Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

Train by Day, Joe Rogan podcast by Night, All Day.

Good to see you again, my friend.

Man, been a long time.

It's been, yeah, like nine years. Yeah, we were talking about it. Yeah, yeah. It's been a while.

Yeah, yeah. For people who don't know. I've been waiting. I was like, I dial your number and it wasn't working no more. I was like, okay.

I've had about eight different numbers since then. He'll call me.

I said, he'll call me.

Yeah. For people who don't know, the real Rick Ross is not a rapper, just like your shirt says.

You know who inspired that shirt?

I think I did.

You did. And you don't even know the whole story.

What's the story?

Well, after that day, you told me that I needed a shirt. You know I was really homeless then. Really? You didn't know that part of the story. I didn't know. Well, I didn't go around like, Hey, Hey, man, I'm homeless. So I was technically homeless. I was standing in a baking apartment, me and my old lady and my two kids. And when I told you that I was doing bad, you was like, Man, you need a T-shirt. And I left the show, I was a little hot. I was like, damn, that motherfucker told me I need a T-shirt. I'm fucked up, but he know I handle money. He knew I'm a thinker. Why are you Can you help me? And so I'm walking down the street downtown and this kid come up to me and he was like, Hey, Rick, I heard you on Joe Rogan the other day. And I was like, Yeah? He was like, Yeah. And I got a T-shirt idea for you. I said, Oh, shit. Another one of those motherfuckers. And I said, What's your idea? And he said, The Real Rick Ross is not a rapper. And I said, Corny is a motherfucker.

But I kept an open mind and I said, Okay, let's do it. The kid did it. I go to him a couple of weeks later and he gave me 100 T-shirts. I sell a whole 100 the same day. Then something popped in my head and said, Why don't you call Joe? That's when your number was still the same. I called you, you called me to the show, and you put my T-shirt on. The T-shirt went crazy. My PayPal. Because I ain't saw you since then, so I never got to tell you. Thanks for telling me to do a T-shirt. Even though I was mad at you.

Why are you mad at me?

Because I was like, why the fuck nobody helped me? I was looking for somebody to come and say, Hey, man, here's 100,000. See what you can do with it. A million dollars. See what you can do with it. That's what I was looking for when I got out of prison. I was like, Somebody's going to come and say, Man, I know you can handle money. Let's do something. So I was looking for that. I was not looking for a T-shirt, but in one of my favorite books, it might come through the back door. Don't look at the front door. Look at the back door. So I did that. And when you put that T-shirt on, man, my PayPal went like this here. And I was like, my old lady, she was like, Man, that PayPal is going crazy. I was like, That motherfucking broke. I said, Go check the bank account. And she went and checked the bank account, and it's like $18,000, $20,000 in there. And I was like, Oh, my goodness. We finna get apartment. Wow. So my whole life changed from there. From there, I took that money and I did this.

Wrote a book? I had already wrote the book. I wrote the book in prison when I had a life sentence. I wrote this book. This was like my message to the world about what it takes to become a drug dealer, how you become a drug dealer. I wrote it for kids so they would know if they started to be a drug dealer, what they was going to run into.

Like a how-to manual?

Like a how-to manual because I said nobody ever wrote a book about... I look at it like this, Joe. We always talk to kids about why not to sell drugs, but why not give them all the information, and they make their own decision. Okay, you sell drugs? Yeah, you might get a big house, you might get the cars. But at the end of that rainbow is some cufflinks and a prison sentence. So I felt that...

You wanted to give them all the information.

I wanted to give them all the information. So I wrote this, and I bought you one. It's a gift. Beautiful.

Thank you very much. Your story is That's incredible. And for people who don't know, just because we did a couple of podcasts in the past. But just for people that don't know, you unknowingly were during the whole Contras versus the Sandanistas war. The United States government or some people inside the United States government were selling crack in the hood and probably other places, too. And they were using that to fund this war. They're using the money to fund this war. And you were the one who was moving the drugs.

Correct. A lot of it.

And you didn't know. You had no idea where- I was the dumb kid from South Central, man.

I never read a book. You couldn't read? I couldn't read at that time.

Which is so crazy. Let me keep going. So you get arrested, you go to jail, you learn how to read in jail, learn how to become a lawyer in jail, figure out the way they did you with three strikes was bullshit because it's supposed to be three different instances of you being arrested. They used the three instances of whatever they tried to pin on you from one case. And so you got out of jail.

I got out of jail.

You would still be in jail right now.

Right now. If I were to listen to my lawyer, too.

Wow.

Because he told me that that law didn't apply to me. I don't know. You know, it's funny because I said my judge and my lawyer and the prosecutor read. I mean, because it was really plain and simple in the law, the way they explained it. The most important thing was an intervening arrest. Not that you get convicted three times, but was an intervening arrest because they're saying that if you get a kid and he does three different things and you're whipping one time, that's for all three. You know, Now, if he does something and you whip him one time and that whipping is over and then he does it again and you whip him for the same thing again, now you're whipping him twice. So the third time, that would be a three-strike. And that's what the law meant. And they just couldn't understand that. Like, oh, no, that don't apply to you because you had a conviction in Texas and you had a conviction in Cincinnati and you had a conviction here. But they were all the same time you whooped me one time. And So I get two more whoopers before it's a three-strike.

It's a crazy story. I mean, it's a very crazy story because, yeah, you were a young kid.

And it's getting more crazy, man. I've been having so much fun, Joe. Like, wow. What's been going on? And you know what? And I owe you a lot of the credit, man, because you really set me off. I don't know where I would have been had I not did that fucking T-shirt. You know what I'm saying? That fucking T-shirt paid our rent, man. And my fucking kids now are playing tennis. My daughter is so fucking good at tennis.

That's amazing.

Man, she's like, twiddling.

You were a great tennis player.

I was good. I'm talking about like... Really good. They saying she like Serena Good. Really? Yeah. Wow. And I try not to... Because it's my daughter, so I got to keep myself honest. You know what I'm saying? But I'm seeing her do things that I was doing at 16 or 17, and she's just turned twelve, and she's doing those things right now. Wow. And I'm like, wow, could she be this good?

That's incredible.

Yeah. I mean, I'm just having so much fun, man. It's like my life has been good. If I died today, I wouldn't be mad. I just want to see them two grow up to be 20, 30 years old. And I've had a great life, man. I met some great people. I didn't have some things happen to me, too. It ain't all been Rosie. My documentary, I think... Was we working on a documentary when I did you the last time?

I don't know.

Well, they took the documentary from me.

What do you mean? What happened?

Well, we shot the documentary, and when it was time to put it out, we finished it. My two partners who put up most of the money got into an argument, and I went with the one who I thought was right. So we go to court, and the court ruled that Mark Levin and Mike Mungrey, one in court, and they had all the say so about the documentary. I had no say so, no accountant. So they sold a documentary to AltaZer, rented it to Alta Zee, rent it to Netflix, and I got zero dollars out of it.

Oh, my God.

Did you just say I had no accountant rights, no right to see how much money was being made?

On a documentary in your life.

Did I put money? I took money, T-shirt money, and put it into the documentary. I put about $15,000 of my own money into making it. We spent about $120,000 making the documentary. And here I am on Netflix, on the front page, too. I made the front page of Netflix for like a year. Wow. And I got zero dollars out of it. And then John Singleton, he was working with me on the movie. He take all the stuff that we did from the movie and do this show called Snowfall, which was one of the biggest TV shows on TV. And I got zero dollars out of that.

What?

Yeah. It was John Singleton? John Singleton did me like that, man. No way. Yes. He went with me to the premiere. Me and him went to the premiere of the documentary together. The day of the Premiere, I got my first books from that book there, and I had my demo books. He bought one for 100 bucks, which I thought was like, Yeah, I'm going to do good with this book. A hundred bucks for one book? So He took that book and he did Snowfall. And he didn't count me as an advisor. He didn't count me in at all. Nothing.

Did you talk to him?

I saw him one time. He changed his number, and I saw him one time About eight months before he died. He was like, Man, I owe you money. But he was in South Central LA in the wrong area. He probably said that just to get the fuck out.

I got you. Let me get out of here.

So I totally understood. But other than that, it's been all right.

There's a lot of people that disappoint you in this life.

They do.

It's very unfortunate. I do not understand why people do that, because you think you're getting over, but you're not. That stays in your soul. It really does. It'll haunt you. It'll haunt you forever. You fuck somebody over, It's better to be good, man. Yeah, it's better to be good. You're a great story because a lot of people write people off, man. And there's a lot of people out there in the world that want to think that because someone did something that's illegal or someone did something that's bad, that makes them a bad person. And I think that's ridiculous.

And I think you- I totally agree.

You can't imagine what it's like to be someone unless you've lived their life. You don't know the circumstances that they fell into. You don't know the life that they were born into. You don't know. You don't know. And there's a lot of good people out there that just get fucked.

Made a bad mistake.

Made a bad mistake in a bad situation, bad neighborhood, bad life. A lot of things just- And people see things different.

You know what you think is bad because of the circumstances that he comes from, he doesn't think it's bad.

Because it's normal.

It's normal. It's normal. Absolutely. And that was the case. I wanted to be a drug dealer because all the pictures I saw drug dealer was, look who I was doing drugs in the '80s. Everybody, all the entertainers. So I wanted to be in entertainment.

Well, not only that, all the entertainers were talking about how they sold drugs. Jay-z, Ice T, Ice Cube, everybody.

But they don't look at those guys as bad.

But it's crazy. Those guys, they could be on CNN. Those guys can be interviewed everywhere. The red carpet, everybody loves them now. I used to be a drug dealer. That's amazing, Ice I don't know if Ice T was a drug dealer. They rap about it. I mean, it was a big thing.

But they don't believe. I guess they don't believe their stories.

They believe it. It's just okay because now they're popular artists. Now they're famous. So they broke through. So when you break through and you're selling millions of records and people are going to see you in arenas and everybody's singing along to your shit, somehow or another, it's okay. You're absorbed of all your crimes and all your sins, and you're welcoming society because you're very popular. It's very weird. It's very weird. People are so quick to write people off. I think it's part of it is because people are afraid to be written off themselves, so they want to do it to other people. I really do. That's crazy. You want some coffee?

Some water. You got some water? The water's right here.

There you go. It's funny. We've done a lot of work with this guy, Josh Dubin, who used to work with the Innocence Project. And We, just through this podcast, have gotten people out of jail that were wrongly convicted, a bunch of people. And then we had one dude on who wasn't wrongly convicted, but he got convicted for 50 years for pistol-whipping somebody, a drug dealer who owed him money. Someone who stole money from him, pistol-whipped his dude, why not go in jail for 50 years, gets out. They reduced his sentence to 25 years. Josh brought him in to show someone who can be rehabilitated A month later, he gets out, cuts some dude's head off and gets caught.

Wow.

He gets caught on a security camera with a blonde wig on. The whole thing was so crazy. But the dude was like, We were hanging out with that guy that day. Took him to the Comedy Club that night. It's like, it doesn't always work out. And then also the system itself. Once you're inside, once you're a part of the system, man, that can fuck you up. You do 25. I mean, how many years did you do in there?

I did 20 years in three months. Wow. Yeah, so the system is, and you're absolutely correct, the system can either make you or break you. I was mad when I first went to jail, but then I started analyzing my life and I wanted to know how I got there. What are you doing here? This wasn't part of the plan. Right. And I just figured I made some bad terms. I listened to some people that, for the most part, loved me to death, would have died with me, and they gave me what they had to give me. And what they had to give me was the drug game.

It's just so crazy that you were connected to this enormous story with Oliver North and Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan had to testify about it. The whole thing was really insane. It was an insane cultural moment because I remember I was young at the time. I remember watching it all play on TV and seeing how this insane story was playing out, that they were selling drugs. What? The government was involved in the drug game so that they could- When Gary Webb came and told us about this, I could not believe it.

No, not Ricky Ross. You're talking about Ricky Ross, right? The guy who couldn't read in school, the guy who couldn't get out of high school, who was pretty good at tennis, but he couldn't make it in tennis. You know what I'm saying? Now you're telling me that he was working with the White House with Oliver North and George Bush and Ronald Reagan.

Crazy.

And then the CIA come to my cell and Maxine Waters come to my cell. What? All these people. I know. It's just like, for me, it was unbelievable. But even when I first went to jail before all of the stuff hit the fan, one of the guys that went to elementary school with me, he came up and he said, Man, I heard the stories, but I couldn't believe it was you. You was the poorest kid in the school. You and your brothers used to change pants and you had holes in your tennis shoes and you used to put tennis balls on your shoes so your feet wouldn't be on the ground. And that was really you. And I was like, Yeah. He was like, Man, you used to make millions of dollars. So it was one of those stories that you really had to see it to believe it.

We had Michael Rupert on the podcast back when he was alive. Michael Rupert was the cop that- I knew Michael. Yeah. Michael testified on C-Span. He was at one of those C-Span hearings and testified that he witnessed the CIA selling drugs in South Central Los Angeles. It is one of the craziest videos. Michael was courageous.

I read his book.

Yeah. Which one?

I don't remember. It was so long ago. Crossing the Rubicon?

One? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He wrote that, and then he did that book, that movie rather, a documentary, Collapse, that scared the shit out of people. Did you ever see that movie?

I didn't see the movie.

The movie was just him sitting there chain smoking, sitting in a chair explaining how the whole system was going to fall apart. Wind up not being correct.

Yeah.

But it was mostly about oil and mostly about the way the economy is and the way our government is, the way everything is structured, that we are on the verge of collapse. And he was telling people back then, You better get ready. You better get ready for everything to fall apart.

