The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Discussing New Notorious B.I.G. Doc With His Manager and the Director. Plus NFL Free Agency Primer With Sheil Kapadia and “Is This NBA Season a Mess Defensively?”

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

Russillo shares his thoughts and some statistics on what makes this NBA season unique (2:00), before talking with The Athletic’s Sheil Kapadia about names to watch in NFL free agency, including Von Miller, Melvin Ingram, Allen Robinson, Cam Newton, and more (15:00). Then Ryen talks with the Notorious B.I.G.’s manager, Wayne Burrow, and the director of the new Netflix documentary ‘Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell,’ Emmett Malloy, about the inception of the documentary, Biggie’s musical influences, meeting with Biggie’s mother, ultra-rare footage in the doc, the escalation of the “beef” between Biggie and 2Pac, and more (41:00). Finally Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:17:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Big was the first one to actually step out. And again, given the dynamics of his history in terms of how he became who he was and laying down his rap patterns and understanding the jazz and adding all of the story elements from country music. Like when you look at that, then I think it gives you a better understanding of why he was able to come in and slide through that one little hole to make this big fucking announcement that we are fucking back.

What? I'm putting the city on my motherfucking back. Brooklyn, let's go. Let's do this. It's Brooklyn in the motherfucking house. It's on, right? And it wasn't no level of disrespect here in New York. And the damn shit wasn't any disrespect over there.

It was just, I'm here. I'm kicking in this fucking door, and we're going to go. We have an awesome podcast for you today. I've got a story to tell. Biggie Smalls documentary out on Netflix. And we're going to talk to Christopher Wallace's manager and the director of this movie. We're going to do NFL Free Agency Primer,

which is about two weeks away from this. It's already starting with the JJ Watt news, Sheil Kapati, the athletic and some NBA trend stuff. I want to start with some NBA stuff because we have so much else going on in this podcast today. Again, the Biggie Smalls documentary coming out today on Netflix, and then Sheil Kapati is going to do some NFL free agency. But I'm just in this moment where I've watched basketball probably every night except for two, and one of those nights was the Super Bowl where I was like, you know what,

maybe we'll take a little break from it. And I'm noticing some things. And I'm not even sure that I'm right about this, but I'm going to work my way into a bigger question about what it is we're seeing this season. So right now in the East, it's a mess. Look at some of these records. First of all, every team from the four seed Knicks,

shout out to the Knicks, 18 and 17. I knew Tibbs could coach. I've said numerous times, he's the single most impressive person I've ever talked basketball with. And yet I thought, why would you bring him in when you don't even really know what the roster is? And there's something that's happening this year with effort and focus and game to game planning. Charlotte does a great job with this. Borrego is a terrific coach where it's like, Hey, who's the opponent?

Almost like a football game where some teams, usually the more talented teams are like, look, we're just better than this team. So who really cares? And then you end up losing look basketball over the course of season. You're going to have losses all over the place. We're like,

that didn't even make any sense. But Charlotte game plans really well. The Knicks do this really well. I think Oklahoma City at 14 and 20, that's like a raging A plus for me, considering what that roster really is. And you'll notice at times with the Thunder, and I've seen this with other games too, it reminds me of the Magic game at Golden State where the Magic didn't have anybody other than Vooch really because they had all these injuries.

But you'll see two games kind of play around for 40 plus minutes. And then the better team just goes, OK, enough of this. And it looks like it's a completely different basketball game from like a college team and a pro team because one team is locked in. But this season is so difficult to navigate. Guys are tired. Most of the arenas are still empty. We're starting to have some people trickle in. It's going to happen more and more here in March. But anybody that you talk

to will just say, look, guys are spent. Guys are really, really tired. So the teams that are a little bit more game ready are playing better. And I think the Knicks are a great example of that. All right. So back to the East. Teams 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, those are the seedings in the East, all have 17 losses. Knicks, Heat, Celtics, Raptors, Hornets, and then 9 and 10 Pacers and Bulls. That's going to impact the trade deadline. The play-in game will impact the trade deadline. I like to do updates on who's actually still close to being the 10 seed in the play-in game,

but as it stands right now, it's actually not that bad. The Bulls are only two games under.500. The Bulls are a much better basketball team than you thought at the beginning of the year. That first week was like, oh my God, these guys are going to be awful. But I'll add this in there. If you're really locked into Chicago basketball, there's some inexplicable losses there. Nothing as bad as what happened in Sacramento last night. Nothing as bad as what happened in Sacramento last night. And again, Charlotte, the Hornets keep finding ways. And this is year two of them being competitive in games that don't make any sense.

All right, so back to the standings. We mentioned that, how it's all bottled up. The trade deadline stuff, if I threw a few names at you, I think Lowry is resigned to the idea that he's going to be traded. I'm not sure that it will happen, but he seems to think that he's going to be traded because from what I've heard, Lowry's going like, look, I'll probably be out of here at some point. But Toronto is sitting there at 17 and 17 because everyone is basically 17 and 17 other than the Sixers, Nets, and Bucs.

The Bucs have won five in a row, by the way, so they're good again. The Celtics part of it with the traded player exception of 28.5 million, this Boston negativity is now to the point where I think it's almost too extreme. Like if you just want everybody out, I think you're, you're, you're kind of an extremist, but I just think that there's so much anti-Boston stuff, whether it's local for the negativity, the way that people grow up to the national part of it, where there's just an anti-Boston things that are going on for a couple of years. And you could say, hey, it's been going on forever.

No, I think it's pretty, it's been heightened for a bunch of different reasons the last couple of years where watching this team play and through their struggles, you know, they're back to 17 and 17. I still don't think they're this bad, despite some of the problems with the roster. But for their traded player exception, I thought they did a good job of tempering expectations of that because I think a lot of people, if you're a fan of a team

and you don't really pay attention to that stuff, then all of a sudden you hear about how you get to get a free player that's almost $30 million. It's not a surprise to have people be confused by the whole process and what it really means. And what it usually means is that it doesn't get used or it doesn't get used in the way that you've been sold. We've been over this. 75% of the

trader player exceptions don't even get used. And when you look at the 25% that do get used, you're like, oh, I didn't remember any of those. You're like, yeah, exactly. So would the Celtics just get a player who's getting paid that kind of money that you also have to remember the other team is okay not getting anything back. So when you start figuring out, hey, Harrison Barnes makes a lot of money, maybe we could have him. Okay, but for what? And Harrison Barnes isn't perfect, but you still have to give up something. DeMar DeRozan isn't perfect, but he can score. But now it's another wing that can shoot, but not from distance. So does that really fix who you are? You're just throwing a bunch of scores out there right now to ease the burden on Tatum and Brown.

Vucevic is a name that's brought up all the time. He's really good. He makes 26, then 24, and 22 million. Great numbers for a guy that is that productive. A terrific center. I know he's not perfect. Defensively, he'd want a little bit more, but he's down in Orlando with a group that just can't stay healthy.

But I think Orlando, if you look at where they're at, they're three games out of the plan. I think there are plenty of teams that are just kind of happy being competitive around that. Orlando's had moments where you thought maybe they were close on something, but they just haven't been. So there's a few names there. I still think the Drummond part too, if that ends up being a buyout deal, I would think other teams in the East would try to get involved with that somehow because they wouldn't want to see Drummond bought out and then end up with the Nets. So back to the Nets. We realize the offense is incredible. I'm not even worried about the game against Dallas. I mean, Katie and Kyrie not playing. Katie hasn't played

for a bit here. Kyrie's going to be down for a bit. But when they're together, when those three guys are together, we realize the Nets are putting together the best offense in the history of basketball. But when I hear that, I'll say, okay, does that mean now that I have to look at them as the all-time greatest offense because the number says so? Or do I have to look a little bit deeper about where offense is going the last couple years, which we've done, or more specifically, what this year is? So let's look at a number here, defensive rating. It's how many points do you allow per 100 possessions? Very simple, because we realize the Nets are scoring per 100 possessions, the greatest

number ever. By the way, you know who did it last year? Dallas. So Dallas historically was the greatest offense of all time last year, but I don't think any of it is ever going to say, you know what's the best offense I've ever seen? That Mavericks team that lost in the first round of the Clippers. And I'm not doing that. I'm not saying like, hey, the Nets are going to lose here in the first round.

But I think we have to understand the concept of rising tides, right? Rising tides raise all boats. And basketball has turned into this offensive explosion where whoever is leading the league in offense is going to be leading a league where offense is just more prevalent than it was even just a few years ago. So if you look at defensive rating right now, there are 20 teams in the NBA that allow 110 points or more per 100 possessions. Okay, 20 teams.

And if you look at February and you look at some of the other defensive numbers, whatever the defense is this year, which is bad for a million different reasons, it's getting even worse. It's trending worse. I don't even know what the hell this is all going to look like at the end of the season. This is what the Nets are. The Nets are both one of the most talented offensive teams I've ever seen and also a product of today's league. Last year, if you look at it, you had 15 teams that allowed 110 points or more per 100 possessions. Last year, another weird year. We're on year two of weird year. So that doesn't seem like it's that big of a deal. But here's the number that should really hammer this point home.

