PBD - Patrick Bet-David - "I Should Be Dead" - Ice Cube Untold Stories: Impact of Hip Hop on Society, Surviving L.A. Gangs

July 15, 2024 - PBD - Patrick Bet-David

02:03:21

"I Should Be Dead" - Ice Cube Untold Stories: Impact of Hip Hop on Society, Surviving L.A. Gangs

Patrick Bet-David interviews Ice Cube, a rap legend known for his influence on music, film, and culture. He rose to fame with the pioneering rap group N.W.A., then found success as a solo artist, and became a prolific actor and filmmaker. Cube is known for his candid reflections on social issues and for speaking truth to power. This powerful conversation is no exception! 00:00 - PDD x Ice Cube Intro 00:57 - Patrick welcomes the audience. 02:05 - PBD Podcast Intro Song 02:31 - Patrick introduces his guest, hip-hop star and movie mogul Ice Cube! 03:47 - Ice Cube talks about the secret to making his 32 year marriage work. 08:53 - Ice Cube talks about choosing hip-hop of gang banging as a teenager. 13:54 - Ice Cube talks about his reputation as a teen growing up in L.A. 16:05 - Ice Cube opens up about losing friend and his step-sister to gang violence. 28:00 - Ice Cube reveals the meaning behind NWA's 'F*ck Tha Police' 38:41 - Ice Cube explains which project made him a superstar: NWA or 'Boyz In The Hood' 45:47 - Ice Cube discusses his relationship and respect for fellow actor and comedian Tupac Shakur. 53:47 - Ice Cube opens up about his relationship with Easy-E, Dr. Dre and Suge Knight. 1:02:49 - Ice Cube reveals who he had beef with in hip-hop and movies. 1:05:33 - Ice Cube talks about the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. 1:12:21 - Ice Cube talks about the power players in the music and movie industries. 1:17:35 - Ice Cube on the affects of Artificial Intelligence on the music and movie industries. 1:20:12 - Ice Cube on exposing elites, making money, and getting political. 1:29:46 - Ice Cube lists his Top 5 Los Angeles Lakers of all time 1:33:06 - Ice Cube discusses hip-hops positive and negative impacts on American culture. --- 🧢 Represent Valuetainment & The PBD Podcast! Buy One “Future Looks Bright” Hat, Get One Free: https://bit.ly/3zFTJE9 Purchase tickets to PBD's "Reagan" Movie Screening & Live Podcast w/ Dennis Quaid on Friday, August 2nd: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3xNPhCS⁠ Meet Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson! Join the Minnect League Championships for your chance to win a meet-and-greet with The Rock at The Vault 2024 | Sept 4th – Sept 7th | Palm Beach Convention Center: ⁠https://bit.ly/4aMAar8 🎟️ Purchase tickets to The Vault Conference 2024 featuring Patrick Bet-David & Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson: https://bit.ly/VAULT2024 — Connect one-on-one with the right expert for you on Minnect: https://bit.ly/3MC9IXE Connect with Patrick Bet-David on Minnect: https://bit.ly/3OoiGIC Connect with Rob Garguilo on Minnect: https://bit.ly/426IG0R Purchase Patrick's new book "Choose Your Enemies Wisely": https://bit.ly/41bTtGD Register to win a Valuetainment Boss Set (valued at over $350): https://bit.ly/41PrSLW Get best-in-class business advice with Bet-David Consulting: https://bit.ly/40oUafz Visit VT.com for the latest news and insights from the world of politics, business and entertainment: https://bit.ly/472R3Mz Visit Valuetainment University for the best courses online for entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/47gKVA0 Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! Get PBD's Intro Song "Sweet Victory" by R-Mean: https://bit.ly/3T6HPdY SUBSCRIBE TO: @VALUETAINMENT @vtsoscast @ValuetainmentComedy @bizdocpodcast @theunusualsuspectspodcast Want to be clear on your next 5 business moves? https://bit.ly/3Qzrj3m Join the channel to get exclusive access to perks: https://bit.ly/3Q9rSQL Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

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	First of all, Hollywood Walk of Fame, groundbreaking song, straight out of Compton, the police, Boys in the Hood, Players Club, right along, straight out of Compton, 21 Jump Street, Three Kings.
	It is a pleasure to have you here, man.
	I'm trying to be like you when I grow up.
	No, man.
	I said I wanted to do movies.
	I discovered it.
	And I really want to find out who took Pac out or who took Big Yellow.
	Mind your own business and you live on it.
	Who has the most power in the entertainment industry?
	You know, got to have balance.
	You know what I mean?
	Got to have a little R ⁇ B with your hip-hop.
	Got to have a little funk with it.
	Mix it a little so.
	Yeah, you know what I mean?
	How much they are invested in all these big labels and the prison industry.
	I'm not saying that the CIA is sitting there writing rhymes.
	Talked about some things that I've never talked about in the interview.
	As a kid who grew up in L.A., I follow his story very closely, Cube.
	And I've seen a lot of the podcasts.
	At the end of the podcast, he said, I shared certain stories today I've never shared before.
	The three close calls he had as a kid, almost died.
	The story, I said, why did you leave the life and why did you not go become a gangster?
	He told a story about what happened to his stepsister and what her husband did to his stepsister.
	That was such a life-altering event that got him to say, I'm not doing this anymore.
	How he got recruited to Boys in the Hood for the movie, which makes no sense.
	I played him a clip of the time Shuk Knight called into the podcast and I said, here's what Shuk said about a story with Easy E and Dre.
	Dre said this on speaker that got Eazy E to cry.
	Do you believe this story?
	And I asked him who he trusted out of the three the most.
	He broke it down and kind of went through it.
	We talked so many different things.
	We talked Lakers.
	We talked politics a little bit.
	We talked politics.
	I brought up a couple names in Hollywood on who were the most powerful people and seeing how he would maneuver through some of these questions was just interesting to watch.
	I think you're going to enjoy this interview just as much as I do.
	So having said that, here's Cube.
	30 seconds.
	Did you ever think you would make it?
	I feel I'm so f***ed so I could take sweet victory.
	I know this life meant for me.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Why would you bet on Goliath when we got Bet David?
	Value payments, giving values contagious.
	This world of entrepreneurs, we get no value to hate it.
	I'm the one.
	All right, so we got a special guest in the house, and I want to properly introduce this guest.
	And when he, you know, we first spoke, you know, they called, they said, look, all Cube wants to talk about is politics.
	I said, I don't like politics.
	They said, no, that's all he wants to talk about.
	I said, I want to talk about his career, his life, business, other things.
	So let me properly introduce you.
	This may be one of the coolest resumes you could have.
	Here we go.
	So first of all, Hollywood Walk of Fame, he's earned the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, the amount of movies sold 10 million records.
	NWA's groundbreaking songs straight out of Compton.
	Fuck the police.
	What else we got here?
	Movies he's been in.
	Boys in a hood.
	Over 40 films, by the way.
	Higher learning, all about the Benjamins.
	Barbershop.
	Next Friday.
	Players Club.
	Right along.
	Straight out of Compton.
	21 Jump Street.
	Three Kings.
	What else can I tell you?
	All those being there, we hear, you know, there's a possibility of another one coming out here, which we're going to talk about.
	You got the big three.
	You got movies, music.
	You got so many things going on.
	It is a pleasure to have you here, man.
	I'm trying to be like you when I grow up.
	No, man.
	I was saying how busy you are.
	And by the way, probably the most impressive one out of all of this.
	When I saw this, I said, there's no way this is true.
	And then I had to go, you know, have our team take a look at it.
	So check this out.
	You probably already know this.
	So obviously, we're going to talk about a lot of different things today, but I want to share this with the audience.
	Here we go.
	So the longest lasting marriages in hip-hop.
	Okay.
	So Jay-Z and Beyonce since 08.
	T.I. and Tamika, 2010.
	Iced T and Coco, 2005.
	Ja Rul and Aisha, 2001.
	Method Man and Tamika, 2001.
	Snoop and Shante, 97.
	LL Cool J and Simone, 95.
	Rev Run and Justine, 94.
	The only one that's ahead of you.
	and Kimberly, because you guys are 1992, is E40 and Tracy, 91.
	You've been married for 32 years?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And you guys got, what, five kids?
	Four.
	Four kids?
	Yeah.
	How the hell do you make marriage work in hip-hop, movies, the life?
	How do you make that work for 32 years?
	Well, you make the marriage the most important out of all that.
	You don't get distracted by the glitz and the glamour and the promises of the industries, but you focus on what's important and you do your work and then you make sure your most important priority is happy, healthy, and comfortable with the journey.
	Comfortable with the journey.
	Was there a certain agreement?
	Were there certain values that you guys kind of speak about?
	Where when you guys look at each other, you kind of understand each other.
	Anything that helped the two of you guys last for 32 years?
	You know what I mean?
	You know what I'm saying?
	Like if you argue, let's do this.
	Anything like that.
	So we just made a real commitment to each other.
	People like us come out of South Central Los Angeles and some of the odds are stacked against us.
	So when you find a like-minded person, soul, who want to beat the odds, you make a pact and you make a commitment to each other to win and not to lose out here.
	And so, you know, my wife Kim is amazing.
	She can care less about the business as far as being a part of Hollywood and the glitz and the glamour and this, that, and the other.
	You know, that don't turn her on.
	You know, she, but she's down to help me make it to the top.
	And so I appreciate her for that.
	And like I said, I wouldn't be here without her.
	How'd you guys mean?
	First time we met, it was at a mall, a spot called the Fox Hill Mall.
	I used to sell at Fox Hill's Mall.
	Yeah, Fox Hill Mall.
	I saw her coming down the escalator and something in my head, this has never happened to me ever in my life.
	Something in my head said, that can be a woman.
	So I didn't really approach her after that.
	You know, she kind of was shopping and I was shopping.
	We ran into each other in the footlock and I had my friend T-Bone.
	T-Bone talks a lot.
	So he was like talking the head off.
	And so I went to shoot my shot and she had a man.
	She had a boyfriend.
	So she was like, nah, it ain't happening.
	So about three, four months later, driving down Crenshaw, me and T-Bone.
	And this car kept swooping on us.
	And it was my wife Kim.
	She was riding with her cousin.
	And they pulled up on the side.
	And, you know, the cousin was trying to get at me.
	But I saw Kim and I'm like, yo, I remember her from the Fox Hill Mall.
	You know, I'm going to try it again, see if she still with this dude.
	And they had broke up.
	So that was my perfect opportunity.
	How old were you?
	19.
	19 years old.
	So you know the escalator coming down right when you enter, I think through Macy's or whatever it was, I used to sell Bally memberships right next to the escalator.
	That was my spot when people would come down.
	I used to work at the Bally's in Culver City.
	Used to be a Nautilus years ago.
	Yeah.
	Right across from Sony with Dexter McClendon, Ruben Rimmer, Francisco Davis, all these guys.
	And they would send me to Fox Hills to sell memberships.
	Yeah.
	Price to go to.
	You know, Fox Hill, you know, my mall was really the Hawthorne Mall.
	That was near my house.
	But whenever we wanted to go look at the cute girls, we would go to Fox Hill.
	So quality was better at Fox Hill.
	Yeah, the quality was better.
	Quality was better at Fox Hill.
	Now, Cube, when I talked to Cuba Gun Jr., we had him on and you guys did the movie, you know, Boys in the Hood.
	Yeah.
	And he told me the story where he says, you know, I keep calling him O'Shea.
	And he says, listen, man, don't call me Oshi.
	You call me Cube.
	And he said, it's kind of complicated because he's Cuba and you're Cube.
	So you guys are doing a movie together.
	And he says, one of the scenes, you come up to him and you see after the, you know, the death and you kind of don't know how to handle the loss, you know, loss of a loved one.
	And he says, you went up to him and said, listen, Cuba, I'm not the crying type, man.
	I come from the hood.
	You know, I'm not one that's going to cry.
	What feedback can you tell me about the scene?
	And he says, just think about the brothers you lost in the hood.
	And he says, you said to him, I got it.
	I'm good from here.
	And then you went and did your thing.
	Yeah.
	Growing up, for you to be able to tap into, you know, what you produce with music, with movies, who were you at 14 years old?
	Were you ever part of a gang?