Well, I mean, if you go on the streets right now and you see the homeless problem that we have in around the country, because I travel the whole country now. I'm doing motivational speaking. And so I'm working with different homeless organizations. One of the main ones I'm working with is out of Oakland, Lulu house, and they're helping homeless people get off the streets. It is so bad out here, man. I mean, it's like-Worse than ever. Like, some of these places that we go, and I would be afraid to go there without a gun. It's like a third-world country. It's like a jungle. They got cardboard boxes and crates and tents and makeshift- Shanty towns. Plastic. It's like Miles of these places. And Oakland is- Oakland's crazy. Oakland is terrible.

It's so crazy. I watched a video about it the other day where these people were driving. They were documenting it and driving down Oakland, down the worst areas where these people have these shanty towns set up, these tent towns set up. And it's just open air drugs and violence and no police presence and no help and no nothing. And this is in America. And this is why we have $175 billion to send overseas to help them, help people in Ukraine, help people in Israel. We don't have anything to clean this problem up, this massive problem. And all those people, all those people out there are wasted potential. All of them, all of them who Who knows how many of those people, if they had a little bit of help, if they got the right counseling, they got the right this, the right that, they started to get a path towards a good life, they could turn it around.

I was like that. I was one of those people eight, nine years ago, just out of prison. And Joe, when I was in prison, I educated my... I read over 300 books while I was in prison because I didn't want to come out and get into the same thing that put me in jail. So what I wanted to do, I never had a job. I never had a job. Right now, today, I've never had. I mean, I get paid for doing speaking engagements and stuff, but I'm saying I've never had a job where I punch a clock or I had to fill out an application, none of that stuff, because I couldn't fill out an application before I I went to prison. And now I'm not going to fill out... Now, I'm not going to fill out an application, but I had all this potential, but I had nobody to give me a boost, to say, And that's one of the things that I was saying about Lulu House that they're doing is they got housing for you. When people get out of jail, they can go stay there for a while. They give them clothes, they feed them.

Because sometimes you need those type of things. My My break was you putting on that damn T-shirt. Had I not got that break, I don't know where I would be at right now. I wasn't going to sit around and let my kids be hungry. I had two new babies. You know I had two new babies when we did that show?

I don't remember.

Yeah, I had two new babies. Wow. Because my kids right now they're 13 and 12. So at that time, they probably was like three, maybe. Like three Two years old, two years old. So they was really new. So me getting that money coming in was like heaven sent. Like, yes, I got a way to get me some traction now. But without that traction, and most of those people, they're not going to have an opportunity to do a T-shirt for themselves. So we need to set up programs where these people can get a fresh start.

Yeah, and that could be done. It could be done. It's funny. We asked AI. We had an episode here where we were talking to ChatGPT. Have you done any of that? You messed around with ChatGPT or AI or anything like that? No. It's scary. Yeah? Kind of Yeah, it's extraordinary. I think we're real close to it being like a life form. We're real close to there being an artificial life form that's more intelligent than human beings that we've created. But we asked it, How would you solve the crime problem How would you solve the homelessness and all the situations? And it basically laid out this plan. And one of the things would be re-energizing communities and helping taking places like these shanty towns in Oakland, set up community centers there's police presence, do something to stop the crime, do something to try to educate people, do something, community centers, to give people a trade, a craft, something where they can move forward. There's a place out here, Loaves and Fishes, right? Is that what it's called? We actually went to the house yesterday. There's a community that they have here. I think it's called Community First.

Hold on a second. I'm going to find out real quick. Yeah. We went there yesterday. I took my family there yesterday. And Community First Village is this thing that my friend Alan Graham has put together. And he's got But right now, I think he's at like a thousand acres, and they build homes for these people. They have all these programs for these people. They have gardens. These people are making art and selling it. This one woman made a chess set. She sold it for $10,000. These people are incredible artists. There's a lot of creative, interesting people that just don't know what to do or where to turn, and they've been doing drugs their whole life. They're all fucked up, and they're homeless, and they've got records, and they don't know what to do. And he's helping them, and he's helping them in a really beautiful way. And it can be done.

Well, I'd like to connect with him.

I will connect you with him.

Yeah, definitely. Because that's the stuff that I want to do. I believe that we got to give people a second chance, a third chance. I mean, I don't believe that we should be playing baseball with our lives with other people. I mean, right.

Three strikes are out.

I mean, if it was your brother, it was your brother, would he only get three strikes? Of course.

Right.

Exactly. If your brother was on drugs, would you say, throw him in jail for the rest of his life? It was your kid.

And everybody should be your brother. All these people are just us. It's just us living different lives. It's just us with different circumstances and different things went wrong and different people around you giving you bad advice, different bad influences, different everything. And one of the things that drives me crazy is to pull yourself up by your bootstrap shit. Like, shut the fuck up. People don't even have boots. What are you talking about? That's so crazy. You're supposed to do it yourself. People can't read. They don't know where to go. They don't have no positive influences. And we don't spend any money on that. I've always said, if you want to make America great again, you really want to make America great? Have less losers. How do you have less losers? Give more people a chance. You're never going to have equal outcomes because some people work harder, some people are smarter, some people are luckier. There's a lot of factors. But what you can have is change the amount of opportunity that people have because some people have zero opportunity. They have nothing. If you give more people opportunity and more people help, you'll have more winners.

You'll have more people successfully living in society, contributing, and everything gets better.

Everybody rises up. When people see other people win, they can duplicate that. Yes, the rising tide. They can duplicate a win because I keep going back to me having the opportunity to do this T-shirt. I had no clue to do a T-shirt. I wasn't thinking about doing no T-shirt. That was not in my plan to do no T-shirt. So sometimes they just need that little boost, the little vision from somebody else that's actually out here. Because when I came home, I had no idea what the world was. Everybody had cell phones. They're on computers. I'm like, I'm like a fish out of water. I don't understand this. I didn't even know my way around South Central for a while. It took me a while just to get back knowing the streets and the avenues because so much stuff changed in 20 a year. So we give people all this time in prison. Like you say, someone was on drugs or whatever. And we got to set up a system where they can readjust. Most people go back to prison within the first three or four months. Yeah.

They don't know what to do. No, they don't know what to do. I know people that went back to jail on purpose because the outside world was too confusing and scary for them. And they'd rather have the structure of being inside. They're like, at least I get food. At least I know where I'm sleeping.

They make it real easy for you in jail. They wash your clothes, turn the lights on for you, shower comes on, they get you soap, toothpaste. Might be cheap. Might be some cheap shit.

What is it like finding out that you were a part of this enormous thing that was going on overseas?

Shocking. I mean, amazing. First, you have to come to... For me, I had to come to realization that I was really a part of that.

Let's tell people the scale. Let's talk about the money, the numbers that you were moving, because it was crazy.

At my height, from 84 to 86, I was doing at least a million dollars every day. And then I had days I'd do as much as three million. Say, for instance, the first of the month, which was my busiest days, the first was crazy busy, I would do three million dollars that day.

Jesus.

The second, I might do two and a half million. The third, I might do a million and a half. And then after that be a million dollars every day. And then the 15, it would spike back up, maybe three million, maybe two and a half million. And then it would start decreasing again.

And what did you do with the money?

Buy houses, When I started selling drugs, I started selling drugs because I wanted to create businesses for me and my friends. We couldn't get jobs. Nobody would hire us. So what I figured, okay, start your own business. Why not open up your own business? So drugs, I couldn't go to the bank and borrow money. South Central was red-lined at that time. They wasn't loaning money on houses or nothing in South Central at that time. We was totally red-lined. Not like it is right now. South Central is one of the hottest properties in the country, where if you got a house there, you can borrow money on it. They buying them. But at that time, it was red line. So I didn't have any way to get money. And drugs looked like a viable source of raising money. So it was totally baffling to me to find out. Well, I never thought it. I didn't know what a million dollars was when I first started. When I started selling drugs, probably the most money I'd ever saw was probably like 200 bucks, 300 bucks at one time.

How quick did it come?

It took a little while. It took a few months.

That's crazy, though.

See, when I started selling drugs, I was a tennis player, so I was very disciplined. Ran, I did my runs. My backhand is off. I'm going to hit 300, 400 backhands over and over and over and over again. I'm not going to stop until I my number. And I took that same mentality into the drug business. I'm not going to stop selling my drugs or take my girlfriend to the movies. I'm not going to the club. I'm not drinking. I'm not smoking. I'm going to stay up under this tree and wait till the money comes.

It's funny because that discipline would have served you well in anything that you had an opportunity to do.

I just didn't know that. Yeah, Nobody ever sit me down and told me. I didn't have a coach. My mentors sold drugs, robbed people, stole cars. Those were my mentors. Those were the guys... You know my mom and my dad I woke up when I was four months old. So I didn't really know my dad. Met him a few times. So the male figures that I saw was these street guys, Crips, Bloods, and When I stopped playing tennis, I was 18 years old, and I was old enough to know, I ain't shooting nobody because he wear red. I ain't shooting nobody because he wear no blue. I ain't with that. I'm not sticking a gun in nobody's face to rob him. I'm not doing it. So I had to find what I felt was a valuable way of making a living. And when I saw cocaine, they come over and they're dancing. We're going to the club. I need a 50. Me and my girl, we can turn it up tonight. So I was like, damn, they're going to get you $50 and you make them feel like that? I want a part of that.

I want to be with that. I want to be the one to make them happy like that there. And I'm going to get paid to make them feel like that there. I'm all in. And I dove in and I was in love. I was in love with the business. And it wasn't-It was the first very successful thing that you'd been a part of. Yeah. I mean, I was a little successful at tennis. I made all conference, all city, but that didn't put no money in my pocket. All the trophies was good and the pats on the back. But Now I'm putting money in my pocket. I can go by my mom house and say, Hey, go pay your light bill. Put gas in your car. My little brothers and sisters didn't have to go to school with hoses in their tennis shoes no more.

You know what's really crazy, Rick? Here we are in 2024. This is 40 years later, right? Mm-hmm. 40 years. 40 years later, and nothing's changed in terms of drug dealing. Nothing's changed in terms of drugs being legalized. They're still giving money to criminals, and particularly criminals in Mexico. I mean, that's literally what funds the cartels. And the fact that there's a demand in America and the supply is all brought over, or for the most part, a lot of it is brought over by the Mexican cartels. We're just empowering them. We're just giving them money.

And I thought about that a lot, about what you're saying. Because In order to get rid of drugs the way they're trying to do it, they would have to get rid of all three elements. You'd have to get rid of the manufacturers, you'd have to get rid of the distributors, and you had to get rid of the users. Because if you get rid of one, The other two are going to create that one again.

And I would like to know. I mean, I don't necessarily think you should do cocaine. I've never done it. I got lucky. Excuse me. When I was in high school, my friend's cousin got hooked on coke and I watched his light fall apart. I was like, Oh, I don't want nothing to do with that. I was always terrified that I was going to do something that was going to turn me into a loser. I grew up poor and we moved around a lot and I always felt out of place. I never felt like I had anything going on in my life until I started doing martial arts when I was a kid, when I was like 15. That's when I really got into it. And then from then on, I said, This is the key to life. The key to life is discipline and focus. And I don't want nothing that's going to take away my focus. Nothing's going to take away my drive. And I saw my friend's cousin. I was like, God damn, he was a good dude. And now he's like a vampire. And he's like hiding in his attic apartment. They're all just doing coke all the time and selling coke.

It was horrible. So I never fucked with coke. But I know a lot of successful people that every now and then they do a little coke. And I think it's like everything else. I think it's... I mean, there's a lot of things. Alcohol is addictive. I like a little alcohol every now and then. I don't think it's that bad. I don't think weed's bad. I don't think any of these things are bad. I think what's bad is bad behavior and bad thinking and not understanding the consequences of what you're doing. And the consequences of what we're doing by making drugs illegal is so crazy because all we're doing, we're not reducing the demand, we're not reducing the supply. We're just empowering criminal elements in another country that now are immensely powerful.

And it makes people want to get involved because of the money.

Incredible amounts of money. And if you're living in Mexico, shit, you think South Central is poor. Try being born in these places where you live in these houses with no windows and dirt floors and you see some dude driving by in a fucking beautiful car with a gold-plated gun. And that's El Jefe. And that's the dude. That's who you look up to. That's who you want to be. And we're empowering that. We're empowering all that in this country by our stupid fucking laws.

I agree. I totally agree what you're saying. And I thought about that, that what would happen if coke lost its value totally? If they had no value. I mean, if it was worth what it's really worth. It's a plant, so it grows while. So it doesn't take anybody to grow it. So you're talking like it might be worth pennies, but it's the value that we create that attracts people to Coke.

It's also making it illegal, so it's difficult.

Making it illegal creates a value. Because if it wasn't illegal, people would just let it sit there or they would traffic it and then it wouldn't be worth hauling because everybody would have it. And the way I see it, that if it loses its value, most people that I saw get started with coke start off selling. And they get curious. Well, what does it do for you? And they try it, and they don't or not capable of not doing it anymore. I did it for about two weeks. When I got up to like an ounce, my cousins talked me in, Hey, go ahead and try it. Go ahead and try it. Because I never tried it before. I never smoked marijuana or nothing at that time. And they talked me in and trying it. And when I looked up, I had like $300. I had about $9,000 worth of Coke. And when we finished, I had $300. So what I realized is that they had tricked me into getting started so that they could get high because they didn't have any money. So I bought that day when When I finally cleared my head up, I said, You know what?

I'm never doing it again. And I never done coke again.

