Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 You can't rap just positive because mm-hmm. <affirmative> the hood ain't positive. It, it takes a holistic approach. Like Tupac, Tupac had gangster music. He had keep your head up. Uh, he had a Dear mama, he had a song talking about if there's a heaven for a G. So he had all of these different elements that made him an artist. He said something that was so profound. He said, imagine getting up on the stage and you rapping this stuff and you ain't never did none of this stuff. That's why they have to start doing it cuz they ain't never done it. Yeah. And they don't know what else to rap about.
Speaker 1 00:00:33 The fact that I had this success that I had with the music, I never expected that. Because like he said, it's hard to compete with what's going on. But one thing I had to learn was, I am who I am. So I know what I do. I know what my life is. How am I gonna write about stuff that I didn't do, especially for me, because what it do, it conflicts with your soul. But if you're saying something that come from your heart, they gonna feel it. You gonna feel it. And it's a real connection,
Speaker 3 00:01:10 Man. Have we a Jim for you today? Rapper, Darien Hadley kid who went through a mentorship program who I actually support and is similar to the programs that Charleston worked with, uh, has come through a success story and has not only started a successful musical career, but has also graduated from college and gone back and is now also working at the same mentorship program that he came through, uh, as a disadvantaged kid. You'd never know it. Uh, Darien Hadley's on the show with us, and of course Charleston. We, every time we have Charleston White, the goal is to get more gems and something different and unique. And today is no exception. He tells the story of his murder case, how everything actually happened step by step. And it's fascinating because you hear about it all the time. Charleston's got a murder case, but we go through step-by-step how it happened, how it unfolded, what made him think certain ways, what other people were involved, what was his actual role in the murder. And it's fascinating. So we put all these cats together in the same room too, and have a good powwow at the end. You're not gonna wanna miss a second. This is great stuff. So without further ado, please help me in welcoming Darien Hadley and Charleston White to the T cast.
Speaker 0 00:02:32 So most people grow up believing that they're a badass because they could fight until they meet a guy who can fight inbox. Yeah. Uh, most, most good fighters, uh, make hell of a boxers, uh, once they learn, uh, the skill and the art of boxing. So what what I'm learning is, uh, boxing takes you away from the crowd and, and, and, and it places you in, in, in an area of isolation where you're forced to just work on you. You, there's no teammates to help you. Mm-hmm. To lean on pat, you on the butt. Keep going. Teammate. Yeah. Uh, so in, in, in the process of that, uh, that training, uh, ultimately, uh, builds character, uh, it it, it it shows you how resilient, uh, that you can be and never stop being, because, uh, it never gets easier for a boxer. So once it gets easier, they got something else to make it harder. Right? Yeah. So, uh, so I'm, I'm, I'm learning, you know? Uh, yeah. I'm learning.
Speaker 4 00:03:27 I, and its great. Fighters have lost plenty of fights. Yeah. That's how you get good. Well,
Speaker 0 00:03:32 It, it, well, for one boxing, I've always been good at fighting, uh, throwing punches. But when I got in, in the ring and put on gloves, uh, I felt awkward. Uh, when I look at the, my first few days of, of, of punching the bag, I was flatfooted. Uh, and, and nobody can beat the bag. The bag have never lost <laugh>. Yeah. So, uh, so everybody think you can go in there and punch the bag and beat the bag. Even just shadow boxing and, and doing the footwork, uh, jumping jacks. So ultimately it, it start changing, uh, my thought process. It's changing how I'm eating. Uh, and now I'm more committed now cause all right. Because I'm committed to go through the pain to, to learn something new.
Speaker 4 00:04:18 I, I love it. And that's a great thing to learn. Yeah. As long as you keep your head.
Speaker 0 00:04:21 Yeah. Well, uh, head, I'm, I, I don't have a history of, of fighting. Uh, I, I have a, I'm a debater. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a loud mouth guy. Yeah. I keep my hands to myself. <laugh> <laugh>.
Speaker 4 00:04:33 Yeah. They got people to take care of that. You got other things, more important things to do than take on somebody that wants to tackle you for something
Speaker 0 00:04:39 You say. Yeah. Uh, but I'm training for, uh, for a celebrity boxing match. So they offer, they offered me a, a nice six figures to fight, uh, Lil Booy, uh, with, with, uh, I think it was 25%, uh, streaming revenue on the back end through pay-per-view. So, uh, we sent over the contract, Lil Booy turned it down. Uh, then they picked out the, uh, them, so the flo, so them, them island boys, them funny looking island boys. Okay. With all that shit on they face. Yeah. So they picked one of them out. So, uh, I talked to 'em, they said they was down, they was cool. Uh, one of the twin brothers was saying, oh, you don't wanna fight me cuz you're scared of me. And I was saying, man, I'm not picking the fights brother. That's who they, they want me to fight your brother.
Speaker 0 00:05:21 Well, you scared of me, Charles. I said, well, you know what, I'm gonna slap you at the way in and me and you'll get the second fight <laugh>. So, so, yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I'm trying to sell the fight. So I thought we had a fight with the, with the, with the island boy twins. Uh, so they turned that down. They threw, uh, Walter Weeks from Fresh, fresh and fit on there. But he's outta my weight class. Uh, I reached out. Well, Rizzo Rizzo, he's a rapper outta Houston. His name was on the list, but then they done went and found an 18 year old, 19 year old white kid.
Speaker 4 00:05:51 Oh, yeah.
Speaker 0 00:05:51 Yeah. A toker. They done went and found, found an 18, 19 year old toker. And, uh, he can fight. Yeah. He can fight like a motherfucker. He been training with Mayweather. He's been boxing over there. He's he's a toker, but he box on the side. So they trying to set me up for the ass kicking. That's <laugh>. 19 years old. But I've been training. Yeah. Yeah. I've been training. He
Speaker 4 00:06:13 Just had a
Speaker 0 00:06:14 Birthday. Man's gonna kick his young ass. <laugh>. Yeah. I'm gonna kick his young ass. Ain't Finn let no 18, 19 year old boy whoop me. Yeah, yeah. Nah, nah, we, yeah. So I'm, but he can fight. Yeah. I both to fight.
Speaker 4 00:06:25 Well, you got some balls,
Speaker 0 00:06:26 Man. Listen, Mayweather daddy training him that some train Mayweather. Man. Man, listen dude, little white, his, his name is Connor something. He got a real big TikTok following. Uh, but yeah, they trying to set me up, man. They know I'm old. I gotta get one of them rapping. One of them rapping niggas coming off the cash smoking cigarettes and drinking Hennessy <laugh>. I can't get no 19 year old TikTok. He look vibrant. He look like he punch hard. Uh, he know how to turn his hips into the uppercuts and the hooks. Yes. I'm in some trouble. <laugh> Connor Tierney. Yeah. He got how many followers he got? He got a large following. I might pull out this fight cuz I don't wanna lose, I don't want my first fight to be a sham. I need a bomb. Yeah, yeah. Put a bomb. Yeah. Well, they need to set up something that's rapper, rapper, rapper. Man, man. And a rapper would be perfect, man. This kid is 19 years old with two eyes. They want him to kick my ass. I already know that. But that's what it is. <laugh>, they want, boy, he look like he can do it, but I be damn if I gonna let a 19 year old white boy, that ain't a UFC 2 million. Yeah. Yeah. It, it is gonna be a big fight. Uh, and, and I been training like I might get my ass kicked, but yeah. I ain't gonna let it happen.
Speaker 4 00:07:35 Well, the not quitting is the hard part. Yeah. Because you, you got all kinds of plans and, and strategies and then when you get in that ring it, a lot of things change for sure.
Speaker 0 00:07:43 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh, when I put that head, head girl on today, and I felt that I can still feel the punches through that head girl. I said, shit, boy, there's gonna be some shit. <laugh>. <laugh>. Yeah. I put that head girl on Teegan. I did like boom. I said, man, you can still feel the punch.
Speaker 4 00:07:59 Oh, you can feel it big time.
Speaker 0 00:08:00 It's gonna rock my brain if it hit me with some good ones. So why I've been working, well, I've been training hard. I throw up every day. I push my body to the limits. Uh, some days I don't, but at least
Speaker 4 00:08:10 That's a hell of a workout.
Speaker 0 00:08:11 Four, four out of five days they got me puking.
Speaker 4 00:08:13 Just take care of your brain, man. That's all I gotta say. Oh. Cause you got a lot to offer there. And don't let, uh, uh, an exhibition like this, take some of that, some of that away. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:08:23 Yeah, yeah. Well keep that brain. Uh, I can't say what I'm gonna do. Uh, but disqualification is always in the back pocket. <laugh>. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Disqualification for a viral moment. Another Mike Tyson Holy Field ear bite off <laugh>, uh, just Yeah. It's always in the back pocket. Yeah. Go make for great views and the the fight will stop immediately.
Speaker 4 00:08:43 Yeah, of
Speaker 0 00:08:43 Course it will. That's just, you know, that's just my hot joke if I've <laugh> <laugh>.
Speaker 4 00:08:48 So I have a couple, uh, this is gonna be a a, a random one. Okay. So I'll try to, I'll try to keep this on task, but my, some of my questions are gonna jump and then some of my questions when we have our guest on, I would like to present those questions with, with some of his input.
Speaker 0 00:09:02 And he a he answered all of them.
Speaker 4 00:09:04 He can answer all of them.
Speaker 0 00:09:06 Uh, well, I wanna put some input, but I think, uh, this, this is a great idea to how to use, uh, I think there should be a, a, a platform monthly, uh, where the youth are griping and complaining about the world mm-hmm. <affirmative> to adults. Yeah. Yeah. Telling us about our dirty secrets. I learned something yesterday talking to a guy by the name of Trent, uh, Reginald Trent. He said, there's three components to a person. You got the public life, you got their private life, and you got their secret life. Most people want to highlight their public life and keep their private life every private because they're not the same in their public life as they are in their private life. And we all have a secret life that most of us don't want people to know about. Of course.
Speaker 4 00:09:50 Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:09:50 But
Speaker 4 00:09:50 That's normal. That's okay.
Speaker 0 00:09:52 But the kids don't know that. Yeah. The kids think we are what we wanna be to them, and they see our flaws. Right? Yeah. They catch us in our lives. Yeah. Uh, and we never acknowledge it. We never say, no, no. Your dad was a fuck up at one point in time, son, your dad made horrible decision. Or your mom was a whore. Uh, we used to run train. Well, you don't, but somebody has to know the truth. Right. Right. Be because what ends up happening is, uh, when, when kids don't have answers, they internalize what they can't answer
Speaker 4 00:10:28 Or they create their own answers. Yeah. And they're not usually correct.
Speaker 0 00:10:31 And, and, uh, and, and, and that's usually delusion. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:10:36 That's, uh, that's fascinating. Well, the two the two questions I wanted to definitely get to were leftover from the last time we chatted. And so, um, in particular, um, and I, you know, as, as many times as we've talked Yeah. And as many times as you've talked in public about this stuff, it's never, we've never gotten into specifics in terms of, of the details of your charges as a kid and perhaps how it happened. And then now that you've grown and, and figured it out and moved so far past it, perhaps why it happened.
Speaker 0 00:11:13 Oh.
Speaker 4 00:11:13 And, and maybe even some of the way the laws are set up now, were they advantageous for you? Or could they have been, could they have been better served when, when you did your time? We,
Speaker 0 00:11:24 We, we was fortunate. Uh, we, we was very fortunate to, to have been here in Texas, uh, because of our governor. And, and Richards was, was our governor at the time. And, and most people know, uh, that, you know, and Richards battle with alcoholism, uh, and drug addiction and, and she overcame it. So this is the trend of, of, of, of America seeing, seeing crack coming to the forefront of our societies. So now on top of that, America's now starting to see children commit violent crimes that they hadn't seen outside of isolated cities like, uh, la uh, Philly, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Detroit. Yeah. Uh, it was typical in, in those worlds, but the rest of America was innocent to children, uh, committing violent crimes. So I was fortunate enough to, to land in a group of, of children in America where we became the first children, uh, in America who were considered the super predators.
Speaker 0 00:12:30 So I'm the super predator generation. When, when, when Joe Biden and, and Hillary Clinton went before Congress and, and, and they said that there's, there's a wave of children that was born in this country and, and that they, they basically said that we were super predators. This was, this was the terminology that they used and, and the traits and, and the characteristics of a child's super predator was that they said we was bigger. Look at LeBron James. Look at Kevin Garnett. So you look at all these guys coming outta high school during that time, going into the N B A, the world had never saw a kid that big before. Uh, so they said we was gonna be bigger, faster, stronger criminals, and that we was gonna, we was heartless and that we was gonna be in that we was encourageable. That's why you saw so many children get, uh, receiving stiff and harsh punishments in this country.
Speaker 0 00:13:22 And that was a tied in a wave, uh, that was a sentiment that changed in America tough on juvenile crime. So here's Anne Richards. Uh, I, I went into a system, uh, it was more like a boarding school. It wasn't a prison, it was a juvenile system. Right. Uh, we didn't, we didn't call the staff members. Staff members, uh, we didn't call them juvenile correction officers. Their titles was house parents. So whenever you give a job title to a person, you also create a mindset as well. You also create a mindset as well that comes with their hidden ideologies and prejudice that you can't pick during the interview or, or whatever assessment test that you give him. So he, he, I went into a system in America in 1991, at the age of 14 years old, when America still believed that they could change children lives from the school teachers to the pro juvenile probation officers to courts, the court clerk, the, the, the juvenile cafeteria ladies. Everybody still believed that they could make a difference in a child life no matter what our crime said on paper, no matter how many gang signs we was throwing up, no matter how many acts of violence that we were still committing in the juvenile facilities, these people came to work every day believing that they could make a difference. It wasn't about no paycheck because they wasn't making a lot of money. Right.
