B-Real and Joe Rogan dissect L.A.’s cannabis tax chaos—$6B in fluctuating revenues—while debunking propaganda like Reefer Madness, exposing absurd drug laws (e.g., 16-year sentences for weed). They contrast PCP’s numbing resilience with meth’s demonic aggression, explore psilocybin’s therapeutic potential vs. unsupervised risks, and critique Hollywood’s sanitized portrayals of figures like Griselda Blanco, the "Cocaine Godmother," whose brutal reality—including a bear dying from 75 lbs of dumped cocaine—undermines glamorous myths. Ultimately, they argue for education over fear, questioning systemic complicity in drug policies and media distortions. [Automatically generated summary]
Joe Rogan podcast, check it out The Joe Rogan experience Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day It's good to be here bro Good to see you, my friend.
That's that's hard to say right cuz I mean It's it's just hard to trust any politician these days man I mean, my friends have hit me up like, hey, when are you gonna run for mayor?
As much of an open book as I've been, you know, and open about everything I've done, yeah, they'll always dig deeper to try to find more, especially when you're in that kind of spot, you know?
The people that want to do that job these days, they're not there to do any work of what politicians are supposed to do.
They're trying to get famous.
They want to be famous for something because now it's a seat to be famous in.
Yeah.
Then it's a shame because people that would actually maybe do the work, they don't even got a chance to get in there because they don't want to be famous.
They're trying to get in there to do the work.
While others like, you know, they're like, I got this seat.
She goes into the jungle where the cocaine manufacturers are.
She went to the Congo for dealing with people that are trafficking in the great apes.
Wild show.
Wild shit.
But she was talking about one of the problems with California is it's so difficult to get a license to sell weed regularly that illegal sales of weed are up way more than regular.
So they're not getting taxed on that because they made it difficult for people.
Yeah, the people that operate legally are the ones getting tapped the hardest because you got to pay for all these regulations and all these fees and the taxation, whether you're in the cultivation aspect of it or you're the retail, manufacturer, distribution, any of it, man.
I mean, it's the taxation to operate is high and the taxes on the consumer as well.
So when you have that factored in and you got these guys that are trapping, as they call it, right?
Black market style.
Yeah, they're making all the money and the state isn't really doing anything about that.
And they make it hard to get a license for people who might actually be able to navigate that.
The business, but it's just so many hoops you gotta jump through, man.
You know, what's crazy is that more states are rolling over, like, you know, because the federal government is leaving it up to the state to decide, right?
And some states are seeing what's happening in places like Colorado, where the taxation ain't so high, and they are actually making a lot of money, or the state is making a lot of money through cannabis.
They're starting to consider it, right?
So you're seeing states roll over one at a time, like New York.
For instance, we thought that should have been like way sooner.
But we thought, okay, when New York rolls, and let's just say Florida and Boston roll, everywhere else will roll over slowly.
And that's kind of what's happening.
So, I mean, I think it's just a matter of time, man, where we will have it federally legal, but we're going to all pay the price until...
You know, what's crazy is the studies that they've been coming up with as of late, like how they've been using microdose and moderate dose to treat people with depression and anxiety and all the other business, you know what I mean?
Oh, yeah.
Some therapists are talking about how they're actually using microdoses to help people.
Let's just say that they had some sort of ailment, like migraines, for instance.
They say that they can disconnect whatever that is and rewire whatever it is causing the migraines to stop them.
I think it puts you in a relaxed state, whether you choose it or not.
I've stood out of a lot of altercations being as high as I am, because somebody might throw an insult here and there, and I may not even be paying attention to them.
Whereas if I'm not, I'm totally paying attention to that.
Yeah, you know like we used to do mushrooms a lot and I told that I told a couple of stories when I was on the last time I was here But you know that it used to be a part of our our journey man like we'd get on stage Mushrooms and like just go on the ride.
Yeah After a while, I couldn't do it anymore.
I couldn't be on stage and be totally in the melt, we call it, where it's above micro, it's above moderate, like you're a full melt, as they say.
And it was harder for me to be in front of people differently.
Because I had these issues deeply rooted that I was angry about, and every time I got to that place, that's what I'd focus on.
And I didn't want to feel that ugliness, so I waited until I got over whatever that issue was.
And then I started, you know, slowly doing mushrooms again, micro dosing first and then moderate.
And I started feeling good about it again.
And I realized how much, you know, it actually helped me push away from whatever that issue was when I did it the first time.
Yeah, I often say, if you're going to try mushrooms beyond micro, try to deal with whatever issues you got before you go in and have a friend there to help you, to be in the world there with you, you know?
In the best case scenario, you would have qualified professionals that would assist in psychedelic therapy, which is what happens for a lot of people.
I know people that have done that in other states where it's legal or illegal.
And where it's legal, I mean, it's amazing.
You can go to a place and someone who understands the experience and knows what to do can help you through it.
And I know people that have made some big breakthroughs in their life and just really just sort of reassessed how they interface with the world because of that.
I mean, if you could find something that would help you get past whatever is, you know, holding you back or troubling you, weighing you down, man, I mean, better than taking any of these over-the-counter drugs for that that might suppress those feelings or thoughts than have you deal with them and get past them.
It's just, you know, I've been paying a lot of attention over the years about the opiate crisis and the pill problem.
That's something we talked about with Mariana Van Zeller, too, because when I first met her, I had her on because she did this thing called the Oxycontin Express.
Where she explained the pill mills in Florida and how people would buy the Oxys and bring them up the highway to Kentucky and all these places and people with horrible addictions and horrible overdose stories and it was all coming from Florida.
And there was no database.
So you could have a back.
Ah, my back hurts.
You go to this place.
They go, oh, you need OxyContin.
And literally you go right next door at the same building.
And that's where they give you the Oxy.
And that's all they prescribe.
And they don't have a database.
So then you go down the street to another doctor because these pain management clinics were everywhere.
I mean, like, look, when people were doing the PCP thing back in the day, right?
You know, back in Southgate, when Sen and I were, like, you know, younger before, we were, you know, while we were in demo stages, right?
