No Jumper - X-Raided on Signing to Tech N9ne, Tray Deee’s Comments, Blockstar, King Von & More

Episode Date: August 24, 2024

X-Raided talks about his new career milestones, working with Tech N9ne, Joyner Lucas, Method Man, Rakim cosign, being judged for his lyrics while other rappers do the same and never get canceled, and more. ----- Promote Your Music with No Jumper - https://nojumper.com/pages/promo CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE STORE!!! https://nojumper.com NO JUMPER PATREON   / nojumper   CHECK OUT OUR NEW SPOTIFY PLAYLIST https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5te... Follow us on SNAPCHAT   / 4874336901   Follow us on SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4z4yCTj... iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/n... Follow us on Social Media:   / 4874336901     / nojumper     / nojumper     / nojumper     / nojumper   JOIN THE DISCORD:   / discord   Follow Adam22:   / adam22     / adam22     / adam22   adam22bro on Snapchat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No jumper. Coolest podcast in the world. We're back for another round with a living legend himself, X-rated in the building. How you feeling, gee? I'm feeling fantastic, man. Here we are again, my guy. Hey, very happy to see you, man. Yes, sir.

Yeah, it was almost four years ago, I think, that we last sat down. And you had only been out for, like, 14 months at the time, I believe. Yeah, I still smelled like prison body wash at the time. You were still saying a lot of recently released shit about how, every single little thing was giving you joy. Yes. Yeah, I'm still in that state, though. Okay.

Yeah, I'm still feeling that. Okay. But I've been on a mission. I told you I wanted to get five years out of every year, so I can get my 25 years back in the five-year period, and I did that. I feel like I'm nearing, wrapping up, getting my 25 back out of it. I want five years out of every year I lived.

I want my time back. Okay, but does that involve living hard? or living peacefully? For me, it's like if I was going to try to live 25 years and five years, it's a lot of drugs. It's a lot of drugs. It's a lot of drugs in pussy in the first two years. I was in Las Vegas as headquarters.

Okay. So I had a note, I feel like the story in Ecclesiastes where he's like, ah, you're chasing the wind, I did all that shit. I went and got all the pussy. I did all the drugs. I drank all the alcohol. and now that shit. Yeah, how long did it take you to get kind of sick of that?

That's a bit of an exaggeration, of course. Right. But I say by, let me see, I say shit got real in about 20, 21, shit got real. And I started out understanding. I had a moment in November, I remember the exact date it was. It was November 11th of 2021. Okay. I was in Massachusetts.

I got called out there. for a specific thing. I did a few, I did a few, I did some G shit. Specific thing sounds like you were, uh, taking some, some wrists. Yeah, I took a couple chances on behalf of one of my brothers. Somebody made a threat that they shouldn't have made. So I jumped on a plane, flew out to Massachusetts, popped up on my bro. So there was a show. Tech was, was headlining the show. And there was a bunch of, it It was a lot of drinking going on. I saw a lot of people doing a lot of things,

but the most successful person was not doing any of those things. And I was paying attention to that. I had about four Long Island Ice Tees in me at that moment. Okay. But I'm still, I think I got that under control. I feel like I did, but who knows what it looked like to somebody else. Okay. But I had enough of an awareness to see how other people were behaving

and see how the most successful person in my vicinity was behaving. But Tech Nine's not the most successful person in this? It was definitely the most successful person. Okay. Yeah. But you were observing him? That's what I'm thinking, yeah. Definitely qualifies his...

In that world, Tech Nine is basically the dude. Yes. Yeah. That's a factual statement. Right. He's been doing it a long time. He built a crazy-ass business. He did.

Yeah. Yeah. And he's a dope-ass person, though. So what I see is this dope-ass successful person and his business partner are exhibiting behaviors that I wasn't exhibiting, but these are levels that I strive to. And they were affording me the opportunity to be near that and in it,

and participating. And so I cold turkey, that was my last drink. That was my last, even vape. I watched him do 90 minutes. And I thought, you're not doing all that, doing what everybody else doing. You're not, I want to do 90 minutes on stage.

I need to get, I need to be ready to go. Right. And so I cold turkeyed all that shit, no vapes, no cigars, no weed, no alcohol, nothing. I definitely went back to the weed, though. Yeah, that's the tough one to kick. I'm not kicking it.

Yeah, me neither. Not until the doctor tells me that I got to. Man, and even that. Me and the doc going to have a talk. Take them out back. I'll keep it my indica. But did you have to handle anybody on this journey out of town? No, but that's what I was there for,

and that person made some good decisions for himself and his friends. And so we went on about our business and all as well. Okay. But what was your relationship with Tech Nine prior to all this? At that point for months, it was solid. It was very solid. Yeah. So like I went, me and Brother Lynchong had a show in Kansas City on June 11th of 2021. I get to town and, you know, phones start blowing up from the little homies from the streets. With ironically, I call them Tech Nine's Crips. All the Crips calling me, talking about, man, tech looking for you, tech looking for you and I was like, you come to call me.

Like, I just, I was there to do what I was doing. I didn't necessarily think he was or wasn't. So I was doing me. I didn't know him like that to know that he that type of motherfucker. You know what I mean? Right. And so I go about my day. I finally get a call from the homie Tres.

And like, Triz is somebody that I very much, I respect. And it's my little brother. You know what I mean? So I take Tries called. Tres was like, man, where are you eating at? What you about to do? How you move? And I'm like, I'm going to go to this spot.

blah, blah, blah. And he was like, I'll be there in 15. Tech could be there in 30. I was like, all right, you know, now pull up. I got the boys with me. Everybody strapped up. We in this restaurant. And, yeah, Trier's walked in there, and about 15 minutes later, Tech walked in that my ass going like Bruce Leroy. Really? Yeah. You got an aura about them? Yes. Yeah. Success or just focus? Goodness.

Mm. Goodness. Like, yeah, throw. He breaks up it. See, it's interesting to me to imagine how you might fit in with the Tech Nine on the road circus, etc. Because when I think about you, it's like you're coming from Northern California, Sacramento. Obviously, you're wrapped up in the gang shit then. Then you go in, you do 20-something years, and then you come out.

And it's like, I just feel like Tech Nine's universe is just probably got its own cultural norms. it's got its own flavor. Did you fit in from the beginning? Or it's an interesting... I don't necessarily want to fit in, and I think that's an advantage for me. I don't perceive myself to need to fit in. I'm willing to accept everything that organically blends in with what I do,

but whatever doesn't, you know. And I was paying attention. My big brother, brother Lynch-on, was over there prior to me. I had some of his input. But I kind of had an understanding, and me watching him blending in or not blending in. And at the time, Tech was on his King of Darkness trip, which is closer to what we were doing anyway, as from us coming with season of the sickness, exorcist. That was more in line with what we were doing at the time that Lynch was around.

So I think we service two completely different audiences. You know what I mean? And we come from, he come from the 50s. He really from the 50s. So they red ragging out there. And I come from 24th Street, Garland, Block Crip, 29. Street, 21st Street, No, I'm going to fall, South Side. So, it kind of like is a union. It brought two different groups of people together who may not have necessarily functioned together. So

I was aware of that. And it's like when J. Rock and Top Dog were at Strange Music, and Kendrick had his affiliation over there, I always perceived them to be among without being of, if that makes sense. You know what I mean? And so, like, J. Rock really Westy, you know, certified, like really that kind of person. And I got a lot of respect for him, so I watched the way he conducted himself in that experience, and it kind of informed me about how I could successfully navigate it as well. I've utilized a lot of that.

Did it immediately open you up to a different fan base? Yeah, it did. It exposed me to a level of professionalism that was absent from how I was moving. I think that's what he, if anything, he taught me was to the professional, And the level that I needed to be aspiring to while still being honest about who I am, being organically me at the same time, which was hard to do on parole anyway. Right. So I'm like on parole, I'm a lifer.

So if you're a lifer, when I got out, which is something that is a pet peeve among when people talk about prison experiences who are not lifers and have all these opinions. and then you don't have lifers because we're lifers. So it's not normal for us to get out to tell people what it's like to be a free lifer. But did you ever have life? I had life. I was serving life in prison. Okay. I had an indeterminate sentence.

So I had 31 years to life. Okay. And all that means is that I have to serve 80% of that 31 before they could think about if they wanted to possibly let me go. Right. And at the time of my arrival, only 3% of people. were having that that experience. So being a lifer, when you get out, you're still a lifer. So if I run a red light, they pull me over, they don't like how I'm acting. I go straight

back to prison with a life sentence and sit there until they decide they want to pull me back in and decide if whether or not I need to stay there. So I walked on eggshells for a long time because I was still a lifer. It's crazy for me to imagine what that must feel like for you because you've obviously like just when you get out you've kind of beaten one of the worst possible outcomes for you as a human being and part of you if i was you part of me is going to want to just stay in the house be extremely careful and then the other part of you like you're saying you're going out you're drinking you're having good time and like you want to make up for all this living but i mean the more you're outside the house the more you're drinking in public the more you're doing all that shit the more likely it is that something's going to happen not to mention obviously so you can't just have it on you like the way that you used to. And so knowing that there's a lot of other people who got it on them, that's got to be like a really tough choice to make. And you have like no experience with the real world for the last 25 years, etc.

So it's like you're almost not really like even fit to make that decision because you don't know what situations you need to be 100% careful in, etc. Like it's such a learning curve of getting back to the real world. I mean, it just seems like such an incredibly hard puzzle to figure out. I think the way we simplify it is the assumption is that like everybody on AG, that got to be assumed. Right. Everybody on AG, so I'm going to be on mine too. Lower your fees are cheaper than funerals, in my opinion.

And I'm not talking literal dollars. So certain circumstances, I was more willing to, I'm going, I need to still be alive on earth. Right. So if, you know, whatever that required, that's what it was. And so I'm blessed that I got, I've been met with an extreme amount of love. And I want to be clear about that because I think that's the most gangster thing that I could say. I've been, I wasn't, it's always going to be people who care about how I'm doing and what happens to me. There are always were people who cared.

And so me, associating with non-gang members would have put me back in prison. Right. But these are my family members. These ain't friends of mine or people that I got jumped on a set. and I was from around the corner like these are my family. But does that explanation work with a court? Not necessarily with a parole board if they don't want it to. So I did have to be careful, but I was careful with an awareness that I would rather go back

than go to, you know, then die. Like that. So it said that had nothing to do with nothing. We're going to move the way we got to move no matter what. And you just got to deal with what you deal with and try to move. correctly and that's what we did. But what I reaped was the benefit of so much love and respect. And I mean, insurmountable, significant amounts of it from people from all walks of life. And because of that, I just had it. It was, you know, good ideas and bad ideas. I think it was a bad

idea. Some dumb shit I could have experienced would have been a bad idea for me and others. So how'd you end up in Vegas, though? Did you parole to Sacramento originally? So when I got out of prison because of the life or thing, because of the restraining orders, I had non-restraining orders on me and parole, they paroled me to the second next county over, which is the rule. So I ended up in Oakland, a significant amount of love and respect out there. And a lot of people who made sure that I was situated in a way that they liked. And I had a positive experience, made great relationships, got a lot of work done. and it's just a lot of people out there that I got a significant amount of love for.

So I was there, but I owned my home in Vegas that was purchased prior to me coming, me getting out. And so I had to do halfway house, gang task force monitor, ankle monitor, approved by the governor, transfer parole to Nevada. Nevada accepted me. And I was, I think I saw you last time two months after I have been accepted to go to Nevada. Okay. I had literally just got to my house at the point where we were doing our interview, even though I've been home since 2018.

So it took October of 2019 is when I finally got to go to Vegas. Was there any politics associated with you still being up in Oakland, given your history of being up there? I don't know if there's anyone who would have still been upset with you about prior circumstances. I think it's intelligent to assume that that's true. but it's also necessary to be aware of how respectful what you can achieve by exhibiting the right amount of respect to the right people and communicating openly and honestly. So I've always been open about my perspective on my circumstances. People are aware of what really did and did not happen on the street underworld level. So it was people who knew better than I did in terms of what I was and was not responsible for.

And, you know, what are your choices? If you tell on them, you're a rab bastard. You hold your mud and keep your mouth closed. People speculate and make up stories. You've got to choose which one of those you want to have. And it is what it is. Most people would, you know, try to defend themselves and end up saying too much. And now you're saying things that should have stayed where they were.

And so I've always chose not to be the person that do that and let people speculate. But those who mattered knew what time it was. So I was received well in Oakland. I had a funny story happened to me that ended up allowing me to have significant influence in Oakland. So I'm in a transitional house. I get it set up so I can work as a rap artist. And so they have to approve me to go out for eight hours. It's basically a jail.

