Camp Gagnon - Former Prison Boss Reveals How to SURVIVE Jail

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Today former prison boss and gang leader Andre Norman sat down with me to talk about how to survive jail, spent 3 YEARS in solitary confinement, and became a Harvard Fellow. WELCOME TO CAMP.Thanks to Athletic Greens and Morgan & Morgan for sponsoring today's episode!Mark Gagnon is our HostMiles McCreery is our Content ProducerWill Schwartz is our Lead Editor

I'd expect two and a half years in the worst prison system in the world. I'm the king of the jail. In charge and I wake up when they're hungry. So I came out of myself. I walk up to the gate where the cell's out. He came to head nod. He opens the gate. He knows who I am.

I bang on the kitchen door. The guy slides a little slot back. He sees this me. He opens the door. He opens on the grill. Like, yo, Jim, man. Make me a hamburger. All right, Dre, they hop to it.

And then this guy comes walking out from the back. He walks up just like, hey, what are you doing in my kitchen? He's like yelling at me. I'm like, dude, check this out. All the yelling's not necessary. So let's just stop yelling and talk like men. So he comes and I said, yo, who are you? I'm the food service administrator.

I'm in charge of this whole kitchen. He said, well, who are you? So I'm the regulator. He says, well, what do you regulate? I said, if you go home or not, I could, your wife would miss you, your kids would miss you? I don't have a wife and kids. I'm going to solitary confinement. I'll be back in about seven years.

So my question is this. Do I get it today? Or do I get in seven years? He's sweating bullets. He walked over to the grill. He said, yo, dude said, what's up? He said, make him two. This is Andre Norman,

formerly a top gang leader who was facing over. a hundred years in prison. Now he is a prison reform activist and speaks to the incarcerated about changing their lives. And today, we will talk about how he was charged with eight counts of attempted murder, how we mentally survived three years in solitary confinement and how he turned it around to become a Harvard fellow. This is his story. Welcome to Camp. I took a headcount. There's only three you in here. Let's you hide a couple motherfuckers, right? I ain't worried about it. You think you can take me? There's three of you in it. I did a head count. There's three of you in it. I did a headcount. There's three of you.

Just you. I passed you. I got your two homies. I've been working out. You see there? That means nothing. Come on, bro. No what that means to me?

What? You're not smart enough to run. Andre Norman. Hey, pass me, mano. Give me hello. Bro, this is so crazy. So this is the funniest thing, Miles. He comes in, we go, a second we get in,

he all of a sudden, we go get food, and we pop into, like, a Mexican spot downstairs. And then he immediately starts speaking fluent Spanish. And just talking to the lady, in Spanish. And I was like, how the hell does this guy know Spanish? Former prisoner, gang member, reformed, gets out and knows fluent Spanish. And then the best part, after he puts in the whole order in fluent Spanish, he looks at me and goes,

hey, what's the green stuff? I said, I went the green stuff. The green thing. I was like, salsa Verde. He said, no, the grit with the avocados. It was the avocado. I was like guacamole? No, you said guacamole.

I said guacamole. I said, no, the stuff that it comes from. I was like, bro, how do you know full Spanish and not avocado? Because I didn't eat avocados for years. Really? It looked nasty. It was green mushy stuff. Oh, that's so funny.

So it was like green pumpkins. So I was like, nah, I'm not rocking. That's actually a decent point. It is kind of gross. I went to my friend's house. My son goes every summer in Jersey. I go to the house to pick up the kid, where they're out by the pool.

He's like, oh, my wife just make guacamole. I'm like, wow. You have to try with the dip tray. It's great. I'm like, wow. But he takes my, my son comes to six weeks. summer. He's such a great friend. He gets my son for one of the six weeks. Wow. We get that cool. And he has a son, same age, same difference. We're kicking it.

So I had to eat the guacamole for the wife. And I liked it. Oh, no. And then you're like, my whole life is a lot. I spent years in the Caribbean laughing at people for eating mushy green pumpkins. Yeah. And lo and behold, the shit was good. It's your favorite food. I ain't going to go that for. Okay. Captain Crunch slash fruity pebbles is still, that's your favorite food. Fruity Pebbles. Wow. That's not actually.

But that's up there, like, maybe the best. Fruitie Pebbles is like, if you say the best. Yeah. I'm a taco guy, but because my mother's make tacos me as a kid. But fruity pebbles, I would never blink at. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, man, look. Especially if you take them purple shits out.

Wait, why don't you like the purple ones? I don't know why they added them for. What do you mean? It just messed up the flavor to color of water, the color of milk, man. I mean, the purple milk just looks rock. I've never met a fruity pebbles connoisseur that's like. we can't do the purple ones. You don't come to the hood enough.

Okay, that's probably true. That's actually a fact. Y'all don't go to other. Y'all doing weedies, man. Eat your weedies. You think all white people eat weedies? Did you? Yes.

There it is. Okay, Andre, I've been watching, which also, can I call you Dre? That's right. We've wanted to, Andrea Dre. You sign all your text messages, Dre, which I thought was so cool. You just say the text and you go, Dre. Dre. I'm going to start doing that.

What's your name? I'm putting your name. I'm saying Dre. That shit was fire. But dude, I've been watching your videos. Like, I was reading excerpts from your book. I just watched a documentary about you, which is fascinating. And you have this crazy life.

And I just want to tell people, like, little excerpts. I mentioned before, but, like, I grew up in a rough neighborhood in Boston. No. Really? I didn't grew up in a rough neighborhood. I grew up in a rough household. Oh. My neighborhood is chill.

Anybody from Boston to tell you, Matt at Pan is not rough. There's no housing projects. There's no whole bunch of drug infestation. There's no whole bunch of gangs. It was all, it was like, if you were black and your family made some money, you moved to Matterpan. It was like, oh, really? We were the Jeffersons. Ah, so it was like the coming up neighborhood.

We came up. It used to be all Jewish neighborhood. Then they did the redlining, they said, you can live here. You guys gentrified the Jews. That's crazy. Yeah. They let us move in because it was like, it was Irish town, Boston's Irish. Right.

So the Jewish people, the art people out of the time, they gave us a Jewish neighborhood. Our newspaper guy was Jewish. Oh, wow. And there's synagogues all around the neighborhood. I didn't know what they were, but they were there. Oh, interesting. So, yeah, so you had maybe a traumatic childhood and then got involved with some gang stuff,

went to prison, spent a long time in prison, was supposed to spend a longer time. Yeah. And really kind of rose up the ranks in prison and then made a change in your life that was really significant and ended up really turning your life around and a lot of other people's lives around.

And I was really, really inspired by your story. And I just kind of want to start at the beginning. For sure. So you're in Boston in this, formerly Jewish neighborhood, you're on the way up, but your household is not so great. I remember one of the excerpts from you were talking about your band class. So you were a band kid. How does a band kid get involved into gang violence?

Well, when I'm in the sixth grade, I figure out something that went poor. I didn't know I was poor in elementary school because everybody just played and had fun. Nobody said anything. Right. You get to sixth grade around the bigger kids. They started laughing at you for having dirty clothes, having uncool sneakers, all that stuff. So the kids would give me the business every day. And I would go to the homeroom trying to hide out.

And then the homeroom teacher said, hey, who needs a free lunch for them? There was no forms in elementary school. She said, Norman, you need a form. Y'all are poor. Come get this form. She screamed on me. Snitched on you. Yeah, she did everything.

She made me come to the front of the class and get the form. It was a big form too. I go home, ask my mom to sign it. She signs it. I come back to school. Now the kids are laughing at me for having old clothes, dirty sneakers, and I'm a freelance kid. life sucked.

Yeah. So one of my friends were like, hey, Dre, we can go to the park and sell weed, we can get some money, get up off this. So I go to the park, we were really runners. We weren't sellers. Okay. So the older kids would sell,

and we'd run it back across the street and get the packages, 10 bags of weed at a time or whatever it was. Then we get like 30 bucks a day. So now we're off bum status. Right. But in class, in sixth grade at that time, everybody was in band.

So Ms. Ellis, The band teacher, I went to band class, she said, yo, here's the trumpet. I'm like, all right, cool. What do you do? She gave me a trumpet. I'm on punishment the entire middle school. I stayed in trouble.

My mother put me on punishment every other day, if not every other minute. What do you mean on punishment? You get in trouble, teacher call home, you don't clean up your room, you come home late past curfew, you break something in the house. Just little things.

Little things. Yeah. Two days in the house. You can't go out this weekend. Being in a house at 5 o'clock instead of 8 o'clock, stuff like that. I stayed in trouble. I stayed on punishment.

So I had, what I do at punishment time? I played my trumpet. So I played trumpet through the whole sixth grade, whole seventh grade, whole eighth grade. I was home a lot on punishment. Right. So I got really good at it. Yeah.

So when it came time for me to go to high school, I was going to go to my district high school, where all the kids were, my sisters went, my brothers went. I'm like, I'm going there. Ms. Ellis came and she said, no, you're not going to the district high school. I said, yes, I am.

She said, no, you're not. She said, you're going to this Magnus School. I said, I don't know anybody there. She said, you go where your gift goes. You meet new people. Sounds great. I ain't think there's such thing as meeting new people. So she sends me to the new school and I get there and I go to the band class in the morning.

Now, I've been selling drugs for three years. Right. I moved up from running to selling and carrying guns. You escalate. You move up a little bit. Right. So I'm full-fledging the streets. But I go to band.

I'm still playing the trumpet. I go to band class first day. It's a room for nerds. Yeah. I'm like, they looked at me. looked at them, they're like, I'm like, don't start and there won't be none. But the kids were like, can you play the trumpet? It's all they cared

about. So I put out my trumpet, hit Star Wars, hit Rocky, they're like, thumbs up, crazy. I joined the band. So in the morning I'm in band class with all the nerds. Yeah. In the afternoon, I'm hanging out the thug kids, running around, guns, girls, cutting class. Were you affiliated at that point? Or was it just like small little weed dealing stuff like that? We were weed dealing. It's what happens. When I grew up,

what said you claimed? It's what neighborhoods you're from. It's the same thing in California. It's really neighborhoods. Right. Just in California, they give the neighborhoods more defined names. That's all.

So the Hoover block or, you know what I'm saying? The corner pocket, Crips in Compton, it's just the corner pocket. The corner pocket was where they were from. Right. They just added crips to the back end of it.

Pyru's a street. They're the Pyrou guys. It became a gang, but Pyrru's the street they live off. You're saying that. It was the nine trade gangses. They live on 93rd. Right.

It's like we're the same things. We just didn't put names on the back end of it. So we're from Wellington Hill. They called us the Hill boys. That was clever. It's a cool name, though. So I'm from this neighborhood. I go to school in a different neighborhood.

I want to go to my district school, everybody from my neighborhood was there. So I would have been in a formalized neighborhood gang had I gone to my neighborhood high school. But since I went to a magnet school, I was with kids from Roxbury from the other side of town. So I'm hanging out with them. But the long story short is,

they told me one day, man, get rid of the trumpet. It ain't cool or stupid. It don't make sense. And it's just dumb. And they said, trumpet or us? Damn. Man, so I gave up my trumpet. And when I gave up my trumpet,

now I got no purpose. And I got no vision. I got no dream. I'm just with these dudes hanging out every day. And shit goes from bad to worse. But now if you're at the magnet school, how do you give up trumpet? Like, you just go to the director

and you're like, I'm not doing this anymore. The magnet school, just had a program, had a music program, it had a science program, but it's still a regular high school. It just had specialized stuff. It had like auto body shop, hospice house. It was a really nice school for trades. And music was just one of their things. And you basically just quit it altogether. I just quit the band. Damn. Okay. So now you're still going to that school. Did you try to go to your district school? No, I didn't even think about moving. Now I'm not even really going to class. Right. Oh, really? I wasn't going to, only class I really went to was band.

Like some people go to school and they only go to play basketball I went to school when you're playing the band Oh wow I'm saying I was a nerd like that Yeah yeah yeah

I know tons of school I only went to school to play football or basketball or whatever that thing was My thing was swimming and my thing was band And what did your parents think

Like you quit band They didn't know Oh wow They didn't know Why I was in the band Oh really My father I think I was in middle school

For three years My father came in a school Once And in high school Four years He came there once And boy Both times, it was just like some fluke stuff.

I don't think he came to my middle school. Let me take that back. He came to my high school once, or they might have called him, one of the two. I think, I know there was at least a phone call. Right. Because I remember the discussion was the teacher told him what I said to the teacher, that that dude don't care about me. He don't call shots in my house, mainly because he didn't live in my house.

So they told him, he said, hey, he said, hey, you, you ain't got no authority over him. Technically, he didn't. Right. Because I'm living my mom's house. And they used to live together. Like when you were younger, they were. I was on. First grade, he left. Oh, wow.

But he didn't go, he stayed in town though. Oh, yeah. Boston's not a big town. When we first moved out, he literally moved a half a block away. No, you used to go out and ride the around about you. And I named, would you go out, you ride the bike to the bike, you do the four corners, you go around the block. You go around the block. You go around the block.

We had like a little cul-de-sack. So as long as we stayed like in the neighborhood of the cul-de-sac we're fine. We could go to the corner, to the corner, to the corner, and go around. My father lived at the second corner. Oh, wow. He literally lived. We ride to the corner, ride down to the next corner. He lived right there.

I didn't know it at the time because I was a kid. But as I grew up and I became a young Miller, I knew what we used to live and I could see what he lived. I'm like, dude, we lived like a half a block from him. And how does that make you feel that? He just moved a block away. I didn't know it. When I was a kid, I didn't know where he was.

Right. I figured it out by the time I got to like middle school. When we used to go visit him in middle school and my mother's the son's over there, I realized how close it was. And I became an adult, I really knew how close it was. So it was just like, you tapped. By then it didn't matter because I had kind of like washed him out of my thinking.

So what he did or what he thought or what he felt didn't matter. Right. And I learned three lessons as a small kid. The first lesson was that you can hit people. I watched my mother be hit for years. So if she can be hit, anybody can be hit. Two, I better protect myself. Kids threw rocks and names at me when I took the bus to school.

And three, I can quit on anything. My father quit on us in the first grade. He just disappeared, went out on his own way. And if he can quit all me, then why can I quit? So as a young kid, hit people, protect myself, and quit on my three rules. Right. And now, I saw you mention it in the part of the documentary, but why were they throwing rocks of you again? In Boston in the 70s, it was just coming out of civil rights era, and it was still

gender, I mean, segregation in the schools, unequal school systems, and they were trying to fix it. So one of the things they said was we had all black schools and all white schools in Boston. And they said, well, we're going to no longer have all white and all black public schools. We're going to mix the schools. And so federal judge signed the law saying that there'll be no more segregated schools for public. So the white kids and black kids would be bussed to schools. And so white kids will bust to black schools. Black kids will bust to white schools.

And the white people in Boston protested. That was like the early 70s. Mid-70s. Wow. So you were going to school at that point. Yeah. I was born in 67. Oh, wow.

So I was on the bus. But I didn't go to a white school. Our buses went through a white neighborhood to get home. So the kids where the buses were going, they're throwing rocks at the buses. So it just became a thing to stone the buses with black kids on them. So it didn't matter. Black kids on the bus, you threw rocks. That's what it got to.

So our bus didn't even go to a white school. We drove through white neighborhoods, so kids threw rocks at us. Yeah. And that's just what it was. And so the rocks are literally like flying through the bus. Oh, smashed through the windows. Breaking the windows. Break windows.

You're not throwing rocks at the metal. You throw rocks at the glass. Oh, so they're like actually trying to injure. Stoning. Yeah. Like children. Children. Whoever on the bus.

So you say it like that, like children. They were children slaves. Yeah. They were like children. Babies, slaves. Yeah. They were bred to create more slaves. So it was like being a kid isn't a prerequisite for getting a pass.

Yeah, I guess. But I just think like, I just think like, I know this is like, I'm like, it's so recent. Like, obviously it's all recent, but I'm like the 70s, like the fact that you were in a school and like going through neighborhoods where they were trying to hurt you as like a first grader is like insane to me. I'll tell you this. And in my family, there's me.

I got brothers and sisters. I got my father and his brothers and sisters and my grandfather, his brothers and sisters. And I am the first generation to be born in a hospital in my family. And the only reason I was born in the hospital is because my grandfather moved his family north. had we still lived in Virginia, I'd have been born at home too. My father and all his brothers and sisters, my grandfather and all his brothers and sisters, my grandmother and our brothers and sisters born in our brothers and sisters born in the hospital. It was against the law. Yeah.

Policy, law, whatever you want to call it, it just wasn't happening. Wow. So infant mortality, if something went wrong, you just dead. Now, did you even have any concept of racism at that time when you were a little kid? Prior to the rocks, no. So what are you, like, what are you thinking when that's happening? And even the rocks, I didn't see it as racism. I just saw it as rocks.

You don't understand his racism. Yeah, they didn't write racism on the rocks. That's what this rocks for. I didn't understand it. I just know what's happening. It's like when you're getting bullied in school, you don't really think, hey, I'm a victim, and this guy's a bully, and he's gone through trauma, and he's just taking out on me.

You're just getting, you just feel bad. Yeah. You're saying? So at the time, I didn't say, oh, this is a racist attack. Right. I learned that as I grew when I look back on my life. Right. I didn't understand.

Like, they're called domestic violence now. Yeah. If you hit your wife, it's called domestic violence. Right. In the 70s, it was called handling your household. There wasn't no domestic violence in the 70s. Yeah. So.