Doing our demos and stuff like that.
We'd, you know, trek around the city, you know, like go to parties and stuff like that.
House parties, if you will.
And every now and then, Because we were broke-ass bastards.
We didn't always have cars.
We'd be walking to the parties and stuff like that from Cyprus or whatever.
And every now and then, you would come across a couple of gangsters that were PCP'd out.
And these dudes, I mean, if you got into some shit with them, you were dealing with someone who didn't know their strength and their abilities at that point.
And a lot of other people in the area, they don't want to fuck with him because him and his brother were kind of crazy, right?
And they had, like, reputations.
And there was another contingency of gangsters that wanted to get at him, right?
So this guy was sitting on his porch one day by himself.
His brothers and the rest of his guys were not there with him.
He was outside of his mother's house chilling.
And these dudes roll up on him with a shotgun, and they blast him.
They, you know, buck-shotted him, you know, in his stomach, all that.
And they take off.
They leave him there for dead.
That's what was the intention, right?
And this dude was on PCP at the time.
They did not know he was on PCP. Nobody knew until the paramedics came, got him.
And that's what, oddly enough, is what saved him, is that he didn't go into shock.
He was just like, whoa.
You know, like, so slowed down and possessed by the PCP or whatever the hell he was on.
And he lived through that, you know?
And it wasn't like, it was a short distance that they blasted him with all them buckshots out.
I mean, it had to be painful, but he didn't feel a goddamn thing, apparently.
And he felt it the next day, obviously.
But he lived through that while he was on the PCP. And that's crazy.
Is it good for you?
Well, because it's not a big conspiracy, PCP. Well, I would say that had he not been on it, he would have went into shock and sure enough died right there on that porch.
But if ketamine's like next door neighbors to that, that's what's crazy because I know a lot of people did ketamine and they did sensory deprivation tanks on ketamine.
The way I've heard about ketamine is, you know, it's only a bunch of different descriptions, but people say, like, you can do, they can do IV-assisted ketamine for depression, and Neil Brennan did it, you know, Neil Brennan, the comedian.
Neil, who's a hilarious and interesting dude, so he's the perfect guy to, like, he can describe this, and he's trying to figure out what's wrong with him, why is he depressed.
So he tries his ketamine therapy.
He's like, oh, it'll probably be something where you lay there and you get a little dose of this and you relax or something.
You're like, no.
He goes, I was tripping my fucking balls off.
I go, really?
And I forget his description of it, but I remember Terrence McKenna's.
He said, it's like you're in an alien office building, but there's no one in the office building.
You're wandering around.
But I've heard a bunch of different, weirder, even more strange descriptions of people that go into K-holes.
There's a lot of anecdotes for sure of them saying that they would break their bones and do things that they wouldn't feel because it was such a powerful anesthetic that they wouldn't feel shit until it wore off.
And so there's this thing about PCP that says if people believe that it would make them...
They believe the public will go along with use of any force to make the claim that the person was under the influence of PCP. That it's so dangerous that any means to subdue.
So when we were spending a lot of time in Southgate before, we eventually start touring and moving around and being a part of the industry more than being in the streets, right?
Just before that, we used to hang out at this spot In Southgate, at this jack-in-the-box.
Like, for some reason, everybody went there.
And it was on Firestone in California.
And City Hall is just down the street, and Southgate Police Department is just right there.
And we just happened to be there on this day where they were trying to take down this, like, dude that was, like, probably, like, 6263 Kenny Loggins-looking motherfucker, you know, scraggly beard.
He's got his shirt off, no shoes.
He's just in his jeans.
And there's like 10 Southgate police officers trying to subdue this guy.
And they could just not.
They had to call like five or six more.
And they put him in the back of the police car.
And with his bare feet, he kicks out the window.
And they're like, they are really dealing with this guy.
This dude was huge.
Oh my god.
Yeah, he had to have been on something.
Because he wasn't very big, big.
He was tall, but he was kind of lanky.
But man, he was tossing those dudes around like nothing.
What's really important to me is it could help so many people.
Like so many veterans.
Like so many people with PTSD. Yeah, you know so many people like my friend assault victims I think that I think there's a real potential that it can help but it's dangerous Yeah, it's like everything where you're you're monkeying with your mind.
I mean, you know There's people that do it for, you know, casual use to, you know, just like someone smokes weed.
Not everybody smokes weed for the health benefit of it, you know what I mean?
And it's the same thing with mushrooms.
Some people are partying with it.
And some people are trying to actually get You know a benefit from it in the way that will help them With whatever issue that they're having that they they feel it could help for So, you know, I think there's there's a different sort of responsibility On on each shoulder and I think the user knows that right?
So like if you're partying on it, you know where your limits are when you're using it for a medical use You're sort of like afraid to step on the gas, you know what I mean?
So I think you go a little slowly in that aspect there, you know?
Because I think people still are genuinely afraid of it because they don't know about it.
They've only ever heard and they're trying to experiment with it.
But that's when you need someone who's experienced in it who can actually guide you through.
So if you want to do a little bit more and get a little bit more of the experience or you want to pull back.
And people that don't understand that, like, conservatives should get on board with it because it's a fucking freedom issue.
And people want to connect it to, like, liberals and hippies.
And they push it onto the side of the left instead of looking at it like as a population of human beings that value freedom.
You value freedom.
I value your freedom to be able to have a drink.
If you want to smoke a cigar or a cigarette, do whatever the fuck you feel like doing.
You are an adult.
I value your freedom as long as you're not hurting me.
And if you can show that that thing actually has a benefit to a lot of people and it's being explored like in legitimate scientific circles and legitimate therapy circles, Shouldn't we take a fucking look at making that legal?
That's what John Marco Allegro said is the birth of Christianity.
He said it was all about psilocybin mushrooms.
He was this guy who was an ordained minister who became agnostic as he was studying theology, and he was one of the people that was hired to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls.
So for 14 years, this guy worked in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And then he wrote this book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.