Five years ago, only one team, one team had a defensive rating allowing 110 points or more per 100 possessions. That was the Lakers five years ago. So we've gone from five years ago to only one team having that kind of defensive number to now, if I really wanted to sell this to you, I could have rounded up on like four other teams. And I could say there's only six teams defensively that are better than that number. So I'm looking at road records. I'm looking at records versus West and the East and how bad the East is in that category. And then

I'm looking at just the numbers and the fact that there's a level of effort that just isn't there. And I'm not blaming the players. This isn't a, hey, these guys are going to try harder. I think this has been really hard on these guys and we're not even halfway there. I think it's been hard on everybody, but at least for the guys that we're paying a lot of attention to and watching on TV, you know, I'm not trying to make somebody struggle out to be more than somebody else's you get the point here, but when you'll talk to staffs and there's excuse making that I've been able to pick up on over the years. And then there's now the kind of conversations I'll have where I'll go, Hey, what was going on over here? Like what happened on this or something like this? And you're just like, you know, guys are just not locked in the way

they're used to being locked in to, you know, the way you respond to the crowd. The fact that when you're down 15, I mean, did you see some of the blowouts this weekend? It's absurd and it keeps happening. And there's another part of this where I now think of the individual effort and I don't know that I'm even right about this, but I'm still going to propose the theory. Will we see production from players and teams this year that we'll look back on and go, well, that was really misleading. This wasn't supposed to be a very good rookie class for the draft. It's definitely better than people were going to give it credit for, but could any of that be connected? We're rookies coming in

who don't know any better, who couldn't be more excited just to start their NBA lives, and they're out there not only with fresh legs because their college season was a disaster, but now all of a sudden they're having way more of an impact, this class, rookies in general, just because they're taking it more seriously and they're just excited to have NBA gear. They're not over it the way a guy four or five years in that's used to msg on a saturday night or the staples center for a big time matchup and they're looking at this like this just isn't the same where the rookies don't know any better we have 38 players averaging 20 or more a game five years ago it was 21 players so this is not about um tempering expectations

of the nets i. I'm not. I'm just putting the Nets in the context of what this season is. And also, does this season mean that we are getting production results from players, from teams? Are we getting results that we'll look back and be like, wow, that's funny. We thought this team was good, or we thought this player was good, or we thought this rookie class was really good,

or this is a mistake that somebody made in free agency. Oladipo is a name that I was going to throw in the trade rumor stuff because he turned down a two-year extension. The only reason he turned down an extension, I don't even know why they bothered offering it, is they could only offer him with the CBA rules a $45 million two-year extension when he's eligible for a four-year deal for 151 or a five-year deal beyond that if you were to stay with Houston after free agency. So he's going to say no, but he's 28. I think he turns 29 this spring and he hasn't even been very good. I don't even think it's physically either. I guess shooting numbers just haven't been that great. And I'm an oval, you know, look, I thought there was almost too much anti-Ola Depot stuff out

there. So it's simply a theory. I don't even have the answer to it. But the next time you hear somebody say like this Nets team, we've never seen this before. Well, that's true. But there's also a lot of other stuff we've never seen before. And I am curious in a couple of years how we'll look back on this year and go, were we tricked by some production, whether it be the team or the individual? One of my favorite NFL guys, Shil Kapadia from The Athletic. We'll do some free agency stuff here. Let's just run through it. Let's have a bunch of fun with all this. So JJ Watts off the board, the defensive free agent talent was clearly on the edge. We'll get

to that a little bit later. It feels like it's almost all defensive line guys. But for whatever J.J. was, we can say he's not that. But what he is now is still really good. And I thought you mapped it out really well that forget the sacks, he was off the charts in a lot of really important categories here. And that's why we see this investment from Arizona, which I think makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think it raises the ceiling of their defense. You know, you look at the Cardinals last year, their defense was really good. It was like a top 10 unit. It was their offense that really struggled. And that's where they need to find answers. Now, I do think there's a lot of risk here, though. I mean, I didn't think he was going to get this number. You know, the reports are two years, 31 million, not because he's not a good player. Like you mentioned, he is a very good player at this stage of his career, but he missed 32 games the previous four seasons. And so like,

if you're the Cardinals and you're looking at where do you invest your resources this off season, I kind of thought they were going to try to build on that offense a little bit more and say, Hey, let's get that top five, top 10 offense, and we'll figure everything else out. They're going in a different direction. So Chandler Jones comes back. They've got what, you know, they certainly could have a top five, top seven, top eight defense. I just wonder how much it raises the bar of that ceiling, unless unless Flip Kingsbury just comes up with answers offensively schematically. No, I mean, it's a good point. No one's ignoring the loss injuries. I felt like it didn't seem like many people realized that he was good this past year. Yeah. You year. And when the numbers came out, I remember Diana Rossini was on it, was like,

hey, the market's around 15, 16 million. And I thought, okay, that's interesting. But then I was like, well, why hasn't he done anything yet? Because then sometimes I'll get nervous. Did somebody feed a number to somebody to set them? Because sometimes it'll happen with an agent. And then it's like, what happened to that awesome offer you got three weeks ago and you're still you're still holding out so what happened so she was right on it with the number the injuries there but his win rate on the pass rush his numbers against the run i think they'd surprise some people because he just he was being held to the standard that he wasn't at anymore so maybe the number overall you know what let's let's not say on jj watt any longer let's keep moving. Let's go with the rest of the defensive guys, though, because Vaughn

Miller misses all of 2020. Yes, he was in the best shape ever according to reports going into OTAs last year. They've got an option. He's 32. The Denver Broncos defense overall missed 247 games. The injury was the forced most in the NFL.

What do you think happens with Vaughn? It's a really tough one. It's one I don't have a strong feeling either way. I guess I would kind of lean to he might be available, you know, because if you look at it, their defense, Vic Fangio, I don't think he's a great head coach, but I do think he's one of the best defensive coaches

in the NFL. Like he's able to just, you know, whatever 11 guys you throw out there, I feel good that he's going to maximize their talent and their ability. Now, obviously, you always want better players. I'm not saying you throw a bunch of scrubs out there, but I just wonder with kind of the way they play and how they played last year, whether they say, you know what, he does cost a lot.

He's getting up there. We're not competing for a Super Bowl next year anyway. Let's move on. Let's use that money elsewhere. And if that happens, I mean, he would instantly become like a top five, top seven free agent, especially when you look at guys who are going to get the franchise tag. So I guess I'm leaning a little bit towards him being available, but don't feel that strongly about it. Leonard Williams. I was starting my

breakdown to tee you up and be like, is Leonard Williams good? Okay. We know he plays all over the place. He was defensive player of the conference of the NFC, or I guess I should say it this way. He was NFC player of the week twice on defense. I finally got there on the third try. The sack numbers career high. So there are some really good things there, despite the fact I still like everybody's going, ah, he's 20 million, you know, oh, they're going to have to franchise. Do they tag him and then trade him? This year was important, no doubt,

but I think there's still a lingering, who are we actually getting here for paying Leonard Williams 20 million? It's so funny how much opinions can change one year to the next.

If you go to my archives from last year, I'm just crushing Gettleman. Gettleman, you traded two picks for Leonard Williams. The guy had like one and a half sacks

in an entire season. What are you doing? And now I'm like, Leonard Williams the guy had like one and a half sacks an entire season what are you doing and now I'm like Leonard Williams you know might be the top free agent on the market it's a it's absolutely a fair point I mean I thought he had underachieved for a while I think it's a good example about how defensive linemen can mature later and also how much change of scenery situation scheme all those things matter for a guy like that. So I think Williams was absolutely, like, he was fantastic last year. I don't think the numbers are inflated. He added 11 and a half sacks. And for, like, an interior lineman, you know, that's almost unheard of. That's, like, near Aaron Donald territory.

So I think he's going to get that deal. I don't know, you know, last year we saw DeForest Buckner. He gets traded to the Colts. He gets $21 million a year. And so if you look at Williams last year compared to Buckner, like comparable impacts, I think. So I think he's got a chance to be in that range. But I'm kind of with you.

If I were a team and looking to add like an impact player, I would be a little bit nervous about saying, all right, Leonard Williams can come into my scheme and I'm going to get the guy we saw last year compared to the guy we saw previously. Yeah, and I feel like DeForest put up more consistent seasons where I mean, when DeForest was right, I never was worried about it, you know, and with Leonard Williams, he looks great out there and it's, it's awesome that you can do some different stuff with them. And look, he had a really good year with the giantsants, but that's kind of one of those deals where sometimes it's the winner's curse where

if you're the team that gets them 20 million and the Giants didn't want to keep them, and we can talk about cap restrictions and all this stuff. I mean, the amount of cap space that's out there now for this off season, that's probably the biggest problem because whatever some of these projections are with the amount of cap space that exists, even with the uncertainty of COVID, no one's going to care, especially when we start hearing these rumors about what the new tv deal is and all this kind of stuff like we have to factor in all of these things and the fact that whatever outdated way we looked at the cap which was outdated when it was happening it feels like the teams are finally going you know what this isn't the end of the world if we do some of these moves to move stuff

around um i've always loved melvin ingram when he's out there i didn't realize you meet 32 this spring god that feels like he's been but he's drafted in 2012 he's missed 12 games the last two years it feels like the chargers part of it at least is over for him yeah i'm with you i love ingram i love watching him play when he's right and when he's healthy i mean the problem was he wasn't healthy last year and he wasn't productive. And so now at 32 years old, what kind of deal does a guy like that get? He's going to be an interesting case because I always liked that sort of veteran mid tier pass rusher market. You know, I would rather spend like,

I don't know what he's going to get, you know, maybe 12 million, 11 million on a one year deal. Like I would rather take a shot on Melvin Ingram for that than to pay Leonard Williams 80 million over four years. And so I think you'll see a lot of contending teams kind of shop in that market. It's Melvin Ingram. It could be a guy like Justin Houston. Like there are three or four guys there that you say, these guys have had incredible careers. You know, if they can be healthy, they can come in, they can play the majority of the snaps. If nothing else, they can play on third down. And so I want Ingram to get with like a

creative defensive coordinator because I love when, you know, he gets moved around and it's just like lining up in between like the guard and the tackle and you don't know where he's going to rush from and his hair is on fire and he's healthy and he gets after the quarterback. So I think he is a fun player to watch. I think he's one of these guys who got screwed a little bit in terms of when he became a free agent. Yeah, I mean, the last two years, part of it, and, you know, the age,

everybody's kind of different. Like some guys are just a different 32 than other guys at 32 years old. Like Vaughn Miller is healthy. I don't care that he's 32. I just don't because that's what i think of him are there any other defensive guys you really like and then let's i guess when you start ranking

what was it like eight or nine players before we even got to a defensive back yeah yeah no the cornerbacks are especially not good one other uh pass rusher i kind of like uh is an unknown guy and we're digging deep here for the audience rome Okwara from the Detroit Lions. He had 10 sacks last year. He's 26 years old and they weren't like these, you know, Bobo sacks where he's just kind of sitting there and he cleans up and it's a coverage sack. Like he was legit winning, I thought, on the edge. So again, it's a matter of like, he's probably going to get like 10 million is the max I would think he would get. He might be seven or 8 million. And that's the guy who maybe he's ascending, hitting his prime. So I don't know if you're a team and you're not going to contend next year and you need pass rush help. Those are kind of

the guys I might look at more so than the top of the market guys. All right, let's look at some of the offensive players here. Big Ben, they say he's going to be back. He's a $41 million cap hit. He can't come back at that number. They've got until March 17th, start of the league year here. How do they make this work? And is there any part of this that surprises you so far? I think it's mostly, they're just going to add years to the end of this contract. So I don't think he's going to take like a big pay cut. I think it'll just be spreading out that cap it over, you know, whatever it might be four years rather than just this year. It does surprise me because I thought they were like pretty brutally honest and it did not seem like they wanted Ben Roethlisberger to come back. They're kind of like, you know, Ben, it's a, it's a lot of fun out there

for retired players. I mean, maybe you just kind of want to call it quits. Well, how about the quote at the end of the year? They're like, as it's, as we sit here today, Big Ben is a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers. And so you were like, wait, what's going on? And, you know, I think that there was a little breeze in Ben Roethlisberger this year where, you know, there are numbers that you look at with breeze where you say, hey, he's holding up, he's still making good decisions.