I heard someone say this quote that, like, history is a different country. And like, I think about that where I'm like, even just your story, like, 50 years ago in the 70s, I'm like, bro, that is, it sounds like a different planet that, like. It was. The way that you grew up. just like the racism, which obviously is still present now, but like the domestic violence and all that stuff is just like kind of wild.

I mean, it's like difficult to process like what that even looks like. What happens is every generation has this trauma. Our generation's trauma was race-related. Our generational trauma was segregation. Our generational trauma was forced poverty. Our generational trauma was government programming. So that was our government, that was our trauma for our generation.

And my father's generation, it was a whole other thing. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you didn't matter. You didn't have a voice. You could be beat, hung, or killed any day or the week. Right. You're saying you better not look back, know your place. So he came from a whole, I never felt fearful of white people.

Oh, really? In the sense of if I said something in a white person, they might take me out back and beat me to death. Right. That's what my father grew up with. So, like, the traumas are kind of generational. Yeah, but they change. Right. Yeah, that's interesting.

And did you, when you were a kid, did you have animosity towards white people? No. Really? I was cool with them. Even after all, like, the shit and throwing rocks in the bus, like, you weren't like. Kids are resilient. Yeah, yeah. So you, as a kid, stuff happens.

You don't really, really internalize it like you should or conceptualize it like you're supposed to. It happened. I wish I could tell you I stayed up late at night and I was crying because they threw rocks at me. I didn't. I don't remember it anyways if I did. Right. My mother took me to the circus and I remember. My mother took me, my mom had six kids and she took us to the circus and one day we were

someplace, she said, that's something about a circus. We're talking about circus, lady. I never went to the circus. She said, I took you to the circus every year. You don't remember it once. Do not remember the circus once. Your brain blocked out the wrong memories, bro. You're like, why can't I block out the racist stuff remember the circus?

I guess it was before the racist stuff. Yeah, I guess. She took us all. We were little kids and I literally do not remember. be lying to you though. Like if I'm going to have kids like I'm going to call my mother lie? No, hold on, hold on. Listen, right? What's up? No, but when they grow up though, I'm going to tell my kids, I'm going to just tell my kids.

Tell them you took them places. Yeah, I'm going to tell them they did whatever. And then my kids are going to be like, I don't remember that. I'd be like, you're too young. Too young. And then they're going to be like, my dad was awesome. I'm like, yeah, I didn't do anything, though. Nah, real talk. She just, she said, I wish I'd left you home. I saved some money. So you grow up and it's traumatic and then you kind of start falling in with the wrong crew and you have this path with band, but then they kind of force you to choose up. Right.

And unfortunately at that time, I guess you chose the wrong way. But it's also like if you've been dealing with abandonment, you're going to choose your friends. The people that love you. And even if they're loving you the wrong way, you're going to choose the people that like are your friends. Who said they were love? I didn't know it was the wrong way.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The bad kids were cool, but there was no connectivity. We just all did the same thing and we loved it. Right. But it was no like personal interaction. Right. So then you get involved with them

and then how does that escalate into doing like bigger and bigger crimes? You have more and more available time. Right. Before I had to be at home practicing, had to go to recital, had to be in bank, I had things to do. Now I have nothing to do but crime.

And now I'm hanging out more and I'm doing more, you're around more people doing more stuff. You just drift further and further down that street. And so it kind of escalates from like running drugs, selling drugs. Carrying guns. Carrying guns. And then you start

kind of like robbing people? Yeah. I was at the park one day. Okay. And we go to the park, we hustle. After a while, you've been out there for a while

a couple years. We get lazy. You know what I'm saying? You don't show up to work on time. So one time we're out playing around me and my cousin Tyrone and we're running late to the park. We're like, man,

we're going to miss our money. We realized that our time was from like three to six. There was rules back in my day. The young kids couldn't be out to past six o'clock. Oh, really? Because the older kids came out at six

and kick us out of the park. So, and that's just the way it was back then. So I'm like, man, it's about 5 o'clock. We're going to miss all our money. We're not going to get paid. We're not going to get a little $30. So it was like, man, then I was like, but we need this money. I said, you know something?

Dave's in the park. He's weak. You know, I got his money in our. Let's just go take Dave's money. It was a great idea. So we went down to the park. We found Dave, got him the corner, took his money. And we ran off, and we got our money

for the day working five minutes. I was like, why would we stand in the park for three hours? We can just work for five minutes and get the same money. So instead of dealing the drugs, let's just rob the drug dealers. That's what happened. Wow. And we escalated to robbing drug dealers. Right. Because there was parks all around, and we started

robbing drug dealers. Right. And that became the new hustle. You only get to work five minutes. Yeah. And are you worried about them like fighting back? Like, they got weapons. There was no real weapons back then in the 70s. It was more fighting. Right. It was a lot more fighting than guns. Back in the days, if you saw 15 kids, there might be two guns and a couple of knives and some brass knuckles.

If you see 20 kids now, they got about 40 guns with them. You think so. And about 30 more at home. Really? Oh, guns is just so prevalent now. It's crazy. Oh, that's wild. I mean, I assumed it was more, but that seems like...

If there's 20 kids, there's at least 20-plus guns. Everybody got their own. Crazy. And why are there so many more guns now than back then? Mobility. when we were kids, we couldn't leave the neighborhood because black people were restricted to the black neighborhoods. So you couldn't leave

and white folks couldn't really come so there was no real mixing of the people. It was limited mixing. So at the time, I didn't have access to go to a white neighborhood and buy guns. White people didn't have access to come to my neighborhood and sell me guns. When I was a kid literally, no joke,

there's a movie called Sugar Hill. I lived at. Whereas the mob would come to my neighborhood every day. It was like a little store at the bottom of the hill, the drugstore, and all the mob guys were being there all day. They ran the numbers,

they ran the drugs, they ran everything out of that store. And if you wanted to do anything and I'd have, you had to go through them. It was like the outposts for the mob.

They were like right there. It just was a bad thing. So that was our interaction. Everything ran through them. Eventually, times changed and they got run out of there. But in the beginning, when I was like,

fifth, sixth, seventh grade, if you want to get a little hustle, like the newspaper guy would come, the baby shoe man would come. We go down and then we hustle with all of them. We get little odd jobs running for them. Wow. We were kids.

Remember the baby shoes? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Before the internet, the guy would literally come to your house and show your parents the bronze, the silver, and the platinum baby, and the gold baby shoe thing. And you just pick them out. And the parents would pick them out

and they'd pay for him. But he never knew his way around the neighborhood because there wasn't no GPS back then. So he'd get a little black kid, and we ride with him and we show him how to get around and we just help him out. Right.

And he used to keep in the back seat a case, they used to give him cash. And we used to steal a cash out of his case. Wow. But we used to ride around the baby shoe man. Then the guy who ran in the newspaper

like the Globe truck, oh, fat, cool. It was cool guy. We ride with him and we'd run the papers from the truck into the store, come back, like take five. Run in, throw five

when it comes back out, going next door. Take four. Run in, take 10. And at the end day, we get like 10, 15 bucks. So at that point, you're just kind of like raising yourself, really. But the thing is, we hustled. White folks had control the hustles back when I was a kid.

The mob controlled the hustle in the neighborhood. So it dictated what came in, who got sold to, and what went out. Once they went away and mobility happened, when mobility happened, there was no more color lines. You can go to any neighborhood you wanted. Like right now, you can go to any neighborhood you want. Right. And nobody's going to look at you crazy. When I was a kid, you couldn't do that.

It was driving while black was real in the 70s and 80s. Right. It was like, what are you doing over here? So now you can just kind of like... You go anywhere. Find someone with a gun in a white neighborhood or like go to a gun store or something. Since people can just move freely, you have access to stuff in other neighborhoods. So when I was a kid, the kids from the suburbs couldn't buy alcohol because there's only two liquor stores in town and they wouldn't sell them alcohol.

So they would... They started hanging out with. with us, they were shocked that we could walk into a liquor store at 14, grab the drunk dude, give him 20 bucks. He buy what, we were standing next to him at the store. He'd buy what we want, hand us the bag, and we go on, give him three bucks. Oh, that's crazy. The white kids were amazed.

They're like, yo, what is this? They were like, and we go to the house, knock on the door, put $10 under the door a little cut in the cut in the cut. They slide on the bag of weed. They're like, oh, my God. The white kids were amazed that the drugs and alcohol were available. They wanted them 10 times worse than weed. did, they just couldn't get them.

So you couldn't even go in that neighborhood just to, like, sell drugs if you want. I wasn't, we were just hanging out chilling. Right. So I met some white kids in the middle town, and they came in the city with us to the hood, and they saw the weed and the alcohols available, and they went back and told their friends, y'all. We were sitting around there all weekend trying to find a way to steal a beer. We just go to the hood with Andre.

We could drink all week. And how'd you meet them? I was hanging in the park out in Cambridge. Yeah. I used to hang out in Cambridge a lot. It was just like a cool place to hang out. hang out and there was some kids from another town called WallFam. We just met up in the park with some girls.

We talked to them and we traded numbers and we then started hanging out and they invited this out to their town. We invited them out to our town. Oh, wow. But they were amazed, but we could do in our town. Yeah, that's wild. Wow, this is great. So then you kind of work your way up from like robbing drug dealers and then are you just

robbing regular people? No, no. Regular people don't have money. Uh, they don't just have cash on them. No, regular people who have jobs, maybe $10 an hour, something stupid. They didn't have no money. Right. So drug dealers had cash.

Did you ever consider, like, convenience stores or anything like that? No. They don't have money. They're selling penny of candy all day. All right. Right. So you're going through people. Drug dealers had money.

Ah, okay. And then how do you actually go from there to then actually getting incarcerated? Robin drug dealers against the law, I found out. I didn't know. Evidently, yeah, yeah. Evidently. I've heard that. Robin drug dealers against the law and carjacking.

It wasn't called fraud. carjacking then. My case is actually what formulated the carjacking law. Right. Carjacking was created the law based on my case. Are you specifically? Me specifically. What do you mean? I went out, my friends went out and they stole a car. They went out one time to rob drugs. You go downtown by the bars and you rob the drugs. And they come out of the bar drunk, you push him down, snatched their wall, you take off. Right. They went downtown to do this one day and the guy was at his car and he had his keys out. So someone had a great idea after they took his money to take his car too.

So they took the car, took the keys, boom, they take off. It was a it was a Camaro. Next day they ride around their hood in the car, I'm like, yo, that's cool. That's nice. I said, how'd you get it? Oh, we took the guy, we took his keys. I was never good at busting the tilt on the car. And then I hated that. Because

I'm riding in a stolen car one day. You used to have to, like, bust the thing and pop the pin, all this craziness. We're riding down the street in the stolen car one day. I said, yo, Bob, what I mean, what happens? They explained me how it works. We bust the tilt.

They bust the top off. You pull some pin up and you put something in to keep the pin up so the wheel doesn't lock and then you drive. Oh, that's cool. I had the dumb question. I said, what happens if the pin falls back in? Oh, the wheel locks and we die. Let me. What?

Back in the day, you bust a column. There was a pin. If you ever seen like the wheel locks? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you turn the key, the pin slides. So they would do something to make the pin slide. Then you had to do something to keep the pin out. That's crazy.

But if the pin, because there's no key in ignition. Yeah, but this thing locks up. So if the pin slides back in, it automatically locks. And if you're doing 60, bye, by everybody. That's crazy. So I was like, I'm off this. Right. Then a couple weeks later, my buddy still the car with the keys.

I had the bright idea. Let's just go take the keys from somebody. Then we can just drive. So I started carjacking. I started robbing people for their, keys. See, this is the issue is you were too smart for your own good as you're like, oh, let's just rob the drug dealers. Oh, let's just get the keys. Like, you're doing the wrong things, but you're smarter. So you're like, oh, I'm going to, let's just do the smart way to

do it. So I would go to parking decks. Right. I go upstairs on like the 10th floor. I pick like six cars and I just wait. And you would come back. I run up on you, you put a gun in your face, take your keys and your parking ticket. I ride downstairs. I paid a parking ticket and I drive off. You took the parking ticket. How did you get out of the garage? You're like, yeah, I'm going to pay. I'm not going to break through the thing. Yeah, I got to get out. That's crazy. Were you ever nervous? Like, like, like, you want a crazy story?

Yeah, please. We go there, I never forget, we go up in the parking deck. We run up on a guy. It was a blue Cadillac. Put the gun to him. Give me your keys. He gives me the keys. He said, yo, man, don't do this.

Something about insurance. I don't know about insurance. He's like, yo, don't do this, man. I can't afford it. He was like, man, he was crying. He was like crying. Like, yo, he had some stuff in the back seat. I let him take it.

I don't know what it was. It could have been a million dollars. want the car. Right. He's like, yo, man, don't do this, man. He's,

he gets, give me a number. He gives me his number. I said, when I'm done with the car, I call you. We took off with the car. We riding around.

We went to New Hampshire. On the way to New Hampshire, the car overheats. So we pull over on the side of the road. We get out of the car. Boom. We go to our friends, so we leave it.

The next day, when I went back home, I literally called the guy. I said, yo, your car was in New Hampshire on Highway 93. They probably got on a lot right now. They told it.

Whoa. You gave the car back to the car. No, I didn't get it. I mean, you told him where I was. I kept his number. Car broke down. I literally called the guy and said, yo, cars on the side of road. That is so crazy. Did you ever feel bad about it, like when you were doing it? Like, were you? Not at all. No. Why not? I have three rules. You can hit people. You can protect yourself. You can quit anytime you want. Yeah, you didn't break any of those three rules.

Wow. There's no fair in this. I never heard fair. I have no equity. I never. like consider it or you're saying none of that stuff. And so when you're doing it, how many people are you doing it with? What might take cause? I go about myself.

Oh, really? I don't need help. And you were never nervous like the first time you did it. Are you sitting there like, all right, I'm going to do this? Like building up courage? Or are you just like,

nah, fuck it, I'm going to go do it? First of my did anything like that was my cousin. Everybody who does crime was taught by somebody else. Okay. So I had an older cousin who had an addiction habit and he would go out.

He came to the city one time he got me. And he took me out with him. And what he would do is they'd ride around in cars, right around in the car, they would jump out and go mug somebody and jump back in the car. They run up, we drive, they parked a little bit up. They get out, run back, mug the guy, and take off. So he, that's why I learned how to do that.

My older cousin taught me. And how old were you at that time? Ninth grade, so I was like 14. Oh, wow. So I learned the game. And then people expose you to stuff. That same cousin, there was somebody else's relative. he lived in the suburbs.

So drugs were like four times more expensive for the suburbs. He lived in the white suburb. He came, saw some, it was like, yo, give me some drugs. I'll go sell to my neighbor four times of price and we can split it. They said, no, dude, you're a dolphin. We don't trust you. They said, well, somehow came up to a great idea,

sent Andre. So they give me the instructions. They give me the drugs. He drives me out there. I'm sitting in a hotel. There's prostitutes, dophines, and craziness, and they would come to the door, I would give him the money. I give him the drugs and he's going to sell him.

He gave me the money. I did that for a while. Right. I'm just sitting in this hotel from watching TV. Making crazy money. I'm not making no money. It was another relative that sent me, so I just got like. You were doing the runner money at that one.

I was doing the runner money. Ah. And were you nervous about police at that point at all? No. Because you don't know about it until you don't know about the police until you finally get arrested. But didn't you see other people get arrested and go like? Until you get arrested, you know. don't get it.

So you're doing all this and you're like, I'm making pretty good money. I don't have anything else to do. And this is what my older people are teaching me what I should be doing. Right. It's not even pretty good money. I don't want to say that. I got sub money. Yeah.

Enough to go just don't buy a sub, buy a pair of sneakers. Right. I mean, it's not even a money thing at this point. The older people, like, that's why they sent me because they can keep the money. Right. So like when you were jacking the cars, did you think like, oh, I can resell the cars? Not. I did something to ride in.

You just wanted to ride around. Just run a ride around them. I just like, the crazy, I used to wash my cars. The stolen cars. I had like three or four stolen cars. There was a, right up the street from my house, a thing called Madepenance Best Car Wash. And I go up there and I buy, you can buy the tokens,

and you self-wash the car. Right. Man, I kept a whole bag of tokens. I watched my stolen cars. Wow. How many cars you think you stole? I don't know. Yeah.

A couple. Right. That's crazy. But I said, when I got arrested in the car that last day, it was like three. three car wash tokens on the desk. You're like, I was going to wash it. I'm not a crazy person.

Listen, I'm not ungrateful. I take care of your stuff. Yeah, it's detailed. You know what I mean? You call the dude. It's like, it's in New Hampshire, okay? It has a brand new wash. I swear on my mother and my son,

I took the guy's number. I let him take the stuff out of the back seat. And I swear on my mother, my son. I called him and told him where his car was. He got a bag who was probably in better condition. No. It was detailed. It was clean.

Yeah, yeah. He didn't even have had a bad hose. Car overheated. And did anyone ever, like, trying to fight back? Like, or did you know... To my luck, nobody ever resisted. So I'm always curious because, like, I don't know if you can tell about looking at me. I've never stolen a car before.

You might have shoplifting a couple times. Actually, I did once on accident. I didn't mean to... How do you shoplift on accident? I had the TV and I walked out on accident, okay? No, I'm joking. No, I was like, I was... That's what's called white privilege.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I told the guy at the cash register. I was like, I'm going to borrow this for a little. He was like, all right, that's cool. No, I had, I was at like, I was a little kid and I was like with my mom like at the store. And I was just like playing with a toy. And we walked out. And I was like, mom, I stole this. And she was like, keep going. No, she was so pissed at me. We turned around. She made me go apologize to the manager of the store, give it back to them. Right. Why she just buying for you? Because then she was like, no, I don't want to reward your bad behavior. You told the truth. Yeah, I know. But she's like, you stole the truth. Yeah, I know. But she's like, you stole it. in the first place.