And in the book he was saying this was all about consumption of psychedelic mushrooms and fertility rituals.
They used to give the cows an anti-fungal feed so that their shit couldn't grow mushrooms in them.
It was in Asheville, North Carolina.
And so many kids were going out there and just picking mushrooms off cow shit and just tripping their fucking balls off that they had to put a stop to it.
You goddamn hippies are going to ruin this town!
So they poisoned the cows.
They gave this cow this antifungal shit.
I don't know if it poisoned the cow.
I'm just being hyperbolic.
But they gave the cow this antifungal shit.
So they couldn't do what it naturally does, which makes the perfect habitat for psilocybin.
I mean, you see more acceptance of it as of late and the fact that they're willing to study it and talk about the actual good it's been doing in those studies.
I mean, it seems like it's a move in the right direction.
There's a thing that happens where preconceived notions are very hard to let go.
And people have them about drugs, they have them about culture, they have them about a lot of things.
But drugs are a big one.
Because I've had my own preconceived notions about cannabis.
When I was a kid, I didn't really do anything.
I didn't party at all from the time when I was like 15 until I was like 21. Because I was training and fighting and that's all I did.
So I was a nerd, sort of.
I was kind of socially awkward.
And I thought that people who were getting high were just wasting their life, and they weren't going to get nowhere.
I wasn't going to do that.
I rarely drank, and if I did, I was always mad at myself.
I was like, you're going to fucking slow your body down, this is going to fuck you up, and you're not going to be able to achieve your goals.
I was too maniacal in this mindset, and I thought that weed was for losers.
Until I started hanging out with Eddie Bravo, and Eddie Bravo and I were doing jiu-jitsu together at John Jock Machado's, this is like 98, somewhere around then, and he starts talking about how much weed influences his music, and I go, really?
And he goes, yeah, he goes, jiu-jitsu techniques, like I think a lot of them up when I'm high.
I'm like, that's crazy because I thought weed just slows you down.
He goes, no, no, no, no.
That's just like what people who don't smoke weed think.
I'm like, okay, let's try this shit.
So we went, got high, and then we went to Baskin and Robbins.
And I remember this is like me high for the first time in, I don't know, More than a decade probably, right?
Eating this fucking ice cream going, dude, this is the greatest fucking flavor I've ever experienced in my life.
Ice cream sundae when you're high for the first time.
Literally, I had never been high before because the time before that was like, maybe I was like in my early 20s, like 21 or something like that.
Because I gotta be universal in my path in the stoner world, right?
Because everybody's always trying to take my fucking head off.
So I have to be ready for it.
Because there was one time these guys from Weedmaps, I was doing a 420 show in Colorado, and the dabs were new to us still, you know, and they weren't as clean yet, and they were just new in the culture, but not new to these guys, right?
We all go to my hotel room, because I know these guys and stuff like that, but everybody's got their own dab rig, their own dab torch, and their own concentrates.
It's like they're Jedi's of dabbing, right?
Yeah.
We start off with one, and it's a hot dab.
This is before we start doing the low temp dabs.
Like, you know, that means heating the nail and then letting it cool down for about 40 seconds and then taking the hit so it's not hot as fuck, right?
This is when we're like heating the nail, let it cool down 10 seconds, and then go for it.
And man, that is the most devastating way you could do this, right?
It was like maybe four hours to the show, and I was still feeling it when we got to the show.
I was high as fuck.
Higher than I had been in a long time.
And none of those guys made it to the show.
They all went home and slept.
I went and did a fucking show, you know?
But after that, that's when I decided, okay, well, I don't, you know, dabs ain't my thing, but I'm gonna keep up on it so that I don't get my fucking head taken off again.
And, you know, so...
Other rappers, you know, have gone through the same thing where it's like, you know, they either don't try it at all because of the way it looks.
The torch to the nail, you know, is very cracky to us, you know what I mean?
So, like, a lot of them don't fuck with it that way, but some of them now and then will try.
And then they'll love the taste, but the high is so fucking extreme after that they don't want no part of it.
Like watching people like Snoop Dogg put down blunt after blunt and roll them, roll them himself, spark them up, put down another one, roll another one, spark it up.
Action Bronson.
How many joints did Action Bronson smoke on the show?
But when I saw them both, I said, if I'm going to go at them, I'm going to have to be getting my role together for about six months before I try these guys.
For me, any physical activity when you're stoned, when you're an avid stoner, right?
To me, it puts you in a zone where you can concentrate more on the shit you do.
So, for instance, I do archery with my daughter, and beforehand, you know, I'll go smoke out before we go, and I'll just be comfortable.
As opposed to when I've tried it when I wasn't.
And there's just something like, it settles me in, my targeting's better, my breathing is better, all that.
And even as it relates to workouts, I feel like I could work out longer than if I'm, like, put it this way, for example, if I'm not stoned, I'll set the time that I'm gonna work out, hour and a half, and on that hour and a half, I'll stop.
But if I'm stoned, I'll lose myself in it, and I'll go longer than that hour and a half.
And that's sort of what it does to me.
It just gives me that hyper-focus where I'm just locked in.
Like, you feel your body moving, like, in a little bit more harmony.
Because sometimes when I'm not warmed up or maybe when, you know, I'm, you know, maybe I'm a little sore or something like that, you can kind of force things the wrong way.
Yeah, I always felt like when I went into the dojo, when I was training, you know, when I went in sober, there was always this anxiety trying to like do it all right.
And like sort of doing too much, you know, trying to like go faster than you actually should.
You know, in your progression, it's, you know, being too excitable and stuff like that.
Whereas when I went in high, I would absorb it, like you said, absorb it more and focus on everything that I was doing, like from the snap of the punches to the blocks and kicks and all that stuff.
Like instead of rushing it and trying to go out and impress sensei or.
you know, All that that you do because ego comes in as well when you're in a doji.
I want to be the best student in here.
It's almost like a competition sometimes, right?
But when I'd go in stone, I wouldn't even think about that.
It was just all about absorbing what he was giving to us that day and then trying to do it and slowing my mind down to do it right.
