especially local, like what's one of the first things you people always ask?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yo, what school did you go to?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I want to take it back.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what elementary through high school did you go to?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: What side of town you from, man?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_04: All right, uh like the original Southside before it started expanding.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, because I barely counted uh King's Crossing South Side.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_04: That almost felt like its own division.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_04: Almost my high school minions restarting San Antonio, you know, if it felt like it was its own division, um, yeah, uh Saratoga and uh Weber.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, but more like in between Saratoga Holly.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_04: So the elementary that my parents ended up taking me to was not one that was in my my area, not in my district.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_04: They ended up taking me to Chula Vista, which was more on the west side off Horn.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_04: And uh my sister had already gone there.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_04: They they loved the fact that it was a fine arts school and you could take electives at that age, you know, we're talking about 1991, 92 and that would feed back in.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that means you went to Wilson?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, not Wilson.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh was it uh the Gifted in Arts?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's an elementary now.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: What is it?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that middle school.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's uh oh no, so I Win Seal.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_04: So that is uh the feeder school, right?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_04: And I remember doing field trips over there to check out Win Seal, but Tom Brown is uh that's right, that's in a neighborhood.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_04: And what what years were these?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_04: So I graduated elementary, if that's uh 1995.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_04: So we're not too much.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_04: So then I started um yeah, getting into middle school around those ages, 1999.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_04: I'm a freshman.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um man, time flies, time flies.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so I went from Tom Brown to uh Carroll High School.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_04: R.I.P.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah right have you been right there?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, I passed it by often, man.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's no longer not the not the place I used to leave my footprints at.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and I only stayed there for about a year and a half.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I then head to King High School, okay, went over there off of a sports move.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_04: I was I was super involved with sports, sports, just mainly basketball.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_04: I played a bit of everything when I was younger um for many seasons, and that's what kind of kind of built my rapport with so many sides of of the town, you know.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_04: If you're in if you're part of sports, at least if you're playing four sports a year, if you're in anything, six years old, seven, eight, nine.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, these are four sets of teammates that you meet every year.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_04: So it's at least 40 new friends every year that that you're just collecting and collecting.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_04: And people don't understand that about Corpus.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's there's a small town feel here that you have like but is it small?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_04: Is it is it is it really that small?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, what's the what's the popular relationship?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Did I say that right?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: But everybody here, I think it's even closer here in Corpus, like three or four.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_04: So here's something interesting about Corvus.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_04: It's about 320,000 population, right?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_04: That's bigger than Pittsburgh.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, that's in perspective for you.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_04: It's roughly the same size as Cincinnati.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Texas, man.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we consider small.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_04: And of the the general population, um, it's even bigger than Venice, Italy.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and so where where does Corpus get this?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_04: You gotta stop feeling small after a while.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's fair.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we're we're we're in a part of the the states that is growing rapidly.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but like you like you said, like uh it's you play sports with people, like you see everybody, you know.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody, yeah, everybody you ever met you can see in a year.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_04: 100%.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it it does, man.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, that but that's some of the charm to it as well.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: That was I can say that that was peak 90s.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: You went to to school from, man.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: So what was this walk paint a picture, man?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: What was what was a fashion like back then?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: What were you rocking?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna piggyback on that.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: What was your first intro into hip hop?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: You said it was uh the Bone Dugs and Harmony CD, but was it between that gap?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_04: We got a lot to unravel with that.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_04: So, fashion-wise, I didn't know how to dress.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, like, I didn't know what I was wearing.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_04: Like, once I figured it out, like the the first things I ran towards was uh you know the South Pole, uh Fat Farm, okay, Fubu, uh Rockaware, Aniche.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_04: I was just running towards uh whatever was nice off the rack, like at Marshall's fair in Ross, and uh or even at Burlington, that's where I find my pants at.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um, the only thing I knew how to do was wear jerseys, man.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_04: I was wearing them champs jerseys, the throwback ones in the early 90s.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_04: You know, that's all I wanted, size 40, size 44.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_04: You know, those those good old days, man, when when jerseys were affordable.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's fair.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so yeah, man, as it transitioned, the the one the one parallel I loved with with basketball in the 90s is that uh there there was a strong connection with hip-hop for sure and how hip-hop was almost being adopted with basketball as kind of like a partner.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: That was the earlier is that that was kind of coming around?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, like when Spike Lee's doing you know, joints with Jordan, and you're hearing Heavy D you know, with Michael Jackson, like you're starting to see elements of hip-hop starting to take shape and form in uh pop culture, and I think basketball was one of the because a lot of hoopers think they can rap.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's fair.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_04: And a lot of rappers think they were once hoopers.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, you ain't wrong.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_04: So some of the first um man, some of the first times I can remember like really diving into uh like wearing hip hop on me is first I need to find my voice.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_04: I used and we there's no internet really like that back then.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_04: You know, the library might have had it, but I'm trying to find lyrics to songs, and I remember having to you know tape cassette, rewind, play, and just copy out lyrics.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_04: Some of the first lyrics I ever copied out was a bone dozen harmony song, Thug Love, Tupac's first.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_04: I remember writing it on paper and then just rewinding it, playing it again, and rapping it, rewinding it, playing it again, rapping it.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_04: Then my friends around that time, I had a few friends at Tom Brown that uh they started breakdancing often.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and they're pretty nice with it.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: I was always a little heavier, so it was it was tougher on my hands.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I was gonna ask, so was MCN rapping your first element that you that you kind of got into?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know you DJ now on TV.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_04: Naturally, I'm a writer, so I was I was naturally already writing things.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um I'd already try to write some you know some whack rhymes as as some startups.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but it starts with the pen with me.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_04: So I'd say my my wit, you know, the the gab that I was able to to get from you know, endless game sessions with my parents where the whole room's talking trash, and you gotta learn how to snap back.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you kind of form your tongue at an early age.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_04: Then when you when you notice you're around people, how your responses, like your rebuttals to things, are pretty sharp because how it how you grew up out of home with that.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_04: And so I always felt like a natural MC.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_04: But when you start, when you just start seeing, because remember at that time footage was limited.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_04: And what when you saw it on TV, you were shocked to see someone break dancing.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_04: You almost wanted to run and just you know, record and play at the same time, just to rewind it and see what move they did or something like that.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_04: So kind of copy in.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_04: So for sure, uh thinking about like Beach Street, yeah, yeah, and catching, you know, wild style, even Star Wars.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_04: You know, this is around the time I started trying to graffiti for the first time.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you got to get out a thousand whack ones before you finally find your time.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_04: I'm still working on shout out to Dose.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_04: Dose holding it down, man.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_04: He's going worldwide with his stuff, man.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, out in holding.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_04: Love to see it, love to see it.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_04: So I would say the order was M Sing, then trying to B-boy.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_04: And then graffiti.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because it popped here around that time.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_04: And and this is me trying to be boy at like 97.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that was about but it was a short span.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_04: I I stopped by about 99, 2000.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_04: That's fair.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_04: I broke my that was a lot of people.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_04: I broke my ankle several places uh in basketball, and I had to focus like on priorities, and uh so was there I mean, early that I mean we're talking like early years of corpus hip hop right there.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Was there a connection between the elements, or was it just like these cats are are riding, these cats are breaking, and we are all kind of just like-minded, or was it like embraced as one culture back then?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's something I've always kind of wondered about.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, just because someone may do the same things you do doesn't mean they're relatable to you.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_04: That's so it doesn't mean you have to hang out with them.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_04: But I feel like it was maybe one of the most unrecognized formulas of a of a grouping of individuals that didn't know that they belonged together, like a down by law pack, like you're from that cloth.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like you see things like it's like a skateboarder and a BMX writer, you're like, Yeah, same, same.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_04: We'll take like a skateboarder because skateboarders adopted a lot of hip hop as well.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_04: I love them for that.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_04: Tony Hawk, that's that's another separate memory.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_04: That game, man.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Nigel.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, but when you have somebody who's come from a different like two two different kids that came up in the same household that now met each other through through two different expressions.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: But were the elements really rocking with each other like that back then?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Or were you just like like you say, you're cut from the same cloud?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: They were, but it was more aggressive.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, it was more aggressive.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_04: You had to test somebody to see if they were about it as much as you were about it.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's what I you know, that's where battling comes from.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_04: That's where you're you're marking out territories, you're marking out new tags because they beat you to it and you're just bitter, they beat you to it.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_04: Like you everyone wanted to prove it to each other.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_04: That's fair.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_04: But it was that iron sharpens iron, and what was left of that that that becomes that becomes crew.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, that's fair.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of uh what were some of the crews do you do you remember any of them at that time, Sam?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_04: Man, I I don't see.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_04: I went away to college right after high school, 2003.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_04: But that's right around the time when it was Flat Road Hustlers, uh Public Zoo.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um man, who was out there?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_04: Emac was out five cent.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_04: Willie Niggas was five cents at the time he was out.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um I forgetting people, I'm forgetting Hell and Gotti Gang.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_04: Gotti Gang was had a great stretch.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_04: Then uh soon after that we had the Unbeatables and then we had the Gulf War battles, and it was like the scene was rocking.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like the scene was really rocking um soon after that time.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_04: But as far as cruise back then, yeah, it's all right, yeah.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_04: My head was on back like just looking straight at basketball for us.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know what's cool?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it just popped up on my Facebook.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is one of the only reasons I keep it around, is for the the ability to see the memories uh on there.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: It 15 years ago, I had a last month or I had my first breaking battle, and it was hosted by Public Zoo.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I was already kind of into it uh up until that point.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: I had been to San Antonio, kind of got exposed to what real Texas breaking looks like, came back super motivated, and then they the the OGs, Indy, and all them were like, Hey, we're we're hosting a breaking battle, and I was like, Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna kill it.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it ended up being us versus a San Antonio crew.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: We had enough, we turned a one-on-one into a crew on crew, super improv, super hip-hop, and uh it was a it was a dope night, man.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: That that night was after that first battle, I was like, I'm gonna, this is it.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's pretty cool.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's a feeling right there that the feeling of when it's over and you realize the state of mind you're now coming back out of like you're normalizing yourself.