The transitional house is a jail. And we can go to work or you can go to school. So I'm self-employed. So I'm getting out eight hours a day. And I go shoot the music. music video for California Dreaming. That ends up on the news. We run up 2 million views on it.

And now all of a sudden people in authority at the Transitional House want to know how I was out able to go do that. And so they start an investigation. I'm unaware that that's going on. I went out on a weekend pass or something. I come back and they end up in a conference room grilling me about who gave me permission specifically to go shoot that video. go shoot that video, even though it was, they knew that I was approved to go, but they didn't

know who approved me. And so I told them it wasn't my responsibility to identify who did what in their system, that if they knew I had approval, that was the extent of my participation and the experience. And so they threatened to send me back to prison with a life sentence if I didn't tell them who let me go. And I told them, I sat there for 26 years because I was unwilling to say who did what. and it don't make sense for me to come home and after that and say who did what

so you can send me back. A lady in there, a beautiful black woman, one of them aunties, she stopped it and was like, this is gone far enough, blah, blah, blah, excuse me from the room. I go back to my room,

not knowing what the fuck was going on. They end up leaving me alone. They let that go. Turns out the woman who interrupted that was Mr. Fab's aunt. Wow. So imagine being a piece of shit that would have started telling on or whoever or giving people up, right?

And Mr. Fabs' aunt is in the room while you're doing that, right? So just the benefits and making good decisions. So that gets back to people. And then the person that they were trying to crack was actually the home of Yogi Calhoun's cousin. Yogi Calhoun's cousin was the one who gave me permission to go. And, you know, he's a younger brother. and evidently people were, they wanted to get rid of him.

He was he had swag, you know what I mean? And was he giving you permission to go shoot this video in a situation where other people wouldn't have? I don't think so. You had a little bit of a connection with him? I think it was internal politics and they had a problem with him

and was using that as a way to try and get rid of that, brother. That's what they was trying to do. And I don't know who he related to or nothing, but I just knew it wasn't my job to solve their problem. So what happens is the smoke clears, He survives that, and he pulls me out. And he told me that was some real shit. He respected it, and he said his cousin wanted to talk to me.

I walked outside. I get in the bench, close the door, and it was Yogi Calhoun. And he was like, I really appreciate what you did for my cousin. You know, he showed me a lot of love. And because of that, East Oakland was a very, is a very welcoming place for me to go to. So that's how that happened. That's how I met Yogi Calhoun. That's how I met Mr. Fab's aunt, who let me go.

for my first weekend passing, hang out with my family after I got out of prison. And these are very, very influential people in East Oakland. And for that reason, I was chilling. Why did you decide to make the move to Vegas, though, because I'm sure it's more laid back, chill,

but also I feel like your star power is probably, like, more powerful in Northern California? Yeah, it is. The issue was just that that was where my home, I didn't know I was getting out when we bought that house. So we didn't buy that house. You know, we had, it wasn't the first home that we had purchased.

And so that was just where we had our residence. You know what I mean? And so when you say, go home for me at the time going home was to go to Vegas. Right. And so you were able to buy a house in Vegas with money that you saved from streaming and whatnot while you were locked up for all those 25 years? Well, I was also around when you, you know, a CD was $10. and I'm independent and I'm signed the Bayside distribution so I sell 100,000 units, I get $7 a pop. I've just had so many people tell me that when you get locked up, especially for a long-ass time,

you almost always lose all of your money. I didn't have that experience. I had a different kind of experience because of the people that are currently in my life. Right. I realize they say your net worth is your network. Your network is your net worth. So I know people, new people, and still know people who have more money to me, who find it unreasonable for me to be broke, who disliked that concept, who wouldn't allow it.

And so I was in a circumstance where you got people like Brian Shafton. I had a distribution deal with his company where I was still there releasing music for myself and others. So I had built my business by 2005 Blockstar as a real company and was doing it. my thing and my partner at the time was aggressive in terms of making solid decisions financially. So it wasn't just me. It was a combination of 20 years of work in that environment, not knowing if I was coming home or not. So I'm just trying to have a good life, whether it was there or here.

And so that behavior ended up resulting in me being able to come home to a beautiful circumstance, you know, as a result of my decisions and my partner's decision in life, We went crazy. We did our thing. Yeah, that's dope. Yeah. Your partner? Yeah, and my ex-wife. Okay. Yeah.

So that didn't work out at a certain point? It did not. After you got out? Yeah. You were together the whole time they were locked up? No, not all of it, but a good amount of, a significant amount of it. Okay. I'm assuming you thought that it was going to work out long term when you got out of prison?

I did. What were, if you don't mind me asking, what were the stresses that led to that? I think me having to go to Oakland. I think the pandemic and I think unrealistic perceptions of what life would be like outside of that environment for somebody. I had an idealistic view of life

that I was unaware I had. And so when you're in that environment, I'm a 17-year-old kid. I'm 44 when I come home, right? Almost all of my information in regard to what I thought life was was from theoretical shit. From what people told me

and what I observed on TV, what I read, what I listened to, and I'm forming a perception of life. Like, I'm literally one of the people in Plato's cave, looking at that wall with the fireburn and trying to decide what I think that shadow is.

You know what I mean? Trying to define something that I wasn't immersed in. I wasn't really living. And so I think that getting out and coming to terms, and I'm not, the only one, by the way.

I've had these conversations with my big homie. He had a lot to do with some of the decisions I made in terms of how he perceived his arrival from prison coming home. My old G. Big Dune did 50 years. And he didn't do the 50. He did half of that, I think. What you do? 30? 31.

So he did 31 and was the one who started telling me to go to school and change my life while I was in that environment. but there's relationship issues that we aren't aware that we're going to have. And those of us who were lifers, you build a life for yourself that was meant for that experience. I didn't build a life for myself that was meant for this experience because I didn't know I was going to have this experience. And maybe that's what she might have been doing. But you get out and you see that this isn't what I thought it was going to be or the way I would like it to be or how I would like interpersonal dynamics to work. family member integration, things like that. And so these things become cultural conflicts.

Is there a guilt associated with that? Just knowing that you kind of had this person on the hook for so long? And then at a certain point, you realized it wasn't good for you? No. No. It was compassion. I think it was compassion. I had compassion.

And I think that there is an absent. I think it's very difficult for someone to have compassion for, a life or somebody who did 2020, they can't comprehend what we experienced. Right. You know, how can I communicate to somebody? I did six months less than Nelson Mandela, bro. Six months less than Nelson Mandela.

He did two years more than Nelson Mandela. How do I tell somebody what that felt like and how to have empathy for me or be compassionate toward me? How do I inform them of triggers that I have or defects that I, that I'm working with in trauma. How do I communicate that to someone who has no ability to be able to understand it? They can hear you, but they can't really comprehend. This is why I'm reacting to these particular things, you know,

or I'll say if you rescued a dog, people would have more empathy for that dog if it bit somebody than they would for a human being who got rescued and was exhibiting behaviors they didn't like. If the dog is barking, if the dog bit the kid, They would have 50 million. Oh, he just got out of the pound, please. Right. You know, but they don't do that for a human being because, you know,

we humans, we expect a lot from each other. And so I had a lot of unrealistic expectations. I think we just ended up being, we weren't not the people that we perceived each other to be. And the most loving thing you could do in that circumstances to allow somebody to be themselves and to be yourself. I wanted to have children. I wanted to be truly free and make decisions for my, myself in my life. I did not want to be treated like a product, you know, a brand. I wanted to be

loved as a man. You know what I mean? Who was trying to treat you like a product and a brand? Because it's like there is you as a human being. Right. And then there is the fact that you, just by virtue of existing, are a business that could be monetized in a host of different ways. And, you know, you're fresh out of prison. It's like you're not necessarily in the position. to know what the best way to make use of the brand is. That must have been very tricky. I think it's less tricky when you got a brine shaft in your life, when you got to, you know, I have people in my life who are very much suited

for understanding what those brands were. And so you say what I needed my personal life versus what I need in my professional life weren't the same. In my personal life, I needed to be treated as a supportive partner and human being is somebody who was having their own experience, not just a united experience, but also an individual experience that required understanding and how my operations manual and how to understand to do the same thing for someone else. So, you know, my lawyer has told me to be careful about those subjects due to the documents that we signed out of respect for each other's privacy.

So what I would say is that I'm very grateful and appreciative. And the law, life that I built for myself in that environment was the best that I've ever seen anybody be able to execute and I did that with somebody who's the savage beast in the realm, in that particular realm and the same thing that made us strong

from that perspective made us weak in society and that's my opinion of it and I love her and I wish her great success. She's my family member you know and that's that and I'm doing me 100% yeah.

freedom it's got to feel good two beautiful baby boys 19 month old and one about to be two months old who were never supposed to exist on this planet at all not supposed to exist because you were supposed to be locked up for the rest of your life forever wow or incapable of producing them oh you didn't think you were capable of having kids

I did not think that I wasn't how they know those of the goaders having us in prison for all that time oh really what so I can't be previous. It's one of the reasons. Were you in a hurry to make children as soon as you got out,

or do you just happen to, it just happened? It was a dream of mine. You know, I wanted to be a father, man. I see, you know, you've been able to do that. You know, I wanted to be a father. Yeah, it's the best feeling ever. It is, truly. It truly is the best thing that ever happened in mine.

I went on a hike with my kid before I came here for an hour. She cried the whole fucking time. She was furious. It was amazing, though. It was great. Right. It's just like, so cool. I'm explaining. the concept to her of, I know your legs hurt, it's okay. Right.

This is what it is. It's like your legs are getting stronger. It doesn't make any sense to her, but it just feels so good to be a part of that development of this little human being. Yes. Yeah. That's what I'm on right now. And I got so much love in my life for support. And I'm really proud of what I've been able to deliberately create for myself as a person who is no longer incarcerated.

or on parole being free as fuck is what I call it. So does your soul want you to relax or does it want you to be on the road hustling doing everything you can to make fans and connect with the people and make every last dollar? Like what does your heart tell you that you should be doing with your time? As a father, the predominant thing I want to do is be with my babies. You know, I want to be with my babies. Right.

And so you also got to be able to be able. You got to have your bag where you want it to be able to decide that that's what you want to do or be able to. You know, I'm fortunate that I could stay home and make good money and I have to run around if I don't want to. Almost a period. I lost $37,000 last year running around. You're staying as damn in like paying myself when I stayed at my house this year. You know what I mean? And only go out for the bigger things.

And I think strategically, in keeping with Travis O. Gwyn's strategy for me and my. personal life and I happen to think he's to Bill Belichick of this independent music shit, you know what I mean? There is no one with more championship rings and if there are, they're a part of his own movement. I think it pisses him off Brian Shaft and got more

plaques than him. He can't catch him because they still work together. But you say losing $30,000 was because it costs so much to go on tour and go do these different dates and stuff that it's like even if you're getting paid a decent amount it might cost you more to get out there? Yeah, it's expensive. You know, you got all this different shit. Uncle Sam, he got all this different shit. And it's ways to do it

correctly, but I didn't necessarily do it correctly. You know what I mean? Because I ran plays that I wanted to run instead of running plays that my coach was calling. And so what I learned was to listen to your coach and run the plays that the coach calls, the way he calls him. And as a result of that, I've had a superior experience. 24, it's been an awesome year for me. Some amazing opportunities the tech is set up. So yeah, if I have my choice, I would stay at home and I dip out when I'm about to go hunt and drag that back, a gazelle back, feed my cubs, and watch me some football and go out when I need to grab me another gazelle. That's what I'm on right now, for real. And so, you know, I'm focused on a documentary. I'm focused on my book and, you know,

an anthology type of project that can wrap up my career. I'm not starting a rap career. I've been here for right after Cube in that middle space, but while Pac was still digital underground Pac, becoming Thug Life Pac, and then before Snoop, and before there was even a death row, there was an X-Rat and a psychoactive. And that's my fucking spot.

I want my spot. Everybody's going to respect my spot. I'm not playing. I know I'm not one of these little new niggis. I don't want to be categorized with him. I'm one of the dopest motherfuckers from my era. steal this dope on songs with Conway,

Joyner Lucas and Tech 9, read the comments. You know what I mean? Acting the fuck up. People love what I'm doing. If I'm pretending to be some new dude, you're just a new dope dude.