	Were you a gangster?
	And if yes, who were you with?
	Well, you know, growing up in the neighborhood, you make choices.
	Now, everybody in the neighborhood is affiliated.
	Like, you can't, you can't not be, you can't be neutral.
	So the neighborhood I come from is called Neighborhood Crips.
	And, you know, we going up, we figuring out which direction we want to go.
	We 10, 12, 11.
	I start playing sports.
	I'm into football.
	I'm into basketball.
	And then I get into this rap stuff.
	Now, not too many people in my neighborhood was into it.
	As far as doing it, they all loved it.
	You know, the pros, Run DMC, and the fat boys and, you know, LL Cool J.
	But only Sir Jinx, which is Dr. Dre's cousin that lived down the street, he was the only one into the music.
	He did it all.
	He did break dancing, graffiti, DJing.
	Anything he really didn't do was rap.
	So, you know, at that point where it's go hard for the hood or explore this new music at 13, 14 years old and hang out with Dr. Dre, my choice was to go with music, hang out with Dr. Dre.
	So them years when banging would have took over my life, I had something to replace it with like great music and learning the music business and doing, you know, DJing parties and just doing something way more interesting than gang banging.
	Now, at the time, who was Dre?
	How was Dre seen in the streets?
	Not to the people that, you know, followed by the business.
	He was a local DJ that was one of the best in L.A. That's it.
	was known as, you know, it was a few DJs that were the best.
	Egyptian Lover, Bobcat, Joe Cooley.
	You know, these are, you know, some of the best, DJ Pooh, Battle Cat.
	And Dre was, you know, close to the top when it came to being a coveted DJ that everybody dig, loved, and wanted to do their parties.
	Did you, like, how could you differentiate him against Egyptian lover or others?
	Because they're all there.
	So you kind of pick in who you want your running mate to be.
	Why did you choose Dre over, you know, whatever the life may be or other, you know, I knew Dre.
	You know, I didn't know the mothercats.
	I got you.
	Not to the point where I can hang with him and be a part of it.
	You know, I could go to, you know, Uncle Jam's Army.
	You know, they had a, they was the biggest crew, Uncle Jam's Army.
	They had Egyptian Lover.
	They had Arabian Prince.
	They had, you know, a bunch of DJs.
	They would do big, you know, concerts at the sports arena.
	And so out in Compton, you know, you had Lonzo Williams who ran the wrecking crew.
	And they did parties mostly in Compton, Lingwood, Carson, you know, them areas in that way.
	And so that's who I was hanging with.
	You know, I would leave South Central and go to Compton and hang with Lonzo and the wrecking crew, Dre, DJ Yellow, Clientele, the unknown DJ, DJ I'm known.
	Sorry about that.
	And, you know, just learning, you know, the Compton side of hip-hop, you know, where they had Tidy T and they had Mixed Master Spade.
	And, you know, they were starting to bubble, you know, as far as making a name for Compton in the music industry.
	So, you know, it was just circumstances, you know.
	Were you a guy that cube, I mean, when you see the way you rap, you see you in the movies, you see reading about you.
	Yeah.
	There's different sides to you.
	There's a side that you can play a serious role like you did in Boys in the Hood.
	Then there's a side to you where, you know, right along or, you know, some of the other funny comedy stuff, they're all about the Benjamins.
	You know, you see these things and still a serious side, but there's also a comedian side to you.
	If we had 10 guys here right now that knew you at 13, 14, 15, how would they profile you?
	Would they say he was feared?
	He was respected.
	He was liked.
	He was cool.
	What's the first thing they would say about you at that age?
	I hope they say I was respected.
	For my age group, not too many people can handle me in anything.
	Sports, fighting.
	I was able to clean out my age group.
	So you had to be able to do that or you would really get bullied and picked on a lot.
	So you had to thump when it was time to thump.
	So I was always down to thump.
	And so, you know, a few of them, you know, I done won my fair share.
	I done lost a few too, but I was a little out of my way class.
	But for the most part, you know, you just got to be down.
	It ain't really about, you know, a lot of people that bang, they scared.
	They got to bang because it's protection.
	You know, I always felt like I didn't have to bang because wasn't nobody going to do nothing to me to make me bang.
	Got it.
	And they knew I was down to jump off my bike and thump.
	And so that's a must.
	You have to be down to get down.
	You might win some, might lose some, but always be down to get some.
	And so that was my attitude.
	Most of my friends' attitudes as well.
	So, you know, I hope it's respect.
	Did you witness friends and peers dying?
	Did you witness close friends?
	Yeah, shot some, you know, losing, you know, losing friends when you're in the eighth grade is just something you don't really think you're going to have to go through.
	You know, losing friends at a young, young age is just crazy.
	But hearing about, you know, some of the big homies getting downed, you know, writing rest in peace on my notebooks and stuff like that, it just was just part of the life, part of growing up.
	I remember when one of my homies got shot, he's my brother's friends, got shot on our block.
	And I was real young.
	So it was always like, yo, it can happen right out this door, you know, right?
	As soon as you step out the door, it can happen.
	So, you know, it changed me, you know, and changed how I looked at the neighborhood.
	When I think about guys that make it to different levels in life, right?
	You win.
	You typically have one of three formulas.
	You have the experience of unconditional love from somebody.
	Typically, it's a mom, right?
	You experience unconditional pain.
	It could be you could never please somebody or a life-changing pain where you're like, this is going to force me to change.
	And then you chose your enemies wisely, the right enemy that brings out the best in you, not the worst in you, right?
	What was the single most significant event at that age, eighth grade, ninth grade, maybe even earlier or later, where you said, no, I'm not doing this anymore.
	I'm out.
	Was there something that truly impacted you?
	Maybe it brought rage in you, controlled rage, or fear of maybe this could happen to me, whichever one of those could be for you to say, I'm out of here.
	You know, dodging a few situations that could have went south.
	You know, my stepsister was killed by her husband when I was 12 years old.
	So that changed my outlook on the world.
	You know, before that, everything was stuff you heard about, you know, few things you seen, but here it was right, you know, death at your doorstep.
	And it like, it was really, you know, a family member that did it.
	So it was, it was odd and it was crazy to try to process.
	And I just knew the world was different for me.
	And, you know, when I was about 14, I was a little older.
	You know, it was a situation where a guy had taken some money from my mom's and just on a lie.
	You know, I'm a Moshe friend from school and I need some money, blah, blah, blah.
	I don't have no money.
	I'm trying to get here, trying to get there.
	And just beat her out some money.
	And we found out that he was smoking.
	So we went over to killing.
	Like my friend, he had a shotgun.
	We put the shotgun in the car.
	We rode over there, knocked on the dude door.
	His pops came to the door, and we asked for him, and he wasn't there.
	And, you know, if he was there and came out the door, we'd have shot him.
	And so whole life would have been different.
	Whole life would have changed that day.
	And when it didn't happen, I went from being mad to being relieved.
	I can leave right here.
	I'll leave right here.
	I went from being mad to being relieved that I didn't do that because I was irrational.
	We was hot and we was about to go to jail.
	You know what I mean?
	And so.
	Pure luck about that.
	Yeah, I just was like, yo, I need to change my way of thinking, you know, on stuff like this.
	You know, was it really worth it?
	You know, and I was caught up on principle and it could have gone bad.
	I'm 15 years old.
	I'm in Vegas in the car with another guy who was driving a Cadillac.
	And his brother is now dead.
	They're with Burbank Trece.
	This was a gang in LA, Burbank, because I lived in Glendo.
	And then we pull up and these guys from New York are to our left.
	The guy had no clue at a gun with him, our guy, pulls out a gun.
	They pull out a gun.
	We run out.
	I'm with my dad in Vegas.
	I go to the hotel and I'm breathing hard.
	You know, you're in that kind of a situation.
	This is it.
	It's about to, something's going to happen right now.
	Yeah.
	And then we go in there and he says, you good?
	You're good?
	I said, no, I'm totally fine.
	He said, why are you breathing this way?
	I said, totally fine.
	Go to sleep.
	And from that moment, I'm like, I got to change some of the friends.
	I'm living in L.A. I'm living in, parents got a divorce, so you're not like in an environment that's stable.
	That one situation, I wouldn't be sitting here right now talking to you.
	It's pretty wild that you're telling me the situation that if that guy would have opened the door, the father says the son is here.
	We don't know Cube.
	Yeah, it's all over right there.
	And it wasn't worth it at all.
	You know, and it's, you know, it's those situations that I think back and I think, thank God that I was, you know, plucked out of these situations at the kind of in the nick of time.
	What do you think that is?
	You think that is God?
	You think that's pure, you know, accidental?
	You think someone's looking over you?
	You think it's just got lucky.
	How do you, there's a book that was written called David and Goliath.
	And in the book, it talks about, not David versus Goliath, he called it David Engeliath, if you can look up this book.
	And the author in the book talks about people who had flirted with death and made it.
	They had this feeling of, I'm going to do something special with my life, right?
	And whether they thought it was faith, whether they would, I'm chosen, I'm called to do something.
	Did you walk away at 15, 16 years old?
	You're like, I think I'm protected.
	Someone's watching over me or not?
	Not really.
	As a very young kid, I didn't understand it.
	I got hit by a car when I was five years old.
	I went to the ice cream truck with my sister.
	And she's 15 at the time.
	And she made the mistake of getting my ice cream first, giving it to me, and then ordering hers.
	So I get mine.
	I want to go back across the street.
	You know, I got what I needed.
	So she said, I said, I want to go back home.
	She said, go ahead.
	So I took off running around the ice cream truck.
	Oh, my God.
	I took off running.
	And When I look, I just heard a car screeching and the grill of the car looked about this big.
	You're five.
	I'm five.
	So I'm about to die.
	I mean, I just see the grill of the car.
	And it hit me.
	And I flew and I landed on the curb.
	And I remember my father, somebody came and scooped me up.
	And they took me to the doctor.
	And I didn't have a bruise.
	I wasn't, no bones broke.
	Nothing was wrong with me.
	And the doctor kept saying, this kid got hit by a car today.
	And it was like, yeah.
	And there was nothing wrong with me.
	So that was one time.
	I remember when I was young, my grandmother worked for these people in Bel Air.
	And I never seen a pool.
	So I took off running as a little kid and ran and jumped in the pool.
	And I was drowning.
	And my uncle reached down and grabbed me and pulled me up.
	How old are you at this time?
	Had to be three or four.
	Oh, wow.
	Real young.
	So that's another situation.
	And when I was about 11, my friend's father had a truck.
	And for a few days, whenever he pulled out, we would run, jump on the back of the truck and kind of duck down and ride for a house or two and then jump off with him saying, get off this truck, get off this truck.
	So we went to do it one day.
	And we all jumped on the truck.
	So he pulling off.
	And when it was time to jump off, he had a trailer hitch and it caught my leg.
	It caught my pants leg.
	Oh, God.
	And I fell flat on my back.
	And he's dragging me down the street.
	Oh my God.
	And the kids is yelling, wait, and I'm hollering, wait, wait, stop, stop.
	He's dragging me.
	He's about to pull off into Vanessa, which is a busy street.
	And he ended up stopping.
	And it was, you know, it was another situation where if he didn't see us yelling, you know, he was kind of looking for us to do it.
	So he, but he thought we all had jumped off.
	And so he was pulling off because he didn't see nobody back there.
	And I'm being drugged by the car.
	So these are like three situations where, you know, I pretty much should have been dead.
	And for some reason, I wasn't and wasn't hurt.
	And so, you know, I look back and say, well, it's because I had a bigger purpose to do to some of the things that I've done.
	And, you know, hopefully change some of the lives of some of the people that I've come across.
	And, you know, I just had more to do here.
	Was it God or was it just kind of like it's just, you know, it is what it is?
	I think it's God.
	I think it's God.
	I think it's divine intervention.
	It happens when you, when it's just not your time to go.
	You will not go a minute before your time.
	And you will not stay a minute when it's time to go.
	It's like night.
	You know, when night come, you know, the day, give me a few more minutes.
	I'm like, no, it's night.
	You're done.
	You know, so you don't have a choice.
	Yeah, you don't, you don't have no choice.
	That's what I believe.
	Your sister, the day you were getting that ice cream, five years old.