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you just caught the glow.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, for that moment that happens on stage, MC, you know, doing shows, battling.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_04: You get you get locked into this laser focus to where it's just you know, what's my mission?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, like I'm gonna execute my mission no matter what.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_04: And there's nothing that can disturb me, nothing distracts me.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: No one's yeah, I was gonna say, no one's gonna mess this up.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_04: You're just in your own element, and not a lot of people have experienced that, so it's hard for them to know why it's so bad.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is it like early years of battling?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: What do you remember your first battle as an MC?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Or what are your earliest memories of battling?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_04: It would be like Jones and really, like in the locker room, okay, like two bars set up.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_04: My name is Yeah, uh, I'm from like or making fun of each other, or we'll just do on the bus coming back late night from uh like a Harlingan game, and it's you know, midnight.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_04: We're on the bus, and of course we're cracking up, we got the victory and kick a little freestyle session.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_04: Now we can get a little silly, and it always turns into someone disses someone first, and then it turns into everyone dissing each other, yeah.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_04: And so that you know, that's a little precursor to it.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_04: But I just started noticing that um I don't like I don't like the way a lot of people move.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_04: And I watched I I I like to observe crowds.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, if you ever see me by myself, man, I'm I'm looking at I'm looking at the world like an experiment.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I'm I'm so zoomed out.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like I'm in the I'm in the rafters watching the game.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not part of the game because you can't notice the rafters if you're in the game, right?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_04: But you notice everything that's happening in the game from the rafters.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so when I'm out by myself, that's how I like to move.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I like to feel like I'm not noticed because I want to be able to notice everything in the process.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and so I started shaping my tongue towards you know, rappers only that I didn't like.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_04: And I used to, man, and it would come.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_04: There's an interesting, there's an interesting tell, man.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_04: There's only a few that know about it too.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um, when I was about 16, 17, I pinned a disc first.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_04: I needed targets, man.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I need targets.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_04: I pinned a disc towards third degree out of San Antonio.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_04: Talented brothers, too, man.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_04: I don't even know why I did it, man.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_04: I was just I was just young, 15, 16, killing yourself.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, man, you know, you know, you you want to climb the ladder, man.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, of course.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm not gonna target someone I feel like I can beat.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say, and you always want to shoot for someone you're gonna be able to do.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's a little danger there.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_04: Because uh, yeah, there's talented brothers over there, and somehow, somewhere in my$10 Walmart mic and cool edit pro um nasty mastered, you know, this two-track version of this diss on the Nas Hate Me Now beat.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_04: And they got in their hands and they caught wind of it.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_04: This is like right when P2P file sharing was available.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_04: So they got it.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_04: They got it.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it took 10 minutes to send a one song, but they got it.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then which was quick back then.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_04: And they didn't like, I just remember they didn't like it, and they came down for a show, and then I'd heard my name mentioned, like that, oh, that's true.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_04: Like, oh, that's like 12 of them, man.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_04: It was like me and my homeboy Marcus, man.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_04: And and uh no, they were cool at the end of the day.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_04: They were cool, man.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Did y'all go and did y'all throw some rounds or no?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_04: Nah, man, they were there for a show.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, you know, and I was popping up the show love for the show, and uh just water under the bridge.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_04: They knew what it was, man.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_04: They know they knew I was whack at the time, just you know, trying to reach to the top, trying to take some shortcuts by you know, throwing some rocks at you know, some credible people in the scene at that time.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, same thing.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_04: My first original name was Ace.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_04: A C E.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_04: And uh that was titled because I was trying to be a better freestyler than the Freestyle Kings.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_04: So Freestyle Kings were popping, and I'm like, you know what?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_04: What better way to push yourself than to put a title on your back?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: Like you put a target on your back by saying ace when everyone's bumping kings, and uh I had to sharpen the pen, I had to sharpen the tongue, and I wasn't afraid of the work.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_04: I'm always I'm always down to putting the work.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And um what was your first like actual like sign up on a list battle?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_04: Man, I remember the teacher having some battles.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you have any that like do stick out that are like yo, there was this one right here?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Any anything like that?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_04: The format for the format to be what it was, it wasn't till Golf Wars.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, it was until because uh I think Texas Battle League had come down, right?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_04: And Michael White had battled uh a man named Stats.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, Stats is from Boston, shots to Michael White.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_04: He had Stats to me, he had like such an ill delivery.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_04: Like I always looked at cool G rap style delivery, the way he was formulating stuff.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_04: And I remember he was just talking loud after he beat Mike.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_04: And I told Mark, I said, I need him, I need to battle him.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_04: Because we're already it was already in discussions.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_04: And one thing about Gulf Wars one is not every battle that happened came out on video.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_04: Some of the footage, one of the best battles of all time was I think loudmouth and can I back and forth, slugfest, rocking the whole venue, and it was right there, man.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_04: And um, man, that night was was incredible.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_04: Shout out to DJ Devious, he was there.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody who was either part of the scene, wanted to be involved in the scene, yeah, or was trying to see what the new scene was about, they were there.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody was intended.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_04: So there's a there's a shot on the intro of the Gulf Wars 1 video where you see everybody in that crowd.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, man, that that's a legendary night.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_04: There was a lot of key people in there.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool, man.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_04: Shout out Magnus too.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_04: Shout out Magnus, shout out Almighty Pulse Man, Johnny Moog uh with Fang.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that was like where was the first time you actually like I'm gonna take it back and we'll move on, I promise.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I just I love I love the subject.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Where was the first time you saw like all four elements where where they actually had it had a label like yo, this is hip hop?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have did do you have that experience?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's like a lot of people do something.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like you kind of just grew up and this is what it was.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_04: And you're like, I'm I I I have to research what I'm gonna be a part of.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_04: Okay I don't want to be a part of anything without you know knowing what I'm getting into.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_04: And so with hip hop, I remember seeing K R S one and like as a very at a very young age, not even rapping.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: He was hosting.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_04: And I never heard any of his raps before.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_04: But for some reason I kept saying, like, when I think of hip hop, this guy emulates exactly what I think of hip-hop.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_04: You know, strong with his words, powerful voice, message behind everything, stature.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_04: Like this is hip-hop.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_04: Like this is a strength in hip-hop right here.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_04: And then when I when I started, I went to go listen to his first albums, um, criminal minded, and I'm hearing all this, and then in the libraries, I'm looking up what's hip-hop, what's hip-hop.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_04: I see names like Who Hurt, Grandmaster Flash, I'm seeing uh Theodore, uh Funky Four Plus One More.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_04: I've seen all these, and then I've seen Mighty New York City Breakers, Rocksteady Crew.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_04: I started seeing that, and then and and then once you see it, it's like once you're exposed to it, the universe now is gonna re-expose it to you in different ways.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_04: So it's like once I saw that a week later, now Beach Street's on, and it's the breaking scene in Roxy.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and you know, you're just you're trying to find a tape.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_04: I'm right in the closet, yelling.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_04: Can I get it?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_04: Where's the tape?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_04: I need room on a tape to record this.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, it's on TV.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_04: And uh so you just start connecting it.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_04: They were rapping, they dance like this, to this music, and you know, you you put it all together.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_04: There wasn't like one event, okay, but for like M scene for like battling, Blaze battles, the ones that uh Idea took care of.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_04: I think K R S1 hosted that one, and then finding on like the first message boards of all time, like finding scribble jam battles and the DJ battles and the and the breakdancing battles up there.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_04: And you I it just felt like a cult classic in the making, yeah, that I I I need to be a part of.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_04: Something's making me want to be a part of this and more than anything else.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: So let me ask this ask you this when you because you you travel now.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when you started traveling, was this because I this isn't hip-hop related, right?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's something you do with work.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is that I get that right?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I feel like that's kind of where like yours and I experience differ.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: But you were when you did start traveling, you were already an artist.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: You you never did you ever travel as an artist or for the art?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Did you ever take any trips like outside of Corpus?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Never, no, okay.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um bills to pay.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I hear you.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's it would be it would be hella convenient if what you're passionate about pays your bills.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_04: But that's not the life for most of the people.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the realness I've learned like in in hip-hop, like it it it doesn't, yeah, especially when you're not willing to to cross certain lines or or wear a certain brand.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh man, I was I was listening to your album on the way over here, and your style is like even though we come from different elements, like I love like that the the beat behind it, man.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's I love you look at all my breaking uh clips on Instagram, like it I'm I love that East Coast feel, man.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that's what I liked about you that night that I saw you.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Was it that style?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, and I was I was curious as far as uh if you ever did did you know get out of corpus as far as battling or if you have any, you know, uh running out of gas on the way to Austin stories or anything like that.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I I'd been able to be fortunate enough to do a couple shows in Austin so long ago, I barely even remember what I rapped or what I did when I was over there.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um in San Antonio, I'd done some shows on campus because I went to uh graduated from uh UTSA.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, cool.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_04: And so I was able to do some shows whenever I'd find people who had open mics or spoken words, and I would go there and just drop some bars.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually something I wanted to get into too.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you you are a bit of a poet, so I'm curious.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um who who inspires you as an artist, man?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like what what rappers?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because I feel like I have a list and I wonder if any of the guys that I'm thinking of are gonna be on it.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_04: So there's uh there's poetry, there's a spoken word stuff that I do, and then there's how long you've been doing that before.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_04: So the spoken words always kind of loosely uh been involved since I was in high school.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_04: I'd always loved writing.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um but the spoken word, it lets me it lets me stack multis and rhymes and wordplay in a way that a beat won't allow you to based off of rhythmic limits.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you have to cut out a few words, so for the bar to hit right on the snare, you know.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_04: You don't have that.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_04: So I look at that as uh like almost a raw, a rawer feel of of how my writing can actually get because much of the album, there's about four or five verses off this album that are heavily influenced, almost word by word influenced by uh former poet uh foreign poems that I've I've written.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and um it's just when I write a spoken word, it's it's about seven, eight minutes long.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: You were writing poetry essentially longer than you've been MC and is about the same time.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's cool, man.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_04: Like because it gave me something to carve raps from.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_04: Nice.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_04: One thing about that I wanted to make sure with with the album is I feel like there's a lot of albums now that sonically sound beautiful.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_04: Wherever you're playing it sounds amazing, but what's the replay value like?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_04: What's the longevity of the actual content that's on there?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, are you creating just 10 songs and calling it an album?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_04: Are you creating 10 chapters to one book and that's what you call an album?