No, you didn't steal it. You made a mistake. That's what I said. Stealing is intent. Ah, that's a good point. Yeah, yeah. I didn't intend to steal it. Right, you didn't steal it.

That was an error. That was a legitimate mistake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't a conscious decision that I'm going to do this. But I guess in her mind, she was just like, be more responsible. Like, you know, if you're in the story. Pay attention. Yeah, exactly.

Pay attention. But I'm always curious, like, if someone were to run up on me and be like, hey, give me your jacket, give me your bike, give me your car, whatever. What should I do? Give it to them. if they have a weapon or you think they have a weapon, just give it to them.

It's not worth fighting. It's not worth dying. It's worth fighting. I'll fight you. Right. But I don't want to die for this. There was a time because when I used to be a psychopath, I would die for it.

That's my thought, and that's my thought process. I will die for this. What started out is, it's okay to hit you. I better protect myself and I can quit, turned into, I can kill you,

I'm going to dominate the space, and I don't care. care. So at 8 and 9, it was I'll hit you. At 15 and 16, it's I'll shoot you. At 21, 22, it's I'll kill you. Now, even though shooting people can only lead to death, it's not an intent to kill. It's just an intent to main, which usually turns into death. Right. So now at this point, are you, like, if someone crossed you, someone said something slick to you or like insulted you, what would you do? I've been made fun of since I was a little kid. That didn't, got thick skin. Right. So even back then when you were a kid.

I was, Mr. Gillis, you remember people that nice to you. Eighth grade, Mr. Gillis was my seventh period English teacher. I would come to class with the same class, everyday seventh period, Mr. Gillis. Monday, I'm cracking jokes tearing the room up. Tuesday, cracking jokes tearing the room up. Wednesday, Thursday. After a while, he said, I can't shut this kid down. He said, Andre, if you be good, Monday to Thursday, I let you tell jokes,

all day Friday. Oh, wow. And I would literally be good Monday to Thursday just so I can tell jokes on Friday. Oh, so you were like kind of the class clown. Like you like to make everyone laugh. Everything. People make fun of me rightfully for having dirty sneakers and old stuff. So sticks and stones never bothered me. Right. But that made you funny though.

It made me funny. Oh, I was straight comedian. Yeah. I get this from my mom. Shout out to Mondukes. I'm sarcastic. People want to fight me. I tell jokes to make you want to cry and get you upset. I mean, that's kind of a Boston thing, too. Boston people are like...

Sarcastic. You guys cut deep. Yeah, we cut. It's crazy. It's just, I get it from my mom. I don't know. She's a Bostonian for life. Right.

But my sarcasm comes from mom. My jokes are like, mean. And she'll make fun of you in a way that's like, mean. Oh, yeah. She hurt the feelings. She'll make you think about it. Really?

Like, I want to lead his family. I'm enough for you people. I'm running away. My brother ran away one time. She was like, bye. I helped him pack? She was like, You leaving?

All right. Just leave the stuff that I bought. Don't pack down the stuff that I bought. Yeah, I'm going to repo it. Let's go ahead. I'm saying, oh, that's crazy. Nah, moms is real, though. Yeah.

And are you guys still in touch? You guys still talk? I am my mother reborn. Really? You've met my mother by talking to me. If she came here right now, sat in the chair next to me and I got about it to chair, and you started talking. She would say some of the things I said verbatim.

Wow. Does she have a similar upbringing to you? Like, in Boston? Was it? This is the thing. She grew up in Boston. She grew up with her parents, but I really don't know my mom's story. Oh, really?

Because back then, the thing was, don't tell your kids your trauma. Hmm. So the stuff that she went through, the stuff that my dad went through, they would never tell us. They kind of just pushed it down. They, yeah, they pushed it down. Hmm. But as a result, maybe they didn't teach you the things that they wish they had learned. Right.

Or the lessons that they had learned because they didn't want to put it. And their belief, if they ignore it, it'll go away. Yeah, that's very common with that generation, I feel like. It's like, so my son didn't get my story. This is other thing. Most people don't write books. Yeah. So my son, it's my son.

He sees me. I'm dad. We're cool. And then one, he's flying home one time. And he's on a plane. He's like 15. And he reads my book. He had never read it before.

I read the book. His dad, he read the book. And he saw my life. He saw what I had been through. and what I come from and what I made it to, and he had no clue. Wow. Because you're just dad to them.

Right. So my mother and father, just mom and dad. I had no understanding that my dad had rocks thrown at him too. I don't understand it. My father grew up in a town where it was just hot on black people.

My mother grew up in a time where you had to do this and do that. You don't even think about what your parents grew up with. It's the furthest thing from your mind. Right. And there's no books. There's no video, none of that.

my son, we were on vacation one time. It was like, how are you going to tell your son you've been to jail? How are you going to tell him? I'm like, I don't know. One day we're in the office and I'm talking to him. I thought I was going to bridge the conversation because I thought it was old enough and matured. I was going to try to.

He was like, what? I saw your YouTube videos. I know about that stuff. That's why you mean. What? He used to watch nerve guns, nerve fights. It's a little Nerf gun thing. He had every Nerf gun on the man.

Yeah. So he would go on a computer, YouTube, and type in Nerf guns, Nerf Wars, and he watched. Never in my wildest dreams that I think he would type my name into YouTube. Oh, crazy. He typed somewhere along the line, he said, Andre Norman. I never used my name. I'm dad. Right.

So in my mind, he's going to type Daddy. It's going to be a different video or whatever. He typed in Andre Norman and all these videos pop up. Right. He knows what I look like. He starts watching the video. Oh, interesting. And so you would never told him directly.

So he learned all of it through your speech. YouTube. Wow. Then I went to broach the conversation. He quoted my videos back to me. Wow. I was like, okay, that was easy. Yeah, I mean, that's probably, that's a good way to do it.

Like, he just got the, he got the direct link from you, like, all polished, presented. And then he got to ask you questions in real life. Yeah, but as a parent, you're trying to figure out how you're going to have this deep conversation. When kids are already watching on YouTube, Instagram or Snapchat. Yeah, your kids are way. You're blazing past you and everything already. Listen, light years. We think they're kids because we would,

they think they're kids like we were kids. Nope. History is a different country, bro. They're growing up in a different country. It's crazy. And my father thought I was a kid like he was a kid. And that's just how it goes. Right.

Okay, so you are like jacking cars. How does that land you in prison? You just got caught one day? No, no. I should rob cars for a purpose. Because I should rob drug houses. Right. So to get to the drug house, you need a car.

So I go rob somebody for the car. I park it. I kept some for drug robberies and some just drive around it. Right. I used to have like three or four cars. And I went to go do a drug robbery and we got caught in the house doing a robbery and the story. Because like the third time I got caught and they were like, okay, you're done. You went to court.

They started reading off sentences. Seven to ten years. Nine to ten years. Nine to ten years. Ten years. Ten years. Fifteen to twenty to twenty. 15 to 20 and a 5.

And said, take them out of it. And that was it. All she wrote. What happened the first two times when you got caught? You make bail. You just cases take forever and you just keep getting in trouble. Wow. And at that point were you like, oh, I don't want to get caught again?

No, this is what you do. This is just life. It's life. That's so crazy. I mean, your mindset now is so different to how your mindset was back then. Like, can you empathize with yourself back then? Like, can you even imagine what your mind? mindset was? I was a misinformed, no direction having person. Right. The misinformation is what I

told myself mostly. All my friends who were the same age as me gave me bad information. Right. So I'm getting information for myself or people just like me, which is all bad. And then on top of that, I have no direction. I literally was in the islands last week. I'm sitting with a lady, we're doing a training for the staff. And I said to the staff, you can start a business and you can do X, Y, Z. Staff lady, no, no, we can't start a business. Because we work for the government,

we can't own businesses. I said, no, lady, you're wrong. That can't be correct. I know it's not America, but I'm like, that can't be correct. It makes no sense. And one of the directors said, you can't own certain types of businesses

that have a conflict with the prison. So you can't run a pro, you can't run something that is direct conflict with the prison. So if your company, conflicts with the prison, then you can't have it. I don't know what business conflicts with the prison,

but hypothetically, whatever that would look like. This lady for 15 years has been operating on the pretense that she can't have any business because somebody told her that. And she just got some bad information. Bad information that she internalized and made it real. That's so crazy. She was like, I can own a business? Like, show you can own a business.

Is this certain businesses you can't own? And then your brain just changes. But like when you're told something, I guess your brain just locks into this one narrative of what your life can be. And then someone comes and tells you, no, no, no. That's wrong. It's wrong. And all of a sudden, your whole reality is different. You're like, wait, I can do that.

So like if someone came to you when you were like 16, 17, they're like, hey, you should go to college. Was that even in your brain as like a thing that could happen? No, because two reasons it wasn't the brain. The way college was presented to me, it didn't make sense. College was just said it's a place to go. there was no definition to it there was no reasoning for it it was like you graduate high school you go to college

it's like okay I tell you you're going to move to Denver for no reason you're just going to move to Denver when you finish school you're going to Denver I don't want to go Denver but that's all they tell you when you graduate high school you're going to Denver right you don't know what's in Denver you ain't never been to Denver you don't know nobody in

you don't know about what's the point of going there exactly this when you graduate high school you're going to you might as well tell me I was going to Denver right it's the same thing you're going to go to college. I had no context. Right. It was just a title. And I wasn't doing well in school anyways, but it's not enough to tell somebody what they can be.

Because most likely, if you need to tell them, they aren't in a place to hear it. So stop saying, I told them, I told them, and talk to them and find out where he or she is in their life. Then give them, if you would explain it to me from the vantage point where I really

lived and said, Drey, look that way. You see that right behind that building There's such and such that you need to be at Not to say just go down the street I don't have access to down the street You have to go to the person Go where they are

Meet them where they're at And give them directions from there And walk with them So many people give directions from where they are Yeah, yeah it's all retroactive Yeah I got a college degree I'm a high school, you should just go to college Yeah yeah

You understand college You understand the whole process And you understand why it's important You just assume that I do Right right yeah I guess the person telling you assumes that they think that they know why it's important. But if you don't know, it's like, what's the point of even saying it? Exactly.

Go to Denver. We're going to take a break real quick so I can tell you guys about my morning ritual. Every morning I wake up, hop out of bed, I make some tea, and then I grab my AG1. That's right, athletic greens. I grab my AG1. I pour it into my cup and I drink it. And it's my favorite way to start the day. I feel like it helps my gut health.

It helps my brain. It gives my body, all the nutrients that it needs to go and power through the day. And the reason I love AG1 is it's just an awesome drink. I don't have to think about pills and my whole pill container and I always forgot to take them. I just start my morning right before I go to the gym, grab my AG1, makes everything better. I'll be honest. Around the holidays, I'll get a stuff he knows. Seasonal flu going around, sickness, people coughing on you.

I grab AG1, makes me feel better. It supports my immune system and keeps me healthy. AG1 makes me feel so good that I'll gift it to my family, my friends, my parents. Anyone that's getting sick around the holidays, anyone that needs more immune system, support. I go, hey, take this. It's going to help your gut health, help your mental, help you stay healthy. You got to try it. So if you want to take ownership of your health, today is a good time to start. Athletic Greens is giving you. That's right. You listening to this right now, a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase.

Go to athletic greens.com slash Gaggin-O-N-O-N. That's right. Gagnon. Gagnon. That's Athletic Greens.com slash Gagnon. Check it out. Let's get back to the show. Okay, so then you get all these crazy charges, your third strike. What is that like next week of your life look like? You get sentenced? I get sentenced. I'm terrified. Just like, what happens?

Like, you got an attorney. You want to do that's what you want to call them? That's what you want to call them? I did 14 years. I ended with a ton of time. I got arrested. I tell you, I still cars. I used to rob people for their cars.

So I'd rob you for your car. Then I would leave and I'd take off. Well, I robbed somebody for their car in one city. I got arrested in that same car and another jurisdiction. So in a jurisdiction that finds me, arrest me, in their mind, it's a stolen car. So they write up the paperwork, Andre Norman stole a car. And that's my charge. Once they do all that, I make bail, I go home.

That police department calls the police department when the car came from, say, hey, we got the car. We found it. We want to send it back. They said, hold up. that thing wasn't stolen it was taken it was taken in a robbery do you have the picture of the guy who you arrested they said sure they send them my picture they said yep this is a guy they robbed for the car so they put a warrant out for me honor norman robbery i stole a car so they arrest me i'm in jail with them i'm going back and forth to court to both courts one for the robbery one for

the larceny i got two pieces of paper it says andre norman larceny Honda. Andre Norman armed, I'm robbery Honda. I go to my lawyer. I say,

listen, I'm not smartest dude in here. But I just got to ask you this question. I'm looking at these two pieces of paper. They both say the same thing

except for the charge. Is this double jeopardy? I mean, it's like everybody knows what double jeopardy is. I said, it's this double jeopardy. He looks at both papers

and he tells me no. Just like the lady who said he couldn't have a business. I say, all, cool. I go back to do my time. I eventually played guilty to the lawsuit

first, just by chance. Right. And then probably like six months later, they take me to trial and they find me guilty of the armed robbery. I go upstate. I'm six, seven years in, I follow an appeal. The appellate court of Massachusetts said it was double jeopardy. Wow. So, meaning,

had I, had my lawyer, let me go to district court, and plead guilty like I did, they want to trial for the law. armed robbery. I got seven to 10 years. Day one, a trial. He said, I want to put in a motion to dismiss this case because he's already been tried and convicted of this crime out of one on appeal. Wow. But he didn't do that. He determined that I was guilty. He determined that I should go to prison and he didn't do his job. So what happened is when I got out on bail, when it came time, we're in court and I see him about to get found guilty. I take off. I skip trial and I jump bail.

Oh, really? And while I'm on bail jumping, I pick up five new cases. The two tens, the two nine to tens, and the two 15 to 20s. I picked up while I was running from the seven to ten. And what were those? I'm robbery. I'm home evasion. I'm carjacking, kidnapping, and robbery.

I'm in court for armed robbery. Right. Had he filed that motion day one, and it had stopped the trial, and I wouldn't need to go on to run. Right. And I wouldn't have picked up. my five new cases. Right.

But because the trial was about to end and I was about to go to prison, I took off running and I ended up getting five new cases while I was on the run. Wow.

So in theory, I should have never stepped foot and stay prison. So all those things added up against you and then that's how you got such a big, so many years.

I had the first case that should have been dismissed. Right. But instead of going sitting in trial and so I'm just going to go to prison, I'm a tough guy. I took off running.

I was scared to death. And while I was on a run, I picked up five new cases. Right, yeah. So when they arrest me for those, and eventually I got sentenced on all of them. Gotcha. And then that's when you go to state.

Then I go up state. But I should have never stepped one day in a state prison. Have you ever talked to that public defender? I went to prison. I did 14 years. I came home. I get my life together. I'm doing a lot of work.

I'm with the President of the United States. I'm with the Attorney General. I'm with the governor. I'm with all these different people. I'm on TV a lot. Scott calls me. He calls, I think he sends me, email, but he reaches out to me and we get on the phone.

He says, hey, it's your lawyer. I'm not even going to do his name. He told me, I knew exactly he was. He says, man, I just want to apologize. I just want to apologize. Because he got notified the day my case got overturned. Because he was listed in my case. And he goes, oh, I fucked that up.

No, no, no. He didn't mess it up. It was intentional. Yeah. If he already thinks you're guilty, then dude, if an uneducated high school dropout can identify double jeopardy. What is your problem? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What is your hold up? So what is your feeling in that moment? It's like, bro, I've served all this time, like my life. I did it, but it's something, I did it. Right. There's the, should I go into prison? At that time, no. Did I do it?

Yes. So there's the technicalities of should or coulda woulda. The baseline is I was living out of order. There was a technicality that I shouldn't have gone to jail that member. Did I deserve to go to jail? 100%. Do you think you would have eventually gone to jail? I'm going to die.

I went to jail right before the crack era Oh wow Right before the cracker Had I been on the streets during the crack camera I'd have been a crackhead or a drug robber or dead or something That's such a crazy way to look at it Because it's like this guy screwed you over He judged you before you were judged

And you got locked up But had that not happened I had 100% been in the street full time That's so tough That is like such a It's like yeah obviously good things can come from bad situations But it wasn't his decision Yeah, exactly. That's the difference.

It worked out. It worked out. But it wasn't his decision. Right. That wasn't his lot in life to say, this kid should go to prison. And I'm going to help him go to prison. Now, if this is how you feel about me, how are you representing me during trial? Yeah, he's just going to be like, all right, don't give him life. Like, they're going to, he's just going to help you not get the full sentence. Don't give him death penalty, but put him in there. Yeah. Yeah. He determined that I should go to jail. And this guy representing me. So this, again, I did it. Yeah.

Every case I was charged with, I did. Yeah. So it's not as if I'm saying, whoa, was me. That's a technical circumstance that I could have jumped through a little loophole. You got to wonder, though, how many guys has he represented that didn't do it, that he goes... How many guys did he sent in prison? Yeah, exactly. That maybe did or didn't do it or didn't do it to the full degree that they were charged with or whatever else.

If you're looking at him for help, you ain't getting it. Yeah. Not that guy. That's tough. And so did you forgive him? I let it ride. I didn't go hunt him down or anything. I said, no, stuff.