Speaker 4 00:14:51 So did they, it was, was your life actually impacted during those, during that period
Speaker 0 00:14:55 Of time? Yeah. I, I still, I still talk to Mr. Davis to this day, and I would love to get him on this show. He worked in the juvenile system coming outta the military in the 1970s, and he retired in the late two thousands. So over 40 years of seeing all the young killers and mm-hmm. <affirmative> transferring them to prison. He's a wealth of knowledge. Wow. And he didn't play. We all respected him. The staff respected him. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh,
Speaker 4 00:15:18 Accountability.
Speaker 0 00:15:19 Yeah. And that's what he taught. So it, it, it wasn't, and, and so what I learned from, from going through our juvenile system, and we had some of the most renowned, uh, program. We had some of the world's best psychiatrists. So, uh, sports Illustrated been six months at the facility. Uh, people would travel from all over the country because at the time, Texas had the premier juvenile, uh, uh, justice system by way of, of, of getting state home and school their, their capital offender program. So at that time, the program that we had, the giddings centered around, not just rehabilitation resocialization. So if you think about Resocialization, that's taking a kid out the hood who, if I got a toy in my hand, he walks up to me and says, man, let me see that and take it from me. He don't wait for me to say, yeah, you can play with it.
Speaker 0 00:16:11 Right. He take it from me. And if you can't kick his ass, you never get it back. So all your toys get taken like that from you in the hood. You leave your bike on the porch, somebody take it. If you can't kick his, see his ass, he go ride it in your face. So you re socialize these people. Yes, sir. No ma'am. You wake up in the morning, you brush your teeth, you make your bed, you put your shoes up under there when you go eat breakfast, when you come back from breakfast, you brush your teeth, your hygiene after. So yeah, they were re socializing up on top of, they had a, a element and component where, uh, we was doing psychodrama therapy where, where we had, man, we had some of the world's best psychiatrists. And from Dr. Dalton, uh, uh, not just psychiatrists, psychologists.
Speaker 0 00:17:01 And, and, and we spent hours in, in therapeutic group sessions. Uh, they were really brainwashing us to be what y'all see me today. I was one of the ones who didn't go to prison. Uh, if, if they wasn't doing an experiment, they would realize, and they did because everybody who went through this program ended up becoming very influential leaders in prison because they grew up in a boys' home. Yeah. Uh, we're like Avengers. Cause what they was teaching us, uh, understanding, thinking errors, separating your thoughts from your feelings, not only that, we had to do what we call the life story. So they would give you a packet and you would fill out all these questions from your earliest memory in life up until the point where you committed a crime where you killed somebody. So you would work on that for a whole whole week doing your life story. And so you're sitting in a group and other people, so they got your file. So the guys that's been molested, they can't go in there and say, I ain't never been molested. Because they wanna talk about this childhood trauma and pain. Right. The kid that's been hungry all this life in school, we're gonna talk about that in that group. And, and, and what was so ironic about it, most of us was gang enemies. But when we got in that group, I watched guy, I watched them niggas cry together, homie.
Speaker 4 00:18:15 We got all kinds of stuff in common in that
Speaker 0 00:18:17 Scenario. Yeah. And, and so what ended up happening is that group never had enemies anymore amongst the group because they bonded. So, so, so that's just one, that's just one That may be three days of you spending two to four hours spilling your life story and they not gonna let you lie. Yeah. You ain't finna paint a pretty picture of your mama and you got this file. It's
Speaker 4 00:18:38 A private life story. Yeah. That's to say. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:18:41 Right. There's
Speaker 4 00:18:42 A place for it.
Speaker 0 00:18:43 And it's
Speaker 4 00:18:43 Not on the internet, but it's,
Speaker 0 00:18:44 That's it. It's, it's in that group setting and it's a private group and nothing leaves outside of this group. Yeah. So I know guys today, man, uh, man, I sat in a group. I seen some of the, we thought we was hardened cri killers as kids. We thought we was hard, man. We couldn't wait to go to prison. But man, we got in that group and everybody became kids again because they childhood pain, they connecting to the pain. So what what, so the deepest part of that was the reenactment of your life story. That's, that's where, that's where you saw man, we're too young. Uh, and we're too innocent as angry. A as we are, the anger is just a smokescreen to the pain because we don't know how to articulate the pain. We can act it by way of anger, but if you sit us down, tears will come outta eye. So all we know. Yeah. Cause we was told, shut up. Get your ass back in that room. You, you couldn't ask grown folk no questions. You couldn't say. Yeah, you lying. You get get hit in the mouth. You call a grown person lying. And they lying. Yeah. I was the kid that's go get hit in the mouth. Cause I'm gonna say, y'all ain't lying, mama. They lying. So
Speaker 4 00:20:01 I think there's a lot of adults in that situation too, that haven't dealt with trauma from early
Speaker 0 00:20:06 On. Most, most, most adults are maybe are Asian. Most most guys are assholes in relationships because of childhood issues. Uh, most fathers are ed with their love because of child issues. Uh, most, most men have a problem and struggle with, with failing to, to, to be committed because what we was taught from childhood and, and just the whole concept of of of of of manhood, it, it, it's been distorted to us. Yeah. We was taught that men don't cry. Uh uh
Speaker 4 00:20:37 Yeah. That was cultural though too. I mean, I don't think I even cry beyond being a kid. I didn't cry again until I was like 35 years old.
Speaker 0 00:20:45 But you cry on inside.
Speaker 4 00:20:47 Oh, I cry on the inside. But it was a different attitude. Once you figure out it's okay, then you can't stop doing. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, once I got this close to death, I think it changed my perspective on life. And, and I'll let myself be emotional all the
Speaker 0 00:21:00 Time. I never seen my mother cry in until, until my aunt be died. Her baby sister. Oh. My mother was like superman to me. Never
Speaker 4 00:21:09 Seen it. I seen she, but that's cultural. See, I mean, cuz you know, she does. Yeah. But she wasn't doing it in front of you because she, again, it was a cultural thing.
Speaker 0 00:21:15 Yeah. I've never seen a man cry.
Speaker 4 00:21:18 That's crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:21:19 Growing up, I never seen a man cry.
Speaker 4 00:21:21 And imagine how impactful that would be though, you know, at you being who you were and then actually seeing, uh, your uncle or somebody that, that you looked up to somebody that had maybe been hard, you know, you had the uncle that would just let it out.
Speaker 0 00:21:36 I started seeing the boys in the boys home in the groups. Take it serious because initially you, you start out trying to play tough, you know, like you kind of had a perfect life. You don't want nobody talking down on your mother. Uh, so I, I watched many guys who, who I thought, you gotta remember, I went in there at 14 years old. I'm a small guy now. So I looked like I was about 10. Uh, so the ages were from 12 to 21 men. The 18 and 19 and 20 year olds look like NFL players to me. Yeah. And they was big. Uh, but to get in these groups and, and, and, and, and see in the public eye when we all out way from the staff outside, they gangster, gangster. But to go in that group, and it's only 16 of us in here, and the other guys don't know none of these stories that's going on. And you better not betray nobody. Uh, I saw guys be different and, and, and, and so that's real.
Speaker 4 00:22:36 Yeah. Like, not just different, but real. Right. Yeah. That's a true expression.
Speaker 0 00:22:40 Yeah. I, I, I, I had, I had a close friend, man, uh, man, he had to spend days opening up talking about how his uncle molested him and his sister. And he used to have to watch his sister.
Speaker 4 00:22:51 God,
Speaker 0 00:22:52 Man. We used to, man, we used to cry. We used to spend four to six hours in those groups. It used to be so draining. Uh, we all would it, it, it would, it would drain you. Uh, uh,
Speaker 4 00:23:04 Just the other stories are painful.
Speaker 0 00:23:06 Yeah. Guys would have to be restrained because at some point they start seeing their mothers in their group and, and so they start seeing their fathers in those groups. So what you, what you start learning from, from attending these groups is there's a cycle o of violence. That there's a cycle. When a person becomes violent, there's a cycle that he goes in. There are steps that he goes in. The first step to every cycle of violence is a motherfucker sitting around saying, poor me, poor me, poor me because hurt people, hurt people. Poor me.
Speaker 4 00:23:43 Interesting.
Speaker 0 00:23:44 Yeah. So that's the first step of that cycle. So once, so, so you got all these different steps. So Darren, at some point, anger is in the play. Well, anger is just a smoke screen. Smoke screen. It was other feelings that led up. Whether you was in the bar, you was in the car having road rage. Somebody made you feel unloved, somebody hurt you, somebody made you brought up the feelings of rejection.
Speaker 4 00:24:07 These usually be mad than sad, especially as dudes, right? Yeah. We like to just rather be pissed off than not
Speaker 0 00:24:12 To do with the, well what, what triggers a guy more, what triggers a guy more than those childhood emotions that make him feel like a little boy. Yeah. He'll yeah. He'll hurt you if you trigger those emotions. Yeah. And that's where the cycle of violence come in. These guys trigger those childhood emotions. Yeah. And it's really not you that they hurting. Here comes the displaced anger. Right. So that's when you start learning. Most guys who walking around looking to hurt people wanting to hurt people don't have a problem with hurting people. It's displaced anger that they're walking with on top of all these emotions that they're hiding behind the anger.
Speaker 4 00:24:44 So are you, and I'll ask you, are you even willing to talk about exactly what happened? And is it displaced anger that put you in that si situation? Maybe
Speaker 0 00:24:56 My brother was angry. I wouldn't.
Speaker 4 00:24:58 Okay.
Speaker 0 00:24:59 Uh, I dealt more with so, so, so me as a kid, just from the simple fact of not having dad. I got all my uncles, I'm all my uncle's favorite nephew. I'm all my aunts fish. So I'm, I, I'm, I'm like the mascot. What, what psychologist would call the mascot of the family. I'm the life of the party. Right. Uh, I make the family laugh, but from the simple fact of me not having a father, I grew up feeling unloved for one. Me and mom's not talking about why dad's not here. Mom working and we living, we living a having a great life. So she too tired to talk about mama where my daddy at. Some kids say, well mama, why we live so poor? It's a lot of kids got a lot of questions. And the parents brush shut your ass up rather than have the answer and deal with the shame. Right. Uh, remember I choked up when I told you, I told my boy, my boy asked me, daddy, where we poor man. I almost cried just having to relive that moment. Right. Uh, but I wasn't gonna break law to leave him just so we wouldn't be poor.
Speaker 4 00:26:01 Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:26:02 So a lot of parents can't talk to their kids because when you look at the kid, it's shame in your eyes. And the, and, and if your kid, most fathers, and I'm gonna say most guys I know cannot look they kids in the eye because it's some shame to go with it. So they'd rather, they'll rather not spend time with 'em. They running from shame. And, and so I'm a kid homie. I, I just wanted to be accepted. I couldn't play football cause I was small. Broke my leg in a washing machine, then put my eye out. So I'm, I'm, I'm the kid that can read. I, I played the violin. I was in the band. Did you really? Yeah, I played the viol and the flute.
Speaker 4 00:26:42 Man. I got a bunch more questions for the next show
Speaker 0 00:26:44 And, and, and, and the flute. So I did that. So I was an extracurricular activity kid from all the way, second, third grade I was in a spelling bee. Mm-hmm. Uh, I'm in the play. So, uh, I just wanna be a part of something. Yeah. Uh, my mother, my mother didn't want, she, she didn't wanna put me, uh, with the disabled Special Olympics kids, but they used to always try to get me in that I wanted to be a normal kid, uh, because I never was a normal kid. I was always in the hospital having the surgery. So by the time I got my fixed, I caught a murder case. So I'm fresh off the porch of a 12, 13 year old kid who's been disabled most of his life. Finally get to play away from mama. But I'm running away from home. My mother, I can go to any mall, but that's not what I want.
Speaker 4 00:27:28 Right. So what, what made you run away? Oh, and then, and then what happened?
Speaker 0 00:27:33 Growing up feeling unloved, unwanted, abandoned, and rejected because
Speaker 4 00:27:40 Of the lack of a father figure. Yeah. Not because your mother, obviously we've heard about her.
Speaker 0 00:27:43 She's, well, you got, I got, I got mama, man. My granddaddy had a barbershop. Uncle Wayne, uncle Joe there uncle. So I got
Speaker 4 00:27:49 Uncles still ain't daddy. Right.
Speaker 0 00:27:51 But man, they play us and pimps and hustlers. Yeah. Right. So, you know, the, uh, uncle Joe throw football with the Warrens that can play football. I'm the little, I'm the little tough kid during football practice tackling the kids with shoulder pads and helmets on and they saying, say what? Come over and sit down for you hurt yourself. But I'm just as tough as they is in they mind. Right. So by the time, like Tupac says, when I get my weight up with my hate, I'm gonna pay 'em back when I'm bigger. Well, I never got bigger, but I had a lot of bravado ness. Uh, I was adventurous. Uh, yeah. Yeah, man. So, uh, and, and I enjoyed being delinquent. So for me it was more
Speaker 4 00:28:33 Rebellion, maybe.