	Is that the same sister that got shot up?
	That's a different.
	No, that's my sister's sister.
	It's not the stepsister.
	No, no.
	Okay, I got you.
	Stepsister was named Beverly.
	Beverly.
	Okay, well, may she rest in peace.
	So you're sitting there.
	You're now, let's go to the 19 mid-80s, right?
	What's going on?
	And, you know, is this colors?
	It's colors, right?
	Yeah, I think colors, I don't know what your colors came out, but I want to say mid-80s, somewhere around there.
	85.
	85, yeah.
	So what you're, does it say, okay, 88.
	Okay, so colors is 88.
	Pretty interesting that it's later.
	I thought it was earlier.
	Me too.
	Yeah.
	So 88, 88 is when you come out, you're 20 years old.
	I think you're a June, but you just had a baby, right?
	You just had a birthday.
	Yeah.
	And August of 88, you come out with, you know, NWA's first album, which you wrote most of it, right?
	That what I read about it.
	You wrote a lot of it.
	Yeah.
	You got Trey, you got, you know, other guys that, but a lot of it was written by you.
	So fuck the police, right?
	Straight out of Compton.
	But let's go to fuck the police.
	Did you write that truly believing fuck the police?
	Or did you write that saying, I think there is so much anger towards the police, I think we're going to disrupt, and I think the market's going to react to this.
	Why did you write that?
	We didn't know nothing about marketing and react.
	We just, this is how we felt.
	We felt that this was our only weapon against what was happening, getting jacked as a youngster.
	You know, back then, that's the crack era.
	So, you know, everybody that looked like they got a little something is getting jacked by the police.
	You know, everybody that got a baseball hat or chain on, beeper, you know, anything, you're getting jacked.
	And so nice cars pulling you over.
	And so it was just overkill.
	And this was our only line of defense.
	Like, our only weapon is our music.
	And this is how we felt because even making the record, we was getting jacked even in Torrance because the studio was in Torrance, a place called Audio Achievements.
	And we'd be getting jacked, just going to get something to eat, pulling up.
	And, you know, they was just, they didn't want us there.
	And so, you know, the song came out of a real place.
	But before that, we did songs, you know, like Dope Man and A-Ball Rolling, Boys in the Hood, just kind of just talking about the environment that we all was living in and trying to, you know, maneuver through without getting killed or thrown in jail.
	Boys in the Hood, 91, right?
	Let me see.
	Yeah, July 2nd, 91.
	Obviously, you were shooting it before that, a couple years, whenever the time, you know, movie comes out.
	How much of Boys in the Hood was acting?
	How much of it was just you being yourself?
	Well, I could have played any of those roles because all those roles is a piece of how I grew up.
	You know, I grew up.
	My father was there in my life.
	I did play football, you know.
	And I could have been a damn good gangbanger if I put my mind to it, you know, a boss in it.
	So, but I didn't want to go that route.
	But I could have played any of those roles.
	You know, I knew all those guys and what life was like.
	Maneuvering.
	You know, you have to maneuver.
	It's, you know it's like being in a, in a hot zone.
	You know you can get shot anytime.
	So so at this point when, when did you say you want to do movies?
	Because the album company never said I wanted to do movies.
	So then how did they discovered, how did they find you, John Singleton?
	He came to you, he discovered me.
	Um, I was backstage at Arsenio Hall show.
	I wanted to talk to Arsenio because he had the two live crew on his show and he wouldn't have Easy E and NWA.
	And I was like, man, you're going to have Luke up there.
	You know, what he's doing is, you know, you might as well have us.
	But I never got a chance to talk to him because this intern kept, you know, talking to me about like, you ice cube, huh?
	You're in NWA, huh?
	And I'm like, yeah.
	You know, back then it wasn't a lot of videos.
	It wasn't a lot of, all the focus was on Easy E back then.
	So, you know, I talked to the dude and he was saying he was a junior at USC and he's in film class and he's going to do a movie and he's going to put me in it.
	And he's going to put all of NWA in the movie.
	That was what he said at the time.
	So, you know, I'm kind of like, you know, okay, dude.
	I'm thinking at the time, you have to go to Juilliard or something.
	I'm totally not qualified for this.
	You've never gone to acting school?
	Never, never.
	And he comes and he disappears.
	So it was just a conversation.
	And I see him a year or two later at a public enemy concert.
	It was a year later.
	And he runs up to me and he's like, remember me?
	Remember me?
	Arsenal Hall show.
	I'm going to put you in a movie.
	Yeah, right, man.
	He's like, yeah, I'm a senior now at USC and we're going to do it.
	I'm like, okay, man, whatever.
	And he's telling me, trying to tell me about the movie.
	The concert lets out and his ride leaves him.
	And he's like, cute, man.
	It's two in the morning.
	We out there in Hollywood at the Palladium.
	No, the palace.
	And he's like, man, my ride left me.
	Can you give me a ride home?
	I'm like, ah, shit, man.
	This is the second time I've never met him.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I don't even know you, dude.
	But he was cool, you know, cool dude, you know, and I didn't want to leave him out there.
	So I gave him a ride to his dorm.
	And he's telling me about the movie the whole time.
	And I'm barely listening.
	It's two in the morning.
	I'm trying to get this dude home so I can go home my damn self.
	So another year go by or some time went by.
	My manager at the time, Pat Charbonnet, she says, somebody want to put you in a movie.
	And I'm like, huh?
	You know, by then, I had broke up with NWA.
	You know, it was drama going on.
	It was like I was trying to be the best rapper in the world.
	Had just done my first solo album.
	Movie, huh?
	What?
	Yeah.
	So I forgot all about the dude.
	So she gives me the script.
	I take the script.
	I throw it in my back seat.
	Never look at it.
	She gave me sides.
	Sides are the scene you have to audition.
	So he just gave you a few pages to see what you got.
	And so I fold that up and put it in my pocket.
	And it stayed in my pocket till it was time for me to audition.
	So she told me on Monday I'll audition on Thursday.
	So I didn't look at nothing.
	I pull up to the audition.
	I pull out the paper out of my pocket.
	I'm trying to read the scene, see what they want me to do, whatever.
	I go in.
	I'm thinking it's going to be a room full of white people making a movie.
	And it's not.
	It's John Singleton, the same dude from the Arsenio Hall show.
	He's like, told you, I told you.
	Didn't I tell you?
	Put you in a movie.
	And I'm like, I'm looking around.
	I'm like, damn, they are making a movie around here.
	I'm seeing cast members on this wall and a lot of activities, pre-production.
	And I go to audition and I'm terrible.
	I mean, I suck.
	I can't act a lick.
	And he's looking at me.
	He was like, Cube, did you read my story?
	Did you read my script?
	Because you suck.
	He's telling you that.
	Yeah.
	He's like, man, I'm going to have to get another actor, man.
	How old is he?
	He's 22 at the time.
	He's a little, maybe a little older than me, a little younger, one or two.
	But he's like, yo, you know, you're not good.
	And I was like, yeah, man, I didn't know what I was saying or reading.
	I just picked it up on the parking lot.
	He said, Cube, dude, go home, read my whole script.
	Read the whole script and come back tomorrow.
	Give you one more shot at it.
	But if you're not better, then we're going to have to find an actor to play this part.
	I'm going to have to change my mind on you.
	And I was like, oh, okay.
	I said, okay, now I'm taking it serious because now I've had some conversations with this.
	So you're not offended.
	You're not offended at his thing.
	No, no, no, he's right.
	He's totally right.
	And I'm glad he gave me another shot.
	So I go right home and I read the script and I couldn't believe it.
	I was like, what?
	They're making a movie about how we grew up?
	Like a movie about our neighborhood?
	Like, is this movie worthy?
	Got it.
	And I'm asking Kim.
	She's like, they're making a movie.
	So I guess it's movie worthy.
	So I get it.
	So next time I go audition, I'm pretty good.
	And I'm bon.
	I just looked him up, by the way.
	He's born January 668.
	Obviously, he passed away five years ago, but he's January 668.
	He's a year older than you.
	So you do the movie.
	What's the difference between the album that took off with NWA versus Boys in a Hood?
	The level of fame and success.
	I mean, how much did they pay you for the movie, Boys in the Hood?
	Because Cuba said he didn't get paid a lot of money, like $36,000 or something like that.
	I got $100,000.
	You got $100,000?
	I got $100,000.
	So at that time, you're a bigger draw than Cube was at the time, right?
	Most definitely.
	Right.
	So you got to.
	I think the only bigger draw in the movie was Lawrence Fishburne at the time because he was an established actor, yeah.
	Right.
	So, okay.
	So which of the two put you like out in the limelight, like this, the skyrocket of overnight movie sensation or album sensation?
	Which one had a bigger vertical leap?
	You know, I would say NWA because it was like Adam Bond went off.
	It was just, you know, so radical for the time that everybody had it.
	Everybody was talking about it.
	Everybody had an opinion on it.
	Boys in the Hood, it took me to new heights, you know, just as an actor.
	You know, it's like I was getting respected for my acting ability.
	And so it opened up the door for a new career.
	Roger Ebert, I think Chicago Sun Times, you know, said I should have won an Academy Award for my performance.
	So, you know, by him doing that and recognizing me at his award show, it really set me up because, you know, the thumbs up guys were, you know, Roger and Sisco.
	Roger Ebert, Gene Sisco, I think.
	They used to, you know, do the movies and give it a thumbs up or thumbs down.
	So by him kind of giving me a stamp of approval, it opened up a lot of doors in Hollywood as an actor.
	Was that like an itch for you?
	Where you're like, I've been really enjoying this.
	Like actually watching yourself on a big screen?
	Did you?
	You know, the first time I seen the movie, you know, John, we got real cool, you know, doing the movie because he was young and he loved, you know, NWA.
	He loved my solo stuff.
	And we was just same age, you know, same interest.
	So we got real cool.
	So he showed me, he was like, you want to see the movie before he finished it?
	Bad move.
	Never show a new actor a movie before it's finished.
	Because when he showed me the movie, it was flat.
	It was not the sound.
	You know, it wasn't no sound mix.
	It was temporary music.
	You know, things were raw, unfinished, edited.
	You know, need some more.
	It was just an unfinished movie.
	And I didn't understand what I was looking at really.
	So it just looked like not a good movie because it looked, it wasn't like I was seeing cups being put down.
	I wasn't hearing the sound.
	And I was, what the hell's going on?
	Why don't feel like a real movie?
	And so I called my manager, Pat Charmin.
	I was like, yo, I shouldn't have did this.
	This was the wrong move.
	You know, this is about to be a disaster.
	And why you let me do this movie?
	You know what I mean?
	I'm not no damn actor.
	I was just beside myself about it.
	And then I called John and I was just, I just wanted the movie to go away.
	I was just like, I don't want to hear about this movie no more.
	And then he said, man, just let me finish it.
	I'm not going to show you nothing else.
	Just let me finish it and then I'll show you.
	So the screening I went to, I was like, man, I'm like, oh, man, I got to sit through this, through this thing again.
	You know what I mean?
	Night and day.
	It was night and day.
	He put the polish on it.
	He put the whoop on it, as we say.
	And it was great, amazing.
	And I was like, so happy that we did it.
	And then he said, yo, we're going to go to the Cannes Film Festival in South of France.
	And I'm like, what?
	What?
	What?
	He's like, yo, we're showing the movie in the south of France.
	I'm like, with subtitles?
	You know, I'm like, it's already LA, you know, basically gangbang story on how to survive LA.
	But how are the French going to take this with subtitles?
	They're not going to understand what the hell's going on.
	So I was, you know, kind of like reserved.
	But then, you know, we got a standing ovation at the end of the movie.
	And I look over this Quincy Jones, it's Eddie Murphy.
	Oh, shit.
	Yeah.
	And these dudes were, it was Jeffrey, I mean, dang, I forget his name.
	Jeffrey Hines or Gregory Hines.
	They all, you know, man, just praising the movie.
	And I was like, damn, if the French love this in subtitles, then when we play this in America, they're going to love it.
	Overnight Blew Up was it came out lying.
	So my guy this morning, my trainer, I'm with him.
	I'm like, so today he's got, who you have on the podcast today?
	I said, Cube.
	He says, really?