This is my thing with forgiving him. Yeah. Forgave him to the extent you can forgive him. I just let it go. I wasn't ready to go to lunch with him. Right. He wouldn't go to lunch with him. Oh, really?

He said, let's sit down. I want to go to lunch with you. I'm like, nah. It depends on the restaurant. No. Good restaurant? No. At that moment, it was a no.

Right. I wasn't ready to sit down with a guy who I know intentionally sent me to prison. Yeah. That's a different level. But, yeah, I guess you can compartmentalize and be like, I forgive you, but I'm not going to forget. I can forgive you, but I'm not going to lunch with you. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's reasonable. I think that's reasonable. I've never thought bad about them. It is what it is. I put myself in a circumstance to be judged or to be crossed out or whatever you want to put it. So I'm not mad. That's what comes with the life.

Yeah. But I'm not going to lunch with you either. So then you end up in prison. Get to prison. Scared to death. And what does that first week look like? How old are you at that time? I'm 18.

I got a gazillion years. I'm scared of death. I'm thinking, oh my God, what's going to happen to me? What's going to happen? How's going to happen? Just every bad thing you can think of is running through my mind. Right. So I said, listen, what I'm going to do is I've been a fighter my whole life.

I get to the unit. I'm just going to fight the first two that comes in me. I'm going to let them know that I'm a fighter. That's the most important thing you ever going to do. If you go to jail, let them know that you can fight and that you will fight. If you ain't going to fight for it, it's gone. And a lot of things can get gone. So that's your advice for me.

If I ever go to jail. My advice for anybody. Yeah. If you go to jail, you got two options. You get the second option. You got two options. One, you better let people know that you are willing to fight. And when lose a draw, you have to be willing to fight.

That is option one. Okay. If they say, hey, man, I like them sneakers. Put your hands up. Right. Hey, man, I think you're cute. Put both hands up. It runs.

No, no. Can't run. Okay. Can't run. They're going to think I'm cute, bro. I know it. I just know it. They're going to see my hair.

Yeah, yeah. You might want to straighten it out before you get to. So, okay. Even if you become a Christian, do the Jesus thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, I could, yeah. You go Jesus.

That could work. That could work. You could have gone Jesus too. You should have done that. No. But one of two things. One, be a fighter. You're going to be the best fighter,

but stand up for yours. People will respect you if you fight. Even if you get your ass kit. If you don't back down and you fight, people will respect you. And there's a. law of the land that people will stand to your defense, don't even know you. Oh, wow.

If you are standing for yours and like, no, I ain't going for that. You're wrong for, you're just bullying me. See, people don't like bullies. So if people are just bullying you because there's more of them or they're bigger than you, most people, such as myself, don't like bullies. I hate bullies. There's a lot of people who hate bullies because a lot of the people are bullied by their fathers or bullied by older people when they were kids.

So even though they became this big-time gang member, they were bullied his kids, most of them. And they hate bullies. Hate bullies. Interesting. So when they see you bullying somebody and he's standing up for himself, it's something inside of them that's going to identify with you. And they're standing up for themselves. They're going to come to your aid.

Okay. So that's option one. I got to fight. Option one, you've got to be a fighter. Option two. Option two, this thing called protective custody. Walk over to the gate or walk to the closest cell. I am scared for my life.

Put me in protective custody. They will put you in a housing unit where a bunch of people who are scared as well. And there's a very, there's a lot less robbery beating and raping going. on and you'll be segregated for your time. Now, you won't have access to the big yard. You won't have access to a lot of stuff, but you'll be safe. Those are option one and option two. You chose option one.

Yeah. And what happened? I had a fight. I got to the unit. Those are, yo, great. Whoa. I dropped the bed. I threw my hands up.

It was my buddy Malvin from the dummy class. We was in the third grade together in a dummy class. I was like, yo, what you doing here? He said, man, what you doing here? What took you so long? We've been waiting for you. Really? The whole prison was waiting for me.

Wow. When you went to college? Yeah. From your high school. Yep. High school college. Mm-hmm. When you got to college during your second year, your sophomore, they tell you, hey,

little Bobby from your high school's here. You weren't shocked. No. You were expecting them. Yeah. Like, oh, that's cool. I thought you maybe were going to go a different college, but you came to this one. Yeah.

It's the same thing in prison. All the guys who went down that bad road, they know who's coming behind them. Oh, wow. So you show up. They're expecting me. You immediately click up with all them. They're like, hey, Dre, where you been? Wow.

So I click up with them and they teach me how to do time. Are you a little bit less scared at that point? Because you're like, a lot less scared. Because I'm around people I know. Right. And did you know that they were there? Because you don't necessarily know where your boys were sent. You don't know who's there.

When you come in, the last thing you're thinking about is who's in this building. Right. You just think who's going to hurt me or who's going to take my stuff. Who's going to hurt me? Who's going to hurt me? Who's going to hurt me? Right. So I get with my guys.

And I remember something happened with one of the homies. and there's this big commotion, then one of the guys that come to me was like, yo, Dre, man, I'm saying? I went to my big homie. I went to my big homest, the guy above me and told him what happened. Later on that day, it all went bad.

And they went to go beat up the two dudes from the other side of town who was talking about the homie. When they ran up on them, like, yo, man, send you guys to the yard. They got to get a beating. They was out of order. They said, no, we weren't out of order.

Andre was in a conversation. How can we be disrespectful if one of your guys is in a conversation? Oh, shit. So they came back to me. It was like, yo, was you in this conversation with these two dudes? I was like, yeah. So they had to get them to do as a pass.

Because the stuff that they said was absolved because I was in a conversation. Interesting. Now, the truth is, I wasn't a conversation, but I reported it to my homie. He just didn't report it up the chain because he didn't like to do what it was about. So they take me out to the yard.

We all go to the yard and have a conference. So we get the whole gang out on the yard. It's like 30 of us out on the yard. where at the end of the hour to kill people. So he's standing on a handball court. I'm like, okay. And this is when I finally realized

who I was hanging out with. 20 dudes doing life sentences. It never dawned on me before as it did that moment. I'm hanging out with 20 full-fledged murderers and they're right now in front of me in my face talking about what should have happened to me

for my violation because they put a rule out on somebody and had to take it back because of my discretion. I'm saying, so I'm like, they're like, yo, we should do this. I'm like standing like,

my first thought I ain't gonna lie, was to run. Yeah. I said, I should just take the fuck off running right now. Yeah. Now,

I looked at the end of the yard there was a big 40-foot wall. Can't run nowhere. Yeah. Can't get out. So I stood there. And they had the little debate and then went around

and running out. And Dominole came up to me, said, listen, we're gonna give you a pass this time. But let it be known. If you fuck up again, we're gonna handle it and we're handling our own.

Then we all walked off to y'all together. Wow. And I can tell you from that day I never made a motherfucker another mistake ever. Wow. I'm standing there dudes contemplating, killing me. Is that, that's what the conversation was? Like, fucking me up, yeah.

They were like, oh, let's just beat him. And then people were like, no, it's killing. It was a little bit everything. And I'm standing like, they're talking about me. Yeah. And ain't shit I can do about it. I just got to stand here listening and hope this shit come out favorable. I thought about running, but there's nowhere to run to.

And why do you think they gave you a pass? Because, I don't know. I can ask Dom. I never asked. Really? But he turned to me, he said, dude, we're giving you a pass this time. So what should you have done? You're in a conversation.

What I should have done. What I had the chance to do when I was sitting on their yard is say, well, I did report up to my G right here. And that's what I was supposed to do. And he's looking at me like, please God, Dre, don't tell him you told me because he's probably fucked up two or three times. Right. He's had his pass.

So he'll get whooped if. I don't know what was going to happen, but he was looking at me like, please God, Dre don't tell him the truth. So I could have put him under the bus. Would that be snitching if you did that? No, no. That was facts. It was facts.

Yo, Dre, you had to order? No, I reported, I did what I was supposed to do. Snitching, which is gone totally outside of the box, is when you have a criminal who's participating in criminal activity and to get out of his sentence or punishment, he confides in the authorities and let them know what his co-defendants and his cohorts were doing. It's got to be a trade with the feds. Police.

You have to go to the police. or some kind of authority and tell them what's going on with other criminal activity. Right. That's snitching. Right. You're just being honest about what you did

in the situation. No, that was internal family business. Gotcha. They ain't no law. Snitching involves the law. Gotcha. It's become like a new, I mean, I heard soccer moms

talking about those snitch. I'm like, what are you talking about? There's a police involved in the soccer game or something? The word is gone to shit. Right. There was a time to call somebody to snitch.

where I came up, you had to have paperwork. You had to have his actual court documents that showed that he testified against somebody. Or there had to be somebody who was standing there and said, I was in court, and I saw him testify. Oh, wow. None of this, I think he was a snitch or you must have snitched. I mean, they just taking this.

I'm out the streets, man. They didn't change the game. When white soccer moms start talking about people snitching, right? I'm cool. That's so funny that you're like a purist about snitching. You're like, come on, let's be literal. Let's be by the book. Because people could kill for that.

When I came up, you could kill for being a situation. or even claiming that someone was a snitch. You claims somebody a snitch, you better have paperwork. You couldn't just arbitrarily call somebody a snitch without paperwork. It's just like, you know, what's the paperwork? Right. Well, I heard, well,

my sister's cut. That didn't fly. This is your, everything back in the day was your word, your reputation, and manhood. And you're challenging all three when you call somebody a government witness. That's the whole thing. Snitching is your government witness.

Government witnesses have paperwork. It wasn't like, nah, you told it's paperwork somewhere. So then from that day forward, you're with your crew. Man, listen, I am so focused on never fucking up again. It's not even perfect. Because I saw my life flashing. Yeah, I mean, it did. When I walked

off that yard, I'm like, man, this is serious. I wasn't taking prison serious. You don't take it serious into some shit like that happens to you. And I started taking it Uber serious. That everything was life or death. Because I saw myself possibly dying.

Right. And at the hands of my friends. Yeah, that's... It's sobering. Yeah, that's sobering. And so how do you navigate the rest of prison from that time? Like, are there any parts that you enjoy? Are there any parts that, like, you like? Enjoyable parts of prison.

Part one. What are you talking about? Enjoyable parts of prison. There's got me one little sliver that you're like, oh, this is the one part that I look forward to during the day. Anything like that? Spoken as a person who's never been depressed. I'm sure, you know, saying?

the people in the cold minds have a glimmer of hope why they're down there breathing in all that damn dust in coal. Yeah, that's true. What's the good part about being in that and sucking in some coal? Yeah, nothing.

Nothing. Yeah. There's nothing good about it. You may do with your day, but what I did was my big homie, Dominic. He was like boss or bosses at the time. So I'm in his gang. When I get there, they say where you're from?

If you went to prison right now, they can say where you're from. And wherever you're from, those are the guys that you're going to be around. Those are guys will come claim you, you, you're part of their team, gang, whatever you want to call it. So I got off the bus, they said, where are you from? They said, oh, you're with those guys.

Then they would come get you. It was like, oh, you're from the neighborhood. So they'd know my oldest sister. We went to the same school, the district school, to this, to that. We're all from the same hood. Right. So we went to the same store, the same this, the same thing. And so they claimed me as one of the neighborhood guys.

And Dominic's boss and boss. So I used to follow him around. Everywhere he went, I went. And I just watch him. And I watched how he interact with people. I watch how he talked to people. how he handled situations. I grew up illiterate.

So I didn't read or write very good. And even when I did not read the right, I wasn't good at it. So I learned by watching and listening. So I watched and listened to Dominic. And I watched how he interact with people, how he talked to people, how people talked to him, what they said in front of him,

what they said away from him. And I just learned about watching him. And I'd come to lunch every day because I'm like broke. I'm not no rich dude. I'm broke. I'm a young kid in jail. I got my parents got a little money. Like Dominic, give me a pack of cigarettes.

Give me a pack of cigarettes. I go back, I chain smoke. I'm a chain smoker. Next day, come to lunch, Domina, give me a pack of cigarettes. Give me a pack of cigarettes. He controlled, like, cigarettes. He had thousands and thousands of packs.

So every day I come to him and get a pack of cigarettes. Then one day he said, yo, man, you ain't got no hustle? What are we talking about? I don't know. He got a, he went, got a carton of cigarettes. He gave me a whole cotton and cigarettes. He said, yo, this is what you do.

You take three or four these, you sell them. You're saying? And then you smoke a couple. I'm saying, and you sell the ones you sell half of them for two. He's called them two for once. You give away one pack to get two back. I'm saying,

so you sell them and then you get ahead. You're saying, all this begging stuff got to stop. I'm like, all right, he gave me one cart and cigarettes. I went to the unit. I got a car, I went out,

I loaned out eight packs of cigarettes. And I smoked two. I got 16 back. I smoked two. I loaned out 14. I got 28 back. I smoked three. I loaned out 25.

I got 50 back. Then it was probably like two months later. We were in the cafeteria. Dr.inner said, yo, you ain't asked me some cigarettes in a while. What's happening?

I said, do what you told me to do? He said, what do you mean? I said, you told me to, you gave me a carton of cigarettes. You told me to sell some, keep some, sell some, sell some, smoke something. I've been doing it.

He said, yeah, he said, I mean, God. I said, I got 250 cards of cigarettes in a block. Really? He said, what? I was like, yeah, I got like 250 cottons of cigarettes in a block. Wow. He said, man, go get them sickers.

He said something down and collect the cigarettes. I had people holding cigarettes from me. I was paying people to hold them because I did exactly what he said to do no deviation. Right. I just kept selling cigarettes, selling cigarettes. You learned the basics of investing? I didn't blink. No, no.

I didn't learn. I did exactly what he said to do. Right. And I didn't deviate. Right. I didn't have a plan B or option B I had started with 10 8 went to 16

then 15 went to 30 and then 25 went to 50 and then 45 went to 90 Wow and then it just kept going Was he proud of you? It was the first time I got like yeah you did good

Ah we gave you a task and you followed It wasn't even a task It was just like do this Just get out of my face You're saying stop begging me for cigarettes Show some initiative And you did And I did it

And you showed you like a hustle And he gave me control the whole end of the prison with cigarettes. Ah, so can you explain to me how, like, the underbelly of, like, the prison sort of, like, black market works? Okay. What does that, how does that work? What's some dude's name? Um, they wrote a book. Freakonomics.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dubner. Dumb, exactly. You know what I'm saying? Dumbner, you, that's a made-up shit for white people. Really? Oh, so Freakonomics is, like, kind of bullshit when it comes to, like, the prison stuff. When it comes to really, when it comes to the real part of it?

Yeah. Yeah, there's some dumb shit. I've read that book and I was like, this is crazy. Because you never been to the block. Nope. So all you know is what he told you. Of course. You have nothing verified by it.

I can verify it's bullshit. Okay. Tell me how does it actually work? How about this? You take a prison with 2,000 people in it. Okay. Let's make 50% of them drug addicts, which is a small number. It's usually like 90%.

We're just going to see 50% of drug addicts. You had 1,000 drug users. What kind of drugs? It doesn't matter. Okay. So we're going to take heroin. So heroin at the time cost you $50. a bag. You've got a thousand drug users. If you can sell each one of a bag of drugs per day,

what is that? 50,000 times seven days, 350 times four weeks. Yeah, you're making legit money. It's millions. You hit over a million. That's if you can sell each addict one bag per day. In prison? In prison. Okay, so how do you get drugs in prison? Hold another story. Drugs come in. Okay. That's the best I can tell. We'll leave it at that. Drugs come in. Okay. You know what I'm saying? They come in all kinds of wonderful ways.

But once they're in, this is back in the days before technology. You give me drugs. I go, we cut them up. And just like any other kind, you're up in there. You're a rich white kid from the suburbs. You got caught up doing some dumb stuff. Your parents, your sister, your aunt, your uncle, they all love you. They're going to send you money.

So I know you're a good client. If I can sell you drugs, I know you're good probably for like $600 a week. So I'll sell you $600 off drugs. I know your parents will pay it. Because I get hooked. I'm writing letters to my parents. You're already hooked. you came in a dope fiend.

So I'm not getting you hooked. You're already hooked. Gotcha. But I know you're a circumstance. I know you come from a family what means. Right. So I can sell you more drugs and I can't get in a guy from the project. Would you protect me?

For a fee. But if you know I'm a good client and you know I'm getting you money every week. No. If you ain't paying for protection, you don't get protection. And it's the thing about protection. Right. Protection is fake. If you're somebody that needs protection,

at least for me, can't speak for nobody else. My thing is, I'll protect you until it's a conflict. So for the most part, I try to, like, wave stuff away from you, keep stuff off you. But if you ever get in conflict with a true soldier or a real guy, you got to handle it. You got to take the beating. I'm not going to put my hands on a true soldier for you. And what do you mean by true soldier? If somebody's, like, really a gang member or somebody's a solid guy and you do some dumb shit to offend him, you got to take the ass with him. And I come to you and I go, bro, I got to take the ass with him. I paid you to defend me. You got to do. You got to take the ass with him.

take the ass with me. I'm not going to clean up something you've actually done. Right. I'm not a henchman for you. I'm going to help you stay out of trouble. I'm going to do my best. And if you get in trouble with us on you. I'm going to do my best to get you away from the dumb shit. Gotcha. We had guys in our unit

whereas back in the days, if you were a lane or a week, you couldn't have anything. You couldn't have soap in your room. You couldn't have shower shoes. You couldn't have radio. Dules would beat you up and take it. Full stop, no blank. That's just what it was. That's just what it was. So what it happened. So what a is I have like four or five guys who are protecting.