Speaker 0 00:28:34 Well, it was my, my mom, my mom life. My mom is now coming. She's now transitioning from the, the, the coddling mother to disciplinary, because now her life is changing. She's coming to know God now. Uh, she's pregnant with my little sister. Uh, and now she's going to parenting classes. And here come this fucking term called tough love. About 87, 88. I think that's the first time I heard that bullshit. Tough love. Mama. Come home with that tough love talk shit. Now she's saying, no, no, no, man. What the, so that's where the rebellion come from. Right. Because mom is changing. This ain't the mom now who's letting us manipulate her and play on her. And, you know, we get in trouble. We clean up the house. She let us still go. So now she's saying no. Uh, now she's not buying, we not having toys all up under the Christmas tree. Man. I woke up Christmas, 1990, we flew to San Diego, California. I had got suspended from school that Friday before the Christmas break. My mama took every present back. I thought she was just talking cuz she done said this shit before. Man. I woke up on Christmas Day, 1990 and didn't have one toy in my mind. I had been abused.
Speaker 0 00:29:48 Wow. And be, because I'm a entitled spa kid. I've been spoiled all my life, man. I feel like I had been, been abused. But
Speaker 4 00:29:55 At that age, you're, you're kind of old enough to plot, to leave. Right. To
Speaker 0 00:30:00 I'm 13. I plot, I started plotting that day.
Speaker 4 00:30:02 You're not six, you're 13, you're just enough past that point. Right.
Speaker 0 00:30:06 Because because my friend's mother was on drugs, they can stay out all night when the street lights was out. They can go all over the city. So I wanted to be like the kids in the Pebble Creek apartments in the projects. I had to come home when it like, man, I ain't like that. I didn't, my mother rule. I, I wanted to be delinquent. Not because I was angry, because I wanted to be accepted. Okay. If I, if I was on a football team, I would've been the best tackler. But I did. Right. So, uh, so I I I, I went where, where I was accepted and, and I excelled at it. And
Speaker 4 00:30:40 So how did it happen then?
Speaker 0 00:30:41 Uh, I ran away from home. I remember my mother was pregnant with my sister and, uh, my sister was just born. Uh, my mother did what every good parent would do and try to sit down and prepare the kids. And I'm the baby. So what do you think about, I told my mother to have an abortion If, if I was 13 going on at 13 years old, I told my mama, abort the baby.
Speaker 4 00:31:02 Oh, wow. We, what, what, what's it, what?
Speaker 0 00:31:07 Uh, I'm a spa kid because
Speaker 4 00:31:08 You just wanted more attention.
Speaker 0 00:31:09 Uh, I'm the baby.
Speaker 4 00:31:10 Okay.
Speaker 0 00:31:11 Being this baby,
Speaker 4 00:31:12 You were about to not be the baby anymore.
Speaker 0 00:31:13 I'm, I'm already dealing with rejection. Yeah. Feeling unloved, feeling unwanted and feeling abandoned by father not being there. Yeah. Mama already working. I'm the baby man. I'm my mama's baby. I can't imagine. Now I'm the baby boy and I've been,
Speaker 4 00:31:31 That's the only bad you got at that point,
Speaker 0 00:31:32 Man. I'm, I'm the mascot. Yeah. <laugh>. So what normally happened to the middle child, pushed away, forgotten about. Uh, and, and so that's when I start rebelling. I didn't even give him a time to pull me away. Push. I didn't even give my mother time because I'm already feeling unloved by daddy. I'm already expecting. Oh, okay. Mama already working all, all the time anyway. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I'm hard out already seeing mama. So there's, there's very little parental supervision because mama working these 12 hour shifts at General Motors and she on the third shift and she on the third shift.
Speaker 4 00:32:07 So
Speaker 0 00:32:07 Yeah. So when she come home from, so when she come home from work, I done packed my bag and ran away. And I had the kind of friends who had the kind of mothers who would lie to my mother. My mother. My mother would go to all my friends' houses. She would call, she would go by the stores, buy the projects. Right. She would stand out in front of the clubs and show my brother picture. Me and my mama, she used to rattle the streets when we ran away. I know. Y'all know where at and everywhere they go, say, boy, your mama came over. You better go and go home. Cuz she coming back to Yeah, my mama all out from the project. Y'all know, y'all and with, with this football picture,
Speaker 4 00:32:41 <laugh>
Speaker 0 00:32:42 Be because we don't belong in these places. So when the police see us, we stand out.
Speaker 4 00:32:46 She knows you're not gonna make it too long,
Speaker 0 00:32:48 Man. We wasn't, we wasn't raised for this. Right. We running away from clean sheets, clean pillow cases, food and ice box to steal. Cause we hungry. Yeah. To wear dirty clothes because we, we wanted to be real. And, and we thought that was real. So my brother was angry. I, I made a joke about it. I, I make a joke about it. And, and during my standup comedy, but when my brother was about 10 years old, I was about seven, eight. And we just casually watching television, he looked at me with one of the most angriest faces I had ever seen. He said, man, when I grow up, I'm gonna kill somebody. Man. I that scared the shit outta me because we don't come from this. Just the, the, the tone, the look literally out believability. I ran downstairs and told my mama, she spanked him <laugh> because she frustrated. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:33:45 Just transferred to Monroe, Louisiana. They laid off the people in Monroe from General Motors. The people from the Arlington plant took the people plant. So we dealing with, yeah. So she frustrated. But we living a good life. The, the, the, the, the kids across the street, they made it to the nfl. They wasn't as angry as my brother. I was never angry. I just wanted to be a part of something. Yeah. Yeah. I just want, I just always wanted to be a part of something. So that's what made the gang life so appealing to me. So when I finally got to peak at the gang life, it was everything I was looking for. Coming from a single parent home, dealing with these issues that I'm dealing with from a lack of a father. Why not join this? It's everything that I need. Uh, and, and so I I get it. I, I understand, uh, we all flock to something because we all wanna be a part of something. We all wanna feel accepted. We all wanna feel that brotherhood, that comradery. Uh, and, and, and, and, and, and nothing was more appealing to me than watching a bunch of criminals and, and, and, and convicts and, and thugs gather together and shake hands and hug and smile.
Speaker 4 00:34:49 Especially ones when, when you're at that age, you're talking about cats that are slightly older than you. Yeah. Yeah. Which at that point too was
Speaker 0 00:34:57 Really appealing. Uh, well, my cousin's name was. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm my cousin Dante and Derrick them. So I'm 1213. They, 17, 18. To me, they grown. Right. They the one with the f they the ones mimicking the culture more than, than what I could see. And
Speaker 4 00:35:11 The ones you look up to. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:35:12 They look more like Eazy-e with the, with the jerry curls and the forties and their hand and the Raider hats. So they was mimicking the culture. Yeah. Uh, we was boys following boys.
Speaker 4 00:35:24 So how did you boys get into this? So,
Speaker 0 00:35:27 So, so, so, so let me tell you how I got us into this. I run away from home. So my mother had went, uh, she had went to the horse races in, in Shreveport, Louisiana for, for the weekend. My grandmother was on and off drugs at the time. Uh, this particular time she may have been off, but sneaking. Okay. So, so she was keeping us for the weekend. Uh, my brother was already in and out, the boy's home. So, uh, I sneak mom car out. I still buy car out while grandma sleep one night. Uh, my brother's selling drugs. So he give, I got a older guy than car with me, but he's my friend. But my brother, he, he sell drugs for my brother. So, uh, they dropped me off of a, a girl named Reia house. I climbed through the window, me and Montoya, uh, it's Reia and Ginger.
Speaker 0 00:36:25 I'm in the closet with Ginger Montoya in the bed with Reia. All of a sudden Reia mama come in and said, REIA, who are that? In the bed with the police on the phone. Boy, we raised up, well, my buddy is in the behind the menu yards off Collins in Arkansas, whatever he was doing, he got Arlington police department's attention. And he had a bunch of, had some crack on him, uh, trying to sell a crack or trick or something with a, with a dope fence. So then had to impound my mother's car. Uh, my mama outta town. I'm afraid of my mama. Her look is her. Look, screw me, <laugh>. So at this time, so that's why I would run away so I wouldn't have to deal with mama. So, uh, boy, mama, get back in town. And rather, I asked her, man, take me to juvie.
Speaker 0 00:37:09 I would much rather my mama come, the, the judge and the court would be the buffer. Cause she go pinch my ear, pinch my arm and all that. So I wanted to be picked up from juvenile. Cause I know she ain't gonna do all that in juvenile, but boy, they said no. So my mama came and picked me up on, on, on the corner of Arkansas and Collins in the middle of the night. And man, she had this look on her face like, boy, you go get it. And I was telling myself, if she hit me, I'm gonna fall out the car. You want me to go fall out the car and hurt myself. So as soon as I got home, I ran away again. So now I'm more afraid of mom. Uh, I done disappointed mom. So now I'm dealing with the shame, the, the disappointment in the hurt. So rather as a kid, you can't process all these emotions. You're just running
Speaker 4 00:37:54 From the problem. You just,
Speaker 0 00:37:55 You just, man. Yeah. Be because you have a refuge. You got some friends that who mom will let you stay here and lie to your mom. My mom hated them. Kind of parents. Yeah. My mom hated them kind of parents. Well,
Speaker 4 00:38:04 That's terribly irresponsible. Let's be honest. That's, that's ridiculous. Other parents gotta look out for kids.
Speaker 0 00:38:10 Gotta look out for. But, uh, so, so here I am. No change of clothes. I got all the name brand clothes in the world at home. Uh, man, we had marble flows. I had my own bedroom phone line. I done ran away to be living like a bum. Yeah. So what else do you do? Hey, y'all, let's commit crimes, snatching purses, breaking into houses. So that delinquent behavior over a weekend doing beer runs, uh, going to ponchos, dying and dashing. Eating in Panchos and then walking and then, you know, doing all the bullshit, right? Yeah. Uh, it's thrilling. It's exciting. You really don't want to hurt nobody. But in the process, you're gonna hurt somebody because you're a kid and y'all got a gun. So, uh, they had a teenage club called Tingles that all the teenagers went to. It was right there by, by, uh, by the wax museum. Behind the Wax museum. Then they had another teenage club called Grahams that was right down the street from, uh, the Parks Mall on Cooper in California. So we had a shootout, uh, with some kids from Martin High School.
Speaker 4 00:39:18 Over what sets
Speaker 0 00:39:19 Or what? Uh, nah. Over the schools. Nah, it, it was, it was over my girlfriend, Adrian de Jesus over
Speaker 4 00:39:24 Girl. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:39:25 <laugh>. Yeah. Pretty poor boy. One of the most prettiest Puerto Rican girls in the world. Boy, she's still boy. Adrian De Jesus, uh, little guy named Lawrence. Uh, he liked her. I liked her. Uh, I thought I was going with her. Uh, but he probably was going with her. But I thought I was going with her cause we kissed on the bridge and she lived in my neighborhood. So, uh, we had a shootout one time. How were we getting guns? We were breaking in the houses. And then we got the white kids. We were all living in Arlington with the white kids who dads got trucks with the rifles and the guns. So if nothing else, we got the 30 or six rifles. Okay. Uh, 20 twos and 20 fives. Uh, I got put on a year of probation for shooting a gun at some white people who called, who called me.
Speaker 0 00:40:03 Uh, a racial slur, who called me the N-word. So I got a year of probation of that. Uh, I'm about to get in trouble again for this car impounding. So I run away, man. I'm, I'm just running from problems cause I don't know how to deal and face with problems. I'm a kid. Uh, and so, man, I just went on a crime spree in my little mind. Uh, I'm finally grown. I ain't gotta worry about mama saying that. So my mind, homie, I I I went on a crime spree because it's fun. It wasn't really for money. It was fun going into North Arlington when with many, wasn't many black people back then. Grabbing a 12 pack of brew and grabbing some hot pork skins and running out. Yeah, it was fun then going, yeah. So it was fun going to the Parks mall, watching a woman walk to her car and snatch her purses and she fall down and hurt herself. And you snatched it in the belt break and you laughed to the car. Come on y'all. Come on, come on. And then we go from the Parks mall to the, the min yards and Pango right there. It's right there off of Pioneer and born spring, one of them. So it was a min yards right there. So I was always the daredevil. I'm, I was the guy. I'm not going snatch the purse in the parking lot. I'm gonna go in the store and steal it, catch it sitting in the buggy. I'm almost
Speaker 4 00:41:20 A, almost making it a dare. Well,
Speaker 0 00:41:21 I want, I want to have the ups on everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I want to fit in. Yeah. I wanna be a
Speaker 4 00:41:27 Part. And you feel like you're in control even though you're outta control, you feel like you're in control. Cuz you're not having to follow anybody's orders, but
Speaker 0 00:41:33 You Yeah. Uh, well, I'm, I'm faulting order because most of the guys I'm hanging with is older than me. I'm, I'm just the daredevil. I'm the Braveheart man. You go do it. You go do it. It's your turn. Uh, well, I noticed they never wanted to do the most dangerous stuff. They want. They, they look for the easy victims. So I, I learned how, watching my friends, I learned how, how criminals pick victims. So I, I I I, I've never been a victim really, because I, as a kid, I, I watched how my, they, they always wanted it easy. I wanna go in the store and have the security guard chasing me out and I have to run around the car. That's how we got caught. That's how we caught this murder. Right. So I'm still, I'm on a crime spree, not my friends. Cause I them at home.