Yeah, it's not a good drug, but there's a lot of things that aren't good drugs. Do you know who Dr. Carl Hart is? No, I never heard him. He's a professor at Columbia, and he was a clinical researcher, and he was a very straight-laced guy. Never did any drugs, no nothing. And when he started doing clinical research on different drugs drugs and different things, he realized that all the things that we're being told about drugs are incorrect. A lot of it is over inflated. A lot of it is exaggerated. And he talks openly about responsible drug use. This guy's a professor, legitimate academic and intellectual. And he talks openly about his own personal drug use, about how these things can be used responsibly. But that thought is never out there. Nobody says that. Everybody tells you, if you do drugs, you're going to be an addict. You do drugs, you're going to be a loser.

Well, you know these people, so many people are making money off of the illegal drug market. I mean, if you just imagine how much money has been spent on incarceration, on probation, on policing. Just prisons themselves.

Privatized prison.

So these people don't want drugs to not be valuable to the system. They wanted to stay the way it is so they can keep making their money. So they do commercials and they market just like everybody else market their business, to stay in business. Those are the things that we're dealing with, and we have to get people that are more sensible. When I got home and found out that marijuana was legal, it was like, wow, finally, we're waking up.

That was just 2016, though, in California, where it was made legal.

Well, when I got... Medically, Medically, it was legal when I got home. Right.

Yeah, it was medically legal in the '90s. I got a card. I got headaches.

Hey, you were smoking when I was on the show. You remember? Yeah. And that leads me to...

Uh-oh, you're in the business? I'm in the business. But you know what's interesting? I bought you some gifts. What do you got here?

This is my new strings. All right. You know I got a dispensary? You do? I got a dispensary. Where? I'm a legal marijuana dealer. The States.

That's incredible.

That's incredible. I told you, you've been gone a long time, man. Wow.

That's great to hear, though, man. Look, I'm a big fan of that. In Texas, it's illegal, but you can get this stuff called Delta 9 THC that's legal, and apparently it's legal federally. So you could just get that. The whole thing is very strange. It's like there's worse things in this world than marijuana. Absolutely. Oh my God. Marijuana makes people calmer, makes people funnier.

Make you go to sleep. I can go to sleep.

I can I can get some sleep.

It makes people more sensitive to other people.

It really makes you more compassionate. It does a lot of things for you.

When I went to my first... Because it all goes back to I go to my first. When I get off parole, it's just crazy, right? They're having a high-time event in LA the day I get off parole. High-times? High-time event. The day I get off parole. So my boy from Cincinnati, he's flying out to LA. So he flies out to LA, he comes by the house. He's like, Man, you Let's go celebrate. And I was like, Cool. Where are we going? He's like, Man, they're having a high-time event coming. I was like, Oh, no, I don't want to get with that drug stuff, man. Because even though I've been through all I've been through, I'm still under this impression that they had been instilling in us. Oh, well, marijuana is a gateway drug. I'm still tripping off of that. So I was like, Oh, man, I don't want to go out there. I start selling marijuana, get involved with the marijuana. Next day, I'll be back doing coke. Because I understood that I'm an addict. I was an addict to selling cocaine. I mean, I love... If I had a problem, my old lady start arguing, I just go sell some coke.

Well, it's a success, right?

So that made me feel better.

Yeah. You're selling a lot. You're making a lot of money.

And I felt better. Why wouldn't you be addicted to that? I forget about your friend in the hospital sick from selling cocaine. So now I forgot about him being sick So coke had become like a crutch to me, where anything that went wrong for me, Coke made it better. I mean, like the commercial, everything goes better with Coke.

Which used to be made with coke, which is crazy.

So it had become like a crutch to me. And when I was going to the high time event, I was scared of that happening. And he was like, Man, I bet you sell a lot of books and T-shirts. I said, Oh, that's a goal. I bet you did. Man, I found myself out there. Man, those people treated me so good. I was like, What the fuck? I want to be in this community. And after that day, I've been chasing the marijuana business in 2016 when they changed the law, I went there. First, they didn't want convicted felons to work in the industry. I was like, what the fuck? How are you guys going to say that? And we the ones made it where the industry is legal now. Had the people not go to jail for selling marijuana, you never would have thought about legalizing it. Right. And they had me to argue to city council. That issue. That's crazy. So I got to argue the issue and they broke down. And now everybody around the country adopted that philosophy, and they're putting convicted felons in the front of the line.

That's incredible. You know, the federal government is reducing it to a schedule three now.

Yeah, they should just totally legalize.

A hundred %. But at least it's a schedule three, which is... What's also listed in schedule three? I think cocaine might be actually. It's medically valuable. Do you know that Coca-Cola is one of the largest importers of coca leaves? That coca leaves still flavor Coca-Cola. I didn't know that. And that there's a plant that supplies Coca-Cola. There's a plant that takes the cocaine out of the coca leaves It creates this flavinoid, these flavors. That's why Coke tastes better than Pepsi. Sorry, Pepsi. If you're a Coke fan, the flavor that Coke has is Flavered, partially at least, by cocaine. Coke is schedule two. Schedule three would be like, it says ketamine, testosterone, anabolic steroids, codeine. Oh, mild shit. Well, codeine ain't that That's interesting. Tiamal with codeine. Probably less than 90 milligrams. Okay. So then that's where marijuana is going to be, which is still ridiculous. What schedule is Ambien? That shit's fucking scary. What schedule is Adderall? What's Adderall? Well, it just set it right there, Jamie. If you click on what schedule is right above? What schedule drug is that at all? Schedule 2. That stuff is fucking crazy. I know a lot of people hooked on that.

Schedule 4. Less. That's funny. Xanax. Xanax is four. I know a lot of people have been fucked up by Xanax. Valium? I know a lot of people that have been fucked up by Valium. Fucked up by Valium. And then that stuff is less illegal than marijuana. It's crazy. We're so silly. I mean, it's a little baby steps towards legalization. That's one thing that California has above Texas for sure, is the legalization of marijuana. It should be legal federal law.

They tax the shit out of us in California.

I wish they did, and I wish they did something good with it. I wish they took those taxes and cleaned up Oakland. I wish they did.

They give it to the police Department.

They don't even do that, man. They're defunding the police Department in California by 150 million with a new budget proposal. $150 million. All the fucking problems they have, and they're defunding. What they should do, if you want to... Look, if you want to tax it, you're making plenty of money, I'm sure. A lot of people want to buy Take that money and fix the fucking problems. Use that money. Use that money to fix the problems. Stop with all the bureaucracy. Stop with all these fucking useless people that are getting paid for the homeless programs in Los Angeles. It's just a scam. It's just a bunch of people making money, some of them, upwards of $250,000 a year to fix the homeless problem. And they're not doing jack shit.

Yeah, I could fix the homeless problem in a couple of months.

You think so?

Absolutely. You just go and build some nice houses and let them stay there. And tell them they don't have to fill out the application. Most of the people that's homeless, the applications, when you run their credit, their credit is fucked. They didn't pay a light bill or a phone bill. Taxes. Taxes, whatever. So their credit is fucked up. I mean, the problem can be solved. But it got to be somebody who say, you know what, we're going to throw a few, maybe 50 million, 100 million in to building some low income houses that We're also going to have some treatments where people get treated, where they get job training. It's just so many things. I don't know. Even when I look at someone, I'm supposed to be millionaires, billionaires, the way they I don't know. I would look at this problem and I would solve it totally different. Because even though I like making money, I'm not like typical people. They get the money and they want to harness it and they just want it for themselves so that they can look on everybody else. I don't think money is supposed to be used like that.

I think money is supposed to be put back into the community where the community can rejuvenate and the money circulates into the community.

And that makes everything better for everybody.

Absolutely.

Yeah. You don't want to be the only one that's doing well. No. That's not a good place to be in life.

Well, a lot of people are like that.

They're foolish.

Just a foolish way of thinking. When we look at the way, the situation with Puff Daddy. He had money, so he treated everybody else like shit. Like, lick a tampon. What the fuck? What crazy motherfucker would want somebody to lick a tampon? I mean, that's how you get your kicks. I would get my kick by seeing somebody do good. Like, look at that motherfucker. He doing That's a good kick. That's my motherfucking boy. That's a good kick.

I like that kick. Some people get a kick off of degrading people. They get a kick off of being the most powerful person. That's an evil inclination that is built into humanity for some reason. There's always been that impulse for some people to do that.

It's very unfortunate. I think power, you can hide your power. You don't even have to show it. You can be powerful and nobody even know you're powerful because you don't have to use it. That's when you're really powerful, when you don't have to use it. You're like, I'm so powerful. Don't nobody even make me use it. Yeah.

And you're using your power for good. I mean, there's a lot of people with some good ideas in this world. And I think There's a lot of people that are very down on the future. I don't think that helps anybody. I think there's a real possibility that we come out of this better. It's just we have to think right and act right.

And then sometimes you got to go to the bottom. They say, one of the books I read, it said that the end of the storm starts at the worst. When you get to the worst, if you can bear the worst. That's the beginning of the end. That's the beginning of the end. So we got to go through the worst. Everybody buckled up.

I think that has to happen, too. I really do. I think people have to see things fall apart before they realize, oh, we had it good. And we didn't even realize we had it good. And now we're fucked. And now we have to turn this shit around.

We've been going the wrong way.

We've been going the wrong way for sure. But we've been led the wrong way. And we've been led the wrong way by people like what we were just talking about before that use their power to subjugate others, to keep everybody else down.

And then we got All these old motherfuckers who've been running things for too long. Why do you stay in the Senate and Congress for 30 years?

Did you ever look at the founding fathers, how young they were?

I haven't. It's crazy.

One of them was 18. One of them was 21. These are the people that started the Declaration of Independence. They signed it. These are the people that were the founding fathers of this experiment and self-government that you and I both live in. They were young as fuck, man. Now you look at the people that are in Congress now. You look at people like the President. He can't even form a sentence. He doesn't know the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. When he's talking to foreign leaders, he's out of it. He's too old. Yeah. It's too old. And then, Mitch McDonald, he just locks up when he's talking to people. It's like, he's too old. He shouldn't be doing that. He's not trying to make the world a better place. He's just trying to not let go of his position of power. And that's a lot of them. And they get there through years and years and years of being deeply embedded into the system. And they know how to work it. And next thing you know, they're the top dogs.

I think they all should go spend a couple of days in jail.

Wouldn't be bad.

Just go sit there for a couple of weeks and then see what it's like. Go in the ghetto, go in a homeless camp. Let them live in a homeless camp for a week. Eat the food that they're eating. And then you really become an American. I think if If you're not experiencing real life, then you don't know what real life is. If you don't see it, you don't touch it. Some of these people never go out to the communities.

Right. They go straight from universities, right into jobs in the system. They work their way up the ladder. Yeah. And then they have disdain for the common people, which it could have been them. Different roll of the dice, different circumstances, different life.

Different parents.

Different parents, different place you live. Different brother. Different everything. Could have been them. Could have been them. And people don't want to think that. They genuinely want to believe they're special, which I think is a trap.

Well, we are special.

Yeah, but I mean special, different than everybody else.

When you start to look down on everybody else, that's bad. When you feel privileged for no reason. If you go out and you do something special, then maybe you're special. But if you're not doing anything that anybody else can't do, then you're no better than nobody else.

Well, there's definitely special people, but special people are just people. They're just people that have put an extraordinary amount of effort and time, and maybe they have just a God-given talent, and they've achieved incredible things. And those people But also what they do is they elevate everyone around them because they make you realize like, wow, my watermark was here, now it's here.

Those are the people that I consider special. Yes. If you can make other people, if you can lift up other people, then you're special.

Yeah. I mean, there's so many people just by virtue of their success and the example that they set, they change the course of so many people's lives because they look to those people for inspiration. It gives them the energy to go out and do things. It gives them the energy, the thoughts, just the idea. Like, that guy did it. I can do it. That's what I want to do. I want to succeed. And it could be a great thing or it could be what happened to you. It's like the wrong inspiration. Absolutely. You say, these guys are succeeding. We don't have shit. They have money. I can do that. And then you do that. But that could be, in your case, it turned out to not be good, but in other people's cases, in different things with different examples of people that are succeeding. You could have done what you did in the drug game if you had better opportunities in fucking anything. I agree. And it's genuinely, it's the discipline of an athlete, which is an extraordinary discipline, the discipline to force yourself to do things you don't want to do. You develop that ability and the ability to really hone in and focus and have drive and a work ethic, that translates to everything.

Everything. You just got to find a different thing to do.

Yeah. And now with the Internet, it makes it better. But we got to get people to where they understand that they should try to do it. Because once you get beat down, you feel like, why should I try? I'm going to get beat down again. I don't have the support. I don't have the crutch to hold me in position until I can build my strength up to be on my own. I think that we, as a society, have to give this to our children, because if we don't, our children are going to be in trouble.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, our entire society. Our society, we're all supposed to be One team. This is especially- Yes. Yeah. Yes. I mean, if we have countries at all, if you believe in America, you believe in any country, that's supposed to be your team. So everybody is supposed to be on that team together.

Everybody. We're supposed to be trying to make the team win. Yes.

The whole team. And that can be done.

And no man left behind.

No man left behind.

Yeah. And if something is wrong, we got to look out for the ones that are slow.

That's the sign of bad leadership in our country, that that's not being addressed. That's bad leadership. That all they're doing is serving the interests of all the wealthy people that got them into power in the first place.

And the wealthy people, once you get wealthy, you should want to be a philanthropist. In my opinion, one of the greatest things that a person could do is help somebody else. To me, that's so fulfilling. People tell me when I do stuff for people, they'll be like, Oh, man, thank you. Thank you. And I'll be like, Thank you. I should be thanking you because you just made my day. I got off by doing that.