And then you see him in spots where you really going to make make a difference back there. And you go, I can't believe the Saints were doing this, that they were able to pull this off. And I'm sure Peyton probably isn't 1% upset that Brees has decided to retire and move on. I feel very good about saying that. And I'm not saying it's the exact same thing with Ben, but it does feel like the organization, you know, Belichick's the only one and he probably gets off on the idea that he is the one that was like, yeah, we actually don't owe you anything.

Go ahead. And then, you know, he watches Brady win a Super Bowl at Tampa. Breeze's final year with New Orleans is probably a favor to Breeze. Is Pittsburgh's final year here with Ben a favor to Ben? I don't know if it's a favor

because the team doesn't have much of a choice. You know, he kind of holds the leverage there. Like they can't just, you know, they can't cut him or just move on from him. Like he's got that contract. And so basically if he wants to play, he gets to play. But from the team perspective, like you look at where they are and they're going to get crushed in free agency. I mean, Pouncey already retired.

They could lose both, you know, two other starting offensive linemen. Juju Smith-Schuster's probably gone. Bud Dupree's probably gone defensively. already retired they could lose both you know two other starting offensive linemen juju smith schuster's probably gone bud dupree's probably gone defensively and so like this is such a natural year for them to just say all right let's you know let's take our medicine we'll move on uh and we'll be good in 2022 because they're never under 500 with tomlin but when the quarterback wants to come back now it's like all right i guess we're running it back here and we'll figure out how maybe we can make the playoffs next year. But I just don't see like a high ceiling for them in 2022.

I feel like last year was really their shot. They start at 11-0 and then we all saw what happened. I noticed your note that you didn't rule out Cam returning to the New England Patriots. Expand on that. That's it. That's the question. I mean, I don't know what they're gonna do you know they don't have a lot of options at quarterback and i know i'm not gonna argue

i'm not gonna be one of these people who just say cam newton was good and no one else knows what they're watching he was not good last year who wants to do that people still doing that i know they were doing a couple years ago trust me because i was getting in arguments with them i can't fathom anyone watching it this year and being like, well, here's what you don't understand about how good game was. I'd be like, all right, whatever. I do think it was a, it was a terrible situation. I mean, any way you look at it, that supporting cast was one of the worst five in the NFL. Now, ideally your quarterback lifts everybody up and gets you to competency. I mean, if it's not great. And so Cam wasn't at that stage in his career. However, you know, like if I were cam's agent i would be able to make easy excuses for him you know he had covid

he comes back he doesn't look the same uh the wide receivers the tight ends are among the worst in the nfl they're not really letting him do a lot it's gordon hayward left and free agency yeah i mean yeah i mean there's there's so much uh can look at it. So I don't know what they're going to do. Like, obviously, Garoppolo, that connection is there. But the Niners have to find somebody before they move on from Garoppolo. And that right now, I would say the odds are more in favor of them keeping Garoppolo than getting rid of him. And then so then you look at their options. I mean, who are they going to get? The free agency class is not very good. Are they going to trade for someone like, I don't know, Marcus Mariota? Like, does that really move the needle for anybody? Are they going to go against the grain of what they've always done? And is this going to be the year Belichick says, I like one of these quarterbacks. Everyone thinks I'm going to trade down because that's what I always do. But guess what? I always had Tom Brady and I don't have Brady anymore. And now we got to get going for the next era. So I think they're a fascinating team because they're in this position where they have cap space they've got a higher pick than they usually have

and it's basically bill belichick the year 2021 almost building a team from scratch how does he think you should do it when you have no option at quarterback garoppolo so you sound like whatever version of that market that maybe people thought but but that it's non-existent. Like it feels like the Darnold market is stronger than Garoppolo's market. Well, the problem is the Niners, what's their solution at quarterback? I don't think they're going to go into next year. I don't think they're going to trade Garoppolo with no other plan. So I think their plan is either find a starting quarterback somewhere,

which would probably be the draft. I don't know that there's a trade option for them right now, but I think the other option that seems like the most likely right now is they keep Garoppolo and they upgrade at the backup spot because they can't afford to have a Nick Mullins, CJ Beathard backup where their season just goes down the drain. Like it's happened two out of the last three years. And so, you know, there are some backups who you're not going to throw a parade for, you know, like Jacoby Brissett. I'll mention Mitchell Trubisky, maybe in a Kyle Shanahan system, like guys who have been below average, but not complete train wrecks for their career. So I think if you sign someone like that, five, $6 million a year, they've won a lot of games

with Garoppolo. That might be what their plan is. Now, if they do add a quarterback, then yeah, I think moving Garoppolo to the Patri be what their plan is. Now, if they do add a quarterback, then yeah, I think moving Garoppolo to the Patriots makes all the sense in the world. I like Brissett as a backup. Are you kidding? Yeah. I mean, in a weird way, where you go, hey, look,

they thought they could upgrade the position, so that's always a little bit of a warning to the rest of us. If you're sitting there arguing in favor of Jacoby Brissett as a five-year starter, and then the incumbent team has him and goes, now let's upgrade immediately, that's very telling. That's what I think is always really important to kind of be like, well, if they were cool, now their teams are right all the time,

but the Colts had no problem going, hey, look, we'll get Rivers at the end here because this is better than Brissett. But as far as backups, Brissett versus Trubisisky um look there's even numbers floating around there that make trubisky look good and i go okay well you know do you believe that like did you find five numbers that make trubisky look good congratulations now my next question would be are you psyched if he's your starter like because don't you know so anyway um Brissette as a backup, I kind of like. We did the quarterback thing there a little bit. Tight end markets thin, huh?

There's really not much there, correct? There's not at all. Hunter Henry kind of leads the way. And I actually think he's kind of overrated compared to what he's going to get on the market. I mean, he's probably looking at $10 or $11 million per year. I mean, he had, what, like 600 yards 600 yards last year was like 12th among tight ends. I mean, are you, are you really opening up the wallet for a guy like that? And it's not like he played with a bad quarterback,

you know, Justin, Justin Herbert was lights out. And so, uh, I would not be, you know, very, uh, very eager to sign Hunter Henry to a contract like that. He got the franchise tag last year under that John Smith, you know, he's a player I like with the Titans. So that would be someone I looked at if I wanted a tight end. But again, these aren't like, you know, Travis Kelsey, George Kittle type tight, tight ends. And then Gronk Gronk is the wild card, but I don't know.

Everyone kind of expects that, you know, he's just going to go back to Tampa on a one-year deal. Makes sense for everybody. Gronk was flat out. If you just rank the best tight ends from last year, he was the best three. He's better than Henry. He's better than Johnnie Smith. It's not even close what he did and how he played after a year off compared to those guys.

I don't know how realistic it is that he would go somewhere else. It was slow coming for Gronk, though. He wasn't getting targeted a lot. He could still always block the hell out of people. But you could start to see them figuring some stuff out there. Especially with some of the Godwin injuries at times.

Tom will be somebody that will bail on somebody in game week to week at times. Is Henry the guy that tweets at people that criticize him? I can't even keep track of that list anymore. Okay, you know what? There's one tight end. There's one of the white tight ends that gets really, really pissy.

So I was like, man, I don't know if Hunter Henry is going to come after this podcast now. So let's go back to the wide receivers. Well, we'll transition over to it. This number is nuts. Allen Robinson, most of you are probably thinking like, oh, yeah, he's pretty good. And I'm not saying he's like a top five receiver, but the fact that he is second, excuse me, the last two seasons, he is third in receiving yards behind Stefan Diggs and DeAndre Hopkins. And that Robinson has put up the third most receiving yards the last two years combined

with that quarterback situation in Chicago. That's like that Josh Gordon deal where for years the run he had with the Browns where you're going, can you believe these numbers Gordon's putting up? I think DeAndre Hopkins just in general and over those Texans years. So Chicago can tag him. They've been talking about a contract with him going back to the beginning of last season. I don't know. This one, the vibe on it feels like they don't really want to pay him as a one, and he certainly sees himself that way, which I don't blame him. So give us a read on this one. the coach, they keep the GM, they're players for these quarterbacks. They don't get any of them. You really want to tag Allen Robinson and keep him and pair him with like Nick Foles or whoever else you're going to play at quarterback. I guess they could think about tagging and trading him, which is something, you know, we see teams do from time to time. But if you're a team in the

market for a wide receiver, now you're going to give up draft compensation for like the right to pay Allen Robinson 20 million a year. I mean, I don't know. There may be a team that does that. I don't know for sure that there's going to be a team that does that. So they're not in great cap space. And so if they want to make other moves and they're going to tag Allen Robinson, they're just going to be pretty much handcuffed. So I'm not a hundred percent convinced that he is going to be tagged. And I think if he's on the open market i do think he's in that 19 million uh 20 million dollar a year range he's only 28 years old you look at what amari cooper got last year you look at what keenan allen got on his extension with the chargers like

robinson is by every metric in that class of wide receiver and he can just line up on the outside one-on-one and who knows if he ever gets with a quarterback who can actually play, who knows what the numbers will look like. So I think he might be the top free agent to actually hit the market. Do you have Godwin as the second best likely available receiver? I've been on the fence with this. I did for a while, and now I'm looking at it. And they really might tag Godwin because the number is not crazy.

