Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 140 - Remi Adeleke

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

Remi Adeleke was born in Western Africa and moved to New York City with his mother and brother following the death of his father. In 2002 he joined the U.S. Navy, ultimately completing the grueling training to become a member of the select U.S. Navy SEALs. Since completing his military service,  Remi has had successful careers in writing, speaking, and films. He appeared in the 2017 franchise film Transformers: The Last Knight, and served as the lead technical advisor on the Netflix production 6 Underground. Remi also partners with City Hope in La Mesa, California, where he mentors at-risk and inner-city youth.

My guest today is awesome. He is a former Navy SEAL who happened to be born in West Africa and then moved to New York City with his mother and brother's brother following the death of his father. 2002, he joined the U.S. Navy ultimately completing Bud's basic underwater demolition slash seal training. His name is Remy Adelecki. And let's just say that his seal service was the beginning of who this person is. He's worked in Hollywood. He's an accomplished author now. He's working on screenplays.

He is awesome. I am super humbled to call this man, my friend. And I'm going to shut up. Episode 140 with Remy Adelecki in joy. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on one of a minute. Can't be clear not. I think the most important place we can start is talking about Ryan Reynolds,

because you said you did technical advising for six underground. He seems to be an awesome dude. He's a good dude, man. Like, he's a straight-up dude. Like, the way he is in films is the way he is in person. Okay, that's what I was hoping. I was hoping that he was identical, camera on or camera off. Because people ask me about Joe.

That's how Joe is. He's exactly the same. Yeah. No, he's that way. He's cool. He's super respectful. He's down on earth. Literally, I was just like, man, this is a regular dude.

And I've gotten that, like, I work with Mark Wahlberg on Transformers. And he was the same way. And, you know, become surprising the more you work with these guys to just see how regular and down to earth they are, you know, family guys. Yeah, because they get to this place, right, where in money, not an issue anymore, opportunity, not an issue anymore. And it seems like some of them are like, you know what, fuck everybody else. And here's an interesting thing I found.

It hasn't been like the super big stars, like the people who have been like that. It's been, at least from my experience, it's been like the medium, yeah, the medium or the up-and-comers, who were like, they're just getting their big break and they're like smelling themselves and they're like, oh, I'm about to blow up and this, that cock and this, and everybody, for the most part, like, they'd be. Like, Anthony Hopkins was, like, cool, man.

He was, like, super cool down the earth. You probably met him on the Transformers series. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How did you get into film? I mean, there's so many things we should talk about, but I need to talk about Ryan Reynolds, Anthony Hopkins. We've got to talk about movie star shit.

Yeah, you know, I was in, I got out in 2016. And, uh... Why did you decide to get out? My dad died when I was five. So, you know, I had two kids at that point, two sons. And I just felt like I really needed to be around them. Because, you know, how it is in teams work up, pro-dev. You're just gone so much.

And, you know, having had a father died at five, I just wanted to be home with my boys. So that's why I got out. And then I thought I was going to go into speaking, you know, public speaking. I was working in ministry too. So I thought I was going to do that. And there was nobody calling me. Like, it was like, nobody with the phone was a ring. I was like, what's going on?

And finally, you know, I was in grad school at the time, finishing up my master's. And I was just like, you know what? I'm going to just focus on school and then see what happens. And Charlie, he got killed in Iraq in May of 2016. And I was at his memorial service and some, you know, some two dudes from the industry were there, two team guys who worked in the film TV.

I won't mention their names. But they pulled me aside. They was like, man, somebody's been trying to get in contact with you about some project. We haven't been able to track you now. Apparently they had been emailing me at the whole email. And it was the old email address. And they was like, hey, you know, give us your email. So I get in your phone number, so I gave it to them.

And then like two weeks later, I'm writing papers at my desk. And I get this phone call from this lady who works with Bay. And she's just like, hey, you know, Bay is looking for somebody help out on Transformers. It's starting tomorrow. What's your schedule like? I can't find anybody. I was just like, well, writing papers. I can be up in L.A. tomorrow.

Were they looking for stuff on the technical advising? Yeah, a combination of. a combination of technical advising and like background extra type stuff. I think I know who these two guys were. Yeah, yeah. I'm 100% sure you know who these two guys were. I won't mention any names either, but yeah, it's an interesting cast of crew that works in that ecosystem up there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so I get up there and, you know, work with Michael and Michael Bay and. So how was that? It was like. How much did he yell directly at you? Because I hear he yells a lot. Yo, he yelled at me one time. But not that first day. He yelled at me one time,

because that one day ended up turning it three weeks and three weeks turned into six months. Yeah. And multiple movies, right? Yeah. Well, yeah, and Six Underground was the second movie with Bay I worked on. But he yelled at me when we were in Michigan filming the submarine scene and he yelled at me one time.

I know he felt bad about it and he never did it again. Did he legit, like, try to break it off in your ass? Yeah, well, the good news was he was really far away from me. Because I was on the top of this submarine. And he'll later, well, I'm going to be careful about it. He was kind of wrong in the situation because he was telling me to. He was in charge, however, maybe not correct. Yeah, yeah.

He was telling me, hey, dude, like, go to the end of the submarine. No. And there's a hatch. You wanted me to walk past the hatch. And, you know, obviously, it's an open, it's an open room. You clear it, then you keep moving or you go down it. And I kept going down it, like clearing it and then making my way down as the rest of the action went forward.

He was like, why are you going down there? Like, you want to do that? And I was like, no, dude, like, I want to just walk past the open. I would at least hold on this so the guys could blow by me. And then finally we did the takes, and then like the next day we reshot it. And he had me go down. But he was yelling to me the whole time. Like, dude, go out of the hell.

It's like, it is what it is. I've heard some legendary tales of him snapping and just going fucking high and right on set. They call it Baham, but. Bayham? Yeah. They call it Beaham. But all in all, man, he's a great dude to work with. You know, I think what it boils down to is he's all about excellence.

He's all about, hey, I want things done a certain way and executing on that way. And, you know, that's where that passion comes from, you know, his passion to execute on a project. And so. And he might have learned that from, I mean, I don't know his lineage in film, but he might have come up under somebody who got the response they were looking for from that method. Spielberg. I mean, I don't know. Did he come up under Spielberg? Yeah, I think he was like an assistant or intern or something like that for Spielberg for a bit. Did Spielberg have any good films? I'm trying to think.

Santa Private Ryan maybe being one of them. Yeah, only completely reshaped the film industry. Now, I don't know how, you know, I've never worked with Spielberg, so I don't know how much of Spielberg's personas like has been implemented in the bay, but I just, but maybe, but, you know, because look at Spielberg stuff is, you know, everything he does is excellent and amazing. Yeah. So, all in all, man, Bay is an awesome dude to work with. He's fun.

I mean, he shoots quick. Like, he does so many breakdowns and setups in a day is just like, dude, the amount of work that he's able to get done in a day is, like, it's crazy. In comparison to his peers. In comparison to other directors. He's just shooting super fast. I could tell you Michael Bay films, if you were to just play a Michael Bay film straight out, the number of, like, white phosphorus explosions that occur.

I could tell it's, I was watching Six Underground. Yeah. And every, it's just, you see him like arcing across behind the cars. Then you watch Transformers. And if you only just look at the similarity in the explosive, like, pyrotechnic stuff. Like, that's Michael Bay. Well, and you know why is because. Because he probably personally loves it.

Well, that, but he's a loyal dude. Like, he's a loyal dude. Oh, does he have the same people? Yeah, he hires this. And once he, once he likes you and he sees it that you're on, you can get on task with the program, he will hire you for years. So when you look at the end credits for most of his movies, you know, he'll have the same, you know, the same, you know, producers, he'll have the same, you know, tech advisors,

have the same, you know, just background, people who work on set, you know, I mean, he's all about, he's a super loyal dude, you know, published everything. That's awesome. So you started in the film industry on Little Transformers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a documentary series. Yeah, yeah. Which one were you on?

was your it was the last one he did transform us the last night okay yeah yeah and then where did your career and film go from there you know after that i started getting hit up other you know by other people in the industry so i did i did two commercials with peterberg um there was another team guy um his name's ray real good dude he reached out to me he's like hey i heard you work work with bail on this you want to come work on a project so i did two commercials with pete there and then um and then i did like some work on on a seal team cbs specifically when there was an episode that had to do with race. And so I work with Neil Brown Jr.,

who's the Black Seal on the show to kind of help kind of, you know, just massage it to make sure that it wasn't too over the top. Because you can easily take that episode way too far. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

And, man, it's crazy because you've got to be careful what you say. You know what I mean? But I don't want to say it was over time. It just could have been executed a bit better. And then when I say that, I don't mean in the storytelling aspect.

I just meant that and how it portrayed the teams. So it was a blessing to, you know, have been a team guy to be able to kind of, you know, correct it, so to speak. And just make it, make it authentic while protecting the teams at the same time. You're in a unique place to be able to do that. I get hit up, oh, my God, the number of times that I am asked about diversity in the seal teams. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, should you, why aren't there more fill in the blank ethnicities? Yeah, yeah.

Should there be? And I can only talk from my experience. I mean, it's, uh, you, I'm glad that you are around to do that because, like I said, you're in a unique place to be able to speak to that. Yeah. Because I think it's something like, I didn't watch that episode because I refused to watch anything that has the word seal and find it. But, but it would be easy for them to create an episode that was more about the national message and get lost in that as opposed to the realities of what you live through. Because how long were you team guy for? Ten? Eight years, man. So I got, I got through Buds in 2007. What class were you? 266. Okay, so I proctor 264. Yeah, you were my proctor for 266 for Diveface. I thought I proctor 264. No, man, you were the class proctor. You were a proctor for 266. So Charlie Keating and all of us were.

Ian Roy. Ian Roy. Well, no, Ian Roy was 264. Okay. Yeah, and then he got rolled, I want to say, I can't remember if it was SQT. I ended up, we ended up again serving at Team 3 at the same time. It was weird. I did that tour as an instructor, got commissioned, walked across the street. Yeah, yeah.

People don't believe it. Oh, yeah, I forgot. I forgot you got commissioning. I did. That's proof that the military advancement system is broken. I have no college degree whatsoever, and I went from being an E6 to an 01 overnight with no additional training. Dude, I didn't know.

You didn't have a college degree? No, still don't. That is crazy, dude. So it was the LDO program, the limited duty officer program. Yeah. And I, so I got past. over for East 7 three years in a row. Oh, wow.

When I was on the East Coast and when I got medevacked out, I was doing my LPO tour, and so they marked it incomplete. Oh, that sucks, dude. Oh, no shit, does it? Tell me something I don't know. I say it again, that sucks, man. So I'm sitting there and I put in my chief package, and my record was okay, and I had some deployments,

and I had some good military awards. I'm thinking, I get this shit in the bag. And the results come out for seven. My name's not on it. Oh, that sucks, man. Yeah, so I'm like, you know, of course, going through the list, I'm like, this must not be alphabetical. I'll just look at this list harder.

No, it was alphabetical, and they were skipping my name. I'm like, whatever, second year, same thing, didn't get picked up. And I knew a guy who was on the board. And they're not supposed to say anything. So he very politely was like, hey, you didn't get an LPO tour, so they just swept your record off the table. Yeah. So I was sitting there thinking, okay, I want to be in the military,

was doing some research, and found. the LDO program, which is supposed to be for like seven, eights, and nine. So I threw in for it for an E6 and then got picked up. And I remember going over to the exchange. I literally, the last day of September in 2008, I was in E6. October 1st, 2008, I was in 01. Yikes. And I went to the exchange and I said, hello, ma'am, I need officer uniforms.

And also, I don't know which ones that I need. So can you do everything for me? And those ladies over at NAB dialed me in. That is awesome, dude. And then I walked over to Team 3 and ended up deploying with probably two-thirds of the guys that I had put through training. It was a really weird, like four to six-year time period. That is crazy, dude. Yeah.

You got the khakis after all, then. I did. Yeah, and I didn't know how to wear him. I remember the first time I put him on, I walked over to the first phase office. And my buddy Jason, he's out. I was Jason Tushin. He's awesome, dude. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's messaging. Yeah. And I was like, hey, man, do I have this on right? Yeah. So, yeah, proof that the military advancement system was completely broken. Yeah. I didn't realize those was your proctor for your butts class. Yeah, you were, man.

Yeah, man. Yeah. If I had known that, I'd failed you. No, I know. You don't remember the whole, the, uh, the, uh, tread deal with me? Because instructor craft was there. So, so I had got dropped in, in die phase the first time I was in buds. Dropped, dropped?

Yeah, I got performance dropped. I did not remember this. Tell this tale. When did you go through first time? I was in 2-50, and then 251 and then 253. Holy cow, what happened on your first journey? So I showed up the buzz

and I had just learned how to swim. Yeah, man. What the fuck were you thinking? Dude, I grew up in the Bronx, man. I'm aware of this. I'm aware of this. There's no pools in the Bronx, man. But if you want to be a seal,

you need to do the requisite training in the water. I know, I know. So here was my thinking. You know, when I showed up the boot camp, I couldn't swim, period. How did that go? Because there's the swim test. I barely passed it. I was NQS. Like, my fear was, well,

I was on the verge of being NQS. And my fear was being part of that group that had to march to the pool every morning, like super early in the morning. And so I just, when I jumped in the pool and I had to do it, I just got on my back, like literally, and I just started doing crazy stuff on my back. We got to describe this, though, too, because in boot camp, I now, oh my God, I haven't thought about this in 20-some years.

They put you up on that tower. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's not, you're not standing, like, if this table was the pool, you're not just standing on the edge, what would you say it is? Like, 10 feet off the ground? No, it's hired 10 feet off the ground. It might be, right? It's enough that I remember people up there not wanting to jump. And I was born a razor on the water, so I'm sitting like, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Yeah, and shaking. They're crying. Oh yeah. Mind you, it's a tower over water, and it wasn't like 30 feet. Yeah, no, it wasn't 30. It was hot. It was hot. Yeah, but I would say 15.

At the CTT at Buds, is that, what was that, what's the high one? What's the high? Is that, because it's two. Oh, and it's not even that high. Maybe nine meters, so what would that be 18 feet? Because it's, I'm trying to think of the one at the CTT, we're talking about, CTT is combat training tank, which is the pool. There's, there's three, right?

It's like low, middle high? No, there's two. There's a springboard one there, right? No, no, no. God, damn it. Both of them are hard. Both of them are, like, there's that lower one. And then you go up the ramp a little bit higher.

And then there's a higher one. It can't be more than 15 feet Yeah So I maybe it's a five And you know it's probably a five meter I'm bad with meters man I'm bad with mad Three feet

Carry the one 15 I forgot about that though You have to do What were we Did they make you jump in In our dungarees Yeah

Yeah I think they made you jump in And then you had to Tread for a little bit A little bit of time And then you had to just swim To the other end And people lost their shit

Yeah Yeah Holy cow. So you did not know how to swim when you were stepping up on the tower. No. But I was just like, in my mind, I was just like, there were three things.

One, I was sick. I was super sick because you know how you get the boot camp crud, everything going around. Two, like, I didn't want to be NQS. Like, I didn't want to be part of that group. And three, like, I was like, man, I want to be a seal one day. Like, I'm going to be a frog man one day, dude. I got to start here because, and back up a little bit.

Yes, Remy. You do need to start there. You need to start with your ability to not die with jumping in the water. Well, here's a funny thing. Like a day or two days before, a seal came to it to, I mean, he may have been stationed at.

I can remember his name. I think he ended up getting killed in a rollover in Arizona. Okay. But anyway, he came in, he did this presentation for my boot camp division. Here's what seals do. If you want to take the...

Probably before the selection screener. Yeah, if you want to take the selection, let's go, you know, can go do it. And I watch everybody, like, all the guys who wanted to go leave the class and I was stuck there. And I felt ashamed. I was just like, damn, dude, I wish I can go do the test with him.

And so when I went to go jump, I was like, I don't care, dude, if I drown. Like, I'm going to prove that I should, that I could be a part of that program. So we just start jumping, dude. And I, and I, and I, and I, and I, I, and I, I, and I, and I, I, when I started doing the treading, I was just, like, I was literally fighting to stay above water. You were just inventing swimming strokes at this one. I was making it up. And I was swatling water, dude, I'm, like, spitting it out. And then finally, I was just like, when they blew the whistle to swim,

I tried to swim on my stomach. It wasn't working. Like, I was just, like, sinking. So I figured, all right, let me get on my back. I get on my back, and I just start doing this frog thing, dude. And I was in a hurt locker, dude, because I'm, like, I'm putting everything into this. And then finally, I get to the end, and I pass. And I didn't have to be part of that group that showed up every morning, which, interestingly, the majority of them are African-American.

Like, I remember in the mornings, I would just see these long. these long lines because you had to march there. I remember that yet because if you're going to the fleet, you have to be able to swim. You have to be able to swim, man. I did not want to be part of that group. So anyway, I had forgotten about that day in my life, but you talking about that swim test,

I am so glad you brought that up. Yeah. It was one of the first experience, again, I was from a beach town in California, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you brown water. Played water polo and grew up doing junior lifeguards. Yeah, yeah.

Used to being around the water. And I remember in boot camp thinking, this is a weird group of people. There's some people up here who are losing their shit. What is the rest of the military going to be like for them? I know, I know. So how did you pass the screening test? Because now we're talking some underwater recovery stroke, which is the most dog shit swimming stroke ever.

So what I did was I got to my first command, which was Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton. Okay, so you didn't screen in boot camp. Good call. You would have died on that screener. Yeah. No, I literally would have. And I was skinny, dude. Like a lot of people, they don't realize, man, I grew up, you know, I grew up skinny. I fought a lot as a kid in the Bronx.

Yeah. But I was super, super skinny. I'm going to guess these were non-sanctioned bouts. No, absolutely not, dude. Okay, just making sure. Jump. Like, I didn't do it all, man. You're talking about street fight, street fight, not inside of the rig.

