 Yes, Network Rock on. Oh, what I wanted to say was about the Jean-Michel thing. When I saw his sister came up to Boston for the closing, the Shepard Ferry was in the building too. I was like, you know, out of all the different things that you guys have done, that Brooklyn next thing with the where Jean-Michel's crown on the court, you know, with the uniform was like, I was levitating and the team being nice now. I'm so upset, you know, that Kyrie and those guys got hurt. But the level of ball going on with my man's image on the court every time was like, wow, this is dope. This is crazy. And both of us being from Brooklyn. Come on, baby. Come on, that's it. You can't beat it. You can't beat that. All right, fab, five friends. What is this last year and a half? I know it's been crazy for everybody, but it's roughly last year and a half. What's it been like for you? Wow, man, everything. It's, you know, it's been, wow, surviving. First of all, happy. I've been able to avoid the COVID nightmare while unfortunately watching too many people succumb to the misinformation that is now leading us back into another third wave or whatever wave it is. So, but it's been crazy. I mean, blessed for sure, been working, been able to find a groove to lean in on some interesting projects that I'm quite excited about, you know, happy to share with you guys. So it's been beneficial. You know, I guess, like, you know, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going as that classic adage does. I'm a living, breathing example of that right about now. So no question. Yeah, one of those projects and social justice being so important, and we've talked about it a lot, of course, in the last year and a half as well, although that's been an ongoing discussion for a long period of time. No question. The war on drugs and could you just share Bernard Noble's story? I think more people need to hear. Yeah. Thank you so much. So, you know, I made a film a couple of years ago that you can see on Netflix right now called grasses greener. And this was the story of the history of cannabis, mostly in America, which really begins along with the development of America's greatest invention jazz music, you know, culture, that's what we do better than anybody on the planet. And in New Orleans, where jazz was formulated and invented, and you had great proponents, like Louis Armstrong and all these amazing people in New Orleans, also back in the early 1920s, cannabis was being used amongst the people making this music. And it was bringing white folks and black folks together to hang out and have a good time. But racists did not want to see that happen. They were terrified of that. And they concocted a lot of lies, a lot of misinformation. They demonized cannabis. We really call it the reefer madness era, where they made movies, literally a film was made called reefer madness that played in theaters and scared the hell out of people, mostly white folks or anybody that saw these things because they tell you smoke cannabis, you're going to become an insane lunatic, murder your family. It was really bizarre. And that was a part of a campaign that led to cannabis being criminalized in 1937. And so the focus at that point then was these jazz people making this music that they felt were, you know, like jazz music was looked at as 10 times worse than any gangster rap you've ever heard. That's how it was painted back then. And so that led us down this, you know, rabbit hole, if you will, of just, you know, too many people of color primarily being locked up, criminalized, as well as people back then in the 60s, 70s with long hair that had politics that the people in charge didn't like. So that's really what led to not just cannabis, but all drugs. There's a racial and a political component to why every single drug has been criminalized. And cannabis literally on the federal schedule is at the same level as heroin. It's inexplicable at this point where there's viable medicine that can help our grandmothers and our aunts who got aches, pains, our athletes who get strung out on oxycodone and stuff. Cannabis is proven, relief, plant medicine, so many benefits. And so Bernard Noble is a situation that we wanted to focus on in the film to find a criminal justice example that illustrates how crazy these cannabis laws or these drug laws really are specifically relating to cannabis. Bernard Noble, for two joints worth of cannabis, was sentenced to 13 years hard labor in Louisiana. He served seven years. So we focused on his story in my film, Grass is Greener. I went down, he was still in prison when I went down to New Orleans to cover the whole history of the city and then interviewed his family, which was a really sad and emotional moment. They just burst into tears and talking about the fight. And so it was just an amazing, sad situation. But luckily, Bernard finally got up parol. And soon as we heard that news, we were like, we are going back to New Orleans to capture this moment. And we filmed him walk out of prison in his family's arms. Okay, nice guy, walked out of prison. If you see the film, Grass is Greener, he comes out of prison going, man, what's going on? I've been watching on the news and jail. I see this is becoming a big business. But I know people in prison for less cannabis than I had doing, doing hard time. So in the couple of years since that, I was like, how could I come up with an idea that could at the same time be a part of this business, but also help to raise awareness? We came up with this product here, which is called B Noble, which I was lucky to partner with a company called Cure Relief, which happens to be the biggest cannabis company in America. They're in every state that has legal cannabis, they wanted to figure out a way to address these issues, to help change these laws, what have you, which we've been winning some battles. New York, as we all know, just voted to legalize. So we are legal now in New York with very progressive cannabis legislation, I should add. And so this product is a two joint pre-roll, which is what you can get. It's only available