	He says, yes.
	He says, man, let me tell you.
	He's 55 years old.
	So think about what age he is, right?
	He says, when Boys in the Hood came out in Miami, he says, Pat, I went to the night it came out.
	He says there was a line all the way down.
	He says, friends weren't sitting with friends because the place is jam-packed.
	He says, the moment, giving me a visual, the moment the guy opened the door, we broke the door to go into.
	Wow.
	He's telling me the story.
	And so, I mean, obviously, there was a, the market was waiting for this.
	Yes.
	You know, it wasn't a lot of movies out that catered to, you know, the core audience, you know, as far as a hip-hop audience, an audience that, you know, now we were seeing our lives, you know, portrayed on the screen like we had seen with, you know, movies like Greece and American Graffiti and, you know, seeing everybody else's life.
	Basically, now we were, this movie was showing us our lives back to us.
	And so it was exciting.
	You know, a lot of people were looking forward to it.
	In these uncertain times, if there's anything we need is we need people to believe the future looks bright.
	So you, if you've heard about me saying this mission to you, we're on a mission to get a million people to wear this gear.
	And this is what we're doing.
	If you buy one of these hats, there's a category of buying one hat, getting the second one free.
	If you haven't yet worn this gear publicly, go ahead and test it out.
	Buy some of the gear, wear it in public, and see how many people will stop by and say, you're also watching Value Time?
	You also follow the PBD podcast?
	I do too.
	Place your order.
	Go to VTMerch.com, click on a link above or below, place your order, and represent the VT and the PBD podcast gear.
	So Tupac's two years younger than you, right?
	You're 69, he's 68.
	You're 69, he's 71.
	So at this moment, when was the first time you met Pac?
	When I met Pac, he was like a background dancer for the Digital Underground.
	Digital Underground was a group out of the Bay in California.
	Actually, their role manager, a guy named Atrian, was their, our role manager was their manager.
	He was like, we got a new group called Digital Underground.
	You should hear it.
	Their first song was a song called Do What You Like.
	And so we ended up meeting them once we went to the Bay and just checked out their show.
	They did some shows with us.
	And they used to have, Digital Underground used to have the most entertaining show in hip-hop.
	Yeah, it was like a parliament funkadelic feel to it.
	A lot of characters, a lot of unique routines and real, real entertaining show.
	Not non-gang related.
	This is the Humpty, right?
	I've seen a video of Tupac dancing on stage.
	Exactly.
	So that was his role.
	And, you know, he would rap every now and then.
	Him and Money B would do raps every now and then.
	And we just became real cool.
	You know, I fell in love with his energy.
	He was the kind who stayed up all night, never went to sleep, always come into your room trying to get you to come out.
	You know, just that, you know, ball of energy.
	You know, so.
	You and we're opposites.
	Would you say he's a complete opposite of you, or there were some similarities?
	A lot of similarities.
	You know, we both Gemini.
	So.
	A lot of Geminis, man.
	You know.
	Yeah.
	Do you know the famous Geminis?
	Yes.
	Yes, a lot of them.
	Elvis, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, John F. Kennedy, Big E, Tupac, Prince.
	I mean, it's a... Kanye.
	Yeah, a ton of you guys.
	Yes, everybody.
	So both of you are Geminis.
	Okay, so you and him are similar and you're hanging out.
	Hey, he always wants to go out.
	So the experience is good.
	But at this point, Pac is not a, you know, he's not a gangster.
	He's not a tough guy.
	He's an artist.
	He's a talent.
	Well, you know what he, what he used to tell me, man, he would be like, man, I want to do the kind of music y'all do.
	I don't or I do.
	I do.
	I do.
	I want to do the kind of music y'all do.
	Got it.
	Because he said, well, I'm from, I think it was Richmond.
	He said, man, it's raw over there.
	You know what I mean?
	They get down over there.
	And I want to talk about it.
	But he was under Shock G, who, you know, was like, yo, you know, that ain't really the route.
	You know, that's, that's NWA and Ice-T and King T, that's their lane.
	You know what I mean?
	Let's, let's stick with the more party, you know, upbeat.
	And then he started doing songs like I Get Around.
	And, you know, they was real cool and upbeat.
	But when he was able to get a solo deal, that's when he started doing the music that he wanted to do.
	And that's when he started to, you know, change and go into, you know, the Pac we know.
	Too short says, you know, whenever I was with Pac, I never knew who was going to show up on any given day.
	One day he's the revolutionary guy.
	One day he wants to go party with the girls.
	One day he's a gangster.
	One day he's an artist.
	One day he's a historian, philosopher.
	Did you kind of experience that as well where you never knew who was going to show up or Pac was just a super creative guy?
	Well, he was always the same with me.
	You know, it was always love, respect.
	You know, we was same, similar ages, and we were all in a similar situation.
	Are you a class under?
	Are you like, if we're like in high school, hip-hop, are you like a crap, you know, graduating class of 88 and he's like class of 90 where he kind of looks up to you?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	No, he got you.
	Well, you know, it was mutual love because we looked up to them because what they were doing was, you know, creatively advanced.
	Got it.
	And so, you know, we appreciated what they was doing.
	They appreciated what we were doing.
	And we were both youngsters around, you know, with, you know, EZE was the head of our crew.
	Shock G was the head of their crew.
	And so we were trying to find our voice within the structure that was in place.
	So we would, you know, conversate about how do we maneuver and do that.
	So we were close in that way, you know, in a more, you know, confident way.
	You know, we would, we would just build and kind of, you know, bounce ideas off each other.
	Like, man, I want to do this, you know, because I was waiting for my solo project at the time, too.
	So then I became solo and started doing my thing.
	And then he was solo too.
	So now he was in LA a little more.
	And we were, you know, we would run into each other at the studio and just really enjoy seeing each other.
	Did you guys ever do anything together or no?
	We did one song together with Ice T.
	I think it's on the trespass soundtrack.
	I forgot what the name of the song is.
	Yeah.
	Trespass soundtrack.
	You and UIT and Last Words.
	Got it.
	Yeah.
	Got it.
	Was there ever any talks of doing something else together?
	Like, hey, what if we did this and what if we did that?
	Or those types of conversation wasn't really being had with the two of you?
	Not really being had.
	You know, he was, you know, on his first few albums, he was really trying to find his way.
	And, you know, I was doing movies and I was kind of trying to build that career.
	And then I think he really put it together with the I think it's Me Against the World album.
	And it really started to come together production-wise.
	You know, always with his first music, he would he would triple wrap his vocals, you know, like rap it once and then wrap it right on top and then rap it again.
	And I always thought it was a little mucky.
	So when he stopped doing that, it just cleaned one track.
	Yeah.
	That's when Tupac emerged as one hell of an artist.
	And, you know, songs like Dear Mama.
	Powerful.
	You know, it's like two life goes on.
	Yeah, it's starting to put it together.
	Then he starts to do movies with John Singleton.
	I was supposed to do Poetic Justice with Janet Jackson.
	Lucky.
	But I had an issue with the script.
	So he cast Pac.
	And it was a great move.
	You know, he's a great actor.
	Then he did Juice.
	Well, it might have been the other way around, maybe Juice first.
	But, you know, he started emerging as an actor.
	And then he gets shot, goes to jail.
	And then Death Row, you know, they get him out.
	And, you know, he just explodes after that.
	What was your impression of Easy E versus Shuge?
	Both of these guys are alphas.
	What was different about Easy versus Shuk?
	Easy, you know, didn't use intimidation.
	He didn't use any intimidation.
	He just was a businessman straight up.
	So it was never any, you know, at least when I was around, never any like, yo, this got to go down or, you know, it's going to be consequences to pay.
	So what was his leverage, though?
	What was his leverage to keep people around?
	Having the best ideas, being smart, being innovative, being able to see around the corner, being a visionary, having a plan, having the resources to execute his plan, letting us be who we wanted to be and not who he wanted us to be.
	You know, he just, to me, he built a better mousetrap.
	You know what I mean?
	So everybody was going to roll with that.
	Was he a feared, loved, or respected guy?
	All three.
	He was.
	So he's a trifecta.
	Yeah.
	How about Shuge?
	Just feared?
	Respected?
	I think Suge is all three, but it might be different degrees of, you know, I think, you know, definitely feared, definitely respected.
	And got a lot of people who love Suge because he pulled them out the mud.
	You know, he pulled them out the dirt.
	And so, and, you know, he helped orchestrate, you know, one of the greatest eras in hip-hop with Death Row.
	So, you know, got a lot of people, made a lot of people famous.
	And they're eating to this day.
	So it's interesting you say that.
	Kevin Garnett said about three months ago, he says, listen, every NBA player should be thanking Michael because, you know, the whole movie air when he negotiates the contract and the mom says 10% of whatever you guys do and feel nice.
	Like, what are you talking about?
	And Sonny's like, listen, this he wants.
	I know you're not going to do it.
	Walks away.
	He said, let's do it.
	He said, we're probably going to change the game because a lot of people are going to be all happy with us.
	But if this shit works, boom, we're shaking off.
	And so Kevin Garnett, so Suge probably set up a lot of people as well where they are today.
	But EZ, I remember one story, him talking about that when he was a gangster, he was a saver and he had $30,000, which is what financed the music and the record business that he got into because he had that kind of money.
	And then eventually he did end up getting, he was on Arsenio Hall, where he put his feet up, right?
	That one interview.
	How much of an influence did you have at getting EZ to sit with Arsenio?
	None.
	Really?
	So how did that happen?
	I don't know.
	I had left the group by then.
	Okay, got it.
	So I don't know how it went down.
	Did you ever hear, one day, it's like three months ago, I get a call.
	They said, Pat, Suge wants to talk to you.
	I said, who's what Suge?
	I only know one Suge.
	He said, oh, Suge wants to talk to you.
	Yeah.
	Like, these Suge not, yeah, it's a collect call.
	He's on the other line.
	I'm like, hey, Suge, how you doing?
	Yo, what up, PBD?
	You know, hey, you need the hood fucks with you.
	He's talking to me a lot.
	What's up, I watch a lot of your stuff.
	He said, I want to talk to you.
	I want to do a podcast with you.
	I said, do I come to you?
	Do you come?
	He said, no, let's just do collect call.
	So it's six collect calls he makes, 15 minutes, right?
	And we do the podcast.
	I don't know if you had a chance to see any of it.
	And it goes, boom, millions of views.
	It's being, you know, all over the place.
	One of the things he said when I asked him about EZE and Dre, Rob, do you have the clip on what he says?
	Is it on that spot on what he says?
	Yes, this is where he talks about being with EZE and receiving a phone call from Dre.
	So here's, I'm curious to know what your thoughts is on this.
	Go ahead and play this.
	I'll say, man, I called.
	So when I asked the phone, I'm talking to him.
	I said, hey, come up here, man.
	What she walked down again, he was like, man, shoot that motherfucking head, pull his head off, shoot me in the eye, take pictures of it.
	You don't got one of those things, you know, blah, blah, blah, phone shit.
	You know, give one of those portable cameras and let me see it.
	I'm going to see it.
	You know, blah, blah, blah.
	When I hung up that phone, I see one of the saddest things I ever seen in the man.
	I'm looking at Easy.
	He said, I bought a car.
	He always phoned the one for me.
	It's like he's trying to hold back the tears because he don't want to be embarrassed by you seeing him crying because he crying because he's scared or he crying because he hurt before another man and crying in front of another man.
	Never hear him personal hair stuff on your face.
	But back to the story, he looking so sad.
	One tear starts coming down a little bit.
	Check his eye, Eric.
	I would never do that to you.
	You don't got a trip.
	I said, you don't got shiny on his face.
	This fall on this one for the one I tell you.
	Me and you always can say we hung out together.
	We get all kind of shit here, you know?
	I'm going to pause it.
	I don't know if you heard a full thing where he's saying he's on a call speaker with Dre.
	Easy sitting there.
	Can you see something like this happening?
	I don't know.
	It's hard to say.
	A lot of time that went by.
	This is my first time hearing this story.
	I'm lost.
	I don't know.
	Whether something like whether Dre would throw Easy under the bus or not.
	I mean, that's severe for contracts.
	You know, no, it's hard to believe.
	But, you know, who am I to say?