It's slammed on the concrete, like, yeah, just going for broke. Was that just part of the deal growing up there? Or was that something you sought out or something you got wrapped into? It's like, and I don't want to use the term kill or be killed, but it's just one of those situations where, you know, you've got to fight back. Like, you're going to get, it's like a rough environment to grow up in. And if people see that you're going to take, you know, take nonsense and they're going to push you on them. They're going to push those buttons. And, you know, and then you're fighting for respect and you're fighting for, you know, you're fighting.

Like, for example, I remember one time I was, this probably a help explain it. better but I was about eight nine years old maybe nine or ten and I was on a basketball court playing basketball and I'm playing this kid who's had to be like a year a year younger than me and I'm crushing them about talking all kinds of junk like yeah man I'm seeing I'm good I just shot you can't beat me like all this all this and and this is Devo Park which is a crazy parking in the Bronx it's like right where I live I mean people people got to kill the crackheads all that and and the kids start telling me shut up man stop talking shut up and I

And I didn't think anything of it, but I just, you know, I'm just continued talking about smack. And so after I beat him, he's like, I told you to shut up. Like, you disrespected me. I told you to shut up. I'm like, yo, man, it's just a game, man. It's not that serious. He's like, no, it's not just a game, man. You disrespect to me.

So he's like, watch what's going to happen. Say one more thing. Say one more thing. And again, it's a respecting. So I'm like, yeah, I'm saying, what you're talking about? Go do whatever you're going to do. Like, I can't remember verbatim what I said, but I challenged what he said. He's like, I bet.

And so he leaves the back. basketball court and he comes back like 20 minutes later and I remember across the street from the basketball court was his bodega and he's at the light and he's with two men and I'm like why is this kid with two men and a part of me's like yo remi leave like go home your early situational awareness was kicking in go home like but a part of me was like how were you in this story I was like nine to ten okay so this is this is young remi I was yeah young remi and I was like I'm not going nowhere because this is the environment that I grew up in I'm not going nowhere like let's see what's going to

happen what they're going to do to me you know I need to stay in my ground like I need to I can't be because if I if I run away what's going to happen when they see me two days from now walking through the park so so they cross the street I start sweating I start getting hot because I know it's about to go down and they approached me and and and it was his uncle who was like 35 34 just got out of prison and it was his brother his older brother who was 19 and and he pointed to me and he's like that's him right there like that's him right there so they approached me and they're like you're talking cussing shit to my my my nephew my other one's like my brother I was like you know we're just playing basketball he's like it's just bad I'm a kid I'm not

thinking they're going to attack me he's like no I it now a little nigger this now you don't do that this is just you don't talk to him like this and they proceed to beat the shit out of me like grown men grown men and and the kid and I'm like nine 10 years old damn and and I'm and I couldn't really fight back because it was like we knew like they had a reputation in the environment that I grew up in the neighborhood I grew up in they carry guns they sold drugs all that yeah so I couldn't really fight back after they beat the breaks off me they stand me up spit on me they would they tell a kid you know spin on me they punch me in my face and then they walk away and then I go home and I just tell our story because that's an example it's just like why does that happen

it's just part of it's this it's this false sense of I need to I need to have respect Because if I don't stand up for myself, I'm going to just keep getting disrespect. It's like a doggy dog dog dog word, whatever that term is. And that was, that's just what it was. That's how a lot of my fights, a lot of the fights that I had was, you disrespecting me. Well, what are you going to do? Oh, you're going to see what I'm going to do. And I don't know being a grown man now, I don't agree with it.

You know, I don't like it. And this is why we see even now, a lot of the crime in inner cities, a lot of the black on black crime. When you really look at why it happens, it all comes down to you disrespecting me. So how do you change that environment? Like if you could go back and switch yourself with nine-year-old you, what would you have changed differently? Because like you said, you still had to live there. Yeah. You know, turning tail and running may not have made it better for you in the long run.

I mean, so what's the- I would have did what my brother did. So my brother was the complete opposite of me. My brother ended up graduating high school in three years. He ended up getting a full-ride academic scholarship to Syracuse University. So he's the opposite of you and me, because I'm a retard. Yeah, they used to call us Pinky in the Brain growing up. Seriously.

You remember that cartoon? They used to call us Pinky in the Brain, and guess who was Pinky? But my brother, you know, he had a life-changing incident happen when he was about around the same age or maybe a bit younger because, you know, my dad died when I was five, and my mother struggled financially to provide for us, and she was a teacher in the South Bronx. And so my brother came home one day and he had a back. I had report card and I don't know, there were probably some things that happened

to my mother in that day. Maybe she couldn't pay the bills, maybe, I don't know what it was, but it was just a combination of things. And my mother just broke down crying when she saw my brother's report card because my brother had felt like three classes and he's the oldest and she was just like,

by, like I'm struggling to provide for you and your brother. Like, you can't fail, you can't feel, like, why did you do this? And she wasn't like berating him. She was like at her wit's at. And she didn't know how to motivate him at this point. Yeah, she said, like, She's verbalizing her frustration. Exactly.

And a switch went off in his head. And after that, he was in the, like, he lived in the library. Like, he lived in the library or he lived at home in the books, just reading books and doing all the things he was doing. And so if I could have gone back and done things differently, I would have did what my brother did. And people didn't really mess with my brother because he was the nerd. He was like, you know, that saying in that movie,

the professional, no women, no children. Like it's like no women no children no nerds like he's a dude that's gonna make it out and do something great And so he kind of got a pass because so he kind of got a pass and he and he stayed he stayed away from it and you know ended up rising he now he's an engineer he's a he has his master's in computer science engineering and and and a bachelor's in electrical engineering he's crushing it he's crushing that's awesome yeah how did you guys find your way to the bronx how'd you guys land there so my my my I was born in africa um my dad he's He was, my story really, like, a lot of how I ended up in the Bronx really starts with my dad. My dad, his father, and sorry, let me know if I'm going too far. No, go, man. Go for it. But my father, he, uh, his father had like nine wives because my father was Nigerian

and my grandfather, my father and my grandfather was, obviously, they were part of the Europe of a tribe and part of that cultural, that cultural trend was, you know, you could have multiple wives. My grandfather had nine wives and he kept on having daughters. And finally, my dad was born. my dad was the firstborn son. So along with it inherited the last name, Adelike, which means the crown is above,

he inherited the title of chief. So in European culture and Western culture, we refer to royalties like king, queen, prince, princess, Dutch lord, that sort of thing. In West African culture, especially Nigerian culture, royalties referred to as chief in your last name. And so my grandfather ended up dying when my father was like 10,

and then his mother moved him down to the south of Nigeria. And there were missionaries there. They did not only taught the Bible, but they taught science and math and literature, a lot of Western topics that we learned in school today. Well, that was taught in Western schools at the time. And so my dad ended up, you know, he was a savant, kind of like my brother. You know, he picked it up fast, and he ended up getting a scholarship to London University. I believe it was London, some school in London to study architecture and engineering. Damn.

Yeah. Full-rise scholarship. That's awesome. Yeah. And so he went to the west and the guy. his bachelor's got his master's, and then he just started building, like, all of his wealth. I mean, he just, I mean, he started building business. He was like one of the first black men on the board of the World Trade Center in New York City.

He was the first black men on the board of the Financial Planning Council in Great Britain. I mean, this dude was, he was a beast. He started all kinds of different businesses. He was good friends with the architect of the World Trade Center, the Twin Towers. And, but after years of accumulating all this wealth, he was just like, I need to go back to my country because he hated the stereotype that, you know, Africans will have. of uneducated Bush people who couldn't do anything in Nigeria being so rich in resources, oil, gold, natural gas, cocoa.

Like he was just like, man, Nigeria could be so much more than what it is. And so he went back and he started a bunch of businesses, car dealerships, consulting firms, engineering firms. And then he started this project called the Lagoon Development Project. And around that time, well, this is before he met my mother. But around that time, it was like a military takeover. And so he had ended up buying this plot of land called Merricko, which, was eight million he paid eight million pounds for it and a few years later the military government

took it from him it was just like you can't have this this is ours now so he went to court this is in the 70s he went to court for like 10 years and fourth the government and finally the federal government said okay we're not going to give you we're not going to give you back marico but what do you want and so my dad was like i want the lagoon so he asked for this lagoon which was a swamp at the time because he he was going to hire engineers he ended up hiring dutch engineers to dredge the foreshore to develop this the lagoon development project, which was an island, is one of the first man-made islands in the world. Your dad sounds fucking awesome.

He was a beast, man. He was a beast. That dude was brilliant. Like so many people, when I talked to his peers and people who came up with him, they was just like, your dad was a visionary. He's so ahead of his time. He sounds like it in many ways. In many, many ways.

And so he developed this, he developed this, which is now called Banana Island. And people in Nigeria refer to it as billionaire's island because billionaire is liminalian. He got a lot of, the richest Nigerian, Dan Gote lives on a island. that island okay um and so I say all I to say around this time is when he met my mother so my mother's from New York City she grew up in Harlem and back and forth between Harlem and the Bronx and I tell people all the time my mom and my dad's stories the real coming to a America story because my mom she went to the metropolitan museum in natural history one day because she loved art she was a flight attendant she had a break so she went there and my dad he was into

the arts heavily and he went there and it was an exhibit on Yoruba which is the tribe that we're from and so that's where they met they got five married five months later and after they got married my mom moved to Nigeria with him and so and so and that's why in short that's how we ended up back in the Bronx so when my dad died after everything happened the Nigerian government stripped them of everything which I can get to that in a second my mom was just like there's no way I'm raising my kids here in Africa I'm taking them back to to New York City which is when that's how I ended up in the Bronx but why do they strip him of everything so my dad he he when he after he developed

the island the lagoon development project after he'd well let's just call it banana island after he developed banana island the Lego state government came in and said you can't have this the federal government who awarded this to you because of the because of Maracle that they took from you they were never supposed to award they had no juror they have no jurisdiction over that all over the foreshore belongs to the Lego state government at this point my dad had invested millions of dollars he already signed contracts with Mark and Spence which was like a department store in London

He signed contracts with Disney. He signed contracts with McDonald's. I mean, he had invested everything. He already started development on a building development. To bring all of those things there. To this island. Yeah. And so much so, he would invest so much of his assets and money into it.

Then my mother being in New York would say, BIO, I don't trust the government system. He said, let's put some money back in the States. Let's put some money in New York City or New Jersey, whatever. Just the case something happens, we have something to come back to. And my dad would always say my priorities right now is Nigeria. Let's get this off the ground. And as soon as it's functioning, we'll be collecting crazy money for the rest of our life and rent and all of these other fees for people being on this island.

And so when the federal, when the legal state government came in and said, you can no longer have this. It belongs to us. My dad started going to court and fighting him and saying, no, this belongs to me. And they ended up taking it. And when they took that island, all of his money, so much of his well. and his assets and his arts and everything was wrapped up in it. He lost them with it. And he died, like, fighting them.

He died literally weeks later. Like, he got bit by. It was like a sequence of events, and that's why I always say it's mysterious. My mom was always just like it was the government to kill him. But he was stressed out. He left the compound, went for a walk. A dog attacked him, bit him.

He got rabies from the dog. We later found out. He got rabies. He went to the hospital. they administered him bad medication, the wrong medication to treat the rabies. He ends up dying. And when he died, there was nobody to fight. My half-brother John, who's a lawyer, he's still on the case.

As a matter of fact, the Nigerian government offered him, like, I think it was like $8 million a few years ago. He turned down because the islands were billions. Yeah. And the case is still open. So my half-brother John was just like, I think he was either in law school or just getting out of it. So he had no juice. Nigeria's a whole other place. Like, you know what I mean?

And John was educated in Britain. So he wasn't about to be this British, where he's Nigerian, but this Nigerian British dude coming back to Nigeria telling people how it should be. My dad, he had the relationships. He had the connections. He had the Wasta to be able to fight them. My half-brother didn't.

And so, you know, when my dad died, my half-brother told my mother, there's nothing left. Like, everything was right. Even this house that we're in right now with the funeral for my dad was in the house, this is not going to be ours. after we you know after you leave and and so that's when that's how it all happened and so your mom

basically grabbed the kids it was just like pot smoke everything behind and jammed to land it in Brooklyn Bronx Bronx mm-hmm nothing with nothing like literally no money like people ask me all the time you know remember what do you where do you get it from the perseverance ability to keep going and it's my mom and when when after my father died my mom came back home home after she buried him she called up she called up her cousin and he was who's a lawyer in New York City kind of well-to-do you know he lived in the suburbs in New York and she said she said listen my husband's dead my kids I don't know how I'm gonna feed him I don't know how I'm gonna do anything can I just borrow some money so that I could

you know until I figure things out I have no money and and he was like let me call you back in five minutes about five minutes later the phone rings, and it's a woman on the phone. And it's his wife. And she says to my mom, like, how dare you call up my husband and ask him for money? Like, who the hell do you think you are?

Like, you don't do that. If you want money, you come through me, you go through me. How dare you? And flips out of my mom's husband just died. The kids have nothing. And this woman is now berating her for asking for a loan. From family. From a family member.

This ain't, you know what I mean? This isn't a cold call. Yeah, this ain't a cold call. This isn't somebody off the street. This is a family member. You know what I mean? And another part of the story, my grandfather, because this particular cousin, his father was off the deep end.

So my grandfather, my mother's father helped raise him. So that was another reason why my mom was connected to him because my grandfather helped raise him, you know, because his dad was super abusive. But the blessing in that is after my mom got hung up on, she was just like, I'm never really. going to be in this position ever again. I never want to be in a position we have to ask somebody for anything ever again. And my mother, she, dude, she was grinding, man. I mean, she worked multiple

jobs. She was a teacher in the South Bronx. She would take jobs in museums, art galleries. And part of it was to provide, but another part of it was to, you know, I got this chapter in my book and I talked about my two fathers, my two parents. And one parent, for me, was my mother, but then another parent for me was the streets and hip-hop. And my mother was recognizing that at the early age and so my mother would try to combat that by again taking jobs in museums to expose us to the arts to expose us to literature to expose us exposed us to education um she would she would make my brother and i read in new york times and books and this is kind of how i got into writing and she because she could see the influence of of the streets of just everything else you were exposed to yeah okay

and she was just trying to counter that because she didn't want us to be a statistic i think at the time it was like 20% of of kids in the Bronx graduated from high school like at the time if my memory research me. I have all the statistics in my book because I break it all down. But it was crazy, man. And my mother, you know, her being a teacher in the South Bronx, she saw how bad the education system was. I mean, education system was bad enough. And I tell people all the time, you know, Nigerian parents are very, very strict. Like they're very, very, you will be somebody. Like, all I, all my, it's not, hey, what do you want to be? It's like, listen up, you look some bitch.

Dude, all my Nigerian cousins in America is crazy, man. All my Nigerian cousins in America, I have a half-brother who's a doctor. I got a half-sister who just graduated from the top MBA program in Chicago. Another half-brother who's in med school. My brother's an engineer. I got a cousin who's at MIT right now, triple major in biology, computer science, and math. You know, I got another cousin who's a petroleum engineer. I got another.

So it's like Nigerian parents, they're all about, and I had a whole bunch of Nigerian friends who their parents are like, you will be a doctor, you will be a lawyer, you will be something. Something in life. And my mother was, she wasn't Nigerian, but she kind of, a lot of that Nigerian culture was imprinting on her because she saw the potential of us because of our father. She saw the potential of us within us.

And she was just like, you will be somebody. And so that's why she would fight against, excuse me, for that. Yeah, that's right. She would fight against the trend and try to expose us to the arts and education and homeschool us on top of sending us to school so that we would not end up a statistic. Now, I ended up still going down the wrong path for a bit, but, but yeah. As we all do. Yeah.

Looking back, though, do you think it was, you know, the difference between you ending up as a long-term statistic in your life and what you've been able to accomplish now is a lot of that driven or that fire burned from your mom? Oh, 100%. 100%, 100%. because I don't think you can, I don't think it's possible to accurately state the impact that that can have on the lives of young men and women. Yeah. That power of having somebody like, who believes in them.

Who believes in them? And also is like, hey, you're going to do this. Yeah. Not only can you, but hey, asshole, put the Xbox down. You're going to. And dude, my mother would beat the brakes off me, man. Like, not in an abusive way. I don't know if that's legal anymore.

I know, I know, I know. I know. I know. My mom's on social media, and she's probably going to get hit up. People are going to start canceling her. Like, you beat your kid back in the 80s. I don't know anybody, so I'm 42. You've got to be in your late 30s.

I'm 37. I don't know anybody who is near our age group that didn't get a little bit of a weapon from time to time. I know. Like, I don't know anybody who didn't. Well, I knew one kid I grew up with, but he's crazy now because he didn't. I was going to say how'd that guy turn out. He's crazy now.

He's crazy. But, you know, my mother, she, you know, I wouldn't be who I'm, who I am without my mother. I wouldn't be who I am without my parents either. I mean, I look back, my, believe me, my, this, what you have just described is unbelievable. I'm thinking about your mom, too, of going from a place. Riches. That's what I was going to say. Like, that probably wouldn't, was in a place where she didn't need or want for anything

because they had the, the means or the resources to get it and then go into a place where it's the exact opposite. We had nannies. We had cooks. I got all kinds of pictures. We had horses. Me and my brother would ride horses with our driver. We traveled all over.

We didn't, and we weren't just relegated to Nigeria. We got paid with Paris, France, New York, London. Like, we traveled all over the world. Like, my father would host these lavish parties with expatriates and politicians. I remember I found when I was like about 11 years old, I opened up this foul cabinet. and I found like a letter from Ronald Reagan, not like from the White House. Yeah, addressed to my dad.

So he, like, we lived a light, like, it was out of a movie, you know what I mean, the life that we lived. And then to have that, and to go from that to. Gone. Zero. And my mom, and I tell people all the time,

my mother, you know, she was, and she still is a very attractive woman. So she could have easily said, you know what, I'm going to just go find a wealthy man and take care of me and my kids. My mother, like, she never remarried. She's never dated. And she tells me, she says, you know, BioRemy, one of the reasons why I didn't date and I never got married is because I didn't want to bring any confusion into the house.

