The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - How A Teenage Drug Kingpin Built A Meth Empire at 16

Episode Date: August 9, 2026

His mom was a queenpin. His dad was the muscle. By 16, he was selling meth and building his own operation in small-town Texas. In this episode, Cory Simek, a former teenage meth dealer reveals what it was like growing up inside the drug game—and how his family’s criminal lifestyle shaped the path he followed. After starting with marijuana, he quickly moved into meth, made serious money before he was old enough to sign a lease, and became the target of a six-month police investigation. He breaks down how confidential informants gained his trust, the warning signs he ignored, the raid that brought everything crashing down, and the brutal reality of racial politics and survival inside the Texas prison system. But his story did not end behind bars. After serving years in prison and losing nearly everything, he transformed his mentality, entered the car business with no experience, became a top salesman, opened his own dealership, invested in real estate, and rebuilt his life through legitimate business. This is a raw story about growing up in a criminal family, selling meth at 16, undercover informants, police raids, addiction, betrayal, Texas prison, redemption, entrepreneurship, and second chances. Go Support Cory! IG: https://www.instagram.com/corywiththekeys Dealership: https://thekeykonnect.com/ YouTube: @Corywthekeys This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: Hims! To get simple, online access to personalized, affordable care for ED, Hair Loss, and more visit https://hims.com/connect Quo! Money is on the line. Always say hello with QUO. Try QUO for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to https://quo.com/theconnect Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 00:00 Intro: Raised by a Queenpin and an Enforcer 01:55 Cory With the Keys Joins the Show 02:19 His Parents’ Wild Origin Story 04:56 Childhood Changes After His Mom Relapses 06:59 Learning the Drug Game at 12 07:26 Smoking Weed for the First Time 08:47 Becoming a 13-Year-Old Dealer 10:08 The Lunch-Money Lesson That Changed Him 11:19 Trying to Live Up to Both Parents’ Reputations 11:52 Getting Kicked Out at 16 12:11 Moving From Weed to Meth 13:15 This Episode Is Sponsored By Hims 14:51 Selling Meth as a Teenager 16:27 Renting a Trap House Underage 17:14 Hustling While Still in High School 18:37 Getting Expelled Before Graduation 20:35 The Suspicious Customer Who Became an Informant 23:36 A Warning Before the Raid 24:30 Police Search the Trap House 26:13 Discovering the Informant’s Role 28:39 This Episode Is Sponsored By Quo 29:50 Another Informant Story After Prison 35:12 Swallowing an Eightball During a Police Stop 37:28 Realizing He Was Set Up 41:49 Back to the First Bust 44:08 Taking State Jail Instead of Probation 46:04 Surviving State Jail at 17 47:07 Learning Texas Prison Politics 50:32 Getting Out and Returning to the Streets 51:16 Weed Connects From the Valley 53:12 How Border Checkpoints Changed the Price 55:20 Shipping Bricks Through UPS 58:03 Moving Pounds and Making Teen Money 1:00:24 His Father’s Return to the Meth Game 1:02:35 His Dad Refuses to Snitch and Gets 25 Years 1:04:18 Falling in Love After State Jail 1:06:14 Learning He Might Become a Father 1:07:09 TDC Boot Camp and the Drug-Free Zone 1:10:15 Finding Out His Mom Died 1:11:52 Trying to Go Straight for His Son 1:13:14 The DNA Test That Broke Him 1:15:50 Heartbreak Sends Him Back to Hustling 1:16:41 SWAT Raids the Trap House 1:18:40 Running Into One of His Dad’s Snitches 1:21:27 Probation, Suspended License, and Disaster 1:22:23 Sentenced to Six Years in TDC 1:24:01 Learning He Must Serve Five Flat 1:28:10 Losing Everything in Prison 1:30:08 Rock Bottom Becomes the Turning Point 1:31:14 Deciding to Make Prison Time Serve Him 1:32:11 Fighting and Surviving Real Prison 1:35:22 Finding Better Ways to Do Time 1:36:52 Finally Making Parole 1:38:28 Getting Out and Starting Over 1:39:09 Discovering Car Sales 1:40:27 Talking His Way Into a Dealership Job 1:41:41 Becoming the Top Salesman 1:42:56 Battling Old Habits After Success 1:47:22 Opening His Own Dealership 1:48:19 Real Estate, Music, and Reinvention 1:49:56 Speaking in Prisons and Mentoring Kids 1:52:12 Johnny and Cory Discuss Their Turning Points 1:54:27 Why Accountability Keeps Him Straight 1:56:30 Finding Your Skill Set and Passion 1:57:09 Where to Find Cory With the Keys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My dad, he's got this reputation of being a fighter. My mom was this huge hustler, you know, making tons of money. So now I'm like, I got to represent on both sides. That's when I started getting into the game. I'm a 13-year-old young boy. You really can't tell me nothing. Got this trap house with my buddies. We're hustling.

I'm getting pounds sending from the valley. The judge said, you know what? I'm tired of giving you chances. I'm sending you to six years in TDC. So now I'm in here with absolutely nothing. My dad's in prison, my mom's dead. I don't have any support. And I just remember thinking, like, wow, this is going to be my life for the next five years. Corey Simek is a former Texas drug dealer who has a rags to riches life story.

Corey comes from a generational criminal family. His mother was a big-time meth dealer, and his father was in and out of prison since he was a kid. So of course, Corey followed in their footsteps. Selling weed and meth from a young age, Corey threw himself into the streets. At what At one point, trafficking hundreds of bricks of cartel weed at a time from the border into his small town of Colleen, Texas. He was living ghetto fabulous until a devastating heartbreak and a five-year prison bit brought him to his lowest point and forced him to make a change. After getting out of prison, Corey hit the ground running, becoming a top car salesman at a

dealership in his area, and was so successful that he now owns his own dealership, the Key Connect, in his hometown of Colleen. Nowadays, he's known as Corey with the Keys. Go see him for a new car and whatever financing you need at the Key Connect in Kaleen. And if you're a music fan, check him out on tour. Corey's also a rapper and just dropped an album with Houston legend Lil Flip. This man is making moves. And the way he turned himself around after prison and his attitude towards life is truly inspirational.

This is a fun one, you guys. It's Corey with the Keys right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. Good to see you, man. Good to have you on. So tell us about how you grew up. I mean, you got tattoos all over your fucking legs. I assume it was different than mine. Yeah, definitely, definitely different.

So growing up, I got to kind of take you back to my mom and dad meeting. So my dad, he was one of those kind of redneck country guys, like to drink and fight. He's a big, huge dude. My whole childhood, I grew up. I grew up with them talking about how he hit somebody one time and just knock him out. My mom was very beautiful, very outgoing center of attention. At a younger age, she got wrapped up in the dope game. And so with her being pretty and outgoing, she became kind of like a queen pen.

She had pounds and pounds of what they called speed back in the day. Fiker dope. Yeah, that type of stuff, the real stuff. And she got to a point when you're looking at. living that lifestyle. Everybody's fake. Everybody's about the money. So she was craving to have something different to change her life. So she wanted to have a baby. The story goes that she went into a bar, saw my dad, you know, a big, strong blue-eyed guy. And she had a lot of money back then. So she threw 10,000 on the table. And she said, you look like good breeding stock.

You're going to give me a baby. And apparently he was feeling it because here I come later on. And once she got pregnant, she completely changed. So my dad being a country redneck now, he's been introduced into this life. And the type of person he was, he was very feared. People didn't want to try to rob him or take advantage. So the power kind of got to his head and he took off in the game, whereas she's trying to get away from it. So your mom was the hustler first.

Yeah, she was the real hustler. And then your dad took it and ran with it. Yes. Damn, that's wild. And so she's trying to get out the game. The story goes, you know, talking to my dad when they split up. He went to get something out of the bathroom one day, and he heard something fall. And he looked, and she had like 20 grand that she, I guess she was taping up under the sink.

And the water from the sink got it wet and it dried. That was like her escape money. She was just going to leave him. They ended up splitting up. My dad was totally crushed because he was in love. You know, so he would beat up any of her boy. friends end up going to jail, just back and forth. He ended up going to prison.

My dad hit somebody one time. He hit him so hard that when they fell, they hit their head and they became a vegetable. So they were like paraplegic. His hands were so big. This is crazy, but it's true story. His hands were so big, they charged him with assault with a deadly weapon for hitting that guy. So he's doing six years in prison.

At that time, my childhood is pretty much picture perfect. You know, my mom's a registered nurse. I'm my only child. I'm spoiled anytime I want clothes or McDonald's or whatever it is. I've got it. When I was about eight or nine years old, that's when everything changed.

My grandma ended up passing away. My mom got severely depressed. And our next door neighbors, they knew my mom back when she was in the Queen Penn Days, and they'd be like, man, Crystal, what's up, man? Get us some of that good. I know you still got the connects. She never would.

Then eventually, she was like, you know what? Let me see what I can do. And from there, she was balls to the wall back in it. So I went from being a spoiled only child to now my mom's back being a queen pin, but she's living a double life. Like she's still a nurse. She's still taking care of things,

but she's living this life. And I'm an only child, so I was kind of like her confidant, the one that she would talk to. And I had to grow up way before my time. You know, she would tell me about her relationship issues. I would see, she would never, you know, smoke the stuff in front of her.

of me or nothing crazy. But as an astute young man, I would notice, like, why are these people coming into the house and they're going into the back room for a few minutes, then coming out. And I started learning about the game. As I got older, I felt like I was the man of the house. So I'd go search her room and find her stash and, you know, get on to her. Like, I'm the man of the house. She was letting people smoke in there? No, not in front of me, but she would hit licks. So, you know, they come in all of a sudden, oh, we got to go to the back, lock the door, you know, five minutes later, come back out. And then probably one of the volatile things

when you're dealing with that is like the ups and downs. So she might be high. She's in a good mood. She's letting me, you know, drive the car. I'm 12 years old or whatever. Have fun. All my friends over. And then when she's coming down,

it's like if she's asleep for two days and if you make a noise, you're getting your head bit off. You're like walking on eggshells. You know, it was very a lot of anxiety. You never knew. which size you were going to get. And you knew what this was, you knew what Beth was at 12 years old? Yeah, I learned about that lifestyle.

I learned about what hustling was. And, you know, by the time I was 13, I was very against it, because you know you can go two different ways. You either see your parents and you want to live that life or you see what you don't want to be like and you want to stay away from it. So I was an athlete, very dare, like say no to drugs. the drugs. And I had a cousin that he would always smoke weed. And he was like the asshole cousin

I would get into it with all the time. So he would try to convince me to smoke. I never wanted to. And I had my other cousin that was from H-town, you know, cool guy. He came down one day. He's like, man, smoke a blonde with this, bro. You know, we want to make sure you ain't going to tell. Just hit it a couple times. So I ended up smoking with them. And then, you know, that kind of changed everything for me. I like the way it feels. You know, everything was funnier. The food tasted better, and I'm the type, if I like something, I'm going all in.

So I immediately started smoking all the time. Kind of funny how this happened. So around the time I was 13, my mom ended up getting sick. I don't know if it was just a rare genetic thing. I think it may have had something to do with the years of drug use and the lifestyle she was living, but she got a heart disease called primary pulmonary hypertension. So they gave her six months to live, but because she was a nurse, she had like this catheter and this medicine pack, and she would have to mix her own medicine.

Most people wouldn't be able to do that themselves, so they would have to be in the hospital, but she was able to do it. So from that six months, she ended up living like six years. But during that time, she obviously couldn't do drugs anymore. She had to calm down. Well, right in that time, that's when I started getting into the game. I'm a 13-year-old young boy. you really can't tell me nothing. When it really changed, so I got this buddy,

kind of like where you came from, I came from an environment. This kind of mixed, you know, you got blacks, you got whites, you got Mexicans. And that was during the era of, you know, we're watching Scarface and listening to the young Jeezy's, trap or die, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. What else was a huge influence in the early 2000s? Cameron albums, New York hip-hop was huge for us. Yeah.

Down here it was the young Gizi, it was the young thug. Yeah, yeah, definitely young Gizi was the big one. And I don't care what anybody says, the music, the movies, they influence you as a child. Eminem, that was when M&M was really getting out there too. And I'm like, okay, white guys can actually rap. Like, they can be in this type of scene. So I had a buddy Jaquin, and he was a mixed black and white dude. Freaking comedian, man.

If he was here today, he would have definitely been a comedian, but he would come all the time and like new clothes, jewelry, hats. And what I would do, I would get like $3 to $5 a day for lunch. And I would save up my lunch money sometimes two days to get like a blunt. And I would go to Jaquina. I buy a blunt. And I asked him one day, I'm like, man, bro, how do you always come with these new hats, these clothes?