Yeah, that's what people don't realize. Doing something nice for people is selfish. Yeah. Because it makes you feel good.

I'll be feeling selfish. They might ask me for a picture in the airport and I'll be like, for sure. You want to take a picture with me?

You make them feel good, but you make them feel good.

You make them feel good. And then you give them some good advice. And it's like, wow, what a feeling it is. So I don't know. I just come up different. And I'm from the streets. I'm from where people kill you for colors. Some of my first heroes was Tookie Williams. I used to look up to Tookie Williams. I wanted to be like Tookie. I wanted to be a crip. So to now see the world to where I should be trying to save lives is a total different mentality than when I was 12 years old, 11 years old. And I'm saying, Guys, fight over a color and stuff. That was because I was ignorant. I didn't know any better. But once I was educated to the facts that Hey, we're supposed to be helping save lives, not destroying a life.

What was it like once you got into jail and learned how to read and then started reading and recognizing that the world was just a much different place than you thought it was?

Mind-blowing. Mind-blowing. I hate that nobody ever sit me down and explain to me how exciting book reading was. The books I started to read was about making money. I got to tell you that, too. That was about either making money or how the mind works, how to think, how to think successfully, how to have faith in yourself, how to believe in you. Because when you don't believe in yourself, it's hard to believe in anything. If you believe you're a loser, then you think everybody else is losers as well. Having these experiences in these books, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, just blew my mind. Fuck, people actually think like this here? You can think and grow rich. You can use your mind trying to create, and you only really need one idea that could make you a fortune. You shouldn't be allowing other people to feed your mind their ideas, what they think you should be. Because when I was coming up, other people affected the way I thought. Man, you play tennis? That's a girlsport. You're right. You're reading a book? Why are you reading a book? You need a gun. So these things start to shape your mind.

And when I find out from James Allen that I am the gardener of my mind and I have to keep my mind weed free. I have to pluck the weeds out as soon as a negative thought pop in. Because even since I've been home, they didn't offer me coke. I had a few guys come, Oh, I was just playing. Nudge you on the shoulder. I was just playing. Just see where you was at with it. So as soon as those things happen, you got to get rid of them. Because when Blandon approach me about selling drugs again, I wasn't planning on selling drugs no more. But when he kept offering it, and when I listened to the tape in court, man, I'm in court, we're going to trial and they plan the tapes of our recorded phone calls. And he says, Rick, I got 700 kilos. The first thing popped out of my mouth, and I don't even know I said this, how much? First thing. And I done told myself, I have promised myself I promise myself, Joe. I promise myself and my kids, I'm never selling coke again. But when he asked me that question on that tape, which is probably what convicted me.

Wow. I said, How much? Wow. Unconsciously. I think I had fallen asleep behind the wheel.

So you had already decided to get out?

I was out. I hadn't sold drugs in five and a half, six years. Really? Yeah.

And the conversations on the phone or what got you convicted? Yeah. Was he wearing a wire?

He was wearing a wire. He was recording the conversation. He had already become a government informant.

Oh, my God.

And I asked him how much?

Oh, my God.

They played that over and over in the courtroom. How much? How much? I just kept hearing myself say, How much? Oh, my God. And I just put my head down because I knew that that was a crucial mistake. Wow. Even though I didn't bite that time. I didn't bite.

But you did say how much.

I did say how much. That's all it took. That's all it took. So that showed an interest. Oh, my God. See, if I would have said, Oh, I don't fuck with drugs no more. But I'm talking to my partner. I'm talking to the homie. We're chopping it up. Old times. Just out of curiosity, how much? Good times. Sound like good times.

I don't sell drugs anymore, but out of curiosity. What figures are we talking about here? It's exciting, too, right? Yeah. That's also a part of the problem. Regular life gets mundane.

Selling drugs is exciting, man. I The girls? Oh, I bet. Girls like drug dealers. I bet.

Drug dealers have a lot of money.

Nice cars. Yeah. Pay for nice hotels.

Girls like nice things. Buy you nice gifts. Nice shoes. Nice bag. Nice this. Nice clothes.

So it's easy. When I go out and I talk to these young guys, I don't criticize them because I understand what they're going through. And I understand that if we don't replace the drug with something else, don't even ask them to quit. Why? Why would you ask somebody not to feed their kids, not to be able to buy their girlfriend's shoes she wants? We have to come up with things Because most of the manufacturing jobs are overseas. We don't make anything in America anymore. Very little.

Very little. Yeah, how crazy is that? Who the fuck didn't see that coming? That was going to ruin everything. Just Do you have people in other countries that are extremely poor, work for almost nothing. It's weird, man. We're a goofy, goofy culture, and we have so much information. It's not like the solution is impossible to solve.

Oh, no, we can fix it.

Yeah.

We can fix it. But we got to start. Yeah. Right where we at. We got to put our hands down, our feet down and say, you know what? We're going to make a stance. And That's what I believe. You start with what you got, where you're at. So many people want things to be perfect. No, it ain't going to be perfect. You might have to go through a little something. You might have to miss a couple of meals. But this is what it's going to take.

It's just hard if someone's already making a lot of money doing something illegal. It's very hard to tell them you're going to make way less money and you're going to work way harder and you're not going to enjoy it, but it's going to be legal. That's a very hard sell. Very hard sell.

It is. But we got to put people first. We got to learn. I mean, we got to stop being stupid. And I believe when we don't put people first, we're being stupid. Because without people, there's no drugs, there's no business, there's no nothing. We are people. It's us. It's us.

It's just one team, team human.

Let's win, baby.

The crazy thing is there's enough resources for everybody. There's enough for everybody. It really is. It's just our system. It's just manipulated and all fucked up and poorly organized and badly planned.

I agree.

Yeah.

I agree. You know I'm deep in the in the marijuana industry now and I'm watching these guys and these guys are making millions of dollars, but I'm watching them cut their own throat. I'm sitting here and I'm literally watching them take razor blades to their necks.

How so?

Well, some of it I can't talk on the air about it because It ain't proper. Right. Got it. But I would just tell you that I'm being privileged to see this business destroy itself. I'm watching them just destroy their business. No organization, no camaraderie. I'm going to beat this guy out. I'm going to beat that guy out. I'm going to put him out of business. And they They're really going to put themselves out of business at the same time. I saw a thing in National Geographic when I was in jail, and it was an alligator, and one of those big water moccasins was fighting, and the water moccasin wind up swallowing the alligator. Really? Yeah. But in the process, he swallowed the alligator. So when the alligator go inside, he's still alive. He takes his claws and go like this here. Oh, go on. Part His last...

It was probably a Python.

Might have been a Python.

Yeah, that's in the Everglades. Yeah. Do you know the largest population of pythons in the world is in the Everglades? I didn't know. They're not even from the Everglades.

I didn't know that.

Just asshole holes, releasing them. And then maybe a research center that got hit with a hurricane. There's a lot of speculation about how the population got so large, but there's over half a million pythons.

Wow.

But yeah, they swallow the allegator, and the allegator cuts its way out of their body, and then they both die. They both die. There's a photo of one of a twelve-foot allegator bursting out of the body of a Python. Look at this. So this Python swallowed this allegator, and then the allegator's tail is poking out of it as it clawed its way out. That's its tail.

Yeah.

So they're both dead.

They both died.

Yeah. And especially when you're talking about the weed business, how much weed can you sell? You really want to put everybody out of business? Are you fucking retarded? Why don't you just make as much money as you can and then encourage all these other people to make as much money as they can and hang out together? Go have a barbecue together. Go to dinner together.

Let everybody do good. Everybody set limits. Everybody set limits. Okay, we're going to make this amount of money.

The competition is within yourself. The competition is to do better. And if you see other people doing better than you, you should say, what are they doing different than me? You should be inspired instead of trying to squash their business.

They can't think. It's stupid. It's a stupid- These people can't think. They like gangbangers almost to me.

It's very similar. There's the same patterns. Those patterns exist in politics, in business, in everything. Drug dealing, gangbanging, everything. It used to exist like that in comedy. It used to be comedians were all out for themselves. Just take someone to explain to everybody. This is stupid. There's not that many of us. We're all in this together. It doesn't benefit you at all.

Let's make society better.

Yes. Let's make everything better.

Let's make the community better. Let's make everything better. That's what it's supposed to be about.

That's what it should be about.

When it's all said and done, you know I read a book and the guy says, When you're at the end, how do you want to be remembered? And me, I wanted people to say, maybe they might say I sold drugs. I don't care about that part. Yeah. He only sold drugs eight years. But at the end, I wanted to say he made the world a better place because he lived. When I go out like that there, I'll be a happy man.

Well, sometimes you have to do the wrong thing in order to be an example of someone who can do the wrong thing and course correct and then become a better person. If you're just a good person from the beginning, that's boring. I like a guy who fucks up a few times and then figures it out. And then that can inspire people who have already fucked up their life. Because people want to think that once they've fucked up their life, oh, my God, I'm going to fuck up. But that's not really the case. This life is like, treat it like a game. If you lose one hand of cards, you're not a card loser for the rest of your life. You got to figure out, what did I do wrong? Well, I hit at 17. I should have just stuck, and I would have been all right. You got to learn. And the only way to learn is to fuck up. And this idea that when someone fucks up, they are a fuck up. No, They're a human being. They're a human being with either bad information or bad counseling or bad examples. And they went down the wrong way.

Get off the carpet. They knock you down. Get up. Yeah, get up. Because they say you're still the champ as long as you get up.

Well, a lot of people will disagree with that. I mean, it's unfortunate this mentality that people have. It's a famine mentality, and there's enough for everybody. There really is. And it's also what you were saying that you like It's selfish to be generous. It's selfish to be nice. It's selfish to help people because it makes you feel better. It really does. It's really beneficial to you, and you feel good about yourself. At the end of the night, when you lay your head down, you're like, I'm not a piece of shit. I'm a good guy. I'm helping people. People like me, and I like them. And we all benefit, and everybody grows. And that's nice. That's a good way to live your life. That's a good example to set, and that can be done. And this idea that's just you against the world, that's crazy. That's going to fuck you over.

And I think that's a big problem that we have, and hopefully we can start working on that.

Have you met this rapper that has been running around your name for all these years?

He dodges me. You never seen him? No, I call him Bad Deck Slipper. You see what happened the other night? He walked Agent Bronner into the ring.

Agent Bronner got knocked out? Or he didn't get knocked out. He got beat up.

The worst beating he ever got before in his life.

Well, Adrian Broner is a cautionary tale because he was an incredibly talented young man. Very, very talented when he was young, but he fucked off too much. And he didn't stay the path. He didn't stay disciplined. And he had losses. And my Donna heard him. That was the first one. It was a few different fights. And now, what is he? 35, 36?

Broke.

And if you're Normal men, healthy men, when they hit 36, their body starts to decline. Absolutely. And he's not that healthy. I mean, he was fat just a little while ago. Javante Davis took him in, and he started training with Javante, and he documented it. So he showed photos of he had this big belly. He looked fat and out of shape, and then leaned himself down to where he had a six-pack again. But you're just getting back in shape. These motherfuckers that you're fighting have been in shape for a decade. They stay in shape for a decade. Their reflexes and timing and technique is finally honed to a razor's edge. You can't just jump back in and compete with some dude who's been on the game for 10 fucking straight years and is focused on the path. It takes long time to get back to where you were. Forget about to where they are. You might look the part. You may be able to hit pads and everybody's like, oh, he's back. The difference between success and failure in the boxing game is fractions of a second. Fractions of a second. The ability to maintain a pace for as many rounds as the fight is.

The understanding of how to pace yourself, the ability to handle the pressure, the pressure of knowing that you've fucked up for so long, and this is a big opportunity, the nerves, the anxiety, the soupless nights before the fight, all that's going to weigh on you, all those different things. When you look at the elite of the elite boxers, to a man, to every one of them, they're disciplined and they stay focused. Okay, you know who's the same age as Adrian Broner? Terrence Crawford, best boxer in the world.

I agree.

Best boxer.

I agree.

I am so excited to see this fight with Canelo Alvarez because I think the Saudi Arabians have so much money. They are throwing so much money at boxing. And the guy who's the head of boxing over there wants to make that fight happen. I think Terrence Crawford, forget about the three-way classes. I think he could beat Canelo.

I think he can, too.

He's the best switch hitter in boxing since Marvin Hagler.

And his hands are like rocks. I held his hand in Dallas. I found Kid Austin, the boxer. Oh, did you? Yeah. He was 2-0. So I helped him get to where he's at now, even though I don't get any credit for it.

A lot of people fucking you over, man.

I went to that fight and Terrence was there, and I was with Anthony Peterson. I manage Anthony Peterson. Anthony 39. He wants to come back, so we're going to see. But Anthony deals with it a little different. Anthony stays in shape, sparring. But anyway, I held Terrence's hand and they so damn big, and they like a sack of rocks. I was like, damn, this dude hands are like, rocks. I'm taking Terrence in that fight as well. I took him in the- He's so clever. I took him in the Earl Spence fight, too.

Yeah, I thought Earl Spence. Well, first of all, Earl Spence, that car accident is crazy. If you watch that car accident, nobody comes out of a car accident like that not damaged. He had to get brain damage from that car accident. That car flipped. He got thrown out of the car. Luckily, he wasn't wearing a seatbelt, which is so crazy. It's one of the few times where someone not wearing a seatbelt saved their life. Benefited. Yeah, crazy. But that had to fuck him up. He was undefeated before that. But you know what? Crawford is just so good anyway.

And he's a different guy. He's a different guy. No parties, no drinking.