I would love I would do it I mean sometimes like sometimes I'll meditate and I'll be high as fuck when I'm meditating and that that allows me to go longer yeah because sometimes you know like I'm a gemini and if I'm not high man I'm high strong and I try to rush I'll rush through shit so like if if I mean to like meditate for 10 minutes and I'm not stoned before I do it I'll be trying to rush the meditation I'm like looking at the time is it 10 minutes yet You know what I mean?
Neither have I. I've taken a yoga class mildly high, and it was great.
It was amazing.
I would imagine if you were hashish high, and you're eating nothing but lentils, and you're on this vegan diet, and just everyday home, everyday stretching, everyday doing it, you're probably tripping balls.
I think you have to educate people more and be open to educate them properly instead of propaganda education, where you're just telling them half-truths to let them know what you want them to know.
Like, in Europe, they're a little bit more with the shits in terms of...
How they deal with alcohol, how they deal with drugs, how they deal with nudity on TV, just little things like that.
We are so uptight over here that we're afraid to teach people about these things because maybe that education will lead them there as opposed to being upfront with them.
Like, look, this is what it is.
This is what happens.
And all the other shit instead of, hey, this over here, don't do it.
You just got to also take into account that people that live like us today, humans listening to this in 2023, This is a new type of person.
This is a new type of informed person.
People are so much more informed, even misinformed, than they've ever been before.
You're dealing with an information overload that's never, never existed before.
And, you know, if you just go back a couple generations, like my grandparents came from Italy, so we're talking about, you know, they came over here during the Depression.
They lived on a farm.
It was horrible, brutal shit in Italy.
They came over to America.
Those people that just got on a boat before YouTube and just moved their whole family across the country, those are wild people, man.
And they were just trying to escape whatever the fuck was going on in Europe, which is probably even worse.
Fuck it, I'll take a chance on a boat.
And then they got to America and they fucking sign up.
Based off the Duttons coming from, I think, Tennessee or wherever, or Wyoming or something.
I think it's Tennessee.
But, like, them trying to get to Oregon.
The original place they're trying to get to is Oregon, but they never make it there.
I won't blow the story.
And they end up going to Montana, but...
Seeing how they trekked from one side of the country to the other and the shit they had to deal with with bandits all along those trails and just the elements, man.
Coming into the country and having to go across it.
In the 1883 one, it's like they're going with a group of people.
It's not just their family.
They're going with a group of people that came from Germany and that are trying to go to Oregon because there's free land there.
They don't have any money.
All they have is what they have with them that they brought from Germany.
They're prospective parts of Europe, and they're trying to get from wherever they're at to Oregon, and on the way, man, the shit that they go through.
And it gives you sort of like that idea of what people were dealing with in that time.
Yeah, we can't even imagine living like that, and that's the only way you could live.
That's the way people lived back then.
So what we're talking about today in 2023 is just a few generations removed from that.
I know it doesn't seem like it, but I had this joke that I used to do about the United States was founded in 1776. People lived to be 100. That's three people ago.
I mean, it's going to be a power struggle and there's going to be a lot of fucking weirdness with people trying to dictate how you think and feel and what to do and what not to do.
But at the end of the day, more people are being heard than ever before.
More people's voices are being heard than ever before.
More important issues are being raised that people weren't aware of.
More shit that you're not hearing about mainstream news that's really affecting your life.
Before these platforms existed where you could be a voice, maybe you didn't intend to, but you became one through one of these platforms.
Before they existed, all you ever had were the articles that might pop up on this website by this writer or that writer or whatever they got on the news.
And obviously, they don't ever always tell you the full story on anything.
But when you got people that now can go on to any social media platform and tell you exactly what they saw without worrying about what the FCC is going to say about the reporting or what your senior editor and staff is going to say about how you brought this story, you don't got to...
Don't worry about any of that.
Boom!
You could capture that, talk about it, and it go viral, and now you're a voice, because people are listening to you now.
It's a different world.
Yeah, that's different.
And you have a bunch of voices now.
People will be heard now.
But the problem with that, too, though, is now...
That you also have the troll generation that, like, they're there to troll anything.
Even if it's really good information, they're there to, you know, just bring it all down.
Because that's what they do.
It doesn't matter if it's something that's going to help someone.
There's always those folks that want to come tear it down.
David Goggins says he takes all of his haters, like all the shit that they said to him, and he puts it on like a soundtrack, and he listens to it when he runs.
You know, I would imagine that's likened to a boxer putting up the picture of the other boxer that's been talking shit the whole time, or MMA fighter, you know what I mean?
If you listen to David's life story, David has two incredible books.
They're amazing.
And one of the things about the books that's so amazing is you realize what he endured as a child and what he went through, the abuse that he received.
How he came out of that this like unstoppable dude And he was like fat at one point in time.
He's open about all these like 300 pounds just drinking milkshakes and he couldn't even run around the block And then he turned himself into that dude.
Yeah You know that goes to show you the strength that the human spirit has you can be shit on your whole life Deprived of these opportunities here there Maybe not have the guidance from your parents or whatever, or maybe not even have any, because some kids get abandoned and stuff like that.
And to be able to pull out of that and that not be the anchor that holds you down for the rest of your life, and that's your excuse.
Like, oh, well, the reason I wasn't able to do this was because of...
You can always get past these things.
You just got to look inside and then eventually let all that shit go and use it as fuel and strength.
And it's great to hear when people actually do this because it is possible.
We do have this ability in us.
We just got to look deep inside even when it's ugly because that's the thing, right?
Everybody wants it all nice.
They want a great story and You know, you don't want all the ugliness, but sometimes life is ugly and we deal with it as people, depending how you grew up, your upbringing or, you know, you grew up in poverty or whatever.
These are things that you deal with, but it doesn't define you.
You could look within and unlock that shit that unlocks your full potential to take you out of that situation and put you in a better place and allow you to evolve and grow and to be a better person.
And not perpetuate any of the shit you went through to now your kids or whoever else.