Like, you're always fresh. And I'll never forget. He said, dumb asses like. you saving up your lunch money going hungry to buy weed and I'm like damn it hit me I'm like I don't ever want to be that guy again like I want to be the guy you know on the end of that yeah on the sale end of that yeah I was the same way yeah so I ended up saving up for like uh you know like a week or two enough to buy a half ounce broke it down into tiny blunts sold those turned it into an ounce and then I was off to the races and

I think for me, the type of people I grew up around, I always felt the need to prove myself. I was around a lot of black guys, Mexicans that were gangster. And that era, it was uncool to be white. Like the white guys were the pussies that, you know, couldn't do anything. So my dad, he's got this reputation of being a fighter. My mom was this huge hustler, you know, making tons of money. So now I'm like, I got to represent on both sides. And so I started living that lifestyle, and I became really good at it.

Now, during this time, my mom is like, hey, you can't do this. I don't want you going down that route. And I'm like, Mom, you did it my whole life just because you're sick now. You can't tell me what to do. By that time, I'm a 13-year-old boy, and she's sick. What are you going to do with me? Like, there's nothing she could really do. So I was off to the races.

She got to the point where the only thing she knew to do, she was doing the best she could. But she was like, you know, I'm going to kick you out the house. because she would always find my stash, take my stuff, you know, just because she knew the game. So I couldn't get shit past her. It's just a constant battle. So when I was 16, she kicked me out the house. And she's thinking, you know, I'm going to go out, be in the streets, I'm going to see how hard it is. I'm going to beg to come back.

Well, right before this happened, you know, I'm selling the green and it's so hard to get it past my mom because, you know, you got a pounder to a couple pounds. Like, it's hard to hide that. Yeah. Well, I started seeing my buddy, same buddy. Now he starts moving the powder and the ice. And he's making, you know, triple the money with little bags this big. And me, the way I grew up, all the white people that I knew that did those type of drugs, as soon as I got a hold of that, now I took off in that game and like surpassed even what they were doing

because I had so many connections. And now I'm like, man, I'm making way more money with a smaller substance. But in my mind, you know, I'm not thinking about the difference in time that I can get from a pound of weed compared to this. And so you know all your mom's old Custies? Yeah, I knew. I actually, it's funny. A lot of the people that I was raised around, I was a little kid. Now I'm serving them.

Even into like my dad's side of the family, my aunt, you know, people that babysat me now, I got what they want. And I'm running the show. You know what I mean? You know, the other night, I actually had a nightmare about. my high school sweetheart, Amy. I was trying to have sex with her and I couldn't get it up. This is a true story.

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feel easy. Amy, come back to me, baby. I got the treatment. To get simple online access to personalized, affordable care for ED, hair loss, and more, visit hymns.com slash connect. One more time, that's hIMS.com slash connect. Hems.com slash connect. Not available in all 50 states. Prescription is required. See website for details, restrictions, and important safety information. So Delafel is the generic version of Viagra. Viagra is a registered trademark of Viatra's specialty LLC. Hymns is not affiliated with Ordoors by Viatras. And this is the small, this is like the early 2000, small town, America, meth boom.

Oh, yeah. And this is the ice. This is the Mexican shards, right? Yeah, that was the shards, bro. Wow. How much, and you were 16? Yeah, I was 16 when I started doing that. And, yeah, so I didn't get to the point, like, I didn't get to my mom's level.

Probably a good thing. You know, I didn't have the pounds and pounds, but I get like ounces in cube. but I flip them so fast and keep going. And as a 16-year-old kid, you know, I didn't really have anything going on. How much can you make off like four ounces of clear? It depends. So, you know, like if you're wholesaling it, obviously, you're going to make four or five hundred bucks, whatever it may be. But I was in the trenches, bro.

I was doing hand-to-hand combat selling, you know, A balls, grants, whatever. I would sell the bigger stuff too. But you could make a lot of money. for that. So I never forget, she kicks me out the house. And about, I'd say, a month later, I come back. Now, I had bought, in that day, you know, I got the gangster slab. I got the old school Delta 88 that I bought with dope money.

It was like two grand. And I remember pulling up to the house. And she's like, son, what are you doing? Whose car is that? I'm like, man, it's my car. She's like, what are you doing? Where have you been? Why haven't you came back?

I'm like, what do you mean? You kicked me out. She was like, well, I thought you would leave, and then you would see how hard it is out here and you would want to come back. And I'm like, no, I ain't coming back. I'm good because I'm out here now. I ended up, by this time I turned 17,

I found a guy that had a house. He was like an older Mexican guy, like in his 30s. He let me give him cash to rent out this house. I'm not even old enough to have a lease or anything. And now I got girls coming over. I got the work. You know, I'm living my best life. And at the same time, I still always had this desire to be successful, to do good things.

So I'm actually, all my other friends have already dropped out of school. They're hustling full time. Me, I would actually be up in the hotels or in different places until three or four in the morning, party and messing with females, hitting leagues. And then I would wake up at 6.30 and go to school, sometimes still freaking high as a kite, you know, whatever. And I would go through school. I did it all the way, and I've told some of these stories before, so I'll skip through certain parts, but I made it all the way to three months before my graduation.

And I had this teacher, this principal, Ms. Farber, and she freaking hated me because I was the type, you know, I would get everybody's order in the morning. I come with all the blunts rolled up. Back then, not many high school kids were on the hard stuff, you know, maybe some Coke here and there. But I would have it bagged up and then I would sell it before, you know, lunchtime. And so they would always try to catch me when they would search me. I would have, you know, all kinds of money. You know, back then it's like fives, ones, tens, all over me, pockets full of money. But I didn't have the stuff.

I remember one time they had the cops come in and somebody had traded me some Adderall for some weed. And they were like, you know, we know for a fact because the dude ended up snitch. on me, he got caught. They're like, we know for a fact you got these Adiraws, and if you sold them to somebody and they died, you could get a murder charge. Do you want to get a murder charge? I'm like, no, sir, I don't want to get a murder charge.

I just, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't sell drugs, sir. I didn't even know you could OD on Adderall. They're trying to scare me. Yeah, that would be a bum way to die. Right. Yeah, so they're like, man, he's been around the block. He's not going to give it up.

So anyway, I did this the whole thing. time three months before graduation she's like I'm looking for any reason anything you do I'm kicking you out and I would miss just enough school to where I could still get by so like you could miss eight days in a semester or whatever I would miss seven and then one day I had missed just at the limit I had popped some Xanax bars ended up wrecking the Delta 88 couldn't get to school that day and so she kicked me out and I remember going in front of the judge and I begged the judge I've already passed all my tests. I've done everything. And, you know, we're trained to believe if you don't

walk across that high school stage, you're a failure for life, if you don't go to college, if you don't do these certain things. And I still wanted that. But in my mind, I was kind of like your story. Like, I don't want to be just the average person. You know, I go to work with my stepdad. He's laying carpet in tile. And it just never fit me. Like, I'll go do the work. I'll get out there. But I just didn't feel like this is going to be me building roofs or laying carpet, like there has to be something more, but we're tied by society. You either, you know, go to college, get some awesome degree, work for this company for 20 years, or come from a rich family, or you be scarface or these gangsters, you know what I mean? So I felt like

that was my only way to live an extravagant life. But I still wanted to finish the school. But anyway, so they ended up telling me, I begged them, man, I've already completed everything, just let me graduate and they said no you're getting court order GED and so at that point I'm like now I felt like a failure like you know there's no chance of me going legit now I might as well go balls to the wall so at that time they ended up I'm still in that house and I am I'm serving people and I'm doing both and it's a crazy story how this happened my first charge but there's this guy So I'm serving this one guy. He would get eight balls for me consistently.

And all of a sudden, one day, he has this lick. This dude will come pay full price, top dollar every time he comes through. And one day I came to get my money from the guy that I served. And he was like, man, bro, I ain't got your money. But I want to make it up to you. Bro, I'm going to give you my lick. You can take him. I'm like, bro, he's your biggest moneymaker.

Like, why would you give him to me? And he was like, man, I can't help him anymore. So I thought something was weird about this guy. Like he was like a nerdy white guy and the thing that threw me off is he would always anytime he would get some from me He was smoking in front of me and You know I didn't know that you were allowed to do that if you're you know not legit So he would always come by and he was always nosey like one to see like man how much you got this time man? Are you upgrading and as I got you know more accustomed to the game? I was like man, why are you worried about what I got like why are you asking these questions? What were some of the

tells with meth heads, like I had a buddy, he used to tell me because he would sell crack, and he would say, when the crackhead comes through in the middle of summertime, and they're not sweating, and they got the fucking coat on when it's 85 degrees, he's like, that's a real crackhead. That's how he would tell if it was a cop or not, because I guess something you guys could comment about the cocaine and just being dehydrated. I don't know what the fuck it is, but crackheads that are really up on their habit don't sweat. So what was like to tell? What did it like a meth head?

What's a true smoker look like? Well, so this is the crazy thing. Now, usually skins oily. They're moving around. Anxiety. You know, you can usually tell their movements. But here's the thing. I'm watching him smoking in front of me.

So he's legitimately a meth head. Right, right. But his whole demeanor, everything about him gave off cop vibes. And even some of my friends was like, man, that dude seems kind of weird. But he's spending so much money, and he's smoking in front of me. And one day I get paranoid because I'm like, man, this dude's got to be a cop. Something's not right. So I had this Smith & Weston that I had.

He comes one day. And I don't know in my mind what I was going to do if he would have admitted it. But I got this idea in my head. When he came in, I'm like, look, I know you're a cop. You're going to admit to me you're a cop right now and tell me what's going on. He's like, bro, what are you talking about? You need to get. He deserves a guy.

Oscar. He was like, man, you need to get some sleep, bro. I smoke it in front of you. I can't be a cop. I can't do it in front of you. And I always, well, he does. And sometimes I'm busy. You know, I got a girl there or something. He's like, hey, let me smoke some. I'm like, I'm busy, man, just take it with you. No, no, come on. He always wanted to smoke it while he was there. I thought that was weird. So I found out later anyway, I'll get to that point on how I found out about that. But so I'm in this house, right? I got this girl. I'm 17 at the time. I'm messing with this 33-year-old chick that she gets dope from you. me, but she would cut my hair.

She was a good-looking chick. She didn't look like a dope fiend or anything like that. And she was in love with me. She calls me one day, and she was like, hey, they told me if I call you that I could go to prison, but I want you to know I left your house, and they said that this is a dope house and that they're about to bust you,

you need to get out of there. So I'm like, shit. So I tell my buddy, like, hey, we got to go. Don't bring anything with you. And it's crazy how, I feel like, God, the universe, whatever you want to call it, There was some close calls where some really bad stuff could have happened to me, but I would skate through.

One of them, the night before this happened, and I think nowadays, I think it was the Mexican guy I was getting the house from. I think he would sneak in there sometimes when I was gone, because little shit would come up missing. My pistol had just came up missing the night before. So I had some dope. I put it outside in the electricity box, and I got like a pound of weed.

You know, you can't really hide that much places. So I put it in the stove. And we leave, we get pulled over. Of course, as soon as we're leaving, and I'm asking them, you know, like, hey, why am I being detained? What's going on? They won't tell me. And they got me just sitting in the back of this car for, like, a long time. And I'm like, hey, y'all aren't going to tell me why I'm detained.

Y'all need to let me go. And then they finally, like, I'm about to tell you, we're about to go back to your dope house where you're selling drugs. I'm like, what are you talking about? They're like, we know this is your house. And I was smart enough even when we left because you tip me off. I took the key off and threw the key on the ground, so I didn't even have no keys on me. They take me to the house, and they're like, you know, we know this is your house. Let's go inside while we searched it.

I'm like, bro, I'm 17. I can't even get a lease. This ain't my house. We know this is your house. No, I come over here. I smoke some weed every now and then, but like, I don't know nothing about this house. And so they ended up, I didn't have keys. They kicked the door in and they said, you're coming inside this house.

And I'm like, no, I'm not. I don't live here. So I know this has to be illegal, but they freaking pick me up by my arms, kicking and scream like, no, I don't live here. And they took me inside the house and they started searching it. Boom. Oh, we got us one. They pull out the brick. My homeboy had one in another room.

Oh, we got it. And he comes up. He's like, man, where's the meth? Where's the pistol? I'm like, what are you talking about? I don't know what you're talking about. And he was so pissed because he's like, look, you know, they play the good cop, bad cop. Look, if you just work with this, we'll go easy on you.

You're young. We know you have it. Sir, I told you, I smoked a little weed. This ain't my house. That's not my life. I'm not admitting to none. So he's so pissed. And I didn't understand why at first.

Later on, when I get in, when I'm in county, I file a motion to discover. Come to find out that guy wasn't informant. So he told him, he put a gun to my face and had the meth. And I realized later the reason, you know, an actual cop is not supposed to do these things. but a confidential informant, they encouraged them to go out and do crimes, to sell drugs, to do drugs. So I realize now the reason why he would do it in front of me is because he had to turn the rest in. So he would do a controlled buy, get as high as he could. And then, oh, this is what I got from him.

Yeah, he only sold me two grams. Right. Not an eight ball. Because, yeah, he would sit there and just be. Yeah. How many buys did he do? How many controlled buys? Man, probably freaking 15.