	Well, let me ask you this because I've had Sammy DeBull on.
	And, you know, when the FBI brought him in and they said, this is what, you know, your boss, Gotti, said about you, and they played a recording.
	Yeah.
	And that's when he flips.
	Yeah.
	He's like, this is crazy.
	There's no way you're going to do something like this.
	And then, boom, what do you need?
	Obviously, the Gotti family is not happy about that whole conversation.
	But you've seen the story.
	You've read about it.
	Maybe you haven't.
	But it's out there.
	From your personal experience in life, we have folks that, you know, we can say, I like that guy, but I trust him more.
	I don't like that guy, but I trust this guy more than I like this guy.
	I trust him, but I like that.
	I trust this guy more, right?
	And you kind of score people on who you trust more.
	Yeah.
	Out of these three people that you've had in your life, these specific three, which one would you say, my experience with him, I trust him the most.
	And I can't see something like that happening.
	With Dre, Easy, and Shuge?
	Yes.
	Well, I mean, of course I trust Dre the most.
	He the one brought me in the game.
	He's never done anything to me as far as contract-wise or business-wise foul.
	Neither has Shuge, you know.
	So, I mean, I would trust Dre the most.
	And, you know, out of Easy and Shuge, you know, I know him, been knowing them probably both the same amount of time.
	And, you know, I trust him.
	You know, I never felt any issues with Easy or Shuge.
	You know, with Easy, we actually had a chance to hug and make up.
	You know.
	When was this?
	This was right before he passed away, maybe that February in 94.
	How long before he's at the hospital?
	I think he's at the hospital in April.
	Oh, wow.
	So this is two months.
	Yeah, so a few months.
	And so, and Shug, you know, we've always been cool.
	Always been able to have a dialogue and talk and done, you know, business together.
	You know, he's flown me in to do, you know, videos with Dre.
	You know, we did Natural Born Killers on the Murder Was the Case soundtrack.
	So it's always been a cool relationship.
	You know, I hear the stories, but, you know, all I know is the stories.
	Who did you have beef with?
	Anybody or no?
	It depends on when.
	I'm talking in that era, in that specific time.
	Oh, man.
	I had beef with NWA in that era.
	Yeah, we had beef above the law.
	We had beef.
	You know, theirs was stemmed because they was loyal to Ruthless, and I had left Ruthless.
	We had a beef with Cypress Hill.
	More of a misunderstanding, but It still went down.
	In common, we had a it was a real misunderstanding.
	You know, I felt like he did a record that dissed the whole West Coast.
	So, you know, I felt like I needed to take up for the West Coast.
	But we got past that too.
	Was it a combo?
	Was it a reaction?
	Was it a face-to-face?
	It was a face-to-face.
	Minister Farrakhan had like a conference.
	We brought in a lot of the rappers to try to work out some of these beefs now.
	Is this post-Piggy or post-Tupac?
	This is post-Biggie, right?
	No, no, this is before.
	Before both?
	Before both.
	Yeah.
	Wow, because I thought there was another one.
	You know, the whole one at the award ceremony when Diddy and Snoop are talking, and you can tell the look on their face, they're both a little bit worried that, you know, pressure could come back to them.
	And then someone tried to bring everybody together.
	No, it wasn't.
	It was, I believe it was before that.
	Got it.
	Yeah.
	Got it.
	And that's where common and all that stuff was squashed.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it was squashed.
	You know, I promised that I wouldn't make another diss ray.
	You know, I had made a diss song.
	He made a diss song.
	I was ready to come back.
	And then we had the meeting.
	And, you know, I was like, you know, it's better to drop it.
	You know, it's having a beef in public is very dangerous.
	It's very dangerous.
	Why is that?
	Because a third party can come in and take one of y'all out, and it's going to be blamed on the guy you beefing with and not on the real person or party.
	Makes sense.
	You know, so you beefing with somebody in public and the whole world know now somebody who don't like you or don't like them can come in and do something and really you already know who's going to get the blame.
	I've seen you say in what happened to Tupac and Biggie.
	You said there was an assassination attempt on them too.
	I don't know what the word you use, but it may be that specific word that I'm using.
	You said on Tupac, it could have been something about what happened earlier in Vegas, that those guys just came back and took him out where it's not like, you know, somebody did it.
	But on Biggie, somebody may have taken him out, right?
	I think you said, correct me on anything I'm saying.
	We know of a big incident before Tupac being killed.
	So.
	You said we know or we don't?
	We do.
	We saw the tape in Vegas.
	Right.
	We're frightened.
	So, you know, when that happens, you have to think about retaliation.
	And that's always a possibility.
	And so with the Biggie, he was just out in L.A., you know, wasn't no big scuffle before.
	So, you know, he was targeted.
	He was targeted.
	I have a feeling, well, how are you going to answer this, but I'm going to ask it anyways.
	You know, you look at Rogan.
	Rogan's fascinated with the John F. Kennedy assassination, right?
	So you're going around, you're doing interviews, and hey, let me see how this happened.
	I've interviewed a bunch of guys that were part of the John F. Kennedy assassination.
	Just curious.
	Curious with what happened with Iran, you know, why I'm here, right?
	Certain events with Jimmy Carter because it affects my personal life.
	So I'm curious, right?
	Hey, you know, certain things happened with my life and marriage, my mother's side.
	They were communist.
	My dad's side, they were imperialists.
	Kind of curious on, I spoke to a pretty higher-up person from Iran on Sunday because I'm curious what's going on.
	I want to know what happened.
	It's part of my life.
	If somebody says Cube, I mean, you're on the, in that phase, you're one of the faces.
	You're one of the biggest names from that, you know, influential names.
	Did you, did it ever, was the event that big enough where you're like, I really want to find out who took Pac out or who took Diddy out or Big Yacht or not at all?
	You're like, no, listen, life happens.
	I got to move on.
	You know, if it's a choice between me finding out other things when I was a kid versus this, I'm going to let God handle this.
	This is not my doing.
	Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's events outside of my control.
	It's not my crew.
	And, you know, I'm a spectator like everybody else.
	You know, it's not my job or my mission to find this stuff out.
	You know, my friend Kibo tells me and tells the world, and I believe it's some great advice: mind your own business and you live longer.
	So I've been taking that advice to hopefully stretch out a few more years.
	You remind me of somebody, and you're going to see where I'm going to go with this in a minute.
	But Diddy, you're hearing Diddy everywhere.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So did you ever have any kind of running with Diddy?
	Did you ever do anything with Diddy?
	Any projects you worked out with them?
	I produced a few records or had his producers do a few records on my Warren Peace album, The Peace Disc.
	Yeah.
	How was he to work with?
	It was cool.
	You know, he gave us great music.
	We flew out to New York.
	And I was mainly in the studio with the producer.
	You know, he had a stable producer.
	So I was in the studio with his stable of producers.
	And I think we did some great music.
	And, you know, I really, you know, really kind of, you know, lost contact with him and really stopped, you know, dealing with Puffy around 94.
	Holy specific reason?
	Yeah, I mean, you know, they was doing their thing.
	I was doing mine.
	And, you know, I'm not the partying type.
	You know what I mean?
	I ain't never been to a Diddy party.
	Ain't never really wanted to go.
	But I don't go to a lot of people's parties.
	You know, that just ain't what I'm in it for.
	You know, you've been the one, you've been to them all.
	Are you surprised at what things are coming out with Diddy at all?
	Or are you like, you have no idea?
	It's none of my business.
	You'll live longer.
	Kind of like the mindset.
	I mean, surprise.
	How could you be surprised with anything that happens in hip-hop?
	You know, it's hip-hop is the wild west.
	So you're going to have the good, you're going to have the bad, you're going to have the ugly.
	You think he's being targeted, or some of the stuff he's got, you know, there's credibility on what they're coming after him with the tapes and the feds and rating his Miami home, his LA home?
	I believe he's being targeted.
	You believe he's being targeted?
	Yeah.
	I believe, you know, somebody, you know, has the power to pull the trigger to make, you know, this stuff, this domino effect happen.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So you think he's being targeted.
	So you don't think, you know, Shook said, you can say what you want about Diddy, but Diddy didn't learn to like young boys.
	He learned it from a man named Clive Davis.
	He threw Clive Davis in there.
	It doesn't sound like you're part of that camp.
	You're part of the camp that you think he's being targeted.
	You know, I don't know enough to even be able to be specific on any of this stuff.
	It's just all speculation.
	I just know he was cool up until a point, and then this stuff started happening.
	So I believe somebody, you know, like I said, said, yo, he's our new guy this year or whatever.
	Maybe let me go in a different direction with this.
	I'm curious because for my own curious nature that I have.
	So I think it's about a little less than a year ago.
	Yeah.
	You make a video and I watched the video.
	I don't even know where you were sitting.
	It just seemed like you're sitting at a place and you're kind of sharing your frustration and you posted it on Instagram.
	Yeah.
	And it goes.
	Tens of millions of views, right?
	And then afterwards, you go and you're like, if mainstream media doesn't want to have me on, I'm going to go and do my own thing, right?
	Yeah.
	And then you go on Rogan, you go on Tucker, you go on, you go all over the place.
	You go all over the place and you're kind of talking and you're doing what you're doing.
	Hit Bill Maher.
	You hit Bill Maher, which was kind of interesting.
	You've had a Bill Maher situation before where you called him out directly.
	It wasn't this one.
	That was the Bill Maher of, I think, eight years ago, seven years ago.
	You guys had a moment.
	You know which one I'm talking about.
	The one that you were very cool and you just kind of put him in your place, put him in his place, but in a very respectful way.
	Yeah, I called it a teachable moment.
	Yeah.
	Teachable moment.
	Rob, have you seen this or no?
	If you've not seen this, see if you can find it.
	It's actually very entertaining.
	It's six minutes, so we don't need to go through it.
	I think it's worth for the audience to watch for themselves.
	But anyways, and I don't know if it's Tucker you're talking to or whoever you're talking to.
	You said the View didn't want to have me on.
	Then you said, even Oprah Winfrey didn't want to have me on.
	You know, when you're trying to promote your big three, you're trying to build your business and all this other stuff.
	And at that time, some people are like, well, you know, why don't they want to talk to this guy?
	Why wouldn't they want to talk to him?
	And then you say, you give him the, you know, maybe it's not, if you were to maybe put a new song a year ago, my visualization would have been instead of saying fuck the police, maybe the title would have been fuck the mainstream media.
	Let's just say, if you chose to make a comeback.
	So at this point of being in this business this long, Hall of Fame, Walk of Fame, you name it, you got all of them, right?
	Who has the most power in the entertainment industry?
	Wow.
	I mean, it's really hard to say who has the most power.
	It's some very powerful entities out here.
	Maybe BlackRock has the most power in Hollywood.
	Who knows?
	You'd say BlackRock.
	I wouldn't disagree with you.
	They're on Black Max.
	Vanguard.
	State Street, those guys.
	Maybe they have the most power in the entertainment.
	You think more than like Aleutian Grange?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	He's just, you know, he could be fired.
	He could be fired.
	Yeah.
	Lior, even these guys, these guys could be fired.
	Yes.
	Okay, got it.
	So you're going straight to the top who has the most power.
	So you think there's so much power that if they wanted to not have a guy like you be heard, they would do their best to not have a guy like you be heard?
	Yeah, I mean, it's a little too late.
	I got a lot of records out there.
	I'm hurt.
	Right.
	Right.
	So, do you know who Sonny Francis is?
	No, who's that?
	So, Sonny Francis is Google Sonny Francis.
	Are you familiar with the Colombo family?
	Yeah, I've heard of them.
	You ever seen the movie Mobster with Christian Slater?
	With, you know, you hear the story about Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, all those guys.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So, Sonny Francis is probably one of the most feared mobsters of the last hundred years.
	And he did 55 years in jail.
	Wow.
	He died, I think, Rob, at 103 or 104 years old.
	If you can go down and see what age he is when he died, 103.
	So he and I met three times in the last two years before he died.
	I was trying to do an interview with him.
	And I'm in New York and I take him out to lunch and we're sitting down, we're talking, and I'm asking about his experience with Meyer Lansky.
	I'm asking about experience with all these other guys.