And then, you know, there's people that take it to different levels.
Some people just improve their life and then there's guys like Goggins who's just always trying to push the boundaries of what's physically possible for a human body to endure.
Speaking of that, did you catch the one about when the earthquake hit?
They were at Everest, and it hit two different places, I think, in the city.
Well, it affected three different places.
It affected the city, this small village, I can't remember what it was called, and the people that were climbing up Everest.
There was like two camps.
And the people that were in Camp 1, they got stuck up there for some time because when the earthquake hit, like, they had no idea on that day what was happening for them, right?
But the people that were at base camp, what happened there, a lot of them got wiped out.
After World War I, America became an isolationist nation in December 1920. In the context of isolationism, the international influenza pandemic, and a post-war economic recession, the US House of Representatives voted to end all immigration to the United States for one year.
Quota Act 1921. They called it midnight races, where boats had to get into the shore by midnight, or they were going to get fined for bringing people that exceeded the quota.
How crazy is it that there's a thing that if you become president, you can decide that you're gonna take a person who's in jail for the rest of their life and go, nope, not anymore, Frank.
They're still figuring out how they let some of these people out that they were supposed to let out for cannabis in some of the states where it's legal.
That's why the Last Prisoner Project exists, so that they can go and help those folks in those states.
Provided that it wasn't...
I believe that if it wasn't...
Let's say a violent crime attached to it, you know, obviously they're trying to get a lot of these people out.
Because I think if you got obviously a violent crime attached to your cannabis charge, they're not just letting you out.
You've got to deal with whatever that is.
But anything that was just cannabis-related possession that didn't have any of that, I mean, they're trying to get a lot of these people released.
Could you imagine going to jail and then there was a story about a guy who got arrested in Phoenix.
We talked about this before.
He was a young kid and I want to say he's 20, 21 years old and he sold weed to this undercover cop a couple times and then they got him for selling more than an ounce Because he had a prior with something else, like an assault, but that he did his time.
Here, a South Phoenix kid got 16 years in a slammer for one ounce of weed.
So 16 years, they're punishing him for this.
And now weed's legal in Phoenix.
So this dude is now in a jail for selling something to an undercover cop who kind of, like, come on, man.
The undercover cop thing is so fucking...
If we knew the cops were just 100% honest all the time...
That's why people got to, you know, people got to make the change.
They can't depend on politicians for this.
You know what I mean?
Like, get the group of people that will go out there and do the work and put this on the state legislation and legalize it or decriminalize it in your state so that shit like that does not happen.
And all these fucking movies that show people smoking pot and going crazy and losing their fucking minds and just lets you know, this is going to take hold of your children!
So they turn this thing that everybody had always used into this new drug.
A lot of people got open after that and actually turned their parents on because when you go into dispensaries now, you see cats our age, right?
And obviously younger people, but you see seniors up in there as well.
Whether they're in there for edibles or they're going to smoke flower or even concentrates, which trips me out.
But...
That the old folks get down with that.
You see it.
And fortunately, that's because there's a lot of information out there now that if you're not sure about that propaganda that you grew up to, you can always now do your own diligence and do your own homework and find other articles based on cannabis that will tell you positive things.
And this is things they've never realized or thought of or heard before, and it opens up their world.
Now, it's not enough of them, because I think if it was, you know, if it was common knowledge amongst everybody that this is a healing plant, and aside from casual use, it can benefit people, more people would embrace it.
And you see that happening, but it's just slow, for some reason, still.
Everything's slow, man, because, like we were talking about before, I think people have preconceived notions that they don't want to dismiss, they don't want to let go of.
Even when they're confronted with new evidence, they want to, like, still stay, nah, weed is for losers!
How many folks that, like, are just the average Joes, you know, that are, like, on the everyday, and then you think about the celebrities that have been taken by the shit.
Deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, primarily fentanyl, continued to rise with 56,516 overdose deaths reported in 2020. So it just keeps going up.
So it's nearly double the amount of fentanyl overdoses in 2019 and 2020. That should scare the shit out of cokeheads, but, you know, some of them are not fazed by this.
You know, because I smoked out with Doug before, and he took a hit of our, like, eight-footer.
We were doing a show with Sublime with Rome somewhere.
Can't remember.
But this was, like, a tour we did with them.
And one show we specific, it was towards the end of the tour, we broke out the bong, and Rome wanted to hit it.
And I think, yeah, that's it right there.
It was made by Roar.
And Rome wanted to hit it because he had seen me hit it with Doug and You know we took we took a hit of that bong and Rome had to like He had he had to leave the party for a while and collect himself.
That looks ridiculous That's just too much that bong right there is too much.
That's too much I'll be honest with you when Bobo started like hitting it.
I stopped hitting it I was like I used that as a no no well Bobo wants to hit it let him do it look at the size of that thing Well, yeah, it's a thick tube all the way down.
Dude, I would drink a cup of coffee and not even notice and almost kind of forget that it had the hash oil in it and then an hour later I'm reading minds.
An hour later I'm like seeing intentions in people, I'm feeling tenseness and relaxation.
Like when you're using it, like so cancer patients, when they're starting to use this, they tell them to use like, you know, they go with micro dosage, right?
So like a kernel, a rice kernel.
And you work your way up, your tolerance, you work your way up to eventually being able to take the whole syringe.
But that's when you're, you know, using it for a treatment for, like, cancer and other serious things.
Like, for us, like, I'm using it for sleep, right?
I was doing the kernel, and I said, okay, I could feel it, but I don't really feel it, feel it.
So I went up.
In dosage, right?
And I started going up a little bit, and one day, I really did it to myself, right?
I keep them in the fridge to keep them fresh and stuff like that, but they're a little bit hard to get through the syringe because it's oil, so it's a little...
You gotta warm it up for it to like go through the syringe quicker.
Because I put them in gel caps.
But this was before I started putting them in gel caps, right?
So I'm like about to hit myself with the dose, right?
And I'm pushing a little bit harder than I should.
Boom!
The whole damn thing goes in.
And I was on for the ride!