But if it's put me where I go, then you say, damn, how many motherfuck do you steal this dope? How many of them are they? How many people steal this hungry? 40, Snoop. Who? How many? Make the list.

and then there are there I go I like that a lot Are you satisfied with the reception that you've gotten from people In particular like you know other rappers and shit Like in terms of The amount of respect that you might feel like you were Do just by you know

Being a real one and going and sitting down Doing your time and being somebody that was so Early in terms of a lot of shit Yeah Yeah definitely I had a few awesome conversations With people who can For themselves say what they want to say. But like recently I did the song with Rakim on the God's Network

project that he did his first project in like 15 years. And so, you know, I do this verse on the Rock Kim album with Method Man. And like I had to come right after Method Man. That ain't, that ain't easy work, you know what I mean? As a rapper, as an MC. And so I cooked it. I did my thing. And Rakim posted that on his profile. And that was like one of the biggest things. How more, that's like Michael Jordan saying he liked the way you play. shooting guard. You know what I mean? Like that's a big deal.

So it don't get bigger than that. For me as a rapper, for outside of like what I'm doing with tag for rock him to say X-Rady takes you on a lyrical journey, blah, blah, blah. You know, that's, that's MVP type shit for me.

That's, that's an all-star game. I got voted into an all-star game by somebody who cannot be denied. But how integrated into the strange music? family are you at this point? How much of your business are they handling versus you still kind of behaving

as if you're an independent artist? Are you like fully looped in with them going on every tour or like how's that look? I am looped in with them in terms of like production, execution. We're responsible. My team is still responsible for the great majority of the music we make.

I think I only got three tracks from producers that have anybody from strange music has ever worked with before on my put on this album this dropping friday uh i'm proud of that you know i did my sound my way i went home to south sacramento and pulled south sacramento i pulled west coast my music is west coast traditional west coast hip-hop that's what i do in the vein of what cube established for us and what snoop was able to do for us and what the the game came and carried that torch for us and then here come Kendrick to carry that torch for us.

That's my DNA. And I fit in my spot in that DNA. And they all know it, by the way, all of them. And so I like for my music to represent that because I think that that's the dopest hip-hop in the history of the earth. I think nothing ever fucked with that.

I respect what everybody else has done. I love, like, follow the leader. Come on. So I can make a list of what I think is the dopest shit ever. But if we're talking about West Coast shit, like, Cube, Snoop you know

Pox Run game Kendrick this is what I sonically that's where E40 I sonically

exist in that family and I want my music to move deeper that way I want to go more home with my shit

now especially being opera is is horror core dead horrorcore yeah

I don't think it's dead I think social media has made it very difficult for horror to have

it's have it's just due in the game. It's very difficult. The hip-hop community has forgotten how to consume those types of lyrics and stuff. Like in the 90s, it was okay. I'm not sure how many of the listeners

necessarily thought that these were all real stories versus like just more extreme versions. I'm somebody that grew up listening to a lot of death metal and shit. So from my perspective, you know, go read a cannibal corpse lyric sheet. And it's probably going to be worse. than anything that you guys ever did.

Well, actually, honestly, it's probably like very close, neck and neck. But, like, you know, for me, it's easy to understand, like, this is a death metal group. They are talking about some horrible shit, but it's no different than a horror movie. Right. Where a horror movie, it's easy for people to understand that the director of the horror movie doesn't want to, you know, kill innocent people. But, you know, a band could sing about that kind of thing. And for me, it's like, even just hearing the way that people talk, I was watching

some like YouTube essay type stuff about you and Brother Lynch-hung and all these guys and it's like people are very into like moralizing and passing judgment as if like how could you ever rap about this sort of thing and I'm like an entire genre that was based around

the idea of doing the most extreme shit and I mean there's like the gangster rap version of that as well like you know I go listen to it I grew up listening to EZE talk about some horrible shit that I know that he didn't actually partake in and it's like You know, hip hop kind of seems like it outgrew that to a certain extent.

People want everything to be real and less fantasy. I don't know. It's strange. I don't know. If I'm a black guy and I put on a hockey mask and I take a chainsaw and I start that chainsaw and I chop a body and blood splatters on me and I look up at the camera and I'm standing next to Big Sean. You're literally describing the most recent Eminem video.

Yeah. And the number one album, the number one album in the world. Right. And people seem able to accept that Eminem is playing a character when he does that, and he's not a serial killer. And that's as close to being informed by horror corps as it's ever going to get. And they all just stomached it and made it the number one album in the country. But myself and brother Lynch-ung, who Eminem unequivocally was paying attention to do the same thing, we don't have the same outcome, and we end up having a conversation about why our genre that we pioneered cannot work.

even though it was just leading to what resulted in the number one album in the world. So that's an interesting dynamic. That's interesting. I think that nobody's going to arrest Rob Zombie, right? Exactly, yeah. And say his characters are real. The Hills really have eyes. He caught a lot of bodies over the years in his albums as well, yeah.

Yeah, and I think it's awesome. And I think that it informs us of the inherent responsibility. that comes with being an emce and hip hop. I think it's both hypocrisy and a statement about why we're special. So I think that people expect hip hop to be real. They really do.

And I think that there is an onus to try and hug that reality as close as you possibly can. You know, did Ice Cube and EZE and Dr. Dre get pulled over by the cops thrown on the car with batons or was the police a song to describe literally what was occurring in their environment even if it didn't happen at end right although people say that story really happened but there's a lot

of pox songs where he's rapping about having kids yeah he didn't have any kids yeah i got songs where i wrapped about having kids and i didn't have kids i have a song called hellraiser where i i uh I started verse talking about having to go hustle because my daughter is going to be two years old. And I don't have, I have to get, I have to make sure I'm providing for my daughter. And the reason I wrote that song is because I have a homie name Wicked. And the homie Wicked was in a court tank with me talking about his experience. And he was talking about his daughter and why it was so important for him to get through his experience successfully because he wanted to take care of his daughter. So I wrote that song for Wicked.

And then I came and rapped it to him and he cried. and I recorded it and it's called Hail Razor now on the album called Nefarious and it's one of my biggest songs I ever made and I didn't have a daughter I don't have a daughter but even at the time you know you rapping about extreme shit that you did or didn't do kind of bit you in the ass since obviously like now now it's very clear to me like oh the mainstream media took your lyrics and misrepresented them and claimed that you had songs that were titled things that you didn't have and shit like that so it's like you know that that kind of thing I guess is not all that new

that people are going to take rap lyrics extremely literally whereas they don't necessarily hold every other genres of the same standard. Or every other ethnicity because we have to talk about systemic racism in the United States of America for us to have an honest conversation about why lyrics are being used

against people. Because nobody went and got ill bill and said he wrote a song about killing people or whoever. Nobody went and got him in them. You know what I mean? They're going to be protesting. Nobody protested nothing. He just rapped that. People go, oh my God, they're going to

protest, slim, and nobody protesting nothing. They were in 2000, right? They were a little, he ruffled some feathers. I thought it was hilarious by the way, and I think he's dope as fuck. And so, but the truth is there ain't nobody going to arrest, none of them. You know what I? Who's been

arrested? That wasn't African-American or a melanated person in the history of hip-hop, and I was first. I was the first one they ever did that, too. I'm paying attention. And they look like me. They look like Young Thug.

They look like, right? They don't look like him in there. Right. They don't go get him in there. But you, I feel like you weren't speaking about this when you first got out, but in recent times you've become a little bit more of an outspoken advocate for how unfair it could be to prosecute people based on lyrics and using lyrics in court. I've seen a clip of you on TMZ talking about it.

Yeah. What kind of sparked that? Because you made it clear the way that you were prosecuted would not fly in modern times. Oh, yeah. That's a deep rabbit hole, so we'll dive in there. I want to touch on something about the horror court thing. Oh, yeah, sure. The reason I think horror court can't be successful currently is because music lives primarily online,

and there are no community guidelines on Earth that allow for Brother Lynch-Hung to promote himself. Right. That's what I think the problem is. He's going to be shadow band everywhere. We post one song. We post four bars of a brother-in-lintang song. We shadow band for two, three weeks, right? So I think that got a lot to do with it.

And you got to be bigger than the machine or as big as the machine, like a slim shady, to be able to get away with that. Because there's so much considered to be entertainment, which I think makes us stronger as a community. I don't subscribe to the M&M as Elvis thing. I think he's dope as fucking wrapped his way to the power and influence that he has. I'm a huge M&M advocate. But Brother Lynch-Hong is somebody who has difficulty in the modern era because the system, the machine is not designed for Brother Linchong to be successful.

He was literally had to have the underground routes and in person in your face and stores where you made the choice. I want to see this. But now the algorithms deciding what you see and they don't want you to see that. So I think that's a problem for me. But to answer your question, the experience that I had, we talk about this, the lyrics being used against you in the state of California, boom, that's illegal. California's felony murder rule has been rewritten, completely reconstructed, and you are no longer to allow to five people, one victim, one gun, one bullet, and five people got murdered. That's illegal in the state of California. juvenile is no longer able to be automatically remanded over to adult court.

That's illegal in California, which is the reason why you have to sit here and interview a kid who looks you in your face and say, I shot pop smoke. Right. Right. Because it's illegal to give a juvenile a life sentence. They can do up to age of 25 and they're back out. Right. And they're ironically calling themselves block star.

I was going to point that out earlier. So that's illegal now. throwing juveniles into adult facilities is illegal now. So if you just go back and say, X-rated, first person ever had his lyrics used against them. That's the illegal in the state of California. X-rated, who's facing the death penalty, remanded to adult court and giving a life sentence.

That's an illegal in a state. Because you were how old? 17. Jeez, okay. So what we're talking about is that 95, 99 to 100% range of what I was put in prison for is currently illegal. in the state of California.

And so I couldn't, I didn't, it's a lot you can't talk about. But people like Gavin Newsom, to his credit and his staff went, they put up a fight and said, hey, we don't believe this is right. A lot of people lobbied for these things. Meek Mill did his job out on the east. You know, we did our job out here on the West, and we got those things accomplished for other people not to have the experiences that we had. And so, you know, if you go shoot a dude and you go rap about that tomorrow,

definitively provable that that's what you did, then that's some dumb ass it you just did. But for me, as a kid that they said, wrote a song about a murdery committed, even though the song was written before and recorded before, months before this crime ever occurred. The song is called Still Shooting,

but they titled it The Murder. Right. And when I'm watching the news reporters talk about that, when I'm watching old footage of that, it's like they wrote the narrative. And there was no internet for people. to be able to raise hell and be like, look at how this is bullshit. Because nowadays, if that shit was put out there on CNN, there would instantaneously be, you know, viral Twitter threads and Instagram posts breaking down how, oh, look how the mainstream media is lying to you.

Right. And that just, there was no venue for that to happen at the time. Yeah, I got f***ed over. And that largely, this is something that I've always felt something about. The hip hop community at the time, the hip hop journalism, which now, if that happened to me and y'all knew it you would go crazy you would have a fit if that happened next week

you'd have a fit you're y'all would be pushing the line a lot of people would be pushing the line and it would be so easy to get the news out there because people would be so entranced by like holy shit like this is so blatant how they're lying editing my lyrics to make it say was something I didn't say instead of hip hop journalism writing the real story

they went and picked up the story from the AP and copy and pasted it. Okay. So now I got the source magazine accusing me of something that the Sacramento B wrote. I got Vibe magazine repeating something that the Sacramento

B wrote with no respect for the politics that were involved or the fact that I was the first viral news story related to hip hop arguably I mean arguably on the West Coast at all. I was the

first one to ever have lyrics used against them and hip hop at all. But that moment, my city, the biggest thing that had happened in Sacramento was Dorothea 20 having the bodies in her yard, right? And they sensationalized

that story. You know, Sacramento's grandma who was a serial killer. I'm the next thing after her that got sold almost as that version of it moving into entertainment more than news that were used to see in now where the news is more of a of an entertainment thing even even our presidency

then turned into some entertainment shit more so than strict professional journalism strict professional politics it's mud slinging it's entertainment it's likes and clicks at the highest levels at the time it was so early that that was subtle enough for them to get away with that to have sensationalized the story about a juvenile who they called a gang leader who had organized and when it executed this and had rapped about it they sold that story and unfortunately my own community regurgitated

instead of doing journalism themselves which I know my community would have done that for me today but at that particular time that didn't occur there was only a really like a handful of journalistic voices within hip-hop at that time it would have

basically been like I don't know the source and like maybe a couple of other sort of regional publications it wasn't that much real journalism happening. Yeah, I agree. This is damn there before vibe. This is before double XL. The magazines didn't get the source was still the hip-hop Bible. So the one place that was my home field advantage,

copy and paste of the story from the AP that was literally written by people who were exploiting the story of a 17-year-old child for, you know, likes and clicks, their version of likes and clicks at the time. It's crazy because the intersection of art and real deal violence and gang shit has just become more and more magnified within the culture. It's just so much information. If you want to find out about any different gang war

that's ever happened in any part of America, you can pretty much throw those names of those gangs in YouTube and find a 30-minute documentary that breaks down who got killed that started this war and where it's at today and here's who's been killed over the past 10 years, etc. And it feels like, you know, you being willing to like really talk about some real shit mixed in with a bunch of fantasy and your lyrics and stuff like that was very ahead of its time as well how do you look at that now

and do you still pay attention to the documentation of like what's going on in the streets and the intersection of music yeah i think being on the ground moving around on the ground makes it to where you got to be aware you know you want to pull up in the city and associate with somebody who got something going on that you may not be aware of you want to know what's going on and who's doing what with who what are the historical issues and make a deliberate decision on you know i'm in town i'm with these people i'm in town i'm with these people or i'm showing love to everybody i'm doing me but show some love no matter what you got to be aware where you are who's who and uh what's what but i think uh it's necessary for me as a artist from my generation, from my class and what I mean to my neighborhood, for me to be speaking toward

these subjects in a respectful way in a way that's trying to heal up some shit. Like I came home from prison and the people, we were accused of attempting to attack. Our rivals just had a barbecue out on 24th Street with the homies, everybody together. One of their short callers, they biggest homies on the phone with me chopping it up.