No, he's clever. He sets traps. He's not just a power striker. I mean, not that Erl Spence is not a great boxer. He's a great boxer, but I think Terrence is one of the all-time greats. He's just so slick. He talked about how he knew that he was going to eat a punch in order to counter So he had to put himself in range so that he knew Erl could hit him so that he could crack him. He's like, I knew I had to gamble on this. And this is like levels to the way that guy fight, the game he plays. When he gets you hurt, you're fucked.

Oh, yeah. You're fucked. Oh, yeah. You don't want to be hurt in there with him.

He's not going to miss on opportunities. He's on that all-time greatness track. But again, he's the same age as Adrian Broner. He was like, Adrian Broner, when he was young, was crazy talented. He was so fast and so good. But you can't fake that game. You are either all in or you are faking it. If you are faking it, you're going to run into some dude who's all in. You're going to run into some David Benavides character that's just not skipping days. No. Not skipping days.

Who really want it.

Really wants it. It's everything all day long.

But you know it's hard when they get the money to stay on that track. When they get rich, you want to enjoy. I guess you want to enjoy your money.

Of course. But that comes at a price. The only person that I know that has really been able to avoid that temptation is Floyd. Floyd Mayweather was still the elite of the elite while he had hundreds of millions of dollars. Just still, he would go to a club, drink water, and then run home with his jeans on. Run home for miles. He'd have his driver's drive, and he would run behind him.

We picked him up in Memphis. He got off the plane. Looked like he was on the plane working out.

He probably was.

Yeah, he had on his shorts and was sweating. And he ran straight in, went in the shower, showered up, then put a suit on and went to the club. So what you're saying is what I believe is to be correct. Yeah.

He shows you all the watches and shows you all the cars and shows you the big house. But what you don't see is the discipline, just this straightforward, eyes on the prize, discipline and focus. That's how you get to be a Floyd Mayweather. You don't get to be a Floyd Mayweather any other way. There's a lot of talented people out there. There's a lot of people that are gifted, athletically gifted. They're faster than other folks. They hit harder than other folks. But it's the discipline, the focus that leads you to the end. That's how you become a great. There's no other way. No one becomes like a Sugar Ray Leonard or a Floyd Mayweather or a Tommy Burns without discipline. It doesn't happen. You have to stay focused, always. And if you don't, then worse. Then you're left with a life of regret.

That's what we were saying about the drug business. I mean, it applies to really anything. Anything. And that's why I believe that I can play major roles in so many different businesses because I'm at the point in my life that I know Then all I got to do is sacrifice for a couple of months and you're in the game. I've been in boxing now for like six years. Really? Yeah, I manage about six or seven fighters.

Who do you manage?

I got a guy, Bashan Champ right now, Alvin Vermeer. I just signed a kid. I just signed my first national champs. I got like four national champs, Ashton out of North Carolina. Damn, I can't even think everybody's name. I shouldn't have named Nobody because everybody be like, why you didn't mention me? Why you didn't give me a shout out? But I got about four national champs that I'm signing this year. I'm not a big I'm not a fan of boxing. You're not? No, I'm not. Really? I think when you're trying to knock the most valuable thing that a human being has, which is their brain, you're trying to knock their brain out. I think it's It's almost like dealing coke, almost.

So why are you involved in it?

Because I hate to see these guys wind up broke at the end of their careers.

And they're going to do it anyway. So you're going to try to help them.

I'm going to try to stop that. And then they have so much influence over our people, man. They can say a word and our people just follow them.

That is the thing. When you see someone succeed in someone who lives a disciplined life, especially if you're a fan of a boxer, it'll make you want to live like that.

Yeah. So I just felt that I could step in and really help these guys with their money as well as help them become the mentors that they should be. And that's why I got into boxing. And I started. You know, Floyd picked me up in the halfway house.

He did? Yeah.

He picked me up in the halfway house. That's crazy. And I was trying to show him what I know. But He didn't really want to use me for that.

Have you ever seen anybody confront Rick Ross about you?

Not in person, no. Anytime I'm around, he disappears.

But is there any video of anybody? Hey, why are you running around with this dude's name when this dude's out of jail now?

Well, these guys, they like we talked about. When you got some money, they don't care if you beating women or making them lick tampons. Everybody fucked with you. So But he was on top of the world at one time.

He was a correction officer.

Yeah, he was. But when he got some money, they forgot about he was a correction officer. You got gangsters doing records with him and people who say, Oh, I hate snitches and all this. But they're doing records with a police officer who put handcuffs. I got letters from guys that was in jail with him when he was a correction officer and they told me what a shitty guy he was. That they would be shooting dice. He would take the dice and all the money. They got extra soup. He take the soups. Just stuff that normal officers just don't... Everybody in jail got extra soups. You say your soups because it might come a time and you ain't got them, so you stack your stuff up. But most officers don't even care. Who cares about the extra suit? We're trying to get the dope dealers and the guys with the knives. But then you got those ones and they're like, Oh, well, you got an extra pair of underwear. You're going to the hole. And that's how he was? That's how he was. They say that's the cop he was. And then when I hear that he's the biggest gangster rapper on the planet, it's like...

It's just so crazy. What is it like having a dude running around out there with your name? If there was a rapper out there named Joe Rogan, I'd be like, What the fuck?

I mean, it's crazy. How would you take my name and not not have the decency to ask me first of all, you should have asked, but then never pay homage. He won't even admit that he stole the name. He tells people that he invented the name. How the fuck do you invent this name?

Well, it's so crazy because the name was famous. Your name was famous. Everybody knew who you were. When the case came out and when the connection to the Iran Contra affair came out, when everybody found out what was going on, You were a legend.

Yeah, you threw a few million dollars toward Instagram and Facebook and the radio station. Everybody forget about that. You put a little gold chain on. You driving a Rolls-Royce and a couple of pretty girls.

It's one thing if his name was Rick Ross. It's possible. There could be another Rick Ross out there. I've met other Joe Rogans. That's real.

Me, too. I met other Rick Rosses.

But what the fuck, man? The guy Everybody knows who you are. Everybody knows who you are. Takes your name. I mean, it doesn't even make sense. Didn't you have a case? You had a legal case about it.

I lost the case.

How the fuck did you lose?

They said I should have filed a lawsuit. The judge got to make a technical decision. She had to make a decision when did the public first become known of him using my name. So what she did is she picked little radio station outside of Miami that played his record for the first time. So that was the date that the public first became known that he was using the name.

So there was a statute of limitations on when you were supposed to address it? Yes. How much time?

Two years. What? Yeah, you get two years. So if we went by her time frame, I should have filed my lawsuit five days before I got out of jail. Oh, my God. That was five days late.

That's so crazy.

But I think she would have found another reason to come up with a date.

Well, the record company probably would have helped, right? I mean, think about how much money they're making off of him.

Oh, yeah. They were the old men. They had 15 lawyers. You know how much money they say they spent on the lawsuit? How much? One and a half million dollars. Wow. You know how much they offer me? How much? Zero. Zero. They never come and say, Hey, man. What would you have accepted?

Just to like...

Well, you know, Joe, we was getting evicted out of my mom's house during the time of the lawsuit. So I imagine if she was losing her house for 220,000. So if somebody would have came up and said, Hey, I'll say your mom's house. Because I was worried about my mom. My mom was, at that time, she was 83, 84. And one of my biggest concerns was her being homeless. So I probably would have took 220,000. If he would have came and said, Hey, I'm going to say your mom's house. Let me have Rick Ross change her name to Mitchell, whatever.

Well, you wouldn't have to change your name. That's crazy. I didn't even care about the name.

I didn't care about the name like that. I just felt that it was so disrespectful that he didn't come and ask me or he didn't show any consideration or pay any homage to the fact that he actually took my name. But yeah, I probably would have took $250,000 If they would have said 300,000, I would have been tickled pink because I felt that I didn't need much money to get started.

Meanwhile, they spent 1.5?

1.5 million. I owe them right now. I owe them a million dollars. What? I got a million dollar judgment.

Because you have to pay their legal fees.

I have to pay their legal fees. Oh, my God. And then the judge was like, oh, I don't believe you guys actually spend 1.5 million, but maybe a million dollars. Oh, my God. She gave me a million dollar judgment.

Isn't that insane? For your name, your fucking name. And you can't appeal this?

Well, we appealed it. But once you lose to the appeals court, you're not going to the Supreme Court or anything like that. So, yeah, that's how he wind up being able to continue to use the name. You know, he changed to say, though, because they thought they might lose. If this judge, if this judge, picks a different date, we go to trial. And they didn't want to go to trial. I didn't think. I think if they didn't want to trial Everybody in LA, they would have hammered him. You know you stole that name. If you'd have heard the thing that he did... Because we did his deposition. We took his depo. That was the first time I ever met him in person. He wouldn't shake my hand either. Really? No. When he walked in, all the attorneys, it was a big table. It was about 12 people in the room. And he walks in and he walks around the table, shakes everybody, including my lawyer, shakes my lawyer's hands and everybody. And I stood up to shake his hand because I don't have no hard feelings. Just give me my money. Right. So he brows his eyes at me and walks away, turns his shoulder like, wow.

And then he comes up with this Oh, my goodness. I don't know where he got the story from. He said he played football in high school and the whole team was called the Big East. And some guy was trying to call him Big East and accidentally called him the Big Boss. And then somebody else called him Rick Ross. He went from Big Boss to Rick Ross. That's his story. That's the dumbest. How he came up with the name Rick Ross.

That's the dumbest fucking story I've ever heard in my life.

If I'd have been a judge, I would have hammered him just for saying, come in my courtroom lying like that. I would have been like- That's the dumbest...

But that's impossible. If he's rapping about drug dealing and money, it's impossible that he doesn't know who you are. Impossible. Impossible. Not possible.

I agree.

Everybody knew. I knew who you were. I had heard the story. I don't even remember when I read about it.

When Gary Will published his story in '96 with the San Jose Mercury Mercury News, My name that year was one of the biggest names in the country.

Yeah, because the story was insane.

It was the first time any story had ever been published on the Internet by a major newspaper. Remember? Remember, the Internet was brand new. Right. So when they published that article on the Internet, no story had ever... Because remember, the CIA tried to recall that article. But once it hit the Internet, it can't be recalled.

They tried to recall the article? You know remember? I don't.

The printed copies, they stopped doing. They took the CIA emblems off and everything. Really? Yeah. They made them take all that stuff off. But the Internet, you couldn't take it back at the time. Once it the Internet, it's like, boom, it's all over the world. When you hit that button, there's no recall. If you put something on that thing and you hit that button, what you said is what you said. You're going to have to live with that. So when it went viral, it was nothing they could do. And it just went crazy. So everybody picked it up. Cnn, Nightline, Dayline, 2020. I'm doing like six interviews for my jail cell Jail every day. Every day people coming down talking to me. And I told you, that's when the CIA came down. The CIA came to my jail cell and interviewed me. The CIA, the OIG, Congress, Maxine Waters, I mean, it was like, fuck, I become a celebrity in jail. They start treating me differently.

What did the CIA say to you in jail?

What did I know about cocaine being traffited by the contras? Which I didn't really know about the contras. I knew Danilo. I don't know about no damn contras.

You knew the guy who was supplying you?

Yeah, that's all I knew. I don't know if he was a contra or CIA informant. I don't know none of that shit. I never cared. I'm a illiterate 28, 30-year-old guy from South Central who never watched the news. I had heard about the Iran contra stuff, but that shit didn't mean nothing to me. It had no on South Central LA. You know what I'm saying? I don't know that my prices and my drug quality, depending on what happened over there. I'm not paying no attention to that. I'm just worried about, man, my drug is going to get here on time. Is it going to be cheap? Is it going to be good? So when all that stuff was coming about, they wanted to know how much money I was making, who I bought drugs from, what years I bought drugs. Just a whole basically like an interview.

So how do you think it worked? Do you think there's like a rogue element that was inside of the government? Oh, absolutely.

But I'm not meaning to cut you off. No, go ahead. Because it was a rogue element to it. But the rogue element come from the top as well. Not that they necessarily sanctioned it, but they knew about it.

They turned a blind They turned a blind eye.

It was the saying, Nancy Reagan said, Say no. And Ronald Reagan said, Act like you don't know.

That's what they did.

They admitted. They admitted. See, I admitted, yes, we knew they were selling drugs, and we did nothing to stop them. So right there is a crime. Because if you're an agent of the government And you know somebody's committing a crime, you're supposed to stop it. But they understood that if they stop that, they lose the war.

It just makes you wonder how much of that shit was going on during the Vietnam War. Because a lot of people think that the Vietnam War, a lot of it was about moving heroine.

Yeah, I heard that as well.

And that makes sense. It makes sense. If you are in a bit, especially the Vietnam War, right? Because the Vietnam War was started with a false flag. So the Gulf of Tonka incident starts the Vietnam War. The Gulf of Tonka incident never took place. It was a fake incident. They said, We were attacked by North Korea, or excuse me, North Vietnam. We have to go in there and fight the Viet Cong. Never happened. It was fake. They made it up just to get us to go to war. So if you're willing to kill who knows how many Americans died in that war? Hundreds of thousands, probably. How many people died during the Vietnam War? How many American soldiers? I think it's close to 100,000, maybe more. And then how many Vietnamese got killed? The overall cost of lives is catastrophic. And they did it knowing.

Well, you know that sometimes they filled it.

58,220 US fatal casualties. And that doesn't include how many people were wounded and fucked up for the rest of their life. How many people died totally? How many people died all deaths of Vietnam War? What's the total deaths? That's just American deaths.

And then they count Asian orange. Right.