I think it would be about $16 million a year to tag Chris Godwin. And I think if he hits the open market, he's going to be in that, you know, 18, 19, $20 million range. So the bucks have options. They have some big free agents. They've got Shaq Barrett, Levante, David. They basically got to decide who do they want to use the franchise tag on. It would not surprise me if they used it on Godwin and then kind of let those other guys walk. I love that my man Corey Davis, who I call in my NFL Jeff Green,

just a player that has blimpses I never really want to give up on, even though there's overwhelming evidence that I should give up on. But Corey Davis is younger, and he was good this year. All right? He was good. and I don't know I mean the thing that I liked about it it wasn't just some complete change it just felt like he played better um so what do you think is going on there because I still think of a team we're going to go hey we're going to make Corey Davis our one I can't tell if I'm so excited that they

see it and that they're hanging on to what we saw from him in college or if you're like why would you pay Corey Davis as a one after just finally a decent season a few years into his career yeah I'm with you I like Corey Davis Davis too and I do think there will be a team that kind of sits out on those top wide receivers and then looks at that uh next grouping which I would put Corey Davis in there and say all right because if you sign him sign him, I mean, I like like sort of mitigating the risk in free agency, you know, and so like Corey Davis isn't going to come in and completely suck. You know, he's going to be at worst, he's going to be like a competent number two receiver. He's 26 years old. He should be in his prime. Like you're probably just not going to get totally

screwed with that signing. And I do think there's upside. Again, maybe I'm with you and we're talking to ourselves. It's something that's not going to happen. But I could see him just building on last year. I mean, he had 984 yards. That's really good at 14 games. And so he did take a step forward. And so I do think there will be a team that pays him. He might be one of these surprise guys where going into free agency,

people say, oh, you know, Corey Davis could be good value. You're not going to have to pay him like Allen Robinson. And then all of a sudden he gets paid I don't know 16 17 million dollars a year I mean that's not what a lot of the projections I see say but um I wouldn't be surprised given his age and his upside if a team kind of falls in love with him is Aaron Jones at running back Packers running back gonna get 15 million a year a year? I don't think $15 million. I had written that $12 million is likely, but maybe he can hit $15 million. Because you know what it's like when guys reach the open market. It's different than when you re-sign with your own team.

And so Zeke got $15 million. Alvin Kamara got $15 million. I mean, we always have these conversations. Do running backs matter? And in the last year, Kamara, McCaffery, Zeke, Joe Mixon got $12 million a year. Dalvin Cook got $12 million a year. So I think $12 million is probably most likely in that Cook-Mixon category. But again, he's hitting the open market. Those guys didn't. They re-signed with their own team. So if you get two teams interested, there could be a team that overpays

a little bit. Do you have one raging bold prediction that you want to go with here? I didn't even tee you up on this. I hate this stuff. I hated when TV used to do this to me. Okay, let me see. Normally they were like, you can just say something that's wrong

and we'll put it in a breakout video. I'm like, yeah, no problem. I think that, I don't know, see that one doesn't have a lot of juice. I was going to give you a Trey Hendricks nugget, but everyone might just sign off of this podcast. If I do that, how about the, uh, I think there's going to be an active trade market, uh, at cornerback. How about that? We talked about the cornerback market and free agency is not good. What about a guy like

the Marshawn Lattimore on the scenes? You know, they're having a lot of cap trouble. They're kind of entering this new era. I could see a team saying, you know what? We're not in love with any of these corners on the free agent market. We've got money to spend. Hey, New Orleans, I think you could probably get a first round pick for him. We'll give you a first round pick for Marshawn Lattimore. I don't know.

I like that. That was that bold enough. OK, I was afraid you were going to like Brandon Scherf, you know, two years front-loaded, though. Like, what? That's a really good one. I like that one. The Saints are as it stands right now, the worst cap situation of any team in the league.

They're far and away, but we got about I would say, I don't know, in that almost 20, it was like 10, 11 teams in that $20 million cap space range. That's why when Pats fans are like, whatever, we have $60 million in cap space. You're like, yeah, and the Jags have $82 million, the Jets have $67 million, the Colts have $40 million plus, Broncos are over $40 million. Broncos could have even more, but whatever.

I'll spare you. We'll break down Phillip Lindsey when he actually ends up doing a contract somewhere. All right? You can follow him at Shio Kapadia. Read all of his stuff on The Athletic. It really is some of the best NFL stuff, especially when it comes to the offseason. So there you go. Thanks, man.

All right. Thank you. I've got a story to tell. Out on Netflix today, The Notorious B.I.G. The documentary is out. I saw footage of it over two years ago, and I've watched the whole thing. It's terrific.

So check it out on Netflix, and we're going to talk with Wayne Barrow, Christopher Wallace's manager and the director of this doc, Emmett Molloy. Look, the glow on both of your faces that we are here, that this has happened. What is this like for you right now? For me, it was four years in the making and in those four years we've been through every trial and tribulation uh obstacle boulders there were so many things that that had gone wrong could have gone wrong and to be here today, four years later, standing in a position where, you know, our film is being viewed in 190 countries across the globe.

And to like 200 million Netflix subscribers is a testament to who Christopher Wallace was. And I think that Emmett did an excellent job in making that a reality for the world to see. Yeah. For me, Ryan, going back, Wayne and I, I first met him in Jersey at his house and we drove out to the Poconos to meet Ms. Wallace for lunch, a great lunch at the Red Lobster. She had a Bahama Mama for a nice afternoon drink. And I was at that meeting just going, man, am I really gonna... This was before I had been hired.

This was kind of like my ideas landed with Wayne and Wayne felt time to meet Miss Wallace. So going there, I just felt like, holy shit, man, am I really going to lunch with her? That felt good enough to me. If I could just score a cool lunch with Miss Wallace and hear about her son, I'd be cool with that. But after that lunch, I could sense she felt some trust in me. And at that point, I really felt like I needed to do this. It wasn't any longer like, okay, maybe you'll get the job. It was kind of her saying, okay, this is yours to go do.

And from there, as Wayne said, we had so much adversity in this. It was that way. They're long-winded. They never turned out the way you thought they would because something else happens. But truthfully, this kind of ended, Wayne, you'll agree to this, it ended the way the film turned out, just the way we kind

of initially planned, which you know, just on his life and not his death. And I think that was always our goal and I think we ended there. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The footage is rare and never before seen stuff, you know, whether it was some of his guys, you know, making sure they were recording everything. But I think as the story starts, the thing that jumped out at me is how much everybody really liked Christopher.

Like he seemed to be the main guy that all the kids liked. Adults liked him. It just like everybody can find something with somebody. But Wayne, it felt like at a very early age, everyone just liked being around Christopher Wallace. I mean, Chris was a really cool dude. He was, um. He was fun. When I say everything was about laughter, he just kept laughing.

He was a comedian. He just liked to have fun. Circumstances are circumstances in terms of the environment we come from. Even in that space, you can always find a happy moment or a happy

ending if you will and he always found that so i think people liked him because he was genuine he was authentic and he was just true to who he was as a person and he made you feel that everything that he did for you or which really really good guy yeah that was the first thing I picked up on, Ryan. That shaped this whole film for me. You know, I, like everybody else, I'm an outsider to this story. You know, I wasn't the obvious choice or on the short list. And I think that's what Wayne gravitated to. But ultimately, I kind of picked up the same clips as everybody else. But when I started to dig into this story, picked up the same clips as everybody else. But when I started to dig into this story, it was his personality, his qualities as a son, as a best friend. Those things felt more akin to me coming from a great family. That's the stuff that really opened my eyes to feel like, hey,

maybe this is a story I could tell because I'm kind of a positive guy. You know, I'm good at making people feel good with stories. That's probably my sweet spot. And this had way more of that than I ever thought when I initially dug into it. You're also talking about a guy that was a sex symbol. Big was a big sex symbol. When I say the women loved this man, it was incredible, right? Now, granted, that happened before, you know, saying he became the superstar that he was. He just had this charisma about him.

And I think that any woman would contest to the fact that if a man can make you laugh, he can touch your heart. Right. And he was that kind of guy. You know what I mean? He makes everybody laugh. So therefore, that connection is always somewhere in the middle of that. Like the guy was just he was he was one of the greatest people I've ever known. Yes.

I always love the origin stories of, of the musical influences. Um, and, and his are incredible here. Um, Donald Harrison, who people well-known sax player,

and then he's got the Jamaican ties from his mother and anybody that's ever spent any time down there. I mean, music will stop the day and that's all. You'll be driving around and it'll be this little hut in the middle of nowhere and all it is is 45s and a PA and a microphone and guys are just hanging out. So that footage of his uncle performing was incredible. And then he even talks, like I think some of his boys are like, you like country western he goes hey i can't fall asleep without it how did this combination wayne make him into somebody that basically helped evolve rap and moved along because there's more musically going

on with him that puff even mentions later on than maybe where rap was at at that point well two things one big was a genius and when i say a genius, a very intelligent, you know what I'm saying, individual as a child. And he was more of an artist than anything. Like he used to draw. He rapped. He writes poetry. He was just one of those individuals that had the gift. Right.

And with that gift comes, you know what I'm saying, different elements that kind of tie into it. His mother is what forced him into that country world. It's not like he put on the radio every day and he listened to country music. But as a child, you listen to what your parents are listening to. His mother loves country music, period, hands down. That's the only thing that's playing through her speakers when she's home. So at night, this is what he would go to bed bed to this is what he would come home to after school constant you know i'm saying variation of this country music that coupled with the fact that you know he's down in jamaica yearly you know

messing around with his uncles one played the guitar you know i'm saying that and then the other one lou lou played guitar and dave would be you know i'm saying chatting on the you know what I'm saying, like a little DJ. Same thing we talked about earlier about yourself. And, you know, I think that and then also being from the block and having a man like Donald around from a jazz standpoint, I think not even taught him staccato and how to verbiate on from a melodic standpoint. I think when you put all of these nuances together, plus the genius that he already was, he found his way. He found his niche, right?

I think that everybody creative has to find that thing that carries them to be who they are. He did that with all of those different nuances of relationships that he's, you know what I'm saying, come around and, you know what I'm saying, kind of grew up with. I think it influenced who he became the other big part of this too was you know he has this i believe the timeline goes he he got some studio time and this is really he's really young at this

point and he does a cover well not cover but he uses the sample of Toto's Africa and then he just wraps over the top of that um how because because at that point it was like hey wait am I really going to do that I mean did that feel like that's what he was going to do or were they just screwing around because then there's a gap for a few years after him kind of taking it seriously again well I wasn't around then but the understanding that I do have is that he um they knew exactly what they wanted to go in and get some studio time. Trista, he already had an idea of what he wanted. So Big is really good at picking music. He had a very, very, very good ear for music.

And at that point, when they went into the studio, they knew exactly what they were going to rap over. And he had already written his lines. So the whole idea was to get their little lunch money together, if you will, to go into the studio and be able to record this. That's how that transpired. He never stopped writing and he never stopped recording. He was still doing different things here and there. But it wasn't until, you know, he got with 50 Grand and Mr. C that, you know what I'm saying? He started to kind of, you know what I'm saying, get into that other space. And that's when the demo was created. So when you're talking about a timeline, timeline wasn't that long, right? Things were just continuously moving. And it's like all these different things are happening almost at the same time, if you will. You know what I'm saying?