right now in Massachusetts and Maryland, but there's messaging on the back of the package. You can go to b-noble.com to get more information about his case and other things that people can do to help this fight. And it's high quality cannabis on top of it. Obviously it's not available in New York, but I went up to Boston over the weekend. Cure Relief is based up in Massachusetts. I met a lot of my partners up there and got to sample some of the product. And it's fire. I'm happy. I'm a serious affixionado. So the weed is fire, the messaging is on the packaging. And here we go, a way to raise awareness while providing a quality product. That's what I was doing during this pandemic, negotiating this deal. And once again, the other component, we're going to take care of Bernard Noble by getting other people to be noble, literally be educated, be informed. And then we're also going to donate 10% of the proceeds to orgs that are helping to get people's records expunged. Those that got little cannabis records on there, you know, from having a joint or whatever stupid possession of a three, four joints of weed or whatever that is. If it's nonviolent cannabis, you should not have been imprisoned. You should not be criminalized. And also there's organizations helping people learn how to participate in what is a growing multi-billion-dollar business, like cultivation, how to work in a dispensary, understanding the science and the magic in this cannabis plant. There's organizations helping get those victimized on deck, learning how to do this. And so that's where we are. Oh, b-noble, give me that website. b-noble.com is where you can lean in. You know, b-noble official is the tag on Instagram and Twitter. But this is it, b-noble. So if you've got any relatives down in Maryland or up in Massachusetts, they can go to their dispensary right now and support the product. And here we go. And big-time faction numbers on that website that folks need to be aware of when they talk about the staggering imprisonment numbers among other things, which is really important. Also, Grass was greener. The movie that you were talking about on Netflix, folks should check out for sure. Man, it's so good talking to you. I've had this fascination for a long time with 80s New York. And you being a centerpiece in that era, what were you like during that period of time? Because I felt it was special because so many people, just like yourself, wearing different hats. I do music. I do art. I do this. I do that. It just seemed like it was such an unbelievably creative time period. Yeah, it really was. It was a blessing to be in the mix at that time, as they say, time and is everything. And it was a completely different New York City at that time. A lot of the city from different urban areas had literally been almost practically abandoned. And that's the Bronx, the iconic images of the Bronx burning, people burning their massive apartment buildings down just to get the insurance money. People living almost like they were in refugee camps in bombed out countries, the way the images look. But downtown Lower East Side had a similar thing going on. But the downtown area, particularly the East Village, had been famous for cheap rents and creative people gathering, whether it was dance, making music, making film, making art, making photos. People could come, live there, and find other people that were trying to make it and figure it out. And so that was Dimeca at the time when I came over from Bed Stop, Brooklyn, where I'm boring bread and collard greens fed. Downtown Manhattan was that place where you might connect with some people that might listen to your crazy ideas. So I'm a young teenager. I have been spray painting on trains, doing graffiti, writing my name everywhere I felt it needed to be, which was crazy when I think about it. But then I used to cut school and go to museums in the city. And I was comfortable with the idea of making art, like Rembrandt, Picasso, Warhol. I look at these paintings and feel a vibe, like, okay, it ain't all, you know, I see what you're doing. And so, you know, with my brash, audacious, young self, I was like, hey, I'm like, well, I should be able to be an artist like Warhol, like Lictorstein, because they were inspired by the same things graffiti artists were. Comic book covers, the, you know, how to make your name bigger, bolder, brighter. That inspired the graffiti movement through the seventies, when it just took over, murals were being made, techniques of using spray paint were formulated. And I was like, well, okay, that's cool. But I'm beginning to see this as an art movement. But nobody was going to take me serious, except these people on this downtown East Village. And then the punk rock new wave scene was going on. So I inserted myself into that world, when the only young Black people making moves, ran into another young cat, same age, also from Brooklyn, cat by the name of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Me and him was like, yo, what's up? I'm into this too. You know, Jean used to go to the Brooklyn Museum a lot. And we both knew as shorties, we both knew a lot about art history, just because we spent time looking and, you know, picking up books and reading. So I had ideas, he had similar ideas. He was like, yo, let's get busy. But I also was plugged in to the hip hop scene, knew what was coming on. You know, Jean wasn't wasn't that up on it. Just everything was totally underground. So I'm like, yo, there's this new kind of music where these DJs is cutting and scratching and rapping. And Jean, I had tapes. That's all you could get them. So I turned Jean on to the tapes. He loved it. You know, because one of the things we would do at that time on the downtown scene, there was a lot of clubs where if they knew who you were, you can get him for like free, because we didn't really have no money at the time. And then we can get in, hang out, get in the mix, party, dance. And that's what our scene was like. And that's what the 80s was like. You know, people were open to different ideas, just wild, crazy ideas at