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_04: And so I wanted to theme this project, and I don't want to stray away from any of the themes that uh you know I I made sure to become this nucleus of this project, I made who were who were some, but before we get into that's getting the influence, yeah.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: But also I'm gonna ask that same question on the on the writing side.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: So who were some of the poets that you you've you've studied or that you you who who inspires you, man?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_04: Bar none, uh I think one of the best wordsmiths and just articulate men of all time was uh Malcolm X.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_04: Malcolm X is you gotta be sharp because that's all he knows.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um the way he can cut through a tense room, you know, with such precision that he never loses confidence with any any way he goes with his uh with the points that he's making.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_04: He's high on that list.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Gil Scott Heron.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Man.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_04: That brother right there.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_04: Man.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_04: That brother right there.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Let me talk to you about that.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, uh, and this is something just from my own journey, man.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: I when I started breaking 16, 17 years ago, uh, I was looking up all these Texas B-boys, man, and I found this one dude uh named Marlon.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Shouts to Marlon Lazama if he ends up seeing this clip, but he's uh he's a poet and a writer, and it it was a video, he's a world famous b-boy from Houston, Texas.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh been all over the world.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I was already kind of watching his videos because I I loved his style as a as a b-boy, and there was this one video of him reciting poetry, and I was like, what is this?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: And mind you, at this time, like I'm living, um, I'm dropped out of school, going to night school for my GED, working, all my friends are in college.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's kind of a I would say a low point, right?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh hip hop's kind of the only positive thing I got going on.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then I find this guy, and I'm like, what is this poetry stuff?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: And mind you, like the early uneducated days, um, I didn't realize like you can be book smart and street smart.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can you can wear both hats, and seeing him reciting poetry and the way he he conducted himself and the way he talked after about education, it changed the game for me, man.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it was from that point on I I started taking school serious.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up, you know, we'll get that's this isn't about me, but um man, I picked up books and I I became I got into reading and poetry and Gil Scott, like maybe a couple years later, was I mean, I I have his book, man.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, man.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um powerful figure, powerful man.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you hit it with books.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_04: Autobiography of Malcolm X was one of the first books I can remember finishing from books that I personally chose to want to read.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_04: Remember, school would try to you gotta read Lord of the Flies, you gotta read Animal Farm, you gotta read you know Mice and Man.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, the classics, but let me find my style.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Do you do you remember?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: I ask everybody this.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember Harrison Bergerong?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was a book, it was like a short story that was in like an English book in like seventh, eighth grade.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Not familiar.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: All right, it's off topic.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was a wild story, but keep going.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right, with the goosebumps inside the the textbook or what?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_04: Goosebumps included, man.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, man.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_04: I need to get my accelerated reader points up, man.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: Gotta get that free personal pizza.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_04: You ain't lying about that.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_04: As far as MCs, okay.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_04: Man, okay.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_04: This is a tough one.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_04: Because my my favorites to listen to when I just want to listen to hip hop are not who inspired me.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_04: Like, for instance, my favorites are like Crazy Bone, Project Pat, okay, you know, Pimp C, Big L.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_04: Like it's corrupt.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there's a lot of styles in that.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_04: But then the ones who like paved the way for my pen, I'm looking at Cool G Rap.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_04: I'm looking at Rockam.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_04: I love Rakim.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um, Big L again, Lord Finesse, um, the whole digging in the crates crew.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_04: I had a moment right there with them.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then Grand Pooba, J Rue the Damager, um Poe Righteous Teachers, Arrested Development, um, that that Soul Quarian group, you know, with De Light Soul and Tribe Call Quest, you know, and then they started later adopting elements like Feral Maunch, it's heavily, heavily involved in you know, Feral Trip, Feral Munch.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_04: Like there's no mystery behind it.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_04: Nice.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, for sure.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_04: Nice, AZ.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Man, it it the list of all time.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, Nice is on the list, man.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_04: That it's the list is extensive.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Go back to the the poetry.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, man, what about uh was I just had his name too?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Saul Williams.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_04: I I I felt dementia now.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_04: He actually ran through my mind as we were talking.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_04: I was wondering.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_04: Uh what's this what's the joy he had?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_04: He did it on Deaf Poetry Jam.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: I was gonna ask about the Deaf Poetry Jam.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_04: Man, there's some there's some sick, there's some sick bars, man, that still they still echo in my head from some of his performances.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_04: And uh he's a brilliant, brilliant guy, brilliant guy.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I used to love that show.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Lemon Anderson.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he was another one from that show that I would watch.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Follow had his book.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: How can I not mention Most Deaf?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: Most Deaf, yeah.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_04: Most Deaf.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_04: Before I had the CD, man, that burnt CD.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_04: I had I need like three copies, scratching them left and right, man.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_04: But Black on Both Sides was getting much play.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_04: Black Star getting much play.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_04: I think I think uh Most Def's verse on Thieves of the Night and on the Black Star joint is uh arguably one of the top ten hip hop verses of all time.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_04: I uh the penmanship on that is is mind-blowing, mind blowing.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_04: And um that's one thing that I love uh taking with me overseas.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, like finding which students, you know, in schools, because I I worked here for five, six years roughly, before I made the jump.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_04: And I made the jump because I just felt the monotony kicking in too soon.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so walk us through that.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you you do go overseas, and this is for work.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Are you free to talk about that at all?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm gonna hop in.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, of course.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's yeah, that's all good.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_04: It's all good.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I I everyone, I feel like comes across a point in time where they want to make a difference, an impact, you know, bigger than what's just happening in their home, but they want to feel impactful towards other people.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_04: The simplest route for me doing that, um, having my bachelor's in philosophy and always you know scoping the field is you know, how can I attribute some of my experiences that I've gone through already and help out younger generations?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you know, you've it's like a mechanic, right?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, all these young minds are coming to you a bit flawed because the world we're living in is a flawed one.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_04: So they're gonna that's raw ingredients coming to, and a mechanic just does some fine-tuning so that when you leave the mechanic shop, you're you're riding much smoother, you're thinking much clearer.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_04: And that's why I like to treat the 10 months in the classroom like and I'm doing it through the vehicles of math and science mainly.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_04: Cool.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_04: And so I was teaching fifth grade for the longest here for just math and science over at West O.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_04: So my last couple years when I was here and just life, life itself.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um the world is it's not really a big place.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_04: That's fair.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_04: It's not really a big place once you leave.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um but I had to check it out.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_04: I need to see what it was about.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like what was the first stamp that you you put on that passport, man?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was China.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: China, okay.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_04: It was China.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_04: I literally finished fifth grade in June and in three weeks arrived in Beijing.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, raw.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: Walk us through that.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_04: And I never I never traveled outside of I've never had a passport before then.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_04: And so um, I was just ready for change.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_04: I was ready for the challenge.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_04: I'd always felt like I had a global perspective, you know, as far as like a natural filter in my head of considering how things were because America is relatively young as a country, very young.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, I mean, there's soups in the Mediterranean area that predate America.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know what I mean?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_04: Like they got foods that are older than America, and so there's a lot of hidden chambers out there.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: How's that work?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Do they do you know like more or less where you're going, where where you're gonna be staying?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_04: So, yeah, there's a few, there's a few online sites that allow certified teachers such as myself to to upload their resume and be able to log in for a fair price.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_04: And it what it does is they serve as a middleman.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_04: And they all they do is provide links of available places that are looking for this, this, this, this, or this.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_04: You can filter out your searches.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_04: So I I applied to about 20 countries.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_04: China's the one that responded back with the best offer.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_04: When they told me they're gonna pay my rent, they're gonna pay me more salary than what I was getting here, plus they're paying my rent.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_04: Nice, and it's not coming out the check like as a stipend.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_04: You know, that's enticing, you know.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_04: And I I took that leap.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: What were some of the things you got to experience?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_04: Probably the greatest decision I ever made, man.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, but it's it's odd because you bit we always build up a world in our head that isn't realistic to the world that we end up living.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_04: How so?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_04: I'm looking at China as like, oh my god, I'm going to China, like I'm nervous, like knees weak, arms are heavy.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, you know, you're walking through the airport, you don't have no service on your phone, you're in a whole new continent.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_04: So you pretty much have no phone, you're by yourself, your language means nothing there.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I was gonna ask, how do you navigate the language period?
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_04: You just got man, you just have to make it happen.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_04: You just have to stay calm, man.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna think better the calmer you stay.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_04: And so are you the dumbest person in the airport with how that many people?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_04: If you don't feel like you're the dumbest person in the airport, then you're gonna figure out how to get out of the airport just fine.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_04: Like, that's what I'm saying.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody's gonna get out.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_03: What's going on, y'all?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: Just jumping in.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_03: I heard y'all's conversation, I was like, Damn, I gotta get in.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_03: You didn't know, man.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's pretty cool.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_04: I ended up people came up to me immediately.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_04: They thought I was somebody.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_04: We wouldn't have that approach and they're like they're doing that little arch and look like, is that the guy?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_04: Were you wearing a jersey or what I was Adidas sweatpants, you know, I had some Kobe's on.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_04: I looked apart, yeah, you know, and uh I had a few people help me out, and uh I got hot spotted onto some service.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_04: Signed some autographs, gotcha.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_04: I got picked up, man.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_04: But but I have uh, I mean, so China was the first time, okay, and I stayed there for a little more than two years.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: Was there any students that stuck out like any ones that you're like that kid's gonna, you know?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: All of them.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: All of them.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_04: The the the school I was working at, uh, the student population for my area was 99% Chinese.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_04: Well, 99.9, I'll say.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um China nasty before.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_04: The way they could just flip the switch with learning from joking to being silly to we're reviewing, and it's just game time.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_04: They're ready to take there's nobody's talking, and it's that type of environment where if someone's talking, they're shutting them up for you.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, so I love that as a teacher, yeah.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_04: Like, because this matters, they gotta they gotta deliver these results to their parents who are paying this much money to have them at this school to get a foreign teacher to teach them, you know.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_04: Oh man.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: You teach the same stuff here that you do over there?