Casulties gets bigger because... 1.4 million civilian casualties in South Vietnam because of the war. Casuities means death. Right. I understand. Including 415,000 deaths. And estimated by the Defense Department gave the figure of 1.2 million civilian casualties, 195,000. So it's all controversial what the what the number was. 1978 estimated 1,353,000 total deaths in North and South Vietnam during that period. Fuck, man. So if they're willing to do that, you don't think they're willing to make money off drugs? I mean, if they're willing to let people die so they can achieve their objectives, they're willing to sell drugs.

They felt that to sacrifice a few people to stop what they felt was the The biggest threat to America was Russia being on our Southern hemisphere, being in Nicaragua. They felt that that was the greatest threat at that time to our democracy. And they felt that they would do anything to stop that.

What a crazy thing to do, though, to think about the sacrifices, what's going to do to American citizens, including the people that, like you, went to jail for helping them. The whole thing is crazy. They probably did it during Afghanistan.

And we still suffering now. That's the homeless problem. Most of the people that's homeless was on crack. Right.

Or something else or opiates or meth. Yeah, it's going on right now. Yeah. Crazy. It's just so much wrong. And we were just saying, I think that's a lot of the Afghanistan war, too. There was one of the best videos out of the Afghanistan war that's so ridiculous is watching Heraldo Rivera interview soldiers that are guarding poppy fields because they have to guard the poppy fields because if they don't, then these poppy farmers won't side with them, and then they'll side with the Taliban. So they're interviewing American soldiers who are guarding heroine being grown. And then during the United States occupation of Afghanistan, heroine production went up, I think at the peak, like 96 %.

Yeah, I heard that as well.

And it was a giant percentage of the world's supply of heroin. And we were guarding it? Like, what?

And it didn't become that until after we went over there. Exactly.

And you don't think someone had a piece of that? That's crazy talk. If they did it With the conscious in the San Denees, you don't think they would do it with Afghanistan? I think there's rogue elements that look at drug dealing and look at it as an opportunity to make money to fund Black Ops projects, to fund things that don't get put on the ledger. Nobody has to know about.

Well, I mean, and just think that if we didn't have situations like what you got here with your podcast, the people wouldn't even know about this stuff. Where would the normal person find out? They're not going to talk about that on CNN, Nightline, Dayline, NBC. None of those people are going to talk about these topics. I mean, I'll be totally baffled, Joe. You with some of the stuff that takes place in this country. I've been on every major news channel in this country. Since I've been home, I feel I have done some amazing things. I spoke at UCLA, USC, Stanford, St. John's. Nobody covered it. Nobody came and heard me talk to young people about how they're going to get started selling drugs, how you're going to get introduced to drugs, who's going to introduce you to drugs. Most people don't even know how people get introduced to drugs. They're thinking that it's some boogie man that comes with a dark jacket on and he's hiding in the dark. Hey, little kid, you want some drugs? And I'm like, no, that's not how it's going to happen. It's going to be your best friend. It's going to be your uncle, your father, your mother, your brother, your sister.

Those are the ones that you trust. Those are the ones that can get your confidence to make you accept something that... If some strange guy come around, most girls are going to take off. But your friends, the people that you care about, that you trust, You're going to believe in them. And they cover none of this. Nobody covers this. Nobody talks about this. Nobody talks about good things that are going in the community, feeding the homeless, people who are trying to do housing like your guy who you just showed me. I never heard of this guy. Why is he not being talked about? Why is he not on the news? Why they're not trying to get funding for him? Why they're not saying, Man, if this guy had a couple of hundred million dollars. I mean, in California, taxpayers agreed to give up extra taxes. I think they raised like a billion and some change for the homeless problem. Where did the Where's that money?

Bureaucracy. That's where it went to. Went to a bunch of people's salaries. It didn't fix shit.

And that's the problem that I have with our major news people. It's bias. They're not going to keep it 100. They're not going to be real.

They can't. They're funded. That's what's really crazy. The news probably shouldn't be allowed to be advertised. They shouldn't be allowed to have advertisers. Because as soon as you have advertisers, especially pharmaceutical drug companies and big corporations, then you can't criticize those people. Those people are the people that pay your bills. And even if it's not written down anywhere, you're not going to go do an investigative journalism on Pfizer. If brought to you by Pfizer, you're not going to do any of that shit. There you go, right there. You're not going to do that shit. So you're not the news anymore.

And that answers your question about the rapper. Why wouldn't they question him? Because he's backed by big corporations.

Exactly. And he's worth a lot of money. He's going to keep generating money for all those people. And he still is. How many years ago was this case?

Oh, wee. Yeah.

I can't even remember. Think about how much money he's made with that name since that case.

I can't remember. Ten years, twelve years. Because I was still on parole. I was still on parole when we were doing that case.

He bought a Vander Holyfield house in Atlanta. Yeah. You know that house at Evander Holyfield got? Evander, when he was a champ, was going crazy. And I guess he just built the craziest fucking house. I mean, it's just this enormous, enormous house on this giant piece of land.

With 50 something bedrooms, I heard. Something crazy.

I don't know what he's doing. I guess he just wanted the biggest, crazy... I'm the fucking champ. I want the biggest, craziest fucking house that's ever existed. And he had to wind up selling it. And then Rick Ross lives in it now. Just like, nuts. Guys running around with your name.

But that's our system. And those are the people that are leading our people. They're the ones that's dictating what's going to go on in society. Man. I mean, so much of our kids are being educated by music, by TV. I mean, I've actually went to a school and the kids accused me of stealing his name.

How old were the kids?

14, 15.

Did you have to tell them?

Yeah, I told them. They didn't believe me. They didn't believe you? No.

Wow.

Because they've been brainwashed. You know what they call it programming? Yeah. Over and over and over and over again. And that's why I Started my own record label. The two guys that's outside, those are two artists that I'm working with right now, Gaready and Juice DeMack. I said, You know what? I'm going to start my own label. I'm going to get somebody to go against you. You got to fight fire with fire. So I got into it. I'm doing so many things right now, man, but I'm having fun, Joe.

That's good. It's good to hear.

I'm helping people. It's good to see you happy. I'm helping them with their career, and I enjoy helping people with their career.

That's beautiful. So the the marijuana business, did you get nervous about being involved? Because it is still federally illegal, even though... Is it officially scheduled three now or is it scheduled to be schedule three? What is the current status? I always stayed away from it. I got a bunch of offers to do it. I'm like, That's a trap. Because it's still schedule one. Yeah. You know? Like I said, that Delta 9 stuff, that's legal, I think, in every state.

Totally. Well, no, some states abandon it. I think I know. Weed states abandon it. Oh, really? Because it's taking away tax dollars.

Oh, no. So we So weed states are banning Delta 9 THC? That is hilarious.

It goes against marijuana.

Oh, my God.

That's taking away marijuana sales. Spy versus spy, dog eat dog. Because they can't tax. They and tax CPD.

Well, CPD is different. We're talking about Delta 9 THC, but CPD should be- It's a derivative.

It's all part of the same... They fall under the same category.

Really? Yeah. Interesting.

They Just a little different.

Well, isn't Brittany Griner, she got arrested in Russia for CPD vape pen, right?

Which a lot of- I think that was marijuana. Was it marijuana? They said it was marijuana.

Okay, so she was saying it was CPD? Oh, it was just a lot of CPD. Because they do have CPD vape pens. They do. That I know people like. Cbd is phenomenal for inflammation. It's so good just for just general well-being and just health and alleviating anxiety, alleviating obviating inflammation. Cbd is phenomenal. And there's places where that's illegal, which is just bananas.

Yeah. And California is trying to make it illegal right now because it's taking away their tax dollars.

That is so stupid. That's so stupid. It hurts my feelings.

Because they're selling in every smoke shop got CPD. They're trying to make it illegal? Yeah.

Oh, my God. That's so dumb. That's so dumb. That is so dumb.

But a lot of states that actually sell marijuana.

What What happens next? The process of reclassifying a substance is lengthy. There's still more hurdles to clear. The plan has been approved by attorney general Merrick Garland and heads next to the DEA, which will take public comment on the proposal. After a 60-day comment period, there'll be a review by an administrative judge. The move started with a recommendation from the Federal Health and Human Services Department, which launched to review the drug status and the urging of President Biden in 2022. This is a long-ass process. But the DEA has not yet formed its own determination as to where marijuana should be scheduled, and it expects to learn more during the rulemaking process. That's funny. Learn more. Come on, guys. Come on, guys.

You know what it is. With DEA, they don't want to be. Of course. They can keep locking people up. We need more money.

That's what's really crazy. It's the prison guard unions. Prison guard unions lobby to make sure that marijuana stays illegal in certain places.

Absolutely.

That is something that-They got big budgets. Yeah, they do. And that is something that is just wrong. That is wrong in this world that we have private prisons and that we have people that are benefiting and profiting off of people being in jail. Because as soon as you make a profit off of something, you're going to want to keep making that profit. Yes.

And they want to keep you there longer.

And imagine if there was just no more lawbreakers. Imagine if a genie cast a magic spell on the world and everybody just stopped committing crimes. No more crimes. And then you can't put anybody in prison. What the fuck? They'd be like, What about our business? Let's make other things crimes. How about thought crimes? I don't like the way you looked at me.

That's a crime. We got these big facilities we built.

Yeah.worth unbelievable amounts of money. They generate money. They treat human beings like a battery. Like you're a battery that generates money. And that's what it's like in these things. It's bizarre that we allow that. It's bizarre that people didn't see where that was going. They allowed private prisons.

Well, they sold fear.

Yeah, well, and this country sells it better than anybody.

If you don't lock them up, they're going to come into your house and rob you and kill you.

Here's a big thing that's a hang up for schedule three drugs. Okay, for example, the proposal does not to identify whether state licensed dispensaries would need to be licensed pharmacies because only a pharmacy can dispense schedule three drugs. Other questions surrounded the coordination of federal regulations related to drug approval, manufacturing, supply chain monitoring, storage, and prescribing. So prescribing, we go back to prescribing it. Yeah, it needs to be legal. What happens if it gets legal in all the states? Here's the thing. It's legal right now for recreational use in how many states? I think it's 19. Is it 19 states? So what happens if it's all 50? And the federal government is not with us. Here, the federal government, we believe it's a schedule one.

And they still allow it to be tax. Yes. When it becomes a schedule three, the taxes are changed, too.

Right. They'll probably make less.

Yeah, they make less taxes as a schedule three.

It's a 24 now that allow recreational use? 24. Recreational use. 24. 38 at medical. Half of the country. Yes. So 38 states have medical? Is Texas have medical? 38. They do, but it's very low. You got to have AIDS. Yeah. I think you have to have AIDS. You got to be on death's door. You got to be on death's door. Well, give them one joint and Regulate it.

But you can believe a lot of money coming out of Texas going to other places.

Yeah, it's stupid.

It's stupid. Because they're not.

Exactly. It should be legal. 38 medical and recreational. So did you say 24? So half the country. It's only three states have no access. It's Idaho, Nebraska, and Kansas. So Texas has a CPD low THC program. And then adult and Medical Use Regulated program is all over the place now. New Mexico, Nevada, California, Colorado, Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, even fucking New York, which is like, New York used to be a bad place to get weed. If you got weed in New York, if you smoke weed outside, they'd arrest you. You get caught outside, try to buy weed. New York was sketchy. Now I go there and there's stores everywhere. I'm like, This is crazy. Vegas. Vegas was dangerous, man. During the '70s, when Hunter S. Thompson's day, you would get fucking thrown in jail for your life, for your whole life for having weed on you. Now they have stores everywhere.

The biggest store is in in the country.

Yeah, huge stores. It should be that way everywhere, and they should make money from taxes. Let's not be stupid. So what does the federal government do if now it's 24? So it's literally half the country has legal What happens if it's all of the country? The federal government is like, We're the country. No, it's supposed to be the states, you assholes. This is set up this way on purpose. You have to have the states, give the states rights to regulate things. The people have decided in all those other states. Look, man, if you ask the average... If we had a vote, just a popular opinion vote in this country, whether marijuana should be legal, it'd be legal tomorrow. I agree. A hundred %. What is the amount of people that approve... And the amount of people that don't approve it, they're probably ignorant. Or there are people that are like, hardcore, anti-everything people. Yeah.

I think the country would be safer. I mean, have you ever known anybody smoking marijuana, go out and commit a robbery, hit somebody over the head? No, they're going to sit on the couch and they're going to get something to eat. They're going to be watching TV.

It's not the drug that encourages people to do horrible things.

If I had my way, I would give it to gangbangers for free.

No, smoke weed. Nearly seven in 10 registered voters favor legalizing the recreational use of marijuana on a national level. Seven out of 10. Wow. It's still illegal. I mean, is that we the People? No. What is that? No. What is that? Is that to serve and protect? What the fuck is going on? What are you doing? It's just weed, kids. We know what it is. You know how many people died from weed? Zero, ever. Zero, ever. Zero, ever. The only way you die from weed is if a CIA drug plane throws a bail out the window of a plane and it hits you in the head. That's how you die from it.

Or they raid your house and shoot you.

Yeah. Or you get a no-knock raid. Because you were selling weed. No-knock raids are crazy. That is crazy. Just bust into someone's house. And if someone breaks into your house, what do you do? You shoot them. That's what most people do. And then the cops shoot you. It's like the whole thing is crazy.

Why would you be raiding somebody house for weed?

For weed. I mean, we're going to look back in the future on this. They look at the Inquisition. We're going to, what the fuck was wrong with people back then? They're going to look at us like, how many people went to jail? How many people's lives got ruined over marijuana?

How much money? Are we kidding? How much money did they blow?

Exactly.

Talking about they have a homeless population that don't have a place to stay and people not having anything to eat. It's going to be crazy.