	And he was very comfortable throwing, you know, the people of power, the government or the money people under the bus, but he was no way going to throw any of his peers under the bus at all.
	Yeah.
	Even if you said to him, so Sonny, what do you think about Bugsy?
	He'd said, you'd never call him Bugsy to his face.
	To you, you can call him Mr. Siegel.
	That's how he was.
	That's this guy.
	Like, oh, if you ever read about this man, he is as legit as they get.
	Some stories about one guy at their house flirts with his wife.
	You can read what he did to that guy afterwards.
	Okay.
	So he's one of those heavyweights.
	Cube, do you think it's necessary for the people of power who abuse their power to be exposed?
	Or is it not a fight worth having?
	I mean, the truth is always good.
	The truth is always good for the soul.
	You know, what's done in the dark will come to light.
	If it's the truth, then it's probably necessary.
	You think the entertainment industry is going through a major disruption or not yet?
	Yeah, man, because we, you know, the entertainment industry has to deal with artificial intelligence, you know, artificial art, artificial influence, artificial inspiration, artificial, you know, pictures, movies, music.
	And we're going to have artificial fun with it.
	Yeah, that's definitely going to be here if it isn't already, right?
	I mean, there's artificial porn, wives, women.
	I mean, there was a movie done called Her.
	I don't know if you ever saw this movie, Her.
	Yeah, I remember Joaquin Phoenix.
	Weird.
	Weird.
	Weird, but here we are.
	Right, exactly.
	So ahead of time, right?
	Kind of like, you know, where we're eventually going to be at that, you know, that time was going to be coming.
	Cube, what's been your experience this last year of going around talking to guys?
	And, you know, you've spoken openly about a lot of different issues.
	I mean, you don't go on Tucker Carlson and not get people to say, you know, why would you talk to Tucker?
	Why would you, I, you know, why would I even think you did a live one time with Alex Jones or you talk, maybe you were on like a Twitter X or an X space?
	I don't know what it was.
	Maybe one was reacting to the other, but I recall seeing something there.
	So what's what's been your experience?
	Is your experience I want to double down and keep going?
	Or is your experience, no, I'm going to back off a little bit and just go about my business?
	Well, you know, I just want to, You know, at a certain point, you know, you speak your mind and you heard.
	And then, you know, what need to be said has been said.
	And if you need to keep repeating it, the people obviously is not listening.
	So politics and all that kind of stuff used to be personal.
	Religion, people didn't talk about that stuff.
	Now, you know, people want to know what you are before they even know who you are.
	So it's become, you know, whack to talk about politics.
	It's whack.
	Everybody, especially this time around, everybody knows what's at stake.
	Everybody know who is who.
	You know both guys back and forth.
	What's to talk about?
	You know, for me, when I made my first round of money, you make a million, you don't have a few money.
	You know, you make 10 million, you still don't have a few money.
	You make a few hundred million, you officially have a few money, right?
	Where it's kind of like, all right, you know, I don't need to worry about, you know, and then you don't go to the parties like you don't.
	I'm a married guy, four kids, you know, this in what is today's date, Rob?
	I go to the parties when I'm getting paid.
	That's a different story.
	Like you said, you can call me OSHA if you're paying me.
	If not, my name is Cube, right?
	In two days, it's going to be my 15-year anniversary.
	I've been married, right?
	Sweet.
	And we take it one year at a time.
	It's a lot of work that you do it, right?
	And I used to, I was the guy you didn't know who was my girlfriend.
	And then if you knew, it's because I wanted you to know.
	I don't need to, you know, me and my girl have a relationship.
	It's our business.
	But my wife and I were dating when all of a sudden they found that they're like, you guys are together?
	Yes, for how long?
	No shit.
	Yeah, why don't you tell us?
	It's not your business.
	It's a wife.
	It's who I'm choosing to be with.
	And the people that I have double dates with, we do what we do.
	And then, you know, plays the role of faith, plays the role of all these other things.
	And what's your politics, Pat?
	None of your business what my politics is, where I'm at, right?
	Yeah.
	And I'm kind of going through that phase.
	And then you get kids and you have four of them, 12, 10, 8.
	She's going to turn two, three, because our youngest is born on our anniversary date, same day.
	And then I read one quote that leveled me.
	Remember your friend told you one quote: you know, if you mind your own business, you're going to live a longer life than if you don't.
	I read this quote that said, if you think it's foolish to study politics, you'll be governed by fools who do.
	So I read that.
	I'm like, it's either Socrates or Aristotle, Plato, one of these guys.
	I'm like, man, I don't want to do this.
	So we're creating content.
	Every time we're creating content, my guy, Mario, who's been with me 19 years, I'd say, I'm going to make content around business.
	If I even say anything about politics, stop the video.
	So we're shooting video at 11 o'clock at night, and our audience mainly is business.
	We run consulting from consult for 5,000 businesses, 60 plus countries, but David Consulting.
	We're doing all this stuff.
	And, you know, there's a lot of businesses we run.
	And, hey, Pat, you're talking politics again.
	Why'd you stop me?
	Pat, it's politics.
	Damn, you're right.
	Stay away from it.
	So I'm staying away from it.
	Going back to business.
	Boom, boom, boom.
	Going back to business.
	Going back to business.
	You're flirting, right?
	It's kind of like Best Drawn UN.
	And eventually I'm like, you know what?
	I'm not going to let the fear of them trying to ruin your life prevent me from speaking about common sense because if I don't, my future grandkids are going to look back and say, Grandpa, how come you didn't do anything about it?
	Look at what happened over here right now.
	What's this all about?
	You know, I'm an LA kid, you know, to live and die in L.A. I'm an RBO posse.
	Don't give me no bam or weed.
	We don't smoke that shit.
	I'm a rap and forte.
	I'm a master ace.
	It's the INC ride.
	It's the ride.
	I'm a kid frost, right?
	I'm that guy.
	I'm a 1.8 GPA, you know, regular guy that's not supposed to do anything in his life.
	There's nothing special about me that I'm supposed to do.
	So you give me this life, and then I don't want to use all this you gave me for good.
	What am I afraid?
	Am I worried about walking on stage?
	And that's what I grapple with, right?
	As an individual myself.
	Do you ever find yourself grappling with that or not really?
	You know, I could look at the different ways to connect with the public, right?
	You could do a podcast like this.
	I could do my own daily podcast and tell everybody what I'm thinking.
	Or I can do music.
	I can do movies, something I enjoy doing a lot more, and say what I feel in the art and let the art do what it do.
	You know, people interpret it the way they want it.
	And so to me, that's a better place.
	I don't want to be a politician.
	I just want to give people good information if I got it.
	So, you know, I use the art to do that, just like a painter.
	You know, you paint it, you put it on the wall, and whether people like it or not is their problem.
	You know, you're gone painting the next painting.
	Like, you know, every picture you walk by, the artist is not sitting there saying, Do you like it?
	Did you like it?
	I did this.
	Did you like it?
	I did it.
	The artist is long gone.
	You don't even know who he is, where he is.
	All you know is you got to deal with what he put on the wall.
	You can look at it, not look at it.
	You can love it.
	You can hate it.
	But that's your problem.
	That's something you have to deal with.
	His job is done.
	And that's how I like to express myself through my art.
	And you either like the song, you don't.
	You like the movie, you don't.
	And I'm going to the next.
	Yeah, I think it's validated that you're loved, bro.
	You're not a liked guy.
	You're a loved guy.
	We love you.
	We don't like you.
	You know what I'm saying?
	And I'm talking from a standpoint of a fan.
	I'm a fan.
	I mean, we're not buddies.
	We've never broke bread.
	This is not like, hey, Cube and I are friends.
	We've never had dinner together.
	It's the first time you and I are even interacting.
	So I'm coming from a place of, you know, we've had both a good life with what we've done.
	And, you know, we're still in the game.
	You're doing big three.
	You're doing a bunch of other things that you're working on, which is impressive.
	We'll get to that in a minute.
	But I think the difference is with the artist is imagine if they took the brush away from the artist.
	That's the problem, right?
	What if we get to a point where the artist can't have the brush anymore?
	And that's what a lot of artists feel like, you know, the entertainment industry has flirted with.
	And that's the frustrating part.
	When I talk to different people, I'm in LA last week.
	I only go to LA two weeks ago.
	Two weeks ago, Rob?
	I'm in LA two weeks ago.
	And I'm speaking at the annual Chases Small Business Owner Symposium.
	I'm there with Christina Yamaguchi.
	I don't know if you remember the figure skater.
	And then it's Sean White and Sofia Vergata speaking at this event.
	So then we go and meet with a director of a couple movies you're familiar with.
	I'm like, so what's happening with Hollywood?
	How much has changed?
	Man, it's a very different life today in California, right?
	It's a very different life in L.A.
	I pulled up numbers to see what homelessness was in 88, mid-80s, late 80s in L.A. versus where it's at today, okay?
	And then you look at crime versus today.
	You look at the streets.
	I used to go to Denny's at Baldwin, is it Baldwin Park?
	The one with the movie theater where there was a Denny Sizzler.
	So there were Sizzlers there right there.
	And I used to speak there all the time.
	And so that was, my dad had a 99 cent store down the street from Great Western Forum.
	He worked there 15 years.
	They knew him as David, you know, and right next to video 2020.
	If you remember video 2020, my dad's store is right next to it, wall to wall, right?
	So, you know, I mean, you go from that to now today with California.
	You look at the homelessness today in California, you see the mess in California.
	And I thought I was going to live and die in LA.
	It's the place I've lived the longest, 24 years.
	Yeah.
	Minus my time even in Iran.
	I lived there 10 years, year and a half in Germany, refugee camp, 24 years in LA, two and a half years in Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee when I was in the Army.
	Five years Dallas, three years Florida, but it's 24 years LA.
	You tell me the freeway, I know, you said Linwood.
	I know Linwood.
	You tell me all, I know these places, right?
	And I left, went to Dallas, and then I'm eventually here.
	Do you think you're going to live and die in L.A.?
	I hope to.
	You know, I love Los Angeles.
	I can't imagine living anywhere else.
	So I'm going to ride and die.
	Hopefully it won't fall into the ocean.
	You know what I mean?
	But the big earthquake, if it do, I'm going to be riding it on down to the bottom.
	You know what I mean?
	I'm going to ride it on down to the bottom.
	And so, you know, that's my favorite place in the world.
	And so I'm going to always want to be in California.
	What do you love most about California?
	Everything, you know, the weather.
	You know, in California, you can go from the snow to the ocean in two hours.
	You know, so it's big barrel.
	Maybe 90 minutes, you know, yeah.
	So it's a great place.
	Got everything in between, the scenery.
	It's just beautiful.
	Obviously, I think you're a diehard Laker fan.
	You almost talk like you own the Lakers.
	Yeah.
	Well, I'm a lifetime Laker.
	You know, them other guys can get trapped.
	By the way, I looked at the list of things that, you know, favorite musician, Michael Jackson, right?
	Jaws, favorite movie, right?
	All these things.
	I'm kind of like, you know, what are you doing?
	Michael's my favorite singer.
	Prince is my favorite musician.
	Interesting perspective.
	Favorite song of Michael?
	Oh, man.
	My favorite song of Michael.
	Oh, my God.
	He's got a lot of them.
	It's not like it's going to be.
	He's got so many hits.
	It's hard to say.
	But I guess I would go with, you know, it's hard to beat Billie Gene, man.
	It is hard to beat Billie Gene.
	Yeah.
	Top five Lakers all time ranking.
	I think you've done this before.
	I think, I don't know if you've done this before, but I'm assuming you're probably going to have it.
	I think I know who your number one is, but I'm actually curious to two, three, and four.
	I mean, my number one is Magic Johnson.
	Right.
	My number two is Kobe Bryant.
	My number three, it would be Shaquille O'Neal.
	Number four, Michael Cooper.
	Michael Cooper.
	Michael Cooper.
	Wow.
	Michael Cooper was no Cooper, no rings.
	Yeah.
	Who's your five?
	Number five, I will put on, let's say, James Worthy.
	Big game James.
	Big game, James.
	He always played better in the playoffs than the regular season.
	You know, I had James on at one of our events 12 years ago, and I asked him a question.
	I said, so what was the dynamic with you and Magic when you guys were kind of, maybe even 13 years ago?