I didn't want to bring anything into the house that would potentially drive you guys in an opposite direction of the direction I was trying to take you in. And I'm not advocating that in any way, but that's how dedicated. We talk about that's an incredibly rare mentality and discipline. Yeah. That was her whole whole life. was these two boys will be successful. Like, no infants or butts. And anything they could come in and conflict with that,

I'm not chancing it. She sounds amazing, man. Yeah, yeah, she's on Instagram, and she's a fitness, crazy fitness fanat. I was looking at your Instagram the other day. Was she the one on the rower? Yeah, yeah, she's on the rower, man. She was doing push-ups, because she comes,

my wife, she did like a little vacation last week, so my mother flew and to help me out from the Bronx. Does she still live in the Bronx? She still lives in the Bronx, man. Good for her, man. She doesn't want, while she's starting to look like that. house is in East Lake now. No.

She's like, I want to be next to my grandkids. Which I would say is the Bronx of San Diego, but it's not. I would just try to make comparison. There's just no comparison whatsoever. No, 100%. Yeah, I lived in East Lake for at least six years. I love it, man. It's great.

Because it's night and day for me. It's just like I wake up in the morning. I hear birds chirping. I don't hear like the ambulance driving by and all that. And it's just, it's serene for me. for me at times. I'm just like, man, like, how do I have this life now? You know? So when did the military start chipping away at your head? When did you even start thinking about that? Well, it's two-fold. It was a two-fold process. Like, one, I say really, my mom would

always expose me to the arts. Yeah. And, uh, which traditionally the military is not known for the arts. Yeah, the art is not. But I'm going to connect the dots, though, how to happen. Not at all. I'm not aware of a military rate that has anything to do with, well, I guess there's There's the singers. There's the singers. I was, I saw a video. Okay, I'm going to give you that. There's the bands.

Okay. The band and singers. And the photographers. That is art. All right. Yeah, yeah. No, my, so my mother viewed film as the arts. So to her, you know.

I'll give her that too. I agree. Theater was the arts, film were the arts. And she would like scrounge her pennies and take us to go see like plays or sometimes she would get us in a free plays. And, and she made it a habit to take us to a movie, tried to take us to a movie like once a month. And so it was a film that kind of inspired me.

The first film, one of the first films inspired me was bad boys because that was the first time I saw two African-Americans who... I was going to say we're talking Will Smith. Will Smith, Marty Maugh, Martin Lawrence. Just wanted to make sure we're talking about the same thing. I watched the shit out of that movie when I was younger. I know, dude. I remember after it came out after I saw it, I bought the bootleg.

Michael Bay wouldn't appreciate this. Did he make that movie too? Yeah, he made that movie. Which is a whole crazy. he's cycling to how I ended up how I got in later on connecting the dots. I just remember him flipping

I think it was a Ferrari and he's just shooting out of it. I was like, that's living life. That was bad boys too. Damn it. Well, it was still bad boys. Yeah, it's still bad boys. See, I'm a real bad boy. Yeah, you are. But yeah, that was the first time I saw two

guys who felt like I felt like I connect with them but they were playing heroes. So that was the first time. I was just like, man, like, there's more out there than just being a drug dealer or being, you know, being an athlete, you know, or being these up, like I could be a hero of some source. That is crazy that that movie

flipped that switch for you in your head. It did. It did. And then a year later, the rock came out. And I, you know, I never knew nothing about Navy Seals. Like, I never heard of a Navy Seals.

And you still don't after watching The Rock. Let's be very clear. Yeah, because they all be killed. But that was the first time I saw Navy Seals. You saw a handlebar mustache and MP5s coming out of the sewer grates. I don't know what kind of SDB. SDVs they were but they weren't real SDVs. Oh my God, that's right.

They were on some, they pushed it out of the back of some shitty helicopter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They had the SDVs and they don't get smoke, but that was the first time I was like, but the suits got me, the black rubber suits and the cameras, all the stuff that's not real. They look cool as shit. Yeah, they did. The night vision goggles that, yeah, I love the colored thermal, all that shit. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, all of it.

The new guy, the new guy who's like, this is my first off and he's like, I can't, I got to go up there and say my, and he has been, he isn't, he's supposed. So, like, it was something about that. Well, I was just like, man, these dudes are cool. Like, they're in the water and they were. I was like, man, need, these stills. So that's why I started, like, doing my research. And I was just like, oh, these guys are special forces.

And in my mind, I said to myself, because I was 15 at the time, I said, if I ever turned my life around, because I was in the streets, I was selling drugs, no one was. I was like, if I ever turn my life around, that's what I'm going to do. Like, but then I filed that away, and I'm back in the streets. and, you know, I was selling drugs, mainly in upstate New York. I'd buy my drugs in Washington Heights, New York City

and go up upstate New York. What kind of stuff are you trafficking in? Bad stuff. You know, it's funny, I was on a podcast with Bedros. And he asked me the same question, and I didn't answer it. And one of the reasons why I still don't answer fully is because of my mother.

Fair enough. You know, my mother's always, she's always had a hard time with me sharing this part of my life. I was just curious if you're selling weed or you went deeper into the Matrix. I was. Deep in the Matrix. tricks, fair enough. I'm selling some things.

And let's just keep it there, just for the sake of my mind. She hates when I even bring it up. She's just like, you know what, though, it's part of who it makes you who you are. And I think because of who you are, there's a lot of people who can learn lessons from that. 100%. Because you never know. People might be in that situation. Here,

you're talking about it and go, you know what? If that guy can get out of the situation, so can I. And that's why I try to tell my story. And that's the main reason why I wrote the book, too. You know, sorry to jump off topic. I know a lot of people, you know, on the teams, they frown upon that, but, you know.

Writing a book? Yeah. I saw the best meme ever the other day. Have you ever seen, like, the vet holding up the sign? Yeah. It says, wearing gators doesn't make you a Navy seal, but writing a book bears. I know, me.

I got to see, I haven't seen that one. Send a team. Yeah, said it to me. But here's a deal. The guy holding the signs wearing gators, by the way. Oh, is he? Oh, so he's definitely a team guy. For sure.

But I struggle with it because, because of, that but I knew in my heart I wasn't writing a book like there's only three chapters in the book about the teams it's a 29 chapter book I knew I was I was writing it to for for that person for that kid you know and that chapter of your life the team guy portion of it it's critical too you know and I actually get hit up quite often to write a book and I can't do it because I don't have a story like yours you know most of my adult life was in the seal teams and my theory is there's already enough seal books

I don't need to put like another spin on it Andy's take so no shit there I was you guys will never guess was in the desert kick it down doors

wrapping up the back yeah and it's already been done yeah and that's why I tried to my whole book is about I mean Africa Bronx

all that all the way through but yeah man I got into the drug game and I was making money, but I started to realize this. Is that why you got into it just for the monetary aspect? Yeah, money, man. Money, like.

I mean, I get the desire or, you know, the want or need to do that. If it's an economic solution. I didn't want to be bummy, you know. I wanted to have nice shoes. I wanted to have respect. And again, a lot of it comes back to, and I think, sorry for backtrack, but I think affirmation for me, you know, I think, I think, I think, I, I think, I think, I feel like it's important for a father to be in their child's life because every child needs

their parent to affirm them especially I think especially your father's for a son they need that affirmation and if you don't receive that affirmation you're going to start seeking affirmation from peers elsewhere and we've even seen with athletes sometimes you know where they go to the club and they're throwing money and they buying all these cars like in my opinion a lot of that comes back to you know affirmation like we're all searching for that affirmation and I I wanted to make money because not just so that I could have what I wanted to have, but deep down the side, the little kid in me wanted my dad to affirm me. And I wanted people to affirm me.

So like, you're good. You're good. You're good. You're good. You're the man. And so after I was in it, it became too risky for me. Like that mindset, that my dad's intellect of this is becoming a risk, seeing something that can happen before it happened that wasn't rude in me, I began to see.

what was like two steps ahead of me. And so I was just like I need to do something else. It certainly sounds like a risky long-term endeavor. Oh, no. If you extend the timeline on that one, it seems to always lead to the same place. Encarsation or death. In prison.

Yeah. And so what I started doing was I got into the cell phone scam thing, which wasn't any better because it was a white-collar crime. Do tell. I'm not familiar with cell phone scams. Yeah, man. I was doing blow-up phones, man. What the hell is a blow-up phone?

So a blow-up phone. All right. So this is, I was just epilogue. I was making tens of thousands of dollars a week. Let's go back to the prologue. Storyteller. So I got this job at this company called MCI WorldCon, which is no longer around.

And because I tried to start going. I was still selling drugs the same time as I was doing this because I was trying to figure out way to have that legal balance. And, you know, I was selling phones but I wasn't making a lot of money and one of the employees there he put me on to this this cell phone scam thing because he was he was not only was he making tons of money at the company like legally but he was making way more money illegally and he was like always salesman of the quarter salesman of the

month and he all this and so what he was doing was he was getting people's PPI personal information Social Security card date of birth address full name and on if a person had good credit not excellent current but good credit you can activate three cell phones on that person's credit I feel like they didn't realize those cell phones were being activated no they did not

no they did not yeah I was gonna say that's why I was this was I was gonna say this guy but this guy's numbers were probably good because he's selling like yeah like impossible level numbers of phones in the month like numbers of phones that no one person should be able to sell and so he's doing it illegally but legally he's making the commission off of it

so this dude is put Mercedes bends. I mean, this dude is like, I went to his house. He's living in like a fat house. And I'm just like, yo, man. So he saw me struggling.

So he took me under the wing and he showed me the ropes. And I got into that. So I would activate, I would activate, you know, three cell phones on one person's line of credit. And then I was selling the drug dealers and I was selling the everyday people.

And the drug dealers liked them because the phone would stay on for 90 days because the phone would activate. You get 30 days of use. you get your bill, you got 30 days to pay it, and if you didn't pay your bill, you got 30 days before they shut it on. So I was the first dude that did unlimited services.

Because you got to remember, at the time, it was 29. This is 2000, 2001, when cell phones are like just becoming the thing. You're paying good money for like the 100 minute a month plan. 29, 99, 30 minutes. You go over, this was, I mean, in New York City. Yeah. You go over 30 minutes, you're paying like a quarter. Like something stupid, like ridiculous.

It was ungodly high. I'm stupid. Yeah. And so I was doing unlimited plans for 90 days. The Remy Adelike, unlimited 90 day plan. Unlimited. Unlimited. And text messages.

Of course. And I'm selling up for like depending on the phone because if it was like a, you know, Star Tech, you know, nice, like the Tick-Tac phone, that would go for 700, 800. If it was just a Motorola flip phone, that would go for three. If it was like a cheaper version of phone, 200. And then the pages came out, the time port, two-way pages. People were loving that. I was selling those for $500.

And then after a while, I was just realizing, you know, I got this, like, I need to get a better source of a PPI or I'm going to get caught up. And so I had a dude who I went to high school with. He was a hustler and his girlfriend worked at a hospice clinic, hospice. And so I connected with him. I was just, I was like, yo, man, I need PPI. He's like, people dying all the time. They ain't worried about their credit because he's been. people on the verge of death and so he would get me sheets I mean sheets of PPI and on one

page was like 10 10 people's information oh wow and sky was the limit man sky was the limit and then I was I was heavily influenced by hip-hop and love rap I rap I wrapped as a kid and and my dream was to be a music mogul and so I wasn't just making the money to spend it I was I was investing in the record company I actually started a record company eighth one entertainment as a matter of fact my production company now is the same name as my as my record company when I was when I was in the teens doing this up and I had a had we did a compilation album I had artists we would travel to do shows and all that money that I was getting from now how old were you doing

this I was 18 19 20 making crazy money it sounds like yeah I had a brand new Lincoln I mean I was it was crazy I was wild I was out of controls and you know there's a saying you know well from get rich quick schemes quickly disappear as well from hard work grows over time. And you know, when you make a deal with the devil at some point the devil's gonna come knocking on your It's gonna come full circle at some point. And that's what happened.

You know, people were starting to get caught up at the clinic I was working at, not the clinic at the office, and people were getting caught and going to federal prison. Well, get in charge with white collar crimes. Yeah. Because- And probably some substantial white collar crimes.

Oh yeah, because we're talking a lot of money and personal information, right? Yeah. And people were starting to start People were starting to get charged and discovered. And I think the reason why I was away from it was because I was using dead people's information. So a lot of my, there was nobody coming in complaining,

hey, my credit is messed up, what happened? So long story short, I sell this drug dealer like 15 phones, 15, 20 phones. They supposed to last for 90 days, Jamaican cat. And I had been selling him phones, but like one, two at a time. and and when he came to me and said hey I want like 15 20 phones a part of me was like I don't want to do 15 20 phones let's just stick with the one to two here and there

but he talked me into it and I knew why he wanted 15 to 20 phones because he wanted to flip him so what he was doing oh he was going to sell him himself he was going to sell him and then sell and then double the price or maybe put a not maybe not double a price but add extra 100 200 on him and I did the deal and he did whatever he did with the phones and it went from 90 days the phones cut off in like 15 days 20 days like super super fast and and when he hit me up and said that I'm sweating I wasn't sweating because I was nervous about him I was sweating because I was nervous about what was going on what happened to this system you had been used to get caught up yeah and I was just like man I'm going federal

prison because the dude the dude who taught me to get the first thing he said to me was This is the first thing he said to me after he told me. He said, Fed Time. And I said, what? Wow, he was that up from it. He was like, Fed Tom. If you get caught, this is a federal crime. You were going to federal prison, Fed Time.

And so those words flashed across my mind. Excuse me, those words flashed across my mind when the phone was cut off. And I was like, damn, I'm going to prison. It's a wrap. It's over. My life is over. And but then I had to deal with this drug dealer. And the way I found out was he came to my house.

That doesn't sound good. He came to my house. And I was stupid because he lived in the projects off of Baleigh Ave in the Bronx. And not Bailiav, man, this is gunpoint. Gunpoint. Gun Hill. Gun Hill Road. In the Bronx.

That's the name of the Bronx. Gun Hill Road. He lived in these projects off of Gun Hill Road. And every time we would meet, he would never bring me into the projects. he would always meet me outside the projects in my car anytime we met in my area i would bring this dude to my house like i would like i thought about that like i was like how stupid was i so anyway he comes to my house knocks on my door i answered surprise that he's there and he's just like listen this is what happened i want my money back well things ain't going to go too well for you and i knew him i knew

with his reputation, and I was just like, man, this dude's going to kill me. And my mom is asleep, like two rooms down. This is the liver room, my bedroom, and her room. So at this point, I'm like, man, not only did I put my life in danger, but I put my mother's life in danger. And this is all getting how I ended up in the military. And so, I know I'm giving a long version of everything. It's fascinating, man. Keep going.

And so he's like, had my money. And I already had money from doing what I was doing. I just had to make a car. extra couple hundred dollars so I went out into the streets I made him his money like within a date paid him his money and then at that point that was my wake-up call I was just like I'm out like I don't know what I'm gonna do with the rest of my life I'm gonna try my hand at this record company thing for a few months and if it doesn't work I gotta figure something else out so I stopped I wrote I wrote a resignation letter for the MCI Worldcom I remember I went into the office it was

the building was right on 42nd Street by Grand Central Station. It was where the building was. And I remember going into that building that day after everything went down and I was just like, okay, is this a cop? Is this a cop? Is this a cop? Is this a cop?

So you're slightly paranoid. I'm paranoid. And in my mind, again, thinking like my father would always think of it, I don't know how stupid I was but I was like, maybe if I go in and turn in my resignation letter and quit before all of this blows up on me, I'll be safe.

I'll be safe. Like, this is what I'm thinking, like in my young, stupid mind. And so I go there, I meet with the man. And I think her name was Mrs. Green or whatever. And I turn in my resume. I'm like, listen, it's getting too crazy around here with all these people doing all this stealing phones. These criminals out here selling these lines.

Savage. I was like, I don't want to get caught up in this. I'm trying to turn my life around. So, you know, here, I'm going to get out of here trying to find a job somewhere else. And I remember she was tearing up. She's like, man, you've been such a great sales, and like you've been so good on all of these winning these awards and this and that she was just like

don't leave i was like this and i got to leave she was like okay i understand turn my resignation letter i'm like and i was thinking maybe she's in on it maybe she maybe they she's tell she's got a a why on or something because she's crying maybe she's acting she's got a wire on and but i got out that building and i never looked back and uh did you ever find out why they were shut off 15 days in No, I never I didn't stick around to find out I don't know I like I like I don't know Maybe it was like a random test maybe to see who was who I didn't stick around to find out Probably the smarter call but I went I get to my warrants later because I had warrants And when I found out I had warrants that's when I was like this is what the warrants for

I'll get to that so so anyway like I do that and then I had a you know a couple thousand I bought more than a couple thousand about ten thousand to try my hand at this record company thing and try invest with my artists because you know in order to at that time in order to make it you had to you had to make demos you have to print copies of the CDs you have to get out there it costs a lot of money and so my my goal at that point was to try and get a label deal so um i had a meeting with deaf jam records which was like the biggest record company hip-hop record company at the time and at that meeting uh lea what's the dude's name his name his name kevin la So Kevin Lows, if you're listening, I'm shouting you out because you remember me.