Yeah. You could tax it, folks. Legalize it and tax it. Even if you don't want to do it yourself, you don't have to do it yourself. I know a lot of people that hate weed. Good. Don't use it. You don't have to. I get it.

And don't sell it. Don't sell it. But you know what's so funny? The people who used to lock everybody up, now they're selling it.

A lot of them do. Yeah, I know cops that sell weed now.

Well, the biggest weed dealer probably in America was an ex-cop. He's the biggest guy. He just bought five million dollars. I mean, $5 million No, 5 million square feet of grow area. That's so bananas. How crazy is that? He's the biggest guy probably in the country.

Well, good for him. But that should be for everybody.

That you still lock people up. That's so nuts.

So nuts.

I mean, those should be the guys that say, Oh, you still lock people up for marijuana? You cannot get in a business. If I had my way, that's what I would do. Hey, did you lock somebody up? Yeah. Okay, you can't get in.

Or we take the amount of time that you locked all those people up for, and then you have to wait that amount of time before you could sell weed. So you could sell weed in three more lives. Probably wouldn't even be that. Probably 100 lives.

Yeah, this country's crazy, man. Wow.

People are crazy. People are crazy everywhere. It's hard to keep your shit together. And we give people power over other people, people that don't have their shit together, a power over other people, and then things just get worse. It's weird. It's weird we don't learn. A friend of mine sent me the lyrics to a song, I'd Love to Change the World, which is like '70, '71 or something like that. And he's like, Isn't it crazy that there's a cycle? Because the same shit they're talking about then is going on now. And then I sent him this Assyrian tablet from 2,800 BC '80s that talked about the same thing. We talked about it the other day on the podcast, this Assyrian tablet talk about the end of the world, that children are not listening to their parents, and people are lying, and the world's falling apart. In 2,800 BC, See? Wow. So it's like this cycle of people being stupid and just not getting the shit together has been going on forever. But there's never been more information than ever before. The access to information that people have right now It was unprecedented. Oh, yeah. The fact that we continue to make the same stupid mistakes, regardless of that, is just really insane.

That's what's really disheartening.

But you know what? The way I said, it doesn't matter if you're smart. It's who got the loudest horn. If your horn toots the loudest, everybody hears you.

And if the message gets out first, if the loud toot horn message gets out first, it takes forever for the truth to overcome that.

To get in.

Yeah, forever. There's also people don't... Once they accept something in their head, it takes forever.

Yeah, it becomes theirs.

They own it. They own it.

This is mine.

They don't want to change it. Something has to happen to them, but they change it.

No, I agree. I see that all the time. You talk to people and you be like, Man, that didn't work. Oh, no, it worked. It worked. I just did it wrong that time.

Let's keep trying to lock people up. We're going to fix it. We're going to fix it through locking people up.

Yeah. We're going to get it right. We just got to lock up more people, build more jails, hire more police.

It's just disheartening when you see the same patterns repeated over and over again, regardless of how much people know. But I think there's also a problem with we think people know, but I think a lot of people don't know what the fuck is going on. A lot of people don't really have an understanding.

Where they going to get the information? Exactly. Who they get it from? We already went through CNN, Fox, the local radio station, especially if you're talking about hip hop. I mean, if you're talking on hip hop radio stations, I would not let my kids listen to a hip hop radio station because they're going to be talking about killing, pimping, selling drugs, killing. I mean, you'd be like, what the fuck? They let this stuff play on the air? I mean, it's crazy. It is crazy.

It is crazy.

And then they wonder why the kids are bringing guns to school.

But did you also see there's been these articles written about the CIA's involvement in the creation of gangsta rap? That they helped promote and push gangster rap?

I didn't see that.

Yeah. All of it's controversial, but I wouldn't be surprised because apparently they had some an involvement in the rock and roll movement of the 1960s in Laurel Canyon. And there's been books written about this, that they have some involvement in promoting these activities, both with rock and roll in the '60s and then gangsta rap in the '80s. And they do it to try... I think the idea is they do it to try to make sure that society is always in a state of unrest and that they wanted to keep people- They need that. Yeah, they wanted to keep people in a state of rest and promote criminal behavior and criminal activity and gang activity and to do it in popular music, and that that would make more crime and make more things happen, and that they can get away with more levers of control because of that.

Makes sense.

You've seen that before, right, Jamie? Yeah, it comes from this, though. Is it bullshit? Well, it's not that it's bullshit. It's like a nominus letter that went around the internet. The secret meeting that changed rap music and destroyed a generation. So it got printed on a hip hop blog and it went viral from there.

Oh, yeah. I remember that letter. It talked about the big meeting where all the record labels got together because they knew they weren't selling music anymore. So they invested in prisons.

But that doesn't No one knows who wrote it. No one ever claimed like that was me. That's it? That's the only source of it? There wasn't other sources? And then it went viral. Never won. Some people that liked it, repeated it, and others, I don't know. It seems to be the source of I thought there was some other things. I thought there was other discussions about different meetings that took place. Nothing official. I wouldn't be surprised, though.

I mean, it makes sense. If you listen to what they're promoting now, they don't promote no positive music. No love songs. When we was coming up, it was by love songs.

Marvin Gay.

Yes.

Luther Randros. Yeah, It's weird that that would be a strategy that would work if you wanted civil unrest, if you wanted people to stay fucked up, you wanted people to not organize, not rise up. What's the best strategy? Promote illegal activity. Promote it. Promote drug dealings. Promote killing. Make it look good. Make it look good.

Dress them up. Give me Van der Horefield's house. Even if you used to be a correctional officer, and now you're a gangster. Tell them you sold 300 kilos. How did you get this house? Oh, I sold 300 kilos.

How many people do you think actually know the story, the whole story, the real story, your story, of you and this guy who calls himself Rick Ross?

I think older people know, but younger people don't. They don't get it. Wow. They're not educated on facts. They don't go with facts. They go with what they hear on the radio, what their local DJ talks about. Those are the things that they go with. And we already know that the local DJ is getting paid by the record companies. So that's what they believe. I believe that they really believe that Jay-Z got rich selling drugs. They believe that. I don't believe Jay-Z got rich selling drugs. He doesn't act like a drug dealer, in my personal opinion.

What's the difference the way he acts?

Well, drug dealers are like, we're looking for somebody to help come up. Because when you help him come up, you come up. Say, for instance, if I find a guy, he's down on his luck and I give him a kilo, he starts to sell this kilo, I benefit every time he sells that kilo because I get a percentage. Of what he does. But the way the record business works is they don't help anybody. When they get on top, they just stay there. And it's almost like they're gatekeepers. You They don't want other people to get in. Me, I would have been looking for somebody like me getting out of jail. Oh, Rick Ross is getting out of jail? Oh, my goodness. I'm going to be at the gate when he get out. I'm going to show him everything he's supposed to do, get him right, because I know he has the discipline. He has the focus that he's going to make it.

Yeah, but don't you think that that's just you? I think you have a unique perspective.

But that's a drug dealer's perspective. Is it really?

A successful drug dealer'sA successful drug dealers' perspective.

A successful drug dealer's perspective. Let me correct that. And most of the drug dealers I was around was successful because I used to try to teach them. I taught them what I did when they were young. I was showing, Hey, this is what you do. This is how you do it. This is who you look for. So you're highly right, a successful drug dealer's perspective. And most successful drug dealers go to prison. And so we know Jay-Z didn't go to prison, even though he was in a car with a I think, Calvin Klein, when he got arrested, DA let Jay-Z go. That's the story that I heard. I'm not totally sure how- He was in a car with Calvin Klein?

Were they talking about jeans?

What were they doing? There's a guy named Calvin Klein. Different guy? From New York.

Oh. Was Calvin Klein a drug dealer? He was a drug dealer. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. Yeah, he was a drug dealer from New York. I thought you mean like no one knew. The jeans.

He thought the jean got it. No, no, no. This He was a drug dealer out of New York.

Oh, that's hilarious. And he got arrested. So he took Calvin Klein's name. Like Rick Ross took your name? His name was really Calvin Klein. That's possible.

No, I think the guy's real name was Calvin Klein. Really?

Oh, that's his real name.

I think that was really his name. Because he was a real street guy. Went to prison in the whole nine yards. But it's a story that talks about that, how Jay-Z was in a car with him when he got arrested. And He didn't get arrested. So more than likely that meant that... In my experience, if you in a car with a drug dealer and the cops raid, they take everybody that was involved. So that tells me that Jay-Z wasn't involved with that activity.

Got it. At least at that time.

That they knew.

Right.

And usually the DA, they watch you. And some of them when they're not lazy.

But what is it like in the world? If you rap about selling drugs and about how you were selling drugs, but you weren't selling drugs, that can't be looked upon well. If you're lying and you're making up a fake persona.

It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. Back in the '90s when rap was supposed to have been authentic. People wrote their own lyrics and that stuff. It was a little different than the way it is right now. Now people can write your lyrics, you can steal people's names, you can steal their verses. It's just totally different than the way it used to be. You can buy your way to the top now. You don't have to have talent necessarily. The most talented guys are not the guys who are running the industry.

A lot of the talent of the guys are producers, too, right? They can make anybody famous. If you have some talent and a look.

And you go pay the right producer. Yeah, there's a lot of examples. Music is programming. You hear sound and you like that sound. And that's why we hear the same sounds over and over on the radio because it's the same producers that are producing music. I'm just waiting to get my money right so I can go to the producers and be like, Hey, I know you've been putting all these guys on. I got a guy for you. Put him on. We ready. How much you need? A hundred thousand? Do it. Because that's really what it is. It's only a few guys who music you hear on the radio over and over again.

Wow. But then you have people who just stand out just because of talent, still. You still have that.

Once in a while, want a breakthrough. You get somebody that's super good and their music just break through. But that's rare. They still got to have some money. You got to pay Facebook and TikTok. Gatekeepers.

Yeah, it's an industry, right? There's a lot of money involved. As soon as there's a lot of money involved, there's control. People want to maintain control of that. They don't someone coming along?

Yeah, I mean, I look at my case, right? If you go on the Internet, I got millions and millions of views where I've done interviews with different people and talk to different people. But then you go on my Instagram, I got 300,000 followers.

Instagram is weird, man.

I walk through the airport, right? I can hardly walk through the airport. People, oh, Rick, can I get a picture? And then my friends be like, man, all the people looking at you, they want to talk to But, you know. So when I experience that, I understand that they haven't let me grow to where I should be.

Yeah, but I think there's... I think social media companies, other than Twitter, X now. I think they all have different ways of limiting growth, just different things. My friend Coleon Noir, he has an Instagram page that's dedicated to Second Amendment. He a lawyer, and he does a lot of Second Amendment stuff, a lot of talking about guns and gun laws and different things. He's been stuck at 1 Million followers forever. He's been on this podcast, like how many times? How many times Coleon been on? Five, six? Five or six times? Great guy. Interesting. Really fun to talk to. Smart as fuck. You would think his shit would grow. Stuck. Stuck at one million. Just stuck, locked up. What's going on there? How is that even possible? It's only possible if someone's limiting the growth.

Absolutely.

There's no other way. If you come on this podcast and 11 million people or 15 million people, whatever the fuck it is, see you, what is the odds that you stay at one million? It's almost zero. I agree. It's almost zero, especially if it's an interesting episode. He's always interesting. He's a smart dude. Why would people not follow him? Of course they would. They'd have to find them. It's hard to find people. They make it difficult on some social media platforms to find people. They're post-limited, so only the followers can see it. Other people can't see it. It's just this weird thing that they do. And if you're a guy that, at least at one point in your life, was involved in illegal activities, they'd probably just shove you into a box. They'd shove you into a category. They have you in some an algorithm. It's just like every now and then someone finds you. But it's not easy. We'll see. We'll see what happens. We'll see what Instagram does after. What are you at now? Okay, let's check right now. I'm going to check your page right now.

300 and something.

Let's check right now. So you are right now. You are at... Let's get down to you here. What is it, Jamie? Yeah, something like that. Here you are. We just went back and forth with each other. So I'll check right now. Profile. Yeah. 392. So you're at 392,000. Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens on Instagram. Stop fucking around. I think they fuck around with me, too, which sounds crazy because I have 19 million. But I'm like, How come I only have 19?

Yeah, but you will Everybody in America knows you. Fuck's going on. Everybody in America knows you. I mean, we did that show what? Almost 10 years ago? People still come up to me in the airport. Man, I know you're Joe Rogan. Did you tell Joe? I said, Don't tell me. Tell Joe. I'm talking about still to this day, people walk up to me and tell me that they loved our episode.

And that's a long time ago. So there's probably been 1,600 different episodes since then or more, probably more than that.

And they remember we was like 60 or 80 or something like that.

Something crazy like that. The early days. You were in the early days when I was just starting to interview people. I was just starting to have interesting people on the podcast.

I never heard of a podcast.

A lot of people came on back then didn't.

I didn't know what a podcast was. You know what? I told my guys today, we were sitting out there. I said, had I recognized what a podcast was and started a podcast, I would have been the first Black guy probably with a podcast.

Back then, you might have been. So this is like 2000... May fourth, 2013. 2013, 11 years. So 208. 11 years. Episode 208. 2000 episodes since then. 2000.

Was that the first one or the second one? I think that's the first one.

The second one was 262.

Wow.

That's crazy. That's crazy.

And they still remember that.

Well, you should do your own now.

I'll be so busy, Joe.

Listen to me. Stop right there. I told you to do a T-shirt, do a podcast. It's easy. It's not hard to do, man. It's easy. It'll promote your business.

Now you just called me on now Why not?