But I tell you, I had the best sleep of my life, and that's when I was like, okay, maybe I'll just take a little bit more.
So I start putting like 400 to 500 milligrams in the gel caps, and I'm popping them, and I'm like...
Full sleep, but you have to time them out proper.
For me, the way they hit me is I could take the RSO at like, let's just say 7 p.m., and I'll start feeling it around 11, 11.30.
And then by the time I go to sleep, boom, I'm good.
If I take it at 9, I don't feel it.
I'll go to sleep.
It'll hit me around 3 in the morning and wake me the fuck up and say, I'm here.
Like the RSO has arrived.
You'll go back to sleep, but when you wake up, You're gonna be high all that morning.
Like, I didn't even need to smoke.
The morning that that happened, I was like, I didn't even want to touch a joint.
Well, people that ain't used to it, that they don't have the tolerance yet, they catch the anxieties and have a bad experience, and then they don't want it again.
And your bud tenders have to know this.
Bud tenders?
Yeah.
At the dispensaries, your bud tenders have to know this to explain this to somebody.
Ask them questions.
Is this your first time at a dispensary?
How are you...
You know what I mean?
Ask the proper questions so that you don't blow this person out and ruin the experience.
And maybe if they're taking it because they don't want to do pharmaceuticals and they want to try using it for medicinal purposes, You don't want to, like, push them away from that because they're looking at this for an alternative.
And if you're just trying to blow them out and get them high and you're not even focused in on what they're there for, I mean, you lost someone, you know what I mean?
So it all boils down to education and the willingness to do that.
I'm just so curious to see him come back because you got to think three years out, building up his frame, becoming a heavyweight, doing it the right way, doing it slowly, getting accustomed to the extra mass.
I mean is with Mike would people forget everybody remembers the knockouts everybody remembers the destruction But people don't remember is the head movement and the foot movement was extraordinary his footwork extraordinary work was crazy It was almost like like almost like a martial artist if you look a hundred percent like the way that his twitch Muscle ability to like move his feet and shift.
So what we're looking at is a guy who goes he goes from lying on his stomach to Pulling his body weight off the fingertips and going into a standing handstand watch that again How much strength is involved in doing that?
And then throws his legs all the way back, backwards until they almost touch the ground, then spins around.
I think as every art form evolves, I think they just started challenging themselves and trying different things and seeing what cats were doing on the gymnastic floor.
Trying to figure out how do I develop these new moves and stuff like that.
And just trying to take it to a new level.
And I think they discovered within that They could do these power type moves as a part of it because you didn't see a lot of the freezing that you see now where he's pausing and holding that up, you know, it was all about the movement on the floor like the spins to the head the hands and You know up up top when you're doing a 1990 or whatever you see a lot of that in the combinations But now you're seeing more strength Along with those combinations.
It's a mixture of the combinations you see of the aerial moves or the floor moves into a power move that he did on his fingers like that.
That's the shit they're adding now.
Like, where before it was all just combinations.
There was no...
Power style moves like that that existed and I don't know where it came from man I just I just know that like you see the way that they do this they just they The fact that they they kept it going There was no place to go but evolve and do some different things and what were you just showing us Jamie?
Their abilities are crazy, and you know, it's great that they're finally getting recognized for that, like by, you know, putting them into the Olympics somewhere, you know?
Look how he's spinning around without without his feet touching the ground.
Yeah, that's insane.
He's on his fingertips.
It's nuts like the kind of strength involved in something like that is It just spun around his head 30 times He's gonna wear a bald spot on his head for sure, right?
If you look at this movie called Wild Style, it documents that.
And there's another one, I think, called Style Wars that documents that.
I don't know when those came out, but I know that it's been around from the late 70s, right at the birth of when they used to throw the parties at the park.
I think it's the Bronx and the other boroughs, like Queens.
I think it was breaks like from what like when they explain it in some of the hip-hop documentaries is that guys like Cool Herc and in Grandmaster Flash and the other DJs that were like the Kings of the boroughs in the DJs they were taking like R&B records that had breaks that were like like To them, that was the best part of the song.
All the rest was shit, but this part is dope.
So they would go and find these breaks and cut these breaks in the party, and people would dance to these breaks.
And then, you know, the B-boy shit was birthed from that.
It's one of those things where they just gotta try to innovate new moves.
The way Tony Hawk would innovate when he brought out the 900, right?
And guys like that, they're constantly pushing To create a different combination, different move that no one's seen or a freeze or a strength move like that guy with the two fingers and he's like stuck like that.
I mean, you know, to top that.
Some guy could probably hold it for half a second but holding it as long as he did.
You know you got to come up with something to top that because like how do you top that?
Yeah if you just like let them be creative they'll come up with new stuff.
Just over time, one guy figures out a move, another guy figures out a better way to do that move, and then they're all innovating and feed off each other.
The guys that do the B-boy shit, it takes them hours to get all that down and to get those moves down and get those combinations down and having the strength to actually pull it all off.
I'm just glad that they're finally getting theirs because it's a great art form that was derived from hip-hop and to see it now, it's like a world sport.
You know, it's dope that the Grammys just recently celebrated the 50 years of hip-hop, because it's now the birthday of hip-hop, I guess, this year, this month, that it's been 50 years.
And...
Yeah, they left a lot of groups out, but I thought the representation was pretty cool, like that they started with the actual pioneers of this, you know, and seeing Run DMC and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5 and Rakim and all those guys do their thing and be celebrated.
Some think that I'm a flake, but I'm no fake nigga, cause I take a bitch, make a man with your burners ass at the stake, with the 44 mag, it's so simple, put it to his temple, fuck how'd I give a nigga permanent dibble?
Brand new headsets on the tracks, G-Rap on a wax coat, bummer got motherfuckers doing jumping jacks, you motherfuckers lost it, I'll bake your ass like a cake, and all your flakes get frosted, cause when G-Rap is on the mix, niggas start shitting, He was amazing, man.
