 No, my wife and me man, it was something we wanted to do man because we ain't never gave this award out to nobody. Nobody has one like this. God, God man, so it came in. Bows. The unboxing is real man. Bows. It's it baby. Yeah, it's going down man. I never thought I'd be doing this. This guy mean a lot to me man. I couldn't go see him empty handed. Yeah, we on Bows Talk one on one, one on one. Yeah, we gonna talk. So before I get into your history and so forth, you know, we can't start our podcast without doing this to you right now. Okay? Okay. We kinda look at you like this. Yeah, yeah. We have this right here. But you said doing this to me, I touched out for you. No, my wife and me man. Oh man. It was something we wanted to do man because we ain't never gave this award out to nobody. Nobody has one like this. God, God man, so it came in. Bows. The unboxing is real man. Bows. It's it baby. Yeah, it's going down man. I never thought I'd be doing this. This guy mean a lot to me man. I couldn't go see him empty handed. So I went on and ordered him a new plaque that we gonna be giving out. He's right here different man. Ain't never picked it up out of here. This thing kinda heavy man. Man, look at that thing. Man, bum be man. You guys mean so much to me man. I rock with him man. Bows talk one on one man. It's serious, this is what everything is. That's why we do this man. This guy right here. Man, I know her freedom man. Check it man. Congratulations, best wishes man. I'm gonna make it, don't boss out man. I'll let you borrow it man. Bows talk one of the bosses, bum be. So we're gonna present you with this award because you know how much we're fans of UNUGK. And it says thank you Bernard Freeman, bum be. It says in recognition of your many accolades including starting UGK with Pimsy, the group that became a staple in the South as the hardest duo ever. But not only that, bum be created, five solo albums becoming a pioneer in the Houston, Texas culture. He also gave back by being a professor in education, teaching hip hop and religion at Rice University. Now owning a very successful restaurant, Trill Burgers, where the patties are flavorful and crisp. Man, thank y'all so much. I'm bad for myself man. Man. I am honored to accept this award. Man, I mean we, like I said, we never gave that out man. And to be honest with you, I just, I told my wife, I said I might not get this chance again but I know, cause you never know man. But me and you, when you, my mentor would always tell me after 35 man, people start passing. He passed away now, but he was like man, I went to so many funerals after 35 man. And I think sometimes people take life for granted. So any opportunity I get, it's like man, I gotta do the best I can just cause I gotta seize that moment. You know what I mean? Well, I deeply appreciate it. Man, thank you so much. And we do give awards and the reason why we do that is because there's so many people who've been grinding and hustling doing what they've been doing for years and have not gotten any recognition, especially from home team. You understand what I mean? So we like to try to show that we appreciate them because so many people came on our podcast and got awards and be like, you know what, I've been doing this for 30, 40 years and I've never gotten any recognition before. DJs, stuff like that. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So many people put in a lot of work, man. And they're the ones that are really the foundation of the culture. You know what I'm saying? A lot of people sold in the hip hop culture, particularly Southern hip hop and Texas music. And you never hear people give them their accolades, Darrell Skies, to Kate Reno's. You know what I'm saying? People like that, the R.P. Kola's. You know, there are a lot of people that were there in the beginning, the Steve Farnier's, you know, that literally set the tone for hip hop even being accepted in popular culture in the city. Because a lot of people didn't want to hear when rap came on back then. In the club or the radio, you know, but we've come a long way to being basically the world's most popular culture. And so it's a blessing to have lived long enough to see it get where it's at. Man, man, you're definitely so true. So I like to go back in how you were raised, where you're from and so forth. Yes. Were you born Port Arthur or Houston? I was born in Houston. Born in Houston. I was born in Houston, but then my parents divorced and I ended up moving to Port Arthur. How old were you when they divorced? I would have been about, I guess 10. 