Speaker 0 00:42:12 I done ran away from home. I'm staying at my friend's houses. Uh, we're having sex with grown women cause we trying to sell crack. So there's a guy by the name of Paul Chappelle, uh, he's the front dope to everybody. He's like a little, little young kingpin. So, uh, y'all got Paul Chappelle to give me $125 worth of crack. And I tricked all my crack off with Mexican Maria while I was Yeah. So y'all wanna be grown. I wanna have sex with the grown women. So I ain't got no money. So we wanted to have some clothes to go to the club. The club coming up. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. We thinking bulls, we ain't thinking money. We gonna go steal some jackets so we can wear it to the club. Now, this is Thursday, the club on Friday. Okay. We're gonna snatch her purses, put a little money, put a little piece of hut money in our pockets. Uh, so I come up with this clever plan to break into, uh, my girlfriend's house. Uh, her dad was a Dallas police officer. So she, I stayed on Overbrook. She stayed on the street over, uh, yeah. Yeah. I told, uh, yeah. Her dad was a Dallas police officer. So that's where we got the gun from. Uh, we stole, uh, two Nintendos, two Vvcs Television from your
Speaker 4 00:43:24 Own girls' house.
Speaker 0 00:43:24 Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:43:25 Uh, yeah, man. Uh,
Speaker 0 00:43:27 Well, she was my ex-girlfriend. So it's the get back. So this why I tell, I gotcha. So most I tell we broke into most our girlfriends houses as kids. They're white dad. You're easy targeting. We, we stole most of our white girlfriend white dads guns because we're the first, we're really the first generation of children that Dr. King's dream really got to coexist, where we really got to go to school with white kids. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in the eighties. But
Speaker 4 00:43:53 Plus you knew the layout. You knew where everything was. Yeah. You knew where people were home. You knew when they
Speaker 0 00:43:56 Weren't. Well, we all, we all always skipped school and go do it. But most of most of us got caught. Right. So, uh, their mom's jewelry, their, their dad's beepers, uh, all of their dad's guns, uh, their brother's Nintendo tapes. Uh, we just doing stupid shit. Uh,
Speaker 4 00:44:13 And so you busted in this
Speaker 0 00:44:14 House. So we still, so, so we break into this house. Uh, nobody wants to go in. I bust the window cause I'm the Braveheart. Uh, and I cut my hand. So with blood left on the window, there wasn't no DNA n test back then, but yeah. Uh, but it was part of the pictures that they used for, for, for the trial. Uh, I remember us being fascinated by having this bulletproof vest. Uh, my friend Dwayne Jackson, uh, he's one of the kids that died out outta the four of us, uh, in a, in a high speed chase, uh, running from the police while, while he was out on bond. Uh, he, he was more of a good kid. I was a good kid, but I was playing bad. So it easily to convince people that I was kind of bad. Uh, DJ was a good kid.
Speaker 0 00:44:59 He, he was an only child. Uh, nothing was criminal about him. Uh, nothing was he, he he wanted to be street, but that was just a culture. Uh, he worked at, uh, steak Andell Tips. He had a cut list. So that's who car we was in. He paid, he bought his own car. Uh, and he was his mom's only child. We was, I was trying, I was trying to get him because we got with some older guys that were from Dow work, and, and, and they, they wanted us to put the bulletproof vests on him, and we test out the gun on him. Shoot. Yeah. Yeah. To see if the bulletproof vests work. You know, you a bunch of, come on, man. We, it's always one, just one friend that you could, it's always a friend that they can get the jump in the river and his drown.
Speaker 0 00:45:44 Yeah, I know. It's always one. Yeah. Oh yeah. So yeah, man, we would go put the, man, when I think about that man, uh, I cringe, uh, because that was gonna kill him. The impact, man, we had a 38 special with blue tip hollow points in it, and we would go shoot it. But the older guys wanted to do this, like how most older guys fuck over the young boys. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, so we got all this car full of stuff that we done stole. We take it to the older guys out on the block selling crack. They take it to the pawn shop and pawn everything for us. Uh, of course they fucked us. Yeah, man. They kept everything except the gun. I wasn't letting that gun go. That's my second gun. I had the little 25. I got that my first time ever holding.
Speaker 0 00:46:34 My Uncle Joe used to take us to the country and shoot guns. So I grew up shooting guns in the country. So I always had a fascination with guns. So I'm a gun fanatic. I love guns. Uh, I'm, I always wanted to be the cowboy. I ain't never wanted to be the Indian. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I'm a lone ranger baby. Uh, so Marco Joe was a man's man. Uh, my granddad's military. Uh, I grew up with all the GI Joe. So I wanted to be military. Right. So I always, when we played cops and robbers, I was always the cop as a kid. So I was that kid, right. That wanted, would've went to the military. If I didn't lose my, I would've became a cop. The culture shifted. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, man, I kept that gun because I remember how I felt when I shot that gun at them.
Speaker 0 00:47:19 White people, when they called me the, called me a nigga. The look, the the moment of power. Oh, this your car and how the control I had, uh, yeah. I wanted it again. Is that, so then what happened? You took that gun And so, so, so we took the gun and, uh, my, my co-defendant, uh, my co-defendant, Antoine Doolittle, we, we was going to go to this, to this. She, she was an adult lady, but she smoked crack and, and, and, uh, man, we just wanted to have sex with grown women. So we would, we would save up money, steal whatever to go buy some crack to go get our little things sucked to go have Yeah. With some take turns all night long watching porn. And he grown women, you know, this is the introduction of Crack to America. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, uh, that was fascinating us.
Speaker 0 00:48:09 So we went to some apartment complex and there was a guy that was walking from that Min Yards, uh, on Arkansas and Collins right there. And he had on a, uh, he had on the New York Giants starter jacket, kind of like one to one. We tried to take from the mall. Uh, well, let me take y'all to the mall first. So we break into the house, we sell all the stuff. Uh, I ain't gonna say his name, but my partner Tory, his big brother, they fuck over what's good boy. They, we probably barely got a hundred dollars a piece, but, so that's really why we were stealing. If they would've played fire wheeler, we would've went and bought some jackets. Uh, because the, at that time, starter jackets were like a Gucci belt. Oh yeah. Man, I know some kids right now serving 4, 5, 6 year old for robbing for a Gucci belt.
Speaker 0 00:48:59 Uh, they was like Michael Jordan 10, man, the starter jacket. Uh, yeah. Yeah, man, you was something with a starter jacket. Yeah. So I come up with this plan. We gonna go to the mall and steal up some starter jackets. Man, this is all in my little brain. And all these guys are older than me. They not thinking about this because they not, they hadn't ran away from home. I got the pressure of, for one, my mother is going to every spot I be looking for me. And she's adamant knocking on doors. I'm, well, I'm talking about she's adamant looking. Well, she knows the time's ticking and, and it is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. She, she's a, I mean, she's adamant. Uh, so I was so anxious to do this. Right. Uh, Antoine Doolittle and Antoine Jenkins, they backed out. They didn't wanna do it. So I told dj, come on.
Speaker 0 00:49:51 We went over to my friend, uh, Denars house. Uh, yeah, it was Denar and Tawan. Uh, they was supposed to catch that murder case with me. Narco was the, was the, was the, was the junior high barber. He was the high school barber. So he was the guy at school to cut everybody hair. Tawan was a fuck up too. He was in and outta juvie too. So he was a perfect candidate. And, and Narco was my right hand partner, but they was all older than me. So I said, say, man, we gonna go to the mall and go steal the starter jacket. Indeed. You just drive. Uh, he said, yeah, man, come back and get me. I'm too anxious to do it. So I'm, oh man, come on. So rather than coming back to get them, I went back to the, to the projects Pebble Creek Apartments to get Antoine Doolittle and Antoine Jenkins.
Speaker 0 00:50:42 Uh, the plan was just to go go to the mall and steal some jackets and some hats and run out. But you can't put a gun in the process of children and think they're gonna make Yeah. Think it's gonna go as planned mature decision. Yeah. Because you can't plan the response of the people. No crime ever goes as planned. Right, right. But in your mind, it's fitting to go to a t. So I come up with a plan, uh, Doolittle was the fat sharp one. So he couldn't run as fast. And he was kind of, he was kind of scared. Anyway, he more of a drug dealer. But what, let me know, he was kind of heartless. One time he had a 70 something year old grandmother, and she was in a wheelchair and she used the door to kind of come pull herself through the door.
Speaker 0 00:51:28 Yeah. And he slammed her fingers through the door and laughed like a motherfucker. I should have known something fucked up about him. <laugh>. Yeah. And his, yeah. Yeah. And, and his mama used to lie to Mamam, lie right in her face. And no, you ain't hear No, no. And, you know, uh, and my mama knew. Yes, she knew. So we go to the mall, the plan was we go, go in and, and, and, and run out. So when we go into the Foot Locker, the first time it was, uh, it was a young black dude in there, looked like he run fast than a motherfucker. So she, nah, it, like, he run fast. We better wait. So we went to the game room. So they got all this on the, on the, on the mall footage. So we spent an hour in the game room spending the pun money playing video game to the shift chain.
Speaker 0 00:52:10 So when we come back now, it's a young white boy. He was fast. He, he was boy motherfucker. So fast. You hear me? Yeah. We should have did it with the black dude. We probably wouldn't have had to kill nobody but the white boy Footlocker. We thought we had the ups on him. Right. So we go in there, we trying on shoe, we trying on hats. Next thing you know, we just grab a bunch of jackets and run out. Uh, the plan was one of us stay in the car. So I'm the, the, the Fort Worth star Telegram. Uh, Ray Sanders, when, when he wrote about it, they described me as being the smallest of the bunch, but being the brains of the bunch. So I was the brain. They got the news. Is that right? Yeah, it was. Okay. Uh, it, it was my plan.
Speaker 0 00:52:49 It was my plan to steal the gun and breaking my girlfriend house. Uh, uh, when we ran out the mall, uh, Doolittle was sitting in the car, the Footlocker man chasing her. So Antoine Jenkins about to get caught. Yeah. He got a little jump. He about to get caught. He dropped a hat or a jacket and ran around the car to get it. At this time, our victim, uh, which is a guy by the name of Michael Levy, uh, his car was having car trouble in the parking lot. Uh, this was at the form 3 0 3 mile, uh, it was probably like two o'clock in the, in the afternoon. Uh, broad daylight. The mall was plenty of people. Tony Dorsett had a club right there. So Tony Dorsett and him was at the club. Uh, so this happened in broad daylight in the mall parking lot when we ran out and got in, uh, uh, I'm holding on.
Speaker 0 00:53:43 It's my gun. So I'm holding on. I got the gun right here. So I'm in the, I'm, I'm behind the passenger seat, Doolittle in, in, in the front seat. Uh, big torn got in the back seat with me and DJ in the front seat. So I don't know what happened. It was starting to rain like this. Uh, somehow the car, he put the car neutral. So he was trying to go in reverse, you know, it's just, he's panicking. <laugh>. Yeah. You know that he got to go up. Yeah. He panicking. So, uh, as we trying to, as he's trying to crank the car up, uh, uh, our victim, Michael Levy, he came out of nowhere and dove on top of the car and start hitting the windshield. He had, he, he had a tool on the hood. He had a No, he was hit. He was, he was on the hood, on top of the hood hitting the windshield.
Speaker 0 00:54:31 Uh, and, and he was shattering the, he was shattering the glass. Uh, so Doolittle was in the front seat with the glass kind of shattering. It's not busting, but it's shattering <affirmative>. And he's playing like, he don't know what we went in there to do, man. What y'all done, done, sir? I don't know what, what man, what's going on, man? What y'all done, done? I'm saying shoot the motherfucker. Shoot him. So I'm encouraging it. I got the gun back here. Uh, I'm saying, man, shoot that motherfucker, man. Shoot him. So he's turned around this way to prevent the glass from hitting him. Man, what y'all did, man, sir. I don't know what, by this time, Mr. Levy, he's playing too, cuz he knows Right? He ain't no goddamn damn where he's teeth gay. He done told us two jackets. He trying to, he done picked him a jacket.
Speaker 0 00:55:11 Yeah. So, uh, so by this time, uh, Mr. Levy, you know, back then the car didn't have to be in Park Drive neutral. You can just take the keys out. The motherfucker, uh, he took the keys out. He reached in from around. I don't know how he did it, man, but he never got off the hood. Really? And he was a small guy. Okay. He was a small frame guy. We could have jumped on him and, and, and let him live. But we, we don't know, man. Yeah. We hurt people. Hurt people. Uh, and we got a 3 57, we got a 38 special that looked like a 3 57 Magnum or a four 10 with blue tip hollow points. And it's a police weapon. It's a police weapon. Yeah. So, uh, when he reached inside the car to take the keys out, uh, by this time I'm saying, man, shoot that motherfucker.