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um, no, so actually, my the least amount of uh my teaching experience was here because it's so strict on on like for instance, I'm certified grades four through six, all subjects, all core subjects.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_04: I chose math and science because I I think they're the best subjects.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, they're easy, they're easier to have the most fun with um if you do them right, and they also mean something at the end of the year because they're tested.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_04: Right, and I think they're translatable subjects wherever you go.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_04: That's fair, they matter.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_04: And so when I went to China, they pegged me at an English training school and I got out of it, and then I ended up working at a high school.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_04: And I had never taught algebra two honors, chemistry two honors, biology two honors.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_04: This is a big step up from fifth grade West also.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, I'm now in Beijing, the capital of China, you know, teaching kids who are expected to be something in life.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_04: How much of that was like learning as you go yourself?
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, um 80% of teaching is how well you host the information.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so a good host can always get by any lesson.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_04: That's right.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_04: So if I need a if I need to stall, I can have them research things and coming.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_03: Do you feel do you feel like you need to know the subject like like all the way or just a little bit?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_04: But you don't you don't need to, but it always helps.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_04: I didn't have time to learn algebra 2, chemistry, and biology in one school year.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but I have time.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_04: Shout out to the brothers over there.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_04: But I had time on my taxi, I had 30 minutes every day to get up there.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm learning, I'm gonna learn algebra two right here.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_04: My first period was an off period, so I'm gonna learn chemistry and biology right there.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_04: And so I had you know set moments, but uh and I did it the same day because I didn't want to lose any information overnight.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_04: I want to keep it fresh if I'm gonna teach it.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_04: And I had students, like as I check for understanding, I always have students, you know, model their work, doing their own presentations, doing things like a business world would want them to do.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we'll set it up, you know, business like I give everybody surveys on what they felt they could have improved from it, and you know, anonymous surveys, and it was very respectful, very honest, very open.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_04: And they end up teaching you a lot more about the subject as well when you allow their voices to be heard.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you don't know everything.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_04: That's fair.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_04: Obviously, I don't because I never even taught it before, but I know I have the ability to teach chemistry, and since that time, what I learned.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_04: So after I left China, I've um I ended up in Thailand teaching middle school.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_04: Coming back to the States, yeah.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I was the department head for middle school science.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_04: And my sixth graders in there were learning chemistry by the end of the year.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's amazing.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_04: Man, because we went online.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_04: So I got to Thailand in 2019, 2020, when COVID kicked off, okay, and we had to go to online.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_04: By the end of the year, when we had to do online lessons, we'd already finished out the entire curriculum.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_04: And so our mandatory hours sessions online, I had them doing chemistry work.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I kept them, finish it and go back to your parents.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_04: Go let them know, don't let them know what we just did.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_04: And they're they're counting atoms, they're counting.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, they're they're able to balance equations, and it's and that's what I mean by the hosting of it.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not there to act like I'm smarter than them.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_04: Right, I'm there to introduce some things in a way that I feel like no one else is introducing it like.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_04: Like with math, for instance, I say the biggest number you're ever gonna deal with is nine.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, that's literally the biggest number you need to ever execute.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_04: Nine.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_04: Because uh, let's say you have uh 91 times 91.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_04: Well, that nine times nine is gonna be the hardest part of it.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_04: Everything is single digit calculation.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: So rudiment, the rudimental uh portion, or I guess, of that of that uh whatever, uh like mathematics, for instance, is just zero through nine as of the basics of math itself.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_04: Zero through nine has created an unlimited scope of of uh the depth of mathematics.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and uh to me that's it's fascinating, but at the same time, get your one through nines down every way you can.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_04: Know how to divide by nine no matter what the number.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and I and I I in my head I'm looking at it like tool sizes.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_04: Like if you're gonna use the nine drill bit, it's gonna make if you're dividing, you're gonna cut out this much each time, you know.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_04: Doesn't matter how big it is.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_04: If you're using this bit, you're gonna it's gonna be more numbers because it's a smaller bit.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I have a million analogies I love tossing the students just to let them find their way.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_04: Because I never found a teacher that taught me a way that stuck to me.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_04: I had to figure it out myself.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: Does your stage presence like do you think it helps being a teacher and being able to deliver things like this?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, because I roast them all the time.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_04: Like I'm going at them, man.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_04: I'm going at them.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_04: Like
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Did you start roasting people?
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like, is that how you or you know what I'm saying?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_04: I reinforce um our objectives in a rather entertaining way while exposing the benefits and advantages that you have that I didn't have.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I have to give them, you know, it's just little things.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you mean to tell me like you're you're you're hot, you're bothered, you know, this is bothering, this is bothering you.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_04: You can't do your math.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_04: Meanwhile, you got air conditioned, meanwhile, you got Wi-Fi, meanwhile, you got a PlayStation at home.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_04: Meanwhile, you get three recess breaks in the day.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_04: Meanwhile, your parents are getting delivered food for you for lunch that doesn't come from their kitchen, it's coming from this restaurant over here because I'm getting these kids, you know, that that they're paying$15,000 a year to go to these schools.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm getting these kids, I mean, kids that have never been told no before.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah, and then they meet me.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_04: Mr.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you better you better look convinced.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and and I I just remind them like you have all these head starts and advantages, but somehow you let me lap you because at that age, I could tell you what I was doing.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_04: And you know what?
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_04: You may you may pay your way to get ahead, but when it comes to actual manual work, when it comes when all if all this shuts down, I'm needed way more than you because my skills show that.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_04: You should you should never allow yourself to not have the skills because people are willing to pay for skills, yeah.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_04: So equip yourself with enough skills that people are willing to pay for at the end of the day.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_04: Facts because daddy's money will run out one day.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_04: Facts.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's cool.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you said China and then Taiwan.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thailand.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thailand, that's right.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_04: Thailand was wow, that was that's a crazy place.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_04: Man, so what was next?
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_04: Hold on, let's let's gloss over Thailand a little bit.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_04: I was in Pataya, Thailand, and it's one of the last spots that have been pretty much renovated by tourism.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's known mainly for Walking Street, right?
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_04: Super huge red light district.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_04: And man, entertainment there is wild.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you could some of your who's who's.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um I was doing a basketball tournament and we flew, they flew us over to Vietnam for the for the weekend to go be part of this tournament.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_04: And on the plane, oh, on the plane ride back, some of my my athletes they noticed uh this one.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_04: This they said it was an artist.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_04: And he said, You've played them in class because I always play music in class.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yo, man, the only thing that's quiet are jail cells and padded rooms.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_04: Don't turn a classroom into one of those.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_04: Because there's I already got theories of how the education system has been monitoring you know the prison system.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_04: Some of our schools even look like it from afar.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_04: Show somebody, show somebody like Tom Brown, take Tom Brown.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_04: Just do a quick scan, send it to somebody who doesn't live in this country and tell them what is this, and they're gonna say a penitentiary.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_04: Or yeah, if you look at all the new designs of all the schools locally, it's all the principals, award, and teachers, correctional officers.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_04: You get an hour of rec time.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_03: How do you feel about home?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_03: How do you feel about like homeschooling kids?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_04: I'm more in favor of it the more I live because I'm aware of like my teaching.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_04: I've up to I've literally taught every grade, every every level, and I feel comfortable being able to not only teach my my kids, but a lot of it's having the time to be able to do that too.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's it's tough.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_04: But there's there's also life missions I want to do.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_04: I don't want to teach algebra to somebody and it's just paper algebra.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_04: Right now, let's go to the store, here's$20.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_04: Show me three ways that you can buy these items or how much of each of these items give me three different scenarios that make it work because that's that's algebra.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and be able to now translate that into a script and have them see how that script represents what they just went through because the test is learning the script, and not everybody knows the script.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_04: I don't it's that's where I think it's tricky.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: I I did all three, man.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: I did homeschool, public school, and private school.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I and people always ask what I like better.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think what I liked better was didn't line up with what was best for me.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm being honest, I would say private school probably would have been the best option.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't afford to keep doing that, you know.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I liked homeschooling, but I missed the public aspect of public school.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_04: But the survival of public school, yeah.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_04: There's a the you learn well, especially how we went through it.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because you there was no knowing everybody going back to public school, man.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_04: There was no knowing everybody.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, now social media is connected.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_04: Everyone, you have the whole classroom is following each other.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_04: That didn't exist in our day.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_04: You only talked to maybe one person if you got lucky to have a friend in that class.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and you had to make friends, and you're looking around, like I already don't like that person.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_04: Like you're not, I'm not even allowed to sit near that person that looked like.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_04: But your inner monologue is is speaking to you, and you're finding out your insecurity.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually, man, one of the questions I I had for you too is is growing up in in your times and our times.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was like I said, I'm only a few years behind you.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, how do you think it compares to to now?
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like growing kids growing up today.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: Scarier here.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I bet scarier here.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_04: So I say that because um let me let me jump ahead a little bit.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, most recently came back from Greece.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_04: And so where I was living at, and I was living in Keepselli, and it's it's well known area in Greece, just above the city center, and some real residential areas.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um every time I I arrive home and walk out to go get food at a restaurant in L'Otaverna, the kids are out.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_04: Everyone's playing.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_04: The moms are out, the dads are out, the kids are out.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_04: You see the young kids, you know, kicking the ball around, setting up their own goals and whatnot.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_04: You see the older kids already grouped up, like looking at the looking across the section.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_04: The girls are looking at the boys, they're figuring out how they're gonna break that ice.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_04: You see other the lights happening.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_04: You see the other youths that are like hiding in the alleyway smoking their little cigarettes they stole from their mama's purse.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you're you you're I was feeling like it's 90s in a way.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_04: Like some of the last time, like some of the last images I remember seeing in certain areas of just being outside.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you you don't live inside.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: And not being afraid of what's coming.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_04: And you go home for protection, comfort, rest.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_04: Because of what's outside.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_04: But if the the neighborhood is taking care of itself and watching itself like that, there's no no place you'd rather be than outside.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_03: Have you always been like an observant person?
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_04: I've I've always felt that way.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_03: I've always felt that uh is there like a moment that like or or that's just how that's just the like how you are, you know?