I put him on the phone with tech, not. My big home are here. Like we have unity on the south side and are trying to continue to heal wounds between the Kiwai's and the Damos, the bloods and the cribs between everybody. On our side of town, that's first. You know, you got to start where you are. So I'm more concerned about making sure that mine are doing what they're supposed to do

so we can avoid some of the things that have weakened the culture and strengthen us and make sure that our children are safe out there and able to have a better. experienced than we did. We were that age, and that's the goal right now. So we got some supreme unity amongst those of us from my neighborhood right now, and getting off parole had a lot to do with that,

being able to even talk about it, or not be thrown back in prison for life for associating with known gang members, even though these are the dopest men that we got walking around attempting to create peace. And so, like, you know, I could have came home, y'all hanging out with these dudes, you know, it was like, man, this is beautiful. Right. I thought

it was beautiful. I still think it's beautiful and I'm an advocate for it and I'm gonna do anything I can and strengthen it. So from that perspective, it is necessary for me to be aware of the politics. So I play my, you gotta, you gotta make your moves correctly with an awareness of what dynamics can and cannot be mixed. You know, some substance is acostic. You can't pour that shit together. Right.

You know. Yeah, you'd really be playing the game with a blindfold over your eyes if you weren't doing your homework to figure out if who you, because like even in Saccharacterial, Sacramento, there's a lot of neighboring cities where it's like their politics basically overlap with Sacramento. And if you're cool with this person, you cannot be cool with this person. And we read about this all the time, seeing like the birth of like Stockton having this thriving music scene and realizing that like there's, you know, jurisdictions about who can hang out with each other in all of the neighboring cities when it comes to the music shit. And that's been kind of crazy to watch how that's developed.

Yeah, man, them are baby boys. Stockton to Sacramento, it's like a little brother. You know, I grew up my whole life, and I saw Sacramento Stockton, Modesto on my TV screen. You know what I mean? I watched Fox 40. It's say Sacramento Stockton Modesto. So that's always been home to us. And then we have alliances with North Side and Fou Falls, townhomes. Them is as much, you know, they damn their garden block to us, them the homies.

And so, in the internal conflicts, and, you know, they're in the internal conflicts, stuff like that or inside of prisons, institutions, and things like that, that's our business, too. But on the street, that's their business, you know what I mean? So a lot of that, ironically, EBK is something that we came up with. Me and I got everybody killers on psychoactive. First time anybody in the history of hip-hop heard somebody say EBK was on psychoactive on my op. That's interesting because there's a lot of different cities who have some people that claim to be EBK before the Stockton thing. Yeah, none of them came before.

psychoactive. Right. Yeah. So I'm on my spot. Ice cube. X rated. Snoop Dog, Tupac, all of us,

right there in that cluster, 40. Master P. I want my spot. And then we could see that they got EBK from me. Right. 100%.

Right up. Because you had an interview on Vlad while you were still locked up like six years ago or so, like a couple years before you got released. Yeah. Where you had a quote, where you said,

that gangs are parasitic organizations. I did organisms. Organisms, actually. Yeah, you're right. And there was another clip on Vlad where, where, shit, what's his name? Big Tray D. Big Tray D.

Tray D was talking about it. And he was kind of like, you know, painting the picture of like, think about X-R-R-R-D's life. Like, he got caught up in this shit when he was a juvenile. And then basically, like, he said, said that all the people that you were on the case with ended up not being solid with you and that, you know, you through being locked up and, like, realizing that a lot of these people that you thought you maybe had a brotherhood with didn't do what they were supposed to do.

Yeah, they didn't see me packages. He's basically saying, like, you know, think about it from X-rated's perspective. Like, he has a certain perspective on the gang thing. Look at my big old face. You didn't see his face? I love Tradee. Was he exaggerating a little bit there? I would never say that Trady was exaggerating. I love Trady.

I love them niggas. The east side is the homies. Crooked eye. I can't crook my dog. That's my partner. Snoop dog, the homie. I love me some corrupt. Das is the one who brought psychoactive and said,

this is what we need to do. That was dads that took that in the death row, right? My DNA is all over the place. So with that said, I think from a perspective of gangster, what's gangston, what's not gangster, is number one, speaking on another man's situation is a violation of certain codes and ethics that we

claim to stand by. It's a violation to speak on me because although I love Tradee for his contribution in hip-hop and his representation of Crip, which was flawless and continues to be flawless to this day, we don't know each other. We've never met. We've never spoke. We never walked a yard together.

We've never... So I respect his statement that he knows. never heard of me being a victim. I respect his statement of, you know, his perspective on my experience from a standard place. But when we start speculating, did nobody have to send me no package, bro? I psychoactive out. I'm signing priority records when I went to jail and before there was a death row. So by the time you get to me being on a prison yard in 1996, I got psychoactive and Exorcists out and tapes and CDs sell for $10 to $7. We're getting $10 to $7 independently with Black Market Records.

So they know I sent people packages. I got the homie's visits. I sent my woman money, right? So it's a mistake when people start talking about stuff like that. So I do agree with the juvenile thing. And I think, you know, he was just trying to make sure that people didn't lose perspective for me being having been a child. and that was him expressing compassion for me, and I like that.

But I think sometimes in our effort to establish our own gangster, that sometimes we have a habit of minimizing somebody else's, and I'm not willing to allow that to occur to me. I've had enough of that, bro. I'm off parol. I've had enough. Ain't nobody minimizing me so they can look like a gangster or be a bigger niggit. I think that everybody already nice where they at.

I respect where everybody at, and I'm not minimizing nobody else's gangster, and they're not minimizing mine. Ain't nobody highlander in me, eating me, so they can get, I'm not being spinach for another niggas, gee. I don't give a fuck who they are. I really feel that way. I hope I said that correctly on the set.

I really feel that way. Dead hummies. So what did you mean when you had that quote on the Vlad interview? I meant that shit. I also, so this is what I, I mean, Then you don't talk about gangstice shit. Let's talk about some real-life gang-s-sit. Yeah, I'm interested in your perspective on it because I see so many young people that are enamored with it.

And then by the time dudes get to 40 or 50, a lot of times that have different perspectives. First of all, while we're still on the subject of the O.G. Homie Tray-D. While we're still on that subject, let's talk about lifers and people with indetermining sentences. When you hire a lifer, I told you, you're on parole, you on life or parole. because I was on life of parole, the difference between myself and somebody who was not a lifer,

which is inclusive of Trady, you go to board. You got to go to board to go home, and that board can deny you, three years, five years, or seven years. The same board that denied Charles Manson 15 years and let him die in his bed is the same board I had to go through to get out.

So at the time, if you Googled me, all that came up was gang to sit because that's what I had done. my whole life. That's what my life was made up of, being a youngster trying to survive that experience. And so, with that awareness for my phenomenal attorney,

Charles Carbone, who is the greatest prisoner's rights attorney on the face of the planet, if you need one, called Charles Carbone. That's good. Charles Carbone says, man, it's a lot of negativity when we Google you. There's a lot of history. This is

a tactical weakness that we have. This is a weakness, a strategic weakness. And so I say, all right, cool, we got the Vlad opportunity. If you think about it, I do this Vlad interview aware that I'm going to board. And I make sure I wasn't even talking to Vlad. That interview was executed on behalf of myself with an awareness that the board, and when they Googled me, right, after those Vlad interviews dropped, when you Googled me, what you found was, Vlad, X-rated, Vlad, X-rated Vlad.

I smothered my name online with a narrative that I created as opposed to being vulnerable to a narrative that had been created about me from 1992 to 2016, 2017. That narrative had been, the train left the building. I was both, I was Bigfoot and the boogeyman, right? All these stories about X-rated, but I ain't met these people. even somebody is jeed out and reputable as a tradie. Cahaw are susceptible to this. Talking about somebody who they never met before because I became something larger than myself.

The train left the building. We talked about it, the baby vampire. We talked about Charlie Temple being frozen. I was actuated with the gun to his head, 17-year-old kid, even though I'm a 40-something-year-old man with people talking about me that I ain't ever met before. and I'm in a real life circumstance and I walk certain circumstances longer

than some of the people with something to say you understand if you add up my time running around like a psychopathic maniac and you add up the time they served I literally did that longer than they did I did that longer I did more active idiotic time than anybody

there is no one who came home who has more time than me because they did five, six, seven. Maybe they did ten of that. I did longer than that in that environment acting up. So these people are not authorities to speak on me. I very much dislike it. I dislike it a lot. I've disliked it for a long time.

So anyway, as a lifer, you got to go through the board. They can say no. We don't believe you. We don't like where you're coming from. We look on the internet. It doesn't represent what you're saying now. So a lot of that was me attempting to create sound bites and quotes and give myself an opportunity to play chess when I go in this environment to debunk some of this other bullshit that's been written about me from these my own home team media, the hip-hop media and the Sacramento B's and the LA Times and all these articles that have been written about me. and not even all of them that I even had quotes in speaking for myself.

That was what you found under 10,000 searches, X-rated, 10,000 more results. 10,000 more results was a bunch of shit because I didn't say nothing. You talk about my homicides. You talk about my homies didn't keep it solid. Every single one of my homeboys stays solid, everybody. Okay, so Tray D definitely got that wrong. I don't know that that was his specific quote. That ain't fair to put on Tray D.

I think he did say that. I don't believe my interpretation of what he said wasn't that. I believe what he was saying was you could get upset in that environment because people not sending you packages. That was my interpretation of what he said, which is true for some people. But it would be unrealistic to think that applies to the dude who dropped psychoactive, who dropped Exorcist, who dropped Exorcist, who dropped Inches his mind, who who, who introduced T-Nutty-Nut, who put out all these music,

introduced the Looney Coelion. first time you ever heard brother lynch hon is on psychoactive if you drive 200 miles outside of sacramento 50 miles first time they ever heard him the assumption that that person was in prison hungry is not it's beneath his level of intelligence or anybody's level of intelligence right and my home boys ain't not one of the specific youngster that took a deal to tell on us i have all he's not a guard and block member. He was a child. He was a traumatized child. And if anything, he should be given an apology and a conversation about how he ended up in a circumstance that that was that was that was utterly devastated to his life. That's really what we got to talk about.

That that baby had to go through that. He was a 15 year old child. 15. You know what I mean? So yeah, he took the little deal and he came and testified. And none of my homeboy said a word. My co-defendant that I sat next to was acquitted. I was convicted. My own boy didn't do a day in prison. We had fractured. We went to trial together. My other two homeboys went to trial together.

They were convicted before. We looked at each other and said, hey, man, you know, we got to make sure that this circumstance happens the way it's supposed to happen. We watched what happened to our brothers. And we went to trial together. My co-defendant never did a day in prison. May 17th, 1996 was acquitted, went home, came back to visit me with the four women of his jury. Visit sat right there and she cried and said, I wish I could have let you go too. Right?

She came to visit me with him after they acquitted him. So people, these are things that couldn't be talked about. Right? And I'm only doing it now because I'm off parole. I don't give a fuck. And I'm not, ain't nobody eating my gangster like Cheerio so they can feel better about that. I'm not having that. So a gang is a parasitic organism. So a paracitic organism is defined as an organism that lives on or within another organism without regard for the survival of its host.

