 My mother passed when I was in the third grade at a young age Yes, and I live with my father and a housekeeper She was from down south and then we miss Sinone. She used to take care of me And then my father passed when I was in the seventh grade Yeah, we on boss talk TV shot at the heat of reason you see me and you first talked about that So man this guy right here, you know this probably this one of them ones man that you just don't it don't it don't happen all The time so man. Thank you so much for inviting us into your home, man Definitely definitely, you know Kenny said I want to get boss talk over there to the crib You know because we wanted to do promotion for the book man, and I said well, you know We can do it at my house So, uh, you know you guys were invited and come to find out your friends of my man big core Man holding corn so his love is love, you know, I like I told you as you were setting up I kind of try to pick and choose a lot of these podcasts out of control You know so I'm happy to be here with you and I'm I'm uh, you know Tell you what you want to know Man I just like like like when I first started diving in man Like I said, it don't just start here for me I've been around a little while too so I remember when hip-hop first started man And I remember the West Coast movement and you can't even that don't start without ice tea making a move You know so for me that was big You know all the way back to your first power and all the stuff that you was doing man Just just was extraordinary for a guy who was in the country who might not have never ever understood What was going on on the West Coast really on that level five people it's kind of like this podcast like you start to dive Into black media to be honest Which you started looking into different things that normally people wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't tap into unless they had insight A lot of people tell our story, but you just don't hear our story being told from our point of view a lot of time That's why I love podcast was good You know the media has always been pretty much predominantly white whether you're dealing with Rolling Stone magazine Bob all the different stuff. Exactly. So a lot of times you're not really hearing our voice You're hearing an edit you're hearing something different. So I'm definitely pro actually us telling our story Yeah, the way we want to tell it and you know, I've been out here so long And there's so many misconstrued things about me and different things But you just have to read it and laugh some of the stuff you like really that that's not how that happens So when you finally How you say get it from the horse's mouth, you know That's a chance to take advantage of it, you know, cuz Some people were there as far as West Coast rap. Yeah, I was like really the first Rapper that really got national attention. There were a lot of rappers out there trying to get it But I was able to pop off early, but that was with help from New York City I was put on by Africa Islam who was president of the Zulu nation son of Ambada Gave me little love to help me get out and break. So You know, there's a story behind everything But you know the true story can only come from the actual mouth of the person that lived it But before we get into all of your accolades, I'd love to because for me personally I always like to get into your background How you were raised and so forth because in order for us to be the people that we are today We had to go through different things from childhood till now. So I know you were raising California Kinda. No, I was born in Newark, New Jersey. Okay My mother and father my mother was Creole from New Orleans. She was a very very fair-skinned black woman. Okay back in the 50s They called it you could pass That means you could pass as white like Lena Horne and a lot of really she was real fair real fair, okay And that's why I'm fair, right, but it wasn't white but my father was brown skin like say Kenny and they were Considered almost to be an interracial Marriage because of how like my mom was and that's why I learned a lot about racism because it wasn't tolerated in my house Because my mother would get to hear white people talk about black people and she used to just tell me the old people are stupid You know and that was just unacceptable in my house There's people learning that people would judge us right how we look but my mother passed when I was in the third grade a Young age Yes, and I live with my father and a housekeeper She was from down south and then we miss Sononi She used to take care of me and then my father passed when I was in the seventh grade Young yeah, how did that affect you losing your parents over y'all? Honestly didn't really affect me as bad as people think because back in them days when a parent would pass or somebody would pass They would just take the kid and move it out like you nowadays kids are around Funerals and deaths and things like that in them days if somebody passed you'd be moved off to an aunt You wouldn't be around the funeral. You wouldn't be around really not to the funeral at all Wow, none of that They they shelter you from all that madness and then you know you just have to address it. I am I Was too little third grade, you know, it's like my daughter now seven years old She's in the first grade so it's kind of like you don't understand death yet Is she ever coming back right because as a child I would think okay, so where's mom? Where is she why she not here you would have so many questions Right, but you don't know what I mean what it means, right? Is it gonna come back? Whatever? Then as you get older you start to understand my father He died when I was in the seventh grade from a heart attack and um, I Remember I was in junior high school and they called me in the principal's office and everybody had that face Damn, you know, so he died I wasn't there and that's a sudden death with a heart attack once again You know, I was separated from the whole Situation I think really it just made me understand figure what's gonna happen to me, right? What's really going on in my life and and as a kid? I guess you get felt like why am I getting dealt all these bad hands? I exactly So I come the I got shipped to Los Angeles to live my father's sister Okay, that's how you know and that was beginning junior high. Well junior high school and uh My father's sister Had two sons that she had already raised they were out of high school. So I kind of was like All right, I'm gonna take care of you because I got to so it wasn't really like love It was kind of like I was dumped on a relative and I did you know her before that's what I was trying to okay Didn't know her I actually they sent told me, you know since so much was going on with my dad We're gonna send you out to LA for the summer and then all my clothes showed up I'm like, you know, you know, so that nowadays you discuss things with kids when I was going up You you as a kid you ain't got nothing no choice. No, you just moved around. It's so anyway I was that helpful or hurtful in society now. I don't know. I really don't know I mean, you know, the thing of it is is is that Whatever hurt me made me to you know So at this point, I'm in a great place in my life. So it's hard for me to say this would Every little thing would have changed the trajectory of your life. Exactly saying every little thing So maybe it was meant for me to go through that now Then and what you know one thing about losing parents earlier, man I got I got my wife her father and mother so live They haven't gone through that yet Now when you lose your parents early, you don't know them well enough like you haven't had enough experience With them so losing them is cold But it's not like losing them when you're in your 40s and there's still a lot look how much life you've had with them So I know I mean I don't wish it on anybody But I've seen like my one of my best friends Mickey just lost his mother and he's a grown man and it rocked him It rocked him because now he's such more much more connected. So I'm not saying it was better But I got I'm past that right. I'm past that and uh, I Don't I don't know maybe way in my subconscious. I know one thing though when you grow up as an orphan I Think that makes me harder on my kids. Mm-hmm, you know because I Didn't have anybody there. So I'm like you got somebody so you know you should be able to figure this out I was forced to figure it out. They're not forced to figure it out. So I figured it out, but live with my aunt went to Cranesha High School and Basically left her house at 17. Are you your only child? Yeah, only child at 18. I was on my own And I've been on my own ever since my whole life and I never dealt with any living relatives Yeah, we on boss talk TV shot at the e-heater reason you see