We met. You shut down my record company hopes. I go into the meeting and Kevin Liles, we played an album form the compilation album, which had, we did a compilation album because they had all our artists on it, and each artist had at least two or three songs. And we did that, so just a case he's like, well, I don't like that artist, but I'll take those two artists. He listened to it, and then after he listened to it, he was like, ah, that's cool, but

you want to hear you. you don't appreciate this next note he's like you want to hear somebody who who I just sign who I think is better than you guys and it's the point I'm like dude if you just tell if you tell me that that means you're not going to sign me to a deal last thing I want to do is hear somebody else hear your shit yeah yeah exactly and he plays it and he's like this is a dude named Joe Buttons Joe Buttons Joe Buttons I say you probably appreciate because he's a massive podcaster now oh is he yeah yeah he has a big podcast he's not he's not a rap anymore but he's a super successful podcaster so I figured you probably

he was name um but anyway and i was just he ended up i end up not getting a deal obviously and that's when i was like all right the hustle game's done music game's done what i'm gonna do three months go by i'm sitting in my mother's apartment and that's when i just feel this presence i feel something say you need to get out of here you like you need to get out of here remember that dream being the seal like you need to get out of and join the military and try trying to try and go do that and i was like ah and a big part of me didn't want to join the military because I hated the police. You know, I had, I had some bad encounters with the police growing up in the Bronx. I saw a lot of things growing up in the Bronx as it related to the police and minority community at the time. And part of me was just

like, you know, I associated anybody in a uniform as the police. Is it an authority figure? It's an authority figure. And the last, and I hated authority. And the last thing I wanted to do was be the police, so to speak. And so when that idea kind of came to me, I battled. But then in the midst of the middle of the... the battle, I looked around my room because it's, and I was just like, what has my life amounted to? Like, what else am I going to do? Like, what else do I have?

Like, I'm not going to college. Like, I can't get into college. Like, I'm not going back in the streets. Why not? You said you wanted to be a seal before? Let's see if you can go do that. So I got out, got out, I left my apartment. I went to Fordham, I went, I ran down Fordham Road, which is a street I grew up on.

And I went into the recruiter's office. First, I went into the Marine Recruiter's Office. Because in my mind, like, I don't know how I associated Navy Seals with Marines. I just went into the Marine Recruiter's office. Because it was those damn Marines, then Alcatraz. Yeah, they smoked us. They smoked us. So I went into the Marine Recruiter's office first.

Like, oh, okay, maybe through the SEALs, I could be a, through the Marines, I could be a SEAL because they got guns and all that, you know. And there was this poster of this Marine. He had on, like, a gilly suit. suppress on his sniper rifle and all. I was like, oh man, this is the seal. This is it. I'm home. Yeah, I'm gonna be that.

That's gonna be me. And the crazy thing about the story is, there was coffee on the desk, but there was nobody in the office. So I sat in the office, the door was open. I sat in the office for like 15 minutes. And nobody showed. There was evidence, because it was open, obviously.

And there was evidence that somebody was in there, but they, I don't know, but they taking a dump or what, but they weren't in there. So I got up and I walked out and I passed the Army recruiter's office. I peaked in, I said, hey, you know where the Marine dude is? And it's like, no, we don't know where he is. And I looked at, I was like, I'm not going to go to Army.

Army doesn't have seals. Don't do it. So then I walked next door down, Navy, Navy SEALs. Okay, Navy. Okay, this is where it's at, right? This is another avenue into becoming the seal, right? So I walk into the office, another big part of the story is this gorgeous Puerto Rican recruiter in there.

Her name is Tiana Reyes. gorgeous and I look and I was like man I'm going to get the seal teams but this is going to be my girl I'm going to pull my hip hop like yo so shorty type thing and and and and and and and she saw me coming a mile away because she was from the Bronx she was from the Bronx and she joined the Navy and then she came back to the Bronx to be a Navy recruiter so she I mean so she played you like a fiddle she yeah she played like a fiddle and she's like so what do you want to do in the Navy and I left up my arms like yeah I'm gonna be a seal I had no muscles I had two like two tennis balls like a tennis ball in each arm and she's like oh yeah really I was

like yeah she's like okay go to go to the computer and do an asvap test because you got to do a practice test see if you can get in the Navy I go and I do the test and I uh I passed it to get in the Navy but she's like you score nowhere near because you know you got to score high and the has to be a seal it's like you score nowhere near where you need to be to be a seal I was like dang so I can't be a seal she was like right now Nope, you can't be a seal, but maybe later. So I was like, all right. So then the next thing she does is she ran my, she runs my background.

And she does a quick search, and she discovers, I got two warrants off of my arrest. I'm like, warrants. And that was news to you? That was news to me. That was news to me. Keep in mind, I left, this was, this is June of 2002. When I'm in the recruiter's office, I left Warcom and all, well, December of December, 2000. 2001 so four months after 9-11 right so I'm like oh man like these the feds have been looking

for me this are all of the things is going through my mind because of what happened the 15 phones that cut off this they finally figured it out and they were trying they just could have found me so I'm sweating hot I get up I get ready to run I run towards that exit and she's like where are you going I'm getting out of here she's like I'm not trying to go to jail right now and she said stop she's like don't run because running's not going to get you nowhere she said do you have a suit i said no i don't got no suit why i'm trying to get out of it she's like do you have a collar shirt and some nice pants i was like i was like yeah i can get some nice pans but why like i'm like i got a go you're going to call

a cops on me like what are you doing and she said no i'm not going to call the cops on me she said come back tomorrow i said for what she said just come back tomorrow she had that snappy brown attitude just come back tomorrow okay so i came back the next day she was in her dress uniform had to tow dress uniform I had a warrant in New Jersey and I had a warrant in New York and she took me to the judge in New Jersey drove me in the government car to New Jersey got got us in front of the judge I don't know how she did it because but she got me in front of the judge maybe because it was she was in her uniform and she advocated on my bad she was just like listen kids made mistakes but he's got potential like can you can we expunge his record

Like I want him to join the military. He's trying to join the military after an act of war, 9-11 taking place. Is there anything you can do for his record? And the judge was like, if this guy's serious, I will expunge his record. No shit. Yeah, expunge my record. So the judge in New Jersey expunges my record. The judge in New York, then she drives me to New York.

Same thing. I can't remember what the charge was in Jersey. It was a misdemeanor something. The charge in New York was I ended up getting falsely arrested at a McDonald's. Times Square for disobeying the lawful order. It's a whole, it's a whole story in the book, but it was just, it was a bad situation, man. And I remember she was like,

I thought you had money with your hip hop stuff. Why you getting arrested for stealing cheeseburg and McDonald's? I didn't steal a cheeseburger McDonald's. I was black in McDonald's. That's what happened. But it was a bad situation. What happened in that story was,

me and my boys, we were in town square, doing our rap battle stuff. It was a big thing. In front of Virgin Mega Store, back in the day, like a bunch of rappers would meet you in front of the Virgin Mega Store and have these rap battles, like competitions. And the hopes was to get discovered because executives were, blah, blah, blah. So we did that.

We crossed the street to the McDonald's, which was right across the street from it. And it was packed, tourists, everything. This is in Times Square, packed. Which is a shit show for people who haven't been. Well, probably not in the last few months, but historically, it's a shit show. Yeah. Been there a few times. Crazy. And order my food, me and my boys, we order our food. And then after we order our food, I was just like, hey, because I ordered first, I'm going to go try and find some seats. So look downstairs, no seats. Walk upstairs, no seats. There's people standing up and eating. And there's, there's just nowhere to sit and eat. And it was cold. This was the wintertime. And it was just like, we were like, we're not going to eat outside. So we got our food, we stood up. And we, just like some of the other people, we stood up and we ate our food. And the security guard was just like,

Like, what are you guys doing it? Like, we eat, we just order this food. It's like, you can't stand up and eat here. It's like, well, these tourists over here stand up and eat and we spent money here. Like, what are you talking about? End up getting into an argument. Cops get called, you know, cops are like,

you got to leave, you can't eat here. And it's just turned into a bad situation. I ended up going in jail. And you spent the night in jail, got charged, didn't know anything about the court system. And I didn't know I was supposed to go to court. Yeah. And that's what my second one was why I never.

paperwork followed you yeah yeah and so so that's what the charge was for ended up she ended up doing the same thing standing before the judge and the crazy thing about it was the court building was not too far from the Twin Towers like literally it was like blocks away from from the twin where the Twin Towers were and advocate on my behalf listen this guy's made mistakes he's trying to turn his life around what happened you know shouldn't have happened at them now blah blah blah blah the judge was like if this dude serious about joining in the military, turn his life around, we'll expunge my record.

Wow. So then after my record was expunge, she went a step further because you gotta fill out that, I don't know if you remember that paper, the legal paperwork, you gotta fill out to join the Navy and ask you all these questions, check yes if you ever. Oh yeah, the goal is to not check yes. Yes, yeah.

Yeah. And she was like, check no, check no for everything, because if you check yes, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, I got your record, she'd be completely expunged out of the system so that when we go to MEPs, She timed it so by the time I got the maps, it wasn't, it was out of the system. And, you know, she forged the paperwork, and that's how I got in the Navy.

Like, that's literally how I got in the Navy. And she died two years later. What? How'd she die? She had an autoimmune disease. Are you serious? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she died.

It was, she had a rare, rare, rare, autoimmune disease. It was called, myo, I can't pronounce a myosidid, something. You could look at, like, they're. They have a John Hopkins Institute has a page where you could donate to her specific. No kidding. But they still don't have a cure for it. And yeah, when I found out, man, it crushed me, dude.

Oh, I bet. Because it was like, man, like, dude, if it wasn't for her, bro. She went above and beyond. Yeah, she changed the trajectory of my life. And that's where, like, I learn, man, from her, man, you got to be willing to give people second chances, especially people don't deserve it. One and two, you got to be willing to give yourself a,

second chance, third chance, fourth chance, fifth chance, because, man, like, what she did, and me and her daughter are real cool right now. Like, me and her daughter's become, like, my daughter, her daughter, Sierra, shout off to Sierra. She was super cool. Like, like, the best I could do for Tiana is, because her father's daughter, father's now in her life,

is to try and be in her life. So, and it was my recruiter really pushed me. Like, like, and when I say push me, I mean, she really, not pushed me, but inspired me to do the right thing in the Navy. because I went from this hard environment growing up in the Bronx to the Navy where I had people yelling at me and, you know, so all that,

you disrespected me, I'm gonna knock you out, that wasn't gonna fly. Yeah, and there were times when. Yeah, that's not the place to go in with that. It's not the place to go in, no, you're gonna get crushed and then end up in the brig. And so every time I was on the verge of lashing out or, you know, bulking up, I thought about Tiana.

because Tiana told me, it remi, like, the reason why the reason why the military doesn't want you is because they worried about your past, your criminal activity, you carrying that out in the military. Yeah. So you need to, you need to be a waymaker and you need to, and what I mean by that is you need to change a narrative so that because if you screw up, then, yeah, I'm possibly going to get in trouble, but then you're going to close the door for other people. but if you're successful and you could show like Navy, Army, Marines, whatever that people go to and be a success in the middle of that can open doors

for other people. So do the right thing. So anytime I was on the verge of, and I did do some stupid stuff. As we all did. Yeah, I did a lot of stupid stuff. But when it came to doing something, I was strategic, I was smart about it.

When it came to something that would have openly crushed me, I didn't do it. I held my tone. And it was so many things. times where you know I was putting a position by leadership where you know cursing at me screaming at me yelling at me you know screwing me on my e-vows and all of the stuff and I just held my tone so your first duty station you did you go to the corman route yeah yeah yeah I was a

cacker checker yeah so you okay you go boot camp realize you probably should have learned how to swim good one okay so we're learning our lesson then I'm assuming you learned how to swim went to your first duty station, took the seal screener. Yeah, well, not right away. So as soon as I got to my first duty station, when, like, I watched the Buzz 2, 3,4 video. Who did?

The documentary on Discovery. Which is not an accurate portrayal of buds. No, no, they cut out a lot of stuff. Yes, they did. Let's just say there was the training that occurred with the camera crew there and the training that occurred when it wasn't. Were you in that class?

No, I was in 212. The last hardest bud class on the history of buds. Yeah, right now our class. Two-sixth's last hardest bud class. Yeah. No, when I got there, you know, I was just like, okay, I want to be a seal. I need to figure out because I didn't have anybody train me, teach me anything. I'm on a Marine base.

I'm in the barracks and Camp Pendleton is massive. So I'm in the middle of nowhere. and I needed to figure it out on my own. So I got the documentary. I bought Fins. I would go to the gym that was like down the street from the barracks and I didn't know how to work out. I would just create workouts from what I saw in the buzz

through video like circuit training and keep. And I did that and then I would run three miles to the pool and I jumped in the shallow in, of course. I was like, I need to figure this out. And the lifeguards will be looking at me like, oh, man. They're like, God damn it, Remmy's back today. I'm trying to say dry, this dude's gonna make you get wet.

And I just started out in the shallow end. And then finally I went to my LPO at the time and I said, listen, like, because I was getting off at 4 o'clock. And I said, listen, if I can have the afternoon off, I could really take that time to prepare for buzzet. She believed in me. I've had a lot of women in my life who's coming in my life who's really, they believed in me and they helped me in a significant way

that's helped me to get to where I met today. my mom, Tiana, and my first LPO, HM2 Brown. And she was like, all right, so I would work. She changed my schedule, so I would work four hours in the morning, eight to 12. I would have 12 to four off to train. And then I would work the night clinic from like four to eight, something like that. It's a long day, but that's awesome that they carved that time out for you. Yeah, 100%.

And I just, man, I just crushed it, man. And literally within, I checked in January 2004. I passed, I failed the screening test because I failed to swim by like a minute in, in like May of 2004. And it's gone from like not being able to swim skinny and had qualified. I'd retaking the ASVAP. I'd studied the ASVAP book in that time. And then I passed in July of 2004.

Wow. And I got orders to Buds. I was in Buds in January. No, sorry, 2003. Sorry, checked in January 2003, took the first screen in May 2003, passed it in July 2003. I was in Buds, January 2004. So within a year checking in my command, I was checking out, and I went to Buds. That's pretty crazy trajectory, given where you started.

Yeah, I was like balls to the wall. But the thing was, and this kind of goes into why I really struggled the first time in Bud's with the water was, I didn't know that we did two mile time the ocean swims. it. Like literally, I was like, all right. It was still a largely an information gap. Yeah. Like I, I remember when I went to my Navy recruiter, they handed me like this maybe, there was a staple in it. So it was more than one piece of paper. But it was like this pyramid of pushups. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like running. Like the amount of information. I had a female Navy recruiter as well. She was actually a mechanic for the Blue Angels was her duty station before. And I believe she went back.

Oh, wow. But she wasn't versed in the seal. And we're talking 95 is when I signed up. 96 is when I actually went to boot camp. So there was not a lot of information. Yeah. Yeah, there was no, I don't think I knew we did two miles swims either. I didn't care because that was actually my strength.

Which was good there. Yeah. But you got to buds and you're like, hey, does anybody know anything? Yeah, yeah. Nobody do nothing. You see a brown shirt and you're like, can I take you out to breakfast? For people listening brown shirts, it means you made it through Hellweek. so therefore you know everything.

No, 100%. Yeah, you are God, man. So it was the two-mile ocean swims that got you when you first went? Yeah, and when I showed up, because I didn't know that we did two-mile-time ocean swims. I just thought I needed to pass the screening test. And then when I went to buds, it was just like, oh, you know, push-ups, runs, like all that stuff. I did old course. And so I remember the first day of first phase, we did some stuff at end dock in the pool,

but the first open water swim I had done in my entire life was the first day of first. wetsuit appreciates this one in the bay. Which is, we get you really cold, so you appreciate your wet suit. It's exactly what people think it is. It's freezing cold, man. It's freezing cold. This is February. Yeah.

So you started buds the same time. I was a January start as well. I know what you're talking about. So there's waves, there's tides, there's rip currents, and none of that is present in pools. No, not only the ability to swim. Now you're talking about managing the surf. Exactly. I know what you're talking about.

And this pool is a little bit warmer. The pool is steaming in the morning. Exactly. The ocean is not. And I don't know what it is if it's the chlorine or what it is, but it felt like when you're swimming with fins, you move a lot better. And obviously it's because the absence of the current. But I don't know.

Anyway, the first open water swim, wet suit of appreciation swim. And I chose my swim buddy was dude. Tyrone Pied is another black dude. It's three black dudes in the class out of a class of 250 cats and I choose a swimboard to even another black dude, right? So we get, and he had been in buds before.

Okay. And so we get into the water and I'm kicking like, dude, I'm kicking like never before. I'm going nowhere. Like nowhere. And Peterson is screaming him like, because he's getting ahead of me. At Lake what you doing? Come on. I'm like, I'm swimming, man.

I'm trying, man. I'm trying. And I'm kicking and I'm getting cold. I had no body of fat, so I'm getting cold. So my body's starting to lock up. And then all of a sudden I start hearing, I start looking up and I've seen like instructors staring at me. In the boat.

Safety boats. Yeah. And they're like, what the hell are you doing? And I was like, I'm hoo-ya. He's like, no, no, no, no, no. They're like, none of this. And for people listening, who-ya is the answer to everything when you're a student.

It means yes, no, maybe. Fuck you. I don't know. It means everything. And as an instructor, it gets very irritating. because you'll ask a question what you legitimately, are you okay? Like people freezing death,

they'll go, hooya, instruct your stuff, you're like, no. Yeah. Are you okay? Yeah. Yeah, no,

100%. 100%. And they're like, cut it. We need an answer. How the hell did you show up to seal training? I know how to swim. I was just like,

whoi yaw, it was like, none, no, no. Yeah. We're past the hooya face. We're past it. And it was like,

well, just keep going. And I, I never, I don't know how, I didn't get far. I didn't get far at all. I mean, obviously the point of the drill wasn't the time swim or anything like that, but it was just one of those things where you just had, it was completion.

They just wanted to use the elements to get your cold. And after that swim, that's when I was like, man, like, what did I sign up for, bro? Like, I knew I wasn't going to quit, but I knew I was just like, I'm in the world to hurt me. And let's remind people, this is your first day. Day one. Day one. But the good thing about it was that was, that was the last. last evolution of the day. So I had done the morning PT and the log PT and the boats on heads

and all that. First day of first phase is a shit show by the way. By design. It's basically you're going to look into a shotgun barrel and have somebody else pull the trigger. Exactly. That's a perfect description of it. Yeah, you're like eyeballing. You're like boom. Yeah. By design. The attrition on day one is actually startling. Yeah. No, it's high. It's high. Like 20, 30 people per class. Winter classes. And what's crazy is? And what's crazy is. you'd think they did a little research before showing up. Do you think that they know it's going to be hard? The number of people that will quit in the first few hours.