There's some cool things, Ryan, in that gap, you know, that were available for us to tell. But again, you kind of got to shape this story. But there was a story his friend Mike told who he was making that Toto sample with where they were listening to the Doobie Brothers and they also sampled like, gonna hear some funky Dixie Land. And then I kind of went back to find out

because I had watched that What's Happening where R rerun steals the tape recorder and goes and tapes the Doobie Brothers show uh it was an episode of what's happening and I started to piece together like shit he must have got that from what's happening and all those things were true and I think that's what started to really open the story up for me because again me and Big maybe we both have a lazy eye, and I'd say that's our only similarity in our life. But we grew up digesting the same things, you know, and that's what really made him accessible to me, where I started to see like,

oh, shit, he went and saw Star Wars. He watched that same episode of the Doobie Brothers and all those things he found a way, like Wayne said, to work it into his own version of storytelling. But it was cool to kind of be able to grab those things that made him seem like a lot of kids that grew up in that era and that time period. There's a lot fork in the road here for Christopher, where this seems to be something he's taking pride in, he's providing. And there's another version of this story where that's all he ends up doing. Yeah, but I don't think that that version would have ever come to light. One, he had a daughter that was just born and he knew that he needed to be in a position to take care of her. Yes. You know, the, the, the fork in the road was the fact that he had this great opportunity

with puffs. And then on the other side of this, I need to make money. Right. And as a man, the conscious decision would be, I'm going to do whatever I have to do to feed my family. That's a conscious decision of any man, no matter what that looks like. And, you know, he started down that path and then, you know, literally was blessed to be able to get away. And that moment, I think, changed the trajectory of everything. And it forced him into this position of understanding that this is where it's at for me. And this is where I'm going to be. And dedicated himself to it and the rest was history yeah like all heroes journeys you know Ryan we tried to put those things you look at that trip to North

Carolina he took with D-Rock in the movie you know you start I tried to set those things up so you see how clearly there was a lot of moments that this almost didn't happen. One more day in North Carolina, that place got raided and the place that they were living out of wasn't even there two days later. And so you start playing those. And I think that's kind of what I tried to do as a filmmaker is set up those things where you see clearly like, man, one little stroke of luck the other way, and this story wouldn't be happening at all. And the same thing with his buddy, Oli, that was stuff, again, that we just kept hearing from all the pre-interviews we did. Oh, his buddy, Oli, him and Oli were so tight. And that was something we didn't know about, but we started to dig into

it. And that becomes another one of those brushes that, you know, that could have been him just as easily losing his life. Yeah. That's kind of what I took because it's that trip to North Carolina. And I've read about that from other books, which is really weird. There's this book about Soundview where some guys from Soundview run into biggie performing down in north carolina and like the whole part of it your your storytelling kind of connected this other story that i've been reading about um when you look at the rap battle that he has his supreme um where they're on fulton street yeah yeah i got the chills because I don't know that I'd ever seen that footage. The first time, Emmett, you saw that footage. I mean, you had to have known, okay, this is going in the movie.

But what was that like for you as a fan? Well, certainly, all I wanted to know is, is there more? Is there more than the few minutes that popped up online? Was there more than just the hook? And we quickly found out with mr c and 50 grand that there was they had 45 minutes of footage they came in to charlie's calypso record shop in brooklyn and showed us the whole 40 minutes we sat there and watched it and then the best part of that is when d-rock you know we we see this footage of DRock wrapping his hand in this

white t-shirt afterwards. And then he goes to tell a story just unprovoked. Yo, I thought that here's this little guy clowning my buddy. I thought we were going to get into a fight. So I'm here prepping like I'm going to kick this guy's ass. And you see it in that footage. You see him wrapping it up. You see him wrapping, yeah.

Yeah, and that's the type of stuff, you know, that's the good luck you get sometimes when you're digging. You know, you just, things like that come together. But that was my first thing, Ryan, was like, could we dig deeper into that? And that's what I tried to do with this whole movie is find the shit they didn't use, you know, try to make it more into less of a montage

and more of a real moment where you're kind of bringing him to life. Wayne, what I also thought was really cool, and you mentioned, you know, his genius, but if you go back to like the early 90s for rap, like Fab Five, Freddie has this moment where he goes, it felt like New York was a little flat. The West Coast starts coming up. The Chronic was the kind of thing where when i was in high school like all of a sudden everybody is only playing that and i was you know in a rap at an earlier age where i loved big daddy came i'm like there's no way i was like if big daddy came somebody told me he's actually kind of a dork it would have devastated me because i was like there's no way big daddy kane's not the

coolest human being ever all right and so there's big daddy kane's, there's no way Big Daddy Kane's not the coolest human being ever. All right. And so there's Big Daddy Kane's cadence. There's LL Cool J's cadence. There was even Rakim, who I probably would put above everybody, but there was very, if you look back on it, younger people have a hard time with a little rap because it was a predictable cadence. It was, here's my line. And then here's my line. Here's my line. And then here's my line. And even as great as all those those guys were you could tell there was a very similar like late 80s early 90s rap cadence especially from new york but when biggie comes along it's a different connection of all of this stuff that was not only just a pioneer but then you could see like we have today where you go that guy's just ripping off this guy and doing all this stuff he wasn't doing anything else anyone had done before. Yeah, I mean, I definitely can contest to that.

I think that Bigg figured it out. He about spoke about this the other day. Bigg figured it out. He figured out what he needed to do, and he figured out who his competition was. And that competition was Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. But at the time, they was killing it. And you know what I'm saying?

It's not that real hip-hop was flat or hip-hop of course the boy was flat it was just a changing of the gods and they was killing it because of the way that their their their their the cadences the music everything just came together and meshed in the way that was so different that it stood out in a real way and they're spitting straight gangster shit you know what i mean so i think it made everybody understand that there's a way to do this different big was the first one to actually step out and again given the dynamics of his history in terms of how he became who he was and laying down his rap patterns and understanding the jazz and adding all of the

story elements from country music like when you look at that, then I think it gives you a better understanding of why he was able to come in and slide through that one little hole to make this big fucking announcement that we are fucking back. What? I'm putting the city on my motherfucking back. Brooklyn, let's

go. Let's do this. It's Brooklyn in the motherfucking house. It's on. Right? And it wasn't no level of disrespect here in go let's do this it's Brooklyn in the motherfucking house it's on right and it wasn't no level of disrespect here in New York and the dance wasn't any disrespect over there it was just I'm here I'm kicking in this fucking door and we gonna go and sure enough it did is it ignited New York hip-hop in a way that balanced things out completely you had, you had Wu-Tang. Like, these cats was coming.

You know what I'm saying? Jay-Z lurking at that time, coming up. And, like, all these different elements is happening at the same time. So now, you know what I'm saying, we're finally in a position where our stories are starting to be told. One of the things, though, that I think kind of helped with that West Coast early, early run

was Boys in the Hood, the movie, right? They had Boys in the Hood. We had Juice. Then they came with Menace to Society, right? Juice represented Harlem. New Jack Swing, that was Harlem. I mean, New Jack City, that was Harlem. But listening and watching those films brought you into Los Angeles in a way where you felt you was

a part of it. You know what I'm saying? It made you understand your world in a different way. We never had movies like that. You know what I'm saying? We didn't have that representation in that way that brought you into the entire city of New York, if that makes sense. It makes a lot of sense.

They brought you into the gang life. They brought you into the politics. They just brought you in. I mean, they sitting outside with slippers on. These are things that we never saw before. We had no idea. That's not how we live here, right? We got Timberland boots and, you know what I'm saying, white on white nights. That was it.

That was popping back today. They got on slippers and socks and shorts, sitting on the porch with 40s and smoking weed. Like, with the gun on their lap, this is what they were showing us. And that's the reality. And I think that those elements helped to kind of signify for him how he needed to change the scope of what it is he was doing and become more visceral in his visualization through his rhymes. I want to stay on this too because when I saw the footage of them doing shows,

it was kind of crazy. Like it looked like they'd be at a Ramada in fire up some drinks and then just get on the elevator and then get to the, what the hell was that? I mean, it was, you know, it was,

it's like when you, when you're starting out, it's like, you know, go do whatever you can do it. Like, you know, you got,

um, you know, people in different cities, whether it's like, you know, you go do whatever you can do it. Like, you know, you got people in different cities, whether it's Houston or Philly, like, wherever you can drive, you get in your car, you just, you hustle up, you and your fellas, and you go down there, and you go pick up that bag. Yes, there was a lot of hotels, you know,

you had venues within the hotels, you had clubs, small clubs, you know what I'm saying? Fairly large clubs, but, you know, nothing that was over, you know what I'm saying, five to a thousand cap rooms in the early days, right? Then he started to grow. And as he started to excel, things became a little different. You know, the venues, we started to get bigger. We did a lot of radio shows. So, you know, he was being introduced to audiences.

So he was able to get in front of people and really show that he was about this shit. Like, this is what, this is who I am and I'm here to fucking stay. He was able to do that because he was able to get in front of the audience and make them understand what it was he was selling us. Yeah. I mean that footage, you know, Ryan, it was real classic. Like I've, I've, you know, covered a lot of bands over the years. So I know that phase of traveling, you know, when they're on the tour bus, although it's like, shit, we got a tour bus.

But they have like 20 dudes packed in it and no air conditioning. And it wasn't the lap of luxury by any means. But it was it's it showed that they went through the same path as everybody else that had to come up. It was quicker for him than most people. But the great part about that footage, Brian, is even in the movie, I have that one scene where it's probably Money L filming on D-Rock's camera where he's just looking at a sunset over the mountains. And it's clear he's never seen anything like that.

You know, there it is, just a shitty hotel room window with a mediocre mountain range and a sunset. And they're acting like they're sitting on top of, you know, in Rio looking down on the beach. You know, they're just like, I never seen anything like it. And that our goal was just to show you these kids had never been off the block. You know, we made that map graphic in the film to show you this all took place within a couple blocks of one another, all these stories, you know, his rap battle was just two blocks that

way. Cutting the demo was one block that way. And that was our goal is to show you that he kind of like took these guys, you know, and got them all out of the neighborhood, which was, you know, the goal of our story is to show that this hero's journey. You know, he kind of brought all his friends with him and got everybody out of there and fulfilled everybody's dreams. And that's kind of symbolic of his personality. He he was a giver. You know, it seemed like all he wanted to do is hook his friends up. Absolutely. He took care of his personality. He was a giver. It seemed like all he wanted to do is hook his friends up. Absolutely. He took care of his people.