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_04: What opened my eyes the most, I'd say, especially on a global scale, is in 1996 my parents had already been uh trying to raffle off and win uh Atlanta tickets for the Olympics in 1996.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um and after like a year of being in these raffles, they showed us what we had gotten from it.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_04: And we had a bundle of tickets, including uh the Dream Team 3 that was up there and the women's dream team as well, lacrosse event.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_04: So I mean, we're going, we're going, but we're not flying, we're taking we're taking the van.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_04: We're taking the van.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_04: So I begged my parents to give me like a little, like almost like a five by five box black and white TV that had the connections for my Super Nintendo.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_04: And the two games I rinse the most, of course, Mario Kart.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_04: Mario, you know, you got to do it at 50, 100, 150 class, you know, old school style, and King Griffey Jr.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_04: baseball.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_04: Because you can do home run derbies, everything, man.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, and so I rinsed those.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_04: We got there, but when we got there, I'd never seen that many cultures in one place, hearing that many types of accents and languages, all there for one purpose.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_04: And it's almost like I got the world under one umbrella, yeah, you know, before I even got to middle school.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_04: That's cool.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I got to experience about a week and a half of that, you know, and I'd never I can't to that point.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think I'd ever been out of Texas.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so that was that was a big moment.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_04: And you're traveling through the backwoods of Louisiana, Mississippi, and this is yeah, and this is where I'm I'm like, wait, don't they got a movie like Mississippi Burning?
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_04: Like up nine, you know, when you you know you used to open up the newspaper to see, you know, what's showing and and some of the PBS.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: The houses look different, the trees look different, the layout, the landscape looks different, the people talk different.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_04: And and I always like to use that as symbolisms of of the current status of where the generations being the the way they're now allowed to think, it it's almost dulling it, it's it's losing its vibrancy.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_04: And um I think that's dangerous.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: You don't think that's the the phones and social media has a lot to do with that?
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_04: No, for sure.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_04: Shorter attention spans um a short attention span will rely on more resources for entertainment.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_04: And so the more resources you're allowing yourself to be distracted by, the more influence you're allowing to be puppeteered by.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_04: And there's not many people thinking for themselves anymore.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_04: Some people are so caught up that they don't even know they're caught up.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_04: And they're the most dangerous ones.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_04: Those are the most dangerous ones.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_04: I had I I take no place in politics, I take no place in religion, I take no place in anything that I felt like has already been manipulated more than more times than days I've been on earth.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_04: That's fair.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, so I'd rather take a step away, especially when I see the reactions that come of people when they're debating or going about things that way.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_04: It gets very violent very fast.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_04: And I just not all violence is the same violence.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: You can't help but notice, and I think even what we were talking about on the on the public zoo episode with like the the kids battling, like coming from a generation where we had to go and make friends without devices, where we had to your words, there was consequences.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we have free speech on the in the playground, but free speech could get into getting punched in the face.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was just saying that, man.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: Look, yeah.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and so when you come up like that and you go to a battle, whether it's breakdancing or MCN, like, yo, like I'm fine after this.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'll take an L because you know what I mean?
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's in the in the team, it's it's not that big of a deal, whether the odds were in my favor or not.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_04: And you touched on something.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_04: I don't feel like I don't feel like free exists.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_04: I don't feel like freedom, I think it's more an illusion.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's not uh it's not a solution, it's not a realistic uh place to get.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_04: I have it as a step above the word hope.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um the the mindset of being free, that that's uh something that should be of relaxation and bliss almost.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_04: And I feel like um if you say we're in the land of the free, no, we're just in a place so big that we don't even know how far the fences stretch, but they're there.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: That was real.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_04: You know, they're there.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um look at recent events, you know what freedom of speech gets you.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_04: Like I said, there's people that find those fences of and then they want to stand on them and hey, don't you know you can you can't have it both ways.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_04: You know, words are weapons, yeah.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_04: 100% and um how do you think religious battles get started?
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so uh if if if you want to try to justify one thing or justify another thing, you know, everything has consequences, yeah.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and and even to a deaf person, you know, they'll feel the energy.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_04: There's still the energy behind it.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I have a a friend of mine who's deaf.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: He uh he breaks with me here and there.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: He's one of the most annoying.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm just kidding.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: Angel, I love you, man.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: You see this.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: Let me get it.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody get there, bro.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_04: So let's go back to um leaving Thailand.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, yeah.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_04: Everything shut down.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, COVID.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_04: We have 6 p.m.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_04: curfew.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_04: They shut down the beaches, uh, they shut down alcohol, they shut down bars, they shut down everything.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_04: 6 p.m.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_04: Everyone's home.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm two minutes' walk from the beach.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_04: I can't even go there.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_04: You know, but they got like it's I was gonna say, and there are policing this.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's policed.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_04: And I gotta get out.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_03: Talk about not being free.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_04: So I ended up getting a flight in June.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_04: I got a flight to uh Qatar from Bangkok to Qatar.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_04: It was an eight-hour flight, and there was only three people on an international flight.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_04: And uh I was one of the three.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_04: Oh man, my legs.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't like flying already.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_04: So I just I just asked for some whiskey, well, the whole bottle.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_04: You know, what am I gonna do?
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_04: I'll go to sleep quicker.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_04: And I ended up in Qatar, and from Qatar, I flew 16 hours to Chicago whole smoke, and then it's but you're I'm already seeing how COVID is being treated in Thailand, now in Qatar, yeah, now in Chicago.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_04: And then of course in America, we have 50 different you know, ways of behavior due to 50 different states.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_04: And so Chicago, when I came down to Corpus, that's when uh I stayed some time down here.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, we didn't nobody knew what what the hell was going on at that point.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_04: And oddly enough, after enough time, it's time to go back to work.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_04: I gotta get back to work, I've caught up with everybody.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_04: And I ended up taking a job in 2021, and I flew there in September, and it was in St.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_04: Petersburg, Russia.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_04: Next, I went from Thailand to Russia, and you know, someone who has come up, you know, with the ears, you know, I hear the news for two of my first three countries of living in to be China and Russia.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_04: But what what I love about it is China doesn't think I'm American.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_04: Thailand doesn't think I'm American.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, that's crazy.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_04: Russia doesn't think I'm American, I'm not the identity of America, right?
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm I'm being called Brazilian.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_04: I'm being called exotic, Egyptian.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, go ahead.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh, how did you get your your your name, your rep, your I guess your MC name?
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_04: So trip trip is about trip.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_04: So the pharaoh trip came from you know me just deep diving into ancient Egypt and you know discovering just a whole lot of truths at a certain layer that gave me confidence that there's more to be seen.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_04: Like this this earth has a lot more to be seen, and this is just one example of of possibly dozens, you know, different sites.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um, trip is short for triple.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_04: So my real name's Marcel.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, but my father's name is Marcel, and my grandfather's Marcel.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm the third.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_04: So in the household, Marcel is my father.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_04: Trip was just a shorter version of the third trip, triple.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_04: That's cool.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_04: And so my parents always called me trip.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_04: I've never heard them ever call me Marcel.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_04: So that's just naturally been my name.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_03: Are you so are your are your what's the nationality of your folks if you remind me?
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_04: So my mom's from Robstown, Texas.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yay! Shout out cotton pickers, shout out cotton pickers.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_04: I see, I see the videos, bro.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, no, my mom picked cotton, you know, my aunts picked uncles picked cotton, you know.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_04: That's the reality.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_04: That was that was the best job available for people there for a long time.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_04: And uh my father was from original Hillcrest, Northside.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, wow, and so he came.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_04: My father was born in 52, my mother's born in 55.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_04: So if you think about the crossroads that it took for a Mexican woman and coming out of Robbstown and a black guy out, Hillcrest, wow, how did that go over when they met and when they told their parents?
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_04: Because even that's real too.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, they don't they almost crossed the tracks to meet, you know, because a lot of people don't even know what that means.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_03: You're not supposed to cross the tracks, yeah.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of people don't even know what crossing the tracks mean.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_04: And um, yeah, they had they had to really really work that out together, you know.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_04: Pretty much two underdogs that found victory.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_04: That's awesome.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and then and everything they've done is everything they worked for in life, provided me for a platform where I'm able to see what I'm able to see right now.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_04: That's the strength of them.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, what are your thoughts on the Hillcrest?
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I guess because they got the D sell and all that stuff going on, and people were saying they're pushing them out or whatever.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know the whole story myself.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_03: Since like your did you spend time at in Hillcrest as a kid?
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_04: No, no, no.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_04: So my my father had already moved out, they'd already gotten out.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_04: It's just one of those natural things where you know your father doesn't want you to repeat the life that you just came out of.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right, right.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_04: You know, he won he'd rather take chances elsewhere.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_04: And my mother was the same way, and so they they they met mutually on that, decided to you know put me, I guess, in a growing area of the city, and it worked out, you know, it worked out real well.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_04: The original south side.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um which is where like uh like what were you saying, like whether I mean I always think where the baseball south side baseball field is, like you know what I mean?
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_04: I'm closer to cabinets, okay.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_04: Closer than that area, but um, I'm I guess I'm more on the on the eastern part, on the south.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um oh man, you just you just touched up on something.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm slipping my train of thought right now.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_04: Slipping my train of thought.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_03: Was it about the hookress community?
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_04: Oh man, the new bridge.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_04: What's the deal with like okay, you you push all these people out, right?
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_04: And you're gonna name the bridge what the new harbor?
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna name it starting with the letter H.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you gotta start it, bro.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_03: Or did I I've got to be started, I gotta start it.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_04: So the letter H, we could have used to just call it Hillcrest Bridge.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, damn.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was listening to a Creon's podcast.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know Creon Martin, right?
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it's the it's called the Man Look Podcast.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, he's talking about he was talking to somebody from Hillcrest.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_03: That uh Elliot Grant was a guy from the Hillcrest community, and they they named Elliot Grant, I guess, on the south side.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_03: They gave it to one of them schools over there.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, well.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_04: Shout out the mayor, John Wimbish.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_04: It's my guy, John Wimbish, holding it down over there.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but that was interesting that you were talking about, like just naming it the Hillcrest Bridge.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's right there.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, there's small acts that will let people at least know that you notice some part of their struggle with yeah, having to transition out of where they grew up.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, that that's we see it often in history.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_04: And if you want to hear more about that, American Autopsy talks all about having a face picked up, gentrified, moved out.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_04: It's a cycle.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's a real thing.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's a real thing.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_04: And uh it's it's a color-coded cycle.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, it's a color-coded cycle.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_03: So you have a lot of that in your obviously in your in your music and stuff like that, right?