As an instructor still consistently surprised me. Like, what did you expect? Yeah, I don't get it. What I boil it down to, I think it's, they don't have a deep rooted emotional reason why. I think a lot of people. They don't understand their why of why they're there. Yeah. I would agree with you on that.

They have a superficial reason. They have a reason, but it's a superficial reason. And it's like, oh, I want to grow out my hair. I want to wear it trite on. I want chicks like more. Hey, you've heard the same saying I have. Everybody wants to be a frogman on Friday. Exactly.

Yeah, you know the deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when they get smashed in the mouth, yeah. That's when it's like, that good idea quickly turns into a bad idea. And for me, my deep root, what kept me going, especially after that first swim was I have nothing left. Like.

Nothing left to go back to? Yeah. I have failed it so much in life. I failed to being a son. I failed to being a brother. I failed at music. I felt that, you know, hustling. Like, I can't fail anymore.

So that was my deep-rooted. I'm going to keep hanging. I'm not going to quit. So anyway, you know, get through the first week, second week, two-mile time, ocean swim. Passing times, 85 minutes. I do it 120 minutes. And for people listening, there's a two-mile ocean swim.

Buds is a 26-week course. Yep. There's 26 of them. I think they do them. What is it? Mondays are the time runs? Yep, Tuesdays. Tuesdays are the swims.

and Wednesdays are the O-Course. You could set your watch to it. You're good. And two of those, and one of those 26 swims is 3.5 miles, and another one is 5.5 miles. Correct, yeah. And the times decrease per phase, not a crazy amount, but... Yeah, about five minutes, right?

Yeah, about five minutes. I think it's two minutes on the O-course. Yeah, two minutes on O-course. And it's like a minute or is it a minute for the run? I can't remember. It's reasonable, though, because if you make it to those phases, you are actually getting more than a... anything it's efficiency the students are just better at doing it but yeah you can set your

watch to the number of times you're gonna have to get in for the old two-mileer oh yeah yeah and I dread it like every night of course you did like yo man this is going because like literally toward halfway through the swim one I was last like I was in the back and then like about I would say the last quarter mile of swim I would begin to get hypothermia even in the in the wetsuits yeah in the wetsuits because I had no body body fat and remember I'm swimming two hours 120 the passing time is 85 minutes you're basically doing a one and a half exactly exactly and I remember one time I felt so bad because I was in Mikey Mansour was in my boat crew workman workman was in my

boat crew there's a lot of good dudes and I remember one time Peterson looked up because he was guiding and he was looking at the beach and he's the entire class is getting hammered and Peterson is like Remy, everybody's getting hammered because of us. Like the instructors told me that if Remy doesn't quit, we're gonna just hammer the class until he finishes the swim. Classic constructor technique. I support that.

Yes. And I felt so bad, but I just, it was bad man, but I finished the swim and then in the class like, they, I think they respect, they did respect me because they after the swims, they'd be like, yo man, like we feel bad for you, bro. But you are a hard dude. Because I put out in everything else.

That's the thing. It wasn't a matter of whether or not you were hard. You just, you didn't have enough experience in your belt when it came to swimming. No. No. And so, so anyway, I get to Hell Week. I survive. Instructives like, dang, this dude made it to Hell Week.

Like, this dude's crazy. So I get to Hell Week and like the med checks, I'm spitting up blood. Like, we did med checks on like a Thursday, I think, Friday or something like that. the hell week started on Sunday and I'm spitting up blood and as a corment I knew I had I had pneumonia or sype is people don't know swimming dues pulmonary edema basically water in your lungs right yeah yeah and uh and like a lot of guys get it in buds because of how much we're in the water and so I knew what it was but I was just like I can't go back to day one again I can't do day one I like I'm especially if it's Thursday or Friday I mean you can almost see the light at the

end of the time yeah yeah and so I so I so after that So I pushed through. I pushed through, went to hell week. And then when I say Medcheck, the Medcheck before the start of Hell Week. So Medchek was on Thursday, Friday, was down there, whatever. Then you had Saturday to chill and then Sunday was breakout. Yeah, coming around midday and just hang up. So by the time Sunday came, I'm really spitting up a lot of bud.

Start hell week, hurt locker Monday, still pushing, crushing it. Tuesday, bro. Like I get hypothermia, pneumonia. pneumonia got worse but I got hypothermia during a steel period my core temperature was 88.8 like it was bad

they rushed me to medical got to medical that's when I finally confessed I was just like listen dude like I got sight and I spit up blood and like there was like jello into the basin

and the doctor at the time I had known his wife because his wife was a doctor at my first duty station and he actually gave me a tour of buds like before I even came to buds and so we had like this I don't want to call it a personal relationship,

but we kind of were like, cool. And I think he thought that I was, because you know, you get all the people who fake injuries or they say I'm hurting and there's nothing wrong with him. I think he thought I was taking advantage of the fact that I knew him. And he looked at me, he's like, hey, like, it's not that bad. What you got like, you need to go back to Hellwick. Like, this is just business.

Like, you got to go back to Hellwood. You can't get out of it. Like I'm, and so long story short, I went back in the Hell Week. you know a few hours after they rewarn me and uh remember i remember i remember fort and seen you for instructor for it yeah as soon as i get back to the class he's like hey remi do you want to um adelaike he's like do you want to do you want to quit or do you want to go in the water because i know i heard you would you got pulled out because you were cold and i was just like i was like no i'm going to water i went to water freezing cold we did around the world and during around

the world not around the world but uh base tour base tour during base tour like I'm running and like all I remember is I'm running one minute and then I'm on and I don't even remember hitting the ground what they what the instructors everybody told me is just like it was like somebody pulled the light switch out the socket I went from this bam face planted like I was done and they did the sternum rub to kind of bring me back to rush me to medical they took chest x-rays this time it was like yo you're your lungs are shredded like my lungs You're like, no, asshole, I told you that the last time I was here. Yeah, yeah.

And he and the whole medical got in trouble because a dude died in my class. No shit. Was it the guy who aspirated in the pool? No, no. He died on the run. Rob Vetter. He was a swift dude. He was a sick dude.

He had a heart attack, didn't he? Yeah, on a conditioning run. Yeah. So Bud's had already, and I can't remember all the history behind. I don't know if he had something going on and he kind of hit or what was going on there. It was a combination of both. I don't know if he was a hundred percent. honest on the entry paperwork

and I don't and I think there was an aspect of the medical staff might have missed something as well either way it terminated in him face down fucking dead on the condition he died yeah I was one of the Corman that helped tend to him you know because it could somebody called Cormit up I ran yeah so

Bud's medical was already under the microscope because that and when that happened that just changed things because I was in the ICU for four days man oh shit yeah dude I had pneumonia and sight and I had rabdo and I was I was just a mess, bro. Like, I was on antibiotics, and then obviously the chafing

all all the stuff that comes with. And then when I got out of medical, went back to Buds, you know, the Master Chief, who was the name, Master Chief Hoffman, no Senior Chief Hoffman. No, senior Chief Hoffman. And the rest of the guys were just like, dang, bro. Like, we didn't know, like, we're sorry,

like, we thought you were faking. Because they see, and I can, they see a very high volume of fakers. You know the deal. You was a buzz and struck, man. Like, and I've seen all the guys who faker on, it's like, no, you just don't want to quit. Yeah.

And so, you know, I could kind of understand. And there was like, hey, good on you for pushing through. Bad news is you got to start all over day one. Buck. So, dude. So you got a med roll. I got a med roll. Day one, watched 100 plus dudes quitting 251.

I was in BoCrew with Mark Lee. It's crazy, though, man. I was like, I met all these awesome frogs, man. I was able to serve with, and even though it was just buzz, like serve all these awesome, these legends, I mean, you know. And went through first phase. fail all the swims again. Went to Hell Week, made it through Hell Week, and then after I made it through Hell Week,

the CO was just like, and the XO, Ryan Zinkie was just like, all right, you know, we see that you got the heart. We're not even going to let you go into second phase. We're not even going to let you do the last swim in first phase. We're just going to roll you now. So you got a med role to start with, then a performance role.

And they double roll me. It was like, we know we're setting you up for failure to get a roll one time. So we're just going to double row you. Yeah. And for people listening, you do get one medical role and one performance role. You do not, so you can get a total of two rolls, but it can't be the same kind. Yeah, yeah.

So if it had been two meds, it's, and I've been on those boards, it's like, hey man, we're sorry, but you're balanced. But either way, your last silver bullet was fired when they double rolled you. Yeah, because they were like, you cannot swim. And we're not going to be able to teach you at eight weeks, bro. It's like, you need, you need like six months. So they double rolled me. I was in Brown Short Rollback land, worked in hell weeks. and all that stuff, and then class back up with 253,

and then I passed my first swim. It's like, yes, dude, I'm like, I'm not a moron. Like, I could do it. Fast my first swim. And I get to second phase, and I failed my first swim. Was it a time, obviously? Yeah, it was time, but a lot of it was pride. Like, it was more so pride than anything.

Because on the weekends, the instructors would show up, and you noticed, you did it. You would show up on the weekends, and on your off time to do remediation to help guys who were struggling. And after I had made it through Hell Week and I passed my first swim, like, my pride level went from here to like here.

Like, I don't know if you know this guys, but I basically already have my Trident. Yeah, yeah, that's how I was. Like, literally, I was, like, I was telling girls at the club, I'm a frog man. Yeah, I'm kind of a big deal. You might have heard of me.

Yeah, I was too, like I was partying, I was going gas lamp, going down a gas lamp dish. Because in my mind, I was like, here I'm this kid from Africa, lost everything, went to the Bronx, hustling. Pass one goddamn swim, and here I am. Pass one swim, you know. And I thought I had arrived, right? And, you know, I was just, it was my pride. And I tell people all the time, man, you know, pride is dangerous, man, because it can crush you.

What's the same? Pride before the fall? Pride before the fall, man. And they crushed me. And, you know, I was too hung over to show up to remediation. And a part of it was like, I don't need it anymore, you know. And I think that if I would have really showed up to those remediations and continue working on my swims and then the other stuff

as it related to pool week, I would have made it through. But, you know, should or could have water. So anyway, I get in the dive phase, fail my first swim, fail my second swim, go to an ARB board. They're like, if you fail another swim, we're kicking you out of boards. And they don't have a choice, by the way. Again, having been on that board, we flip open the record, and it's like, listen, there's nothing we can do.

Yeah, 100%. And so I get to pool. week and that tread bro I mean I pat I mean you know the deal with the oh I know the deal with the tread and I'm already struggling I mean I passed ditching dawn night ditching dawn buddy give shame yeah but you still were failing the tread every day were you dude I thought I was like yo when they when they so for the people listening the tread twin 80 scuba tanks with a manifold and regulator that Jacques Cousteau would be disgusted with because it was from

like the days of the Egyptians. Yeah, man. You have a weight belt on. You have your UDT fins and you start a clock. Yep. Bottom of the wrist has to be out of the water. Both hands up. Yep.

And that's the only requirement. Five minutes, five minutes, bro. And when they threw me in that water, I was like, yo, what are they trying to do to me? They're trying to kill me, man. It's like all his way. I could, my leg strength when it came to swimming was not,

up to par anyway and it's like I got a trail water from five. And this is a different type of swimming. This is completely vertical. Vertical. Yeah. You know, if you flip it on your side and you're doing the underwater recovery stroke. Yeah. I mean, you could literally sleep doing that. Exactly. But you flip that vertical, put a little bit of weight on there. And if people, I mean, I would watch it, they'd have their

weight belt on cock-eyed so they're starting to list. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. It was, I'm not going to lie. As an instructor, it was fucking glorious. All I would watch is their hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because if they were, you know, most people would figure out if they just kind of lean forward and put their head in the water, they relax and they'll tread for a little bit, come up, big breath,

and come back down. But you just watch the hands, and it starts, like, when they start monkey pawing, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's a rat's on, it's a matter of time, dude. And you'd see, like, weird, like, like, eh, and then, like, the Texas longhorns. And then, like, you just, all I would do is watch the fingers.

And at some point, you realize it's fucking giddy up time. Oh, yeah, it's a rat. Somebody's going down. And then even when you drop your hands, it's like, oh, stay in the water. Yeah, you still gotta finish the five. It's like, no, dude, I can't,

I swallowed like 10 gallons. I would have students drop their weight belt on me and I would go down and get it. I never did that. And I would wrap it over their manifold so they couldn't take it off again. Yikes. How do you even get it off at that point?

Is it still got that quick release? They lower their hands. That's right, that's right. They drop it. And then all of a sudden, they're doing a tread. Like, nipples are out of the water. I'm like, no, no, be right back. drape it over the manifold and then

fuck me that's the widest eyes I've ever seen in my life yeah man so I dude I was I failed the first time felled the second time went to ARB board hey you know we're going to have to have a discussion

if you fail it you know because you get four shots at it yep fell the third time fell the fourth time fuck man and like I said the instructor's hands are tied at that point and they told me I went I went to my ARB board that for that four failure they told me if you to pass your first two swims like we would have rolled you you

know because you're a good dude we would have rolled you yeah failed your first two swims and now this we got to drop you and that was the first time i took responsibility like i remember they asked me they said you got anything to say and i was just like hey man real talk like i'm not even trying to like you know you know shine you guys on or anything but it's my fault i was just like i should have been working on what i need to work on on the weekend i should have been you know going to remediation the weekend i took i took full responsibility now is the way i really learned that lesson is that in order for you to progress in life after failure, first and foremost, you gotta take responsibility forward.

It's a tough lesson to learn, man. Yeah. Because my whole life, I blamed everybody for everything, like everything. That was the first time on adult life, I took the blame. And that's where I learned. You know, if failure's only a failure,

if you learn from it, it's a lesson. And lesson that I got out of that was one, never show up anything in life unprepared. Like, I showed up the bloods unprepared, and two, like. And if you do that, the system will work. Yeah. I mean, if that curriculum is designed,

spit people out for those reasons. 100%. So where'd you go in the in between time? So I ended up with the Marines after all. First MAR div. Yeah, man.

So I ended up first MARDIV. Was that back in Camp Pendleton? Back to Camp Pendleton. And, you know, it was, I needed that, though. I needed that. And I was with the grunts. I was at Battalion 1 4, and I hated it.

Like, because, you know, no disrespect to the Marines. Marines are awesome. Like, I love my Marines. I just. As do I. They're a different breed, though. Yeah.

Yeah, they're different breed. I loved them, but it was just, it wasn't what I wanted. You know, when you feel like you were so close to what you want and then you end up what you don't want to be, it just changes. I mean, dude, if you made it to Pool Week, you're about halfway through the curriculum. So maybe not light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah. But you're, you know, you're marking your progress towards completion. Yeah, man.

And so anyway, man, I went there, you know, a lot of amazing events happened. my LPO I was there for like a year and a half my LPO ended up becoming the command career counselor like yeah the command career counselor for first marine division and he had known my work ethic he saw me work hard he knew I wanted to go back to buds and so he was just like hey I talked to the command master chief and keep in mind he went from being in charge of like 10 corpsmen

to being in charge of like 600 corpsmen yeah all the corpsmen every corpsman for first Marine Division and he was just like, hey dude, like, I'm going to talk to the Master Chief. He talked to Master Chief. First he said no, but then Master's Q's came back and said, listen, if he gets his FMF pin and he has good e-vowals

and he signs a page 13 that says if he fails Buds, he will have to come back and do a, and do three full years or do the full tour, I will allow him to go to Buds. And I went back to Buds, man, and 266. And, you know. Straight through that time? Straight through.

You got rolled again? I got rolled in third face. Third face. What for this time? Don't say swims, God damn it. No, no, no. Demo. I failed a demo test, man.

You did? Yeah, man. Damn it. I know, I know. I know. I think you got on me about that, too, when you found out. Because I got back and off the island and he was like, dude, rammed me, like, what the hell did you get rolled for?

I said, demo. He was like, demo. Like, I failed the test. But anyway, you know, again, it was. It was good for me, man. Again, every failure has been good for me because I learned a lesson in it, you know? And how was how we through second time, or the third time through? Yeah. It was easy. You think because you knew what was coming? Yeah, I knew it was coming and I had been through it already. And it was just like, you passed the tread on your first try. No. Dude, you should know this story. Fuck. I saw a lot of students. Okay, yeah, that's true. So his. If I had known you had this history at the tread, yeah, don't mistake it. I would have grabbed you out of line and be like, Remi, let's fucking party. No, I know, I know, I know. Dude, you probably don't remember this, but instructor Kraft. I remember Kraft, yeah.

He was there when I was in Dyeface the first time. So he had told all the instructors like, oh, really? Oh, he's going to get. So anyway, the first time I do the tread, like, craft is like, you're going to go first. I was like, I was like, yeah, I'm good. I can go first. And probably better that you do. Yeah, get that fucker done.

Yeah, get it over. And I put the, I put the, I rushed, I rushed the straps on. and he's like hey get in the water go now it's like hey I just want to get my straps right and I jump in the water and I do the trap five minutes boom I'm good I'm looking at crap like yeah looking to be like are you guys seeing this are you guys seeing this tread yeah but but then because I hastily put on the straps towards like the last 30 seconds of the tread the straps began to get looser oh no right but they stay on five four five minutes so boom now it's time to do the swim you got to swim

down yep I do to swim down the strap pops like when I'm halfway down like passing a dive board the strap comes off and it wraps around my neck but it's still on and they're like you still I think I can't remember if it was you and you're like you still ain't failed dude and tanks are still on your back technically like keep going yeah I'd let you party so I'm still swimming and it's like choke at me so I'm like I'm pulling it's yanking on my neck and I'm like damn man so I get right before I get to ledge I was like man when I get on my back like these things are going to come off

because like gravity right you know just the water just they're just naturally going to sink you'll tip over off yeah because it's only one strap and it's hanging on by a thread at this point and long behold like I start swimming backwards on my back I'm feeling good comes off and instructor craft was like

Adelaikee damn dude I got out the water dude you should remember this man I got out the water and I flipped out on crack Like, they're struck, I can't remember when it was there. It was like, like, I like, drop that. Oh, the hell you think you talk to? Because I was like, I was like, I told you, man.