	He says, you know, when he said, when I came to the Lakers, I was a number one draft pick.
	Like, I was better than Michael in college.
	I'm the guy that's coming in, right?
	You know, you better treat me as that.
	And he says, I'm about to be traded.
	And he says, one day Magic comes in and Magic says, hey, I just want to tell you, James, I want you here, but this is my team.
	And if you can understand that, we're going to do very well together.
	Some dynamic right there.
	Yeah.
	And he says, James walked away and he says, you know what?
	He's right.
	This is his team.
	After that, they had zero problems.
	Yeah.
	I mean, Magic bowed to Kareem.
	Yeah.
	You know, not bowed, but just said, hey, you know, I'm coming in to help Kareem win.
	And, you know, it's not about me.
	But at that point, it was about him.
	About Kareem.
	About magic.
	At the point when Worthy came in, it was about magic.
	So it was only right that Magic told Worthy what it is.
	Makes sense.
	Yeah.
	Hip-hop.
	Would you think hip-hop, you know, when you had this professor here from Harvard?
	What was his name?
	James Fryer.
	I want to say, maybe I'm not saying his name properly.
	Dr. James Fryer.
	Can you type in, I think Dr. James Fryer?
	I don't know if you've heard of him or not.
	Cube.
	He's fantastic.
	Okay.
	If I get his name right, is it?
	Put in Fry Robin.
	You should be able to pull it up.
	You're taking a long ways, Rob.
	No.
	Oh, it's going to take you a while to find him.
	Okay.
	So hip-hop.
	Okay.
	If we go through hip-hop from day one till today, would you say hip-hop's been a net positive to society?
	Roland G. Fryer.
	Yeah.
	And he's a professor that wrote a couple different things, papers, and got a lot of controversy behind it.
	I think, Rob, what was the paper that he wrote that he got heat from Claude Ingay?
	It was regarding statistics regarding police violence when it comes to police using violence against black people as opposed to police using violence against people.
	Not yet, not people of color.
	And this is a guy that he says, I went back him multiple times, and this almost cost me my job.
	He saw there's more police violence towards whites than blacks based on statistics.
	And he broke it down.
	Why?
	Because the cops are afraid, because they're going to get more scrutinized if they do do something to him.
	Anyways, so this article goes and he gets a bunch of heat for it, right?
	And he's right now working on the effects of hip-hop on society.
	Okay.
	And he hasn't done the paper yet.
	The paper is going to come out in the next three to six months.
	And you read different things.
	Do you think hip-hop's had a net positive or a net negative impact on young boys' lives?
	I think in a lot of ways it's had a net positive.
	It's given a lot of youngsters hope.
	If you think about the world before hip-hop, it was pretty corny.
	And it was really no outlets for the young youth to express themselves.
	You know, everything was being done by grown, grown men and grown-grown women.
	And there were very few outlets for the youth to express themselves, you know, on a mass level or on a major level, put it that way.
	And then hip-hop changed that.
	Hip-hop has created an industry where there was none.
	It's created, you know, more jobs than I can even speak on.
	It's created industries, created talent, cameramen, editors, engineers.
	It's created superstars, you know, from people who can't sing, probably can't sing a lick, you know, but they can still, you know, sell out stadiums and arenas.
	It's given hope to kids just like sports have to change their situation and change their dynamic, you know, almost overnight.
	And look, it's like saying, has movies helped people become better?
	You know, there's all kinds of movies.
	You know, there's horror movies, there's pornos, there's all kinds of stuff.
	But overall, in general, if you don't count all the bad stuff, you know, movies have done a lot to bring the world together.
	And so I think hip-hop has done more to bring people together, especially of all different races.
	You know, where else can you go and see kids of all different races getting into one thing, you know, one style of music?
	So, you know, of course, there's the hardcore music and everything bad in the hood is blamed on hip-hop.
	You know, a bad kid doing something in a baseball hat.
	It has to be or hoodie.
	He has to be hip-hop or it had to have something to do with hip-hop.
	And it's not true because those things were happening before hip-hop.
	Now, of course, the weapons and all the things that's on the street now wasn't there before, but they're there now.
	Hip-hop don't make weapons.
	Hip-hop don't make drugs.
	You know, hip-hop might talk about it, might speak about it, may glorify it.
	But at the end of the day, these things are manufactured by conglomerates and corporations.
	Hip-hop don't, you know, leave train cars open full of weapons in the hood where, or U-Hauls or, you know, that has nothing to do with hip-hop.
	That has something to do with a power structure that want to keep the status quo.
	So overall, I believe hip-hop has helped the world be a little more honest with itself.
	Almost like a form of comedy.
	I think maybe the better comparison would be a comedy, right?
	Where comedy allows you to, like, you know, sometimes Dave Chappelle gets up and he tells some jokes.
	You're like, okay, I crossed the line right there.
	But you know what?
	Maybe it's a form of being honest with the market and you decide.
	If you don't like it, he's like, look, you know, I'm for this thing when he got up one of the jokes he said, he said, you know, ladies, I'm kind of with you.
	It should be on you to decide your body, your choice, if you want to keep the baby or not.
	I agree with you.
	It should be your body, your choice.
	Now, if it's your body, your choice, I should also have the choice whether to pay child support or not.
	That should be on me as well, right?
	And you see the ladies at first, they're all like screaming with him and then like, boo, you know, and he's kind of like, wait a minute, why are you pissed now?
	You know, and he gets into his whole thing that he does.
	I get that.
	You know, I think about when I was a kid and I'm listening to Hit Em Up, my workout playlist.
	You hit them up, right?
	You know, and then you listen to Easy E Real Mother, you know, and then you listen to Mo Murd, you know, Mo Murder, Mo, or and you remember that one song with, what was it?
	We're not against rap.
	We're not against rappers, but we are against those thugs, dogs, dogs.
	Remember that whole, you know, who was a bone thugs, right?
	That came out with that song.
	So, you know, that's my playlist.
	And as a kid, to me, it was rage I had on why am I living this life?
	And this was my way of connecting, right?
	Where it's kind of like, man, there's an outlet to it, right?
	So, you know, I was internally friends with these, you know, these rappers.
	I was hanging out with you guys.
	You know, it was a good day, right?
	One of the greatest hip-hop songs of all time.
	Some say top five, top 10.
	That's you, right?
	Hey, today was a good day.
	All right.
	So, but then, you know, you fast forward and this guy said something very interesting.
	I'm not done with the research, but let me tell you what I did find.
	I said, what's that?
	He said, in the projects and in the hood, hip-hop did well because it helped spring people out.
	He said, but hip-hop, and again, he's not done with it.
	I don't want to quote him on this.
	He needs to come out here, tell us what it is.
	He says, in the areas it hurt is communities that they don't have a tough life.
	You know, they're living an okay life.
	And now they're thinking they're gangsters.
	You're going to a private school.
	You're not a gangster.
	Now you're going to school and I got a gun.
	Let me tell you what I got.
	So it made some of those kids act like they're tough and you're not really tough.
	So it helped the ones here, but it kind of hurt some of the other communities that maybe weren't exposed to this life.
	I mean, when you listen to Brenda's Got a Baby, that's a, you know, Brenda's Got a Baby, and then the dumpster, and you're like, remember that whole scene in the movie you guys did?
	I think, did you do it in your, was it straight out of Compton?
	What movie was it wasn't straight out of Compton when he's negotiating, maybe, no, it wasn't a straight out of Compton.
	I don't know what movie this is with Tupac, where he's negotiating with the producer.
	It could have been a documentary where he's like, I want Brenda's Got a Baby in the album.
	No, we're not going to do it.
	No, it's got to be in the album.
	I'm telling you, we can't put this in the album.
	They're not going to let us play this on the radio.
	What are you doing, Paul?
	I'm not doing this if it's not.
	You know what CI talking?
	I don't know which movie it is.
	But guess what?
	Brenda's Got a Baby.
	You know, it's telling a story.
	He's not making, you said Richmond earlier, right?
	And this is some of the things that he's seen.
	What do you think about that argument?
	That maybe it hurts some sects, you know, some communities, but it hurts some other because it brought in, you know, mindsets to safer communities that are not dealing with these issues.
	Well, my thing is, well, what issues are they dealing with in those communities?
	Because it might not be gangbanging, but it could be other issues that they're dealing with.
	You know, this has always happened with art.
	You know, sometimes, you know, life imitates art and art imitates life.
	You know, when I think about, you know, people that do what they do, you know, like a Stephen King of the world who, you know, usually makes horror movies or,
	you know, sometimes very violent stories and he's allowed to be that type of artist without, you know, without somebody doing a psychop on what is done to the world.
	You know, sometimes guys paint a beautiful picture, sometimes they paint an ugly picture.
	But the key is, you know, you've listened to the music.
	You've named some of the most hardcore records ever, and you've turned out fine.
	It's mindset and it's individuals.
	And, you know, some people don't know how to take it, but that don't mean you should stop doing it because a few people don't know how to accept the music and look at it as music and art and continue to live their lives.
	You know, everybody walked out the movie, you know, wanting to be Bruce Lee.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Everybody walks out the movie thinking they Bruce Lee.
	And so that happens with good art.
	You know, people are going to want to, you know, when, you know, Barbarino was on TV, you know, on Welcome Back Carter, you know, being, you know, basically a thug in the classroom, you know, with a red rag hanging out of his pocket and portraying that.
	You know, you had a lot of people that wanted to be Barbarino.
	You know, Fonzi come in.
	He cool.
	Got the leather jacket.
	A lot of people going, hey, I'm the Fonz.
	Nobody want to kill Happy Days because, you know, now their friend out here in the suburbs got a leather jacket on and, you know, and he's saying, hey, all the time.
	So, you know, this happens when you do great art.
	People want to imitate it.
	That don't mean you kill the art for it.
	Yeah.
	Do you still listen to hip-hop?
	Yeah.
	What do you listen to?
	Do you have like workout playlists or whatnot?
	Not on that tip.
	You know, I listen to what's hot and I'm doing music myself.
	So I'm mainly listening to what I need to do better on my own stuff.
	You listen to any old school stuff or not?
	Yeah, everything.
	What do you listen to?
	You know, I can go back and run DMC, you know, some of the great albums.
	It takes a nation of millions to hold us back.
	Another great album.
	LL.
	You know.
	LL.
	Even Fat Boys.
	Yeah.
	Listen to it all.
	Wow.
	The only thing, and I'm going to come back because I want to see who's on the top five hip-hop rappers.
	I'm curious to know what you'll say about that.
	But you know what it is with me today, Cube?
	And I'm just transparent about it with you.
	So, man, I was so caught up in my life that when I did a 180, for me at least, one day, like, for me, hip-hop stops in 03.
	I know nothing after 03 with hip-hop.
	When I tell you nothing, I'm telling you, I know nothing after 03.
	You tell me, Kendrick Lamar, I can't tell you a song.
	You tell me, you know, Lil Wayne, I couldn't tell you one song.
	If I hear it, I know it.
	But I can, now you go back 90s, I'm with you.
	I can hang with anybody, even R ⁇ B. You bring anybody R ⁇ B, Aaron Hall, Uncle Sam, I can go weird stuff.
	Like as yet, I can go, you know, all of that because that was my era.
	That was my crew.
	That's who I was with.
	But then one day I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing this no more.
	So I replaced everything I listened to in the car.
	Radio's not been on in my car since 03.
	It's been only books.
	And I realized if I listened to too much hip-hop, the way I would speak would change.
	My rage would change.
	My intensity would change.
	And maybe in certain situations, that's a good thing.
	But when you're running a business and you want to get the creative juices flowing, I lowered that up.
	I went back to more 80s.
	I listened to more Grandma's Got Um, you know, Grandma's Hands with Bill Withers.
	And I go to, I love that song.
	It's one of my favorites.
	Go to that, you know, 70s, 80s to just bring it here instead of trying to take you there because I believe words have power.
	You know, affirmation, it's got a lot of power.
	So, even earlier, when you were talking about your friend who gave you that counsel, you know, mind your own business and you live longer, and you said it's not necessarily, you know, what you say publicly, it's what another person that's not involved in the debate or the discussion can interpret that in a certain way and come back and try to harm certain individual, right?