So every night about 8.30, I'd put shower shoes on my door, on my, on my bars, put the soap on my bars and stuff. Then you would come, take the shower shoes, take the soap, take the shampoo, go take a shower, come back, put the shit on my bars. You couldn't keep that in yourself. People beat you up and take it. Oh, what I, and people would pay to do that. You pay protection and now I'd put yourself on my bars and I hold you down.

Oh, crazy. But I wasn't, if you put it in your cell and some, you could, you put it in your cell and some Somebody runs in there and beats you up, I can't do anything about that. Right. I'm not going to do anything about that. Right. There's lines to protection. Okay.

So, okay, so heroin gets in. Heroin comes in. You find some good clients. Oh, they're there there. You get them hooked. They're already hooked. No, no. 80% of people in jail in jail for drug-related crimes.

Ah, so they already have an experience. Come in what happens. Come in what happens. Gotcha. And you just sell the people who get what happens. They're doing all day doing nothing. So you just sell it to them. But it's easy for me to show you and just tell you because it doesn't make sense.

This is out the newspapers. and any like great breaking news. This is just one guy selling drugs in the jail. It's about 2,000 people in this jail. Yeah. What do you think he's making a year? I mean, that math we just did before, I'm like, if he's making a million dollars a year, I'd be shocked.

What's that say? Don't say the name of the system. 20 million in drugs, 40 firearms seized in drug trafficking operation. Right. Wow. That's just one prison. I mean, that's insane. 20 million.

So, okay, so that's a lot of money. If you're in prison, let's say you're doing life, what are you doing with $20 million? You just buy shit. So you're buying cigarettes. You buy stuff. And once you got $20 million, like... Now you can pay for lawyers.

That's wild. So people can actually use the black market to get enough money to... A lot of people use black market to take care of their families. Right. Take care of their kids, to pay for legal expenses.

Yeah. It's not the wisest thing in the world, If I got a choice of selling drugs in jail and paying for a good lawyer or just sitting here and just doing time, then it's going down. You're in the system, you're coming up, you're dealing in like, are you in like

sort of like the underground drug market in prison? I work for, work with, the gang I'm in is the lead gang. Okay. So what happens is take any prison system, there are gangs that operate within the system. Right. And there's the strongest gang

to the weakest gang. And how does the strength work? Is that size or is that physical, like, ability? It's the imposing of physicality on the yard. Gotcha. So you need soldiers. Like, America has the strongest army. We're not the biggest country.

We have the strongest army. Right. We have the best weapons and the best technology and the more soldiers. Strategy all those. So it's not so much Ukraine got finished fighting Russia. Come on. Yeah, yeah. They came to them in the beginning.

And it was like, yo, we'll send a plane for you. I remember the camera. I remember it. They said, yo, we're going to send a plane to evacuate you to the president in Ukraine. You know what he said? Send me bullets. Wow.

He said, send me bullets or send me guns? Yeah. He said, don't send me a helicopter. Send me guns. Because he's ready to fight. They were like, no, no. Russia is attacking you. We're going to send you, we're going to evacuate you,

the president to safety. Nope. He was like, no, don't send me no helicopter. Send me guns. Send me helicopter with guns. Yeah. He said, I'll die. I hear. Wow. And that's kind of the mentality there. Some people have his mentality.

Small country, solid soldier, solid leader. You get a big country with a leader, don't have solid, solid leadership. Leadership is everything. So how do the leaders kind of segregate within the gangs? No, I mean. And does everyone have to be in a gang? You don't have to be, but you're going to come across one. You don't have to be. You don't have to be. And you're saying, you don't have to be caring about the United States, but if we invade your country, you're done. Gotcha. Hey, I don't care about the U.S., but if they run up in your country, you got props.

So if I go to prison, I got to at least acknowledge that they exist. Gotcha. And don't mess with people in specific hands. No, that's not so much you don't mess with. It's not to that extreme. If you're a country, let's just say you're the Bahamas, because I got friends in the Bahamas. And you're a small country.

You're chilling. Mind your business. you don't attack United States of America if you're the Bahamas it's not going to work well for you right it's not going to be a fast fight or a fair fight

you got to be aware of where you stand in the hierarchy exactly gotcha you were part of the biggest system I happen to be from America so how many dudes were in your gang in this block it wasn't my gang it was Dominic's gang and it was like statewide

it's not like we have territories in Guam, Puerto Rico Hawaii You're saying these islands are position for reasons. Right. But at the time, like 50 of us total. Oh, wow. Okay.

And so where do you fit in the game? To the bottom. Just off rip. And then what are your duties as the first gang member? When you come in, you just part of it. It's like the team, the fam. Yeah. Like I was hustling cigarettes.

Yep. You know what I'm saying? You just be there. You're saying it's like, what is the job of a soldier to wait for war? Right. So every day we would wake up and we go out to the yard and we would work out and all that type stuff. We would hide knives and we just get ready for war.

Right. You're saying get ready for the daily hustle and get ready for war. And Dominic was the leader. Dominic, hands down, no blame. And he was a great leader. For me, he was. Yeah. And he really took care of you and kind of like mentored you.

I mean, his mentorship was like he's me before years older in the sense of he didn't read him right that well. He didn't have a great relationship with his dad. He grew up in the streets. So he's traumatized. he's been through a lot of stuff and he's teaching me from his lack of empathy

emotional connectivity and so he's teaching me what he's been taught which has got him the way he is he's where he is based on what he's been taught now he's teaching me so I love him because he's holding me down if not for him I don't survive prison

and he's doing his best like he's doing what he thinks is right for you to take care of you exactly yeah so what happens is in prison we don't look at it as oh he's traumatized Oh, he's teaching me wrong. Of course.

That word is... Yeah, it's different in prison because minus his teachings, my prison time is dramatically different. Minus his presence. Anything could have happened to me. I mean, I went through my entire 14 years unscathed. I went through 14 years, no fear.

Other than that first couple weeks, he was being nervous, but as far as worrying about dying or being hurt or being robbed or being raped, never had that fear. Oh, really? Because of Dominic and being part of his team. Wow.

So I never had to be. the fear like other people had to deal with you're saying right i had to deal with going to segregation had to deal with catching cases that they deal with being shipped across the country but that was by a byproduct of being part of the lead team right and he he taught us lessons every single day was a lesson and if you was paying attention you learned the lessons if you weren't you didn't i'm in a block he doesn't we don't live in the same unit and there's a running in a long social media guy getting to argument guy says yo well after lunch i'm like yeah we can get this in right right now. He says, no, after lunch, we go down the library, we can square off, and we can fight.

I said, cool. He doesn't know what gang I'm a part of. So I go to lunch, and I'm sitting the table with Dominic. I see, oh, Dominic, I got beef after lunch. He said, yeah. He said, with who? Told him the guy. And he said, well, I thought he was asking what it was about. He skipped past that. He said, question. He said, can you beat him? I said, no, no, no, check this out. I'm going to go there and I'm going to square up. I'm ready. He said, no, no, can you beat him? I got the knife you gave me, man. I got the club. I'm going to hit him with the club.

Hit him with the move. You're saying, seven taught me these moves. I'm going to wait. He said, man, shut the fuck up. Ask you a question. Can you beat him? The whole table quiet. Because he raised his voice.

It was like, oh shit, you're fucking up. I was like, no. He turned and said, yo, B, you got the fight. You're a monk. You got the back. Your Dre, you watched the door. I made this like, what are you talking about? Do you?

I'm doing. I'm trying to prove myself. Yeah, I thought you'd be proud of me. Like, y'all, I'm in a scrap. I'm about to prove myself. Yeah. He said, motherfucker, we don't take losses. And this ain't about you.

It's about us. And we don't lose. So play your fucking position. Watch the door. Because we don't lose. At no time is this about you? It's about us. I was like, okay.

When you put it that way. You put it that way. Because I was willing to risk getting my ass whipped to prove a point. Right. that I would fight. And what does that do for the reputation of our gang if I get beat up? It damages it.

Right. He wasn't willing to let me lose to make us look bad. And he asked me, he asked me before he put somebody in my place, can you beat him? Had I said yes, he didn't let me fight.

I told the truth and said no. I couldn't beat this man one-on-one. Right. It just wasn't going to happen. You're saying? So he took appropriate measures and he put some money in that he knew it would win. Wow.

So at the end of the day, our gang is undefeated. Not just Andre tried shit. Right. And what happened to that dude? Oh, you guys asked with. I'm curious, were there any white dudes in your gang? No. Really?

Because it was all from the block and there were no white dudes on the block. This is the craziest thing. It's the neighborhood you're from. Yeah. At the time, there was no white guy. It's my neighborhood. Well, I'd take that back. When I was a kid, I was probably in, like, elementary school.

I suppose this kid named Nathan We was cool Came up Making the middle school I'm dating a chick named Pam You know in middle school Like she's your girlfriend For like two weeks

Yeah yeah And that's the longest time Yeah Yeah But it's a long two weeks Yeah And Pam dumped me

Whatever She moved on There's no big deal Then my cousin came And was like Yo Dre Let the white boy Take your girl

And what white boy Said Nathan Nathan They didn't know white boy What of us What are you talking about Nah man white boy took your girl.

I mean, what are you talking about? Then he said, Nathan's white. We're like the eighth grade. No, Nathan's is the third grade. I said, get out of it. What are you talking about? Then I thought about it. His mother was white.

Yeah. His sisters were white. When I actually sat out and thought about it, and I started looking at them in the yard. His name is Nathan, you know? Not even. I mean, I really had to stop and I pondered this shit. Yeah.

And he was white. He turned out to be fully white. He turned out to be his parents. I never saw his dad. Ah. Saw his mom. Right. Saw his sisters.

Yeah. Never saw his dad. But he was just one of us. He was just a poor kid. I've never seen your dad, but I know that you're black. We have light skin people. Yeah, that's fair. There's no dark-skinned white people.

That's fair. That's fair. So in your mind, you're just like, he just one of us. I guess he's white. I only saw, I going by his house. I didn't really went in. Right. But I stopped by the fence and way to his fans.

mom and sisters, but never really engaged them. Right. Oh, that's so interesting. And my whole life, because I'm never around white people. Right. Yeah, you made that comment in the documentary that I thought was interesting, is you were like, who are these people that are being mean to us? Yeah.

How old were you when you, like, met a white person for the first time? Met him and, see, I mean, I guess, like, a friend. You encounter them. You encounter white people as black in America, just by default. But as far as, like, in having a conversation, seventh grade, I hit a girl with a book because she was laughing at me and I was embarrassed

I hit it with a book and my dad get, I don't know if my dad gave me to beat him with my step back gave me to beat him a lifetime because I hit a girl because I hit a white girl. Yeah, yeah.

In elementary school it was white kids in our school because now we're three years in the busing so I'm in class with white kids and they're just kids somebody told me that they were white they're just other kids.

Right, and as a kid you don't have this idea of racial constructs. So we're in class, first grade they're throwing rocks at us, but we don't know why. Right. Third grade, where it's in class and it's just other kids dead

and they just happen to be white. Mm-hmm. You're saying? And you don't think they're white. They just there. Interesting. And then you're finally aware of it around seventh grade when that happens.

I mean, she was just another kid. Literally. Right. First grade, to get to high school, that's what the divide super comes. Oh, that's so interesting. I'm going to predominantly black school.

Right. So white kids are like sprinkled in. Are there a lot of racial segregations within the gangs in prison? Oh, 100%. That's like a real thing. That's real. And how does that work?

So you have like... It goes back to when you come in... Ah, you're blocked. ...is what neighbor you're from. Right. That's in the state prison. And the state prison is what neighbor are you from.

You're with those people. Right. I'm in the state system for like a year. I caused so much havoc that kicked me out and there's something in the federal system.

When I get to the feds, I go to a place called Lewisburg first, off the change. And we leave Lewisburg. There's something in a place called Oklahoma, El Reno.

I get to Oklahoma, and they say, where are you from? They said, oh, you got a homeboy here. All right. They take me all these little blocks and cuts, knock on the door. They say, oh, man, tell Jimmy you got a homeboy here from Massachusetts. I'm standing there. White dude walks out. I'm looking at him like, okay, what's this?

He said, where are you from? I said, Boston. He said, where you come from? I said, Walpole. He's like, you smoke? I was like, yeah. He said, wait right there. He went back inside and came out with his giant bag of food

and cigarettes and he gave it to me. He said, yo, if you need anything, I'm right here. I was like, all right, cool. I went back to my unit. Weird, it was different. Then I ended up at a place called Terrah Hope. Terra Hope was a gladiated school in the 80s for the feds. Indiana, right?

Indiana. So I'm in Terra Hope. I get there. They're like, yo, you got a homie here. Go down to the block, a dude named Eric. White dude. He come out, walked the yard. He's like, yeah, boom, boom.

There was three. It was four of us on the yard from Boston. The other three were white. He's like, yo, if you need anything, boom, poop, boom, you come see me. I'm like, all, cool. And the feds is what states you're from. Interesting.

And the states is what block you're from. So in the states is white, black, white, black, white, black, white, black Latino. And the feds is state. Interesting. And then I remember there was an old, I forget the old dude's name now. It was an old white dude. He was like, oh, like 70-something years old, could barely walk, had thick glasses. But I used to get the newspaper.

So I'd go to the block, pick the old white dude up, and take him out to the yard. Because Terrell's unforgiven. So he just can't go out to the yard. He's only going to get run over. So I would go get him and take him outside, like you do an elderly person. Right. I got this old white guy. I'm sitting on the bench while he's reading the paper, and I'm sitting there with him.

And dude's like, yo, Dre, what you doing with dude? He's my homie. Keep going. That's cool. So you protected him just on the strength of... As long as we're from... In the feds, if you're from the same state or from the same city, you're cool. You're cool.

There's no, what are you doing that white guy? What you're doing that black guy? Right. But in the state, straight racial lines. Interesting. And so how do you work your way up to be, you know, one of the younger guys that's just like running cigarettes to then really running the gang?

We're going to take a break really quick because I got to tell you guys a story. A story that I've told a few times before, but it's extremely traumatic. It's when I was hit by a car. That's right. I ran a stop sign and some guy hit me. And I said, hey, you know what? you can leave. Don't even worry about it. And I wish that I'd call my friends of Morgan and Morgan. That's what I would have done. I would have checked them out because they might have been able to

help me get some money for my injuries. Morgan Morgan is America's largest injury law firm. They have over 100 offices nationwide and more than 800 lawyers. Everything is completely free of charge unless they win your case. That's an insane value. No upfront costs, no sign-up fees. If you don't win your case, you pay $0. Morgan & Morgan will spend millions to see your case through to fight to get the best results. Morgan and Morgan has attorneys who focus on every area of personal injury care, car accidents, slip and fall, workplace injuries, medical malpractice, nursing home abuse. If you're ever injured, you can check out Morgan and Morgan. Their fee is free unless they win. For more information, go to for the people.com slash gagnon.

That's right. G-A-G-N-O-N-G-O-N-G-O-N-G-O-N-G-O-N-G-O-N-G-O-N-G-G-N-G-O-N-E-N-O-P-E-L-G-O-N-E-L-S. Go check them out. Let's get back to the show. When we first get there, I'm underdominit, like everybody else, fast-forward, like a couple months, like eight months. They came and locked their prison down and took everybody out, all the leaders. They came and locked all the leaders up. Don't know what happened. They know who the leaders are.

Oh, yeah, of course. Oh, wow. They come in, lock them up. It's like, you know who the generals are in the Army. They got the thing on the shoulder. Gotcha. Even if you don't know, you know. They came and took all the leaders out,

and doors opened in, it was December 5th, 1987, MCI Walpole. Locked it down, took everybody out. We come out the next day, and we come to the table, and all the leaders are gone. And since I was the closest to Dominic, I became the leader by default. He's the closest to Dominic. You're the boss.

I'm like, okay. And so I was the boss. for about two and a half weeks. I made every bad decision humanly possible. What do you mean? I called work stoppages, food strikes, had people beat. I was just doing every dumb thing you could think.

You're like a bad dictator kind of thing? A horrible dictator. Oh, really? I didn't know what I was doing. So were you doing what you thought you were supposed to do? I was just making up shit. At the end of the day, I think this is what you're supposed to do.

I think this is what you're supposed to do. They people coming up for advice about prison shit. I got eight months in prison. What do I know? Interesting. So I'm giving all bad advice. Then I ended up some dudes from another town told me about something. They got me sent to segregation.

And between me making all the bad decisions and this guy's doing some stuff or some TVs, got me jammed up, they came, they were like, get him out of there. Because he's, the systems know who's running their jails. It's not a secret. Right. And we got a bad leader. Shit goes bad. And I was a horrible leader. I'm in charge of the whole prison by default, clearly by default, not because I earned it.

got the biggest gang, and if you're the leader of the biggest gang, you run it. You run it. So I'm making every horrible decision known to man. Yeah. And just like, then luckily, I got caught up in some stuff and I got sent to segregation. So Dominic came back like a month later. He comes back. The first thing he says is, where's Dre?

He said, oh, Dre down in solitary confinement. He said, what are he doing down there? He said, man, the dudes from that town got him jammed up. He put out of Edie. Everybody from that town off Dior by 6 o'clock. he bought that entire city from the prison. Wow. He said if anybody from that city is in this prison after 6 o'clock stab him,

because one of the guys got me jammed. He said, done. Wow. And they all gone. They gone. They're gone. Six o'clock. Gone.

They all, detective custody, either you're going to do one or two things. Take it to the yard and you're going to lose or find a way to get locked up. Wow. He cleared the entire prison of that city for me. That's wild. And so how did you got out of solid? No, that's when they're shipping to the federal government. What is solitary like?