I told you my stress weren't. We're jacked up to. I think I do remember that interaction. Yeah. I was like, I told you my freaking, like, I'm cursing. Like, I'm cursing. Like, I told you my freaking stress were messed up, like, dude, brother.

I'm, like, I dropped the fuck down. Who do you think you're talking to blah? And I dropped down. I'm still like, I told him. I was like, I'm going to drive there wet. Like, I told him my stress were jacked up, man. like I could pass this. And they was like, dude, you get you failed.

It's like, you show you could pass it. Just come back and do it tomorrow. So I came back the next day. Failed it the second time. No fucking way. Yeah, bro. It's like a movie, bro. It's like perfect tension, plot twist, right?

So I get in the water, like, boom, do the five minutes. I'm good. Swim down, straps, everything was good. Swim down, good. Swim back. Shallow water blackout. Like right when I was passing the second. No shit.

man you that's what I'm saying like I think you like a bunch of instructors jumped in the water to get me out because I black like I'm I'm swimming and I pass like the I do think I help pull you out yeah and it because it was like man you yeah it was you're heavy rolled into the fucking back of your head yeah had a black guy and I went all the way down though and dudes trying to swim my negative ass up dude I'm just like it was a rap instructors like like yo I think you looked at me like yo man like good on you but you fail bro. Yeah.

The only evolution you get a shallow water blackout pass on is the 50 meter under water. Yeah. Yeah. I failed though. I failed. So I failed and went to a board. It's like,

what's up, bitches? I'm back. But yeah, I know. It was like surreal, dude. So, but it was like a bunch of,

you brought everybody, instructors brought every, like all the guys who failed like two times or whatever into the board. It was like a phase board. And then you cleared everybody out after you, you know, flipped on them like, oh, you suck. And then it was like,

Atalakey, stay here. I stayed in there. It's like, yo, dude, like, come on, dude. Like, we know you can do this. I just go there tomorrow, do the swim. We know you can pass it. Just get it over with and freaking move on.

And I didn't win in. Passing, no shallow water blackout, no straps. Went through pool. You were my first pool comp. How did that go? You failed me. Even I thought I was mad at you. I'm not going to lie.

I was mad because I did everything right. What did I fail you for procedure? I can't remember what it was for. But it was the pool comp where it's like a who yaw pool. Not a hoo-ya, but it's like the one that's like a practice type, but if you pass it, you pass it? You know what I'm saying? Did that exist back then?

You remember? Like, it's like, it's not the, it's the full-on pool comp, but it's like. I don't remember one that was like that. It was either pool comp or it wasn't. Okay, so anyway, it was pool comp then. You were the first instructor that I went through and you kicked me in the nuts.

And then you were mad at me. I was mad, bro. I was mad because I felt like I did everything right. I was like, man, no, I passed it. But you were known to be the hardest, one of the hardest. I gave a very fair test. But it was difficult. Everybody's like, you know, don't go on, don't go instruct the slump's line.

Don't go instruct the stumps line for the bull come. You're going to get crushed. Yeah. I mean, I thought the test should be hard, but it should be fair. If people pass, they pass. If they fail, they failed. I didn't take any personal interest in it. No, you didn't.

You didn't. 100%. You didn't. It was all business. And, you know, I failed. but it was good, second time I passed it. Yeah. Pass it.

And most people do not pass on their first attempt anyway. It's the odds of success increased. Actually, most people, over half are usually on their third attempt. Yeah. When it gets to the fourth, the stats start going down and touch. Oh, yeah, 100, because he's stressed out. Oh, my God. You see him on the side of the pool and they're just like, ha.

I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm actually have to work for my money on this one. Exactly, exactly. They freak out. And that's what I didn't want to get to that. I was just like, nope. Like, I wanted to pass it. That's why I wanted to pass it for a second. I was like, I'm passing it now, dude.

Like, because that stress on top of the stress being able to be able to breathe and all that. No, that's not happening. So, yeah, went through and then got to, you know, third phase and, you know, had the mishap, came back, made it through third phase and went to SQT. And then I had a massive setback in SQT. And, you know, it's just, and that's been my whole life, man, like even up to this point, dude, just getting punched in the mouth by life. Like got to static line jump school and, you know, on the first jump, you know, jump, second jump, the winds were super high. It was the end of the day. Was this out in O-Tay?

Yeah. This static. This was out. Brownfield. Yeah. Okay. Oh, that's right. Brownfield, yeah.

Yep. Trident D.Z. Yeah, Trident D.C. And I was the number was I was the number two guy out. And I guess the guy, I was a guy. I was a slight, might have been slightly heavier than the one guy, but I don't know what happened with the weights, but I fell past the one guy and I became the number one guy, but because of the horizon, everything was hard to tell. Yeah. You're not paying attention to who's the one, two.

Well, and static line jumping is a shit show anyway. You have very little control. It's dumb. It's dumb. That's the most apt description of that activity. Yeah, I hate it, dude. I hate it. And so I pass him, and I'm getting closer towards the ground because the winds are massively.

high at this point. We all have the radios on and the structure just start screaming. Number two guy, number two guy, you need to turn into the wind. You're not into the win. And I'm like, I was the number two guy in my mind, but in reality at that point, I wasn't. I was the number one guy from his POV. Yeah, the exit stick order was different than your actual vertical. Exactly. Exactly. And so he starts screaming frantically like, you need to turn into the win, number two guy. So in my mind, I'm already into the win, but I'm like maybe he knows something I don't know. This is just my second static line jump. I go to turn. And dude, the wind shifted my shoot, and I was sideways at this point. And if I tried to counter, I could have landed sideways and just really jacked myself up.

And, you know, so I just stuck with it. And I hit the ground massively hard. I split my medial malleolus, the bone in my ankle in half. Yeah, dude. Like, as soon as I hit the ground, I hurt my ankle snapcrackle and pop, bro. And it was just like, oh, shit. The number of times I've been on a static line, DZ, where you hear people after they land. yell, Cormat!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not awesome. No, it's not. That activity should be fucking outlawed. It should be bound. Ben, yeah, no, 100%, dude. You have no control. You're coming down at a high rate of speed.

It's crazy. You know how many times seals have ever done a successful static line jump in real life? And this is the sign. Not for three, zero. Not for three, zero. I can't make the proper. Yeah.

But yeah, man. But I didn't call for Corman. Because at that point, I was just like, You already diagnosed it yourself because you were recording. Yeah, I was just like, damn, bro, I was like, I just need to do two more jumps. So do I go to the hospital? Do I do these last two jumps? So long story short, dude, I ended up hiding the injury.

The next day, did the last two jumps on it broken and then, you know, and then went to the hospital. But I got my cert and, you know, got out and got rolled. And then, you know, class back up with 269 and graduated and went to the teams, man. And then I think you were three when I was there, right? I think so, yeah. I checked into Team 3 in 08. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you probably were in the OIF portion of that.

You deployed to Iraq? Yep, Iraq. Okay. Was Nick your OIC? We were in the same TU. Okay, so you were in probably a sister platoon? Yeah, I was in Delta. He was in Charlie.

Okay, yeah, so I was over in Afghanistan. So, yeah, we ended up. How was your experience in the teams? Great, man. Like, great. Oh, I loved, dude, I loved the teams, man. And, like, I was able to, you know, do some cool stuff and serve with awesome guys, in my opinion. You know, I mean, you know, total, like, I was able to do three deployments.

And, you know, it was just, it was just great. I don't have it. Like, I don't have any negative experience with the teams. Like, I was able to, you know, kick down doors. Was it what you thought it was going to be? For the most part, yes. For the most part, yes. On the DA side of things, yes.

Direct action people, kicking indoors. Yeah, being able to do DAs and. And granted, they weren't like, they weren't like, I wasn't doing a DA every day, but like to be able to do, like just being able to go on one DA, you know, like the first day I went on. I was just like, dude, bro. Like sneaking in, kicking down the door, wrapping the dude up. Like, yes. Like, and I remember after my first off, I was just like, I could die now. Like, in my opinion, in my opinion, you know what I mean?

There's guys who have done way more stuff than I will ever do, you know what I mean? Like, but just in my mindset coming from where I came from in life to get to that point. it was story arc filmed over now for me. You know what I mean? I don't mean that in a negative way. I just mean like, man, like I made it, you know? And it was great. You know, I was a Corman and then I was also a humid guy.

So, you know, I did a lot of the human intelligence stuff, you know, and that was fun. So I was able to, you know, how much I could share it. I feel like your background and all this stuff that led up in that life, hustling on the street had to have helped when it came to interface them with people like that. 100% 100%. And for people listen, we're largely talking about developing networks of human intelligence. Yeah.

And probably just leave it at that. So yeah, those interpersonal skills, the ability to read people, communicate, manipulate them if you need to. Yeah, like that shit's going to be huge. Oh, 100%. 100%. And I felt like coming from the Bronx and being, and the big piece of it was I learned how to read people in the Bronx. That's what I'm saying. This dude's fake.

This dude's a killer. This dude's this. So as soon as I'm in a meeting and somebody's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, I'm like, looking at them like, come on, bro. Yeah. I'm fucking three steps ahead of you. But here's another thing I was able to do, which was funny. Because I mean, as you know, like, what is it?

Like, what is it? Like, less than 1% of seals are African-American or something like that? I don't know. Yeah, I think it's like. Probably. Last statistic I saw was something along those lines. And then when you get into the humid side of things, there's not many African-Americans than that, right?

So, like, when I would meet with these people, they so used to seeing the white faces with the big. years, right? I would walk in and they was like, like, who? Like, what do you think? Like, who's this dude? Like, but I would play, I would, I use it to my advantage. I remember I began to learn that a lot of people, and I'm just trying to be vague here, but a lot of the civilians that I work with in other countries, you know, they like, like black movies, like Eddie, they like, like Eddie Murphy and comedies and all this other stuff. They didn't understand, but they would watch because they get the Arabic versions and they would watch like Eddie Murphy on. So when I got started

to get hip to the game, I was like, oh, let me start acting. So I remember I were going to meet him sometime. Yeah, what's so? And dude, they couldn't understand what I was saying. They fucking love it, did they? Like a big cheese foul. But I would just use that to build common ground and build relationship. And then that helped me be more effective in the job that I did, man.

You're a product of your upbringing, as we all are, man. When you said you went down the human route, my initial thought was like, oh, fuck, man. Everything that you went through in your life. Yeah. Probably made you awesome at that. And for me, it was the best of both worlds because, you know, I was able to, you know, build these intelligence packages, meet, communicate with people, and then take that and then go on ops. Yeah, go to action. Help, yeah, help, you know, play.

And I wasn't the only one. Like, there was a whole team that worked together to do it. And there were other ways of information that we had to vet against and all that. So it was a whole system behind it. But to be a part of that and then also be a part of the other side. Yeah, that's awesome. It was cool. I mean, so like you said, the statistics on African Americans in the SEAL teams are super low.

What's your answer when people ask you, do the SEAL teams need more diversity? Well, man, I think diversity is great. I think I would say, in short, yes. I would say the SEAL teams can be more diverse. But I think that how do we get there is the question. And I think it has to do one with, it starts way before the SEAL teams. I mean, in my opinion, I think it starts with education, especially in communities where,

that are predominantly, you know, minority communities. You know, I just think that it starts there. I think this education, just case and point, like my brother is a doctor, you know, it's not many black, it's not as many black doctors as they are our white doctors, right? Yeah. My other brothers are engineers,

not that many, you know, black engineers as they are white engineers, right? So I think that one, and then a big part of that is, what, 70% of Americans are white Caucasian, right? I think so, yeah. It's like 14% are African-American, so that plays a huge role in everything as well. I just think it goes back to, again, education, you know, the education system in these inner cities, exposing kids to too soft, exposing kids to, not just the soft, but other career choices. I think also fixing the education in inner cities where it's up to par. I have a friend who's a recruiter now.

We were in the Navy, and he left the Navy now. He's in the Army, and he's a recruiter in Philly. And he's called me up, he's called me up twice. And he's just like, man, right? And I mean, like, I can't get any of these kids in the military. I'm like, wow, it was going to me. He's like, the schools are so jacked up. Some of these kids can't even read.

So, yeah, they're not even achieving or able to get to the baseline for entry into the military. Yeah, they can get an entry into the military. And then he's like, some of these kids have records and this and that. But his main, his main focus was the education system. And he was just like, man, And like, what can you do? Is there anything you could do?

And around that time was when I was writing a book and I have a whole chapter where I break down the education system in the inner city and how it, you know, how bad it is and maybe some tools that can probably fix it. And so, yeah, I think, you know, because if you don't have, if you can't qualify from an educational standpoint

to even get in the military, you definitely ain't going to qualify from an educational standpoint to get into the teams, right? For sure. And educational, if they're getting out of there and they don't have the ability to read or function in society,

you're setting up generational problems. Exactly. exactly 100% but yeah I mean I mean I don't think I don't think it's the seal team's fault as like some people I've been asked hey there's a seal team's racist is that why it's less than 1% that's why it's like one black and I I want to see the only way I think you could get there and this is from my own experience to describe it as racist if you only looked purely at the mathematical stats yeah it didn't have an understanding of the pipeline because I mean I don't know I mean you'd be the person to answer this did you experience racism when you were in

The SEAL teams? No. No, I didn't. I think, I think, like, I've experienced racism in other realms of life, but I can't recall experiencing racism in the SEAL teams. And one of the things that I personally loved about the SEAL teams was the fact that it's, in my opinion, it's very performance-based. Yeah, nobody gives a fuck.

Yeah. Who you are or where you came from. It's like, hey, man. You can't meet the standard so you can now kick rocks down the road. And that's whether you're in Buds and that's rather whether you're in a platoon, you know? And that's what I loved about the teams is that it's, You know, there's a saying, you know, you know, way more than I do.

You know, your reputation follows you, it starts at buds, right? And what I loved about the teens, I felt like out of all of the places I've been in life and all the jobs that I've done, that was the one place where it's just like, if you do your job, you'll be treated good. If you suck at your job, you're going to know about it. Because people, two mates are going to, you know, hammer you and stay on your life.

There'll be conversations and duct tape and rigors tape involved. Yeah, yeah, 100%. 100%. And so, you know, I say, all that to say, you know, nah, I've never experienced racism in the teams. You know what I mean? I almost think, though, obviously, given what's going on in the world,

it's an interesting time. Because I never, I don't feel like I saw racism in the teams either. But it also, to me, I think, might be a unicorn of an environment. Because it was so specifically based on performance. And the negatives to not meeting that performance were so dire in their consequences. That if you spend long, enough there, it actually makes it difficult to understand what the fuck is going on in the rest of the world. Because that was my optic from being a young man into my late 30s.

Yeah. Yeah. So I come from that world. I'm like, no, the standard is this, like, it's tough. It makes it, like, I don't understand a lot of what I see and what's going on. Yeah. You know, I, let me just, I second. You said, don't understand what, as far as outside of the teams or inside the teams? Well, the teams, right, if you're, like, you spend so much of your time in an environment that I would agree is not racially based. And then you hear people talking about right now in society, it almost seems as everything is racially based. You have this, you're like, but that's, you know what I mean?

That's not my experience. So it makes it more difficult to understand it. Got it, got it, got it. Or to answer questions about it. Because my answer is when it comes to diversity. I agree with you. And I say the same thing when I'm asked. I think diversity is great.

Diversity of thought, diversity of belief. Yes. You shouldn't modify standards for diversity. No, no, 100%. 100%. And, yeah. Yeah, it makes, that's what makes a team a team. That's what makes a team effective is when you have diversity.

Well, a team, I think the more diverse a team can be, the more effective that team could be. I completely agree. And as you said, not just in race, but in thought and beliefs and everything, you know. And I think it's not just lacking in, it's lacking in a lot of other arenas. Like even in Hollywood, you know, like working in Hollywood, you just, when you look at the leadership, at the executive level, there's no diversity, really. And then when you look at people who are greenlighting movies, and now you understand why a lot of the movies are what they are

because you have one specific group and gender and race that are... Entrenched? Yeah, and green lighting certain movies. So, you know, like I brought this up in a podcast before. It's just like, you know, how many films, African-American ensemble films have you seen in the last? seven years with the budget for that film was over $70, $80 million. Probably Black Panthers the only one you can think of.

One, right? How many, you know, predominantly white or white ensemble films have you seen where the budget was over $70 million? All a lot. And so if you just look at it from that perspective, it's just like, it's not just in that. It's in corporate levels, it's all over the place. And I think, you know, a lot of people don't like the term systemic racism, you know,

having grown up in the Bronx and having witnessed and experience, I do believe it. I do believe that there are certain systems in place that need to be rectified, right? That do affect certain groups from moving forward, case in point education. You know, when you look at the education system, like take New York City, when you look at the education system

in the Bronx and then you cross town and you go into certain parts of Manhattan, public school system, night and day, right? And I know a big part of that is, is taxes, right? So anyway, I just say all that. I can't remember how we got on that. I think that. Well, that creates an unlevel playing field to begin with.

Yes. You know, yeah, I totally agree with it. And again, it's, fuck, man, I sit back and I watch what's going on in the world. And I see these people arguing for a light switch solution. And it's not, I'm like, hey, man, like, we're talking some complicated, entrenched, ingrained shit. Yes. education system that like that reform i i think every system every single one should be open yeah

for judgment review and reform i think that's how we evolve as a society i mean look at the constitution united states it's designed to be amended yes it's supposed to be malleable yes and roll with this as a country yes because we're fucking idiots and we're figuring our way out yeah no 100% so all these systems should it you have to do that to make them better yeah and i just see people wanting to see the solution on Instagram or Twitter. Yeah, and it's not. We're talking years. Yeah.

Years. And we're talking and we're talking, we're talking actually not just posting and not just talking about it, but actually doing something. Like, like, you know, it frustrates me like, like, I want to, I'm trying to be careful how I say certain things, but because people could take one sound bite and twist and put it on Twitter. Oh, you said this. I know what I mean?