Speaker 0 00:56:05 So now he said, man, gimme the gun. So, uh, I I, I was the first one to get out the car. Uh, and I remember telling him, uh, uh, to give us back the keys. He said, if y'all want the keys back or y'all gotta wait for the police. So at this time, we're all getting out the car as he's saying this to me. So, so, so, so, uh, DJ is standing right here, standing right here next to me. Passenger side. Yeah. Big torn. Never got out big at this time. Big torn, never got out. We done threw all the jackets in the hat out. So as, as, as he's telling me at this point, you threw all this stuff out. You wanted to just leave? Yeah. Well, on my mind, I want them jackets. Yeah. Yeah. No, we ain't leaving without them jackets. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:56:49 But we left without them jackets. We left with a life. Yeah. We didn't take one jacket. We took a life. So, so, uh, you end up, was it you? So, so no. So, so when I get him the gun, I'm in the back seat. He's on the hood getting off the, so when he reach in, he cut the car off. Uh, Antoine and Antoine don't get out immediately. I get out immediately. Yeah. I'm a little hot man. Give us back the keys. He said, if y'all want the keys, you have to wait for the police. And he's holding him like this. So at this point, Antoine gets out and walks from around the driver's seat. Winner, winner, Tudo Cutlet, cutlet Supreme. He walks around here to me, the Footlocker guy standing right here. Cuz he chased us out. Remember Levy don't see the gun. At first. The Footlocker guy. Do he take off running? He was like, hell no. I'm outta here. Smart guy. Yeah. He take off running. Uh, I tell Levy to give us the keys again and he throw 'em to dj. Uh, and when he throw 'em to dj, uh, I turn around and get, and come me and shoot that motherfucker. Pow one shot. Uh, Antoine never admit to trying to shoot him in the chest, but because of the impact, boom.
Speaker 0 00:58:05 They thought we shot him in the back. Yeah. They thought, they thought we shot him in the back. Uh, yeah. We thought it was funny. Uh, I, I stood over him. I always wanted to see what, what it looked like for somebody to die. I remember my friend killed somebody. He, he killed a drug addict one time. But I was too afraid to go in the house. And look, my other partner went in there and touched the brains. I knew he was fucked up. Yeah. I knew he was fucked up. Yeah. He went in there and touched the brains. But all my friends end up killing somebody because we thought, uh, man, we thought that's, that's what you do. Uh, was we heartless? No. Did we have any emotions, uh, for the people? Not at the time. You have to learn empathy. Yeah. If, if, if, if I got a, if I got an abcess tooth and it hurts so bad that I can't eat, I can't talk, I can't sleep, I can't care about what's hurting you. This pain won't let me. Don't care how much I can see you, my pain do will not allow me to have no compassion.
Speaker 4 00:59:21 And we talked about that last time. You gotta, you gotta take care of yourself before you start reaching out and trying to help other people too. Or else that's not gonna be
Speaker 0 00:59:27 Effective. So, so man, to this day, and I never talk about this, I, I, I make it seem like I killed somebody and I, yeah. I killed the white man. I just, I ain't never killed nobody. But I talk as if I did because I played a great part in, in being responsible for taking somebody's life.
Speaker 4 00:59:45 For sure. And you took responsibility for it. You
Speaker 0 00:59:48 Notice, I, you notice I just say my victim, I say his name. Yeah. I make it my business to say his name, uh, had
Speaker 4 00:59:55 On, I don't appreciate you sharing that. I mean, it, it, it's a tough don't tough thing.
Speaker 0 00:59:58 I don't
Speaker 4 00:59:58 Never talk about it. I know you don't. And that's, that's why I was really curious if there was a reason why Yeah. Or if there was some particular step, especially in lieu of the, the guests we have here today in ways we can tie this story into things.
Speaker 0 01:00:09 Oh, be because it's, it is, uh, I, I tell, I tell you, I man, I tell the young niggas all the time, homie, you ain't, you ain't ready to kill nobody. You, you don't wanna see that face forever. Uh, you, you, you don't, you, you can't, you, you, you don't wanna wrestle with those demons, those dreams and nightmares. Uh, it's a long road, man. Where you done took a life. Your life is gonna be a long road if you think you're gonna live in peace. So you have to, you, you have to, you have to find something that places you on the path to redemption where you can redeem. Because you, you pay your debt to society, but you forever owe debt to the life you take. Yeah. So, uh, I, I understood that leaving from the boys' home, that's when I knew I had empathy. But the day we killed that man, I didn't have no empathy. The day we killed Michael Lee, I stood over and looked. And I always wanted to see, do, do, do black people, do white people look like the black people doing the movies? Do they look afraid? And he did. Yeah. He looked afraid. So I vividly remember that
Speaker 4 01:01:19 He said so disconnected in terms of what you're doing. Everything else, right? You, you're acting out a character that's not in your character and then you're playing it all the way through.
Speaker 0 01:01:28 And plus I had my uncles trying to make me hateful, hate white people. My mother saying, son, well, God has no respect. My mother's not hateful. My mother, my uncles, them and the man, the white man. Man, you go across the railroad tracks and break the houses and steal, you snatch a white woman per, so they instilled in this shit in me. Yeah. Intentionally, unintentionally. But through observation and, and, and, and sometime indirect, indirect teachings, I was taught it go across the railroad tracks. You go to the airport, you don't break. And so it was always get the other race.
Speaker 4 01:02:01 Interesting.
Speaker 0 01:02:02 Then it was get the gang, then the gangs came and shifted that my relief came, uh, when I met my victim's family when they came to my 40. You have met them? Yeah, I met them. So I got to sit and I got to sit and, and and, and watch them watch me say to me, we forgive you.
Speaker 4 01:02:20 Wow. Yeah. That some incredible people. That would would've been my next question. I just, yeah.
Speaker 0 01:02:27 That's in incredible. Watched my mother man. And my mother never made no excuses. Even in court, me and judge Gene boy said, Ms. White, are you asking for your son to come home? My mother said, no, no. If they would've released me at 18, it would've been another murder.
Speaker 4 01:02:42 You weren't ready.
Speaker 0 01:02:44 Lack of brain development. 18 year old, just as stupid as a 15 year old. He just know a little better. But he don't know shit because his brain's not developed. He's as dumb as he will ever be because he think he know and he don't know. Right. They're expecting me at 18, 19, 20, 21 to make some of the most crucial decisions of my life when I'm the dumbest of my life. Come on America. Right.
Speaker 4 01:03:08 And you're the most capable of acting out on that dity. Right.
Speaker 0 01:03:12 Impulsiveness. Yeah. Because I cannot logically and rational think as a human with this brain development at this age.
Speaker 4 01:03:19 And the lack of accountability, which you apparently did. Yeah. Come up with a way to become accountable. Obviously,
Speaker 0 01:03:26 You know how they used to make us accountable from stop, from from being mean to one another, kiss and make up. We stopped fighting each other cuz they catch us fight. We gotta kiss and make up <laugh>. Say you're sorry. Tell him you're sorry. Boy. Pop. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Say, say it like you mean it now give him a hug. Because they don't allow families to fight in our family. And I don't wanna kiss and make up. So I quit fighting. Yeah. And just say mean things in my head.
Speaker 4 01:03:53 You got them.
Speaker 0 01:03:54 Yeah. <laugh>.
Speaker 4 01:03:54 Yeah. I'm just gonna be nice all the time.
Speaker 0 01:03:56 I win. But I, I just, I just wanted to throw that, throw that in there. Uh, because, uh, they gave me something that they needed, they needed to forgive me too. Just like I needed to hear them say, I forgive you.
Speaker 4 01:04:06 That's a beautiful thing, man. I wouldn't have thought. Most people are not capable of doing that. Nah. Would, would you think? I mean, nah. The people that we know today, oh,
Speaker 0 01:04:15 Well, let, let, let me just tell you how fortunate we were. There was a lady by the name of Ms. Simpson. Ms. Simpson was our typewriter teacher. Probably. She was like the mother. She was the sweetest woman I've ever known in this world. Her whole family worked at this facility. Mr. Tony, uh, Mrs. Davenport. There was two sex offenders who one day brutally raped Ms. Simpson in a type writing class, in a vocational building after school one day, brutally raped her, hit over the head with type men. Just, just, this is, uh, man, this was the sweetest woman. This is the comfort you find when you come to this facility. And you just, just, she gave you comfort in just her voice and teaching you the homero keys. Man, when they raped Ms. Simpson, those staff members had every right to come back the next day and work their job and treat us like the crimes we had committed. But they didn't still treated us like children. Hmm. Even after Ms. Simpson got her brother and sister worked, man. And, and, and, and, and, and, and what ended up happening is that, uh, the state said she was at fault for her rape. And it never made it right. Huh? Because she allowed those kids to help be a helper. And they were sex offenders.
Speaker 0 01:05:40 The state. I've never forgotten that woman. So the impact of these people, homie, they had every right to come back. And we was many of the people that had killed their mothers and their fathers. It was kids there who had raped six month old babies. It was kids there that had had killed three month old. We had some of the worst crimes in the history of this state. 19 90, 91, 92, 93, Ms. Simpson got raped in 93. They tied up. Father Pete, the Catholic priest hog tied him and drove his car through the, through the, through the gate. George Anderson snuck a gun in there through the, through the back of a, it was so, it was, it was a But these people never treated us like the crimes we had committed. They still treated us like children. And they still believed that they could make a difference. You, our,
Speaker 4 01:06:25 You think was, cause those sweeter people are better victim candidates.
Speaker 0 01:06:30 Like they're more trusting. I think this is a different America. I think there was a time when people became teachers and they really believed without this pay that I'm gonna be a great teacher and I can really make a diff There was a time when people really believed that that's,
Speaker 4 01:06:44 That's why they became a
Speaker 0 01:06:45 Teacher's, why they really wanted to make, there was guys who became cops who really believed I'm gonna make a difference in the world because I'm a cop. And they set
Speaker 4 01:06:52 Out to do that. That's why you go do all that work and get underpaid and be
Speaker 0 01:06:55 Okay. Come on now. Right. It's some, it's some college professors that could go somewhere and write a book, but because they know what they're given to this future. So those are the people that I come up under in America. Those people don't have the same belief anymore. Now we throw children away. Now we don't believe children can change. We start giving them juvenile life without parole in 94. We start sentencing kids at 15 to 75 years where he have to go to prison and survive before he can even start to think of rehabilitation. Right. He
Speaker 4 01:07:29 Never even sniffed adulthood yet. But
Speaker 0 01:07:32 He has to go in survival mode. Right. And what he does from 15 to 30 is gonna affect his parole because he had to survive. Yeah. So, uh, I I I, I'm a product of of of America's juvenile system. I'm a product of, of a America's higher learning educational system. Uh, I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a state baby. I was raised by the state. I'm institutionalized as far back as I can think. In school. I was injured as a child. So I had a private tutor. I I, I remember seeing doctors and nurses. I ain't go to school by the time I get out to body cast and get my eye fixed. I wanna play gangster and catch a murder case. So in the sixth grade, I got my, that's when I got my output in seventh grade. I got it redone. Eighth grade.
Speaker 0 01:08:15 I'm feeling a little bit more confident now. Now I can fit in. I don't feel this jazzed. Yeah. And now I catch a murder case. I was never gangster. I was never street. I had, I had all the, the, the members only teddy bears the, the bulldog. Look at what the jackets in the, had I had all that shit, man. I had the Nintendo Power Pad. Uh, man, I told you I played the flute in the violin and was good at it. I act in plays. Uh, I, yeah, man. So I was just acting like I'm doing now. Yeah. I never stopped acting because I, I wanted to fit in. I wanted fit in on the internet. I don't wanna be the positive guy. Yeah. The only positive guy with no, I want to fit in. Yeah. So I been acting to fit in, in my public life, in my private life. I'm nothing like I am in my public life. Right.
Speaker 4 01:09:05 I appreciate that about you, man. Yeah. I always appreciate your candor and your honesty. And I appreciate you telling that story. I didn't know if you get
Speaker 0 01:09:11 Through it. Yeah. I I, I, I never go in details. Yeah. I know. I, I talk like I don't have no remorse. Uh, but I, I never, I I never, because that's the vulnerable side of Charleston. I understand. Or that's the, that's the side that make me choke up. Uh, because to, to stand over man and watch him die, uh, only to be given mercy from his loved ones and family.
Speaker 4 01:09:31 Remarkable.
Speaker 0 01:09:32 Yeah. Yeah. We laughed at him when he was dying. Ah, man, look, we, I said we shot that motherfucker. I took ownership for, for killing him immediately before we was ever arrested because I wanted to be the one said I shot him, man, God damn it. I wanted that murder. That was me in my head. I'm mad the motherfucker, I didn't get the murder. But I thank God I didn't cause I wasn't a killer. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I didn't know what that was gonna do to me. I know what it's done, done to all my friends who done killed. Ain't the same no more. Ain't the same. No more. Yeah.
Speaker 4 01:10:03 That's a life changer, man.
Speaker 0 01:10:04 Well, based on what we was taught, you killed somebody, homie. You going to hell. So imagine as a kid wrestling with your spiritual beliefs, never really wanting to embrace God because you think you're gonna go to hell for taking a life. Imagine. So I tried all of the religions running from what I thought a real God was. Yeah. I became Muslim, then I went to Atheist, then I went to Satanist, then I went to the Crip. God, then the pimp guard, then the game guard. Everything. But God. Right. Because you, you, you, you
Speaker 4 01:10:35 Still running.
Speaker 0 01:10:36 Yeah. Until you know your own truth. Yeah. Until you know your own truth, man. Uh, well, well maybe God sacrificed his life to save my life so I can save other lives. Because the, the Fort Worth star Telegram read the day after his death hero dies. Thwarting teenage shoplifters. That's what the headline wrote. So he died a hero. Senator, Senator Joseph Lieberman, uh, once stood before Congress, uh, and said that, that that fatherlessness and, and, and it, it crosses racial lines. Oh, absolutely. And that it's, and that it is the greatest, one of the greatest problems that's plaguing in America today across all racial lines.