10, do you remember? Yeah, no, I remember, because it was just me and my mom and everything really changed. It was like my fifth grade year. And like the whole dynamic of life changed. You know what I'm saying? Because I went from living in like a three bedroom house to an apartment. You know, I grew up and I was born into a house into a home with a mother and a father. And then switching from that to just being me and my mom, it really changed the perspective of how I looked at my mom. Were you close with your dad? Not really, my dad traveled a lot. And like my brother, I have three brothers, but they're all older than me. So they all had a much closer relationship. How much older? With my dad, five, six, or seven years. Okay, okay. So they all had a closer relationship with him because by the time I came in, he was traveling more with his job. So it affected you, but it didn't affect you that much? No, no, I mean, it affected me because, you know, I was just watching what my mother had to go through. I'd never seen my mother have to struggle like that before. You know, I would hear her cry sometimes. And it was rough because my brothers weren't there where I was. My brothers were older at that point. So- Did they live with your dad? Yeah. Okay. And then one of them was already out of the house. So it was just a different family dynamic. But I just wanted to, you know, I just didn't want to see my mom have to do everything she had to do. Did you ever get to go live with him? Yeah, I did that for about three months and then I had to get out of there. How old were you when you did that? I was 18 when I graduated. Okay. I graduated, the night I graduated, I left and went moving with my dad because I told my mom I wanted to rap. And like I was, you know, I had a little scholarship and she was like, no, I'm not supporting that, you know? Because by that point, all three of my brothers had made mistakes. Two of them have been habitual criminals. And so my mom did a lot of things different with me that she didn't do with my brothers because she thought she had spoiled them. So she was a lot more strict with me. And so when I told her I was going, I wanted to make rap music. She was like, no, I can't support that. You can't, you got a week to get out of my house. And so I just left graduation night. My brother came to my graduation. I said, I'm just gonna leave with you. And then so I left, I went to my dad's house and then six in the morning, my daddy woke up, woke me up and was like, nobody live here for free. Time to go to work. My dad had a landscaping company. So basically I cut grass the day after I graduated all summer and torn roofs and painting and all that. And I was like, I ain't trying to do this over here with him like that. And then I, you know, so I made some choices to go out and live on my own. And, you know, so that was it. That's what, that's kind of my story too. My mom left dad at nine and we moved between houses from grandma to Annie to whoever, you know, and then they all had kids. It was like, you know, a lot of times a lot of men didn't know how to be fathers, you know, cause some of them did. My granddad stayed with my mom, but my dad, he just was drinking and just doing what he doing. And, but I ended up staying with him cause I was like, man, I'm gonna stay over here. Cause we from nine to on up, I would learn from him. And you know, we was just talking about that downstairs. Like he wouldn't tell me nothing, but it was what he's done in front of me that gave me, you know, some stuff to go with for us on the hustle. You know what I'm saying? But I flipped it and changed it to something else cause I wasn't for the hall of public wood and being in the woods, man. I'm not fit to do that. You know, I made a decision. I didn't want to work. A lot of my family was late, like they laborers. Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying? They worked outside, they had very hard lives and I was like, I didn't want to have that life. But I ended up making a decision that gave me a different kind of a hard life, you know? Yeah, me too, me too. But one thing I always would say as I got older and I realized I learned, I always say that if a man and woman together and they split, especially if you have a boy, I always feel like when the boy become like a teenager, age, he needs to go with a dad because a mom can't teach a boy how to become a man. Luckily, one of my older brothers, who was not like in and out of jail, he was more like a surrogate father to me in that way when I was away from my home. At this point, my mother remarried. She remarried a really good man too. So I did have a father figure in the house. That's good. But then I still had to go and be supposedly, I would have to be with my dad for different vacations in different times of the year, but I would just go to my brother's house because they live in the same apartment complex. I would just go stay at my brother's house. And I learned a lot from my brother. There was really, I didn't feel like there was anything more I would gain. I would still see my dad every day, but I was learning the type of things I needed to learn from my brother at the time.