But see, the thing is, like, you know, in that lifestyle, crazy shit would happen. You know, somebody would steal something from you, lose something. You know, you got Bill, you got all this stuff going on. So it was like, I'd start getting a few ounces and he would come and be like, man, you're doing good. I think they were waiting for me to get to, like, the pounds. But it just never got to that point. You know, every time he would come, you know, I would have like an ounce, a half ounce, you know, stuff like that.

Right. And so, but I think after, I think they were waiting for the big stuff. Right. But then once I pulled the gun on, they're like, hey, we got to, we got to end this. We got to go take him in. So did he have your real name? Yeah. Well, I don't know if he had my real name, but they come to find out they had did a six

months investigation on me. Another thing I can tell you for anybody, hopefully all are not living that life. But if you ever get pulled over and you know you have a reason for them to take you to jail and they don't, that means they have a do not detain on you, which means they're doing an investigation. So there was one time where I had went outside to meet my homeboy on the corner. And I just seen him out there. So I went and shook his hand.

I guess they thought I had dope. So they swoop up on me, not knowing they're watching me. They probably thought I was doing a cell. And they searched me. And all I had on me was like an empty baggy, like some little crumbs, like just from personal stuff that I was doing. And they found it. I'm like, fuck, I'm going to jail because all they need is a crumb. But they ended up just giving me a warning and not taking me in.

I'm like, that's weird, bro. They had me. Like, it wouldn't have been a big charge, but that's still a felony. But it's because they were waiting to get the big bust. They wanted to the meth. Yeah. Yeah. You never realize how many customers just slip away.

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handle that headline. The DEA let they had they were working with an informant and he had tons of meth and they were like you just keep moving it. We'll let you know when it's time to like you know move up the ladder. Oh wow. So just tens of millions of dollars with a fent just but that happens all over the country all the time like not only can they lie to you you can't lie to them you can't lie to the government but they can lie to you tell me how that makes sense. I pay your salary. Cawlery cocksucker. I should be able to lie to you, bitch. So you can't lie to them, they can lie to you. You can't sell drugs. They can sell drugs. Oh, yeah.

They did that with guns, gun running into Mexico with the Fast of the Furious. So yeah, people, when we were kids, we grew up on movies and propaganda where it was like... If you ask them, they got to tell you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's total bullshit.

If they smoke in front of you, that means they're not... Hit this. To prove it messed me. You're not a cop. I got lied to, bro. Yeah, exactly. No.

There's almost no rules, and they break them all the time. And in Texas, they can break their own laws all the way up to, you know, appellate judges. Oh, yeah. They encouraged the crime. Yeah. And you know what? Breaking from that story, because you're on that topic, I want to tell you a crazy story. There's something that involves that, right?

So this is later on. We're not on a timeline here. but I had been in trouble a few times. Now I'm out. I'm really not selling drugs at this time that this story happens, but I'm still partying. I'm still partaking.

And I had this girl, you know, when I get into my girlfriend, she always had the spot to stay. Everybody getting high, everybody's chilling. And I go chill with her. You know, we mess around, we get higher, whatever. And I usually didn't have anything on me. I really just like to, you know, party here and there.

Well, I would see her some very questionable things. happening. Like, people were saying that she was a snitch. I wasn't selling it, so I didn't particularly care, but I would see some different things, and she would kind of joke about it sometimes. Like, I saw a package. I'm like, what's this package? Can you open it for me? And it was like some, like, hearing device. And she was like, oh, this is, I like to spy on the neighbors. And so I'm like, what you got going? But I'm thinking it's just some like tweak or shit did not actual cop stuff. But this is so crazy. So one day I had went and got some. And I found this plug where I was just going to party.

You know, so I spent like 20 bucks. He gave me like a whole eight ball. I'm like, oh, shit. Is it a me a-o or some of the other stuff? Yeah. Okay. And so I went over there with her and, you know, I would always party with her. I usually didn't keep anything on me.

So I'm like, hey, look what I got. She was like, oh, her eyes got big. And, you know, I put it in my pocket. You know, we did some whatever. And at this time, I had a few cars. I was selling cars. And I'll get later into the story about that. but I was selling cars.

I had like a few little cash cars, and she had asked me, she said her mom was sick or whatever, would I let her have one of my cars to, you know, to give her mom? And I'm like, I'm not just going to give you a car. You know, at this time,

I was struggling. I was barely starting to make a little money. And she begged me, please, I would do it for you. I'm like, you wouldn't just give me a car. Like, that's not real. So that day, she was like, hey, would you mind taking me to Walmart? I really need to go to Walmart and get some stuff.

So I'm like, cool. And so, you know, we're both high. And we go to Walmart. And she was like, I'm going to go in. You know, you can just chill, whatever. And so she, uh... Being high on meth in Walmart is the most Texas shit I can think of. It's terrible, bro.

That's so funny. I want to smoke meth and go to Walmart. Just before I leave Texas forever and never come back. I'm absolute, John. And me and my producer are going to smoke some ice. It's a horrible thing. But she went in there. And now I've always been the type.

I've always been a hustler. I've always been in control of my faculties. Even when I was, you know, partying whatever, I never was like one of the freaking weirdos. You know, I would be the type. I would get high and I would go on a mission, you know, whether it be if I'm building something or working on. So whatever it may be, I would be focused and I would get shit done.

You got some people who are just lost in the sauce. And she was one of those. But she went in and I'm sitting there. I had just got a new phone. So, you know, I'm on my phone, you know, setting everything up. You know, that can take some time anyway, but especially if you're on that. And I'm noticing, I'm like, man, she's been there for a long time. So I'm like, man, let me go see what's up.

So I went and walked around and I'm looking. And usually if you're going through a Walmart in Texas with people that are high, you're going to see each other in one of the aisles across the store. I'm not seeing her. I'm, this is weird. So I go back and while I'm sitting there, you know, you got supersonic hearing and shit during that time. So I heard something like, I'm like, look, way off on the other side of Walmart. I see a cop car.

I'm like, man, that's weird. But he's way on the other side. I'm in the passenger side. I'm not driving. I'm not doing nothing wrong. Something just told me. So I got this eight ball. I put it in my cheek just in case.

And I'm back, you know, on my phone. They were smart, bro. They waited like 20 minutes later. All of a sudden, boom, boom, boom. Flashlight in my face. I'm like, whoa. He's like, hey, roll down the window, let me talk to you. I'm like, what's going on?

He was like, let me talk to you. So I roll it down. You know, I've learned some things in the game. So I rolled it down like this much where we could just talk. And he was like, hey, can you step out? I need to talk to you. I'm like, for what? What's going on?

He was like, well, we got a call that somebody was like looking in cars, you know, that matched your description. We just want to make sure everything's good. And I'm like, no, this is my car. I own it. He was like, what's okay? You know, just step. out and come talk to me. I'm like, there's no reason for me to step out. And I got a fresh

drink in my hand. So I got this drink and I got this thing. You know, I'm trying to talk with this big ball in my mouth. And he's looking, he knows. And I could see him like looking like he wants to try to see if he could reach in, but he doesn't have room. I'm like, all right, man. All right, chill. And he's like, don't you do it, don't you do it? He's like, oh, motherfucker. A big old eight ball, bro. Swallowed it. Oh. my God, baggy and all. Damn. And so I get out, he starts

checking me, and I hear him, you know, I hear you know, as they're checking me the other one, like, I guess an ambulance, we got one just, you know. Like, he's trying to talk in cold, but I know he knows, and I couldn't figure out, oh, when they pulled me out, right, immediately they went right

to the pocket where that was at. And so... To your girl was snitching. That's what I ended up finally later on. So I had a wild ride in County. If you've ever ate at eight ball and been in county, yeah. What is that like? What is that like? It was insane. Paranoid as all could be like freaking, it was like a movie, bro. And the whole time I'm thinking they're sending people in there to set me up,

probably just normal conversation like, hey, what are you in for? And I'm like, man, he's the feds. He's trying to get me. It was a, it was. How are we high for? Like, do you know, a day? Probably like a day and a half, two days. Fuck, yeah. But here's the crazy thing. This is freaking wild.

And, you know, now I live a much different life. I do a lot of stuff in the community, so I'm cool with a lot of the officers and stuff. So they'll probably see this and be like that, motherfucker. But so when I get out, this is the crazy thing, right? I get out. And what they said, the reason they arrested me, they said they had some old warrant for criminal trespassing. Really some BS deal that they just tried to get me on.

And so I get out. I get taken to the Walmart. I'm going to go get my car. I go and the car's busted into the whole freaking ignition is just ripped out the fucking car. And I'm like, man, what the hell? And I realize as I'm putting two and two together, I'm like, they went straight for the pocket. That old girl, like I visualize, like she saw me put it right in that pocket. They went straight here.

She just, oh, I forgot to say this part. as they were taking me, they were like, hey, your friend's in there, she's saying that she's with you and she had all her laundry and stuff in my car. Do you want to give her the keys to the car? I'm like, no, I'm not giving her the keys to my car. And they're like, well, she said that her laundry's in there

and stuff like that. I'm like, well, she don't have to wait. So did you ever figure out why she, how long she was working with them and why? I don't, I mean, I'm sure she got busted. I don't know how long. But this is the crazy thing, right? They were trying to talk me into giving her my keys.

and I'm like, no, I'm not. Then I come back, my car's busted into, so I guess she's high. She tried to freaking bust into it with like a screwdriver or something. And I clicked two and two. She'd been begging me for this car. I wouldn't give her the car.

She's seen, I never have stuff on me at this point in time, had some stuff on me. So she's like, that's my ticket. I get him busted. I get a bust. And I get the keys to his car. And I found out later my bold ass is crazy. I called and said, hey, somebody busted into my car.

I need you all to come out. It was one of the same officers from the night before. And he's like, what's going on? I'm like, y'all snitch or whoever tried to set me up, which was some BS. She tried to break into my car. I know Walmart's got some cameras. Y'all need to do something about it. And they're like, well, how do you know?

I said, Walmart's got cameras. They say, I need to file a police report. And they're like, really, you're a street dude. You want to file a police report? I'm not a street dude anymore. I'm a tax-paying citizen, sir. somebody tried to break into my car because at this time,

this is after my prison and everything like this. So it's so crazy. They're like, you really want to push the issue? I'm like, yeah, the sergeant ended up coming and talking to me. He's like, look, do what you got to do. I'm not going to push the issue. I'm not filing charges on her.

So what I ended up finding out later is she was working for them. They encouraged her to go do whatever. They were going to let her, you know, for a bus, they probably would have let her keep my car They weren't going to press charges on her because that's their informant. So she basically just had free reign

to just go out. Yeah, the informants do more crime than if they just busted the person and brought them in. So like they, in the course of like trying to take down drugs and drug dealing, they allow 10 times as much. So it's like, what are we even doing?

So then did they get you on the ball that you swallowed? No. Of course, right? It gets eating. eating up in the stomach acid. This is a crazy story. While I'm in there, right.

Tweaker stories, dude. Hey, no, this is horrible. And that's not my personality, but I had to do what I had to do. So while I'm in there, I remember now the nurse, you know, they do like the, they check you and make sure you're good. And by this time, I'm like, I don't know if you've ever done ecstasy or anything, but like, my eyes are like rolling and I'm trying to sit straight. And she was like, sir, I need to know.

what you swallow. We know you swallow. So I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. I ain't swallow nothing. Like, sir, you could die. Is it worth dying? Just tell us what it is. We can pump your son. I'm like, man, I'm just, I'm tired, man. I'm tired. I'm sitting here rolling balls, you know what I mean? It must have felt great. No, it was terrible. I mean, my body did feel kind of good, but it was terrible. And like, I'm just laying there on this cold concrete just like freaking gone and I'm still high once I get out and my crazy ass at this time it's so pissed that they freaking broke into my car I'm calling them while I'm still high just got out just ate this eight ball and uh yeah but I found out that they encouraged that type of stuff

as long as they can get a bust so what happened when you were 17 whatever happened with them dragging you in the house so they dragged me in the house didn't get caught with the other stuff I I ended up- So they didn't find the meth or the gun? No. So I ended up getting charged with the possession of marijuana. Oh, right. And at this time, you know, I go into county, a little white guy in there, you know.

First time being busted for anything. Yeah. You know, this is my first time actually, you know, not just little- traffic violation type stuff. So I go in and I'm the type of person. I'm not a wigger. Like, I hate that term. I'm very, I know I'm white, I'm proud of who I am, but I grew up like you.

I like playing ball. I like rapping. I can freestyle with the best of them. I've got black friends. I've got Mexican friends. And I'm going to be me. I'm not going to let anybody tell me. And like I said, I always had to chip on my shoulder.

So when I was in the streets, we had this image of being weak little white kids. So if somebody was going to fight, I was the first one to fight. When I saw guys were making money pimping females, it didn't even go. That's not even my nature to want to take advantage of a few. female, but I'm like, well, if they can do it, I can do it too. And I had a couple females that were working for me that I was pimping out, you know, not beating them up or anything, but I was more of a finesse just using my mouthpiece to get them, hey, I got the customers, you've got the product, let's work together.