And out of context. context man and if that's the crazy and then you get canceled because you just like no dude like but you know put your money where your mouth is you know is what and especially as it relates to you know celebrities and and Hollywood and athletes and all this stuff and all these people speak out or maybe people on social media if you're going to post something you better be at going out and doing something or have been doing something right you know one thing I learned especially especially in the teams is every great uh well specifically in the teams is every great uh well specifically in the teams is Every great military leader will never make you do something that they have not done or that they are not willing to do. Right. And that's why you would follow those people. They're like, fix bayonets. You're like, son of a bitch. I don't want to do this, but the dude asking me to do this, not that you and I ever did a bayonet charge.

Yeah. I wanted to at least one time. Let me clarify that in training because a bayonet charge in real life would suck balls, the biggest of balls. But you know that, and that's one thing, you know, it was interesting for me when I shifted from being an illicit to an officer. That was obviously the largest leadership role that I had and I was super cognizant of never asking people to do something I wouldn't do myself. Yeah, yeah.

Because the second you do that, you can almost see it in the people that work for you. Well, they look at you and they're like, okay, dude. And your credibility. It starts that, it's like one of those sand hour glasses, but you just popped a hole in it and all your sand's starting to come out of that thing. Yeah, credibility shot.

And that's why I see a lot, you know, so many people go to social media. Like, I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way like me beat my own horn. But, you know, I've been for years, especially after I got out of the team, I was just like, you know, I see a problem. You know, like my whole thesis when I was finishing up, my master's was on how to combat the murder rate in south side of Chicago, you know. Which people should Google. It's unfucking believable how high it is. It's crazy.

and and you know after when I was working on my thesis I was just like damn bro like I'm a seal dude I come from the streets in New York like I need to be using my influence to do more like instead of just talk about it so I started going in prisons man like I'm like dude I'm in prisons I'm in jails I'm like I work with a nonprofit called the city hope and and I'm in inner city schools in the hoods I'm with gang members I'm you know I'm just I'm using my time and my research to try and be that change and to try and bring that healing like I'm talking to police all like I got I started giving out my phone number the police officers on on Instagram like they would hit me up hey I heard you in this interview let's connect and like I was like all right let's connect let's have some conversations how can I help you how can we how can we change things you know and I think that that's that's where it should be if you're gonna I don't want people posting nothing or saying nothing unless you're actually doing something yeah what you're

talking about actually connecting with them that's the that's the nucleus of actual change. A post, like, fuck off. If that's all it's going to be and you're not going to commit yourself or dedicate yourself to trying to make a difference, then piss, go piss up into the wind. And for people don't know, that means it comes back on it. Yeah, it comes back. I know that because I've actually done it myself and it really sucks. You need to turn your back to the wind.

But then it creates a vortex and it still goes on you. They smell like urine for the rest of the day. What was the conclusion you came to, your thesis, when it comes to Chicago? And this is an interesting one, right? Because obviously the Black Lives Matter movement is, huge right now. And you start seeing people like where are you at for the 16 people that were killed in Chicago

this weekend. Exactly. And there's a huge disconnect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the number of people die, and I have some friends who are law enforcement there. Yeah. Holy shit, dude. Yeah, man, like New York City right now. I think the crime rate is like up what, I mean, please don't quote me on this, but I saw something like around 200%. Yeah, I think it's doubled.

Yeah. You know, where I met with the whole Black Lives Matter thing is like, it's hard. for me to connect in anything to a specific organization like even as in the best example that I use is like you know as a Christian like it's it's hard for me to be so rooted in an institution of Christianity right for me it's like I'm about the essence of it the the the meaning the the heart behind it but not necessarily like dedicated to the organization I like I'm for the movement and the essence of it. of the black lives matter because I think I don't I'm not fully read into the organization so I can't

really get behind it but I believe I mean from my understanding it's they're a little vague on the organization their absent leadership intentionally at a national level which can create problems as well because then you get these regionally yep that all have it's fuck man it's yeah and my and my thing is you know you know because I think for a long time in my My opinion, it's been as though black lies, black stories, black justice, black, black education has not mattered. And that's why I'm kind of like for the essence of an changing initiative. But at the same time, you know, as you said, it can't just be about black lies matter

when a cop kills a black person, my opinion. If black lies matter, black lies have to matter all the time. If a black person kills a black person like this poor girl, Secoria Turner. I know. I couldn't believe it. You know what I'm saying? In Atlanta. Was she like eight years old?

I was going to say I thought it was six. Yeah, there was another one. I think it was in Chicago. It was like a six years. 12 or 13. It's like what's going on? You know, it's like Nipsey Hustle. Come on.

Like, and that's why I'm in the prisons. That's why I'm in the jails. That's why. Because Black Lives Matter matters to me. So because, and it has mattered to me. It's not just now because of it's a big thing in the news. It has mattered to me. And so what does that look like?

You know what? The Bible says faith without works is dead. So for me, what does that look like for me? That means, okay, Black Lives Matter, I'm going to go into the schools. I'm going to the prisons. I'm going to the jail. I'm going to spend time. I'm going to sit.

I'm going to try and create content that helps the black community get out of the situations that we're in. And so that's what it means to me. It's more about action and change. And my heart breaks, you know, anytime anybody is killed. you know, an unjust way, my heart breaks, especially when it's a kid, especially when you see what's going on in Chicago. To answer your question about what the conclusion,

there was a lot of conclusion, a lot of, like a lot of solutions that I came to as far as how to combat the murder rate, I think. But 2016 is when I wrote this thing. So if my memory, I should have read it before I came here. It's funny because I thought about naming, maybe you should read your thesis if it comes up. I totally forgot to,

But it goes back to that lesson. I didn't learn to be prepared. But it had to do. Big part of it was education. It was one solution. And that's totally unpacked. A big part of it was community relations with the police and working together with the police, the community working together with the police to try and minimize the crime rate,

i.e., if some dude kills another dude or a girl and you know who it is, Tell him. Yeah. This whole, I ain't going to snitch because this and that. Kill a little girl. You know what I mean?

That's something that pisses me off all the time. It's like, like if we matter to each other, then help fix that situation instead of being like, I ain't going to snitch. Or they don't want to talk to the police because they have such a negative view.

You know, and like I watch first 48. All of Don. You ever see that show first. first 48 on A&E? It's a, I haven't watched the show, but I know what you're talking about. It's a crazy show. So what they do is they follow, it's the murders, right? It's the murders.

They follow real murders, you know, like from, for the first 48 hours. Yes. Oh, I have watched some of this. And these, and it usually goes cold. Idiots get into these interrogation rooms. And they're like, I didn't do it. And the cop will go, tell me the truth. They're like, fuck, you got me.

I did it. I'm like, you suck! Yeah, yeah. No, but it's good. But a lot of the times, you know, you see these sad, cases and I don't want to say anything I don't want to do anything but then you do get the anomaly cases of people who are just like you know what I love that person I have real love for that person I care for that person and well-being that's who did it and I think you know a lot of people

have turned it into a weakness to say something and I think it's more of a strength to be bold and stand up and say you know what that person's life mattered to me or all lives matter my people's lives matter to me yeah and because of that I'm going to do something about it Well, and nothing is going to change but with a desire to not snitch. I completely and utterly understand where they're coming from. I'm like, okay, I get that.

And I get a part of it too. Part of it. But there's no change that comes from that. That's the how what is happening or has happened is going to continue to do so into the future. Yeah. The part of it I do kind of get is

oh, my, maybe my family get killed. I can understand that for sure. I got to go back to this environment. We saw a lot of that overseas. And that's why that makes sense So that part of it I get. The other part when your family is not in danger is that's hard for me. Like this whole Sequoria Taylor thing.

Like they just up the reward to $20,000. Why should it have to be $20,000? Yeah. For somebody to say something. Like is that the value of her life, $20,000? Like somebody should come on and be like, yo, somebody who, because I guarantee you whoever did it or whoever's about, there's other people around them.

No, yo, you did that, right? Go to that person. Yo, man, you messed up. You messed up. Let's fix this. You know, and I don't know if that person's watching, but listen, man, go. Situation like that, go out.

Say something, man. Like, it takes more strength to say something to fix it and give that family peace. Then it'll be a tough guy, this and that. Doesn't get any way. Yeah. Yeah, perpetuates the problem. And, you know, another thing that's crazy to me is, like,

you know, while we're on the topic is, like, a lot of these corporations and stuff going back to action, like, oh, you know, Black Lives, Mounds, okay, okay. Cool. In my opinion, I think a lot of them are doing it, because if they don't do it, they don't post it, then, oh, they're going to, they think, nobody's going to, you know, buy my product or whatever,

but let's see how much Black Lives Matters to you, two, three, four, five months from that when we come sitting in your executive meeting or your chairman's meeting, you know what I mean, to see how much. I think a lot of people, too, are just, you know, It's just, you know, optics, right? I think there's an essence of that for sure.

People are, I think a lot of people don't know what to do or what to say, but they feel like they have to do or say something. Yes. And they're almost more afraid of being quiet and judged. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's a shit show. Yeah, it is.

I look at the, I see the stuff coming up about Chicago and just the pure numbers and just talking with the people that I know there. Yeah. What a travesty, man. An absolute and utter travesty. And that's not the only city where they're, That stuff's happening. New York, man.

New York. My mom's is in the Bronx. You know, my mother's still in the Bronx, you know. And, you know, my aunt, I got an aunt who's 100 about to be 102. She's in, she's in, like, the Washington Heights area. You know what I mean? Like, and so, I don't know, I struggle with a lot of it. But I think the cool thing, you know, is that, you know, I've had a diverse life.

So I'm able to see things from, you know, diverse perspectives. You know what I mean? Being rich, being poor. You know, being, you know, being living in. in Africa, living in America, you know what I mean, growing up hating the cops, being somewhat of a cop as a seal, you know what I mean? I've been able to live in these. So I'm, I think, you know, if more people with diverse backgrounds speak up and not just speak up, but, but show the fruits of their heart, show the fruits. And yes, protest in the school. Yeah, I'm not knocking

that, but let's go a step further. Yeah, the protest is the opening to the conversation. There's got to be additional steps. Yeah, let's go a step further. Beyond that. It might be opinion let's let's let's let's go to some schools let's let's let's go to to some political leaders and have some real tough conversations let's let's let's go into politics let's you know let's let's let's let's not get crazy you don't have to fucking politics yeah I don't know about anybody who goes into politics is out of their mind to include Dan Crenshaw out of his mind yeah he was Charlie Pateu he was his same task unit yeah it's great it's yeah it's one degree of separation of the

CLT it's unbelievable yeah what are your experiences like when you go into the prisons I mean, I have absolutely no experience doing anything like that. It's awesome, man. It's like, dude, it's like, well, I'm not going to front. First time I started, it was scary. Yeah. If you hadn't said that, I'd be like, Rami, you're lying, son of a bitch. I'm going to be, I don't care.

Ain't no shame my game. Here's the thing. There's some tough dudes that we worked with. Yeah. If you go into a prison and you are not scared, you need to get your head checked. No, for real. Here's one story. Here's one story.

I go into this prison and this is like a max, this is, I can't remember what level prison it was, but it was one of them high level prisons. So you're saying that the people in there were not in there for jaywalking? No, not at all. This is like, it was a serial killer in one prison. I think this prison I went to.

But I'm in this prison, we walked through it, you got through, go through all these bars. And you know, as a seal, I'm thinking, man, like if I ever get trapped in here, how would I escape that one point? I'm like, I gotta figure out of way. But we go into this gymnasium area, this big gymnasium area. And one end of the gymnasium is connected to the main building. And the other end of the gymnasium is connected to the yard.

Just massive yard where they all walk around. And in that gymnasium area is like this glass box. And it's like it was. That sounds like some Hannibal Lecter shit right there. But no, security. That's what the security guard. Okay. And so guard comes up to me, he's like, all right, everybody's, bell's going to ring.

Everybody's going to come here. I'm like, where are you going to be? He's going to be in the box. I was like, in the box. Is there room in the box for me? Yeah, in the box. And he has a podium set up. They got the chairs lined up.

He's like, hey, they're not supposed to do this. And I'm not supposed to approach you. He's supposed to stay. Like, all right, cool. So I go to the podium, doors open. All of them are going to be. come in. I'm like, yo,

I'm not gonna be, I'm not Superman. Yeah. There's no, I don't care Navy SEAL, like, it don't matter. You're not gonna fight 100 dudes.

Like, it's not happening. Brolic and they're big dudes. And I was, I was like, if somebody wants to have a start a riot is going down. I'm not going to,

like, there's no winning. I'm not going to win. But it was cool. They were mad respectful. And a lot of them were just like, yo, man, you will see what we heard, you would see them.

I'm like, yeah. And they're like, yo, mad respect. Like, you all, like, to them, they were like, you're one of us. Because they were like, they were like biker gang dudes in there, murderers. And so they have these hard dudes, so to speak. So they felt like they could identify it. And it became cool.

And at the end, like, we're shaking hands and they coming close. And I think if you give off that sheepish, that essence, they smell that. But if you, you know, stand right and you confident, not like private, but confident. They smell that too. They smell that and they respect you. And, you know, and that's how I was. That's what I learned. Just be confident, you know, and I remember towards the end of the talk, they all surrounded me.

And they were like, man, we just want to say, we appreciate you come in. People don't come here and talk to us. What did you talk to them about? I talked to them about transformation. I talked to them about, you know, your life is not over, though you made, though you, though, you, though. you're in this place, I talked to them about second chances. I talked to them about life. I tried to motivate them.

You know what I mean? I talked to them about education, you know? So it was, I shared my story, but interweaving in those points. Yeah. You know, you know, transformation. It's not over, you know, motivate yourself. The main thing, especially as it relates to my story, when I go do these talks, is transformation. Like, I was at Rikers Island Jail last year.

And, man, that was hard, man, because. A lot of the kids, a lot of kids, man, a lot of the, there's kids in them, man. Like, to me, I'm 37, so it was like 18, 19, 20, their kids to me. Isn't it crazy what an 18-year-old looks like now, be an older? Yeah, yeah, tall, lanky. Yeah, man, like, it was sad because I remember one kid, I spoke at the graduation ceremony because they were, they had, there was a graduation ceremony for the inmates who decided to pursue their GD while locked up or pursue their high school diploma

and the families and everything went in there and there's kids and there's when kid came up to me he's like I'm going I'm going I'm getting shipped to prison tomorrow and the prison that was picking came to pick a mom they weren't going to let him in the graduation

because they were just like yo dude like it's time to go and his mom was crying and everything and same thing I talked to them, transformation I told his kids man like

keep going with your education I know some of you're you're going to prison, don't stop. Like, same thing my recruiter said. You know, the people make mistakes. That doesn't mean that they have, they don't have potential. I try to talk to them about not getting clicked up in these gangs, like being like my brother was, you know, and that's, that's all I could do.

All I could do is use my story. And, and again, they can relate to me. And, you know, I feel like a lot of them listen to me because I come from the same environment they came from, you know. And I hope that I give them. them hope that yet that there is a light at the end of the tunnel some of these kids are not going to ever get out of prison yeah there's double murder murders yeah the math just isn't in their favor they're not going to get out yeah and so but some are and so I'm not just speaking to

those who are arms I am trying to speak to those who are not you know the message it still could change their life you know what they what they're able to do or influence outside of their individual self maybe smaller but it still could change their life for the better 100 percent so I asked I'll say all that to say, man, I encourage as many people who have that platform, like, you know, SEALs, man, like celebrities, athlete, like people who, people in those positions respect to go into those places. It means so much to them. It makes them feel human. Like I've had, like, I've had guys come up to me and say, I feel human. I've been to women's prison is, that's on a whole other level.

Really? Oh, dude, I went to a maximum security women's prison. It's crazy. man. They, they, but they, like, there was way more security. They had guards. It was like 300 women in there. They had guards, like a square guards around them and more.

Because the women's prison out here are worse. Like violence-wise? Yeah, man. Yeah. That's what they told me at the prison. They was like, because I remember that same day I went to the men's prison. And then the organization I was saying, okay, now we're going to go to women's prison. But it's worse.

It's like, don't, they know how to play nice and they seem nice. Then they'll cut you. Don't get it twisted. Then they'll cut you. Don't get it twisted. And they haven't seen a guy in a long time. Well, you know, outside, so you get the, you get the remarks and the whistling and all that kind of stuff.

But, you know. You were getting cat calls? Oh, yeah, you do. I mean, they're in prison. Like, someone from life. I remember this one. But you get touching stories. And, you know, like this one lady came up to me.

She said, thank you so much for coming. I'm in here for murder I'm probably never going to get out she was like but you come in here and made my day and she had a kid she's like my son is my son is four or five and you know I just hope to be able to share

your story with my son you know so that his life can change you know and at the end of the day that's what life is about for me you know is it's using my platform my experience my stories diversity of my life to give hope

to inspire people to change narratives and, you know, to make a difference. And that's why I love being in the prisons and jails and in the streets and the times. You got a lot of time left, too. I mean, you're young. I'll be dead of old age, like probably tomorrow, but you got time. You, what, three years old are to me? I'm 42. Yeah, you're three, well, you're four years.

I'll be 38 next month. Run the math. I'm almost 43. You'll be 38. I'll be 35. Five, yeah. What month are you bored? August 10th.

All right. I'm October 10th. Oh, well, right. 10. 10, easy to remember than 8.10. Yeah, yeah. You got a lot of time left and your message is awesome. What, I mean, what are you going to do?

You're into some, in addition to that, obviously, you still have ties into Hollywood. Yeah, yeah. How does, how does Remi spend his average week? I mean, what is, what's firing you up now? Writing, man. Writing, storytelling. You know, as I shared earlier, it was, film that inspired me to go into the teams.

And so just being able to move through that medium and shape stories, not just for the purpose of entertainment, but for education, inspiration, and motivation. So, you know, writing, you know, that's my daily schedule. I'm writing films and TV shows. We were talking off the air before we got on. I just got hired two weeks ago, just signed a contract, two weeks ago to adapt a book into a TV series for a streamer. And did you teach yourself how to do that?