Solitary is 24 a day, seven days a week in a cell with bars and a solid steel door and no light. No, they have a cell light like in the window, I mean the ceiling, but no out, no window. You're just sitting there. It's a twin bed, a toilet and a sink and like a little bench that you can like halfway by the letter on. I mean, that makes you go crazy. When I was down there, the second time I was down there for two and a half years. Two and a half years?

Yeah. In prison, if you commit a bad act, they'll take before a hearings board in Massachusetts, and they'll give you anywhere from one year to 10 years in solitary. If you kill somebody, they'll give you 10. So I kill you in population. I go before the board. They'll be like, you killed them. 10 years in solitary.

I might have stabbed you two to three years in solitary. Got called a knife, six months to a year in solitary. Try to escape, six to eight years in solitary. Everything came like a little thing. We beat up a guard, four years in solitary. It was like the standard thing. Yeah. So I tried to kill a couple of guys.

It gave me two and a half years in solitary. So I'm down there. There's 15 of us on this row. It's 15 cells. We're in our cells. It's all like tough guys. There's all like solid leaders. And I'm in the cell with chilling.

And over months were at it. Days and days and weeks, weeks, weeks, months. Some guys already been there ahead of me. So the guy in cell one, hypothetical, I would say sell one. Solid dude, big reputation. Everybody knows him. he's down there big jimmy and then month three for me by month 15 for him he starts rubbing shit

on himself and screaming at the moon brain goes a mush then cell two month 15 for him month six for me he starts cutting himself sell three month 17 18 for him month nine for me he start setting his shit on fire while he's in the room, then you just get, you start realizing about month 16 to 19, people start going to mush. So what are you, so you're terrified? Hell yeah, I'm online. So what do you do? It's coming right at me.

So what, you ever see the scary movie when the, when the darkness comes? And it comes and it's like everything's just going dark, dark and it's coming your way. Yeah. I'm like, that's just coming right for myself. At what month do I go crazy? Because I know these dudes. These are solid dudes.

Yeah. And nobody's doing. nothing to them. They left them their own devices, closed the door, no sunlight, looking at a fucking brick wall all day. Yeah, it's an unhuman. 18 months. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, they go insane. So how do you stay sharp? I got a newspaper. Long social, I finally, I said, man, I got to do something. So I started solving the problems in the newspaper to keep my mind active because you really can't talk to nobody. You're sitting in a cell by yourself. And like 15 months of sitting by yourself, not talking to nobody, I guess you start talking to yourself. Right. So I started

solving the problems in the newspaper. So let's take today's news. Russia, Ukraine has a war. I said, if I'm the president of Ukraine, what do I do? From the general in Ukraine, what do I do? If I'm a farming, Ukraine, what do I do? If I'm the neighboring state of Poland, what do I do?

If I'm this person, what do I do? If I'm a citizen in America, what do I do? If I'm the Russian, what do I do? If I'm in this, I would solve the problem from like 20 different vantage points. And it'd keep me up, it takes like three days per problem. Then the next one is a housing crisis. There's a homeless crisis in downtown city X.

Right. So if I'm the mayor, what do I do? From the police chief. If I'm the local CEO of a hospital. If I'm the CEO of a business. If I'm a nonprofit or from an NGO. If I'm the mother of one of these people down there. I mean, I started thinking, if I'm the homeless person, I mean, if I'm this person,

I started solving the problems from 20 different vanish sports. And you're doing this intentionally knowing, oh, if I don't do this, my brain is going to fall apart. I'm seeing it. I see what people are doing. They ain't doing nothing. They're hauling at them. That requires a lot of foresight. No, it wasn't no foresight. I'm seeing

motherfuckers go crazy. But I think that's what makes you special is that you, like you always are observing what people are doing around you and you're learning lessons from them. I had no choice. As best you can. As a kid, I couldn't read or write. I learned by listening and watching. So you see these people go crazy.

I'm seeing good people. I'm not going to go crazy. That I know, no of, go crazy. I'm like, why is he on meds? Right. They're coming down, yo, yo, yo, yo, Jimmy Met time. Jimmy on meds. He's a more solid dude.

Solid dude I know. Wow. And everybody in this block is called 10 block. It's the 60 worst people or the most violent people in the state. So these are the 60 toughest guys in the state. These ain't just so regular guys that just got off the bus. These are guys who try to kill people in jail, choked out of God in jail, try to jump over the wall, handle their business.

These are real people, as we call upstanding citizens in the prison system. And they're going fucking crazy. Now, can you tell me why you try to mess up those dudes that sent you to solitary? Like what happened? Like what did they do that made you want to want to go for them? No, I mean, there's rules in prison. Okay. And I, as much as people get on these things and they talk, talk about prison,

I'll do a thousand prison stories. But what I don't do is glamorized prison. And I don't talk because the people, for me to tell you this story about the people that I hurt, I got to tell you about the people that I hurt. And so I'm thinking if I'm that guy and I'm sitting home watching this podcast, This guy's on here talking about what he did to me. How does that make me feel?

Bad. You're saying? What kind of trauma am I inflicting on him? I'm saying? So I'll say I want to seg for hurting people, but I won't tell the story of what I did to the people. You know what I did? That makes sense.

Or just, yeah, you got to my, jumped over it. I did this, it is, all that. It sounds good. Right. It's a hell of clip. It'll go viral. Right.

But it's going to, if that person sees it, even though we ain't friends, he's still human. And if I say him about helping people, then is this helping somebody, entertaining somebody at his expense? Or their expense, there's a bunch of them. So I don't tell the stories of hurting people.

Respect. I tell the story of when Dominic checked me or they were going to do, my homies who put me online or stuff that happened. Like, we had a dude, what shit happened. But as far as my victims

from in prison for being hurt, I used to. When I, when my early days of speaking, I would talk about it because I was insensitive to them. I'm saying? So I learned over time, like, I don't want to make them relive that pain. I was like, even if you read my book, I mean, people who know me, they know I've been charged

eight times with attempted murder in prison. I've been shipped to nine states. I've been riots on airplanes. I've done a lot of shit in prison. I got caught eight times. I ain't going to say how many I did. I got caught eight. But the baseline is, you read my book, there's no blood.

Nobody bleeds in my book. Right. Nobody gets shot in my book. Nobody gets choked in my book. My book is about a story about my transformation through life. It's not about conage. Right. I'm saying it's not about, I'm saying clickbait.

Right. So you can give my book to an eight-year-old. They can read it and walk away untramatized. Yeah. That's awesome. I'm saying I read some books, man. It's all about hustling and slick this and pimping that and shooting this. And I smack this one and I chopped.

that one and literally. You give my book to an eight-year-old. And they'll walk away with lessons and no trauma. And you think that causes more harm when people glamorize prison or are they glamorize the system or they talk about the things that they did? Do you think some people think that's cool

and kind of fall into that? My son, wonderful kid, he'll listen to a rap song when they're talking about blowing up the city or burning on a block or pimping holes or shooting people or slinging droops, drugs. To him, it's entertainment. it. Right. Because he has a dad and a mom.

Right. But the kid without a dabbing the mom, that's real life. That's why. I want to be that. So for some people who listen to this, they'll say, oh, that's just a story that something Andre went through. Or they'll say, I can do that too. So I make it a point. I tell people, I train people to be speakers.

You can't go to a school full of middle schools and high schools and tell them that you was the most biggest drug deal in your neighborhood, the toughest guy in the prison, knock people out and he finally woke up, found Jesus, and got your life They're not hearing a Jesus spot. They're hearing to you as a drug dealer with the cause and the fame, you was a gangster with the life and the money.

They're hearing that part. Right. So you're responsible for what you say in the interpretation thereof. So if I give you something that you can reinterpret as this is cool, that's all me. I always thought like it was a little unfair the way because like obviously I grew up in like a white suburb and I- Really? What gave it away? The white people part.

Why don't you go up in the Spanish suburb? Yeah, I'm sorry. They wouldn't let you in? Nah, they wouldn't let me in. I have no rhythm. We established that. Yeah, exactly. That's a part of the, I guess, the initiation process.

But no, I, obviously all my friends love rap music. And I thought that there was a little bit of a glamorization of, like, the drill rap that you're talking about. And to me, it kind of felt like the way people used to look at like cowboys, where it's like, they got to watch these guys like Rob Banks and do crime. And they were able to distance themselves, and it was just like a story. It's like these action heroes that they were distanced from. But then I was like, you know, these are real people. Like it dawned on me much later. I was like, oh, no, these are real people, just like you said, in a real situation,

living this every day. Like, this is a real kid that's rapping about this, about his friends and his homies that aren't here anymore. Exactly. Partially due to, you know, the culture that was bred through some of those specific songs and things like that. It's not the music. Music and reflection of the lives that they live or they want to live.

it's the lack of education. If you go and you educate these kids, and education includes love. Right. You're saying, if you can do that, then it's just music and entertainment. Right. If you don't do that,

it becomes a guidepost for life. Right. My son will never think, I'm going to go by an A.K., go on a block and post up and smoke cigarettes and the rest of that shit. Right. You know why?

He has to look at me and talk to me. Yeah. And there's nothing in my continents. There's nothing in my conversation. it's not in his mother's discussion that Lents him believe that that's a real scenario. Right. Yeah, same with me.

That was like Maya Breed. I had never thought that that was an option. Right. No, he doesn't. He'll make the... My son actually makes beats, but he does not believe that that's a lifestyle.

Right. Yeah, that's an interesting distinction. Okay, so I'm curious. I want to know about the redemption part. Like, the epiphany that you had, that sort of was like, all right, I'm going to turn this around. But before, can you tell me the head nod story again?

Oh. You gave it a new name. That's God I was a hungry story. Oh, that was hungry story. Excuse me. I grew up in the system. After a year, I was down in South Dakota for like six months and causing all kinds of havoc. So they sent me to the federal government.

The state called the federal government and said, we can't house him anymore. He's too violent and too incorrigible. And he's going to be a real leader soon. So we want to set him out to you so I can kill him and knock him off before he gets his full potential. Right. Because you could look at me when I was like first coming in and say, well, they listened to him. I don't know why. how come, but they listened to him.

When I first came in the system, people listened to me. I wasn't in charge, but people listened to me. And even when Dominic went away, everybody gravitated to me. Like, they had anointed me the next leader, even though I had no training. It's just natural leadership. It was just, I don't know what it is. They just said, we're listening to him.

So I go through, I get sent to the feds. I do two and a half years in the Fed system. Crazy as I want to be. I come back. Two rides on airplanes, did all the madness. I make back to mass. I'm back in mass. Now, going to the federal government back in the days was huge because they used to send us out there to get murdered or killed. That was the reason they take you from Massachusetts,

put you in the feds, where you're like one of 400,000. You go to a prison, there's 2,000 people. There's one guy from Massachusetts, you. That usually doesn't work out too well. Because the numbers, the gangs, the culture, and if you make one mistake, you've got problems. You're saying? So most people go out there and they start all.

far riding and they make a mistake and they get swallowed up. So when I went out there, I remember my lesson from taking me to the yard with Dominic, but they were like, yo, they had me terrified to make a mistake. So I am so uber conscious about not making mistakes. I'm moving through the federal system. I make it through two and a half years. They kicked me out. I was so out of control.

They kicked me out. They called Massachusetts and they sent me back. So when I come back, my name is like, they used to sit around in prison yard and tell stories. Yo, man, Jay was in prison X and this, this, this. The stories of my stuff would make it back to Massachusetts. And they would sit around the yard and be like, yo, man, Drey putting in work. So when I actually came back, it was like, LeBron James going back to Cleveland.

It was like, he's back. I'm coming home. I'm home. Yeah. And it's like you put LeBron James on the high school team. It's not fair. Right. I'd expect two and a half years in the worst system, the biggest system in the world.

It's easy now. And I conquered. Now you put me back in high school. Running them up. Wow. So I'm in myself. I am in charge. and I should be now, right, and I know what I'm doing.

Right. So I'm in my cell. I got the gang, I'm chilling. I wake up in a damn hungry. I got pulled up to that, so I'm hungry. Let's get something to eat. So I came out of myself, I walked downstairs, I walk up to the gate where the CL's at.

Gave me head nod, he opens the gate. He knows who I am. Walk out in the hallway. I walk down the hallway. He gets right up the hallway. There's another gate where the sergeant sits. Give me a head nod. I walked by him.

He gets down to another gate. Give me that nod. He let me walk up. He gets it sending control where there's this big, in case steel and plastic and plexiglass where they control the whole prison. And across from it is a gate to go to the kitchen. I grabbed the gate, gate the head noddy, open the gate. I walked down the hallway.

It's like this long car to get to the kitchen door. I bang on the kitchen door. The guy slides a little slot back. C.O. He sees this me. He opens the door. I walk in. I'm like, yo, dude's on the grill. I'm like, yo, Jim, man, make me a hamburger.

Make me some fries. Like, all, Dre, they hop to it. I'm chilling. I'm just waiting, right? And then this guy comes walking out from the back. He walks up and he's like, hey, what are you doing in my kitchen? You're not dressed right because they all have to wear white. I got a regular clothes.

What are you doing in my kitchen? You're not dressed right. He's yelling at me. He's like yelling at me. I'm like, dude, check this out. First, all the yelling's not necessary. So let's just stop yelling and talk like men. And second, you can't even back there yelling up.

So he comes and I said, yo, who are you? I asked my time, and who are you? I'm the food service administrator. I'm in charge of this. I ran this restaurant, that restaurant. I'm in charge of this whole kitchen. He said, well, who are you?

There was a song out by Warren G called a regulator. So I'm the regulator. He says, what do you regulate? I said, if you go home or not? And it hit. I said, dude, you're talking tough. You're yelling at me for no reason. You ain't tough.

It don't make sense. It's not necessary. I said, man, I didn't. came out and get something to eat. And you're doing all this wolfing about nothing. And he's looking and he still started. I said, dude, yeah, I said, listen, I could kill you. And if I killed you, right, you'd be dead.

Your wife would miss you, your kids would miss you. I don't have a wife and kids. It's just me. I said, now, if I kill you right now, you're going to go home dead. I'm going to solitary confinement. I'll be back in about seven years. When I get back in seven years,

you'll still be dead. This kitchen will still be here. here. I walk through them to save five locked doors. I just walked through the gear here just now. And everyone in his kitchen is on the exact way I told them to do, except you, and I'm going to get a hamburger. So my question is this. It's not, am I going to get a hamburger? Is this why I get it today? Or do I get it in seven years? That's your call. He's looking at me. He's, because I talk calm. He's looking at me. He has to, on his hip, he has a radio. He got the little orange button on that. He can smash the orange button

and all the troops will come running. He's looking at the radio and he's looking at me. You can smash the button. They're going to take me. I'll be in a whole for about a week. If that, coming down here talking shit to you. He walked over to the grill. He said, yo, dude said, what's up?

He said, make him too. Then he went in the office and he called his wife, sweating bullets. Wow. And how long were you living like that for? We were like, you were just running the prison? For a while. Yeah. It was my turn.

Yeah. And at that point were you... No, I ran to prison until I went back to solitary confinement. Oh, and you went back again. I picked up two more attempted murder cases and I went back to solitary. So I was running at prison until I went back to solitary. I hadn't learned to send people versus Miko.

I like going. Right. A lot of people would send people to go do to I enjoyed going. Because I grew up, and initially I was a guy that got sent. Right. So I got used to being sent. So even though when I became boss, I still wanted to go.

I thought I had to prove something by going. I had to be on the front line. And real leaders stay in the back and let the soldiers do the front line work. But I hadn't learned that lesson yet. Right. So I'm back in solitary confinement. I got another 10 years added my sentence

and I'm sitting down there thinking that I'm winning. I'm the king of the jail. I'm running shit. Yeah. My mom came to see me and she said, how did you get in jail in jail? She said, Mom, I'm working hard. This shit is not easy.

And she said, talking about the trumpet and about some other stuff. Like, mom, your husband was in jail. My father's in jail. I'm running this thing. You should be proud of me. She just walked out crying.

I'm like, she's soft. You know, it was a couple years later when I realized that I was a king of nowhere. That I had done all this stuff, created all this stuff to be nothing. And I had a guy asking one time. You said, yo, you're the boss, right? You see, yeah, can I talk to you for real, for real? He said, if you're the boss, walk out. He said, all these CEO.

you talk shit about, all this staff that you be clowning and punking and chumping, they go home every night. You lock in your cell. If you, the boss, walk out. He said, and that's why I realized I was a king of nowhere. So I came up with a plan and said, I don't want to be in jail no more. I don't want, because it didn't make sense. It made sense to me up until that moment.

I said, I want to go home, I want to be successful, and I want to never come back here. I said, I'm going to go home, go to Harvard, be successful called a day. I went to my friends. I said, yo, I'm going home. I figured it out. Go home, go to Hobbit, be successful. It looked me like I was crazy. They were like, yeah, I'm like, yo, we can do this.

What they really said to me is, y'all, bro, we can only go to the creek. Man, listen, man, we can only go to the creek, man. We can go past the creek, man, we're in trouble. We can go to the creek and we can come back here. Meaning they can go out of the hood, getting trouble to come back to jail. What I'm talking about is past the creek.

Yeah, never coming back. Uh-uh. You were talking about never coming back? man, Mr. Charlie ain't going to like that. You can't talk about never coming back. You can run to the creek. You can even go a little bit up the hill. But your ass better come back here.