You brought them tricks? Oh, yeah. I guess that's true. Like meth heads also want to fuck prostitutes. Yeah, they do. And so I went through different phases, right? The story I told you, you know, I went through a phase where, you know, I was doing exos and coke and, you know, just I was partying, but that wasn't my whole story. Like, I wasn't always on that type of time. For a long time, I was just smoking weed, drinking, you know, it was uncool to do those type of things. So just different phases in my life. But I'll tell you another pretty crazy story. Hang on. So what happened with the, with this bust? Were they able to get that? Oh, yeah. So they got me a state jail

felony. So with that, whenever I went in, I had a lawyer. I'm not going to say any names because I pissed somebody off last time. But I had a lawyer that, no, this is the time before that, but I had already been in there a couple months. I didn't have much money. You know, my mom was sick or whatever. I wasn't smart where I had a bunch of stash stuff put to the side for when this happened. So I had already been in there like two months. And they came. And they came at me with an offer, you can do five years probation, get out today. And I'm like, well, what's the alternative? Because I didn't want to do probation. I had no intent or desire to stop smoking weed or change my life. Like, didn't even cross my mind. I was still going to be a gangster.

So they said, or the alternative is you can do six months state jail. And I'm like, man, I've already been here two and a half months, another few months. And my mom begged me. She's like, please don't take that. You'll have a felony. Because I could have got where they take the felony off, I would have took the probation and completed it, but I wouldn't have completed it. Do you think you could have fought it? Like, because they dragged you into the house. Did you have any action to, like, beat them? You know, I think if I would have had a great attorney, probably so. But that was part of, if they wouldn't have drug me into the house, I think I would have had a lot of action. But since they did, in the court appointed I had, and they're like, well,

we have this confidential informant that says you sold them meth and had guns. And had guns. And guns. Like basically, do you want to really push this issue or do you want to just take this six months? Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, if you want them to try to turn it into a Fed deal, you know, whatever. So I'm like, fuck it. Let me just take this. I took the six months. And my mom was like, please don't, you don't want to do that. And I'm like, man, a few more months that I can smoke weed. You know, I've already been surviving in here anyway. I already got into a couple fights and stuff. I'm okay, you know. So I go to state jail. And I'll tell you, state jail is almost worse than

prison in a lot of ways. State jail at that time, I think they've increased it now to five years. But back then, you could do up to two years whatever sentence you got you did day for day. So if you got six months, you're doing the whole thing, gear, blah, blah, blah. So there's no incentive to make parole. There's no good time. You're doing day for day.

So if you want to go in there and fight every single day, then you can do it or you want to be a trustee. Doesn't matter. So me being literally, I was a 17. year old kid, not even old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes when I first go into this state jail that has, you know, grown men, you know, aggravated assaults, all these different things. I had to learn a lot of hard lessons during that time. So my dad, he had always been in prison. He told me, hey, if you go, don't join the Aryan Brotherhood or any of that kind of crazy stuff.

But in Texas, they have a thing called the Woods. A wood is you're a white boy. You let them know you're a you're a white boy that's not scared to fight that's going to get down if it comes to it and whatever. So when I went in and they would ask me like, what are you? I guess I'm a solo wood. During that time, they slowly started to make more politics out of it where they want to tell you who you can hang out with. And I was never that person. I was like, look, I grew up in state jail, it's more of the people from your area are going to be there. So a lot of the people I was in the hood with grew up with are in there.

And I ended up getting into it with the whites because they would tell me, you know, you can't slapbox with that. You can't do that. I'm like, dude, those are my boys. Like, I'm going to do what I want to do. And we were on lockdown. And they were really just looking for a reason to make it more political. So they started having votes on who was going to do stuff, like the tango blast and all these different places.

So I got this one other little white kid that was kind of like me. You know, we'd be slapboxing with the black. and stuff like that. And they said that we're having a meeting, and it's about us. And they said that because we were slapboxing with the blacks, that we could get in trouble and they could extend the lockdown, so they're going to vote on whether or not to discipline us. So my little homeboy, they said,

well, we've already told him in the past, so we're going to vote two on one in the corner with him. For you, we're going to give you a warning this time. And, you know, could have left it at that, but I'm the type I want to know what's going on. I'll speak for myself. So my Selly was the leader of the Tango Blast, who they said was going to smash us if they didn't handle us. You know what I mean?

So I go up to him, I'm like, hey, Selly, what's the deal, bro? Like, if you felt some type of way, I feel like we're cool enough you could have told me, bro. I didn't mean no disrespect. He's like, what you're talking about? I told him what they said. He's like, man, I never said that ho-ass shit. They're just trying to get some structure in their organization. So they're using y'all because y'all are not the typical, you know, white pride type dudes.

And I'm like, what? So we had another meeting as they were. were going to go discipline my own. I'm like, well, first of all, I think it's kind of some bullshit. I'm 17-year-old kid. You know, a lot of these big, muscled up dudes, you know what I mean? And I told them, like, hey, I talked to them. They said, that's not even the case.

Like, man, you got a speaker for a reason. You don't go talk to them. You can set off a race ride. Now we got to discipline you, too. And I had some of my black homeboys that are listening in from Temple and Killeen. And they're like, that's some whole ass shit. When so-and-so called you out, you didn't want to do nothing to him. Now you want to mess with him just because he's hanging out with us.

And fuck y'all. Matter of fact, you a bitch and you a bitch, what y'all gonna do about it? And they didn't do anything. And they were like, okay, well, fuck it. We're not gonna do nothing. But you're running, if you're not one of us, then when a race riot happens, anything happens, then don't fucking come to us. We're not gonna help you. And I'm like, man, I see now I'm more likely to get beat up by y'all, then y'all are gonna help me. You know what I mean?

When it comes to some racial stuff, y'all aren't even standing up. Which not to say that all white guys are like that. I've been to some places with some solid white guys. that'll get down and are just stand-up guys. But I've been to a lot of places where, you know, they'll beat up their own before they'll risk getting into it with another race. Sure. So that was your first taste of like real racial prison politics.

Yeah, bro. That's pretty crazy. It's 17 to have witness that. You're like, what the fuck? Can't we just come here and can't it be like school? Right. Can it just be all fun? Yeah.

Yeah. It was. No, it's not like that at all. So then how, so then you did your little bid, you got out, you eventually end up getting locked up on like a serious, you know, man prison bid. Yeah. What led up to, yeah, talk about that. Talk about how that led up to you catching like your major felony. Yeah.

Okay. So I do that time. I make it through that. Now I'm a felon. You know, I got my GED while I was in prison because, you know, they kicked me out of school. And just like I planned, you know, I got straight. out and got back to it I had no desire to change I get back in the game I'm hustling who's your connect you had you for for the ice did you have like were you

getting good work yeah I had different ones so like I had my hood black homeboys that sometimes they would come up with some different connects and then I might have like some old school white guys that knew my parents or whatever that would come up with the connects yeah and I'm the type of person you know I can kind of a similar where I'm at. So I could be chilling with the rockers over here. I could be in the most hood gangster spot over here and anywhere I go, I'm good. You know what I mean? And I can relate to different people. So I had a bunch of different connects. What ended up getting me. So this is kind of crazy, too. Another corrupt story. So we had this house. Now at this time, I'm out of prison. I live with my mom.

I'm just trying to get money, you know, whatever. I got a cousin. I got a couple homeboys. Like, we'll hustle up and pull together. We'll get hotels. My cousin, Jane Bone, I brought him from little Marlon, Texas, down with me. And we would hustle. We'd get hotels until we finally hustled up and got this house.

And we were whiling out in this house, man. My rule was, like, if you need a place to stay, I'm not tripping. As long as you contribute. So we're having house parties. We're having females over here. And a lot of it is white guys that, you know, a similar mindset as me. Like, we're not no holes.

We're going to hustle. We're going to fight. So we're getting into crazy fights. It's all kinds of shit. You know how it goes. People running up trying to rob you, different stuff like that. But we're in this house.

And once again, so at this time, I was all messing with the weed. And my homeboy used to go to the valley. And I think you know something about this. They would go to the valley and they had the border patrol. They would ship the bricks in through the mail. And I could get like $200 bricks. bricks if you can get them across.

Tell us about the valley. For people that aren't from Texas, what do you mean when you say the valley? So the valley is right down by Mexico. Like McCallin. It's like right on the border. But it's inside Texas, but they have like a border patrol still inside Texas. Yeah, the checkpoints. Yeah, the checkpoints.

So for you to get, you can get anything you want over here, but to get it past that checkpoint, it's a major risk. And once it goes past that checkpoint, now it's five exes. value, you know what I mean? Right. So if you get work inside the checkpoint, that's when you're getting the good ticket. Oh, yeah. And if you can get it past the checkpoint, that's where you make your money. So they had connections at the UPS and places like that that would ship it over. And I had a homeboy that was from the Valley. And he was a part of a gang down there.

They called it La Bamba. I've heard of them. Yeah. It was crazy, bro. I went down there with them one time. They have like no rules. They drive all over the road. no speed limits.

And like, that's the first time I experienced. Like, when you go in their hood, we drove in, they got essays hanging out the window like, hey, what's up, homeboy? Who you with? And my homeboy, like, hey, they're like, oh, okay. Like, they really will take you out just even driving in their neighborhood. Right. That's like third world country, Texas.

Yeah. That whole area is fucking nuts. I'll tell you a quick, funny story, bro, because I was the youngest one in the click. And I got, like, my gangster blood, black homeboys. And then I got him who's part of the clique. I'm the white guy in the clique. And I remember they stopped somewhere. And I was tired.

You know, we've been rolling, smoking, whatever. So I'm in the truck and I doze off. I wake up to, hey, give me all your money. Get me all your money. Doors open. And they're like, hey, get me. I'm like, what the fuck? And I guess they were trying to see how I react.

I'm like, man, here, what the fuck y' y'all want? Get off of me. They're like, no, we're just fucking with you, bro. It was just a little Mexican home. Like, man, y'all are some hollies. Because in that environment, Like it really could go down like that, bro. So they tell us about the UPS.

So they were getting you, they were getting bricks of weed UPS from Mexico. Well, from the valley. No, so Valley is in Texas. Right. But it's right there. Okay. So where you're getting it dirt-ass cheap.

Right. And so I could get bricks in the valley for 200 of brick. That's back when they had like popcorn and stuff. Right. You know, so it wasn't the Reggie. It wasn't like the indoors, super good, but it was like the pop. It wasn't BAMR.

It wasn't like brick bullshit. Yeah. It was like in between. Yeah, exactly. So you get it, you get it for 200 inside of the checkpoint. Yeah. Between the borderline and the checkpoint. And then you UPS that.

Yeah. Back to your hometown. And you might pay like, you know, depending on your connection, 100, 200, a brick for the UPS people or, you know, whoever you got over there to ship it. And they're selling it. Yeah, yeah. It's an economy down there, bro. Wow. So you have somebody inside UPS making sure that it gets on the truck. Wow. That's a lick. I've never heard of that. I've heard of a lot of licks.

Yeah, because, you know, the whole environment down there, it's all Hispanic. You know, so you got a cousin, an uncle, you know, prima, whoever that's going to be involved. So, you know, they package it up and they make sure it gets out of there. Now, when it gets to this side, the UPS on this side, you're taking a risk. You know, we used to do the same thing. You used to do, like, different addresses and stuff like that. But it's a great lick because even if it gets stops, because the UPS probably gets to fast track through the checkpoint. And even if it does it, you don't have your name on it.

There's nothing linking it to anybody. Exactly. Oh, wow. Unless you get caught. And we had a couple of times where it's like it was too sketchy. We would get it to an abandoned house, right? There was a couple times where, like, it just seemed off and, like, fuck it. We're not going to go get the package.

You know what I mean? So they had the addresses back in Colleen, or how did that work? Yeah, Temple, Belton, Colleen. So they would just be, like, pick it up here. Yeah, you know, sometimes they might have, like, a, you know, nerdy white guy that, hey, we'll give you a brick. You let us use your address. Or, you know, sometimes it was an abandoned house or somebody they know just moved, you know, different things.

Several times it would be like low-level drug dealers that like, hey, we'll give you a deal on the bricks. Let us ship a shipment to your house. You know what I mean? Stuff like that. So you could get a brick of that popcorn weed for 200. Yeah. So 200.

It's the ticket. Yeah. And selling it wholesale, like a decent price is eight. You could really sell it up to a grand, maybe even more. So now when I say 200, remember, you still got to pay like 100 or two for them. to ship it on these bricks. So you're basically paying four. So you're pretty much doubling plus your money.

And then that's if you're doing wholesale. You know, if you break it down, then obviously you can make a lot more. What were you doing? I was doing a little bit of everything. You know, I had some people that I would drop the bricks to. I had QP legs, half pound legs. You know, I wasn't doing like the grams and stuff like that. But, you know, somebody won a couple ounces.