That he did. He actually took care of his people. His friends were his family. It was just him and his moms. You know what I mean? So that became his family. And everywhere he went, he made sure they were there. See, he wasn't going to school. He took him and threw you know, threw him under his wing and made sure that, you know, he'd

send him off to school and to the point that they started to start moving around. But he took these kids off the block, like Emmett said, and really put themselves in a position where they can see something other than what it is they were seeing every day, all day. You know what I'm saying? That most people never get to see anything beyond that, right? They don't even get to go to the other boroughs, let alone go across, you know what I'm saying,

the bridge to go to Jersey or, you know what I'm saying, get on a plane and go to Virginia or in a car to go to Philly. Like, those little things, those little moments mean so fucking much. And people take that shit for granted but these guys came from what we considered to be nothing and they built it and he built it and allowed them to continue to build for themselves and gave them opportunities that they probably would have never had that's very clear in the movie uh towards the end i i know i've read a bunch of

books i've watched i i have opinions on it, but from the journey of him and Tupac being friends to then realizing, I guess we're not friends. I thought it was really well done, especially in the puffy scene where he was like, look, we felt like there was this theatric thing that we didn't even realize what was going on. And then of course we know how it ends, but how wayne was that time for christopher when it it's always felt like going back and looking at any of it he still was confused by it and didn't understand how poc was taking it to that level um it was very trying time for all of us um christopher specifically considering it was you know an attack on him, you know, as an individual, as a man, knowing that he did no wrong.

And two, that the individual who's, you know, bringing this accounts to the table knows what happened and knows what it was and didn't allow things to kind of settle by creating this quote-unquote beef that wasn't necessarily beef. It was just some shit that had nothing to do with either Tupac or Big. And, you know, the extenuating circumstances beyond that just carried itself into what it carried itself into.

But at the end of the day, for us, that's not something that we like talking about. It's, you know, both of these individuals are no longer here. And at the end of the day, we want to make sure that their legacies continue to grow and build as they're supposed to. But, you know, for us, it's always love. Big has

always been about spreading love, because that's the Brooklyn way. These are his words, right? So, you know, despite what was happening, he knew that it was no need for him to put himself in a position to respond to some shit that he had nothing to do with.

And if this is how you want to feel, okay, cool, it is what it is. But, you know, bottom line is one day you'll know. And unfortunately, both of them, you know what I'm saying, were murdered in their prime. And, you know,

now we're here talking about it and trying to make sense of it. No way that we're going to be able to make sense of that. It was senseless murders, specifically big, you know what I'm saying, because that's my brother. I miss him. And, you know, we all miss him and we all love him. And bottom line for us is to make this film about his life, talk about his life, how he, Christopher Wallace, lived, why he lived that way, how he lived that way,

how genuine and pure he was as a man, and how he loved his family. Yeah, I mean, you know, that's it, Ryan. I think when I looked at this, it was always, I felt like a little, like even when I read the big autobiography, I felt by page 10, Tupac was already in the narrative. And the rest of the

book was almost a split autobiography in a way. It was kind of shadowing each of their journeys through life. And when I sat with Wayne and Miss Wallace, it was really to try to not focus on that, try to make a film that celebrated his life. And so that was a real conscious thing. But one thing that caught me around just specifically, because I was learning this all as I was going, in the interview, we have a lot from that interview he did the day before he was murdered up in San Francisco. And every aspect of that interview is an optimistic, beautiful, thinking about the future and his kids. Every second of that interview is an optimistic, beautiful, you know, thinking about the future and his kids. Every second of that interview, it embodies that a guy who's hopeful for life.

And when I watched that, it was so gutting because, you know, again, I was misled like everybody else through what I picked up along the way through this beef and everything. I was uninformed. When I watched that interview and he talks about me and Cee's, Cee's Leo going to be around forever making music that makes you want to party and have kids. That's not somebody who's sitting there fearful of his life being taken away from him the next day. That's a guy who's thinking about being around forever. And that really caught my attention. That really was a profound moment for me making this film to go, okay, that's so different than what I thought.

And that helped me kind of stay in the lane of trying to make this movie that celebrated his life. I want to end on this because his mother, Valetta, is terrific. You'd expect her to be terrific throughout it all. You guys do. I think that's really the foundation of the movie is weaving her in and out and all these different parts of the story.

And I always just, it made me smile a little bit when she heard about the first album because a relative bought it was like there's so much profanity on it and then she goes to christopher she's like what's good he's like mom don't listen to that stuff and like here is this larger than life figure and it's just a little reminder that most of us you know have a mom or someone in our lives that were like mom you know don't worry about that um wayne you represent the family, you know, don't worry about that.

Wayne, you represent the family and, you know, you help put all these pieces together. How is she doing? I know she doesn't listen to the music. She listened to it once. She's great in the movie, but how is she doing as she puts, resilient, positive-thinking women I've ever encountered in my life. She has embraced not only his murder. She embraced the elements that came with it. All of the different, you know, relationships. She stepped into this world that she was totally unfamiliar with, and she navigated it. And I gave her as much support as I could over the last 24 years

to assure that she had her grounding and she had her footing as a mother to be able to grieve while at the same time stand strong and fight. And she's going to continue to fight. But I don't think that there's anything that she herself is regretful of. Um, there's no remorse. She's angry at all outdoors. She's angry at her mother and losing her son in the way that she's lost. You know what I'm saying? And, um, I think that rings true every day um

but again her strength and her courage and her fortitude has always given her the balance that she needed to continue to push forward to fight for change for herself and the family family to try to do everything she could to find out who murdered her son, hold those responsible accountable. You know, she's been an advocate for, you know what I'm saying, Christopher Wallace, Notorious B.I.G. in a way that none of us could. I respect her, I honor her, and I love her. I respect her, I honor her, and I love her. And it's funny that you ask, you know, how she is,

because I hear so many different things that's resonating to me from things that she said. And one of the things that she always says is, leave it to time, right? Everything, Wayne, no matter what it is leave it to time there's no need for us to fight the things that we can't fight control the things that we can't control push for things that don't matter leave it to time those words resonate with me more than anything with her because that's exactly what she did she left everything to time and then so doing has been able to accomplish so much in building his legs and this film is that that end

piece if you will um that still has a new beginning it's so crazy yeah that's really how the film feels and and the outro and the music i've got a story to tell. It just goes through it because I remember a few years ago hearing about the Knicks part of it. We were like, wait, what? Because we were talking about it on ESPN and then we were like, how far can we go with this? She's great. She's happy about this.

She's in a real space and yeah, ready to kick some more fucking ass. One cool story, Ryan, just going back to Jamaica with her, you know, it was real cool because we just filmed in their house. We were just eating meals and it was interesting to see her back in her element because here's arguably the most famous living mother on the planet, you know, like across the board. And we're in Jamaica driving in this old Mercedes,

driving around. And, you know, in a way it felt like she was coming home. And again, in the movie, she talks about dreaming of moving to America and being filthy rich. And again, like all his buddies, he helped his mom and his friends achieve their dream and sadly lost his life in the process. But he got them all what they were looking for. And it's pretty admirable. And it was cool being there, meeting his grandmother, having his grandmother, you know, who didn't say much, 97-year-old, and tell the story about when she learned that he was murdered on the television was a real heavy moment. And that's only because we were sitting in, I was on the bed with Miss Wallace and the

grandmother, just kind of, they were just relaxing. And that story came out of nowhere. And those are the things, again, you just pray for access when you make these films. Am I going to get the goods? Am I going to get everybody to participate and and wayne and miss wallace made sure that happened and then you're you're you know for me at that point it's just hanging in there with it and we did and it's a great final product um check it out netflix i've got a story to tell i know it's hard the documentary part of this, man, you never know. And you really have made something that's different and you should be proud of. So thanks a lot for the time on this, both of you.

Thanks, Ryan. Appreciate it, man. You want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you can possibly imagine.

And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. LifeAdviceRR at gmail.com. Kyle was talking a little. How was your weekend, by the way? It was solid. I went out to dinner for the first time in like a year with some guys who used to work at the ringer

and it was super fucking windy in Marina Del Rey and we probably shouldn't have done it and we kind of just soldiered on through the dinner outside at this brewery because you can't go to any reservations because they want to turn over all these tables so yeah it was it was cool to be out with them but like, yeah, we're going to wait before we try this again. Okay.

All right. So you dipped your toe in it. That's cool. I don't know how we got on the topic of Dune earlier, because I feel like that movie is supposed to be coming up. I brought up Sting. That's right. Yeah, because I feel like when we had Haydn on, the radio head author, he really shit on the police. And I thought, wow, that was an easy thing to do. If you wanted to be a movie or music critic, I guess essentially, I don't know, this is the alarming relevation that I had about my life the other day. I had about my life the other day, um, was, I was like, I'm just a critic actually as well. I was like, oh yeah, those guys kind of suck. Um, like I spend my entire life talking about people

that are better at something than I am. So I, uh, I was bummed out when Hyde and just ripped the police, but it was a super easy thing to do. Like, oh, three white guys going on a Kingston hangout for a bit, learn some chords, come back post-clash and then soul cages. And you're just like, Oh, all right. Like, is he wrong that he said that? Or should he shut up? You know? And I liked hiding, but I felt like that was nasty. So then sting came up again. Cause I watched a video of sting and I was like, you know what? Everybody can back off. Like, again, I'm not coming home to crank up.'m an englishman in new york but i appreciate it when it was out in the 90s and then we started talking about dune so the new dune how long is the

new dune supposed to have been out because i feel like this has been a long time it's not out i will have like when was it supposed to be released i'm not sure i think covid pushed everything back. Let's get IT on this. March 21st, 2014. I don't know. Wait, what? That can't be it. October 1st, 2021. Your boy, Shadow May. My boy who? Timothy Shadow May? I don't know.

I figured you would have liked him. I figured you would have liked that Netflix movie, The King or whatever. Yeah, I don't know. All right, so this one says it's coming out october when was it filmed though oh i don't know they shot it in budapest i feel like this is supposed to have been coming out forever did you watch the first one is my question uh i tried because i was excited i'm like a big space guy i like space stuff but i don't

think there's enough space stuff out there to be honest. And so I was like, I just asked my dad and I was like, what do you, should I watch the regular Dune? What do you think about it? And all he said was sting was in it. Like he thought I was,

I thought I would appreciate that part. And then I just, I tried watching it and I fell asleep twice. So, I mean, I got to get it done because I am just for the space, you know, but I don't know. It hasn't worked so far. I got to get it done because I am just for the space, you know, but I don't know.

It hasn't worked so far. I got to stop watching at night. I don't know where to start. I love that you thought you were going to be excited that Sting was in it. And you're like, he knows me pretty well. Yeah. I don't know what that was about. Have you ever listened to the police?