Mr. Charlie going to find out. You want me in trouble. Wait, miss who? Slaves. Slaves would want to run away. But they said, we can't go past the creek. Because if we go past the creek, we're in trouble. He told us, we can go to creek, swim a little bit,

but can't go past the creek. I can kind of get away with going up the hill a little bit. I can't leave a plantation never come back. And that's the mindset my friends had. They would, if I came up to my cell and said, yo, man, I got beef with this dude, let's go kill him. They would go with me. And they would help me kill somebody.

Yo, I got beef with this CEO. Let's go fuck them up. They would come with me and fuck you up. Yo, I want to get some drugs in. We're going to flood this whole place with heroin. They would get down with me and flood the place with heroin. I said, let's go home and never come back. They said, no.

they couldn't wrap that their mind around that. Go home and never come back. Nah, I don't know what that looks like. How did you change your mind? How did you switch your mindset? My goal was to be the number guy in the prison system.

When I had the chance to become that and my clarity came and I saw it was a bunch of nothing, I didn't want to be in prison no more. So I sat down and said, well, what do I want to be if I don't want to be this? And I said, I don't want to come back. At first I said, I want to be free.

Now I realized free is just a pocketer. lot of people get to the parking lot and they're technically free. And they have no plan beyond the parking lot so they end up coming back. So I said, I don't want to go to the park lot and come back. I want to go, go, go. So I said, college, I go home and go to college. I won't come back here. I picked Harvard because the only school I knew the name of.

And I just said, I'm going to do this. It's the only school you knew the name? I'm from Boston. I used to ride my skateboard there. Wow. I'm from Boston, never been no college in my life, don't know nothing about college. Only school I knew the name of. Harvard has a train station named after it.

It's Harvard train station. So I scored Central Square and Harvard Square It's on the red line in Boston So if you've ever rode in a train in Boston There's a stop called Harvard Right And you know it's to college Did you know it was like one of the most prestigious universities

No, wow I dropped out of high school I know about prestigious universities Right The closest I came to universities Was in the 11th grade While I was filmed everything I went in exchange student scholarship

I went to Europe for the summer And I came back I met all these super rich white kids from all over the country and I went to go visit the ones in New York and they were talking about going to college and they went on their fathers and they went on their fathers,

it was taking them on college tours and I saw it, but it didn't make sense to me. I didn't really understand what they were doing. So when I picked this school, it was just simply based on I knew the name and where it was. So I didn't understand it was any different than a local community college.

Wow. So now that's your goal. That's the target. And I got a thing with a challenge. If you challenge me, I win. If you challenge me, I'll wait you out. I will beat you down. It's not the one who inflicts the most pain and who endorse the most pain that wins.

Shout out to Jihad Lloyd Wright, who's past. He said, Dre, it's never the one who inflicts the most pain. It's the one who can take the most pain. So I've learned to take the most pain. And I can take a beating, I can take a no, I can take a denial, I can take rain, I can take sleet, I can take snow, I can take misery, I can take low,

loneliness, I won't lose because I don't quit anymore. You used to? I used to. Once I learned, my biggest thing wasn't depression, wasn't a crazy family. My father taught me to quitting was okay. Yep. And once I fixed that quitting gene, I don't quit anymore. So I can, if it's, it took me 25 years to actually get to Hoffett.

I never blinked. I never once said I'm not going. Really? It never wavered in your mind. Never once. Wow. Okay. So you're, you have this sort of like,

mindset change. That just happened, I guess, naturally, seeing what the eventual road, you know, of your actions would lead to. And you were like, I don't want this anymore. But you still have all these years and these charges racked up and the whole deal. So how do you get out? I looked in the mirror. I said, what's inside of me to stop this from happening? I'm black. I'm a gang member. I'm violent. I got 105 years. I'm saying, I just picked up two attempted murder charges. I'm saying, I got anger issues. I got a family that doesn't support me. I got, I'm a high school dropout. I made my list.

And I started working on it. Went back to school, got my GED. Went to anger management classes. I went to the law library, taught myself to law and became a lawyer. I started going to self-help groups. I started going to college. I started behaving myself instead of hurting myself.

I started mediating beats instead of starting beefs. I put myself on that pathway. All in prison. In prison. And my best friend, when I met on an exchange student program, she's my best friend to this day, when she picked her college,

she was Miami. She picked Brown. University, which was like 10 minutes down the street from my prison, so she can come see me. And she would come see me like once or twice a week. We're sitting in a vivant one day. And she said, we're dumb conversations. And conversations come up by hitting a girl. I said, if you hit me, I'm hitting your back.

She said, what if it's a girl? I said, if you hit me, I'm hitting your back. That's my mother taught me. She said, you can't hit a girl. She's not as strong as you. I said, listen, if she's done enough to hit me, I'm hitting the back. If she thinks she's tough enough to hit me, and we went back and forth, we agreed to disagree. And she went home to Brown University.

I went back to myself. I said, Dre, you want her life. You want to be where she's at. You want to be hanging out with her. She just come back from Tahiti. I don't know what hell that is, but she went.

And she's living her life, traveling the world, even though she had rich parents, but she's living her life. I said, dude, your life sucks. You don't like it, but you're doubling down on your mindset. Instead of opening yourself up to what she's saying,

And maybe if you think like her, you might get what she got. I'm like holding to the thing that hasn't worked for me. Right. And she's living her life, the life that I want to live. But I'm trying to live her life with my thinking. But it's scary because I guess if you are, someone imprints on you a way to live in a rulebook and a recipe for life, and it's not getting you the results you want,

but it's the only thing you know is scary to let go of that and take on something else. It wasn't scary. You just need, she loved me. We've been best friends. We've been cool. It's nothing but all. It's all good. You can trust her. Yeah.

It's just that I had to sit and say, here's my thinking, and this is what it got me. This is her thinking. This is what it got her. Which one do I want? Yeah. I'm willing to make the change. The hardest part about change is changing. That's the hardest part about changing, actually making the change.

Yeah. Rationalizing it, thinking it through, making it make sense is easy. Making the change is the hard part. So what does everyone your gang think when you're like, all right, I'm going to learn law, I'm going to go to these classes and everything like that. I'm changing up. They didn't go. I went by myself.

But if you're leading the gang, what do they think is going on? Well, what happened is I passed my responsibilities off to my number two. And I kind of like stepped aside. And I told him, I'm going to help you, support, you, advise you, whatever you need. I'm your guy. I'm going to make sure that you win. I started going to do my thing. And the six years that I put in, I put in a lot of work, as they say.

I went through a lot of stuff. And I never blink, never backed down, went through. stuff most guys had never been through in our state. Surviving two and a half years in solitary, two years in the feds and all. Surviving the stuff I survived wasn't easy. And then leading the way I led was noticeable. So I'm going to school every day, programs every day.

People think I went crazy. Ah, because they didn't know what happened. The word was, Dre snapped. Dre crazy. Dre probably on meds. The time got to him. The time got to Dre. He just snapped.

The same way I watched some same solid guys go crazy and solitary, and I didn't think bad of them. I felt bad for him. People thought the same thing about me. Dre snapped. He thinks going to programs are going to change his life. These guys rubbing shit on himself, think he's going to do something. Or he thinks going to go in the program going to change his life.

He didn't go, Drey went crazy. And one day I was going to, I was coming back from a program or going to guys. They were all outside walking by the homies. He said, yo, yo, Dre, what's up? I'm going to program. For what, man? I said, man, I'm trying to work on some stuff. They said, dude, you're the smartest dude in prison.

You are literally the smartest dude here. Why are you going to programs? I said, man, me and my dad don't get along, man, and stuff mess my head up. I got to go work on that. Dude said, now, why are you really going? Now he's challenging me. Yeah. I said, man, dude, I'm telling you, man, I'm trying to work on my stuff.

They said, nah, now, what's really going up in that program building? He's, oh, my God, I said, me explain some to you. I'm going to programs. I'm going to counseling. And there's one or two things I'm going to talk about. I'm going to let you choose. I need to go to counseling and talk about me and my dad not getting along, him not being there and how it hurt my feelings,

and it's affected my life. I can go back to the unit, get my life, come back and stab you in the face and talk to the counselor about some idiot trying to get in my way of talking about my dad. You make the call, but I'm going. He said, man, Dre, that's fucked up what the father did to you, man. You need to fix that. I said, you sure.

I said, man, I'm like, all right, cool. And I kept going to counseling. I would die for mine. See, going to counseling don't make me weak. Yeah. You don't make me soft. Don't make me not dray. You're saying, if I got to kill you to go to counseling, then fuck it.

I'm going to kill you and go to counseling. They got counseling in solitary. Right. You ain't going to dictate my life. You ain't going to dictate my life on me. You ain't going to tell me shit. I've been running this shit my whole way. How the fuck, you're going to tell me anything about how I'm going to live.

I'm saying And it's the same thing When I got a mentor I got an orthodox Jewish rabbi as a mentor And my mentor Natan He taught me how to be accountable Be responsible To be giving

To be a servant To be human Nobody ever taught me to be human What do you mean by that? I taught shoot them stab him Kill him Who gives a fuck about them

Keep going That's what they taught me since birth It's all about survival It's never about collection It's not about us making it's about you making it So Natan taught me it was about people. It's about helping. It's about serving.

It's about the greater mission. It's about being a better person and all this other stuff. And I liked it. And nobody ever taught me this before. Fast forward, I ended up joining the church. You're saying, I went to parole. I got parole. April of 99.

Three months later, I went to a program and I got saved this, they say. And the first thing God told me is I gave you parole. He said, had you asked me that anybody said to me, Drake, going in and pray to God and he'll give you parole, I guarantee it. I said, no, I walked in him, walking out of here. I ain't asked somebody to get in here.

I asked somebody to get out of here. So I went in to parole, and I got it. Three months later, I go to the church. I joined the church. And the first thing God said to me was I gave you parole, but it was two damn stubborn and taking the other way. So long story short,

I'm in the church now. And all these dudes who I didn't deal with before, and now in my circle. I'm in the church circle. And I'm hanging out the rabbi every Wednesday. So one of the dudes was like, yo, man, you can't hang out the rabbi.

I said, why? They said, he's going to hell. I said, why is he going to hell? Oh, he won't confess Jesus is His Lord and say, it's always going to hell. And you can't be around people who ain't like us. I was like, huh? They're like, yeah, yeah, you don't know anything about this.

I know you're doing Christ, man. You're just a babe and you're still drinking milk, man, all this other. I'm like, huh? The church talk. I said, listen, man, me explain something to you. that man you're talking about when you wouldn't come up

a thousand feet near me he sat with me every Wednesday when you wouldn't say booed to me that man taught me lessons on how to be a person and now you're telling me he's going to hell I'm not going to argue that part because it might be true wherever he go for eternity I love to go sit next to him

I'd be honored to sit next to him and as far as your ass go you want to see Jesus I can get you there today I know people around here you want to go see Jesus motherfucker No, no, Dre, no. I don't ever think that your bitch ass can pick my friends.

See, what happens is people get in these different lanes and roles and they want to control and leverage, man. Listen, man, I don't care you to see you over company. You're a grown man. I don't care if you're in the church, you're a grown man. I don't care if you to do that at the restaurant's serving tables, you still are grown man.

Everybody grown. You talk to people like they're people. You don't talk to people based on their positions. And that's how I feel. I'm saying? So I've always been, I want to cheat code for prison. Cheat code for prison.

One of the things that kept me alive for 14 years and out of a lot of bullshit is I was kind to everybody. I was never disrespectful. I remember I was walking through the hallways one time and the homie was bigger than me, was older than me, more senior. And a dude tried to say some,

get the fuck out of here. They screamed on the dude for nothing. And I was like, whoa. He was just like, where the teen? Fuck everybody. That was attitude. You see, like you Detroit bad boys.

Where the team? Fuck everybody. It's us against the world. That was his attitude. That was never my attitude. So I was, I say hi to people. How you doing? What's up?

All that. And when I became boss, I always kept that attitude. All the little nobody dudes, the little scrub dude, the little bitch-ass dudes, they would hear everything. And because I was kind to them, not a bully and an asshole, they would tell me everything. Yo, Drey, man, you know, dude's plotting. You know, you know, dudes, they stay dropping stuff in my head about what's going on around the jail.

But if I was an asshole, they'd be waiting for me to fall. Right. They'd be cheering for me to fall. Like, yo, I hope they get them. They're plied on them. Yes, let's go watch. But you weren't even doing that on purpose. You just wanted to be kind.

I used to be a little dude. I was 5'1 when I started high school. I hate bullies. Yeah. I was 5'1. I was like 4-11, 4-10 off of middle school. I hate bullies. I was looked over, looked past, disregarded most of my life.

I hate bullies. So I don't know how to be mean to somebody. Right. It ain't in me. Right. Now, can I fuck you up? Yeah, if there's a reason, but I never just did it for fun. It's always justified.

It was a reason. Yeah. I'm saying? It was combat because it had to be combat, not just because I was bored. Right. You're never a bully. Never a bully. Can't find nobody on the planet said I bullied him.

Right. So now what happens on November 19, 1999? November 19th, November 15th. Try to give me four extra days, motherfucker? You're working for the man? See, that's what I would these white people? You're trying to give me four extra days.

You work, see? I think it was November 25th, actually. No, you're trying to give you 10 extra day. How are you fucking with you, man? That's your comedy? That's bad comedy. Boo! I'm not going to disagree with you because you are,

you're scaring me, bro. Yeah, yeah, you be scared, motherfucker. You're trying to give me four more days. No, no, November 9th, all right? I'll get you back. No, you're leaving earlier. Give me mine. Yeah, yeah, you're good.

No something. November 15th is my day because it's my day. I went to the parole board in April of 1999 and I got parole. I was supposed to go home in May. I didn't go home. My God Gordon Haas prayed for me to be there

to go to that program and get saved. And I was. And then they held me for another six months after that, five months. I was supposed to go home in May but I didn't go home until November because the system refused to release me.

Me and the C.O.s, me and the directors, we was all beefing. We ain't letting them out. He's a criminal. He's bad. He's bad for society. He tricked the pro board. We went around the circles. But in the end, they finally, instead of like I'm going to May, let me go in November.

Had I gone home in May, it had been a month before the summertime. 14 years being locked up, I'm due a summer. Well, I'm going to shine. I'm going to get me a drop top, some jewels, and be out in the park. I'm going to go shine. And I'd have spent May, June, July. August, floss and inflection. Now, September, I'm going to go to school.

I got out in November. It's cold as shit. I hate the cold. It's holidays, so you're in the house, anybody around, and came right out of the holidays. I was in college in January. Wow.

Timings everything. Right. So it goes back to my lawyer. That's happening a few times. Had you not crossed me, I wouldn't have to jail. I won't wish this on nobody, but timing matters.

Had I came home in May, like I was supposed to, I'd have been in those streets hard for four months. But because I came home in November, I was with my family. I was locked indoors because it was cold outside. And it gave me, I volunteered to the juvenile center every day.

So you immediately start giving back. 90 minutes. But had it been summertime, I don't know if I'd went every day. What do you mean 90 minutes? Prison, parole office, youth center. 90 minutes after I walked out of prison, I was in a youth center talking to kids.

Wow. And what do you, what's motivating you to go to a youth center? We used to bring the kids up to the prison and talk to them from the youth center. So when they found out I was going home, they asked me to come by the youth center and talk to them. So I gave my word.

I'd come by. So when I came out, they said, yo, Dre, where you want to go? I said, take them to the youth center. I kept my word. And what do you tell the kids the first 90 minutes that you're out of prison? The first 90, I just told them, man,

they knew me from being at the prison. There's some kids who didn't know me. I told my story growing up and what I did and I want to do, and I made it home doing great, they clap. And they said, Dre, will you come back tomorrow? I came back the next day. I couldn't tell her my life story.

I already told them that. So I told me another story. They clapped. I said, Dre, where you come back tomorrow? I went there for like 30, 40 days in a row. Know what they made me do? Become a master storyteller. Prior to that, I had told one story.

Going to that youth center for like 45 days in a row. Got to have new material. I became a master storyteller. Wow. These kids were like, really hungry for lessons and entertainment and engagement I tried to tell a kid the same story twice

I heard it can't oh yeah these kids are harsh so it made me become a master storyteller I'm telling stories about hygiene about finance about thinking about this I'm just I became a master's I had to stay in for like two hours with 35 kids

who were like 14, 15 in lockup and keep them engaged and that's about 45 days I was a master storyteller didn't even know it Wow. It's just repetition. Repetition. I had to come up with new stuff every day. When did you see your mom for the first time after you got out? It's probably three days.

Wow. And she knew you were out? I don't know if I caught. Probably. I got out. I would say that at a group home because I didn't want to go to her house. Oh, why not? Love my mother. Me and my mother in the house together for 18 years equal to me going to prison. Not her fault. Not my fault. I'm going to let's do the math.

Andre and mom, same house for 18 years, equaled Andre and If you two are the same people, there's going to be conflicts. No, that's not. I had no conflict with my mom. Oh, really? Me and mom had no conflict. But me and mom in the same house for 18 years didn't stop me from going to prison. How do you want to look at it?

So why am I going to do the same dynamic again? Let me go someplace with some people who are professionals at keeping people out of prison. My mother will love me back to prison. Most people's mothers love them back to prison or back to drugs. It's called enabling. My mother's an enabler. She's going to help her child. way she thinks is best, which

technically isn't a professional way of helping me. I need a professional help. So I went to a professional program. United States focused and leveled up. Every day, went to that center. And the cool thing about going to the center, I came home, cheat code on staying free. When you do a lot of time in jail, you come out,

the world's moving 100 miles an hour. You're moving at minus two. So everything's moving too fast. You can't keep up. And you just, the ATM's talking to you, the bus is talking to you, cars are parking themselves now. People walk around with air pieces in. You're like, do you think they're on another planet?