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of irony because I think irony and hypocrisy sleep together.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_04: So it's so it's ironic you say this, but you do this.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, doesn't that make you a hypocrite?
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_04: So they definitely sleep together, and I love uh my writing style loves to find pockets of irony.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_04: That's the point in you.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_04: And uh I a lot of my students always come out and and they have things they want to ask about America and everything.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_04: I gotta give them sharp vagueness.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_04: For instance, I have a bar where I say if it can be fixed and it's not fixed, well, guess what?
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_04: They don't want it fixed.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_04: So if you find a solution that's pretty sound and it and it's an Occam's rate, the the room agrees on it, and but somehow it's not gonna work, they're not gonna put it in the practice care about it.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_04: They they want you to spend your time talking about that, yeah.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_04: You know, because it gives more attention to what they need.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, their pockets feed off of attention, commitment, showing that you're still raising your pom-poms when they're on screen.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it it's it's it's deep, man.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_04: And that's one thing I love seeing overseas.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_04: Like, so when I got to Russia 2021, so what happened in February 2022?
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_04: The invasion of Ukraine, uh all over there when that popped off.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah, we our head teacher, our principal, and like six, seven members of staff like jetted overnight.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_04: Didn't even think twice.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_04: Then Tonobody, we didn't know till we showed up to work, yeah.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_04: Understaffed, and then embassies are leaving left and right, which means those kids have to leave too.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and those kids have been friends with these kids, and I'm seeing friendships split because of war.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, these are the I will say intentional acts.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_04: There's no unintentional acts when you send missiles, yeah, or when you're targeting, you know, areas that aren't bases, you're going to residential areas, and that goes for anybody.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um man, it's it there's a lot of social emotional healing that needs to be done.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_04: And that's where I feel like your duty as a teacher is is you know suited.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's not when the class is perfect, it's when real life is happening.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_04: And these kids still rely on you for six hours of the day.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_04: You know, they need to hear something that can stick.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_04: And so all I did was just try to give them things that can stick in life.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I I pretty much threw out the curriculum.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_04: And I said, What do we need to do right now?
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_04: So, like when we had English classes, a lot of it was them voicing out, you know, personal frustrations, inventing about you know what's currently going on.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_04: You know, because we can't be loud about it, yeah.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_04: But we can pin things down, we can author it, you know, we can keep it to ourselves, you know, treat it like a class diary.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_03: Do you consider that like a way of teaching them, like I guess, hip-hop?
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_04: Everything is hip-hop, man.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_04: Everything, yeah, everything.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_03: I'm starting to think that because I've been having you guys on and stuff like that.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, damn, is what I'm doing hip-hop?
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_04: So hip-hop is the soul food of music.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_04: Because soul food came from the scraps.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_04: Hip hop was born out the scraps.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_04: It found itself and it created a generation.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_04: And what we're seeing is a generation that now.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_04: Is representing itself with the elements of it having to find itself.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_04: There is no father of hip-hop.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_04: There's a birth of hip hop.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_04: And there's a bunch of influences.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of ingredients that go into it.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_04: But when we're talking about like the the nature of it, no, it's not like blues.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_04: You know what I mean?
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_04: Blues goes back to an instrument, which goes back, you know, to ancient ancient times in the world.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_01: How do you think with there being four elements?
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_04: Well, because with because hip-hop, the energy in hip-hop is rooted more on I'm gonna prove you right, or it's the have nots, this is all I got.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_04: You know, for instance, when you bomb a train right for the first time, all white train, no one's done that.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_04: And put on your goggles of a of a 13-year-old kid in like 1980 who bombed his first train, who's uh who's not excelling at school, probably coming from a broken home, on the street more hours in the day than than he needs to be.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_04: And he sees his piece ride by, knowing that the whole city sees his piece, right?
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_04: Like that little spark of like that's hip hop that you now felt seen.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, your story felt seen.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, there's pain behind the words, there's struggle in the progress.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, this is something that I wanted to kind of dive on.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of brings up a good point.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_01: So uh that that feeling, right?
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like from my own journey, man, I was chasing the the scene and a status and and and the game, you know what I mean?
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_01: And uh getting to various points where you're almost like like to hip hop or too different, you know what I mean?
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's like commercialized hip-hop.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: Would you say like like you too much of a purist, I would say.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh like if you didn't do hip-hop my way, like, and this is early years after many books, and you know this like books will do this to you for a little bit, like they'll flame the ego, like you said earlier.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_01: The first the the homeboy reads one book and then he wants to go on torch food, like coming from that that side of things, how do you negate like your experiences coming back to your your local hater, you know what I mean, and not having some kind of ego trip about it, you know?
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I feel like this is something that like now in my older age, I I've gotten a uh a better grip on uh I'm a man of faith, so I attested to that.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_01: But it is something that I feel like a lot of us like who get do get out and do experience these things like that we wrestle with, you know what I mean?
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because as much as it as you you always have like your core people who are supporting here, but then you got those ones that are like Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_04: It it does, it does.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um I personally can't knock anything that I don't participate in.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and that that deals with hip hop too, right?
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_04: I don't take part in drill rap, I don't listen to it, right?
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_04: I don't have an opinion on it.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_04: If if you play in the room right now, I have a choice to not be in the room if I don't want to hear it.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_04: Right, I'm not gonna protest.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_04: I too many people want to just stand their ground and protest something immediately to feel heard.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, you're annoying.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_04: Right, you're gonna make me want to be around you less.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um, there there comes a time, and I felt like I've you know certain experiences will do it to you, like you yoda out.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, you just hit a level to where if somebody's upset with me or frustrated with me, they clearly don't even know who I am.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_04: Because everybody I've had a chance to sit down with, talk with, build with, eat with, we're all good still.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_04: No matter what areas in life they chose to take after that, they know that there was always peace when we were around each other.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_04: Like I don't go around the world making enemies.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_04: They're already naturally there.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_04: I don't need to make more to make my job harder.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_04: You know, they're already gonna be there.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_04: And so if anybody, you know, has an opinion, maybe they just it's just not their time yet.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's not everybody's time to understand the words that you speak.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it there was a there was a point in time where I would have been annoyed with myself with this album.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_04: I don't want to hear that.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_04: Like, but now I'm at that point in my life where you know I feel you know this is this is essential, it's what the soil needs, you know, to grow.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I was I guess I was getting at like more chasing.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think for a while, and this is just from my own journey, man.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had this notion of what I wanted to look like and sound like and be like and and break like and think like, and you know what I mean?
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you finally get that day, it you get to a level where uh I wouldn't say if I ever fully achieved it, but you get to a certain level where you're you're there, and that's cool.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know what you wanted.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's not yeah, I don't know, you're still not satisfied with who you are.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_04: With writing, yes, okay, 100% with writing.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_04: Uh beat making, all beatmakers, we all think we're the best.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we think we're the coldest.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_04: You didn't hear it in my you know, my JBL that night, you know.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_01: We're always the best b-boy in practice.
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_04: For sure, man.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_04: And but with writing, I I fed away heavy with the writing.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm so meticulous with the writing.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_04: I I I love hearing somebody say this guy's nice because it makes me want to now scope it.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_04: See, like to my scale, is he nice?
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_04: One of the first artists I felt like that about was Lupe Fiasco.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_04: Because I was just talking to my church brother about that guy.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_04: So Lupe Fiasco let me backtrack it.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_04: At UTSA one weekend at Stubbs, Roots were having a show.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_04: And so me and my homeboy PJ, shout out PJ.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_04: We got tickets to go see the Roots.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_04: We show up, and uh, we didn't know that uh Gene Gray was also on the undercard and that Farrell Manch was on the undercard, but they were introducing this young brother to the world, and you know, he goes on stage, and long story short, it's Lupe.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, he hadn't even he hadn't even dropped a music video yet.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but he had the songs done, and I mean he was a talented guy, but just the friendliest guy in the world, right?
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_04: Like he's a young kid, like on stage, and I'm already looking at him with lasers in my eyes.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_04: Like if I if he calls someone to battle, I'm running on the stage, man.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_04: I'm ready.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I'm just ready for attack, you know, especially when it comes with you know the pen, yeah, wordplay, everything.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um I can't be a boy like that no more.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_04: I'll battle a kid in class.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_04: Like, yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'll do I'll still you just won the the zoo, uh what is it, the um the rap battle, right?
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's cool.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_03: Shout out to Zoo for that.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh uh the the producer wanted to know if you had to learn Mandarin.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um you just learned, man, you learn a lot of phrases on the go.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_04: I can't read or write Mandarin, but there's there's plenty of phrases that that you just learn, learn on the go.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_04: Well have a like have a good day, I believe.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_04: Or I'm man, I'm I'm I'm a little rusty with that.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_03: Talking about uh, was it Lupe Fiasco?
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_03: It made me think like just you talking.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like, do you feel like you're a competitive person?
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, for sure, for sure.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_04: But I don't show it.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_04: I don't show it.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just saying, I I don't like to show my cards.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_04: Uh-uh.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_04: Because a bluffing deck can win a bluffing, a bluffing deck will win a pot.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_03: What did you say?
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_04: I said a bluffing deck could win a pot.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_04: So you don't know what I got, but I know I'm working with some aces.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what it is.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_02: Bring that back.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_04: Pocket aces.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_04: And so, man, uh but that came through sports, right?
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_04: Through competition, constant competition.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_04: And it that's that's where you find your grit, how you figure things out.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_04: Where now the world becomes applicable because you know it takes practice to get better.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so whether you're gonna get better with tools or with instruments, funny that you say that, man.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_01: My wife uh and her family are extremely competitive, and I mean it could be like sequence, the card game, it could be Monopoly, man.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Let's play the household, man.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Sequence is is their jam, but it could be basketball, pickleball, whatever the case, man.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_01: They are extremely competitive.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm this is my personality, man.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if I'm angry, I'm I don't know.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's gonna lie and say I yell, but he he don't count in the corner.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um but uh I could play a 10-year-old in basketball right now in the back of the school.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_04: There ain't no friendly one-on-one.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, but my wife's always like, You're not competitive.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, in my head, I'm like, man, I'm one of the most competitive people I know.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't go about it the way y'all do.