Speaker 4 01:11:26 I completely agree. It's definitely, we don't have to make this about a racial issue at all whatsoever. Because it is a human problem. Right? Yeah. And it is perpetuated by, as soon as you get one fatherless family, it beget yet another fatherless family. Because again, you start assuming that that's how things are done, or you change your mannerisms and the way that you deal with your family and the level of accountability shifts. And so it's cyclical. Right. And so that, that's really what we're Yeah. That's what we're trying to intercept here.
Speaker 0 01:11:59 Well, that's why I stated, that's why I made that quote, uh, because he said it's not a racial problem. This is an American problem at this point. Yes, sir. Sir. Because when you look, when you look at all the, the, the, the data, the statistics, it all points to that lack of father not being in the home. Whether that's from working or his lack of involvement at, at, at the football games, uh, whatever. Uh, it's a key element that, that every child needs. Yeah.
Speaker 4 01:12:25 Both parents have a lot to contribute. It just how happens that dudes are usually the, the primary absentee. Yeah. You know, and that, that's really destructive, particularly on men. I think that, that it's more impactful on men. Yeah, it is. But I mean, we, we got a guest here's who's been through a program, a program that I've supported ever since Fishbowl concluded, you know, all the book sales go to this organization, Mr. Darien Hadley, who's a, uh, a talented musician and somebody who works at Hope Farm and has been through the Hope Farm program. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> is here with us today. Oh wow. And I'm honored to have you here, my brother. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 01:13:06 Sure. For sure. I appreciate you bringing me here. So whatever y'all have, I'm, I'm happy to answer you.
Speaker 4 01:13:12 Yeah. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Well, first of all, tell me about the experience that that got you into Hope Farm. And was your mother involved or was it just you? And kind of tell me a little bit about that experience before.
Speaker 1 01:13:22 So it really started with my younger brother being in the, in the program. First I was actually not supposed to be in the program cuz I was a little over the age. And usually you want to get kids at a younger age so you're able to instill the information that you want to instill in to him. So they saw me and it was like, Hey, he's a little older. We don't know if we wanna bring him in. So they interviewed me and they realized, hey, maybe we can't put him in the program. I guess they saw some type of potential in me. Mm.
Speaker 4 01:13:50 Because they usually pick up like a five or six, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> is the prime age they
Speaker 1 01:13:54 Want. Exactly. Exactly. So I was, uh, quite often a shy kid. I didn't really, I wasn't involved in too much. Like, you know, me and my brother and my mom, we were in Eastwood and she moved us out real quick. We lived every part of Fort Worth. Like, that's where it started though. And she always told us, you don't have to be where, where you're from. So that's, that's something I always What
Speaker 4 01:14:15 Did she mean by that you think?
Speaker 1 01:14:16 You know, she just wanted us to live a different life. Like, she knew what everything was evolved around there. She never took us away from me. Like, we went to Truvin, we went to Eastland, all of that, you know, I know all about all of it. So it's like, I saw everything that was going on around there. She's like, look, the only way you can learn is you going to either observe, you gonna listen or you, you gonna experience. So I was more always the observer person because I was always shy. I didn't want to just talk and open my mouth for no reason. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So you get hurt. That's how you get caught up in, it's something that you don't got no business getting caught up into. So I just shut my mouth and just looked at the outcome of how everything you do, every action has some type of consequence. Yeah. So I just observed. Really.
Speaker 4 01:15:01 So how, how many years did you spend, how many, uh, semesters, years, whatever, did you go through the Hope Farm program at?
Speaker 1 01:15:08 So I think I started when I was in middle school. So I was like 11. Okay. 12, something like that. And I went all the way through, um, high school. I didn't really think I was gonna go to college, but I ended up going to college. They saw, you know, they grew me into the person I am today. And they was like, Hey, if you feel like you want to do this, you can, like, nobody in my family was to college. So I was like,
Speaker 0 01:15:29 You first generation college student.
Speaker 1 01:15:31 First generation college student
Speaker 0 01:15:32 Salute.
Speaker 1 01:15:33 Yeah. So I was like, hey, I'm, I guess you're not make, I'm making a difference. So, um, my brother, he's currently in college too, so we gonna be the first two to do it. My mom, I I, I just never seen her smile the way she smiled when she, when I got my diploma. So yeah, it made me happy to see that. And it's like, um, we live in a world too. I'm like, I'm happy I got the college degree, but I don't feel like that defines me. I'm happy I still went and got my college degree. This, so, like, my younger cousins, they'll be like, Hey, I can do it too. My cousin Darien did it. So if they wanted to take
Speaker 4 01:16:06 Action, so we're saying this is kind of a, a launch point. It has nothing to do with, I've hit a new finish line. Mm-hmm. Cuz it's not a finish line, it's a starting line.
Speaker 1 01:16:12 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I feel like college is really basically, hey, you can do anything you want to if you put your mind to it. That's the way I looked at it. Uh,
Speaker 0 01:16:20 Well that's, that's when most people realize they can't mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Uh, so I, I wanted to say, uh, what, what college does mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, it separates, uh, those that can and those that can't. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I'm the one that couldn't mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, I'm two semesters away from a bachelor's degree. Uh, college is not for everybody, but I recommend everybody go to college if for nothing else but the experience. But if you can complete it mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that tells the world. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you can start what you finish for. Yeah.
Speaker 1 01:16:49 You feel like you gonna finish yours or, uh, what's the plan with that?
Speaker 0 01:16:56 That's the hope that I keep telling myself. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. That's, that's, that's the hope that I say man when I get old. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, don't get too old where you can't do it. So, uh, I keep telling myself that's the hope that I, I tell myself, man, you gotta go finish. You gotta go finish <laugh>. Uh, I I I feel like I feel like I done something wrong by not finishing. I feel you. But when I dropped out, hype started mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I started doing, uh, working with juvenile legislation. Mm-hmm. So I started doing with hype what I would've been doing as an attorney. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, I felt like I was doing more mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Uh, but I think I owe it to, to, to myself. I owe it to my children and I owe it to my mother to finish. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> because I started it. You
Speaker 1 01:17:41 Should. Yeah. You can get the picture. You put it in a nice little picture frame, put it on the wall.
Speaker 0 01:17:45 For real. Everybody can't do it brother. So I salute you.
Speaker 1 01:17:48 I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 01:17:51 So how are you now taking, are you leveraging that degree to do anything else? And did that have anything to do with you getting back and actually, cuz now you actually work at Home Farm, right? Yeah.
Speaker 0 01:18:00 So
Speaker 1 01:18:01 I work there right now. So, you know, I already told 'em in the beginning like, I want to come back here. Uh, cuz you know, I graduated in Covid so I didn't even get to finish my Oh wow. Senior semester had to do it all online virtually. So that was something. So I'm like, I'm here back and forth worth already. So while I'm doing my classes, let me, you know, work here Yeah. And help out. Why not? They're the reason I got to college in the first place. So I also saw they needed help with their content creation. So that's when I went to school for videography and, you know, cinematography. So
Speaker 0 01:18:31 Like, there go that word, content creation. Uh, they, they're starting to implement it in schools, trade schools and everything now. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> Yeah. Is gonna be up there with, with psychology and, and psychiatry and, and med school and all of that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah.
Speaker 4 01:18:45 And Darien knows what he's doing there. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, he's got a camera in his hand. He's not just waving it around like I would
Speaker 1 01:18:51 <laugh>. Yeah. I'm just trying to, you know, capture those moments, really capture what's really going on in whole farm. Like these kids, what they're going through. Cause all of them have stories. Everybody has a story. Yeah. And you can't choose your life. So like, I want the, and another another thing I realized, being there, putting that camera in their face. Like these kids nowadays, they like being in front of the camera, TikTok and all of that. Yeah. They, they embrace it. So when they see me pull out the camera, what, what do you think they want to do? And they wanna jump in front of it and show people who they are.
Speaker 4 01:19:21 That's awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 1 01:19:21 And in
Speaker 0 01:19:22 A way they, I use it as a behavior modification. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> say, man, don't be doing all that cussing, man. Don't be throwing that gang. So, and, and I noticed that they will clean it up just to stay on the camera. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 01:19:31 <affirmative>. Exactly. Yeah. It's, in a way, it's a way for them to listen. Cuz it's already hard enough for kids nowadays to wanna listen or even for them to get their attention. It's too much media. You got television, you got your cell phones, you got all these things that you can just look at. Why would I listen to somebody talking to me or telling me what to do? You know what I mean? So it's like he said, it's a way to get their attention and really maybe get them to learn something. Like what I try to do is like, you know, educational activities with 'em. Like we, I don't know if you saw, we do like black history videos or we'll do like fun fact videos. It might not be something they'll want to do on paper, but if they can just talk about it in front of, in front of a camera, they'll do it.
Speaker 1 01:20:08 They'll do the research rehearse. So it's, yeah, exactly. Yeah. They wanna do that and they wanna feel like they're, they're running something. Yeah. Like most these skills, they already feel like they're grown already. So it's like they want to be in control or something. So I, I try to give 'em full control to the extent because I want them to feel like this is their creation. I want them to know when you start something and you finish it, this is what happens. This is what hard works leads. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. That's what it leads to. Love it. Yeah. So,
Speaker 0 01:20:33 So ain't nothing like hearing it and seeing it.
Speaker 1 01:20:35 Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 0 01:20:36 Yeah. Yeah. Ain't nothing like hearing it and seeing it and
Speaker 4 01:20:37 Seeing it. And that's a success story. Cause I know you had questions too for, for, you know, for kids that, you know, you get a lot of pushback and blow back from Katz our age, my age, whatever. The older kids and, uh, not older kids, but just <laugh>,
Speaker 0 01:20:53 The older population, grown folk.
Speaker 4 01:20:55 Mm-hmm. Yeah. The grown folk. But I get a
Speaker 0 01:20:57 Lot of pushback from that 35 to 50 age group.
Speaker 4 01:20:59 So we've got, we've got a young youngster here. So what do you think you can learn from somebody like CW over here? Is, uh, is there a lot of controversy that turns people in the wrong direction? Or do you think, uh, do you think it's more of a conversation starter to get people to another level? I mean, obviously you're not leveraging a lot of his stuff
Speaker 1 01:21:23 In, in the
Speaker 4 01:21:24 Curriculum necessarily, but, but if they know about him, it's smarter to talk about him. Right.
Speaker 1 01:21:29 I just feel like what he does, it makes you think about what's going on. It's a different perspective. Everybody has a perspective and I respect everybody's perspective. Not everybody is going agree. A lot of peoples gonna disagree of course. But at the same time, it's a perspective and it's something that somebody thought about and put into the universe just like anybody else would. Only difference is people. A lot of people are seeing it. Yeah. And a lot of people might not like it, but hey, that's what it is. That's, that's what the world is conversation
Speaker 0 01:21:57 More
Speaker 4 01:21:58 Than see it, the more are gonna dislike it. Cuz you're just talking percentages. I mean, you know, if I got 10 followers and three of them hate me, I only gotta listen to three complaints. But mm-hmm. <affirmative>, when you turn it into 3 million, then that turns that three into a whole lot of people. Oh,
Speaker 0 01:22:12 There's a lot of competition in the world. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>
Speaker 0 01:22:15 And, and, and there's a lot of people competing for a child's attention. There's a lot of people fighting to get the child's mind. It's a lot of people want their kid to look at this commercial and say, mom, I want that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So it's a, it's a lot that's directed at children and we don't really know it. Right. Because there was a time when we grew up, children were off limits as far as advertisements. Right. You didn't market the children. Now everything is being marketed to a child. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So when you look at a culture that propagates and promote destruction and negativity on top of everything that's coming at the child, then how do you compete with that? How do you compete with the rapper that got a million dollars worth of jewelry on saying this school is overrated and you don't have to listen to your teacher.
Speaker 0 01:23:02 Cuz she told me I couldn't read. So you don't listen to her. So how, how do you compete with him? How do you compete with the drug dealer who this kid been seeing, getting up every day in this neighborhood, driving all the foreign cars that he see on television. His working uncle, his working mom is not, how do you compete with this? And said, no, you don't wanna do that. How so? Uh, man, I realize those, that's my competition. The football player who pan still sagging, that's in the club, making it rain and then it's a shooting afterwards. That's my competition. Yeah. The, the the drug dealer, uh, who, who, who everybody know sell drugs on this street. And he said, do it for yours. And, and, and, and the kids watch him live like a king and get treated like a kink. That's my competition. So I I I, I realized my bow tie, my shirt tucked in my cocksucker hat, uh, my non offensive language, my non-abrasive words, uh, my lack of cuss words. Uh, I, I didn't have the ears of many children if they wasn't sitting in court with me. Now I got the whole country of children listening and watching. Oh, that's mis So, uh, if it's offensive or, or, or if is it abrasive? They all still get this too. Right? They come over here and watch this. Yeah.
Speaker 4 01:24:20 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And that's why I have the appreciation because really it's just about drawing the, the, the people that are just offput and mm-hmm. <affirmative> change the channel are gonna be somewhere else anyway. But I find with people that are off put by you mm-hmm. <affirmative> will be off putt and say, this is a bunch of bullshit. And then, but they'll watch it go to the next channel and they'll watch you again. And then they'll complain again. They'll watch you again and complain until they land on something like this.