that. And you could get a shot, like get an audience. And the things that we worked on, we found in the audience, but it grew and blew up, to be honest, way beyond expectations. It's unbelievable. And I can listen to these stories all day. I'm telling you, the fascination is real during this time. You talk about coming, you know, from Brooklyn, and you fast forward to today, and you got the Brooklyn Nets in this past season. There were in Jean, Michelle Bosch got inspired jerseys. How am I going to say? Listen, let me tell you something. So, you know, once again, I'm a filmmaker, and I'm a visual artist. And I just was up in Boston for the closing of a major exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Art. The show was titled Writing the Future, Bosch Yacht and the Hip Hop Generation. It was an exhibit of Long with Jean-Michel, of 10 or 12 other people that really spray painted and were comies, mostly people of color, black and Puerto Rican that was on the scene, people that I pulled into the scene after I kicked the door open along with Jean-Michel. I'm talking Lee Kenyonas, Futura 2000, Lady Pink, and a bunch of others that were tight with Jean. The museum put together this dope exhibit of our early work from that period. Also, a lot of people didn't know, because Jean-Michel, his work, I'm so amazed at what my man was able to do. The things we talked about, even though he had this unfortunate, too short a life, the stuff that we put in effect really worked. And to this day, he is the number one attraction at museums around the world. When a Bosch Yacht exhibit opens, they online, the whole time is there. But what all of these scholars and Bosch Yacht experts and the curators didn't really ever really focus on is the fact that he also, not just, I mean, come on, this widely known that that was the homey, you know, along with Keith Aaron, we were all mad tight, but that he was tight with others in the graffiti scene like Ramel Z, like toxic, like core, like pink. And then Jean-Michel did portraits of all of us. So there was one room in this exhibit where there's all these different portraits, some with paintings, then there's a series of these plates that Jean-Michel just did these little artworks on plates. And there's a portrait of me, Futura Pink, a big painting of A1, a toxic of Ramel Z. And so this was something that was exhibited. If you just go online, look it up, Writing the Future, Bosch Yacht and the Hip Hop Generation at the Boston MFA, Boston Museum of Fine Art. So we all gathered for the closing, a bunch of us went up there, along with Jean-Michel's younger sister, Lisanne. And it was a unique and special vibe to see works that I remember Jean having in his studio, because we would all go to each other's studios back then in the 80s to see what we were working on. Yo, that's dope. I see what you're doing. Yeah, oh, they're coming to check my workout. And here's all these paintings together. So that was a special situation that brought me back to so many downtown memories that we lived through. And unfortunately, more than half the artists are no longer with us. That was shocking. You know, Ramel Z passed away, Jean-Michel, I mean, too many cats were gone. But the fact that a major museum like the Boston's most important contemporary museum did this show in a major way, there's a great catalog was had all those ideas have been flowing around my head since I was just up there. So the last thing before I let you go, being a pioneer on the art scene, you know, filmmaking, what you talked about, your MTV raps, which is of course iconic. And you're not slowing down at all, my man, you're not slowing down at all. But to be considered a pioneer and to have so many people talk about, you know, your legendary status in terms of being a spark for so many different ideas and the culture. Does that sink in? What does that mean to you? It's really humbling, you know, it's super humbling. And I'm just, I often tell people, like when I get deep and they ask me questions, how does that feel? Like I go, look, my background, like Max Roche was a master architect of bebop jazz. He's a drummer. If you saw the film Questlove's film, Summer of Soul, you see Max Roche on stage with his then wife, Abby Lincoln. Him and my father grew up together in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. Max would be at the house often. I mean, you know, you pick up Ebony and Jet Magazine as a kid. I mean, wow, that's him. Like I really know him. So these cats were the personification of cool, of humble. Like I can remember walking with Max as a little boy and people would see him on the street and just, hey, Max, and he would just be real nice and cool with them. And I was like, wow. So I can never be other than that. Then Debbie Harry from Blondie, like what are some of the first people I connected with when I got to that downtown East Village scene to try to find people that would listen to what these ideas. They took me under their wing, Jean-Michel as well. They were some of the first people to pay money to buy our artwork, hooked us up in their music videos. You know, the song Rapture, Honey Shotted Me Out, me and Lee Kinyonis, his spray paint, Jean-Michel's in the video too, Rapture. So, you know, and that was the biggest thing pop music on the planet. And they were super cool. So it's amazing that I learned from those people that I kind of came up around, got exposed to. I could never be whack in terms of not being appreciative, being humble and just being blessed be and, you know, healthy and got and the best is yet to come straight up. I'm working on things about that whole downtown era. We got a whole dramatic series, a podcast coming soon. The paintings are fire. And this weed is be noble cannabis is no joke. And I'm just going to push it. We're going to spread this word. And it's been a blessing, man. That's all I could say. I hope to see you in the building next season. We'd love to wrap with you again and continue to chop it up, my man. No question. Thanks for having me on. And I'm around, baby. Holla at me. I'm in here.