That's a literal definition of a game. It's on me. These tools and foes, this GBC on me is really on me. This ain't no game. This shit is on me for sure, right? And it drove all the decisions that I made because the train had left the building. It was ugly. It's ugly on the south side. ain't no game. And so what I had to come to understand is that I have to defeat that we have to defeat that parasitic organism. And we're watching it happen.

YG, walking down the street with game and all the pie rules, right? It's beautiful. That's them defeating the parasitic organism. That's the whole saying, man, you ain't going to tell me what to do. You don't get to tell me what to do. Right? Because the parasite want me to smack that brother right there walking out

that store. What are you wearing? What hat is that? What shirt is that? What's said is that where your grandma stay? We've made jokes out of it. Skits. Where your grandma stay. Where your mama live? Where your auntie from? We've made jokes and skits out of it. That's a real thing. I don't have to decide that. I don't have to believe everything I think. I don't have to believe everything I feel. I can investigate my own emotions. I can decide that I want to have discernment in regard to somebody else's life and be respectful to them. And I have the ability to demand that they do the same thing for me. And then straight.

up and ain't no parasite about to drive my car. I'm not willing to be driven off of, I'm not existing from a place of hate. The same way I view you on that hike with your baby and I'm chilling with my babies on the couch, chilling, taking them to strange

music in this $20 million studio. Man, I wish that kind of joy for all of them. Because if they had that, would nobody be hurting nobody? Would nobody hurt nobody? So hurt people, hurt people, I said in a song. hurt people, hurt people.

And if that's true, then heal people, heal people, heal people. Hill people, heal people. And that's what you see. These brothers are healed persons or people in the process of healing attempting to cause healing. But Kendrick Lamar attempting to cause healing. That's beautiful for YG to be wanting to cause healing. This is beautiful. This ain't no, gang.

So it's up. Bloods and crips functioning on the south side. We're trying to put it together in a way where we put strength in our community. We inspired by what everybody else is doing and inspired by the fact that I'm not the only one. I'm not special. I was the only rapper, but my big homie here

and he was doing life. He had, what was it? What did they end up giving you life? They gave you the 50 and you did 31 out of the 50. So it's other ones, my other, it's a family father of guard block. This ain't a random dude. This is somebody on

Mount Rushmore. His co-defendant is literally the creator of my street and we're still trying to get him home right now. My uncle Barry was B. Dubbed 24th Street go our blocks. So like, this mission we're on, the men that are coming home, even from on the other side, men like Vaughn, men like, like, Severeo Strong, men like, it's men on the other side coming home who also have healed and who would like healing. You got to be concerned about it's everybody on the same page, you know, Big Meek and the south side, Miko Yure, who, if I didn't have him in my life, I wouldn't have had a career. at all out there on the south side trying to do something beautiful in the community with people who were trying to harm each other not long ago.

And my own, my home you, big poop and the motorcycle club disintegrated, man, I think it's beautiful. So hurt people, hurt people, heal people, heal people. People with discernment are careful with their tongue when they speak on other people. And that's what time it is. And that's what, that's what I'm a stand on. So would you say that it's always going to be foolish to act like gangs are only one thing and the gangs are inherently evil because I feel like a gang,

like a gang is as simple as just they're being a neighborhood and they're being dudes who at some point have to join together to protect themselves. Is the problem just that the culture of gangbanging is to some extent toxic and that needs to change as time goes by?

Because it's one thing to imagine L.A. A lot of different gangs in L.A. getting along with each other. You can conceive of that. The idea of everybody just saying, like, no, no more gangs. I mean, that's impossible to imagine in L.A. I think it's unnecessary. I think that the origins of gangs, if we look at the young bloods that came back from Vietnam

and the origins of the bloods, the real origins, not just the streets, but the origins of the bloods. If you look at the origins of the Crips as a response to, the Black Panther Party, like it was created. It was created to do what it's doing right now. It wasn't created to do what it started doing. What it started doing was created by guns and dope being dropped in Los Angeles, California, by government officials who were intending to disrupt by officers

who dressed up like bloods and crips and did drive-bys in order to cause bloodshed to create the vision because it's more financially lucrative in the United States of America for people, for poor people, because it's not fair. We talked about that before. I told you, some of these groups I ran were, they're integrated. I can't create a group in prison and say, that white boy can't come over here. If you come in and you're serious, this is a safe place. Come do you.

And that's that. You can deal with your own boys, but come do you. If you have a circumstance where poor people are in this country monetized, They monetized our life you born, right? I just had a baby cost me. It spent a week, two weeks in the NICU cost us $250,000. $250,000. They got for insurance, right?

Yeah, okay. A quarter million dollars, two weeks in the NICU. We monetized when we, and by the way, I had to start tripping because he didn't need to be there. He didn't need to be there. This is a money play. I'm watching it happen, and I'm saying, are you a doctor? Because you look like a lawyer. actually I have some paperwork.

I want to see like, all right, man, my baby up out of here. Oh, you got to do with CPS. I got to deal with CPS to get my child out of it. Right? With monetized when we were born, they got us monetized when we're alive.

You're going to pay your taxes. You're going to pay these doctors. You're going to, you know, every way. You're going to go to these liquor stores. You're going to get these drugs. You're going to do this. You're going to do this. You're going to do this.

Then you die and they monetize that too. You f*** up and make a mistake before you die. We got a place to monetize you for that, too. I got monotage for 26 some odd years. So that number one, gangs didn't become destructive organizations as a result of their origin. Their origin was not to be destructive, but destruction was something that was imposed and implanted amongst it. And that's what spiraled us into being something that was eating. We were eating each other.

And I think people are starting to wake up to that. And it's like, you know, I don't wish harm on somebody's child because of what street he was born on. You know what I mean? Right. Street he ran with. That don't make sense to me. I can't find a place in my mind where that would be logical. You can't think of anything more destructive than that in terms of like the overall health of a community.

Yeah, man. If we did it anywhere else, they would be calling at a crisis of some kind, right? You see something like that happening in the Sudan. They say there's a crisis in the Sudan. but nobody says there's a crisis in South Sacramento. There's a crisis in South Central LA. Like there's a crisis of parasitic organisms driving the car. And I think what we're seeing is a lot of people deciding

that that ain't something they want to participate in no more. And I think it's beautiful. I did all that time. I didn't come home hateful. I ain't judge my own boys for making peace. I could have done that. People made arguments about decisions I made. I could have made an argument.

About that. We still got homies in there over beefing with them. I just did 26 years over beefing with them. And y'all having a barbecue. Yeah, I don't know how much attention you pay to this, but in Chicago there's been a few people pushing peace, you know, FYBJ Maine saying that, you know, he wants to, like he's basically giving up his grievances

and he's trying to just be a bridge in between, you know, the BDs and the GDs and everything like that. And then even somebody like a little dirt getting on board with that. And then you see the very natural reaction to that from a lot of people that he grew up around, which is basically like you're a bitch because you're basically turning your back on your friends who were killed by the other side at a certain point and by you pushing peace. You're basically spitting on the grave of your friends.

You should be sliding on behalf of your friends. And it's just like, you know, like that you see it right there. Like this is how this problem is going to never go away. I could tell you something that's going to be disturbing. And I think she'd be giving great consideration, especially for people who don't understand this reality. That is a legitimate argument. Yes.

It's a legitimate argument. I understand it. It's just spit in the homie's faces. It's a legitimate argument. I cannot tell someone to say, their hood because I want them to change their life. I got to tell you, love your hood and change it. for that reason. So I got to acknowledge

their grievances in order to respectfully respond to why it matters, but why it's more important to make a decision geared toward positivity and love. I can't do that if I'm not willing to listen to their grievances and hear them out when they're

trying to explain to me why they feel so harmed. Why it's so hard? I just came home from some shit I didn't do. It's people who could want to smack me, but they also think that's not, that shouldn't happen. It's not appropriate because of where I was and where they were and what it'll cause, right? You have the argument that them dudes are prepared for that. We're prepared for that.

And there's the argument that love is superior to that anyway, right? So we got to be aware of both things. I don't get to deny one thing in order to push the other. So I think it's highly possible and necessary to push positivity while having an understanding because where this man might not be ready, right? They say, teach with mildness those not favorably disposed, for they may come out of the snare of Satan and into the light, right?

I don't get to decide how fast somebody's prepared to be able to heal. I don't get to decide that because the wound is deep. The wound is Willie Lynch deep. The wound is United States of America deep. The wound is slave ship deep. The wound is

CIA freeway rig drugs dispersed throughout the country. Cointel Prodeep, the wound is deep. So for me to look at somebody and say, it's been two years and you ain't really to have, you ain't ready. And we're like, well, you spent the long time in the darkness. I want, you know, it's reasonable to think it's going to take a second to turn that water back pure.

We're pouring something in it to dilute that yellow muck in that orange, ugly shit that's inside of that couple. You've got to keep pouring it in there. So I'm very understanding, because I was the little homie who would have thought that was some mark as shit. You were you making peace. There was a, there's a version of me that would have judged everybody. You ate a rib over there?

I would have judged it. I would have thought that was lame. Because my spirit was in a place that was not healthy. I was not a healthy person. And I was an intelligent person operating from a place of darkness, harm, and hurt and hate. And so when I got through that by my big homies and people that was reaching out to me to tell me something, I listened. It was somebody like a do need to have to tell me, hey, man, it's okay. It's okay.

I had to hear it from somebody I knew could be a monster if you wanted to. But it was always a person pushing us in these directions, but was with all the bullshit at the same time. Because that's what we do. this the block. And so from that perspective, I'm very patient with people and I try to hear them out and to give them an alternative perspective. Here's another way to look at that. And so hurt people, hurt people, these people are hurt. If we're going to do a tick-tack, tic-tac, you took one of ours, we took one of yours, this can't ever stop because the score is, we're aware, I'm hyper-aware of the score. Because people have short memories, especially young people, people who are

in their mid-20s. It's like if this gang war has been part of their life since they were, you know, in their early teen years, as soon as they became aware of it, it's actually probably existed way before that. It's like they don't have the perspective that you have of having seen decades and decades of this shit playing out over and over and over. So, and it's also, it's a shame that usually the people who are going to be instigating push in peace are going to be the people who have seen some level of success who understand how, you know, They've been given kind of the privilege of having a more mature viewpoint on it. Shit, I got a little homies pushing peace.

I got a little homies pushing peace on behalf of their babies, youngings with the shit, grimlins. I got grimace pushing peace right now, super motivated. We united. And we've inspired a significant chunk of our section. I say, damn, there, 90-some-and-percent of it, very much motivated. Because, and this is why, if you take away the ugliness and the sense of belonging, and the family, and this is what it's predicated on, being with the shit. If you take that away, what you're going to replace it with.

They got to be where, I can't ask you to let that go. Let go of your entire identity and just be John Smith. And going back to the south side, though. What am I doing? There has to be an alternative. So if it's hurt people, hurt people, and we get them through the hurt and to be a healed person, then we got to give them something to do that is in the lane of healing. So that their predominant participation, what they do.

And when you go to sit still, you're with your babies. You're doing something positive. You're moving. When you start moving around, we're doing something positive. We're doing something to move the purpose. Even if it's still adrenaline rush is involved in, in some of the places, you know, my big homie pulling up in rival neighborhoods, getting out by himself because of respect.

They respect him. There's a, there's a, you know, you got to be willing to do that. You got to be willing to get out and look at a young hyena in his face and say, hello, where you're a big homie at. You know what I mean? that come with a certain kind of system. So there's still a certain kind of G. Involved in doing the right thing. It's not an absence of gangsta. You know what I mean? Kendra glomar walking around with people touching the shoulder like that's going to heal him.

There's a gangster. There's a gangster inside of being willing to walk through that. Being willing to walk through it. Being okay. There's an amount of gangster being Martin Luther King on the balcony you knew you potentially just told everybody he was going to die a couple of days before. Are you standing there? Do you agree with the statement I heard this quote recently is like our modern day culture would never have allowed Malcolm Little to become Malcolm X? It's like our culture. I think that's true. So judgmental and full of hatred towards people who are trying to do something different,

something positive that they'll never let a regular guy become a symbol of peace? I don't think anyone would confuse Detroit Rare with a regular guy. But I'll say for a man who was shot, by somebody who looked like him, no matter who sent him, we're going to act like there wasn't no hate. Malcolm, just because it wasn't viral, don't mean he didn't have no hate. Also, we forget that how he was perceived in the media and probably by his own community at the time was a lot more controversial

and, you know, chaotic than how we view him now with, you know, all these years past. Yeah, I think Malcolm X right now would look like Kendrick Lamar. I think Martin Luther King right now would look like YG the other day. Sunday. That's what they look like. They're still here. Modern day. Modern day. This shit is...