It was crazy that the song that influenced that was from a rapper named Schooly D based out of Philly and he had a thing called PSK and so that 6 in the morning was a play from PSK which was actually the first gangster song in hip-hop but the first West Coast gangster song was the 6 in the morning See,
The difference is on the West Coast shit, we use more 808 like that.
The bass-driven shit, because that was more L.A. Like, in L.A. at that time, you'd see cats riding around with sound systems bumping.
And so, when guys like Dr. Dre were making, you know, when they were producing, they were adding that bass in there, that 808, so that people can feel that shit in their system.
Yeah, you know, the thing was is that Muggs was from New York.
He was from Flushing.
So a lot of his influence was from New York.
You know, his favorite production was like the Bomb Squad, which were producing Public Enemy and all their shit.
They had like some of the most complex production at the time with bridges and brakes and these crazy sounds and stuff like that.
So, you know, that's what Muggs got down with.
Now, when he moved out here and we start hanging out, he's introducing us to New York music, you know, hip-hop music that we heard.
We heard some of it via the radio on KDAY, an AM station that was playing a lot of hip-hop in the mix, and some of it mixed with R&B and soul throughout the day.
So, This is where we got our first introduction to hip-hop, but Muggs being from New York, whenever he'd go back, he'd come back with new records and he'd introduce us to stuff like that.
And so when it came time to working on an album, he had all that influence.
And being from New York and absorbing all that culture, it sounded sort of like New York-style production.
Mixed with a little bit of LA influence, especially with, you know, what Sen and I were kicking in terms of vocals, because we were using a combination of LA and New York slang, you know, merged as one.
So that's why a lot of people were confused, like, where are these guys from?
You ask people in New York, they thought we were from East New York, and they were from Cypress Hills, New York.
And people that were from LA, they were like, well, wait a minute, they kind of sound West Coast-ish.
I think they're from out here.
But they didn't really know until we came out and said, you know, yeah, we're from LA. Our boy's from New York, and we're sort of a bridge, you know, between LA and New York with the sound.
So...
Yeah, it was always a New York-influenced sound because, I mean, that's where it was from.
But I think that's what added to us being different because most things that were coming out of Los Angeles in that time or Southern California sounded like gangster rap, sounded like a version of N.W.A. or Compton's Most Wanted or something like that.
And we wanted to be different.
We didn't want to be in that lane.
We felt that was their lane.
We need to make our own.
So we didn't want to sound like anything else that was in Cali.
We didn't get signed by a California label, whether it was Sony or any of it.
We got turned down here because we didn't sound like we were from California.
What it is is they don't want to take a chance on trying to develop it because if it fails, it's on their back.
You know what I mean?
So they want something that's easy that, like, oh, this sounds like this.
We can market it in this lane.
This is already a successful template.
Let's use this.
Oh, they're not using that shit.
We can't do nothing with it.
So, you know, like, it's the development.
And fortunately, you know, when we got assigned to Rough House Columbia, we had the power of Columbia backing us up Because they sort of believed in what we were doing.
Well, they, not sort of believed, they believed in what we were doing and got behind it and allowed us to be as creative as we wanted to be and pushed us.
And, you know, along with having Joe and Chris on our side creatively, like, pushing our line and saying, hey, these guys are doing great.
We don't want to intervene and, you know, change anything they're doing.
Just let them fucking go.
I mean, that was everything because, you know, most of the time they want an easy layup.
So if, let's just say, you know, there's a group over here that's doing well, hey, how come, why don't we make a record like this over here?
It's like, well, why don't you go sign that shit over there?
This is not who we are.
So, you know, they want you to make it easy.
But realistically, it's nothing good is ever easy.
You got to work toward it and develop it.
Unfortunately, you know, we got on the team that that believed in that.
And man, it was the biggest fuck you to all those that turned us down and didn't get what we were doing.
I watched one of those CSI shows and they were dealing with this autopsy and I was like, Jesus Christ, this is regular TV? It's wild what people's access to things like HBO and Netflix, what it's done to regular TV. They'll show gore and violence now.
I couldn't believe it.
I was like, I was looking at this like, when I was a kid, if a guy got shot on TV, they didn't even have blood.
It's like the Hulk like you you know, you made him mad now all of a sudden he's unstoppable every yeah, everybody's like oh you fucked with yeah That's everybody want that's what people love.
They love this like one person that can't be stopped Yeah, you know in some way whether it's because of the Hulk like he's got some fucking genetic thing They zapped him with rays and change his body.
I mean, it's the same thing when they were running Stone Cold Steve Austin on the WWE. His character or his persona was that you could not stop Stone Cold.
Bruce Banner is like a little unassuming scientist who's built like Ben Shapiro and then all of a sudden he turns into that guy and the pants somehow still fit.
How the fuck?
How the fuck do you not see that giant green dick?
Those pants would pop off just the same way a shirt would.
But it's fucking like the scene in the Hulk when he grabs Loki and he smashes him left and right like Loki who says he's a god and the Hulk grabs him and pile drives him into the concrete back and forth and back and forth and goes, puny man.
Yeah, not in the DC and Marvel universe, because, I mean, you know, it's been for so long and they developed so many characters to come up with new ones and try to put those over.
Because some bands, they'll tour 20 years after their last album and they'll just still have all those hits to choose from and they don't ever write new songs and the audiences love it.
Yeah, you gotta let it find its place and let people say to you, like, hey man, how come you don't add this?
You guys always play this over here, but you never...
And then we might take that into consideration and be like, you know what, yeah, we should play that.
But...
Yeah, I've learned from watching others, like, when you don't play the popular songs in your, you know, the pantheon of your library, your musical library as an artist, man, they're gonna shit on you heavy.
Like, yo, man, how come you didn't play insane in the brain or whatever.
And learning that, as an artist, seeing how he did that, and how a lot of us were like, yo, this is fucking ridiculous.
I never wanted any of our fans to feel something like that leaving a Cypress Hill show.
So like we, you know, we definitely will play some new shit, but we'll strategically place it to where it's not bothersome to the fans.
Like, oh man, I wanted to hear the hits.