Different world. You're saying? Electric cars, no gas. They're like, what's going on? White people jogging through the hood, all kinds of stuff. So I'm like, man, you know where I found my piece? At the youth center. I went to the youth center.

Know what it was? It was a locked building. I walked into a locked building. Guess what I was comfortable in? Locked buildings. Right. There was no phones. There was no moving cars.

There was no talking ATMs, no talking buses. None of that. It was a locked building. I knew what to expect. I understood the vibe. I understood the energy. So for those three hours, I was volunteering at the center, I could center myself and calm myself.

To go back out for another 22 hours of fast-paced madness. And I'd come back to the center for two, three hours and calm myself. Because I was safe inside that building. That's so interesting. You spend so much time incarcerated that your brain, I guess, kind of adapts to being more comfortable. It's not so much adapts.

I take you from no exposure. Right. And I throw you out into the world. It's too much stimulation. It's too much stimulation. Where do you go to find peace? So for me, the juvenile center was my peace. And probably like five or six times,

I literally got in my car about 10 o'clock at night. I drove out to the max. It was probably like 45 minutes outside of the city. MCI Wallport. And I sit up on the highway and I had to look over the wall into the prison at the housing units. And I had to sit in the car

and I look because all my friends were in there. And I would sit on the highway outside of the prison like an hour, maybe an hour and a half. And just like, not talk to my friends, but like just look at the prison. And I would turn around and drive back to the house.

That was your whole world, really. I've done that like four or five times. I just drive out there 10, 11 o'clock at night and sit outside the prison. It was like the highway that went by the prison. but you can see from the highway over the wall. I drive out to Nisit. It was like, man, that was my connection to my guys.

Wow. And then how quickly thereafter do you start Academy of Hope? Like, what's the journey there? I started youth centers. Then I got a name around the city for being a really good speaker and kids listen to me. And then a guy hired me in the neighborhood to work with him. And I learned how to do a lot of stuff there,

write grants, do trainings, do accounting, program design. We did $25 million in nonprofit grants. We helped create the Office of Faith-B-Based Community Initiative to George W signing the law. We created programs for Canada, for Brazil, for London, like, seven other countries. We're working at Harvard Law School. I'm speaking on campus. I'm not working at, but I'm speaking on campus. I'm engaging at the university.

And we're just like, we're on light speed. I'm creating programs for other gang members and for gang kids. And we're just on light speed for four and a half years. Never stopping. From day one, I didn't stop. Right. This is the thing. When I came home and I went to this guy and he gave me a job, he says, what do you want?

I said, I want a house. I want a car. I want to be able to hire my friends who will actually get the job done. So he got me in this big house. At this big colonial house in Boston, there was like five bedrooms, three floors in the basement. I'd go to work from like 8 o'clock to 5 o'clock. I'd cut home. My house is empty.

Nice house, but it's empty. Haiti being alone. I'd go back outside. Work to like 10 o'clock. Come back home. Guess what? House still empty. Go back outside.

Come home at 2 o'clock in the morning and pass out. I get up at 8, go back to work. I did it every day for four and a half years. Wow. So I hate being in the house by myself. You got a lot of stuff done when you're constantly outside. People are like, this dude, this doesn't want to stop. I would go home, and it's the worst feeling in the world.

And I still do. I still deal with that to this day. I live by myself for the most part. Were there any habits that you built or formed in prison that you still do now, similar to that? like things that you just do on a regular basis that you just like small things in your home that you're like

I mean I could sit in a cell forever and not be blank so I sit in the airport see people crying and complain I'm like do I just sit in two by four foot cell I got TVs, radios

iPhones, cables, cables, lounges, my coffee machines, restaurants right man what's y'all talking about this is a problem

so you're patient you can just you can chill it's not even patient I'm good yeah I used to do this with nothing right you'm saying now put a phone in front man I'm chilling.

I got a TV in front of me on the plane. My bed lays down. My teeth lays to a bed. They're bringing me meals. I'm like, what are you all complaining about? Right. I can sit on this plate with 20 hours. Wow.

But for me, patience and never forgetting what it's felt like to just be invisible. And I want to help other people be not invisible. So I was literally just in Currosol. I'm in Curisaw for a week. I gave my speech. I went down to give a speech with some people from Holland. I got on stage, I gave my speech. A lady who was local stood up

because they flew everybody in from Holland. She said, hey, that's a great speech. We think you're a great guy. We got kids on this island that need to hear that message. We have an event a couple weeks where you come back and speak. I said, cool.

Got off stage, it turned into go to the prison. They called the prime minister of the country who was on his way to the airport. He authorized me to go into the prison, which is against the rules because I'm out of the country, he's all this background check.

he let me in on her say so. Wow. I go to the prison. The day I'm leaving. It's the next day. It's Wednesday. I'm leaving at 5 o'clock. It's 9 o'clock I'm at the prison.

The guy says, hey, man, we really need you here. I said, if I stay for a week, we let me in every day. He said, yes. I called my assistant. I canceled my flight. I was going on vacation.

My first vacation in four years was last week. I canceled it, and I stayed and I went to prison every day. Wow. I said, my life has three things. I'm a Harvard fellow. an honorable son

and I impacted mass incarceration if my life does not line up with what I say I am, then I'm a fraud so I had a choice of go on vacation and do me or stay there and impact people in prison's lives you're about to work I stayed and I worked in prison for a week

went to the schools and tried to stop kids from going to prison and I was there for a whole week every single day in a foreign country not at the beach not on a tourist thing in a prison talking to people helping them get better And what are you doing tomorrow? Tomorrow, tonight, I'm driving two and a half hours after this up to Knessaki, New York, to speak of the prison. Wow.

Because people inside need to be told and they need to be shown that there's a way out. And for me, my thing is I want to help people get out of prison. All prisons aren't penitentiaries. Some people are acting in prisons of addiction, bad relationships, you know what I'm saying? Bad choices, bad jobs. thinking, I'm saying, they want out, they just don't know how to get out. I've broken free from some of the biggest prisons.

I want to help people break free from prisons. My mind used to be prison was people locked in a cell. That's when I thought small. Now my mind says it's people locked behind trauma and addiction and heart feelings. Those are actually harder to bust out.

Right. Because they're more entrenched. Yeah, it's deep, it's in you. It's in your brain. It's internalized. Yeah. So you can take someone that has like drug addiction problems and you can sort of map your experience within penitentiaries and understand, oh, this is how you're stuck in this cycle and you can help them get out of it. When you meet somebody who's living in trauma, addiction, negativity, bad relationships, bad jobs. Bad job could be $400,000 a year job. It's going to be bad for you.

Right. And so it's not how much you make. So it's not everybody works in Home Depot got a bad job. Sometimes that's a great job. Right. It's who you are in your life and in your mind. I've been through many years of isolation, many years of depression, many years of neglect,

many years of trauma. I've seen and been through so much stuff that when I sit with somebody, I just listen. I'm a professional speaker, but I'm a real listener. I listen better than I talk. And I listen to what you're saying,

what you're not saying, what you're admitting, I'm saying, what you're exuding. and I speak to that. I don't speak to your potential. If I talk to your potential so waste of time because your pain is blocking it.

But if I talk to your pain and I move that, then your potential does what it's supposed to do. It is so much easier to talk to somebody's potential. Oh, you're a comic. Let's talk about Jim Belushi. Let's talk about Eddie Murphy.

Let's talk about Dave Chappelle. Let's not talk about the time your mother didn't come get you for your birthday. She left you on the corner. Let's not talk about your sister dying in the street. Let's not talk about

those things those things are hard right so let's just talk about if I can potential you enough maybe you hurdle your pain and it never works yeah you can't you can't shake the stuff unless you're addressing it head on so I don't worry about your potential right I don't care what you want to be it doesn't me help you be who you're not but you're trying to be so now that you're out of the system I'm curious if I were to give you a billion dollars and I was like okay make the the perfect prison what is the right prison for people that have offended the perfect prison you gave me a billion dollars and said, Drey, make an impact.

I want to cancel prison. I want to fix prison. I would go to every daycare center, every K through one school in America, and I would fix it. You couldn't do it a billion dollars. But give me a city, you say, hey, Dre, here's Detroit, Michigan.

Here's a billion dollars. How do you spend it on prison reform? Prison reform isn't intervention, it's prevention. If I can stop people from coming, the people inside will just take care of themselves. So you go to the K-1s, you go to the preschools,

and you make those so solid that those kids would never end up in prison. Right. Then anybody in jail, either ages out and dies or they come home. You got to fix it at the root. If you say to me,

Trey, there's a thousand guys in this prison, there's a thousand kids in this day kid center. What do you do? Save the babies. Yeah. 10 out of 10 times when I go into prisons

I tell men to their face I'm about saving the babies ahead of you yeah grown man you had a choice you made choices might have been the best might have the best inputs but those babies deserve a first chance so I will save babies over grown men

any day of the week right now I'm curious this is the last thing I'll ask you because I know you gotta I know you gotta get out of here what can I do I'm a 26 year old white kid like why I got to be the white kid

like I noticed it's your wife I did not think you were not white. So what is the preference on being a white kid? Because I'm just, I guess I'm distant. I don't really know anyone that's been to prison. Yes, you do. You don't know me? Okay, that's fair. That's fair. That's fair. What is this? But today, but today, I don't count. No, that counts. That counts. After

today, okay, I know like... Are you married? I am. You just faking the ring. No, no, I'm married. Okay, so you met it the first day. Then what? Did you just, you just kicked it to the curb? Nah, and then I married her and then I dated. You kept it going. Yeah, I kept it going. So what you say? So you know

this works. Okay. So why does it work in the white people than us? I'm going. I'm going to keep this going. No, you don't. Yeah, I will. I will.

Hold me to my word. I'm going to keep this going. But I'm curious, like, what can I do? Like, if I'm a 26-year-old kid, what... There you go. 26-year-old man. You're not a kid anymore. 26-year-old man, that's a good point.

26-year-old man. What can I do to help prison reform, help kids that are struggling? Like, how can I actually make an impact? I say this. If anybody who's watching this or is going to hear about this wants to make a difference.

Step one, save the babies. There is a grade school. There's a kidney garden. There's a daycare. With some poor kids in it who are under-served, undeveloped, in need, you can go to a daycare center

in your neighborhood and say, yo, this is a for-profit business or non-profit, doesn't matter. There's a bunch of little babies in here, five, six, seven years old. You just say, you know something? I'm going to go down there, meet the director of this site,

and say, I want to support your site. I want to buy some books. I want to buy some trainings. I want to pay for your staff to do X. Know something. I'm an accountant. I'm going to help you with you.

I want to do your accounting for you. Whatever is it. Start there. Little kids are so easy to work with because they smile so bright. I'm saying there's nothing better than a little kid smiling at you. So if you go find a daycare center or K1 through third grade in your area or inner area and you can help it, it'll be so gratifying. You send me 10 thank you letters a week.

Because you would feel that good. And it's a lot easier to work with a seven-year-old who's trying to get his life together and trying to work with a 26-year-old who's trying to get his life together. It's drastically different. Different skill set, different outcomes, different algorithms.

Go to the babies first. If you want to do something in prison, this thing right here is new technology. They have tablets. There's a company called Eventive that puts these tablets in the hands of prisoners. If you have a classroom in a prison, it can fit 100 people.

but the prison holds 2,000 so you can never get everybody in the class. This puts the class in their hand. During COVID, lockdown, you can't get out to use the phone, can't come out for a visit, you can do it right here. You're saying?

So fighting over TVs, fighting over the TV room, TV right here. Privacy phone call right here. Everything you need right here. I'm saying, so technology is real. If somebody wanted to be helpful, you're a comedian.

I love to get some of your stand-up stuff. Take it and put it on here. So guys can laugh. I mean, we need to laugh in jail. They need to laugh because it's stressful sometimes. Yeah. So if you and your community and friends want to do some skits, we can just go, boom, put them right on here.

Just donate some content and we can put it on there. You sing, give me a song. I put it on there. I mean, that's great. How can I do that? Just call me. Yeah. I will.

That's a great idea. Yeah. So I mean, I'm into like low threshold, low barrier, no stress, something that's doable, easeable, manageable. I don't want you to like to go sell off your house and go try to save the kids on the south side of town. No. It's no something you're a comedian. You got this podcast. We take these podcasts. We can put it on here. Hey, I got 30 podcasts. I'm going to give them to put them on the platform. And guys in jail, girls in jail can see this platform. See this my stuff. I got some stuff I take

when I was a comedian. I got some friends I know this thing. Whatever the thing is. Yeah. We don't need dollars. We need people. Yeah. Now, I'm curious. I've always heard people do like, oh, pen pal programs and writing to people. You can email them on here. Would that be helpful? Yeah. They have these. You can email them right here. If you want someone to email, pen pal, nobody writes letters. They do texts.

You can send a text and email right off this thing. Wow. So if you want to email somebody and just stay encouraged, send them prayers, send them affirmations, send them quotes, send them pictures. I'm saying? When I send homies, they want to see pictures of me at the beach, me and first class on the plane, me sitting here with you, stuff they can't see. And this is a thing.

It's content made for them. Right. It's not content made for the theater or for the night. Netflix or for Amazon where they watch it. He asks a cool show. This is one of theirs. Yeah. Doing stuff for them.

He sat in a cell just like this. And I'm talking about, yo, this is us. Right. And I'm showing them what can be. So if you guys say, hey, well, what can I do? I do content. I'm going to India in two weeks. I'm going to be running around India with a camera.

Just taking videos and pictures of me in India. I'm going to tag me after Taj Mahal. Yo, this is real. You know what I'm saying? Me on G-road. Me around this. Me in India. Right.

Me and Curisaw. We in Amsterdam. This is stuff that they'll exposure is everything. Yeah. So if somebody on here is in a great place or a great city, invite me out, man. We'll come out to your city and we'll film it. Yeah. I don't care what city it is.

You can be in Des Moines, Iowa. I'll come. Wow. You know what I'm saying? Because the brothers ain't seen it. Right. The homies ain't seen it. And they want to see one of theirs going places.

I come to Montana. I've been to Helena, Montana. Yeah. There's a little kid out there having a struggle. I went out to go see us. Shout to Helena Montana. You're saying, Salt Lake City. I help white kids, black kids, Spanish kids,

Asian kids, poor kids, rich kids, I don't care. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I help people. It started out, I helped black people because that's why I was comfortable. Right.

Now, I'm a little bit more mature. I just help people. Yeah. So if anybody's watching and say, yo, can we do? Set it up, listen, we want to film in Ireland. We want to film in China. We want to film in Germany.

We want to film all over the world so we can put it on here and they can see what's possible. Wow. That video is going to go on here. here. Yeah. They were like, whoa, Dre's in the submarine. I want scuba diving. Me, I had an underwater camera dude with me.

So do they all know you? Like, got all these different prisons. They're about to. Well, they got 650,000 people know me. Right. I used to go speak in the prison, a hundred guys in the audience. And I make one video, 650,000 people in the audience. Yeah, that's crazy. I reach far better. Right. So I can't speak everywhere in person,

but this makes it equal. And now people are probably writing to you being like, oh, I just saw your video. Like, man, people come home. They're like, yo, Dre, I watch your videos I was inside. Man, I'm encouraged. I'm going to do something.

I get that all the time now. Now, were you, were you uncomfortable when you all of a sudden got sent all over the world and you went to India for the first time? Or you went to France for the first time? I've been to 24 countries. They sent me across. I went across a prison tour.

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. USP Lewisburg, USP, Tehrahoehl, USP, Atlanta, FCI, Reno, FCI Memphis FCI Talladega I didn't have been

in so many prisons I can't remember name them no more Wow So why if I can travel on prison planes I can travel

first class Yeah it's a little nicer Yeah you know what I'm saying A little nicer This is

This has just been so cool I really appreciate you sharing your story And breaking all the stuff down I saw just today you released an episode of your podcast

Yeah Can you talk to me about that And just like What's going on here Where can people find it Like The podcast

It was released today is on Apple Play Any place you listen to our podcast It's put Honor Norman Day 1 and it'll pop up And it's me with another gentleman Who's from New York Who did about 22 years

And while he's inside He went to college and got a degree He came home He's doing phenomenal work And the thing is We shot that podcast Walking through the streets of New York I got an interview with him

Me and him just walking around New York There's not us sitting in the room But it's people want to see They want to see stuff Yeah, yeah. This is a nice set, but people want to see stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They want to see buildings.

They want to see cars. They want to hear horns. Right. Food, everything. Food, all that. So, yeah, that brother, Jewel. Shout out to Jews from New York from Brooklyn. Came home.

He's doing phenomenal stuff. And we just want to give people shoutouts, man. Let people see that success as possible. Yeah. And I'm going to read your book. What's the name of the book again? I ain't fuck with you. I'm going to read it, bro.

I'm telling you. Don't tell me this. It's like my dad now. Making false promises and shit. I'm going to take you. I have no 26-year-old white dude, fake I'm thinking like being my father. Why do I got to be white now?

Why now why do I got to be? Because that's what you claimed that. I am going to read it. But what's the name of it again? Ambassador Hope, turning poverty in prison to a purpose-driven life. Yeah. And they can get that on Amazon.

Amazon. The only place we rock is Amazon. I don't rock with Jeff. If you ain't number one in the business, I'm not on a little side show stuff. I rock with Jeff in Amazon. Yeah. Well, man, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me.

This means a lot. I really appreciate you. For sure. That's been the episode. Thanks.