That's what that is. Malcolm Max right now, Martin Luther King would have needed to march due content. Even they needed to march due Selma. Ain't nothing on fire in Selma? Some shit is on fire in L.A. Some shit could be on fire. I'm talking about internal flames.

Some shit on fire in the south side where I'm from. It's on fire. It's dangerous. People dying over dumb shit. And it's It got to stop. Somebody got to stop that shit. And that's where you get the people that's willing to go do it. And it's really going to stop, though.

It's going to require at least some people involved in this type of shit to be willing to say, like, all right, my homie got killed, but we're going to move past it. We're going to try to not have this vengeance just lurking in the shadows for a long period of time. Somebody like Jay Main is going to have to say, yes, I'm still hurt and angry the FBI. got killed, but I'm not going to use that as an excuse for me to wage war against a big chunk of Chicago as a result. Yeah, I don't think it's my place to speak specifically on them brothers. I can speak hypothetically from a perspective of how I can relate to it, but it ain't really my place to speak on their politics. But I do know that strategically, on behalf of melanated

people, that a decision has to be made, that it is superior. to want positive outcomes and to want successful our children and the next generations, that that is superior to continue to participate in what is an unmitigated and unadulterated genocide being committed

amongst ourselves in this country. Period. And that's an easier sell. If I get specific, you know, if I get specific right now, some of my little homies that have united and are healing wounds and

stopping civil wars and stopping tripping off of who, hang out with who. If we start talking about specific names, then I'm going to have to go patch up some shit real quick because I'm going to ignite feelings. I mean, I lost some people that I love. If we get specific

names, I might have a bad morning and be like, fuck all these niggies. If we get too specific, right? It's easy on the South side to wake up and say, fuck that nigga X rated if you get too specific. Right? So what we have to do is not have a myopic view of the issue and view the larger thing and say, what do we want

for these babies? We all got them at this point, even the little hummies. What do we want for them? Because at this point, it's parents. And the one thing we all got in common amongst mine is, man, the dopest dad you'll ever meet. I'm talking about one of my little homies hustle man. What got to you right there? Just thinking about him. Oh, me, a good dude. If you tell him to go, they can. going to go. They're going all of them. He could send them. And he went to school.

And he took his babies. Everywhere he go, he got his babies. And all he want to do... Yeah, he wanted to raise them babies. Not only do he want to do it, he's doing it. In the thick of it.

In the thick of it. He ain't the only one. The homie Mac, they gave me with his baby. We call and face. time. What's up nephew? Pictures nobody will ever see. T'nati hold my sons. Belizo

and T-N-N-Din-D with my babies. Like, yeah, these are some good men. Good men. For war and for peace. They're good men. So, yeah.

And we ain't the only ones. My nigga Meek. He's a good father. He raised his babies. He raised his babies. He helped raise me. My brother. Just happened to be in med of your blood. You know?

I could jump a fence. I could walk out of house on 24th Street. Jump a fence. Walk through a back door and be inside of his grandmother's house on 23rd. That's how close. That's the distance between mortal danger and peace and the homies and not homies. Yeah, man Everybody raising their babies So that's bigger

Love and that kind of desire It's bigger than hate For sure, it's not close And you either got to experience it Hopefully people live long enough To become fathers, man And get a bar Unmitigated love

Ain't nobody ever gonna look at you like that I'm a whole superhero in my house You know what I mean? I'm a black panther in my house I'm not f***ing that up. I'm going to be for the rest of their lives when I'm old and gray, you know. I'm going to be 70 with a 20-year-old son. I'm proud of that.

You know, I want him for the rest of their lives. They got to be able to look at me and be like, man, we fuck with you. That's valuable for me. I ain't the only one think that. Crip blood, everybody. And I want that for my nephews, my brother's kids. That's what I want. And so it's dope to be off parole and not vulnerable to getting through

back in prison because I give a fuck about my community, you know what I mean? We're working on some shit right now. Doney's saying, you know, you go to the Mettaview Community Center in our neighborhood and got to pay for everything. So he tried to hold a hood meeting about peace and that the community center tried to charge him to have the meeting.

Like, what? You know what I mean? That's the type of shit we got to work on. We got shit to do. And nobody got time to be hating on nobody because of the street they claim or what color they wear and that shit. And nobody got time for that shit. You think a lot about how you're going to explain everything that you've been through to your kids, Wanda? Oh, yeah.

That's why we're going to do this documentary, and we're going to do this book. I went through different stages of writing, talking to God himself, writing, talking to my mother, writing talking to myself, my younger self. And I feel like I wasn't anywhere as clear as I am right now, which is I know that everything I'm doing and what I'm communicating and expressing is from my mom. babies. I never had that kind of clarity, you know. So it's necessary for me to tell the story and wrap that up in a way that they could be proud of. My family could be proud of. My community. That shit matter to me, man. Hell it matter to me. I'm dead serious. We're not fucking around.

100%. Yeah, we're not fucking around. You got the biggest mass shooting in the history of Sacramento occur. And there's people that didn't survive that in my music videos, right which was that happened a month after I got off parole and I got to know mentally I was gone if I was on parole still and that happened I was gone it was easy to put one and one together and say go get him that would have been an easy call it was like a month later on my month it was 33 days later when that happened and we got people on both sides of that that we just wanted this shit got to get calmed down we got to have some resolutions these brothers got to start

we got to start getting this money and focus on these babies and that other shit. You know, it is what it is, at least amongst ourselves at first, for us to establish peace amongst ourselves. And I understand it and then communication and get back to, like, the homies are the homies. We love each other. And then, you know, you get that right. You know, fingers are weak. I can't knock a man out with a finger. But if I put, if I close it, you know, you can knock some shit out with a fist.

And that's what we got to do. We got to form a fist. amongst ourselves and then we use that fist to knock out some of the bullshit that we need to get rid of and then we can go into deeper than just

our neighborhood in the gardens and the matter of view that we can start extending that to other people coming from a place of strength you know that's it you can't communicate from a place of leadership

if you can't identify leadership so that got to be done and so yeah man ain't nobody bigger than the program not even me Nobody, nobody bigger than the program. Right. For sure.

Not 100%. We just got real for a second. Man, it was real. It's been real ever since. Since you walked in? Yeah, it was real. September 14th, 2018. It should have been real since March.

March 19th, 192. That should have been real for a minute. Yeah. There was something I did want to ask you about is, I don't know if you're familiar with the King Vaughn story. but that's been kind of a wild thing to see emerge in rap having dudes and there's been other artists since him and stuff who are basically like current popular rappers

but then some percentage of the fan base especially locally he kind of knows about them having committed you know a lot of pretty heinous crimes allegedly allegedly but you know in some of these cases it's like very, very unlikely that all of the things is attributed to them would be alleged. But what is that like for you to kind of see hip hop going in that direction, some percentage of hip hop at least? I think it's been, I think the exact same thing that happened to Vine happened to me. And I think it happened at a time where, you know, if I went through that same thing right now,

which is not legally possible, but if I did, it would be the same. way, except I didn't die. That was the problem. I wouldn't shut up. I pop up here and there and disrupt the narrative that was being created. When you die, they get to deify you and put you where they want to put you, and they have machines in this machine,

you know, turn that into what they needed to be. Do I believe that that baby was some type of vampire running around, you know? She just, just, you know, do I believe that, believe it, believe it? You're skeptical about it? I wouldn't say I'm skeptical. I just,

I'm skeptical of the United States of America. I'm skeptical of the machine that will want to do that, imply that that is a standard for a blackmail, melanated person to strive for, that that is something to be glorified. There's a machine. There's an energy in this country that very much would like for that to be an image for us to aspire to and be like, look at that.

He was a serial killer. He was blah, blah, blah. You know, so there's a tin on the two. the 10 on that too might be significant compared to the average Joe or even compared to a rider you know I know people who did a lot of shit and when you know some of the stories

because the train leaves the building that's what I mean that's why I had to do that Vlad interview the train left the building ex-smacked this person X-Mack that remember that thing that happened that was X I had that going on and so I know what happened to me It makes me view all of that with a grain of salt.

And the reality is that that man lost his life. His family has to grieve the loss of him. He ain't coming back. His brothers have to grieve that loss, and they've got to figure out of the way to move forward from there. That's the extent of my input I got on that shit. For sure. Makes sense.

I also wanted to ask about this is, what's your relationship like with Brother Le Chong at this point? And did that ever falter over the years, Or was that always a really close connection? Yeah, me and Lynch always been close. We've always been close. I think being as close as we were, we have frictions. Especially, I think I'm responsible for a lot of that.

Like, I was a very, very aggressive kind of person. You know what I mean? And I probably wasn't the easiest person. Lynch still would tell a story. I remember we was in the studio arguing over a song. And Lynch is like, it's my fucking song. You know, it's my song. And I wanted to do what I wanted to do.

and Lynch, my big brother, and he's telling me, you got to do it like this. And I'm like, you know, I heard you. And so I end up, I get mad, I stand up, and I took a strap out and put it on the console, and I turned around like, you know, to talk to him. I wasn't, it didn't have nothing to do with, no weapons, no violence even, but it was like,

I'm tired of talking about this now. And Lynch and still tell me that story, you pulled a gun on me. I'd be like, I ain't pull no damn gun on you, because I just put it. it up. I wanted to fight maybe. But like that was the type of shit I was doing that I wouldn't think about. Man, there ain't a part of my soul that would, that man, if I could have erased that moment and not have done that to him, you know what I mean? That's my brother, somebody who's fought for me,

who stood up for me, who I've always been, I've always popped up when Lynch had a little bit of trouble, even when it was detrimental for me as an individual. I've always taken all Lynch's face. I'm going to keep doing it, by the way. And so like, it's just one of them things. where I was an ultra hyper aggressive person and people had to know that I was safe to be around if that makes sense. And so I think for me and Lynch, you just had periods where you had to give consideration.

You know what I mean? I'm being all competitive about rap music. Some of my baby boys could be like that toward me now. You know, they're rappers, they dope, they're gangsters, all that shit. I can't want to be. I happen to believe I'm from a place that has bred some of the realest, most Giest mother-s-hs-in-the-hist thing in the history of the earth.

I believe that about South Side Guard and Block Crip. 24th Street, 29th Street, 21st Street. I think we're some of the dopest niggas in the history of the earth. I believe it. So much so that them streets are comparable to you could argue us toward whole burrows of who's the dopest niggas. It's been hip-hop

and then it's some street shit from YAs to prisons. They shit is respected. I can't want to be from that tribe and not know that every now and then one of these little lions it's going to bite me. You know what I mean? I'm going to get bit every now and then. And I've bitten brother Lynch.

You know what I mean? Sebo. And Sebo is, you know, we, I got to come from a tribe of lions. We fight. It's block recreation. We really with the shit. And so for that reason, every now and then, somebody going to get snacked on. You know, it's going to be some shit.

And, you know, I feel like that has impacted my relationship with Lentz. And we had a point now where that's got. dressed and dealt with. We had some dope-ass conversations, man. He told me proud of me as a father that seeing me with my babies, he knew what that was going to do to me. He was waiting. You know, he got to have his kids. He's like, man, he's just

so proud of me. And it's dope that we get to be in our places as me being his, I'm his baby boy, for real. I came out first. My music happened first because of the way I was moving. I was really lynched. But the big homie told me this the other day.