So you were moving it fast. Yeah, I was moving it pretty fast. How many pounds would you get at a time? So I never got to like the huge levels, like what you did. You know, I might get like five bricks. I would do it consistently, right? So I'd get the five bricks. I would move those quick.

Then I might get some more. I was never, some of my buddies were getting, you know, 30, 40, 50 bricks. I wasn't getting that much shipment at once. But I would constantly. And I was doing other things too. You know, I was making money. I was doing good. For a young kid.

You know, for a young kid, definitely. That's really good money. I'm not going to sit here and say I made millions and stuff like that. But as a 17-year-old kid, I always had a couple racks in my pocket. I had my car. I could go eat where, you know, back then, like to be able to go to Chili's and order whatever you want on the menu, that's a flex. You know what I mean? 17.

So, you know, go out party. Drink every time, Corey, take a shot every time Corey makes a Texas statement. I was high meth in Walmart and Chili's was the, the, the, the, you know, the, dream. Let's go. Yeah, no, you're right, though. That was, like, to have $3,000 as, like, an 18-year-old, you were like, wow, I don't know what to do with all this money.

Oh, yeah, bro. Like, I would go to school and, you know, school lunches, like, to get an extra slice of pizzas, like $3. They'd be like, damn, I wish I could get an extra slice of pizza. I'll pull out, like, two racks. Like, here, grab some fucking pizza. Yeah. They're like, what?

And, you know, in my era, it's, like, you got the preppy kids. who come from a rich family, like, they're the ones that can buy extra a couple slices of pizza. Like, what's this dude? This pothead, you know, whatever. And so it's kind of one of those things. Like, I think a lot of the things that we do is for self-validation, feeling like we're somebody, like we're not inferior, you know what I mean? And so me coming from a background of, you know, I got the redneck country, you know, dad that's in prison, mom that struggles with addiction. And, you know, I can't afford all the nicest clothes. This is my big fuck you.

Like, I can go wear the Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hill figure stuff, too, even though I had to sell some dope to do it. You know, I can do the same thing you guys can do. For sure. What were your dad? Was your dad back in prison? What did he keep going back in and out for? So my dad did six, and then he got out. And this goes partly into my story to, I'll hit this briefly.

he got out, me and him started developing a little bit of a relationship. My mom at that time, you know, she was sick and she was warning me like, I'm going to go send you with your dad. He's going to get you back in line. I think he felt bad because he had been gone so long. So I went to this little country-ass town Marlin to go stay with him. And I'll never forget he stops. He gets this big-ass joint. And he was like, look, I'm going to smoke this one joint with you.

It's going to be like our peace treaty. After that, no lies. No bullshit, no more. You're going to get in line. I'm like, okay, cool. So we smoked that joint. I'm like, all right, now we're high. You know, he's a high as a motherfucker.

And I'm like, all right, Dad, since we're being honest, we're not going to keep secrets. I pull out like, I don't see. Like, I guess we're going to have to finish this too. And then we became homeboys. You know, there was no discipline, which I probably could have used some discipline. Yeah. But he ended up after he got out, he got involved in, you know, back. in the meth game, and he ended up finding out how to cook it. He got plugged in with the people

that were actually cooking meth. And this is a crazy story about the justice system as well. Now, my dad, he was never, or after prison, he wasn't like a big time hustler trying to be a king pan. He just wanted to get high and have a little money to party or do whatever. Now, his homeboys, you know, they wanted to be the king pan, so they're just cooking up meth doing all these things. That was back when they would go get the suit of fed pills. They would find people. I was going to ask you that. So what year did they ban that? That's got to be a federal level ban, right?

He was doing it during the time right before they banned it. I'm not exactly sure the year. Okay. Yeah, but so everybody got busted in that ring and every single person snitched. His home boy, which was supposed to be his best friend, he got caught in the act of whipping it up and everything. And I remember visiting my dad and I'm like, man, dad, what are you going to do? and all these people are snitching on him

so he's like man everybody's rolling on me the DA said I got one or two options either I can cooperate to or they're going to make an example out of me and they're going to fucking rail me. I'm like well what are you going to do you know I don't snitch on nobody that hasn't been caught but if they're telling on you

you know and he was like I just ain't got it in me son that's not who I am he said live by the I'll never forget live by the sword die by the sword and all the rest of them got five years eight years. They slammed him with 25 years for conspiracy. Damn. And he didn't even get caught with no dope. Just conspiracy.

That was a Texas state conspiracy or that was the feds? The feds. Is he still in there? No. So he actually just got out like two years ago. So when he was in there, Obama had passed some laws that they took a little bit off his sentence. Then he completed a few programs. But he ended up doing like a, Probably like 18 years, bro. That's brutal.

Yeah, so like pretty much my whole life, he was gone. Wow. And he could have just told on the guys that are told on him, and that would have. Yep. And what they ended up doing, since he was the only one in the whole group that wouldn't cooperate, they ended up saying, like, he was the ringleader. And because he has this reputation of being a big, badass dude, like, oh, he intimidated us into doing it, you know, all this kind of crap.

So, yeah, so he was gone. After I had done my state jail, I had this girl, right? I get into this relationship. This is supposed to be the love of my life, you know, 18 years old at this time, fresh out. And we had been fighting all week and she tells me like, you know, we're about to break up. And I'm like, look, this weekend I'm not going to hit no licks. I'm not going to do nothing. We're just going to stay in the house and chill.

And I had got some exos. I had a bunch of exos. And I'm like, man, we're going to pop a pill. We're going to have a good time. I get a call and I had this lick that he would pay. top dollar for the weed. I had just got like a pound of weed or something simple. And he wanted a half and he was going to pay top dollars. So I'm like, look, babe, I'm going to go hit this one lick. I'm going to go take him this half. And she's like, man, I knew you were going to.

I'm like, babe, please look, take a pill. I'm going to take my pill. I'll hit this lick. By the time I get back, we're good. So I go, I broke off enough to where it was more than a half because I didn't have my scales. My scales were at her apartment. So like, where it's a little more than a half so I wouldn't short him. I was going to go grab my scales, way out the half brick, go by my business. Go to her house, get the scales. As I'm pulling out, fucking cop. Woo-woo. Gets me, bro. And I didn't even have time. I was going to get out and run. But as soon as he opened the door, we're like in the ghetto apartments. So he immediately cuffs me the half a brick or whatever it was was sitting right there on the seat. Boom, he arrests me. I remember I'm sitting in jail.

As the red and blues are going, the Exo starts kicking in, and I'm like, I start feeling good. I'm like, fuck, man, I was supposed to be at home with baby. See, those pretty red and blue lights. Oh, man, I'm supposed to be at home with baby right now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right. So I'm going to try to go quickly through this part right here.

But I get in, and so another state jail felony, because I got the weed. When I get in, I had this lawyer. I won't mention any names, but he was telling me that, don't worry about it. It's just state jail felony. No big deal. I'm going to get you out on probation. Now, this time I have an incentive to change.

So while I'm in there, I end up getting a letter. I'm thinking she's going to fall off. You know, in a couple weeks, she's going to forget about me. I get a letter and she says, hey, you need to get your shit together. I'm pregnant. We're having a son. So I'm like, oh, shit. And I love the girl.

You know, so this is for the first time. I'm like, okay, maybe this is my incentive to want to change. So I'm going to get my mind right. And the lawyer said me, you're going to get out. Don't worry, don't worry. I go to court. As I'm getting ready to walk in, I don't gave all my stuff away. I'm hype.

I'm going to go home. They say, you got to visit. I'm going to visit. What? And so I go in there and it's my lawyer. And he was like, look, man, after talking to the DA, he said, you know, because this is your second offense. There's no way you're getting out on probation today. I'm like, what are you talking about?

You've been telling me for all these months. months and I'm getting out on probation. He's like, you're not going to do it. The best they're going to offer you is TDC boot camp. TDC boot camp, you go to this hell on earth, this boot camp. And if you make it through, it's like six months. Yeah. And if you make it through, you get out on probation. If you don't, you go do up to 10 years in prison. And I'm like, no, I'm not, you know, you told me I'm getting out. He was like, look, you got one or two toys. Either you can accept it or I'm going to drop you from my caseload. You're going to sit in here for another three or four months, you're not going to get a better option.

He said, they're trying to hit you with two things. They're trying to hit you with a repeat offender and a drug free zone. Now, the repeat offender, that's the bad one. That's the one you don't want. I'm going to get that dropped. Just sign for the drug free zone and take this boot camp. What's the drug free zone? So this really came back to kick me in the ass later on.

If I would have known what I know now, there's no way I would have signed for a drug free zone ever. So in Texas, the drug free zone, is this law that they created. If you're within a thousand feet of any school, playground, daycare, anywhere where kids can congregate, they can hit you with this drug-free zone. And with a drug-free zone, anything that you get less than five years, you're doing day for day. Anything over five years, you do not see parole.

I don't care if you're a trustee. What? You do not see parole until that five-year mark. So before I get to that point, I'm not knowing, okay, whatever, I'm just signing for this boot camp. That was hell on earth I mean so imagine in a boot camp They're trying to break you down and then build you back up

Imagine some sloppy redneck TDC guards never been in the military They got full control over you Do push those motherfuck talk shit to you Like I remember like in the few Five minutes here and there you get to yourself You might be looking through your Your photo book and they'll be like

Oh who's that? Is that your mama? Is that your girl? I bet she's out taking some big old fat black cock right now while you're in your boy You can't do shit. You can't say shit. It's a game. So how much time did you have hanging over your head when we did that program? Up to 10 years.

Oh, okay. So it's indeterminate. You haven't even been sentenced yet. You go back in front of the judge if you complete it. Oh, that's terrible. Yeah. So, I mean, they know that they can treat you any kind of way. Like a story I always tell this guy got caught stealing chicken patties.

So they bring it over there. Like, oh, you like to eat, boy, you like chicken patties? All right, let's put them some chicken patties on there. Made them a big deal. You like salt on your chicken, don't you? let's put some salt, put a whole deal of salt on there, like a half of freaking bottle. I know you like pepper on your chicken, don't you? Boy, boom, all this pepper. They're like, now you're going to eat it.

You're like, please, sir, no, no, you're going to eat it. And you're going to go to prison, boy. And so he's just gagging, choking, throwing up, and had to eat that whole thing. And that's the type of stuff that they would do, make you scrub down the whole prison. And I'll never forget while I was in there. Part of the reason I ended up doing three months, I think part of the reason why they had a little bit of leniency. I get a call one day to the sergeant's office. And you do not want to go to the sergeant's office.

That means you probably got a case. They're either going to extend your time or, you know, you failed the program or whatever. So I'm all like paranoid. And I'll never forget. She was a bulldyke, mean, hateful. She hated men. And I go in there and she was like, sign me. We just got a call from the hospital.

Your mom was dead. You can have a couple days on the side of the program. Bye. Like, no fucking sympathy, no nothing. And I hadn't heard in there you don't get coffee. You don't get fans. You don't get any kind of privileges in there. You don't even get magazines in there.

So I'll never forget. That was the first time I'd heard music in forever. And it was a Bone Thugs and Harmony song playing on her radio. Like, I tried so hard. Can't seem to get away from misery. And, like, the words hit me as she told me that. And then, like, boom, my mom was dead. So I'm in like this little boot camp for fucking half ounce, I mean a half pound of weed.

They wouldn't let me go to my mom's funeral. None of that shit, bro. And probably a good thing because at that point in time, all I could think about is I just want to crash out, get fucked up, get drunk, something. But you have nothing in there. So, you know, I had to sit with the pain and get over it. And in my mind, I'm thinking, you know, well, you know, lost my mom. But I got a son on the way, you know. I still got a reason to get out and do right.

So they end up, instead of doing the full six months, I did like three or four, and they ended up letting me out on five years probation. So now for the first time in my life, I have an incentive I want to get out and do the right thing. So I get out on with this girl. And, you know, I'm laying concrete with her dad, waking up at five in the morning. You know, I'm not hustling. I'm on probation during this time. I'm doing all the right things.

I'm not smoking weed. And she has the baby, so I'm happy. You know, I cut the cord out, you know, hey, this is what I'm gonna do. And I just had this weird gut feeling because, you know, I had been locked up. And I'm like, man, did you ever mess with anybody like the whole time, you know, I was locked up?

No, I would never do that, blah, blah, blah. I just kept having this weird gut feeling, man. And I always make this joke, you know, she's Mexican and I'm white. And I always say when the baby came out, look like he had a little mustache and stuff. I'm like, man, what's going on? Oh, no.

But this was the love of my life. And, like, for months, I didn't want it to be true. And I'm like, man, I just had this nagging feeling. And we're about to get married. You know, I bought her a little freaking Walmart ring, you know, some Texas shit. We bought her a little diamond ring. We're about to get a trailer, like some real Texas of shit, bro. And I'm like, man, I'm going to get a DNA test.