I mean, or did you, in your education, did you? Yes and no. I mean, one, like as I shared earlier, my mother would, like, you get the parents, the football dads who are like, you're going to play football, go out there in the yard, throw some more quarterbacks, throw some more balls, my mom was like that with writing. You will be a fantastic writer. You will write. And so, like, writing had always been in my DNA from an early age.

And then fast forward to the teens, we talked about the human stuff I did. A big part of it. was writing. Like, you have those meetings. You collect that intelligence. You can't just pick up the phone and say, hey, this is what? You got to write detailed reports. It's funny.

They never make that into the movie. It's weird. Yeah, I know, right? And it's funny things. And it doesn't make, I think it was scared dudes away. Because in the, so many team guys don't want to go into that field. Because the last thing I want to do after an opera before op is write something, right? I have been in fistfights over PowerPoint.

Yeah. I tell people, people like, no, you have. I'm like, you don't understand. The bullets snapping by your head and shit blown up. That's about 0.01% of your life. You're sending emails, PowerPoint briefs. I had a mission come back one time on that 2010 deployment. They would not even send it to the commanding general for approval.

Because on the insert portion, or it was infill. We were in the helicopters, getting ready to go to the insert. The helicopters were oriented in the wrong direction. They weren't facing the direction. a flight and they pulled the whole op because of that they didn't pull it they wouldn't even submit it for mission approval until i went into fucking powerpoint and flip the helicopters that's ridiculous like you sons of bitches where is that in the movies yeah it's not gonna happen man it's like cut two yeah people like boring yeah so you know after the writing in in the teams

and um you know i got my book deal the way i got my book there was through kathy lee gifford you know i'm close to the gifford family as a matter of fact her son cody is my writing partner on this current TV show I'm doing. And she pretty much walked me to the publisher and said, man, you got to make, this guy's got an amazing story. You need to sign to a book deal. And when I was doing the contract, you were talking about writers. Like, who do you want to get to write your book?

Because it's like the concept is like, you can't write your book. So who are you going to get to write your book? I mean, is the normal template you have an interesting. This is probably what they want to overlay on to you. You have an interesting story. So let me find a writer to write your story for you instead of you writing it. It's either who do you want to? to write your story or let us help you find a writer to write your story, right?

Because it's like no confidence. Yeah. And that kind of, it influenced me a bit to the point where I lost confidence. I was just like, I can't write my book. So I was like, oh, well, my mom's been a writer for, let me have my mom write the book. And so they was like, okay, so that's part of how the contract got approved. Like, it's like, okay, your mom's going to be the writer. And my mom, she wrote two chapters that are now going to be in her,

because I'm co-writing her book now. So this is a- Oh, how the tides have turned. And it was great, but as I was reading, I was just like, this is not my story. It's not, it's her story, and it's not the way I would tell a story. And so I told my mom, I said, mom, I'm going to do this. And she was like, okay. And so I started from the beginning, and I got, I wrote,

I wrote, I got halfway through the book. And the blessing in it to at the same time, I was at the Lee Strasbourg Institute studying film and theater. And while I was there, at the same time while I was writing, I was learning a lot about story arc and character art and I was learning about scene study

and method acting and improv and just all these elements to tell stories. And I was learning about it from the perspective of the actor more so than the perspective of the writer. So it was almost like reverse engineering it. You have the actor, he doesn't lines, but then how do we get,

where does that come from? It comes from writing. script and then I had to dissect these scripts and I'm learning so much and so I'm implementing all of these things that I'm learning into my into my writing while at the same time writing the book oh what a fascinating story time it was crazy man it was crazy and I tell people all the time you know you know you never know how what you're doing now is indirectly preparing you for what you will be doing later you know don't despise small beginnings and so I get halfway through the book in December of 2017 and my

I publish, I turn in my book, and this, I'm getting to how I got into writing. So people was like, man, this dude's going down. Let me know if I'm giving too much information, bro. And I turned into my publisher. My publisher was like, this is great writing, but you're over. I'm like, I'm over.

And it's like, yeah, you sign, the contract you signed is for 60 to 80,000 words. And I was like, I think, it's like, best analogy I can give is, it's like handing a, a mark 46 to some average person on the street thing I'm like what's this how do I yeah like where do I go with this and

and I was like what does that mean that's like that means that your book is what you're at 60 to 80 thousand words so I was like there's no way I could tell my story 60 to 8000 words I literally got into a to an argument disagreement with my publisher and finally they bent and they said all right we'll compromise for you if you hire

a ghost writer to write the last half of your book will allow you to turn in 130,000 word book which is that average for a lot of memoirs especially memoirs 130 or more okay you know and uh and so i hired a i hired a ghost writer for the last half of the book and uh and a month later i call this dude up and i'm like hey dude can i see some can i see chapter 15 whatever chapter 15 was at the time and he was just like yeah sure and he's like how do you want to do you want to go over it over the phone do me send it to you read it and then you call me with your thoughts i was like no let's go over it

together on the phone. So he sends me chapter 15. I read the first line. I'm like, no. I read the second line. I'm like, no. I read the third line. I'm like, hell no. I read the fourth line. I'm like, yo, bro, did you read the first half of the book? Like, what is this? And here's this, like, old white dude from Rhode Island. Trying to write. So there I was on the block. And this, this, this boy where did it came up to me and say, where's my 40? And it's, I'm like, yo, where did you even like, what happened? And I was like, I had to ask him, was written so poorly that I was just like, dude,

did you even read the first half of the book? And he was like, no. I said, dude, how can you tell the first half, the last half of the story? You don't even know the first half of it. He's like, I didn't want to be influenced by your voice. I said, that's the purpose. You have to get influenced by my voice.

So a reason about like one fluid book. And he was just like, oh, yeah, but at least I told you the truth. I was like, dude, we need to fix this right freaking now because my deadline and turning the book is, in two months, man. And he's like, ah, I can't right now. I'm on the East Coast. I said, well, we're going to do it tonight. He's like, I'm going to a party.

I said, well, we're going to do it after you get back from the parties. I'm going to be drinking. I was like, yo, bro, I was hot. I was like, we need to fix this now. You're fired. So I said, you know what, screw it. I said, I'm going to work on this tonight. Get on the phone tomorrow. We'll go over what I wrote for this chat. I don't even want to read

the next three chapters. So he's like, I bet. And I said, your job is to read the rest of the book, the first half of the book, by tomorrow morning. Got it? He's like, yeah, I got it. First thing he does when he calls me up the next day. He's like, yo, dude, he said, did you read the first half? Did you write the first half of that book?

I was like, yeah, I wrote the first half of the book. He's like, you sure you didn't have dictated to somebody? And then they took it and wrote it for you. I was like, no, bro, I wrote it. I'm a writer, man. My mom's had me writing. I was a kid. He's like, yo, this is good writing.

He was like, and you wrote that, rewrote that chapter that I said you. I was like, yes, he's like, I'm going to be honest with you. I've never lost a job in my 30 years of being a writer. He said, you need to write this book. Like, you need to write this book. Why did that thing turn off, Remy? Memory? I don't know.

Hold on. I heard it, too. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, dude. I talk too much. Yeah. We got plenty of time on the other cards.

Yeah. Yeah, I heard that click too. I was like, what the fuck? Well, at least it clicks. Yeah, no shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so.

Primary secondary SD cards, dude. I'm fucking ready. There you go, man. When it's none, two is one, right? Yeah, and then three is better. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, he was just amazed by the writing, and he was like, hey, I've never lost a job in 30 years,

but I'm going to tell you, dude, your publisher was wrong. Like, you need to keep writing this book. Like, no one could tell this story like you can. And I wrote the rest of the book, and me and my, I turned it into my publisher, the vice president and the company, and she read it like that weekend. Like, I turned it in ahead of time.

And she called me, she sent me an email, I still have it to this day. And she said, listen, dude, I know we've had a lot of battles back and forth. I didn't think you could pull it off, but this book is amazing. She's like, you're a really gifted writer. And I'm so glad that you didn't stick with the ghost writer and you pushed through a road at yourself. And after I wrote that book, that's when I was just like, I want to tell more stories. And I want to try my hand in a different realm, which is writing film and TV shows. You think you'll ever get into the behind-the-camera type stuff?

That's my long-term goal. I'd love to be a director. Okay. So long-term goal, I'd love to be a writer-director. I just know that there's a process to that. And the way I write, interestingly, like, a lot of the feedback that I get from my book and also from the screenplays that I write is, dude, you're very visual. Like, the way you write is visual.

Like, I feel like I could see it. It's like you're directing it as you're writing it, you know? So it'll play nicely when you want to transition to that level as well. Exactly. And I think that comes from being on sets and consulting. and seeing, you know, Michael Bay work and Peterberg, and I was just working on a TV show with Apple and working with Jakub, who's an amazing director,

seeing how they work, and then I'm on set, and I'm not just seeing it from the perspective of a writer and never having been on set. I'm seeing it from the perspective of being on set and being a writer and visually how the story's told, not just literary, but with the camera movements and all that kind of stuff as well. It's a complex world.

I've done limited technical advising, but damn. Yeah. It's not just show up in like, all right, you know, act monkey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of shit that goes into it. The DPs. I'm sorry, I ain't got coronavirus, I promise. Dude, like the photography, the sets, the wardrobe.

Holy shit. And the amount of time, so I worked behind the scenes on the History Channel show six. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they would do seven to ten days of prep for a seven day shoot. And you're not, like, taking it easy on those seven to ten days. Yeah, yeah. It was pretty nuts. Yeah, yeah.

So I got a Peter Berg story for you, if you're ready. All right. So. I love Pete, man. He probably doesn't remember me, but he might, when I tell you this story, because there was pain involved for him. He came to Buds and he wanted to run the O-course. And I'm just not Starstruck.

I don't give two sheds. So I was just spent my time making fun of him. And I was there and he invited me up to a birthday party at his house. And they wanted to go play paintball. Oh, yikes. So we rolled to play paintball and, like, Marcus LaTrell is there. Yeah, yeah. on Pete's team.

And I forget where we were, but it ended up, they ended up getting pinned in this little low ground area. And I can just see two little head stick in there. Pete and Marcus. And so I immediately like bust off to the right. I'm like, I'm just going to just ambush 101 from the side.

And I hear Marcus stick his head up. He's like, oh, it's Andy. We're fucked. And then Pete just stands up and I just start stitching him. And then we go to the next. So they get annihilated. because they were stuck. We go to the next one.

Was there another team guys with you on your team? Or you're the only team? I think Harry Humphreys was all my team. So I don't know if he was a team guy or not. He's old. He's old. We go to another one and it's, I forget what it was. It was like, they were going to come at us.

Actually, it was me and Marcus. They're like, well, we'll just send everybody against you guys. I'm like, okay, we can play this game. And I remember just standing. I was on the corner of a building and I see Pete trying to use concealment, which he's not. And I take one shot and it hits him direct.

directly in the side of the head from a good distance. And he starts shooting back, and man, I'm like, hey, dude, by the rules you're dead, but whatever. And I just stood still. I didn't even move because they were just whipping all over the place. And he was just like dumbfounded. He's like, why didn't you move? I'm like, because you can't shoot for shit. And I shut another round and hit him directly in the head.

He's just like, fuck you guys. That's my Peterberg story. That is funny, dude. That is so funny. Yeah, man, that's funny. It's a weird world up there. No, it is. These guys live in La La Land for sure.

Yeah. It's crazy. But the influence that you can have, man, like coming out of that world. Yeah, man, and the reach, man. It's like, and now, again, that wasn't the, and I'm grateful for the consulting side of the industry because it really, I was able to get behind the scenes and see the producers and how they work and the writers and how much power they have to shift culture, you know, in it. And I was just like, I don't want to do this consulting thing anymore.

I was like, like, I want to write films and I want to be on the producing, writing, producing side. And so, so I, I bought final draft, which is a system to write that you could write to the software to help format screenplays. And I just started like taking classes, man, like not formal classes, but like the master class,

Aaron Sorkin, how you writes, you know, three-X structure, all this lost moments, Michael Haig, just studying all his videos. Isn't it crazy the amount of information that is just at your, fingertips. YouTube, you could get your PhD times three or by sitting and watching YouTube video. All this? YouTube. What equipment do you need for a podcast? What electronics? What editing software? It's 100% YouTube, man. It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing, man. And yeah, I just started learning. And then I wrote my first film, which is now my agent is going to be taken wide this week.

Can't go into all the details because it's a high concept, unique action thriller type deal. And that, that, That script is, I send it out to a few people to get feedback before I took it to somebody who had like some power to do something. And all the feedback was like, dude, you wrote this? Wow, this is great for a first script. And then I submitted it to a big management company, which I'm not with anymore. And they sign me off for it. It was just like, hey, dude, you know how to write films.

And they signed me off of it. That's so awesome, man. And then we did some rewrites. And then things kind of fell apart just on the business side, relationship things, relationship from relationship perspective and then I got signed to another agency off of that script and another script I wrote about the first group of African Americans

to serve as special operations and a true story, amazing story is a story I came across and I was just like, dude, I never heard this before. I saw you posted on that on Instagram. Yeah. I think the two guys that were in that picture were the original like UDT?

No, no, that's a different project. Okay. Yeah, yeah, that's the story. I just came across. I didn't know that history either. Yeah. Those stories to me, though, are fascinating. Crazy, dude.

like I didn't I was just like how come I never knew this and so my goal with that is I have somebody who um who has a journal from one of those two those two first black UDT dudes and so he's she's supposed to give me the journal but my goal is to like I'd love to adapt that into a limited series that'd be so cool man or a film I'm thinking leaning more towards film because visually I already kind of see how it will play out but yeah the the script the other film is like like with that UDT story is two this is about a unit and this I can't go on and all it because it's such a fascinating story. Somebody would be like, oh, it's that.

Yeah. And plus I try to get ahead of it. I just, I just, a producer, a big production company, I can't name them, but a massive production company that's led by a very famous actor just picked up that script. That's awesome, man. So, so I wrote that film, and then it was between that film and the community got me signed to an agency, and I was there for a while, and I moved to the agency. I'm with now, and those scripts got me signed there, and I'm with APA, and then that's how,

and they negotiated this deal for this, for this, um, slaves deal with story. which is a TV show I just got hired on two weeks ago and it's an amazing to answer your question in short that's what I'm doing I'm sitting on my computer I'm writing stories I'm crafting stories I'm trying to figure out the best way in the stories and I'm trying to find amazing stories that haven't been told to tell

and this slave steel stories one of them it follows um it follows Harriet Jacobs and uh she was a slave in in the 1800s early 1800s and this woman bro she like when I read the book I was like seal training Like, dang, sealed. Like, I broke my ankle, still training. Freakid like, the mom almost died of hell.

I just kept on coming back to me. Like, the stuff that this woman went through to escape slavery was, like, crazy. Like, she hid in a box for seven years in Edington, North Carolina, blocks away from her slave master. And she's writing letters from this box, sending the letters to New York, and then getting them rerouted back to her slave master blocks away. so that he would spend money to send bounty hunters north to look for her, deplete his funds, so much so that he has to sell her kids to their father

and essentially get their freedom. I mean. That's some high-level shit. Yeah, dude, the stuff this woman did, even little espionage, she didn't even know she was doing trade. High-level field craft shit, yeah. Yeah, she's doing this stuff, and she's a slave, dude. And I read the story

I was just like, and the producers they were considering doing it as a film because they have another film that they produced that Fox is distributing. I think Netflix is distributing domestically. Fox is doing it. International distribution on it. And they were considering, it was like, hey,

we already have this financing for this slave still as adaptation. Let's potentially do it as a film. And I read the book. I was just like, I think we should do this as a as a TV show. And I think that, you know, we could,

we could potentially do an anthology type series where we could take some of these stories and just keep building on it and tell other than there's so many other amazing stories we came across, some that I wish I could mention right now. But I know people would be like, oh, I never heard about that.

Yeah, man. But we've come across some amazing stories that we want to tell in the following seasons. But, yeah, man, that's what I'm working on now, man, just trying to tell these stories, man. It's awesome to see the trajectory. and what you're doing. What's the best way for people to find you and support you?

Best way is social media, you know, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. I got a unique name. Fucking LinkedIn. I'm still not sure with that damn thing. It's like an upscale Facebook, in my opinion. So you can find me on any one of those social media platforms. Remy Adelaika. I also just jumped on the advisory board for the C4 Foundation.

so you can find me on their website just so anybody interested in supporting that foundation that amazing foundations that was made to honor Charlie Keating which you know you put them through buds. Yeah, and for people who want to know more about that, I went in depth on that with Nick Norris. Parts one and two, I think we touched on it, but the previous episode.

Yeah, yeah, and doing amazing things for the community. And I've been talking with the other leadership and we're considering doing some other stuff that I can't go into detail right now. but that's going to be cool for good shit on the horizon inner city communities you know something we talked about you know so yeah c4 foundation you can find me on that website and go support it if uh if you can four for four campaign that's been a huge campaign for the foundation but yeah and yeah that's where that's what that's what people and city hope now that's another place

people could find me that's another nonprofit i work with with inner city kids and um to help you know educate um inform and you know and be in the lives of of of inner city kids people in prison and in jails and support them the best I can about my platform. Do something, not just talk about it but do something about all that's going on in our country. You're doing it, man, for sure. You're setting a fucking hell of an example. Try it, brother. Yeah, it's impressive.

I'm glad I can call you a friend. Thank you, man. Sammy. Point people in your direction. Not just friend, but you know, my frog man pops. There you go. Even though you fell me in Poocom. Hey, if you would have met a standard, you would have passed. Thanks for the time, man. Thank you, brother.

That's it for this week. Ladies and gentlemen, all I can say is thank you for taking the time to listen. People often ask if there is something that you could do to help me, and the answer to that is twofold. One, if you have the time, go over to iTunes or Apple Podcasts and leave me a review or rate the podcast. And number two, tell somebody about it. Those are the only two things that I would ever ask of anybody. I'll see you next week.