Yeah. There's that one song that I like. Which one is that? I hope this is the police. That would be embarrassing. that i like which one is that ever is i hope this is the police that would be embarrassing every step you take is that even the title yeah yeah okay although there's dennis there's been a slight correction on that where people think was this about a stalker so that was actually my first thought, to be honest, when I heard it way back when, you know what I was,

I was trying to figure out the production timeline of the new dune. And I don't, I don't feel like doing this here. So I, you know, hit us up. I actually, I don't care.

Don't hit us up. But I, the first one's a tough watch. It's weird. It's really weird. I remember a summer house, Martha's Vineyard, 96, I think. And one of the roommates was this older guy named Des from Seattle. And he sized me up and I sized him up and we didn't like each other immediately. And then we ended up becoming, I think, the

closest out of the group. He was just really cool, really cool guy, great way about him. And he was like, yeah, when I first met you, I was like, oh, I got to share a room with this guy. This sucks. And I'm like, why is this guy like in Seattle and older? Why is he living with us? And it was just one of those deals, one of those great little moments in life, man, where you just assume and then, you and then you're pleasantly surprised.

So he's a great guy. I really get along with him. But I'll never forget, he came home one day, he's like a day off and the weather's nice. And I was like, let's go outside. Let's go do something. He goes, you know what? Because I know this is going to sound like a big zag, but all we do is go to the beach on the day off. He goes, on my day off, I just want to sit at home one day and watch a movie. And he rented Dune on VHSs and i was like yeah i'll give this a shot and i same deal i'm like what is going on i had never read the books i imagine it's really interesting there's also a tv show too wasn't there yeah i think so what do you think the industry needs to do to address the holes in the space lineup though that you mentioned earlier i think it costs a lot

of money to make a space thing not look like dune you know what i mean so i think i think it's just expensive and i don't know i'm not sure i anything that's space i'll watch it though i'll watch anything that's space anything that's space so did you did you like the martian yeah big fan of the martian i mean did you read it i don't know i big fan of The Martian. Did you read it? I don't. No, I didn't. I don't usually love movies where nature's the bad guy, but The Martian was cool.

Didn't love 2012 and there's a big tidal wave. What are we going to do? I didn't like 2012 either. It didn't do it for me. I'm a huge end-of-the-world guy, so I'll see your space and I'll raise you the apocalypse. But, and then coming back from space,

see, that's something I could get behind. It's like, all right, let's check it out. We still have all the space stuff. We're coming back on the spaceship. Earth has been already apocalypse.

So we're just checking it out. And now it's crazy down here. Did you watch after earth then? Yeah. Did you go to the theater? I'm a big Will Smith guy. Oh, that's a dough with space and will smith you probably own it you're probably like you know if you really watch it if you give

i won't confirm that i won't confirm that did you see it at the theater no no i didn't okay what's your favorite space movie wow i mean big star wars guy but um i like stuff like oh yeah i like i like the interstellar i like prometheus i like uh i like space man yeah no i saw this article about mars it was like mars sucks as a hellhole we're like hey maybe mars isn't for you hitchhiker's guide by the way it's a top one for me what's that hitchh Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Oh, yeah. I could see that. Great most acting. Yeah, I never. I know that's the book. I didn't read the book.

I think that was one of those deals where I thought I'd read the book because it was, you know, pretty, pretty well known. Yeah. Yeah. People with high regard look different. So I was like, yeah, maybe I'll check that out. So I have a couple of things I haven't watched because I was like, oh, I'll get to the book. And then I never got to the book.

That because the movie didn't really do it for me. the book, and then I never got to the book. Because the movie didn't really do it for me. Speaking of space movies, did you check out The Fifth Element? Bruce Willis? No? I saw that one in the theater. That was a tough one. Gary Oldman's kind of my guy. His role in The Professional, all-time favorite role.

But that was a tough watch. A lot of stuff going on. And I don't... It got a higher rate. I think 71% on Rotten Tomatoes. That surprises me. Don't love the cover of the movie. Doesn't look super exciting.

Gets worse. Gets worse on the inside. Okay. So, yeah, there you go. That's Kyle on space and the need for more space movies. And if you go space and everything, by the way,

that Mars article, I just double checked it. It came from, you guess at the Atlantic Atlantic was shitting on Mars. You're like, okay, okay. All right. Let's do some life advice here.

You got some heavy ones here. This one's great. Kyle's going to love this one. Okay. We're going to do two. Cause this one's so good. All right. I'm not going to do stats because it's starting to get old. All right. Sorry, buddy. Whoa, zag. Yeah. 24-year-old graduate school. And like Macaulay Culkin said once, I'm a peerless individual. About five years ago while in undergrad, I was nearly killed in a

car accident by a drunk driver. I get a low six-figure settlement from insurance due to my injuries. I didn't touch the money for years for fear of how I may waste it. And that strategy paid off when I started investing it all in January 2020. Although that's a weird time to be doing well. Obviously, I was hit hard by the COVID market collapse. Oh, okay. There we go. But when the market was at its worst, I picked up a number of stocks and cryptos that more

than quadrupled in value before I knew what happened. I was a millionaire, although I've been completely smashed by the last two weeks by the sellers and no longer can call myself that. Oh, okay. So he's just under that seven-figure guy. I would ask you to check on the capital gains taxes because that's probably going to tell you that you're not a millionaire liquid pretty quickly, especially if you're short-term capital gains. All right. Similar to when I first got the settlement, I didn't know what to do with it first. So I just kept some in the market and pulled some out and left it in cash.

But now I've got three months left in grad school because my classes are virtual and I've already accepted a job offer that starts in mid-June. I'm trying to take the profits and have a little fun while I have a unique window of freedom in my life. By the way, I should be able to make low six figures annually in a few years of this job if I progress through the promotions like I think I'll be able to do if I work hard, which I plan to do. About two weeks ago, I looked in the forecast in Dallas, where I live, and saw the weather was going to be freezing and a snowstorm was about to hit. So we all know that Texas deal. All right. So I made a spontaneous solo trip to Puerto Vallarta, where I ended up staying for nine days. I stayed at an amazing hotel, bought everyone and their

mother's cervezas, spent a ludicrous amount of money that I don't even want to reveal at a strip club and played golf at the nicest courses. Although it was a great time, I recklessly spent way too much money. Additionally, I drank a ton every day and stupidly dabbled in the Mexican pharmacies that legally sell you stuff that isn't over the counter in America for very good reason. So in addition to the 50 grand that I blew, I thought he told us that he didn't want to tell us how much he spent. All right. So in addition to the 50 grand that I blew, I had more than one health scare. Jesus Christ, Hunter S. Thompson, what is going on with you? How do I navigate my financial success at such a young age by not doing anything regularly in the previous paragraph?

I've never been very good with money. No way. And I don't want to look back in five years and see that I'd pissed it all away. Also, I've always been a good looking guy, but used to be extremely shy and awkward in high school and much of college and girls viewed me as the ah, nice guy who they never considered. As I matured, that social anxiety started to fade and I finally got in a very good shape. So basically it's not like I had a good run with women when I was younger. And regardless of how my financial situation has worked out, I would have wanted a phase in my twenties where I was able to have some more fun socially. Now that I have the ability both financially and socially to do that, I feel like it only complicates my ability to handle my money smartly and manage it for the future. If I'm starting to date a girl I really like, I probably won't hesitate to fly her around the world or book the penthouse suite at the Hilton.

Why? Okay. Why? You don't have to. Yeah. You could not do that. You stay in a nice room. It still costs money to stay in a hotel anywhere now.

So you'd be surprised. That stuff is basically, that exists for your mindset. Now, hey, I'm going to stay at this villa. How much is it? It's five grand a night. It's unbelievable. Couldn't just stay at one for 800 and have the exact same amount of fun. for 800 and have the exact same amount of fun. But that's why those things exist at the high end of the luxury market so that people that have the cash will go, oh, no, no, I want the best.

I want the best. I want the best. All right, look, you may think I'm going to crush this guy, but I'm not. But let's finish this. Lastly, this will probably make the listeners hate me even more. My father is extremely, all caps, financially successful in the banking world. And even before I was in the accident and received the settlement, told me I'd had more money coming to me than I'd know what to do with. All right.

So that's, all right. So there's your problem. I want to have a family one day and I'm terrified I won't be able to provide for them like I should because I was so reckless in my 20s. Even if I don't, I'm still scared I'm going to blow this. How can I better balance enjoying myself in these three months before the 60-hour work week starts while also taking better care of my health and bank account? Okay. Here's the deal, man.

You've got some bad habits. All right. We realize that, but it's not that big of a deal. You're 24 and some people are going to listen to this and say, oh, put it all in the bank, but you're not going to. You're not going to put it all in the bank. It's very clear that you have that need to kind of spend. You're a guy, like I remember there's one kid who used to like buy a round every now and then at the dive bar that I worked at. The only problem was he was always blacked out when he did it. And so then he would have the credit card. And three days later, we'd be doing beer deliveries and running through some paperwork. And we'd get a call from Visa. And they'd be like, hey, Chad is refusing the charges, disputing the charges again and be like, well, okay, what this guy, and then he'd come in and be like, Hey guys, this is a good, I'm like, dude, you can't buy around for everybody. And then dispute the charges multiple times. One time, maybe, you know, we'll give you a pass on it, but you can't keep doing that. And so he was like, you know, he was actually a really nice guy.

He just liked to spread the wealth a little bit. So I can understand wanting to kind of show off a little bit. Um, one of the things that I always think is a little bit funny. And I, I say this to the audience because I don't want to ever be full of shit with you, is that, yeah, things have gone well the last few years, so I'll make reference to some of the decision-making that I have, not in any other way to be 100 with you. And sorry to say 100, but there's other people that crush it compared to me

that are acting like they're eating peanut butter and jelly every fucking day, all right? And that's just not true. And they're doing ridiculous big boy shit. And every now and then I'll share some of that with you because I'm being honest with you, but because I was broke for so long, like a credit card that didn't work at a date at like 32, worrying about your credit score in an apartment at like 35, like that's, that's, that's really dumb shit. And I, unfortunately it was guilty of that stuff.

But what I do know, if we kind of try to figure out some of the blessings along the way, even if you're not, you know, not like I'm super religious guy over here is that the, thank God I didn't have any of this money when I was in my twenties. Cause I would have probably done a lot of shit like this. Not so much the Mexican pharmacy thing.

You know that I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. Here's here's what I think you kind of need to do. And I don't know that you're going to do it, though. I just don't. Because as you sit here and say, like, I don't want to blow all this money and you find a way to get to two seven figures here on paper, which, again, isn't really seven figures in your wallet.