• 1:14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because if you And if it bugs me, I'm not gonna go out and and and say it.
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you show your armor, someone's gonna attack.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't always want to leave the house ready to defend myself of attack just because I'm wearing something that's gonna magnetize somebody that wants to challenge me.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm not gonna go out, you know, being loud and obnoxious and say I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this.
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_04: No, you know, my confidence lies within.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I don't need a reminder.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_04: And when the time comes, we'll we'll prove it, we'll see.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly, exactly.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_04: And uh that's that's that's what a moment felt like, you know, at the MC battle, you know, when I hadn't been in the scene in forever.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_04: I now came back and it was good to to make a splash at the pool, you know, that everybody felt.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_04: And I no better, no better crowd to do it around than than the ones that have been supporting me from the beginning.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I'm not crew, but we're family.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_04: Facts.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_03: Digging the dreads, bro.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh while to get them there.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_04: Oh man, you know, I get Lenny Kravitz, I get Bob Marley overseas, man.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_04: So I used to have the fro, like like the photo I submitted, man.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_04: I used to have the fro, and and that was at the time where every airport I was in, they're thinking I'm Colin Captain.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_04: It's funny, bro.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_04: I couldn't go nowhere.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_04: I guess Zach Dela Rocha wanna had more babies.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um but yeah, so so going back to to Russia after the Ukraine situation, I ended up getting illegally taxied out on land because the situation with the airport was crazy.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um, they were charging like five grand to get out through through flying because they knew all the the European airports were banning Russian planes because of NATO.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_04: It was all that uh I this is a whole other podcast.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_04: I can't wait to go in.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_04: I got some strong opinions about it.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_04: But long story short, I get uh I get help getting taxied out, pretty much coyotied out, crossing the border.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um, a few problems at the border when they see my American passport, but you know, it wasn't it was it was nerve-wracking, but I was I was I got everything I need.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I don't, I'm not American, remember?
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, but the crazy part about it is the guy who got me out, his name was Igor.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_04: Shout out Igor, Igor, Igor, but Igor had you know, the whole the whole Russian stereotype kid, you know, the kid to the tea in a beamer taking me out and paid$500 to get him to do this.
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_04: So he came from Finland, he came down to pick me up in St.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_04: Petersburg.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_04: How'd you find out about him?
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_04: Through a South African that was married to a Russian I got some good people over there, man.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_04: Shout out, shout out my South Africans too.
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_04: Pay 500 for them to take you.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_04: So he picks me up, we cross and everything.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_04: Five minutes before we get to the border, he pulls over and he goes, uh, I need you to sit in the front.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, I I I I heard rumors that this is okay.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_04: He wants to look like we're and then as I'm getting my stuff, because my friend, I am I am very sorry.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you don't want to hear sorry five minutes from the border.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he goes, This is this is very dangerous.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and I'm like, yo, like you could have told you could have prepped me on this.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_04: You could yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to tell you.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_04: I'm done.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, just see how tense I am.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_04: Could have this conversation at the start of the money, and so he goes, Oh, everything fine, everything fine, because the car had Swedish license plates.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and then he showed me a Swedish passport.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_04: Well, this guy's not Swedish.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_04: He is not Swedish.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_04: His name's Igor.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_04: And um, man, sure enough, you know, that he his documentation, they let him pass like nothing.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_04: Like nothing.
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, oh, he got it together.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_04: I'm looking at our car, they're like stripping the car, they're taking out the seats, they're looking for every type of contraband they can.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_04: They didn't find nothing.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_04: We get passed.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_04: I get pass, we take off.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_04: And he goes, My friend, I am uh I'm not from from Sweden.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_04: No, Finland, Finland, not from Finland.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, I apologize for that mistake.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um where are you from?
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_04: He said, I'm from Ukraine.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_04: Well, my brother, I'm from Ukraine.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Ukraine, it's all funny, man.
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_04: Like, what kind of joke is this, man?
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_04: So wait, so so that's the crazy part.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, Ukraine refugees moved to Finland because they were offering packages for refugees.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, they allowed them like instant citizenship.
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_04: And he's picking up a stash.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_04: He picked up a car, Swedish plate, or finished plates, and a passport, and he's been taxing back and forth from Russia picking up people like me.
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_04: He did it, he said he did it 17 times.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uber right there.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_01: 17 times.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_04: He had done it 17 times.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, that's a good record to have.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's like I didn't know, I didn't even know how to what to call it.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_04: It was like, you know, the Harriet Tubman of the Slavic region.
• 1:19:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like, so you so you traveled to work to uh so after I left Russia, I got a job um in Costa Rica.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, so you stayed there?
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_04: I got a job in Costa Rica, so I flew over to Costa Rica, stayed there for a year, and ended up getting a job opportunity in Athens, Greece, and then I jumped over there.
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_04: Every spot I've been in, though, I find a way to get involved in the scene.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_04: I've been involved in the scene somehow, somehow, everywhere.
• 1:19:57
  SPEAKER_04: I've done open mics everywhere I've been.
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_04: I've done shows.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_04: I hosted hip hop night in Beijing at a club called Hot Cat Club for multiple months.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_04: And it came about after I bombed on a comedy open mic night.
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_04: So too much whiskey.
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_04: I bombed that.
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_04: I liked it.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_04: So the manager said he enjoyed my set.
• 1:20:18
  SPEAKER_04: And he uh he said he was thinking about oh, he was playing some uh Pete Rock and premiere beats.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and everybody left.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, Can I wrap?
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_04: Is the mic still on?
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_04: So he'd say yeah.
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_04: So I started freestyling in it.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_04: Didn't bomb that like 15-20 minutes, like we're just freestyling.
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_04: My homeboy Rupert's right there.
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_04: And um, he calls me over, said he wanted me to.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_04: I have the he said I looked apart to host hip hop night there.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_04: And so he let me do it.
• 1:20:43
  SPEAKER_04: What's that supposed to mean?
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_04: This guy was is a Uyghur, the Uyghurs of China, and that that's uh so that division of Chinese people, through my understanding, I could be very wrong, but uh they're more of like a Muslim faith that is completely being eradicated.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, they're they're being Gestapo.
• 1:21:05
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, no questions asked, take you, you're thrown into camp.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_04: Whoa, and last I heard his shop was boarded up.
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_04: Like it's intense, they they don't document it, they don't talk about it, it's not to be talked about.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, China, you get prepped every year.
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_04: You get prepped at the same time not to talk about the three T's Taiwan, Tiananmen Square, and Tibetan massacres.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, you can't even search it.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_03: Hope this video doesn't get taken down.
• 1:21:31
  SPEAKER_04: And if you talk about it enough, if you talk about it enough in your group chats in China, yeah, you'll get a knock.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_04: They'll come knock on your door, figure out what you're doing.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_04: That's wild.
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_04: That's definitely changes your perspective on so coming back to America, especially Corpus, that's why I'm like, yo, like I don't have any problems with no one here.
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_04: I'm here to support the scene, I'm here to just you know implement a lot of the thoughts and ideas that I can incorporate age.
• 1:21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's kind of where I'm at too, man.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Just supporting everybody.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you and I kind of met at a at a dope time.
• 1:22:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's been it's been a great conversation with you, man.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_01: We're sure you and I could chop it up for hours.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, for sure, man.
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_04: We we got we got a lot to talk about.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I mean, we only touched on the battling like nowhere near as much as I wanted to.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to get into your traveling, I wanted to get into your I wanted to get into the poetry, man.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like a lot of people don't realize how how into it uh I am.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you're you're into it also?
• 1:22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_01: I love kidding.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_01: I love poetry.
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_01: I I write it uh with the goal of doing an open mic one day, but I've never done it.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_01: I've always chickened out, and that's because I love speaking in front of people.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_01: I've done like public speaking at my old jobs and stuff like that.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_01: But just that is uh it's it's on the to-do list, just every time I get close, I check it out.
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_04: Stick to the pocket of your if I had any advice, stick to the pocket of your delivery.
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, don't write to a beat, but the pocket of your delivery.
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, there's certain parts of the bar you want enunciated, but then don't leave that absent when you get to the next bar.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you just introduce that that part, reintroduce it, re-introduce, like you're nailing home a part of it that should be delivered differently.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I would tell people to focus like that because a lot of it goes monotone.
• 1:23:13
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of the favorite fans are the ones that are animated, you know what I mean?
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_04: Like the salt waves of the world and the I feel like I'm saying something I should have said a long time ago, and I'm finally getting the time to say it.
• 1:23:26
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm like anxious to say it.
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, yo, okay, yo, did y'all know?
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_04: Like, and I just start going on it like that.
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_03: So you are so you have to present it to some to an audience at one point.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_04: I I prefer to.
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_04: I don't I don't write everything I write, I I plan to to speak out about, and that's what helped me shape how I write.
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_04: Nice with the intention of it being seen by multiple people.
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think for me, as much as I would like to, I'm comfortable just having a black book and writing things down.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I use being uh on various platforms, whether it's you know something like this or speaking in front of people to get that itch out because it's something, or even uh even at work talking to people and controlling a conversation and being able to bring in others, and I feel like that's so much more natural.
• 1:24:15
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a and that's why I asked earlier if is there an aspect of the performance in the classroom, uh another another similarity, man.
• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was subbing in between my in between jobs recently, and I loved it.
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Man, I was doing I was subbing kindergarten at yeah, it was great, man.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_04: But I think above all um being personable, you're speaking to real people with real problems, right?
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_04: You have you're a real person with real problems.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_04: Stop stop being so many characters.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_04: You gotta keep up with every character that you that you mask yourself with.
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_04: The more you stop, the the better you feel in every room you walk into.
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:24:55
  SPEAKER_04: And um, so like at school, students know immediately what to expect when I walk into the room because I don't change.
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna get this every day.
• 1:25:03
  SPEAKER_04: There's different versions, but it's the same person.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_04: And um, as far as what they em seeing and all that, yeah, man.
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_04: I mean I I see kids always bring me their favorite songs and stuff.