Speaker 0 01:24:41 Or like, what you did last. My slogan is, my slogan is the catching come before the hanging. So I came to the internet, internet to do the catching. Mm-hmm. Motherfucker, I raped white women, I kill white men. Well, I ain't never done that. That's the catching man. Who is this guy, man. And then when they start googling, man, this guy work with kids. Look at his background. This guy don't have a background. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, this guy's full of shit. So you either turned off by, but what I saw is it's just as captivating and mesmerizing as 50 shades of gray because I can play ignorant and then walk you back to intelligence where most people get stuck on ignorance. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, if, if the pressure gets too heat or gets too hot, uh, I can say, y'all listen man, I ain't, I'm a character man.
Speaker 0 01:25:25 Look at what I do in real life. This is what I do. I'm just on here saying so I can always walk you back. Well, why did you say this? I can give you a reason why I said it. I'm not just on here saying anything. If you put me before a bunch of children and they say, well why did you say this? Why did you say that? I can give them a logical, logical explanation and reasoning on why I said it was it. Right. Probably not. But this is why I did it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. So, uh, and
Speaker 4 01:25:51 The conversation being had as opposed to before where it wasn't even being addressed.
Speaker 0 01:25:56 Let me, I I i I, I don't wanna pat myself on the back, but I don't wanna hear such horrible music anymore. Talking about so much killing. It's kind of a little change a little bit. It's a little shift in the, in in in the industry now.
Speaker 4 01:26:12 You hearing it?
Speaker 0 01:26:13 I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it. And, and how, and how these killers and drillers was talking two years ago compared to how they talking now on these same platform where I've addressed these issues with,
Speaker 4 01:26:25 Uh, man, I can only imagine. I mean, every, I mean even changing one artist that has a good draw is impacting a million people. I mean, it's, it's, and it would be an amazing feat. And I hope you're right. Yeah.
Speaker 0 01:26:38 So, uh, I, I didn't, I came to the internet to fight fire with fire. I tried it. I I tried to do it. Uh, like the beavers, the cleavers, I'm sorry. Yeah. Wally in there. I tried to do it like w in them. I tried it. The beaver, man, I, I tried it. Hard shirt tailed, tucked in hard bottom shoes. No curse words. Uh, I wouldn't smoke a cigarette. Uh, man, I, I tried to do it that way.
Speaker 4 01:27:09 You're too boring to make the air.
Speaker 0 01:27:11 Yeah. And, and, and, and, and, and what I realize is there's so much,
Speaker 0 01:27:18 There's so much that's competing for the eyes and the ears and the minds of our children. Uh, you can't beat them. You can't beat what's out there. We're not preparing our children to beat 'em. So what we gotta do, we gotta equip them because they, they wasn't prepared. So we have to come back and now equip them. Okay. Look homie, you might go to prison, but I'm gonna try to give you what you need because I know you got a journey ahead of you. I'm looking at the situation you're in. I'm looking at where you come from. I'm looking at your, so I, so while I interact with you, I'm gonna give you everything you need while you go on this journey. Because in my mind, God got a correction officer. He got a probation officer, he got a judge, he got a district attorney who's gonna give you the other part because it's a holistic approach.
Speaker 4 01:28:07 Yeah. Or you get somebody like Darien, who's, I mean now, you know, you and me can talk and I don't mean to patronize, I'm putting you in my age group, even though I know you're a lot younger than me, but Yeah. But you are a lot younger than us. Yeah.
Speaker 0 01:28:21 He's the bridge now. We're not the bridge. He's the bridge.
Speaker 4 01:28:23 Yeah. So putting you on the same level and almost having you agree on some level about what we're trying to accomplish, and you're doing it by your deeds. You're being an example. You've gone through the program, you're coming back and you're now teaching other kids. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> what you've learned. Cuz you've been through that war, but you're not 45, 50 years old. Yeah. You're still young and you're at the age where they still will look up to you and listen to you as as opposed to what we were talking about. Yeah. You know, you, you get to a certain age, you get I'm old mature and you're wise and everything else, but by then somebody that's 16 isn't interested in what somebody says when they're 40.
Speaker 0 01:28:59 I think what it is though, I don't
Speaker 1 01:29:00 Try to present myself as a perfect person. I'm not, I didn't make mistakes just like anybody else on this, in this world, you're gonna make mistakes. And I feel like when you come to a kid and you try to present yourself like you can't do any wrong or what they did is just the worst thing on earth. It's gonna be a disconnect. They
Speaker 4 01:29:18 Know better. They know
Speaker 1 01:29:20 They can sniff it. They have a radar. Yeah. They have a radar. So if you come up to 'em like that, you think they gonna listen to you. You gotta you gotta get to their level. That's the only way they gonna really tune in. Well
Speaker 0 01:29:29 That's, that's, that's how, that's one of my tactics. I show up telling the kid everything he want to hear so I can tell him everything he needs hear. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they wanna know, you done made some mistake, man. Mr. Charleston lied. Yeah, I done lied before I done stole. I done, man. I'm just, I done done what you done, done, man. It, it used to feel good to get a police officer in there. And they said, man, you know what? I, I coulda got in trouble. For real. Yeah man, I coulda, I coulda went either or to hear a cop say that mm-hmm. <affirmative> and he's stressing. No, man, I could have been either or I got in trouble, man. You for real, man. I, I watched cops effectively bond and, and, and, and connect with children in uniform in a badge by being able to say that by
Speaker 4 01:30:14 Being human. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 0 01:30:16 <affirmative>. Yeah. Because white or black, I'm a boy. You a man. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know what it's like to be a boy, don't you? So I tell all my white volunteers that work for the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, man, don't let your lack of blackness stop you from connecting with that kid. You are a man. He's a boy. You know exactly what he's going through. Take the man you Yeah. You done been there. You trying to get him to where you are color, don't do that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> experiences do, man. Yeah. So, uh, man, that's, that's man, that's, I I I show up to relate. So when I, when the, the relation give me the connection because I can't correct something that I don't have a relationship with. And that's the problem with America. That's the problem with even some of us as parents, we don't have the kind of relationships we think we have with our children to really correct them effectively. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> because society is pulling us away from our children. And that's the parent this the parent.
Speaker 4 01:31:13 Right. Yeah. I mean, do you spend way less time with your parents mm-hmm. <affirmative> than you do people at school or your educators or your phone.
Speaker 0 01:31:21 So now you got the, the, the AirPods, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they got them AirPods in their ears and you say something to 'em, you say something to 'em, they gotta pull it out and say, huh, what'd you say? Okay. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And they put those earbuds and EarPods right back in and it erases what you done said, because your faith and, and what you know, comes by what you hear. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So all day long you hearing die kill. So yeah. And then what? Say mom. Okay. And put it right back in mm-hmm. <affirmative> because they can't connect and they can't relate to nothing around them right now.
Speaker 4 01:31:55 So this poses a question for you because Mm. You're a talented rapper. Yeah. So what is your impression of maybe the rap game and how it's moving? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in the directional, you know, like Charleston said, maybe over the last couple of years and how do you write? I know, yeah. We've collaborated on a couple things where you've just, you've told stories. I'm, uh, I appreciate that. But you've, I've heard other stuff too. That's not story. It's more something else. So, yeah. How do you, how do you approach?
Speaker 1 01:32:23 Honestly, the fact that I had, the success that I had with the music, I never expected that because like he said, it's hard to compete with what's going on. But one thing I had to learn was I am who I am. Hmm. So I know what I do. I know what my life is. How am I gonna write about stuff that I didn't do? So like, um, you know,
Speaker 4 01:32:42 That's profound. It's, it's,
Speaker 1 01:32:43 It's real, it's really hard to, especially for me, because what it do, it conflicts with your soul. Hmm. And then like I, when you performance on, you gonna get on that stage and you gonna look at people looking at you and you're saying these things that don't feel right, how's that gonna work? You gonna be on that stage, your hand shivering and stuff, how does that work? But if you're saying something that come from your heart, they gonna feel it. You gonna feel it. And it's a real connection. So that's what I do. So I can't discredit any music that's coming around. Like, because what they experienced, that's their truth. So if it, if that's something that they believe, if that's, if that's something that they really experienced, then that's coming from their heart, that's coming from their perspective. Mm-hmm. My perspective is I'm a, I'm a regular dude. Like I didn't, I made a tape card for the Funk with my friend <inaudible> or whatever. Lord willing, we got placed on that MLB game. We didn't expect that. Cuz there's a lot of artists they could have pulled from. Yeah. Where this two dudes from Fort Worth. Yeah.
Speaker 4 01:33:38 Congratulations. By the way's
Speaker 0 01:33:40 That's made you
Speaker 4 01:33:40 That's awesome. You
Speaker 1 01:33:41 Know what the first thing I did was I bought the game and I bought it for the boys up there just to show 'em like, y y'all know me, y'all see me every day. I'm a regular dude. I'm not, you know, I'm just who I
Speaker 4 01:33:52 Am. But I can do extraordinary things,
Speaker 1 01:33:53 Man. I can do extraordinary things. Exactly. So some of them listen, like, just the fact that they listen to me knowing they have all these other alternatives to listen to, I'm like, dang. So let me really kind of throw in some real information in there. I'm not trying to rap perfectly. Like I'm gonna write about real stories. Like I write about things that they hear might might as well too. I'm a, I'm a man, I'm a human being like mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I got my pleasures and desires as well too. I'm not going to run away from that, but I know there's real life that needs to be talked about too. Lessons that's, I feel like that's what music is supposed to be about. Supposed to be able to connect with the listener and teach 'em something in a way that's where it's, that's how I listen to music. Like, so I think that's what, that's what it is right there.
Speaker 4 01:34:35 That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 01:34:38 Uh, you said I'm me mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, that's the hardest thing to be as a kid. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, even a young person, uh, because you got your own unique gifts mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, that'll make you shine and stand out. But if nobody's nurtured those gifts mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, that's why you're at the hope form. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. You're there to nurture, nurture those gifts. I tell all young people, man, pay attention to these people and what they say good about you. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> because you done heard people say all the bad things you paid, man, pay attention to what people say good about you and take that with you because they're identifying your gifts and your skills. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, you, you, you can't rap just positive because mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, the hood ain't positive. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, you, you, you, it, it takes a holistic approach.
Speaker 0 01:35:32 So you got to have like Tupac, Tupac had gangster music. He had keep your head up, uh, for the women. Uh, he had a dear mama. He had a song talking about if there's a heaven four G. So he had all of these different elements that made him an artist. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. He said something that was so profound. He said, imagine getting up on the stage and you rapping this stuff and you ain't never did none of this stuff. That's why they have to start doing it cuz they ain't never done it. Yeah. And they don't know what else to rap about. Or if they don't do it, they gotta go get a bunch of guys who've done it and put it on stage with him to drown out what he just said. You gonna look like a fool up there because most of them really hadn't done it.
Speaker 0 01:36:18 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, man, these people are not heartless killers as we were not murderers children. We was children in pain who was acting outta behavior, man mimicking stuff where we, some people was misguided, some people was taught wrong, some people been abused from the time they've been born. I had never heard of no such things like that. I done landed in a boys' home for murder and I heard kids used to go to bed hungry. I never imagined, uh, going to bed hungry. I didn't know kids went to bed hungry, man. I was, when I was fucked up sitting in them group sessions and I used to get out, I said, man, mama man, I had a good, I done tricked myself to get down here and these are my friends homie. And they, man, they done had horrible lives and they was good kids. Yeah.
Speaker 0 01:37:10 I was playing bad man. I was playing. So when I sit back and I look, I used to convince the psychiatrist and psychologist that I was gonna get out and kill again. I hadn't even killed the first time, but I, I would make them people believe, ma'am, when I, so my recommendation was for me to go to prison. I wasn't supposed to come home as a kid. I was supposed to come home after doing those 12 years. But, but my judge and, and and my house parents man, there, there was a, there was a house parent. I was in trouble. I used to have to sit on the back walls. I was called a l l p, loss of privileges. Man. I'd have to sit there for 24 hours for days, can't play dominoes. Everybody they walk by and say something to me. So one day I went to sleep and man, this, this, this worker, she was just stirring at me when I woke up.
Speaker 0 01:37:56 She said, you like just such an innocent little baby, but I'm playing bad. I'm trying to convince these people when I get out, I'm gonna be a gang banger killer that's ready to do life in prison. All this is documented in my psychology file. So I'm crypt for life, man. I was playing, man. When I got my g e d at 16 years old, I tore it up just outta spite to be resentful because in my mind I'm gonna be a gang member with life in prison. I'm just talking as a stupid little kid. But they're documenting this and because I got the behavior to go along with this stupidity. But I'm not violent. I'm not, I'm not an aggressive kid, but I'll fight if I get mad impulsiveness. Right, right. And you can do enough, even if it's not in your character, you can do enough screwing around playing a character to make you think to screw your whole life. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm playing because I'm hurt and I'm being an asshole to the judge. I got a smart mouth with every police because I'm hurt man. All I want is a hug really from the same cop that's putting the handcuffs on me.