I know her family's are real close. I know they're probably going to be pissed. But I'm like, man, I can't go the rest of my life just wondering. You know, so I go get to. the DNA test. And I'm at work with her dad one day and I get this call because I'm waiting, like on the day they were supposed to tell me they weren't ready yet. So I'm on pins and needles. While I'm going to work, I get this call. And I see it's then my heart starts beating, bro. And then I'm like, man, you're tripping. It's going to be your kid, bro. You're tripping.

And, you know, they don't know whether or not you want it to be or not. So they're very clinical with it. They're like, um, so Mr. Simick in the case of this and such, there is a zero percent probability that you are the father. I'm like, what? Whoa. No. And I remember when they came to do the swab, I had just got done eating and stuff. So I'm like, man, is there any way could they're like, so then they realized that I, you know, it was kind of upset. I'm sorry, Mr. Siamic, but no, there's a zero percent chance. And I'm like, fuck. Damn. That's so scandalous. So how, and how long after you have been locked up did you get that letter? So like, you know what I mean? Like, How long did she go?

So she had to have gotten pregnant, like, literally within a week of me being locked up. Because the timing was just like, and mind you, that was my girl. So I'm busting in her every day multiple times a day. So there's no reason for it not to be. So literally the day or two after I got locked up, it had to have happened. Oh, man. Yeah. That's brutal for an 18-year-old kid.

Bro, love of my life, about to get married. Now, I look at it now. My life would be completely different how it happened. You know what I mean? One of my favorite country songs is one of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. Because at that time, I used to pray every night. Like, let me get out and show my mom I'll be successful. Let me be a good dad.

You know, so now I'm mad at God. I'm mad at the world. Like, bro, you took my mom while I'm in prison. I didn't even get to go to the funeral. Right. Love of my life. You know, there's no way I can stay with her after this. You know what I mean?

You have to take care of this fucking baby anymore. That's kind of cool. You know what's crazy. had signed a birth certificate. That's one thing I give her credit. And I know I've talked about this story and she's probably seen it. She's not a terrible person. You know, we were young. For sure. We made mistakes. Later on down the line, they tried to pull me in for child support on the kid because I had signed the birth certificate. And she did tell them like, no, that's not right. You know, I don't want anything from them. So she's not a terrible person. You know,

we've reconnected. She's good people. But at that time, I hated her. I hated the world. I almost crashed out. It did some things to her. Luckily, I did. My home boy stopped me from crashing out. But now I went from, I have this incentive to be a good guy and do the right things and now fuck everybody. Fuck the world.

I'm ready to go back balls to the wall. I got this trap house with my buddies. We're hustling. I'm getting pounds sending from the valley. I wasn't really messing with coke at the time, but they had got some coke from the valley and it was some super bunk coke. Like, it was trash. And they

couldn't get rid of it. They're like, bro, take a couple ounces. I'm like, I don't want it. It's trash. They're like, man, I'm literally give it to for a couple hundred bucks. You can't not win. Like, even if you sell it for 500, just take it. And I'm like, fuck it. So I got it. And this Mexican guy, you know, I connected with him. He did coke or whatever. I told him, because, you know, I'm not a sheister. I'm like, hey, look, it's just not very good. But I'll give you a great price. So I had an ounce on me at the time. He got the ounce. And, you know, I told him I could get more. So I I think he probably thought I had more. So the next day, I go, I'm messing with this chick, have a great night the night before, awesome time.

I'm coming home. And as I'm coming home, instead of kicking the door in, I pull into the driveway, they kick the door out. And the SWAT team is already inside the house. Get on the ground. I'm like, whoa, what is going on? And I hadn't had no problems with the weed, man. Freaking touch the coat. And so they pulled me in the house.

And, you know, they're asking me where the stuff said. I'm like, man, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have nothing. So there was like some little blunt residue from where we're smoking blunts, like on the table, right? I'm on probation at this time still from, you know, I got out of the boot camp. I'm on probation. So they start searching, where's the coke? We know there's, I don't know what you're talking about.

And I, to this day, I know that this is fake, that they set me up. They said, because I'm like, y'all ain't got nothing. You can get me for the blunt. And they said, no, we still got a felony because, you know, they got to put a lot of effort into these bust. So if they come out with nothing, they look foolish. So I said, no, we still got you on a felony. I'm like, felony for what? I know I know I didn't have anything in there.

I wouldn't even doing that coat because it was trash. So I ain't got nothing on. They said, we scraped your countertop, and we got a 0.01 of cocaine off the countertop, like scraped residue. And I'm like, there's no fucking way. There's no way they could have even tested it. So now I'm a little bit more hip to the game. So, you know, of course, they take me in. I'm on probation.

And they come at me with an offer. they say, I'm like, I'm going to fight this. There's no way that got Coke tested. Show me as Coke. There's no way because I know there's not. And my lawyer said there's one of two options that you can do, right? You can fight the Coke and then you're on probation. So they're still going to violate you for the weed that they found.

You know, we did find some weed. They're going to violate your probation. Or you can accept the Coke charge, plead guilty, get nine months in state jail. While you're doing your nine months, your probation will continue to roll, do your nine months, get out, still in probation. Good. I should have just said,

fuck it, let me go do my time now. You know what I mean? But nine months or five years, fuck it. So I went back to state jail. During this time, quick story, I go to the same state jail I was at.

While I'm in there, I end up seeing one of the dudes that snitched on my dad in the scullery, which is in the kitchen in prison. And I noticed this is one of the snitches that got my dad all this time. So me doing the honorable

Texas thing is like, hey, you remember my dad, Gary Simon? Like, yeah, what's up? Boom, drilled them in the nose, shattered this shit, dropped them. Nice. And I went to turn. You know, I'm going to get out of there. Hit them, drop them, kicked them a couple of times. Go.

They got the mace in my face spray me, cuff me. You know, they have no, you know, they don't care about your well-being. So they got me cuffed. I'm just like snout, blah, they just, you know, this mace. They're just letting me suffer. end up taking me to Seg. So that's my first experience in SEG, where, man, you really get your fortitude tested,

being locked in a cell for, you know, 23 hours a day. And I was there, like I said, in stage, yeah, you can fight. It doesn't really matter. But if you seriously injure somebody, I shattered his nose. So the whole time, they're like, man, we're going to file free world charges on you. They shipped me up by San Antonio to a unit called Demiq. Mingez, where it's all Hispanic.

And that's before the actual prison, I got a taste of, like, the real racial, like, gangs calling shots. Like, who goes to child first? Who goes to commissary? These different things. I was on medium custody. So, like, with the rough people back there through my little nine months. But I get out of there, and now, once again, I'm on probation.

Did they charge you? They charge you a bus in the news? The whole time I was on pins and needles. They never filed. the free world charges. Good. Oh, it must have felt great.

Oh, yeah. Busting that dude shit. Man, I'm telling you, so when they release you, you know, they call you out and you're like, you're about to go home and everybody tells you

they're going to have a bench warrant. So like, as soon as they release you, the cops will be there. So like, the whole time, I'm like looking like, fuck, they're going to come get me.

Yeah. They never did. And I ended up leaving. So I was good. So then after that, you know, I, Wanted to make some changes, but I still wasn't all the way there yet.

And I was very good at living a double life. So you got three felony drug charges now. Yeah. So this time I have the two state jail weeds, and I got the point zero one, you know, on the... They call that distribution? No, it's possession of the control system. Right, right. So now I'm still on probation, though.

So I get out on the probation, and I did everything I was supposed to do. Like, I was still smoking. I would take like the certos. I don't know if you know what that is, but to clean my system. Still hustling, still doing things. And past all my piss tests, did all that. I ended up, you know, I got caught driving with suspended license. Because, you know, back then, Texas had all these fines.

You could not get your license back if you were going through some shit. And so I did four and a half years on the five-year probation was almost done, get caught with suspended license. Now I go and, you know, me being the self-righteous young man that I am when I go in front of the judge, you know, I think I went open plea in front of him, which is where he determines the outcome. You know, you present the case instead of just signing for something or whatever. And I'm like, sir, you know, I did all this time. I never got in trouble, never failed a pissed ass. I mean, I have to get to work. I have to drive, you know, how else am I going to pay my probation fees and stuff?

And DA slam me. They're like, oh, so basically what you're saying is. as long as you follow most of the laws, you don't have to follow all of them. You're above the driving laws and stuff. And the attorney said, I mean, the judge said, you know what, I'm tired of giving you chances. I'm sending you to six years in TDC.

You're going to six years. For a driving without a license? Yes, and I'm in there on the eight ounces of weed is why I'm on probation. Now drive with suspended license, sends me to prison for six years. Okay, so before you complete, pleaded your probation for the eight ounces of weed, you caught dry, I was suspended license.

Which is not even a felony. No. And they just basically revoked your probation. And even though you've done four and a half years off of five, now you have to go do the whole five years. Six. They gave me six. That's fucking awful. Oh, it gets worse.

Holy shit. It gets way fucking worse, bro. So now I got this lawyer and he's time. Oh, man, it's not a big deal. Once again, he was telling him, you get probation? I'm like, bro, you said probation. This is six. You know, they were going to reinstate it supposedly.

He was like, man, it's not a big deal. That's a weed charge. You got a six. You'll go do nine months a year. Hell, you'll be out before the Super Bowl. You'll be good. So I go back to the pod and everybody's all excited. What's up, man?

You get probation or what? I'll never forget. There's a dude from Kaleen, Texas named Killa, black dude. He's like, what happened, Cuth? I'm like, man, they gave me six years. And it was like six years, you got a drug free zone, don't you? I'm like, well, yeah, it's just a weed chart. He's like, nah, because you got a drug free zone.

You got to do five flat before you even see parole. I'm like, man, ain't no way. You know, all it is is a weed. He's like, man, I'm telling you, I got a home girl for weed. You're doing the whole thing. I'm like, ain't no way. So I had a girlfriend at the time. Funny story.

This chick that I was with, I had took on Jerry Springer and all kinds of stuff. That's a crazy story. Actually, he took her on Jerry Springer? Yeah. Take a shot. Do we tell the Jerry Springer. You don't have to talk about it, but it's interesting because you had a Mori situation with your baby mama. And now you took a chick on Jerry Springer.

What is your life, dude? My life is insane. You don't deserve him to be in prison. My life is a movie, bro. It really is. It's a movie. Joe Dirt. Yeah.

If you look up Jerry Springer Rumble in the Jungle, Corey with the Keys on Jerry Springer. It's still on Facebook. Hell yeah. We'll let them look that up. Yeah. But anyway, so I'm with this girl now and I'm, you know, we're getting serious or whatever. And I said, baby, you know, they're trying to say I'm going to do five years flat. I know some bullshit.

It's just some weed. Can you call a lawyer? Somebody else, not my lawyer, and find out. And so the next day I'll never forget I called and she's like, hey baby. And I could hear in her voice my stomach job. I'm like, what? Why you sound like that? I talked to the lawyer and he's right.

They sat on a drug free zone. You don't see parole until you serve five years. I'm like, no, there's no way. I'm like, man, talk to a parole attorney. There's got to be, you know, because it's like there's always a solution, right? There's no way for weed and a suspended license. I'm going to sit in prison for five fucking years in Texas prison with no AC with chumbo's and all. Like, there's no way.

And so the next day, I'm sorry, baby. The parole attorney said, don't. even waste your money because you're not going to see parole. And I'm like, oh my God, man. And that was the sickest feeling that I've ever felt at that point. Because at this point, I realize I'm not going home. Yeah. You know, usually it's like, oh, nine months sucks, but I can do it five years, bro. And I remember I was in county. And in county, we had these four-man pods. And I'm the only white guy in the pod. All three of the rest are black dudes. I'm the only one that has store. They're all hungry they're all looking at me like want some food one of them is a devout satanist that would

cut his head with a razor put a pinagram on his pillow and pray to satan in the cell and i just remember thinking like wow this is going to be my life for the next five years this fucked up yeah isn't that crazy dude i was so sick i remember asking this dude i'm like i'm trying to get myself hyped up i'm like man i know there's got to be some good points to this as this dude he had done like 10 like, man, what's the best story? You had to have some fun down there. He's like, man, I don't really know. I'm like, man, there's got to be some cool shit.

He's like, oh, yeah, one time my home boy got a big pack of square. We had square. We just smoked square after square until we got sick and down there threw up. I'm like, man, I don't even like cigarette. That sucks. That's the best you got, bro. This is going to fucking suck. So quickly getting past this.

So, you know, while we're in the county, I tell her, like, I know you're not going to hold me down for five years. You might as well just split up. She's like, no, I love you. like I'm gonna be here. And you know, you wanna believe it. You wanna think it's true. But I know it's not.

You gonna get dig down, whatever the case may be. I'm like, if you're really about that life, let's get married while I'm in here. So we can at least get contact visits and stuff like that. Did they have conjugal visits in Texas? Not conjugal, but if you're not married, you see them through the glass. You don't even get a hug, you get no physical contact.

If you're married, you can at least get a hug, grab some ass, a quick kiss or something. You know what I mean? Some kind of human contact. So we got married. My stepdad stood in as a proxy. We got married while I was in jail. And, you know, at this point in time, my mom had passed and I had been hustling, so I had left her with like six grand. And I should have took, you know, she had all my jewelry, my guns, all my stuff. I could have sent it over to my stepdad's. But I'm like, man, it's my wife. You know, you're going to hold me down.