	And they're not even involved.
	This gangster's not even a party.
	What are you doing?
	This John F. Kennedy, what are you doing?
	It's not even, it's not even a part of you.
	What are you doing?
	And then that can get somebody with certain words to say, you know what, I'm going to be the hero and I'm going to come out there and do XYZ.
	That's the only risk, you know.
	That when I go there, that's what I think about in that part.
	Well, you know, mind your own business and you live longer.
	It doesn't mean ignore everything that's going on.
	No, not at all.
	It means, you know, you started to mind your own business when you said, okay, I'm going to turn the radio off and I'm going to listen to books and improve myself that way.
	You know, that to me is what it's all about.
	And also, too much of anything is not good.
	Yeah, too much hip-hop is not good.
	It's like too much sugar.
	It's not good.
	You got to have balance.
	You know what I mean?
	So you got to have a little, got to have a little RB with your hip-hop.
	Got to have a little funk with it.
	Mix it a little bit.
	A little soul.
	Yeah, you know what I mean?
	You got to mix it up to have a balance.
	Maybe I love hip-hop a little too much for me to go to it because, you know, I go.
	I go.
	Yeah, we all do.
	You know, it's an energetic music that can give you a nice feeling.
	But too much of it, you know, it's not good for you.
	Top five.
	Top five rappers in the hip-hop.
	Who would you put on your top five?
	Not album, no order.
	No order, because I love them all.
	Chuck D, Melie Male, Keras1, Rock Cam, Ice T. How many times have you given that list?
	A few times.
	A few times.
	How many times do people think those are the five that are going to be on your list?
	I don't know.
	You know, you never know, but these are my OGs.
	I would throw LL in there too.
	These are my OGs that show me how to use the music and make it powerful and not just a nursery line.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I remember one time, funny story.
	You know, Jay King?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So Jay King.
	Club Nouveau.
	Club Nouveau.
	Yeah.
	Why you treat me so?
	And he had what?
	Look at all these rumors, right?
	All these rumors.
	So one day, Jay King and I started working together.
	And he says, Pat, I want to start selling insurance.
	I hear there's a lot of business in insurance.
	I love Jay King.
	If you've been around Jay King, he's a hustler.
	He's a hustler.
	So I said, Jay, we got to go talk to certain people that they have, you know, reputation and that we can sell them insurance.
	Yeah.
	He says, all right, so let's go to Beverly Hills.
	I don't know which one it is.
	He takes me to one of these hotels.
	We go there.
	We're sitting there.
	He says, let's talk to Suk.
	I'm like, Jay, no insurance company is going to let me sell insurance to Suge.
	What are you talking about?
	And he brings all these guys one by one by one.
	And then you realize, you know, this space is a very interesting.
	I was friends with Reggie Calloway.
	I don't know if you remember Reggie Calloway, the Callaway brothers.
	I want to be rich, you know, and then he had Casanova.
	Was it Casanova?
	Casanova.
	Yeah, that's Reggie Call.
	Yeah, that was them.
	CIA, your first crew, your name was CIA.
	Crew in action.
	Crew in action.
	We wanted it to be criminals in action, but Lonzo was like, man, stop talking this criminal stuff.
	You know what I mean?
	We're going to be crewing action.
	So I like that.
	After the wrecking crew, crew in that, you know, crew in action.
	So CIA, and you've said some stuff about the CIA.
	Rob, I don't know if you got the clip or not.
	I don't know which clip this is.
	We'll play one of these clips if you got it.
	Is this on Bill Rob?
	Okay, play this clip.
	You know, maybe your positions change, but I want to hear your thoughts.
	Go forward.
	Same people who own the labels on the prisons.
	Literally the same people?
	Literally the same people who own the labels on private prisons.
	The records that come out are really geared to push people towards that prison industry.
	But they didn't make you write those lyrics.
	It's not about making somebody write the lyrics.
	It's about being there as guardrails to make sure certain songs make it through and certain songs don't.
	You know, some records are made by committee.
	Meaning record company guys sit around and tell the artists, this is hot.
	Say that.
	Do this.
	We're going to have this guy write the lyrics.
	We're going to have that.
	You have, you know, the record company pushing the narrative.
	And somewhat, you know, some social engineering going on here to make sure those prisons stay full.
	So.
	Yeah.
	How much truth is there behind that?
	I think it's a lot of truth.
	If you really, remember I was talking about the Black Rocks of the world, the Vanguards of the world.
	Look how much they are invested in all these big labels and the prison industry.
	And, you know, not saying that the CIA is sitting there writing rhymes, but they may have a deal with the labels and to allow certain records to get through.
	I mean, it's up to the label who they blow up, the whole industry.
	And so, yeah, I mean, I've seen records made by a committee when it's not the artist's own thought process.
	But that happens with a lot of records.
	You know, a lot of records are, you got producers, you got ANR people, you got people who sit there and say, okay, this sounds like it's a hit.
	This sounds like it's going to be great.
	And so it's not hard to imagine a record label, you know, finding a kid that's talking the hardest and blowing him up to the top because they know, you know, some kids may be out there going to listen and, you know, like you said, be influenced to do something because this is their favorite rapper.
	So, you know, you don't see a lot of happy rappers at the top of the game, do you?
	No.
	You know any of these names, any of these people that the CIA fed them or somebody wrote the scripts for them or no?
	I'm not looking at names.
	I don't know names, you know, it's just companies who, you know, they're not, they're not going to let you put the record out unless they have a say in the production of the music.
	I got you.
	Yeah, I mean, that's kind of like you write a book and they say, hey, you can't be critical of this guy.
	Take this out.
	Or, hey, we got to talk to the lawyers about this line.
	We don't want to get sued by those guys like that.
	You're not saying necessarily to try to get internally to destroy a community like the African-American community.
	You know, I mean, I'm not saying that it's not either.
	You know, I don't know what their plan is.
	I just know that the same people who own the labels own the prisons.
	And I believe, and it's a lot of evidence out there that they make sure that the records that are put out will more than likely have a negative effect on the community and create a prison industry or a prison community where,
	you know, you got the men and women in the community going to jail often.
	So it happens.
	It's real.
	It's reality.
	Last two things before we wrap up.
	Friday 4, how is that looking?
	Better than it has in the past.
	There's new leadership up at Warner Brothers, and they see the value in making this movie.
	But it got to be done in the right way under the right circumstances.
	So right now we're just working out those circumstances on how this movie is going to be produced.
	And make sure that we got a lot of people who are big stars now who want to be in the movie.
	So we got to make sure we got enough to pay them.
	These influencers you're talking about.
	Well, you know, no, I mean, Mike Epps is a bigger star.
	Cat Williams is a bigger star.
	Terry Cruise is a bigger star.
	I got one.
	These guys are a lot bigger than they was when we did the first movie where Cat is now.
	This was their shot.
	So we want everybody to be happy and want everybody we can to get back in the movie.
	Let me tell you which one of your movies I've watched God knows how many times all about the Benjamins.
	I can't, for me, that's the one, you know, which is you ain't got a faux head, you got a five head.
	You don't watch movies, dude.
	You have dreams.
	I bet you never see it.
	You know, that movie's one of those gems, you know, that people love.
	And wherever you catch it, you can watch it too.
	I can't help myself.
	He is too good.
	And Big Three, how's that looking?
	How's that come along?
	Amazing.
	You know, Big Three, we're in our seventh season.
	We're going into week three in Baltimore.
	We're selling teams now.
	So we sold a team in Los Angeles and we sold a team to Heath Freeman in Miami.
	So it's going to be a team out here in Miami.
	And we're looking at Toronto.
	We're looking at Dallas.
	We're looking at London, New York, Detroit.
	So, you know, hopefully we can sell these 12 teams and expand the league and, you know, unlock a major fan base.
	How close were you at signing Caitlin Clark?
	Were you having conversations with her people?
	Yeah, we had conversations with our agent.
	You know, we were a little disappointed and we didn't get a chance to sit down with her and her family because we think we could have made a compelling argument.
	They probably didn't want us to make and tell her how much leverage she really has at that time.
	So, you know, it didn't happen, but, you know, we was ready for it if she was ready to take that step.
	And it was a big step, you know, playing against men, you know, in this new league.
	You know, it was a major move if she, and she probably just, you know, didn't need another challenge, you know, at the end of the day, you know, being in the WNBA with a target on your back is probably challenging enough.
	Do you watch the WNBA?
	I catch a game or two every now and then.
	Gotta.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	She's changed the numbers.
	Her, you know, average attendance, 15,500.
	That's sweet.
	And, you know, people love the women's sports because we know they want to win.
	They're playing to win.
	Right.
	And with the men in the NBA, we're not sure.
	You know, we're not sure if they want to win or are they worried about their brand?
	Do they want to be like they load management?
	You know, what is it about?
	Is it really about bringing home a ring in WNBA?
	Or you're in the real in the NBA.
	In the NBA.
	That's right.
	So you don't think it's not what it used to be anymore.
	I'm not sure.
	Are you?
	Do you are you sure that every NBA player is dying to win a championship or do they do they care about their brands finals?
	I did.
	All of them?
	I come a few games, about three games.
	Were you bored out of your mind or not really?
	I wasn't bored, you know.
	But I, but, you know, it didn't feel the same.
	It doesn't have the same weight for some reason.
	I didn't feel it at all.
	I, you know, I didn't feel it at all.
	To me, you know, when's the last time I felt it?
	It's going to sound weird.
	It's when the Bucs played the Suns.
	Yeah.
	I was sick.
	Yeah.
	They were fighting.
	There was something there.
	You know, Giannis wanted it.
	There was something about this one.
	I'm like, maybe Porzangis just completely changed the game the first couple of games when he played.
	Remember when he came in?
	You're like, dude, this guy's got four blocks in the first quarter.
	You know, there's no way these guys are 16, 4-4, you know, in the first, you know, half or first quarter.
	I'm just not excited with the NBA product today.
	I'm not.
	I don't see the competition.
	I think the last time I watched the NBA All-Star again, when they fought in that one, fourth quarter where first to 157, I think game ended 155, 157, and the type of defense, you're like, this is cool.
	And then they went away again.
	I don't know.
	Look, the last time I rooted for the Lakers, and I know this is going to be controversial for you because I know your loyalty where it lies.
	I've been a diehard Laker fan since Michael made that shot over Sam Perkins.
	Oh, wow.
	Because that's when I came to the States.
	And I mean, listen, Sedale Treat.
	I'm talking Nick Van Axel.
	I'm talking Elvin Candle.
	Campbell, Kevin Smith.
	I think Kevin Smith was his name.
	34.
	Kevin Smith, what was his name?
	Kevin.
	Anyways, we had it number 34.
	That's my zero.
	Travis.
	Not Travis.
	This is in the 90s.
	If you go to 1994 Lakers squad, 1994 Lakers squad, you would see this.
	Sidale Treat.
	Nick Van Axel was exciting to watch, left-handed, who was a fighter.
	What's the squad?
	Can you zoom in?
	Sam Builly Campbell.
	Remember when Cedric Sabala scored that 50 points in a game?
	Oh, Tony Smith.
	I'm sorry.
	Tony Smith.
	Yeah.
	Did you ever see Cedric Sabalis' rap song?
	Do you remember that?
	I think I did see it.
	Yeah.
	Flow on.
	It was called Flow, Flow On, Flow On.
	It was terrible, but I mean, he scored 50 points in a game.
	I liked him.
	He was our guy.
	You know, when we listened to him back in the days, anyways, Cube, it's been a pleasure.
	It's been an honor having you on.
	Congrats on an incredible life.
	I don't even want to say career because some people have great careers.
	You've had an all-around great life.
	You're part of a community where your son wants to work with you and collaborate with you and do movies with you.
	You're married for 32 years.
	You love where you came from.
	You give respect to the people that came from your industry.
	There is a lot of strong, deep character with you.
	And there's a lot of depth with you.
	And I applaud you.
	I respect you.
	And I really enjoy this conversation.
	Thank you, man.
	Thanks for having me on.
	And yeah, we had a good time.
	You know, I talked about some things that I've never talked about in the interview.
	So it's a great setting.
	I appreciate it.
	Take care, everybody.
	Bye-bye, bye-bye.
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