If you're on trading sites and you are going to cash out because then you're going to get hit with the capital gains part of this, which is probably like 40% on some of this stuff. So make sure you figure that out before you start spending it all and then get hit with some tax bill. The fact that you know, there's all this money coming to you. I think that's going to influence all of these things. So you can, you know there's all this money coming to you, I think that's going to influence all of these things. So I can sit here and give you advice. You can read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. You could read that. But I don't know that you're going to do any of it. I just don't. I mean, when I first was going through this, I was thinking, look, do this. Put together some plan where you put half of it,

some plan where you put half of it, 75% of the liquid position in the most boring security ever. All right. I don't know that I would start doubling down on stocks again because it ripped again today after the sell-off of last week, which really isn't that much of a sell-off when you're on all-time highs. And then people write up these headlines like Dow, massive sell-off. We're like, dude, some of this stuff has been on fire at levels that I can't even imagine that we're at right now. So I don't know that stocks and day trading, look, if you're starting to try to day trade right now with this position, with where we're at, I don't know that that makes a ton of sense. Day traders listening to this may disagree, but those guys are probably in it every single day and figuring out something that feels like it's on the low end when everything else is high. So they're in that position. And it doesn't

sound like that's what you've been doing recently, researching all this stuff. I think you also need the juice a little bit, and I think you need the action of it. So I could tell you, hey, take 75% of it, 50% of it, put it in there. Because if you really do want to provide for a family and all this stuff, then do it. You said it, you wrote it in an email. You said you want to be able to provide for your family. But I think you actually just really want to spend it because you know your dad's cutting you a huge check at some point, whether that's a trust fund or you turn 30 or whatever. But here's the simplest advice of all of this. Picture yourself not being a millionaire right now. Picture yourself just

having the money that you've had after college. I'm sure you're going to get some money from graduation. You're going to have some money from the new job. This idea that you're supposed to go on this massive three-month bender to make up for everything else and that now you're afraid you're going to spend all the money. There's plenty of guys that can go on three-month vendors with their buddies and not have to be millionaires to do it. You can easily have this raging time before the job that you want to have so desperately, which by the way, after you get the job, it doesn't mean you never get to have fun again. That's another thing that people have to start. I remember when I was in college, I was like, yeah, I imagine after college, we'll never go out on weekends anymore. What's the point of getting drunk and doing stuff once you're out of school? And then you get older and you're like, oh, that was a chance to take some time off and do anything.

I know it's scary and being a grownup and all that stuff and five days a week and all, you know, whatever, man, uh, this, these three months are terrific. So use them to your advantage. Um, don't feel bad about socially wanting to date and make up for lost time and all that stuff, but don't start getting hours. We love the people that wheels up. All right. But to just spend all this money on private jet hours when, you know, if you really want to impress somebody, you could just fly in someone really cool and not get the presidential suite. These are decisions that you have to figure out how to kind of put a little governor on

yourself. So you can still spend money and not be broke. But the way you word some of this stuff, it's like, man, I can't believe I'm going to piss away all this money, but I know I'm going to. You already signed the contract to get rid of it all. Your mindset, and I'm not even trying to like, I don't even think you're a jerk or anything like that. I'm sure other people hate you after reading this email,

but you've convinced yourself that you have to somehow maximize the most fun of your life in these next three months because you're never going to have fun again. And to do that, somehow you have to spend every last dollar. That doesn't make any sense. That doesn't make any sense. Because if you didn't have this money, I'm sure at 24, you could find a way to have a great three months. I mean, if you're really that worried about spending all of it, keep 10% of it. Know you're going to blow it and give the 90%. No, don't give it to your dad because

then maybe you won't get his money but you know just put it put it in the most basic security you can possibly find put it into the cd long term something you can't touch for a little while if you want to do that but i don't think you want i don't think you really want to i mean there's still a way you can have a lot of money i mean i didn't have, well, you know, whatever. I mean, the idea of having 100 grand in the bank at 24, 100 grand. If you skip, impossible, impossible. I would have had a ton of CDs, though. I know that. And I'm not talking about the ones that mature.

One more. Hey, you probably get this all the time, but your show is my favorite podcast by far. We do get it a lot. Thank you. Anyway, 30 years old, 5'1", 205,

not extremely strong. Everybody's, uh, squat 365, deadlift 375. Hey, don't start beating yourself up. He weighed,

it started out weighing 155. Dude, you put on 50 pounds. Good for you. Uh, I know you get a ton of emails about relationships, but I figured what the heck. So my girl and I have been together for about

a year and a half now. We met in the gym. She's just my type. Strong, athletic, and cute. Everything physically I would look for. Everything was going great until about five months ago into our relationship. A female neighbor moved in next door. Dun, dun, dun. Her and I got to talking one night. One thing led to another and I cheated. We didn't go all the way, but it went

further than it should have. The best is that he tells me how far it went, but then says, I'm not sure if you want to say this on the radio. I don't, but thank you for any clarification.

This guy, our man, they weren't cuddling, I'll tell you that. I felt bad and the next morning I told my girlfriend, holy shit,

so you cheated on your girlfriend with the neighbor at the door next, like the apartment next door to you and then woke up in bed with your girlfriend the next day. I was like, hey, I cheated on you. I don't know if I feel bad for you or envy you. She was obviously hurt, but she decided to stay with me.

I've cheated in the past and decided to get counseling to help me with this problem. This counseling has been amazing. Helped me with a ton of problems that I didn't know I had. I had a friend who cheated on his girlfriend all the time and he went to counseling and he told me that the therapy told him that he has acceptance issues where he feels like his self-worth is defined by other women accepting him. And that's why he cheats all the time. And it's an insecurity that he never knew and he was able to resolve this by learning. And then he kept cheating on her.

I was like, what happened to that huge moment in your life where you realized that your cheating was just, and he was like, well, did you see how hot that cocktail waitress was? I was like, yeah, maybe it wasn't, maybe it's not more complicated than it is, but thank you, therapist. Okay, so our man's doing all right now on the therapy part of it, but back to the story. So a couple days after I told my girlfriend thing. So wait, she was not going to tell you,

but she saw how bad you felt about cheating on her. And so then she was like, hey, don't feel so bad. I actually made out with my ex this week also. I was pissed, not because of her cheating, but she played it off like it wasn't a big deal and I couldn't get upset because of what I did. Yeah, actually, sucks, man, but you can't. You can't get upset because of what I did. Yeah, actually. Sucks, man, but you can't. You can't be mad at her then after she was like, oh, but honestly,

sometimes you do cheat and you tell the girl and she's like, oh, it's not that big of a deal. That's probably actually not great. It just didn't sit right with me. After some long talks, we've decided to move forward. Now to my question, it's been a year since we had cheated on each other. She's still extremely insecure. It's not just little things like wanting to see my phone if a text pops up or something like that. It's the big things, like if she decides to go home for the night while I watch some games, she gets extremely nervous and has to FaceTime me to check in. And for some reason, I missed the call. It has happened twice in the last year. So she FaceTimes our guy, and he misses it.

She drives back over to my place. It's a 20 minute drive. She also watches my Instagram followers, Facebook friends, and asked to see my phone regularly. I haven't been doing anything shady since that night, but it's getting tiring. I'm not sure if she'll ever get over this.

And she has admitted to this herself. Our relationship isn't perfect in other aspects, but it's not bad either. What are your thoughts? I don't think you guys have a chance in hell word it's over dude right think about 20 more years of this could you even fathom it no no i've had the phone thing happen to me a couple times but i mean the thing one time it happened and i wasn't even dating the person and I was just like, all right, yeah. Like I, I've talked to other people, but like, what, what right do you have?

Like, you know, and then I've just felt like, so it was such an invasion. Cause I was like, how did you know how to get in? And they're like, oh, well, I've been watching you, you know, type in your code, your phone. I was able to figure it out. I was like, you suck. I'm sick to my stomach now. Yeah. So I was just like, oh, well, I've been watching you type in your code to your phone. I was able to figure it out. I was like, you suck. Yeah, I'm sick to my stomach now. Yeah. So I was just like, really?

So you kept waiting to get the right angle to watch? So you purposely set out like, I'm going to keep watching him open his phone. Because I would just leave my phone on the table if I went, you know, because I didn't really have anything to hide. But I also didn't feel like I needed an invasion of my phone. I mean, there's stuff I would talk about that's business related that I'd be more protective of than any correspondence with anyone else. But if I'm not dating you and you think you have that right to go through it, but you're living with her, man, and you cheated on her with the girl next to you and you know you're

pissed because we're selfish because you think like hey my thing didn't mean anything but your girlfriend has to see at the time i guess think about that your girlfriend had to see the girl who lived next door or wait well yeah i imagine even if you didn't live together i don't know maybe they didn't live together and none of this matters yeah obviously when she was over your apartment even if she wasn't living with you, I'm sure she stayed over and then had to still see the neighbor at some point. There had to be some sort of interaction. That had to be terrible for her. But I think the thing that always happens with men and women on this is that men will do stuff cheating-wise that's completely nonsense.

There'll be nothing emotional about it. And men can feel like, well, look, I don't even like that person or whatever. And I was on a business trip and had a few too many dram buoys. And next thing you know, where I feel like women, when they cheat on us, it'll feel like it'll be one of your friends. friends. It'll be her ex. It'll feel like it's far more emotional. And we get madder about it as if what we did wasn't bad because we didn't care where we feel like, and look, this is not down the line. Every woman that's ever cheated on a man, it's always just somebody that are emotionally attracted. I'm not making that assumption, but that's always what it's felt like whenever I've thought about it with my friends and stuff that's happened over the years. Long time over here living. But I don't know why. It sucks. I mean, you did this to her. You made her this insecure. Maybe she was like this before you, but you didn like you're gonna miss her and all that stuff or you're gonna miss her to and i'm not even like you're to blame in all of this but i don't know why you'd want to do this either i don't know why you'd want to do this i mean if she's striving over when you don't answer facetime every single time i miss calls all the time that's that's insane

i miss calls all the time yeah that's a brutal one but i you know the facetime thing's funny because it started happening a little bit more and i was like why is this person facetiming me you know and then of course you facetime me and i'm in like in a hotel watching the clippers and you're like oh like what's going on like it's watching the clippers game like oh okay then i was like oh i know what's i know what's going on here it took i mean mr usually i like to think i'm on top of things but with that one in the facetime technology it took me a little while to be like oh i'm getting face because there are people that facetime you and

there are people that don't and when somebody who doesn't facetime you ever is facetiming you when you're away it's not about the facetime they want to see if you're going to pick it up. So there you go. All right. LifeAdviceRR at gmail.com. Matt's the pod today. Thank you as always. Please subscribe and review and spread the word.

We'll talk to you Wednesday. Thank you.