As soon as I left and I got to prison, like all of a sudden, this was the worst time of my life, Johnny. This is where shit got real. So I'm in prison. It's in Bonham, Texas. I was in Buster Coal Unit. And we're in 10 buildings. No AC. When you're in the transfer facility, you don't get fans.

You don't get radios. For this big 60-man dorm, we have one fan up on the ceiling in each corner. It's 120 degrees. I mean, you're just pouring sweat. I remember you couldn't sleep at night because it would feel like bugs were crawling on you. When the sweat dripped, you were like, you know, so hot, bro. And in prison, you at least can put a fan in your face that will blow hot air. And here you have nothing.

And I wanted to, you know, show that I'm going to do something positive with this time. So I had took an HVAC class. And I'll remember you would be so hot at night. You couldn't sleep until like one, two in the morning when it finally cooled off and your sweat dried enough to fall asleep. And then at stupid times, they do chow is stupid-ass time. So at like 4.30 in the morning, they call chow. So if you don't want to starve, you know, now I got two hours of sleep.

I get up for child. You got to stand there like cattle, you know, waiting for them to unlock the door, go eat your slop, come back. Then at 6.30, you got to get up for class. So I'm trying to function on a couple hours of sleep in this heat, people fighting, talking shit. The phone call slowly start declining a little bit. Like they're not coming like they were. I'm not getting the letters. Within like a month or two, she completely ghost me.

steals all my money, all my stuff. So now I'm in here with absolutely nothing, bro. Like, I know I'm doing minimum five years. I got a six-year sentence. My dad's in prison. My mom's dead. I don't have any support. I'm not getting no letters, no commissary, no nothing, bro.

And that was a very depressing. It's the worst. It's got to be the worst time of your life. Can't get worse than this. No, you know what? Thank God. It's a beautiful thing. And it transitioned my whole demeanor.

really transformed my life because at this point I got so low that I came to a point where like I had nothing but my own fortitude in God and I'm like it can't get any worse than this so it can only go up. And then at that time I started finding little hustles like I've always been a good writer so I would write custom poems for people like you could tell me you got into it with your old lady and you're sorry and it's Valentine's and I write a poem that was so customized they would think they wrote it. And then I'm a musician, so I would write songs and people would, like, throw some soups on the table.

Like, man, hit that song again, bro. And, you know, we'd be going down through there. So I started finding little hustles. Then you get a job. You steal some bleach from the laundry or, you know, whatever. So I started hustling, and I got to a point where I'm like, wow, like, I'm okay. Like, no matter how bad it gets, I'm going to survive.

Nothing can stop me. And I decided right then and there, I'm like, you know, I'm not going to. to be a victim. I'm going to become a victor. I'm not going to serve this time. I'm going to make this fucking time serve me. And so I set my mind. And, you know, a lot of success is all mental. It's all your mind frame. So instead of being, man, I came from a background. I struggled. I was poor. You know, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to turn all these negatives into a positive. I'm going to use this time like a boot camp. I'm going to read every book I can fucking read. I'm going to

work out. I'm going to get in the best shape of my life. I'm going to study real estate. I'm going to take every class and that's the mind frame I was in I was no longer in prison I was like in the military just you know getting ready and so you know you do up to two years in the transfer then you get shipped to your ID unit I got sent to a Dolph Briscoe unit and that's like a real unit where people are doing real time and you know there's a lot of gang banging a lot of fighting and you know you know how it goes being a white guy that's going to talk to who you want to talk to and do what you want to do, you're going to bump heads. So usually every unit I went on, I would get into some fights. One of the stories that everybody likes to hear is my craziest fight. So the most hardcore

fight I was in at this time was with a punk named Coco. Big gay dude, 200, big old swole black dude named Coco, flamboyant. In my prison, it was Apple. There was always one big, jacked black gay guy. Yes, bro. Who will fuck you up, who will knock motherfuckers out. Dude, it was so terrible because he knew what he was doing.

So his whole scam was, he was like, hey, let me get a honeybun. Let me get this and that. And if you tell him no, then like, I'll beat your bitch ass. And then it's like, if he beats your bitch ass, then you just got beat up by a punk. And if you whip him,

you're not getting a whole lot of cool points. So I would just try to avoid him. You know, when he comes somewhere, I find a reason to go. somewhere else, but they're gonna corner you eventually. You know what I mean? He's like, let me get some chips, let me get some chips. Like, look, bro, I can't give you no chips,

like, what you mean, you can't give me no chips? I'm like, man, I gotta make it last to the story, I can't. And you know, it's all loud in there and everything. I was saying, like, well, you a bitch, and it's like everything stop, like, the tape stop, everybody, look. I'm like, you know, if I don't do anything, I got punk by a punk, it's gonna be a rough road. If I get whoop behind, that's bad, but I'm like,

Fuck. All right. Come on, Coco. Let's go to the back. So we go back there. As soon as we get back there, he just rushes me. Big old black, dude,

just starts swinging, bro. And we just start, you know, there's not much room to move. So we just start trading legs. He's hitting me. I'm hitting him. And I can feel it's starting to, like, go black.

Like, it's fixing to get me. And I went to, like, survival mode. Like, if he knocks me out, this is not going to be good. So I just fucking went crazy. I started hitting him. And I ended up knocking him down. And then it almost became a racial right.

Because, like, even though this is a gay guy that they're not really supposed to support, you know, a lot of people in there, you might have seen this, too, are, like, undercover. So, like, some of the most gangster, hardcore people, you know, secretly be doing some shit. Like, there was a guy named Shytown that was the tattoo man, and he would always be in the cell with Coco. Coco ain't got no store, but Coco's always getting fresh tattoos. And the dude's Shy Town, like, nah, hell no, white boy, we ain't going to let you do it like that. I'm like, bro, he called me a bitch. He charged me up. And it's like everybody's surrounding.

I'm like, oh, fuck, it's about to be a race riot. Luckily, cooler heads prevail. And they're like, damn, shot time, why you tripping on the punk? The punk called him a bitch. It ain't his fault. Making him ugly. Yeah. You make this girlfriend ugly, man.

You can't do that shit. Yeah, that was a crazy-ass story. But, yeah, so that happened. I end up, I learned that you can do prison one or two ways. You can do it the easy way or the hard way. I've done the segue, fighting in, locked in a cell. It's exhausted. It sucks, bro.

So I'm like, they always got a worse place for you. You think it's bad here? We can put you down here and be your food. We can make even smaller boxes for you. Yes. Yeah. So I realized after the state jail stint, I'm like, okay, I don't want to do my time like that. So I figured out that I could get good jobs.

And one of my things is I've always had an affinity for the ladies. Like I like talking to women. I like being in the presence of women. That's why I hate prison. I don't want to be locked up around a bunch of dudes all day. You know, it's just not my style. Even in the free world, I might have like one solid homeboy or a cousin, and other than that, I'm hanging out with females. So I would get jobs to where I could still fraternize with the women.

I would get like an outside hallway porter job where everybody else is put up and I'd be out in the hall and I'd be talking to them. And if you ever want to test your game to see if you really got game, when you've got a thousand other people who are dressed the same as you have the same haircut, you're all working out, you don't have anything to differentiate. yourself from them. Your mouthpieces, your whole soul game, you're going to learn some things. So who, who, the prison guards? Yeah, the prison guard, the female guards. So that's what I would kind of do to pass my time. So I would write, I would write like little song, like love song, like, hey, check this out. What do you think? We'd get on the speaker, you know, in your cell and talk to them. And I had a couple girlfriends in there that, you know, would bring me in stuff. A lot of people, they're wanting to bring in phones and drugs. I didn't want to live

I wanted to get the hell out of there. So my thing would be like, bring me some creatine, some protein powder, you know, different stuff like that. Wow. So you did, you got out in five. So even as a trustee and everything, I did five. I went to see parole. And at this, I ended up working my way up where I was working in the warden's office, trustee camps and everything. So I'm like, finally my five came up.

Like, I'm good. I'm going to go home. Denied. I'm like, what the fuck? I did five on a six and y'all are denying me. And I ended up doing five years in like nine months. Three months, I'm ready to rocket to the door. Then they call me for parole.

Oh, we're giving you parole. So you have three months so they can get their numbers up and say that Texas is giving out parole. Yeah, we just had a guy in here, a cop that did 20 for, I mean, it was just the most insane, corrupt Texas corruption story I've ever heard. He said a lot of those people on the parole board are former COs. And you know how smart the CEOs are. Like their fucking high school dropouts, just like the inmates, right? So, but they, they just know they're cool with this person. And so, yeah, here,

here's a job deciding people's fates. That's crazy, bro. Yeah. They have too much power. And no accountability. None. So, yeah, it's like, again, that guy, Carmelo Anthony, that kid, after they gave him 35 for stabbing the white kid. Yeah. Like people like, oh, it's all right. You'd be out in 17. Like, not necessarily at all. That's just the earliest you could be up for parole.

But they're going to deny you a lot. Oh, yeah. No, for sure. It's crazy. So I did eventually end up getting out. And like I said, my mentality had changed. I'm like, man, I made it through hell. I survived in that.

Now I'm free. I can move around. Like, there's nothing that. you can do to stop me. So when I initially got out, you know, I needed to make money. I would go with my stepdad, you know, laying carpet and tile. I knew that was never, that was never my type of thing. I was built for something else. And the only job that I've ever had that was a little legitimate job was serving tables. So I go in a suit and tie. It's funny that we talk about this because it's some Texas shit. I went in a suit and tied to chilies

and applied for a job and they're like, bro, why are you in a suit and fucking tie? It's chili. bro, like, you're hired. So I would hustle. And while I was in prison, somebody told me, they were like, man, you should look into selling cars. You'd be a good car salesman. That was a big convict hustle. Everybody was talking about when I get out, I'm going to open up a used car a lot. Dude, I'm telling, hey, and I never even thought about it.

I wasn't one of the guys that, you know, was a super car fanatic or anything. But a dude told me, like, you'd be a great fucking car salesman. I'm like, why? And he was like, man, just the way you interact with people. And he was like, and you could make dope boy money. Like, you can make 10, 15, 20 grand a month just selling cars. And it never crossed my mind that you could be successful and make that type of money without having a college degree or anything like that.

So I got it in my head. I remember one day, like, we're getting our asses kicked at the restaurant, you know, people bitching about their food being cold. And I looked in the mirror. I'm like, surely this is not going to be my future, bro. I'm not going to be a freaking waiter at Chili's. So I had one little Walmart suit and tie And I would work double shifts at Chili's

I would work the lunch shift Get off for like a three hour break I put on that suit and tie Smell like baby back ribs And I'd go hit different car lots And all of them would turn me down Oh your record, lack of experience And I hit Belton I hit Temple

Hit Colleen I was ready to give up man I hit probably 20 car lots And the last one I saw Freedom Jeep Chrysler And I'm like maybe this is a sign Freedom I'm like, you know what, I did the shit the right way all this time.

I told him, you know, I'm a feeling I made mistakes and blah, blah, I'm a good worker. None of that shit worked. This time I'm going to do it my way. Have you ever seen the movie Catch Me If You Can? Sure. So I used to watch that in prison and he would fake being a pilot and, you know, he would just play out the role and they would accept it. So I go into the car dealership and I'm like, I got a meeting with the sales manager. I'm going to be the top salesman you've ever had.

I'm going to make you more money than anybody here has ever made you. They're like, what? You got experience. Yes, sir, I've been selling cars the last five years out in Dallas, Texas. And he's like, Dallas, what part? And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, there's Arlington. I'm like, Arlington.

He starts asking me all these questions. I'm like, damn, does he know I'm lying? He's like, man, I'm not trying to drill you. The only reason I ask is because I sold cars out in Dallas for like 20 years. I know all the spots. I'm like, fuck, I should have said Houston or something. But I just kept going with it, bro. And so, mind you, I don't know shit about cars.

I've been in prison for the five years that I was supposedly selling cars. And they end up, it's a crazy story how it all happened, some divine intervention shit. But they end up giving me a chance. And they're like, hey, since you've already sold cars before, you know, you're not getting no training, no nothing. You're on the floor. And so here I am this freaking felon that has no experience with anything in this huge franchise car dealership. But I'm like, fuck, it's either this or baby back ribs. So I got to figure it out.

So I watched every video I could, just started hustling, became a natural. And within my first month, I was there for like two weeks. I became the top used cars. And then my first full month, I became the top of the whole company out of four car lots. And so I started doing that. And for the first time in my life, like I was telling you, you know, when you're in sales and you're good at sales, it's really difficult when you're selling a product that you can't advertise. When you're selling weed, you're selling drugs.

It's like the more you advertise it, the more risk you take. It's hard. When I realized I could sell illegal products and not have to look over my shoulders and I can like freaking advertising, make videos, I just really excelled it. And I started doing great. And for the first time, I started making big, legitimate money, learning, credit. How long did it take you from getting released to like this, to being a success in the car business? So here's the funny thing about that.