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_04: I want me to listen to stuff like that.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_04: And again, I'm like, he's trash.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I'm better than him.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_04: But but you've got to you you can't lose touch.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_04: You can't lose touch.
• 1:25:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's important, it's important for your mind to stay relevant with what's going on.
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_04: 100%.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_04: Your interest may not have to, but let's keep your mind sharp and relevant to the awareness of the full scope of what to consider.
• 1:25:37
  SPEAKER_04: You know, the the glory of going to a supermarket, it's it's not the few items you purchase, it's the option of how many items you can purchase.
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_04: And so let your mind, you know, always be available to explore any chambers it needs to to fully develop.
• 1:25:53
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, you have your chambers that you're gonna often go to.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_04: It's just keep the other doors unlocked in the meantime.
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_03: I definitely I think of it like always have some type of creative, something creative.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_03: Because I'm creative, like I played guitar for years, I've been in bands and stuff like that, and I feel like even this podcast is a part of me being creative.
• 1:26:11
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there's always some avenue of creativity.
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_04: I haven't even told you about the bow wow diss I did in the MindSpace stage that caught you.
• 1:26:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yo, I did a bow out disc defending Will Smith.
• 1:26:25
  SPEAKER_04: No, because bow wow discs.
• 1:26:27
  SPEAKER_04: I was looking for any reason to diss people.
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_04: So I was like, Wait, he dissed Will Smith right after he did a lot of people.
• 1:26:31
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think about what else Will Smith did to the comedian?
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_04: Words are weapons, be careful of the response.
• 1:26:37
  SPEAKER_04: It's like good thing it wasn't a gunshot.
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, yeah, you know, everybody wanted to you know talk talk negative about Will Smith, but he didn't kill nobody for what they said.
• 1:26:50
  SPEAKER_04: I've been slapped for saying the wrong things.
• 1:26:53
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_04: Lesson learned.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Chris Rock ain't gonna do it again.
• 1:27:00
  SPEAKER_04: Well, not there, yeah.
• 1:27:02
  SPEAKER_04: His brother's the one that's that's been talking mad now.
• 1:27:04
  SPEAKER_04: But I disbow wow.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_04: I know I wanted a reason to disbow for a long time because he became like the BET hearthrob, and that's when BET was making this big change.
• 1:27:11
  SPEAKER_04: My space day, so yeah, BET was turning into like Robert Johnson sold it, everything was getting commercialized out.
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, this is when they're getting snap rap and all that, lappy taffy's coming in the mix, and Bow Wow just just just for existing, I dissed him, and and so that track took it.
• 1:27:31
  SPEAKER_04: There was like 50,000 uh plays off that in MySpace day.
• 1:27:35
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm like, what?
• 1:27:37
  SPEAKER_04: And so I'm getting hate mail from all his little teeny boxy fan things, you know.
• 1:27:41
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, and uh a message board for Jazzy Jeff Fresh Prince message board.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_04: I I was Googling, you know, to see if anybody was picking it up, and they had a whole discussion about it, and it eventually got me to join the discussion, you know, to let them know, you know, yeah, I did because they were loving it.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_04: So why not, you know, why not join?
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_04: Room and speaking highly about you, and so uh I hopped in there, and there's a few people I met there that I still keep up with to this day.
• 1:28:07
  SPEAKER_04: And this was 2005, 2006, around that time.
• 1:28:11
  SPEAKER_04: And I would do songs, we'd send verses overseas.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the guys I did the breaks, shout out breaks.
• 1:28:17
  SPEAKER_04: One of the songs we did in 2006, we were able to link up when I left Russia.
• 1:28:21
  SPEAKER_04: I went to London and I I hollered at him, said I'm in London for a few days.
• 1:28:25
  SPEAKER_04: We linked up.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_04: He played the old song, and in the park, we did like a little verse video with it.
• 1:28:30
  SPEAKER_04: And it's crazy to think that you know, 11-12 years after you make a song, you finally meet the person you did the song on their territory.
• 1:28:39
  SPEAKER_04: Man, you know, in a in a park in London.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_04: Nervous.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_04: That's wow, man.
• 1:28:43
  SPEAKER_04: Cool dude, too.
• 1:28:43
  SPEAKER_04: Cool dude, man.
• 1:28:46
  SPEAKER_04: We're worldwide, man.
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_04: We're worldwide.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Man, thank you for coming on.
• 1:28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 1:28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let me have this opportunity to do this, man.
• 1:28:54
  SPEAKER_01: This has been such a dope experience.
• 1:28:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh man, looking forward to man, we're gonna work together one of these days, man.
• 1:29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Something, whether it's uh writing or some more zoo events.
• 1:29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Wish you the best with your travels when you're getting ready to get out of here.
• 1:29:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, man, about to go see my better half.
• 1:29:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yemen, you know, same the one that keeps a smile on my face.
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, sir.
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_04: This world tries to take it off.
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, gotta find the people that put it on.
• 1:29:17
  SPEAKER_04: Bars.
• 1:29:18
  SPEAKER_04: It's good having you.
• 1:29:19
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you, gentlemen, for this conversation.
• 1:29:20
  SPEAKER_03: Wait, uh, before we go, is anything you want to say before we go?
• 1:29:24
  SPEAKER_04: Man, uh American Autopsy, my debut album.
• 1:29:28
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's just meant for the for the ears, man.
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's if you had any frustrations towards this country at one point in time, there's definitely some bars in there for you.
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think we all have a lot to say.
• 1:29:39
  SPEAKER_04: It's just we don't feel like we are allowed the right avenues.
• 1:29:43
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, we feel restricted on the the ways we can say it, especially now with you know more speech laws and what you can put out on the internet and what you can't put out.
• 1:29:50
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's like they're trying to filter what's raw.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_04: You can't filter raw.
• 1:29:53
  SPEAKER_04: It's either raw or it's not.
• 1:29:55
  SPEAKER_04: And so American Autopsy is an uncut you know, scope of how I've been looking at things, you know, being multi, multi-diverse.
• 1:30:02
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I'm a cocktail of cultures already with my bloodline.
• 1:30:06
  SPEAKER_04: And so, you know, shout out to Trenton who mixed it down, uh, Kaya Vance, the quota team, Bobby Glory, uh uh Trey.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_04: Man, that that that group really they really inspired me to get back into the music.
• 1:30:20
  SPEAKER_04: They're some of the first that uh once I got back into the scene, I was able to watch them.
• 1:30:24
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there's some great young talent over there, and Kaya's poet laureate of the city.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_04: And and so being able to watch them perform, and they introduced me to Trenton, who sound engineered the whole project for free.
• 1:30:36
  SPEAKER_04: Man, this man did it like come on, man.
• 1:30:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you ain't being mad.
• 1:30:41
  SPEAKER_04: I can't I can't pass an opportunity like that.
• 1:30:43
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, he ain't free no more.
• 1:30:44
  SPEAKER_03: My my favorite s my favorite song is uh the bar.
• 1:30:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, man.
• 1:30:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's real chill, bro.
• 1:30:51
  SPEAKER_04: Your voice is like it's it's a real good every boy becomes a man, check his mannerisms.
• 1:30:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the way you even kick it off, it's like uh talking about uh learning physics and whatever.
• 1:30:59
  SPEAKER_04: Went from watching watching naturals to learning naturals to have to make you feel that way.
• 1:31:05
  SPEAKER_04: Black list.
• 1:31:06
  SPEAKER_03: Go ask the catalysts, cataclysmic, yeah.
• 1:31:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, all that.
• 1:31:10
  SPEAKER_04: When I was born, yeah, the planet shifted.
• 1:31:12
  SPEAKER_04: Go ask a catalyst.
• 1:31:13
  SPEAKER_04: They're gonna say my first steps are cataclysmic, catechisms of Catholics and Baptists, imagine Christians lying to me about the black Egyptians, sacrilegious.
• 1:31:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a good jam right there.
• 1:31:23
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate that, brother man.
• 1:31:25
  SPEAKER_04: Every song on the album, by the way, had about four versions.
• 1:31:28
  SPEAKER_03: Whoa.
• 1:31:29
  SPEAKER_04: Because the beats all came from overseas when I was overseas.
• 1:31:33
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 1:31:33
  SPEAKER_04: I started shaping all the rhymes once I got back here, but there are pieces from other unfinished notebooks.
• 1:31:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I just made sure it all worked out right.
• 1:31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh perform any of the other versions, like when you do.
• 1:31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you think it'll be like uh like a feeling kind of thing?
• 1:31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know what, tonight I think this It'd have to be impromptu.
• 1:31:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I it's not something I can decide.
• 1:32:00
  SPEAKER_04: Because there's definitely some edits I made purposely.
• 1:32:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:32:05
  SPEAKER_04: I gotta keep it vague, you know.
• 1:32:06
  SPEAKER_04: That's the that's the fun secrets, man.
• 1:32:08
  SPEAKER_04: I got put it this way, though.
• 1:32:11
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna show me your cards, I got you.
• 1:32:12
  SPEAKER_04: There's a loss files coming out.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_04: American autopsy loss files.
• 1:32:16
  SPEAKER_04: What didn't make the cut, but some of those uh had to make a business decision.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, oh man, I keep a cutthroat, man.
• 1:32:26
  SPEAKER_04: I I feel like um we've all been dealt shady hands, and um we're all trying to play the best the best of our abilities, right?
• 1:32:35
  SPEAKER_04: And so I I appreciate y'all giving me the time to likewise, man.
• 1:32:39
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you you know, get some exposure, man.
• 1:32:41
  SPEAKER_04: I I've been you know like a fly on the wall watching the progression.
• 1:32:46
  SPEAKER_03: Public zoo, public zoo, bro.
• 1:32:47
  SPEAKER_03: Shout out, yes.
• 1:32:50
  SPEAKER_04: Shout out to all public zoo, man.
• 1:32:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, really held it down.
• 1:32:54
  SPEAKER_04: Shout out, just just everybody, man.
• 1:32:56
  SPEAKER_04: I don't have enough people.
• 1:32:57
  SPEAKER_04: I can shout out Moi Bratya, Moisestria, you know, to my people out in Russia.
• 1:33:03
  SPEAKER_04: You know, um that's a good way to end it, man.