Listen, it's an easy thing. It doesn't cost much money, man. It's real economical. You upload to YouTube, it's free. Youtube's free. You get one of those platforms that supports podcasting, and they do things, and they help you get ads. Not that hard, man. And I bet right away, especially after this episode, you'll get a big audience. It's an easy way.

I'm working on some stuff.

Then before you know it, you have 20 episodes, 30 episodes. You get better at it. People like it. And you could talk about all kinds of things. You could interview different people. You could have conversations with friends. And then you develop a following. And the next thing you know, it helps your business. It helps with the other things you do. It helps speaking engagements, all these other different things.

Yeah. They've been telling me to do it.

Yeah.

And I've been like, Oh, no, you're late. You waited too late.

You could have a podcast that's called The Real Rick Ross is Not A Rapper. That's That's a great name for a podcast. That's a great name for a podcast.

I thought that was an awful name for a T-shirt.

I think that's a great name for a podcast. It'll pique people's interest right away. They're like, What? The real Rick Ross is not a rapper? What? What podcast is this? And then people hear your story and they're like, Oh, my God. I didn't even know. This is crazy.

I might I'm going to take your advice on that one. It's a great idea. I took your advice last time and I benefited.

I'm telling you, it's a great idea.

Hey, crazily, right now, this T-shirt still brings in revenue.

That's beautiful. We'll bring in a lot more after this one. It just makes sense. I mean, it's just another method to get your word out there.

And we need platforms. Yes. Because some of the people with the platforms don't use them to benefit the people.

Well, also we need platforms forms from a person like yourself that has gone through this arc of life, this interesting arc of life that finds yourself a completely different person now than who you were when you were 28 years old selling drugs. It's just a different- 19 when I started.

When I was 28, I was an addict. I was stuck when I was 28. It's a different... When you go seven, eight years selling drugs, you don't even know anymore. You're like, out your mind. You're crazy.

You're just in the business.

Yeah, you're just in the business.

Well, especially if your business is making $3 million a day. That is just so crazy. How much money do you think you earned over the entire course of selling drugs?

Well, you figure just my two best years. So you say 360 days in a year. Just those two years was like, what, 600 million, something like that. Not profit, though. Not profit. That's not profit. Of course.

But just the amount of money you make.

Every million, I probably make 200 to 300,000 profit off of every million. I was able to take that much out. That is an insane amount. And then that's not counting the other six years because I sold like eight years. I did like eight, maybe nine years in the drug business. And so before I was making a million dollars a day, I was making 500,000 a day. And before I was making 500, I was making 400, 300, 200. One time, 10,000 a day. But all those numbers add up. You're talking about 100,000 a day ain't bad numbers. A couple of million dollars a month. So I make quite a bit of money. I mean, it went through my hands. Not that I made, but money that went through my hands that I touched.

It's crazy.

With some crazy numbers. It would probably be in the billions.

Billions?

Yeah, it probably would be in the billions.

That Life and that experience that you've had is very unique. There's not a whole lot of human beings that are out there, wandered around that can say that. So that perspective that you have would be very valuable for people. Just to hear what you did and what you went through in your life. It's a very unique story, man. And it's an American story. It is. It really is.

It is an American story. And I thought that America should know about it. That's why I wrote the book. And when I I wrote that book, I didn't know if I was ever getting out of prison. That was like my letter to the world. This is how it happened. So that you don't form your own personal opinion Without getting to know the person. Because so many people, we form opinions about... I didn't really like the way the government characterized us drug dealers. We were raving, maniacs. When I got arrested, I was a danger to the community. That's how they denied me by, he's a danger to the community. Like, I'm going to take a gun and go to McDonald's and just go to killing people. No, it don't work like that. That's not who I was. I had absolutely no violence in my case.

Which is pretty incredible for someone to move.

I could have been violent. I had guns, but I never used them. So why am I considered A danger to the community. So they consider drugs a danger. And even when we went to jail, I was a black box. They put a black box on you, they put handcuffs on you. And then they got this little black box. They slide over the handcuffs so that your hands are like stiff and then they cuff you till your waist and you can't even use the bathroom. It's crazy. And then when you go to prison, you go to the worst part of the prison because They classify you with the guys who do murders and the bombers. And so now they got drug dealers who I consider myself almost like a white collar crime.

A businessman.

A businessman. I wasn't looking to hurt nobody, but we were still classified like that. So I wanted to show people the mentality that I had. Yeah, I did get crazy with drugs. I wanted to say all the drugs I could sell. My mission in life became, sell as much drugs as you can. It wasn't about making money anymore. It was like, become the biggest drug dealer that you can become. Be great. That's how I felt. Be great at it. Fuck how much money you make. And you're not going to spend all the money you got. You don't even spend the money you make now. But just be great at what you do. So it wasn't about money anymore. It just became, I'm going to be great at it.

Isn't that crazy that that mentality you can apply to almost any industry? Just, unfortunately, you applied it to the wrong one. Yeah.

Somebody asked me before, do I have any regret? If I had a regret, that would be the regret that I didn't take those skills. But I learned so much from selling drugs. Those fucking guys taught me, man. They taught me what the teachers couldn't teach me because they had a different passion to teach me. They wanted me to, motherfucker, get smart so you can get my drugs cheap and good. We need you to be smart. We don't want no dummy. We don't want to be getting our drugs from no dummy. So you get smart. So you can make sure that when we come get our drugs, we're going to be safe. We're going to get the best drugs. The price is going to be right. We like what you do. So we're teaching you. And they taught me. I mean, if somebody would have told me about a gram, a gram, what the hell is a gram? What is a 10th of a gram? What is an eighth of a... What is an eighth? What is a quarter ounce? What is an ounce? I know none of that shit. I failed science in school because I couldn't read.

I never went to science. They put me in special I sit in the classroom and make paper airplanes. You know what I'm saying? I'm throwing paper airplanes around the classroom. I don't know about no science, but when I started, got in the drug business, they taught me. They showed me what the ground was. And they showed me how to work a triple beam. I didn't know none of that shit. They showed me what a money counter was. They taught me how to work a money counter. I didn't know none of that shit, Joe. I was green. Man, we missed one of the greatest fucking interviews, man. The guy I bought my first ounce from, he was paralyzed when I got out of prison. And we were shooting a documentary and I go to his house when I found him. I found him. I went and found him because he was like my partner. I loved him. I knew he was paralyzed, too. When I went to prison, he was already paralyzed. But when I got out, he was on his last leg and I almost got him to talk, man, on camera. He talked off camera, and he told us, and what I should have did, I should have promised him, man, do the interview.

When you die, I'll put it out, but I won't put it out until after you're dead. And I wasn't thinking in my right mind. You never want to tell a friend that he's going to die. That was the first thing. I didn't want to say that. But he told us about me when I started. And it was just so fascinating to hear him talk about me to me. And he's laughing about how green I was, how he used to take dope out of the bag, and I didn't know he had took it out the bag. He said, Man, I wouldn't sell him a kilo because I could get four extra ounces out of the kilo and I could sell him a pound. And it was just so much stuff. And it was amazing for me to understand that at one time I knew absolutely nothing about cocaine. I'd never seen cocaine before. And they taught me. They took me and molded me.

What's really crazy is that even though that sounds like, oh, my God, that's illegal activity. That's drug dealing. But it's really a system. And you figured out how to Excel inside this system. You figured out a business. And you really could have done that with anything.

Yeah, to me, it wasn't illegal. I mean, I understood it was illegal, but I understand now, like you're saying, And that it was the mentality of being able to be taught, to be able to listen, to be able to follow instructions was the part that I feel was the most valuable lessons in this whole thing. That I learned to follow instructions. I learned to listen. I'm doing the same thing with the weed business. When I first got into the weed business, when I was out of jail and we were smoking weed and stuff, it was like two kinds of weed, Thai bud and indica. That was it. Now, fuck, it's thousands of different strains.

Botanists got involved. Scientists got involved.

So they tell me, Smell the weed. I can't smell shit. I don't know the smell. I don't know nothing. So I had to learn the smell. I had to learn what smell are you looking for.

What smell are you looking for?

Well, now, one time it was the gas, the O-G smell. And it was really gassy, smell like gasoline, really stanky. Now it's a candy smell.

Like a sativa.

Like a sativa. Sweet. They want that good taste. That's what everybody's into. To smell it. Yes. But now the stuff I just gave you is the brand new stuff that the guy just created. You got what they call... He calls it Candy Gas. Oh, boy.

So it's a hybrid.

It's a hybrid. He has the highest testing weed in California, my partner, from Green Dragon. That's the name of his company. And he just invented this strictly for me. He said, Rick, this is the first time time that anybody going to get candy gas. He said, Will you please get Joe Rogan your jars and tell him to let us know how he like it. But it's candy gas. So it's going to have the Ogie high. Ogie knock them out. On the couch, stretch out. Give me something to eat. I'm not moving. But it's going to have that sweet candy taste that everybody's looking for. So he's saying that this year is going to shake the market up.

It's funny.

So I know how to do all that. I know the smells now. That's interesting.

It's funny how It's very much it varies.

It really does. And he's a scientist. Like you said, he's a botanist. Went to school for it and the whole nine yards.

So once they got involved.

Yeah, total different game.

Yeah, total different game. It got scary. They started making Just insane high THC content weeds. That's what everybody wants. That was one of the arguments about it being illegal. It's like, the marijuana of today is different than the marijuana back in the day. It's so strong and people are going crazy. Listen, people are going crazy no matter what you do.

Yeah. Well, at least they're not using Fentanyl.

That's true. And that's also the problem with things being illegal, that they're cutting it. When you're buying it from the cartel, there's a lot of stuff that people are buying from the cartel. It's cut with Fentanyl. A lot. Including street pills, pills like fake Xanax and fake Valium. It's all cut with Fentanyl.

Fake Mollet. And like you said, that's what happens when you put that illegal market together. Exactly.

And meanwhile, It costs us 100,000 lives every year, just in this country, from opioid overdoses. And what are they doing to stop that? Nothing. It's so perplexing. It's so perplexing, the problems of our world today. It really is, because it's such a complicated series of issues. And it doesn't seem like any progress is being made. Even the minimal progress That's being made with marijuana. The good progress is the state's making it illegal for recreational use, making it legal. But if the federal government still doesn't have it legal, what the fuck are they doing? How is that still a thing?

The federal government should just get out of it.

Yeah.

Just wash their hands with it. Leave it to the states. We're done with it. Whatever the states do, let it do.

That's what they should have done a long time ago.

Let's be done with it.

Well, they should have rescheduled it. They should have made it legal. Just schedule make it legal. It should be legal. It's stupid. The whole thing's stupid. It's stupid. There's plenty of things. If alcohol is legal, marijuana should be legal. That's simple. Alcohol destroys lives, destroys liver. I had a guy in here last week. He lost his liver and his kidney, a liver replacement and a kidney replacement just from drinking himself to death.

And cigarettes.

Oh, yeah. All that stuff. Legal. Totally legal. It's crazy. We live in a strange time, but it's interesting.

Well, we're starting to talk about it. Yeah. I mean, the first thing, nobody used to talk about drug dealing. That was a taboo. To have somebody to come on and say, I sell drugs. You never would have heard that before.

No, not like this.

Now we're talking about it. People are starting to understand how they get started selling drugs, what to look for. And that's really all I can do. If I can educate somebody on what to look for when it's coming your way, hey, I be at my job.

Yeah. And explain the pitfalls. And also, don't ask how much when someone calls you up. When someone gets suspicious.

Don't get addicted. Because if you get addicted, you're going to ask how much. Right. How much? Right.

Especially if you're addicted to the thrill of the game. If it's an exciting thing, and then you're not doing that exciting thing anymore and you miss it. Because everything that you're not supposed to be doing exciting, at least in some way, especially something that's massively profitable. But at least you documented it right here. Freeway Rick Ross, The Untold Autobiography, Second Edition.

Well, I took out all the misspelling and the typos because you know, I self-publish.

Oh, okay.

You self-publish this? I self-publish it, yeah. So if anybody want to get it, tell them to go to my website, Ricky Ross. Com. Don't go to Amazon because they keep all the money.

Amazon keeps all the money?

They keep a lot of it. Yeah, we don't get much money. Okay. I brought you my other one, too. I did that one since I've been on.

21 keys of success.

Those are the 21 keys that I used when I got out of prison.

All right. Beautiful. And this is available on?

On my site as well.

Freewayriki. Com?

Freewayrikiross. Com. Okay.

All right.

Now, I brought you a few gifts. You know what I'm saying? Thank you, sir. I said, I'm going to go and give you something. That's my other one.

Three books?

Look at you, man. And I also bought you one of my sweatshirts. All right. And I just want to tell you, man, thanks for-The world famous Freeway Rick. Thanks for all you did for me. My pleasure.

Your story is crazy.

And you know what? I'm going to take your advice on the podcast. You should. I hope you did. Everybody else has been telling me and I've been like, but I did so well the last time you told me to do something, and I would be going against my own principle.

You You definitely should. Listen, you're an interesting man, and you've had a fascinating life. And we need more interesting people and interesting voices. We need more people. We grow and learn from other people's perspectives of the world. When you get to hear a person who's gone through the life that you've gone through, which is very unusual. When you hear that person talks, it educates you and informs you and it changes your perspective. You get to add to your perspective of the world from another person's life experiences. And that benefits everybody.

Oh, no question. It does. I agree.

All right. Let's do it again sometime, man. The next time we do it, we'll be talking about your podcast.

When the movie comes out. Okay. When the movie comes out, I'll come back. When is that? Well, we just hired the director three weeks ago. So hopefully this summer we go in production.

Okay. When it comes back, you come back. All right.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, Joe.

Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Joe.

Bye, everybody..