So now I've been out about 10 years and I've become very successful on what I do. I'll tell you a little bit about that. But the journey there was crazy, right? Because I think when you've lived that alternative lifestyle, you always battle those demons. So as I was selling cars and I realized like I'm making all this money, now I used to have to hustle and sell drugs to get money to party. And then I still had to use some of that to re-up. I'm just saying, though, what was the tie? from from selling cars starting to sell cars and getting out of prison that was

within a few months that you know it's nothing selling cars yeah so it seems really hard like you're busting your ass and you're slaving forever but it was just a couple of months yeah so it's just like it's it's a good lesson for people that are watching this in prison or maybe just got out of prison absolutely like you you just did a ton of time right in horrible conditions so you can do some time struggling out on the street. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. And this is the thing that I've realized from being in there. If you get out and I don't care if it's a Walmart suit and tie, you get dressed, you don't do the online stuff, you go in person, you shake someone's hand,

you're confident, and you tell them that you're going to be an asset. I don't care what you've got to tell them. If you got to tell them, hey, I'll work the first week for free. I'm going to be the first one here, the last one to leave. I promise you, no one is going to outwork me. How can I be an asset to your team, somebody's going to give you a chance. Yeah. And then you were working for free in the fields being a slave. Now, even if you're working minimum wage, if you bust your ass, they're going to notice that

and they're going to give you an opportunity, or someone over here is going to see you busting your ass and they're going to offer you an opportunity. And always lie about your background. Lie, dude. Lie your ass off. I'm the biggest proponent of that. I tried every time to do the, I showed all my paperwork from prison.

I took this class, that class. They didn't give a shit. And they don't get it. either. Like, they're just like squares. So they're like, oh, we can't take the liability. I'm a big proponent. I taught my buddy. He got out of jail and he has a bunch of charges, did a lot of time. I told him the exact way that I did. Hey, go in there, lie your fucking ass off, telling that you've been selling cars for the last five years. Be smarter than me and actually know the research of what you're talking about. And he did the same thing. And he got a job. They don't have, we think that they got some magic computer that tells them. They don't know if

you used to be a manager at this place or that play. You know, I'm going all in. Right. I'll never have to do that again with the skills that I've learned. But if I ever was starting from ground zero, I'm going to look up a place that got shut down and tell him I was the manager there. Watch fucking YouTube videos and learn the lingo. Have you ever been convicted of a felony?

Nope. Yeah. Look it up. If you catch me, you catch me. You weren't going to hire me anyways. Right. So unless you're a pedophile, then you run for Congress. All right.

You got a skin beef, you got to be in the government. Hey, no, right? No, for sure. So then what, tell us about now, what you're doing now, and, you know, how you've leveled up, even from just being on the floor selling cars. Yeah, so one thing that I will encourage people, especially if you've ever struggled with addiction and that lifestyle, it's really easy to go back. So I wasn't selling drugs. I wasn't living a crazy lifestyle. But I got to a point where I'm making all this money.

I'm like, well, I can still party and have fun. And so I got back into a party phase. And I'm thinking, you know, as long as I'm not selling drugs or anything, I can drink some beers after work or whatever. And that led to a lot of crazy stuff. Like, you know, I remember one time I crashed, just got a new Chrysler 300 that I bought from selling cars. And I went and I'm drinking.

And these girls are like, man, come out to Waco, come party with this. I'm like, no, I'm not going to do it. It's me and my home girl. and you're going to be the only guy. We'll have fun. I'm like, fuck, I can't turn that now. All right, I'm going. Ended up freaking crashing the 300.

Run from, yeah, ran into a pole, knocked the pole down, get out. I'm running from the laws, bro. The laws chased me all through the night. I was at, there was an overpass. I was hiding in the overpass. They're walking beneath me. And if all he would have had to do was look up

and would have saw me and it would have been a rap. They didn't end up seeing me. of getting away. Without going, I had a bunch of crazy things that happened during that time of me partying, ended up getting some DWIs. I got to the point within, within like three years, I ended up starting my own car dealership. And that was a battle in itself because of my criminal record. They tried to black bomb me. It's a crazy story how I ended up actually getting it because they denied me. They told me that they weren't going to give it to me. I was going to waste all my money if I appealed it. I appealed it anyway. There was one person in the committee that I had actually talked to and saw what type of work I was doing and stuff in the

community. And she ended up going to bat for me, overturned the decision. So now I got a car lot with the car lot became successful in that. And then I asked myself, you know, hey, what are people when people are starting to make money? What do they do? Oh, they invest in real estate. So, you know, they call me Corey with the keys because, you know, I had the car keys. now I'm doing real estate. Now I got these properties. And I got to the point there were a few times where I almost lost it all from dabbling in that old lifestyle. My one rule is I'm not going to sell drugs anymore, but I was still partying, you know, with the women and stuff like that.

So there was a couple close calls where I almost lost it. Thank God I ended up not. And at this point, you know, I got two beautiful daughters. I own a car dealership. I bought several investment properties. I've got an apartment complex. I'm also a musician. So one of my dreams, and you may be able to relate to this,

just like how you were writing your scripts while you were sitting in prison. While I was in prison, I had my prison journals, and I'm a little while I never owned a trailer in my family. But I wrote that I was going to get out. I was going to own a business. I read all the books on real estate. I was going to become a real estate investor. Like I told you, I used to write music in prison.

and be banging on the tables while everybody listen to my music. I'm like, I'm going to be a famous musician. And I got out, and with that success mind frame, I ended up accomplishing all those things. So I got the car dealership, became a real estate investor. I linked up with a Texas legend. I know you don't know a lot about Texas, but Little Flip is the most...

Of course. You know about Little Flip? Come on, bro. Yeah. Bro. So I ended up selling him a car, and me and him got cool. He heard my music. I love my music, started doing music with him.

Now I've done songs with several big artists touring all over the world, got a lot of big stuff on the way. Now it's so ironic because I actually go speak in prisons. I've mentored at schools. I go share my story because I think so many people, they feel like if you didn't come from a rich background or if you've got criminal felonies and stuff like that that you can't be anything successful,

We're taught in the matrix that, hey, you have to graduate high school. You have to do good there. So you go to college. You get this college degree. You have to go work 20 years at this company and get retirement. And it's not like that, bro. With the internet, with entrepreneurship, there's so many opportunities out there. Totally agree.

Where anybody can, if you put your mind to something, you can do it. If you believe it, you can achieve it, whatever it might be. Like, if you want to do comedy, if you want to be in real estate. Like, I made a hundred times the money. that I could have thought about selling drugs, having to look over my shoulder, waiting for the cops to come and take it with the legal product.

Like I literally have a billboard. They give me shit in my community because I like creative marketing. So I got a billboard that says who T.F. Is Corey with the keys? And when people drive by, who the fuck is Corey? What the hell? Like, why would so?

You know, I just do off-the-wall stuff, but it makes some Googlers. So like now everybody knows. And it's so crazy, like me, coming from a place where, you know, if anybody saw me coming, it was like, unless they were a dope fiend, like, we don't want this guy around. He's a nobody. And now, like, I was just in the belton parade in my cyber truck, and people were like, Corey, with the keys. And I think it's important that people see that. Like, it's not about where you've been. It's about where you're

going. You can create your own story. People like you and Ian Bick and these different people. It's like, we made our mistakes. We went down that path. We learned from it and created something great. And now the stories that you're sharing with the world are showing other little kids like, hey, I fucked up. I saw it. I got caught with some weed. I did these things. But now I can be a podcaster.

I can be a comedian. I can be a real estate investor. And I think it's important, bro. Well, you have a great attitude. Like, it took me way longer after I got out because I had such a shitty attitude and I was depressed and I was blamed myself and I blamed society.

And you hit the ground. with like a fucking warrior mind, but like a in a positive way. So that's really what it's about. Like you get your mind right first. If you could do the, the quicker you could do that, the quicker you will physically have that which you put out there. So what would you say is the turning point in your life that made your mind shift? Mine was at the rock bottom where I'm like, it can't get any worse than this.

Yeah, I mean, I guess it was kind of like that. I can't really point to one specific instance. instance. I mean, part of it was like the weed game was changing. I didn't realize there was still a ton of money on the street. I thought, okay, as soon as weed became legal in California, that was going to be it. The prices were going to bottom out. There was going to be no racket. I'm glad I thought that or else I might have gone back into it. I just really, there was no motivation anymore. There was no, there was no incentive for me. So that was one one thing. But also it was like my parents, you know, like I couldn't really go back to it because

because I'm not, I didn't grow up like you. Like I grew up in an upper middle class, upstanding. Everybody's parents were together. Nobody's parents were on drugs. It was a beautiful thing. It was a beautiful thing. It was a blessed thing. And when I got locked up, everybody from our neighborhood, like, stood, they didn't

turn their backs, like rich snob people. They were like, they had my back. And so I didn't want to let them down. Because if I got locked up again, they would have just been like, okay, Mitchell's just a career fuck up. So it was kind of more being. responsible to other people, to be honest with you. That's a big important factor because I've almost went left several times, but that's

one of the things that holds me accountable. It's so crazy because I actually had like a SWAT team detective hit me up not too long ago. He was like, hey, Corey with the Keys, hey, would you mind sending one of my officers? He's a big fan. He loves your music. Would you mind sending him a shout-out video? I'm like, what the fuck? Like the cops want a shout-out video?

Like what is going on? When they see me now, they're like, oh, Corey with the keys? what's up. Like I'm an upstanding member of the community. And if I were to mess up, I would be letting so many people down. And I would have so many haters like, see, we knew it. He's a criminal. Y'all should have never trusted him. So it's like, even on the times where I want to go left for myself, it's like I can't let the people that believed in me. That's amazing. So build that life up and then you'll never go back to the other life because you just can't, you can't. You feel like everything happens.

for a reason, do you feel like if you wouldn't have went through the things that you went through, there's no way you would be as successful as you are today? Oh, I would have been loving life. I wish I got away with it. I would have to be sitting in this fucking garage doing this goddamn podcast. No, for sure, for sure, for sure. I mean, yeah, it did take me years to realize that. But yeah, I think if I would have stayed in the game too long and I wouldn't have kind of been able to find

what I was good at, like a skill. And I even felt that when I was like super deep into the game. I was like, I'm not fulfilling who I'm supposed to be. So I did always kind of feel that, right? And when you're stuck selling drugs, and especially when you have success in it, it gets harder to leave it.

So you're almost cursed with it because I'm getting too much money. Like, I want to let go with the fucking, plusies too good. I can't. I'm getting so much, I'm getting, making 50 Gs a week, you know what I mean? So it's like.

And it's the persona. You're that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't want to be that guy, though. I wanted to be a guy, but I didn't want to be the drug dealer. So that was, so yeah, it was the pursuit of my identity was what kept me on the straight and arrow. Because like, who am I supposed to be rather than how much money can I make? Absolutely.

I don't know if that makes any sense. No, it makes perfect sense. And I think that's a big part of it is like, you're like me. Like, I knew I was meant for something great. I just didn't know how to get there. I couldn't see myself working in an office or in a factory doing that was never me. Like when I would go work with my stepdad or, you know, doing the concrete, I'm like, man, I just can't see myself doing this.

And I found out with sales and marketing, like, hey, that's my avenue. I feel like everybody has a skill set. Yeah. They have something that they're great at. Society tries to mold you to be a little cookie cutter, the same person, but you got to find your passion. And if you have a successful mindset, you can... For sure. Yeah.

And I think drug dealing, for me, I was like, I'm not... It's kind of boring. Like, you don't really... You're not utilizing your... Who you are as a person. You know what I mean? Right. Anybody could have good dope.

Right. Exactly. So, wow, that was a fucking fun interview, man. And I appreciate it. Yeah, that was really cool. That was different. That was different. So plug away.

Where can the people find you? Yeah. So it's... Corey with the Keys, C-O-R-Y with the Keys. It's funny, you're the Connect. I own the Key Connect, car dealership and Colleen. So I do in-house financing for people with bad credit. I do regular financing, any kind of car you want.

We got it. I'm a real estate investor, so I'm always looking for good deals on real estate. And then Corey with the Keys on the music. I got songs with Little Flip, R-N-B-FoMob, O-C-C-C-C-P-O-C-E-O-C-A-O-A-A-O-A-A-A-A-O-A-A-W. We got a lot of big stuff happening. So check out the music on Spotify, Apple, all that kind of stuff. And I'm on Instagram, YouTube. Anything, Corey with the Keys, type it in, and you'll find me.

Fuck yeah, dude. Hell yeah, that's awesome. Corey with the Keys, I appreciate you, buddy. Hey, man, I appreciate you, bro. Hell yeah. I've been on a few pauses. This is an awesome interview. I really enjoyed it, man.

All right, bro. Well, come back soon. And, yeah, tap in with us, guys. Corey with Keys. See you next time. Peace.