Speaker 0 01:39:03 Fascinating. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I really just want a hug from the same principle that suspended me that I keep cussing out. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So man, I, I get it. So when I got grown I said, man, you know what men ain't no such thing as a bad child. No child is born bad. I grew up with kids who killed their mothers and their father. I grew up with a kid that stabbed his next door neighbor 93 times when he was 12 years old. Man. O 93 times. That's mad. It don't just come out. You gotta wrestle to get it out because it goes in fleshing a 12 year old. Yeah. Do you think a 12 year old is a monster like that where he can stab somebody up 93 times and go spend 30 years in prison and never stab one person? If you are a monster at 12 and you go spend 30 years in prison where you can stab all day long and you don't stab nobody in 30 years, you're not a monster. That was a kid who was being abused, beaten by his father. The same actions that he did to his victim Kelly, his daddy used to do to him. Yeah. Where you think he learned it from? Right When he was stabbing her and saying Why you lie? That's what his daddy used to say when he used to knock him unconscious.
Speaker 0 01:40:21 The exact same shit that his daddy used, he did to his victim. And his daddy started doing that to him when he was five years old. He said he had his first homicidal thought when he was five years old God. And two minutes later his dad walked in and said, I'm sorry. I said, man, if he would've walked in a little earlier, homie, he could have stopped that thought if he would've came. That's why you don't beat your kids and spank your kids and tell 'em, go away. No, you repair what you done done. You tear 'em down and build 'em back up. But you don't send 'em toe down. He start having homicidal thoughts at five years old, he wanted to kill his mother and father, but he killed his next door neighbor who was his best friend instead. Mm. He should stand over his mother and father while they was asleep at night with their gun. He just didn't have enough to do it. So he killed his innocent best friend.
Speaker 4 01:41:07 And again, that's what's cyclical because he got locked up early. But so many of those cats have kids before they go get locked up and then never come back. And those kids have that inherent,
Speaker 0 01:41:20 I got a harm
Speaker 4 01:41:20 Process it all over again.
Speaker 0 01:41:21 A harm boy. That's a killer. They got a bunch of kids. Every time his son get into it with somebody, he say, nigga, you better kill that nigga. I don't want you doing no more fight. His daddy will kill. He tell his son, you better kill that nigga, nigga. Fuck all that fight. Kill that nigga. Your daddy a killer.
Speaker 4 01:41:38 Yeah. I mean that's how it goes.
Speaker 0 01:41:40 So I, so that's where the mitigating factors come into play for most black children. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So that's why I, I partner with, with mitigation firms and, and, and public defender's office to testify on, on, on behalf of young black children who come from the fishbowl who come up out of these, uh, conditions and, and, and, and situations. Not to make excuses and justify, but he, here are the factors why this person don't know right from wrong. He don't know. Stealing his wrong, he been having to steal ever since he was born. He was born.
Speaker 4 01:42:12 Yeah. Empathy will change your perspective. And then
Speaker 0 01:42:15 You had to steal in the house just to eat because there was so many kids, so many adults in the house. They got 12 people in this house. They gotta steal just to eat it four and five years old. Why wouldn't they steal when they come out here but got perfect attendance at school? Why? So they can eat. Nobody ever caught on that till they catch a murder case. Mm.
Speaker 1 01:42:36 It starts with foundation. That's what it starts with. Like most black kids like me included, I ain't have no father in my life and growing up like that, you start to walk, you walking, you are walking around trying to figure out who you are, not knowing why you feel the way you feel. And you, you start to feel you're desensitized and you're numb to the feelings that you feel you're supposed to suppress it or that's what you're told. So when you're walking around like that, it's, it's easy to be susceptible to anything that's around you or to gravitate towards any person that shows any type of love or appreciation of who you are. Cuz you, you're finding you want love, you want love and you're trying to find it.
Speaker 0 01:43:15 I never got a hug from a man till I start going to Kimbo Road, man, big Tony, Ted them. Man, I ain't never get a hug from no man until I land to juvie. So guess what? It was rewarding to go to juvie.
Speaker 4 01:43:32 Well, and you've met the right folks in there. Not everybody does have that pleasant of experience, but you met,
Speaker 0 01:43:38 It's a generation different time, a whole nother generation in a, in a different time. But man, but
Speaker 4 01:43:44 Look, look how, what a blessing that is and the fact that now that you can pass those experiences on as bad as it was, and you can pass that on. You have somebody like Darien who can understand on, on the same level about how important it is to communicate to kids about these things. And now we have generational gaps where we can intercept these folks and get in front of that stuff and teach 'em respectful sociological interactions and you know, cuz that's stuff you guys go through. Right? It's not just
Speaker 1 01:44:14 Edu Here's the thing though. Like one thing that I've learned, even going through the program, like, you can't save the world, but you can save the world you you're living in. So I know something that I'm saying it's not going to resonate with all the boys. They're gonna grow up and still do what they wanna do because my influence is just not enough. There's other people that they gotta see every day besides me and what they're saying might resonate more than what I'm saying. And that's cool. You gonna grow up, you going, you gotta live to learn. So, but you,
Speaker 4 01:44:43 But you mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but you keep planting the seed. Yeah. That's all you can do eventually that mm-hmm. Will grow bigger than some of the other seeds. Well
Speaker 0 01:44:49 That's how you keep planting the seeds. Mm-hmm. When you realize you're not a savior. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you're not Christ, you're not, you're not a savior. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you can't change the conditions in which the kid was born in mm-hmm. <affirmative>. You can't undo the trauma and the pain that they have endured and that they're gonna endure. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you cannot change the conditions of their home life. So while you're with me, I'm gonna love you, I'm gonna nurture you, I'm gonna have discipline, I'm gonna correct you, and I'm gonna look for what I need to look for in you so I can show you the goodness of who you are. Boy, you, boy, you good boy, <inaudible>. Yeah. So I'm gonna nurture, nurture and pull out the goodness in you. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, everybody over there gonna highlight the bad. But what I can't do, I can't change that when you leave me mm-hmm. <affirmative>, so I understand I'm not Christ. So while I'm here, I'm going to equip you little brother, I'm gonna give you everything you need. I know you going to prison. 1, 2, 3, 1 of y'all going to prison. So while y'all with me, I'm gonna equip you for whatever journey you have to go on. That's my only job. Most people who plant trees will never get the enjoy the shades of the trees that they planted. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 4 01:46:00 <affirmative> for sure. Yeah. We that's a man. Yeah. That's an integral thing too, man. Yeah. Knowing that it's right, just because it's right. You don't have, you don't have to see a
Speaker 0 01:46:08 Act. And I say Tegan mm-hmm. <affirmative> because I used to be in juvie like this real, with my own fold listening to people like Charleston and him talk. Right. And I thought everybody was full of shit cause of my uncles now. And I used to always hear, well, if I can just change one of y'all, I've done my job only to grow up to be the one that they changed. I'm the one, the same one with his arm folded. Send everybody lying. The man who come in and say he had life with the parole and the age outta prison. The man who come in and say he had AIDS and still a alive man, he ain't got no aids. He, I was discrediting everything just out of my stupid adolescent emotions, rebelliousness resentments at people who hadn't done nothing to me. Me and my pain lied at the feet of my mother and my father. My wrong choices lied at the feet of me. I'm responsible for doing wrong, especially to people as a kid. I didn't know that. But once I understood that, I woke up and said, man, I don't wanna do wrong to people. I woke up as a grown adult and said, I don't wanna do wrong to people. I don't steal, I don't rob man, I don't wanna do wrong to people changed
Speaker 4 01:47:24 Who you were.
Speaker 0 01:47:25 Yeah. I changed system. They placed me in, in, in an environment. So, so it, it is just like, I use this analogy, uh, oftentimes, right? It's just like when they rescued Michael Vick's dogs that was bred and groom to fight and kill other dogs, they didn't take those dogs and put 'em in a pound where the dog got to fight and bite other dogs. They placed them in a, in their, in a nurturing environment. Right. They went and got these dogs, rescued them, put 'em in a nurturing environment, gave them structure, love and discipline. Right. And they nurtured these dogs back into their natural state, which was man's best friend. And they started having these dogs be adopted to families licking kids in the face after they'd been over her killing. Why can't we do that to that babies and kids? Yeah. I'm not saying doing it to grown folks, but we can surely do it to young children who are committing these violent crimes instead of throwing their life away. Best place. I think young children are much more redeemable than anything in
Speaker 4 01:48:33 Life. Yeah. Best place to start. I think we're all in agreement there. Yeah.
Speaker 0 01:48:36 So, so to see this brother, uh, in, in my eyes, that would be my dream job to have been at hope for him and work at hope for him. Yeah. That's all I ever wanted, man, was to go back and work at the at T Y C. That's my man. And that was my dream job to grow up and get me a job and be another Mr. Davis. Shout out to David Davis. I wanted to be, I wanted to be, that's my hero. He was cool. We was scared of him. Like he was our daddy. He didn't play. He was firm, fair and consistent with that military background. And I still talk to him to this day and I've been out for 30 years.
Speaker 4 01:49:13 That's awesome.
Speaker 1 01:49:14 I think the biggest thing for a kid to see is someone that's showing up for him. That's all it is. That's all key though. That's all they care about. They don't know right from wrong. They just know who they see every day. So if you show up, you doing enough.
Speaker 0 01:49:26 I know guys who played football and nobody never showed up, so they quit playing football. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I know guys who man, they, because nobody never showed up. They look out there and them stands and there was nobody never there.
Speaker 4 01:49:38 Yeah. What's it for?
Speaker 0 01:49:40 Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 01:49:41 Well and that's the beautiful thing too. I know both of you're like this too. That what, you know, when you're planting that seed and you're pouring into them while they're there, if they leave, if they go off into life and try something or if they go off into life and end up in prison, we can still be there for 'em then too. Yeah. You know, that you just let them know, man, you know, that you're a foundation that they can always rest on. So I will just say I appreciate what both of you guys are doing. It means a lot that you're both in the same room with me today. So I really
Speaker 0 01:50:09 Appreciate you guys. Yeah. I thank you for uh, I I feel like we should have more young people, uh, over here speaking and talking. I think there should be a platform of nothing but young people, uh, with gripes and complaints about by grown people and, and, and how they're, they're they're ruining their future. Uh, we're not just ruining, uh, our country, so to say we're ruining our children's future. Yeah. Uh, the, the value system that that that we now see a lack of, uh, morals and, and principles. Uh, it, it was stripped because we're now interacting on social media. Uh, so now we can be in our same households and never really speak to each other, but then text message one another. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Uh, so we're losing, uh, our morals and our, our dignity and, and, and, and our value system that that made us a, a great nation, uh, and good people despite of, uh, the history of this country
Speaker 4 01:51:06 And the acrimony comes anonymously instead of actually being able to say, I totally disagree with you, and we work it out. Yeah. I can totally disagree with you. Dis you dis your mother dis everything you've ever done and then disappear. Nobody knows who I am. And that's bred a whole new character too. Yeah. That's really destructive, man.
Speaker 0 01:51:23 Yeah. Uh, you can be mean with no consequences now. Yes. Um, because the IP address, uh, we're becoming, uh, we're detaching from one another. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we're plugging into this matrix and we're, we, we are detaching from one another and, and, and our kids are, they're adjusting to it faster than what we are. That's why they can be so much meaner to each other than we can because there's no human attachment. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and I used to feel bad when I bullied people. I literally felt bad
Speaker 4 01:51:56 Because it's not, it is not who you were.
Speaker 0 01:51:58 Yeah. Yeah. And you
Speaker 4 01:51:59 Experienced that too. Yeah. All of us have been on both sides of that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,
Speaker 0 01:52:03 Right. Oh. Oh. Even today, if I tell a lie and everybody believe it and don't nobody know I'm lying but me, I secretly feel bad. I secretly feel bad.
Speaker 4 01:52:16 So Hillary is wrong cuz you're not en incorrigible. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 0 01:52:21 <affirmative>, no child is born bad. All behavior is learned. Children mimic what they see and repeat what they hear. They either learn through direct teaching or sitting back observing and you doing it in front of them. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 01:52:35 And Darien's the
Speaker 0 01:52:36 Only way to learn. Yeah. You're either gonna teach me directly or you're gonna do it in front of me and I'm gonna pick up on it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, there's no other options. Yeah.
Speaker 4 01:52:45 <laugh>, thank you brothers for being here, man. I really appreciate your time. I know you Yeah. This
Speaker 0 01:52:48 Was, this was pretty powerful and deep man. Uh, I'm, yeah. I'm, I I can't wait for this to drop. Yeah, for sure. Oh, I think you should do more of these, man. I appreciate you. Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna see if I can. Yeah, we gotta get him on real life Tree star.
Speaker 4 01:52:59 Oh yeah. Darien's Darien's. Straight up man. Just straight up fool right there. Yeah,
Speaker 0 01:53:03 Yeah, yeah. We gotta get y'all real life street star.
Speaker 4 01:53:05 We'll get some of your, some of your music on some of this cast too so that for sure folks can scope it out and make sure we get links to your latest stuff. I'm okay. Obviously we keep up with that anyway, so for sure we'll get it on. God.
Speaker 0 01:53:16 Thank you. Yeah, man. You're doing what you're doing brother. For sure. Yeah. I aint, I ain't gonna call you Jesus, but uh, you, you, you, you're a good example like him, a living testament for sure. Yeah, you done lived it and walked it so now they can believe that it can be done. That's why we believe in G He had to come down here and walk it and Yeah. He had to come put on the suit for so you done put the suit on and walked it and now you a living testament and say nah man, you can do it. I nah homie, so can't nobody argue, argues For sure. I appreciate that. Yes sir.
Speaker 4 01:53:43 All right brothers. Alright
Speaker 0 01:53:44 Man.
Speaker 2 01:53:58 Make you do, make do what they want. What the one see through, don't let just, ain't that sweet little honey from the soul.