I think that might have been you. The big Hummy told me Lynch and his crew was like ozone and turbo and then me and a CBO we was like

old dog and can't right and both these contributions to our neighborhood are vital important minus a lynchon who was a music musical genius and ahead of me

in bars and measures and understanding how to execute I just was moving faster I had access to funding I was in the streets. They sell me some dope pay for my studio time, so I'm moving faster. I used to pay for studio

time. Let you come in there and make sure my samples got organized and then finish his song with the last two hours from my session. You know what I mean? So if I could get through a song in four hours, Lynch had used the last two hours to do some shit to work on his music. So I really came out first before

Lynch and Bo because I was moving faster and Bo was locked up. I remember when this nigga walked in the door from YA, a nigga, beautiful. beautiful. Jerry Curl with the looks in it with the blue khaki suit on. I was at the Hummy AC House on the south side AC and black house on the floor with the Elise's drum machine right in the rhyme that ended up on psychoactive and Bo walked through the door and they was like, oh, it was Bo, you know what I mean? That was some dope-ass shit. I was like 15 and you know,

I think Bo a few years older than me and he's like 18, 19 and Lynch, it's like six or seven years older than me. So these are my brothers, you know what I mean? And I'm in a great place. Me and Bo in a great place. We're not doing no plan about each other. Me and Lynch in a great place. All of us together are in a great place. The Block Movement 2 album is going to happen. And that's a part

of that unification. That's occurring in my neighborhood. Dumbass proud of it. I'm proud of it. There's another rapper from that era that might be getting released soon. Do you see yourself reconnecting with Six when he gets out? Six is a

tricky. Six is a tricky thing for me. So like, I do not. The answer is I do not. Unequivocally. But the reason why it requires an answer is what happened with my career like, you know, because they are

older than me, I was trafficking in a different circle than them in the south side. I was with the baby boys and then I'll go be with the big homies do what I'm supposed to do, give what I needed and go back to the baby boys. They was moving in a little bit different generation to me. They both Blanche and Bow and them all from a generation above mine.

So my cousin Nicole Lee was dating six. In December 17th of 1990, I remember specifically because it was my grandmother's death day. And at that time of our lives, we celebrated my grandmother's death day. We're having a family event, big food, everybody chilling. So Nicole brings six to the family event. And I had all my rhymes pen, like people put up comic books. I had rhymes all over my walls in my room. And the DJ that night was my boy Percy Hunter from the south side, flat dogs.

And Percy was in the room, spinning the music, and Six ended up in that room, because, you know, he drawn the music, and he was the amazing artist. And he saw them rhymes. He was like, who wrote this shit? I was like, shit me. And me and Percy had been making music. He had a four-track recorder and the Belisi's drum machine. That same one I held on the floor with when Bowie came.

him home. And so I had already made songs and shit. I just was making them at the homie house with records and the little four track and a little shitty-ass microphone. And so Six is like, nah, niggas, you too dope. And so we're going to link up tomorrow.

I want you to meet my, I want to bring my brother over here. And so he's like, meet my brother. That was how he framed. And the six is from the creek from Glen Elders. You know, we got, it's a lot of family on the South Side integrated like that. So Glenn elders is affiliated. Aphilers is affiliated with

peripherally to guard and block you know we've had historical allegiances but so six the next day we link up at Percy House and he brings in he walks in with brother Lynchon who is famous in the hood at the time

because this nigga would do acrobatic flips that nigga could have won a gold medal for that shit I'm talking about any flip you've seen anybody do ever than some Mary Lou Retton shit that nigga had that Simone Biles shit he could really do that shit that nigga Lynch was amazing.

And so he was always rapping and shit. So it was like, you know, like, God damn it's Kev. Nigel, you could have just said you was bringing Kevin Mann over here. And so we bust rhymes all night and shit and bam, bam, bam. And, you know, because of six, me and Lynch started hanging out and really getting into the music. So Six was the one who was the glue to kick off what became that run of endangered niggies in black, nigga deep, psychoactive and 24 deep. Brother Lynch-hung, if you take six out of that,

I don't know that I'm sitting here today. You know what I mean? None of that I experience good or bad. I don't know if I get to do none of it minus him. However, you know, it's certain shit you can't be accused. It's certain shit you can't do, and I stand on that. Because when I was looking into it, I heard interview clips of Brother Lynch-Hung basically saying that he doesn't believe

that six did the things that he was accused of, which for the people at home who are kind of confused about, we're talking about, there's YouTube documentaries, his name is supposed S-I-C-X. You can dig into it yourself, but he was accused of some extremely heinous stuff. But then I listened to interviews with him from jail

where he seems like he basically admits it and basically says that it was basically fueled by him sort of accidentally getting into meth and that turned him into like a monster. I heard an audio clip of his son, basically saying that he never had, any negative interaction with his dad, which doesn't mean that he didn't do what he was accused to doing to his daughters.

But I don't know. It's a messy situation. But I guess his plan is to get out of prison into, he's devoted his life to Jesus. And he's planning on coming back out and getting back to the music. I would say that it seems unlikely that any large group of fans are going to accept him after a history. that? I think that the earth is a very interesting place right now. And what people would and would not accept, I've seen a lot that I would assume wouldn't be accepted that was. And so for that reason, far be it from me to say what him or Jesus are capable of, but I can tell you what

acts is incapable of. And I'm incapable of fucking with somebody that was accused of that in that close or admitted it or anything like that. Then it's unfortunate. There's certain codes that you can't walk the yard with. You got that cold. It don't matter. I've seen a man who had a reckless endangerment for doing a high-speed chase with his son in the car. Nobody got to really get into the story because he had to get stomped out. And because you don't get that cold.

It was the cold more than it was the story. People don't really care. It really, what you find out about if they care is if you die or if they just whoop your ass. And that's how you know. People knew the story. but you got your ass whoop really good or you just don't make it and so I'm empathetic to his son

that's my nephew, little six I think it's unfortunate that he's associated with that I think it's brave of him to take that name and to fight for on behalf of himself and his family and I'll support him in that and I think it's fucked up for that baby boy to how that, you know, when we talk about what I want for my sons and how to be viewed, you know what I mean?

that got taken from him in a way. And so I'm empathetic to him, and for that reason, I'm a very good uncle, you know? That must have been f***ed up for you to have found out that somebody that you had spent time around was capable of that kind of thing.

Shit. That shit, I ain't get no calories off eating that shit. That shit ain't, yeah, that shit ain't do anything for me. Yeah, I didn't, I wasn't f***ed up about it. I observed that shit. They said, you know how much f***ed up shit I had to see? or some shit is just that shit is in and it's like oh really and then it's out there's certain stuff

i could hear that it ain't i got to think a lot about it there's certain shit i just ain't willing to burn no brain cells over man i ain't burning no calories i ain't intaking or burning none over that if you i hear this specific thing i'm out my brain don't belong there my spirit don't belong there and my presence don't belong there either and theirs don't belong with me. And that's kind of how I see it. That's just my personal philosophy. I think that this is an opportunity

for me to touch on something. I think all the people who, because you know, it's a lot of people with commentary about what you're supposed to do. So what I think is, is we have, what is it, Megan's Law? Yeah.

Yeah, Megan's Law. And you can go and look and all these tough-ass dudes with commentary about a six or any of that. Can Google they know? neighborhood and go drive over there and beat up all of the weirdos. They can go and punch on them and stab them. They live in your neighborhood where your kids are, right?

So them same other guys that want you to go beat one of them up on the yard or think we got a six up. I'm going to need them to line these niggas up and I need everybody to get f***ed up. And that's the green light. We purging these niggies. Let's purge them. Until then, they all got to shut the fuck up. Everybody full of shit.

if none of these niggas free, none of them that get on the computer and got that shit in their house looking like that Kendrick Lamar covered for not like us. That's why I thought of when you said the Mexican neighborhood. Look at the nigga, lay neighborhoods looking like that motherfuck picture that nigga Kendrick posted. And them saying tough-ass motherfuckers want to talk about what the homies got to do, what the homies got to do and what we got to do to this, nigga.

Like, niggie, to line it up, run it, kick it off. You're saying people should worry about it. their own shit before they start telling you what you're supposed to do. Yeah, worry about my shit too, but get cracking. You know what I mean? That's how it is when it's time to get cracking. You came out here and this, you got a problem with you. Ain't nobody taking your fade.

You got to punch this nigga. But if you punch him, we're going to, everybody getting their ass whooped, all his homies, everybody, but we can't kick it. He said that shit to you. Bum, niggily. Oh, he ain't do shit. I'm going by me some ice cream, nigga. And mind my business.

And that's the story for you. you got to walk around with that for the rest of your term and I feel that way on the street too. That's how it is. So I see a lot of these people on these computers and they like to make these commentaries about what everybody's supposed to do or a homie coming back from like Dune did

all that time. We get out, I got a condo in Oakland already pushing a foreign. I'm going to work at my condo at my headquarters for Blockstar and that gave me eight hours and then some overtime. And then when I go back to the transitional house

right? So you got some transitional houses where these tough as dudes, I don't want to be in a transitional house where none of these niggas is at. They ended up, that's how I found out Duni got home. Duni was in the cell in my room at the transitional house waiting when I came back from work.

And it's like, you're a lifer. You're going to refuse to go to the transitional house for six months so you could go home to your family or you're going to beat up some of these weirdos and go back to prison? Or like, we got a Stop with this fantastical-ass

Supreme Robo-Gankster bullshit these niggas is on this whole shit. I'm hella glad I'm off the raw. To start talking about this shit, these bitch-ass niggins ain't whipping nobody ass. Kick it off. Kick it off. I guarantee you kick it off.

We got it to. We'll cover ours. But we ain't going to punch them first. We ain't driving up first. We ain't knocking on the first dog. Everybody handled their business. We're getting rid of all the dots on the house. then if that's what we own. Or mind your business, raise your family, keep your children safe, and that's that. Because my babies wasn't in the transitional house. You know, my babies wasn't on the yard. It's your baby's at your house. And you ain't doing shit in your own neighborhood.

I think that's hypocritical to the degree where you got to get called out. We can't have no healing if we still let niggis play. They plan. I'm sick of the playing. It's a lot of people that I think are good men who making dumb ass decisions because they care about the plan. They care about the responses from the people playing. And I'm like, I care about my babies more. I care about my future more than I care

about niggas playing. And the niggas playing know who to play with. They know who to do that too. It's all good. But all that reckless shit is dead. I'm on parole. That shit is over with. Ain't no more reckless nothing. So anybody that think we should address six?

I say awesome. We were We are perfectly willing to do that as soon as they read their neighborhood of all of them little dots. And they get credit, even one, just one of them. Maybe. Yeah. They had the one in their house. They were the one in your house.

For sure. All right. Last question. You mentioned Blockstar, not your label, but the Pop Smoke's killer or somebody who was involved with Pop Smoke's killing. I took a lot of heat for interviewing him. what's your perspective on that, on platforming, somebody who did something that is, you know, quite clearly evil and not just doing it, but doing it like four years after it took place?

I think that, I think that from a perspective of real journalism, I think it was perfect. I think you should have did it. I remember after our interview, you said some shit and I posted it. You was just like, man, this is what I do this for. And I think that people can confuse the character and the establishment you've built for yourself with your intent and who you are as a specific person. And I think you caught some heat from people who assume that other things that you participate in, you know, which is your business, is superior to your, to if you turned around and did some journalistic shit. Because I don't see.

It could be said, well, nobody should have interviewed them at all. But if he got interviewed by 2020, I don't know if that shit still exists. this. I'm outdated. I'm outdated. This nigga got interviewed on the NBC, right? And Lester Holt asked him all that shit, it would have been a normal thing. Because that was appropriate.

But like I said, I needed hip hop to have done journalism on my circumstances specifically to get to the root of this shit. And if that had happened for me, I might have had a different outcome. Because in the years leading up to me going to trial, hip hop spent them

years repeating what the AP was saying. which was utter bullshit that was provable if somebody did some real journalism. Right. So I think we've been so far removed from journalism. I remember, you know, that we got the Elliot Wilson's. We got people who this shit really used to kind of matter. There was a point

but especially during the vibe run where people, journalism mattered. You had to really, I remember Dream Hampton being scooped. And I mean, it was people who really gave a fuck about telling the stories of hip hop. That's why we got so much shit

of Pock speaking on behalf of himself or finding Ice Cube Young Ice Cube but a lot to say that I think it was on fire. He was trapped He was not playing. And them interviews are out there because they was doing real journalism. So I think what we saw was you do

some real shit inside some fake ass shit and people responded to it abnormally because it's like seeing the black cat in the Matrix you know what I mean? It's a glitch in the Matrix for you to do some real shit and it's fake ass shit. That's what I I think a lot of people look at podcasting and they think that you should only talk to people who are, you know, expressing virtue.

And I don't think that's true. I think you can have conversations with people who have done horrible things. And I'm not going to let, like, and it seems so hypocritical to me because nobody ever gave me a hard time about having a conversation with you, even though obviously you had an incident in your upbringing that, you know, some things took place that were very, very negative. but I don't think that's any reason to not have a conversation with you. And I think that the primary difference between why nobody ever gave me a hard time about having a conversation with you

and why that blockster thing got so much heat is because he killed a famous person. And that doesn't seem like the right reason to treat these things like they're completely different. I don't think that's true. In my circumstances, we lost a beloved member of our community. And so I value her more than I value pop smoke. Right. Sure.