I don't want to hear this shit over here.
So like we're hitting them with hits from the start, sprinkle some new shit, some more of the old shit and Here and there, just so that, like, artistically, yeah, you want them to have the new material, but, like, they're there to really realistically hear the shit that they fell in love with you for, you know what I mean?
Yeah, you know like and that was part of the story part of the story was this lady was just like Dominating shit.
Yeah look at Tom Cruise.
Oh, man But this that was part of the story was that this lady couldn't be crossed But that she was seduced by this guy who was remember what she she had this boyfriend the boyfriend was Banging other chicks and she found out and things got ugly.
How many people are gonna go on treasure hunts in people's backyards if they find out that they were a coke dealer in Miami?
It's almost worth it.
If you buy a dude, he's a coke guy, goes to jail in the 1980s and he builds his fucking mansion, the mansion's still there, you would buy it and go, okay, has anybody ever done any renovations in the backyard?
And you better be there when they fucking peel that shit up, because those construction companies are going to be like, ah, we didn't find anything, sir.
I bet once you start getting high from that coke, you're like, oh, this is great, and then you're a bear, you're a glutton, so you're just diving in there, eating the whole bag.
Dr. Edward Domino, who participated in the early testing of PCP, documented that the drug produces an adrenaline release resulting in a fight-or-flight reaction with an increased heartbeat, high blood pressure, and raised body temperature.
Interesting.
He said that the effects of the drug can vary greatly.
It can act as depressant, stimulant, or hallucinogen, depending upon the dosage, type of administration, and circumstances of use.
On the street, PCP is available as a powder, tablet, or liquid, or in leaf mixtures, it may be swallowed, injected, snorted, or smoked.
Well, people definitely move better when they're on adrenaline.
Adrenaline makes people very explosive, right?
It's supposed to be there to get you to run away from something, right?
To get the fuck away or fight or flight.
Either you're gonna fight, you get all this burst of energy out of nowhere.
It's a wild drug, though, because...
Like you ideally would want to be in shape and have very little adrenaline because adrenaline jacks up your heart rate unnecessarily sometimes.
And so if you're really juiced up with adrenaline, your heart's at 170 beats per minute.
If you start engaging in physical activity when you're already kind of gassing because your heart rate's already jacked, you're going to get tired quick.
And you're getting guys that are already very experienced and they know how to do it.
They don't just go full blast.
Not all of them.
It's rare.
Occasionally it happens.
When you go through those smaller shows, like the LFAs and these other small promotions, and you finally get that call, the moment they close that cage, you realize, oh my god, I'm on fucking pay-per-view.
You've got to maintain composure and you're calm in there.
And sometimes when you're new to it and you're excited and the adrenaline rises, man, it's hard to stay composed.
I mean, that happens with young rappers out there, right?
First show in front of like 10-20,000 people.
They, let's say, rehearsed for weeks, a month, and they got the song down, and their breath control is there, and they sound great, but the minute they get on that stage and they see the enormity of it, It changes.
The inexperience makes them forget everything they learned and all of a sudden they're breathing heavy.
They're trying to keep up with the song.
They don't sound like the tone that's on the actual record and it's all that nervous energy because of the inexperience.
I would imagine with an MMA fight, going through that, man, that's got to be the toughest because you trained, you put the work in.
I think if you've got a different sort of voice and you've got to maintain it and not let it get damaged and things like that, you've got to find ways to strengthen it.
For me, I knew some of the stuff that was causing damage to my voice.
One was I was smoking blunts and I was drinking whiskey before the shows and things like that.
And then carbonated shit like sodas and stuff like that.
That whole combination had my shit raspy.
And then...
The excitement, the adrenaline, carrying that over, not necessarily controlling that to be able to sound right.
So it was a combination of all that.
And then someone referred me to the lady.
I think her name was Elizabeth Sabine.
She taught a bunch of different singers, but her thing was opera.
And to teach you how to breathe so that you don't have to over-project from your vocal cords and all that stuff from the throat.
And so getting rid of the whiskey and the blunts and the sodas, that was one thing that definitely helped.
But like with the breath control and not over projecting and staying in key and in tone, whatever, she taught me that.
And that preserved my shit so that I could sound like what I sound like on the record, even to this day.
I didn't really suffer too much damage like a lot of people do where they cannot sound like they do on the record because they've pretty much blasted out their shit.
By partying and not taking care of the muscle, not taking care of the tool, any of it, you know what I mean?
So, I always respected the fact that I got this gift, so, like, I'm gonna do what I got to to protect it, and that was one thing, man.
Like, I was going hoarse every damn, every other show, like, And not sounding the way that I should on records.
And when I would hear the playback to that, I'd be like, oh my fucking God, what is this?
And then finally I reached out to somebody who knew a coach and they were like, hey, put me on to your vocal coach.
I want to try to strengthen what I got going on here.
Fortunately, man, I paid attention to her and I didn't blow it off.
Like, what the fuck is this?
Because you can go in there like that and be like, how are these exercises going to help me?
But until you do them and get used to them and it becomes second nature, you don't realize it.
And fortunately, I was serious enough to take the advice and do all the practices.
on the flip side i like the way johnny cash sounded in his last days yeah he sounded good i love the hearing the life in his voice i love hearing the living yeah in his voice like that guy lived a hard life he sure did and johnny cash lived a hard life And it was a dope record, for sure.
Just hearing that voice at the end of his life, and knowing that he doesn't have much time left, and knowing that he knows he doesn't have much time left, and he's singing that.
Can you play some of that?
Play Johnny Cash, Hurt.
And it's a cover, a Nine Inch Nails cover.
There's so many layers to it.
So many layers to it.
And it's like when you see what he looked like back then, man.
I mean, he was an older dude, man.
An older dude who was one of the highwaymen, you know?
They can find me at, I mean, just Google me, Be Real.
It's all right there laid out.
But, I mean, we do our Dr. Green Thumb show Monday through Friday on YouTube, so you can find us there, and we're constantly, you know, giving up our schedule and the shit we're doing, man.