So, like, you know, I ain't going to do that. But what I will say is what I think the reasoning was is because I'm at a stage of my life where I can tell you what a parasitic organism is. I could tell you the definition of remorse, knowing sadness and bitter regret arising from the repentance of past misdeeds. I can tell you that. And this child can't because he's a child, right? I can keep my child on my insurance to their 25 because that's my child. Your brain is not fully developed now. You can't get a life sentence because you're a child.

So you got to sit in his chair and do an interview and not be a child all of a sudden, right? So we have an absence of compassion. When we go get a rescue dog, would have got more compassion. This kid was the best he could. I heard him trying to accept responsibility, but he just left a place, which I commented on your post. He just left a place where the exhibition of remorse and understanding was a weakness that could have cost him maybe as a ass could it cost him his life in narrative have been weak. His people

in there that was mad about Pop's Mark Dine. He probably took some faith. Who knows? I don't know. I ain't going to speak on him too specifically. I hate when people did that to me. So I want to go too far. I'll say, I have empathy for the fact that that child

is not developed in a way that would allow him to have communicated what he needed to communicate in that moment. And it probably was a learning experience for him to read the comment. that was probably the closest thing he got to a mirror. And maybe that was the thing that might save his damn life. If he could just understand why people were outraged

because he had an absence of empathy and remorse. But when you sit in a chair and they send you to life and your lawyer is telling you, don't express any emotion. And you're sitting there and everybody says he didn't feel anything, right? Because this motherfucker just told you don't express nothing. But they're going to use that against you. So you end up being, then you go to a place where, hey, man, if these dudes play with you, man, don't let them off. Take your pencil.

That's your ass. You ain't got nothing left to take. They're going to take your manhood, too. You got to go and survive that. And then end up in his chair across from you and can't express remorse. There was a moment in that interview where he seems like he's having such a hard time expressing any level of regret. And it's like, I just volunteered for him. I used the example.

I said, if I drove him. of home from here and I hit somebody with my car. And it was like just because they ran out into the road and I killed them. It's like I didn't go out of my way to do that. I didn't want that to happen, but I would still feel horrible about it. And when I said the word horrible, he goes, yes, horrible. That's how I feel. And that to me was like, holy fuck, this kid is so a product of his environment and he's still caught up in the ego and the boisterousness that you need to have as a gang member that it's like incredibly hard for him to sit there and express any level of remorse even though we are talking about somebody that was not from a rival gang it was just a celebrity that they

were trying to rob and it was so hard for him to like even verbalize that and I thought that that was probably like one of the most fascinating moments in terms of just painting that picture of like what a young dude who grows up in this environment is basically trained to be and you just described on my behalf what I meant when I said that they were being. being controlled by a parasitic organism. You just described it eloquently. That was awesome. I don't got to do it no more.

Sound bite this shit and post it and be like, don't ask me no more. Parasidious, this is what the fuck that is. That's what was driving his car. He has to appease this thing and the people, the pressures, and not, what does this kid got to go back home to? What's in his living environment? What is the politics being pushed in that environment? Is there somebody expressing, you know,

it's safe to heal up. It's safe to come and say that that shit was terrible, but he's still working that out. He's still getting there. I knew at the age of 25, like, if you listen to what I was writing, I wrote misanthropy and landed a loss when I was 25. I wrote Deadly Game about the three strikes law when I was 22,

but I had a, I faced a death penalty. I had to be like, whoa, I wrote Thu's Father Life about to go to trial. It was real songs. And me trying to figure it out. That was my no-jumper interview as a kid, as a Blockstar. That was, I just put it in the songs and figuring it out. And now people can hear me where, as a developed painting. So that baby is the Mona Lisa being painted.

And we're looking at him the third of the way done. And I'm all the way Mona Lisa painted, right? But I'm that kid, too. I'm block star. I'm where that name came from too. I'm where EBK came from too, right? And I'm a completed, painted Mona Lisa. And he was half done.

He's partially done it, the third of the way. We can't expect him. We can't look at him and say, is Mona Lisa smiling? Because the smile ain't painted yet. You know what I mean? So if he makes it, if he makes it, then we're going to see the potential of a phenomenal human being because almost everybody I know

who has reached a certain level of, Enlightenment that allows them to be a source of a caustic changing force in society has had a traumatic experience. That's the impetus of it. Your response to that traumatic experience is what makes you somebody who can make change or makes you somebody who's going to be destructive. It's a crossroad. The trauma, the traumatic event and your response coming to understand it is going to define how you impact the world, the rest of your life. and I hope that your interview and the backlash, because it wasn't just you,

you got some backlash, which you obviously could withstand, but he read it all, because he's from that fast food generation. He cared about every recommany, he read them all. He going to care about this, too. He's going to care, and that was more informative

that anything one of them doctors could have told him in that environment because they didn't have him long enough. You know what I mean? I had to do forensic, I had to go through a forensic psychologist like Clarice Starling coming to see Hannibal Lecter. And I had to score 25 or lower on a psychopathy exam to come home from prison. I scored 24, ironically.

You know, you have to, you have to. So in order to do that, you're not going to get past those people playing games. You're going to have to really figure this shit out. Me talking about a parasitic organism, man, because I read it and recorded. I thought my way into thinking that. Like, damn, man, a gang is like, what the fuck? That's how they define that? That's, damn, that's like what the hood did to it.

Like, I had to learn my way into that. And then I was able to communicate it and people was like, God damn, right? When I say bitter, well, annoying sadness and bitter regret arising from repentance for past misdeeds is literally the definition of remorse. that kid couldn't tell you that. And if I tried to tell Commissioner Roberts that playing with him, I'd still be there right now. Because I'd have got a seven-year denial. And that means next year I would have been going back to the board in 2025.

I'd still be there. So I can get to play with them. I have to learn this shit. And by learning it and having a comprehension level because of my mother and Ms. Maxine and my family having a culture of comprehension and reading because of words were in my house, I was able to comprehend them when I read. them. But I had to be exposed

to that. They didn't have that shit in there. They didn't have that shit in there. Might have been one of the worst things that happened to me was if I got sent, if I got sent as a 17-year-old famous ex-rated, got sent to a juvenile facility and released at the age of

25, bro. Famous as f***. But yeah, I've been famous as f***ed and dead. Because somebody was going to have to do it. I was tripping. You think that little dude was tripping. If they let me out, I was tripping, tripping. The whole time and didn't

really know it, it was such a natural thing. That's the way it was. We were tripping. So I'm empathetic to the dude, man. I think that they did some dumb-ass shit. I've done some dumb-ass shit. Anybody really with the shit has done some dumb-ass shit. All of us that's really stories that can't ever tell nobody. We've done dumb-ass shit.

That dumb-ass shit wasn't the only dumb-ass shit. We did some dumb-ass shit. I was an exclamation Mark on some dumb ass shit. Right. Right. So just like that kid, he's done some dumb ass shit, potentially, you know, allegedly, maybe, possibly, you know? But I just think I could be empathetic to him and I hope they whipped his ass and comments enough to make him be like, wait a minute. Like, am I tripping? And the end, maybe he developed some vocabulary for reading what people saying he's supposed to, this is what you're supposed to do. Because he's young and impressionable. You might have saved his fucking life, bro. It's crazy because his Instagram got deleted,

so I'm not really even sure what the fuck he got going on now. Oh, he still could see. What the likelihood of him getting anything positive out of this situation is because I've heard people saying that he was going to be a rapper. I don't know how likely that is. That's a dumb-ass idea. If they deleted his Instagram, it's the best thing could have happened for him. That's like giving meth to a meth addict.

Then young man need to be somewhere getting educated, sitting his ass down somewhere. I hope somebody pulled him and got him and start trying to teach him something or that story is for nothing. You know, the worst disservice you could do to pop smoke is for this kid not to develop than nothing. And I know that because the most horrible disservice

I could have done to South Sacramento and it would have been to be sitting here incapable of communicating what I'm communicating and have had that happen in my community. It would have been the biggest disservice I could have done to just be some dumbass sitting here talking about, yeah, because we're going to, for me to be that, person would have been the worst thing that could have ever happened to Southside Sacramento.

That would have been the worst thing ever. So I think it's very important for us to have correct responses and to be able to develop and keep going. You've got to know your story. I don't know about nobody else. I believe, and what happened with a lot of decisions I made, I believe it that Allah, Allah, Allah, Muhammad al-Rasul- Allah, I believe the same thing. It got a little dirt driven out there.

I believe that. Because I believe that, I believe that my story cannot possibly be allowed to be that something destructive happened. And I inspired all this other destructive shit. And I died one day. Right. And now I'm a serial killer, right? And everybody running around with me on their shirts, representations of how tough they are. Right.

Some kid in Iowa with an x-rayed on his shirt because he's tough, right? No disrespect to gangsters in Iowa. But that would have been the worst shit. But that is crazy to think about how, you know, the fan base could have turned you into that if they had, well, and I guess realistically a lot of people did. When I first found out about you, that was definitely part of the narrative that people told me about it. Like, yeah, this dude's rapping over the phone. He did this, this and this. That got my ears perked up.

Like, really? Okay. I'm interested all of a sudden. Yeah. There's some gangster shit. I meant that shit. I meant it in real time. And I mean this shit.

In real time. Same dude. I needed that. I needed all that. But we can't allow if I don't finish the story, it's the worst thing that I could have ever done in my community, bro. I have this story got it in the right way. I got to dictate the narrative.

That's what the fuck we're going to do for sure. That's what we're going to do. That's what we're going to do. You're going with us or we're going through you. That's what we have with it. We're going to get this shit established. We're tripping for the right reasons now. And it's awesome.

For sure. Thank you so much for your time. And I feel like now we're two for two on classic interviews. Because I feel like we covered some very important ground here. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that this, people forget our first interview, how far that was. And then I was telling my agent that my PR agent, you know, Ritchie, a dope-ass dude,

worked with a lot of powerful people and shit. And we had a conversation. I was telling him we had a dope-ass interview. That was like interview at a year. And we ran it back, man. I f*** with you. No, we do too. I appreciate it, man. How come you never ended up on Vlad?

You did the one over the phone, but then you didn't do one since you got out? Yeah. You ever have a conversation with? Yeah, there was some plans. I'm big on deliberate intent because I lived a life where I was floating in the wind, and I just went with whatever. And so I felt like it was more appropriate for me to do certain things when I had certain outcomes.

I'm a believer that you can't wait for the perfect circumstance, or maybe you never take an action. You got to get cracking when even in the, stages of uncertainty, but I believe that coming off of phenomenal outcomes with TechNine and Travis O. Gwynn and my brothers have strange music to knock with Joyner Lucas, Conway, and Tech 9, and Rock Kim, Sinus 7 with Method Man, Prodigy, rest in peace, shout out to my brother M80. Like for me to have been doing that and have an album drop in Friday, now it's time for me to running around and we're going to talk and I needed to get off of parole because you know if I went to

Vlad while I was on parole yeah it would have been a little tight you wouldn't have been able to say what you wanted to say I wouldn't have said what I was going to say and you know he would have played the little clip had Tray D over my ear trying to instigate some whole shit between me and the homie I know Vlad was super respectful to me and I I know Vlad has his lane everybody got to get their bag and do what they do I'm in my lane too I don't bite on none of that other shit I know we are who we are and it's a lot of shit is circumstantial but you know there was some potential for that and uh maybe i would have had a negative experience not been able to say what i want to say and now i'm giving a half-ass interview and uh so now we can obviously speak way more freely now than i

could then without fear of uh incarceration and negative outcomes and shit so yeah man um tell them what you got coming up or what they should be looking out for yo so we working on releasing my new album A Sin in Heaven, which is available now by the time you see this, A sin in Heaven. New video Ali Ali Oxen Free featuring my little homies, T-Nuddy,

Blizzo, and my brother, Tegnine, on a beat by Elfingers from South Sacramento. Now, man, we bring in that funky shit. And, man, you know, I got some opportunities for some shows, put some money in my house, man, feed my babies, man, and allow my brothers to put some money in their homes. keep working on having peace in South Sacramento.

Free B-Dub. That's what we own 9-1-4 in the building. And that's pretty much where I'm at with it. That's it. Jeez up. Fo's up. Nah. What's up, Big Army?

What's up, Big Army? You know, I mean. Hey, X-Raea. I appreciate you, dog. For real. Much love. Thank you. Live in legend.

Pay your respects. The man has lived quite a life. Amazing interview. Thank you so much. No Jumber. Coolest podcast. Like, comments, subscribe. Strange.

Woo.