Oct. 28, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:06:00
3875 Music Industry Insider Speaks Out! | Kaya Jones and Stefan Molyneux
In the aftermath of the Las Vegas Shooting, former Pussycat Doll and Platinum Recording Artist Kaya Jones had a revelation and spoke her mind about the abuses she experienced in the music industry. Kaya Jones joins Stefan Molyneux to discuss leaving the Pussycat Dolls, why she referred to the group as a "prostitution ring," the role of fatherlessness in such predation and the opposition to those who speak out about child abuse. Kaya Jones is a Platinum Recording Artist and was one of the lead singers for The Pussycat Dolls who sold over 15 million albums and 40 million singles worldwide. Since leaving the group, Kaya has published several successful albums including Confessions of a Hollywood Doll, Kaya, Rise of the Phoenix, The Chrystal Neria Album and What the Heart Don't Know.Website: http://www.kayajones.comTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/KayaJonesYour support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux of Freedom Aid Radio.
I am here with the one, the only, Kaya Jones.
She is a platinum recording artist and one of the lead singers for the Pussycat Dolls, who sold over 15 million albums and 40 million singles worldwide.
Since leaving the group, she has published several successful albums, including Confessions of a Hollywood Doll, Kaya, Rise of the Phoenix, the Crystal Nuria album, and What the Heart Don't Know.
The website is kaya.com.
Well, thanks so much for taking the time.
I'm not going to do this as an audition for a backup singer or dancer.
We're actually just going to have a chat about corruption in the music industry.
I was tempted, as you can well understand.
Oh, man, that's hilarious.
Thank you. That was a beautiful introduction, by the way.
So, you, I mean, let's go deep backstory here, because you loved singing, loved dancing from being a kid.
You were born in Toronto, right?
And then you got your first signing, 12?
12, is that right? Wow.
Yeah. I don't even want to compare what I was doing at the age of 12 with what you were doing at the age of 12.
So I wonder if you can tell us a little bit.
I started modeling when I was nine. No, I just knew I wanted to entertain.
I started stretch classes at two or three and then went into ballet, modern hip-hop, jazz, belly dancing, tried everything, ballroom, you name it.
And then did acting, started acting when I was about five, started violin when I was four.
So I was always, it was always the art.
It was always art. Wanted to perform.
I didn't know I could sing.
Prayed at the foot of my bed for about seven years after hearing Nina Simone and Whitney Houston sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl in 1991.
And that was kind of it.
I was bit by that bug.
I was like, I want to do that.
And yeah, just prayed to God every day that one day maybe he'd allow me that opportunity to sing and never studied singing and Then just one day I was able to sing and never taken a vocal lesson since, just utilized what I have.
I've had coaches send me warm-ups and stuff, but everything is just pretty much on the fly.
But I think the violin gave me somewhat of a good year.
So I signed when I was 12, but I went into modeling when I was about 9.
So my mom was very supportive.
She was an artist as well, so I was lucky.
I was lucky that I didn't have a You know, parents had said, no, you know, don't go into that.
They were very encouraging. Well, it's funny, too, because if you can sing, the violin is like the last instrument you ever want.
Because, you know, I did like violin for like 10 years.
And if you want to sing, that's like the worst.
Yeah, that's like you don't want to be that instrument because it's got you all kind of squished up to one side.
And did you just did you sing along with someone and then suddenly the voice kind of came out?
I mean, that moment where you say, hey, I can actually do this pretty magical moment.
Oh, no. I would lip-sync to my teddy bears.
You know, every year it was someone different.
So it was like Celine Dion one year, Mariah Carey one year.
And I mean, when I first started to sing, it was an audition for my friend and I was actually going to help his audition and I taught him the dance moves and he wanted me in the room.
And it was for a tribute act.
It was actually to be a tribute artist for Britney Spears.
Her first single had just come out.
And yeah, they asked if I could sing and I said, no, I can dance.
And I just decided to mimic her because they said, would you audition on the spot?
And I just mimicked her as best as I could and got the job and my friend didn't.
And it was kind of weird because I was like, well, This is kind of not expected.
And I felt really bad for my friend because he took me as like a guest and I felt horrible.
I felt horrible. Hey man, it's a cutthroat business.
It's kill and be killed. You know, I appreciate the sentiment, but if you get the audition, you get the audition.
Yeah, exactly.
But I said no to the job because I thought if I was really going to do this, why would I want to mimic somebody?
Why wouldn't I want to just be myself?
Then my mom took me to karaoke bars because we didn't have enough, you know, why I didn't go to vocal lessons wasn't because we couldn't afford it.
I mean, with all the other things I was doing, we couldn't afford it.
And she was a single mom.
And so basically, yeah, karaoke was a good option because it was a dollar a song.
And so she'd have me go sing something.
And if I, you know, wasn't my best, she'd go do it again.
Well, it's funny because karaoke is sort of an instant way of learning how to work a crowd and how to get some moves and how to get some attitude and how to work.
Even that little thing about like you see, it's probably a bad gesture to do on video, but you see Celine Dion with that microphone when she really belts full lungs.
She's got to like hold it at arm's length because otherwise she's going to blow the eardrums of the audience wide open.
So I've done some in my day.
It's not a bad way to get started with that approach.
Yeah. Yeah, so that's more or less how I started.
And then I got signed when I was 12 to this Polish pop artist.
He had a song called Spring Love, which was a dance song with Stevie B, that Spring Love version, but his version on it.
And it did well in Poland.
And we were supposed to do my demo as a trade.
I was doing his album for a trade of my demo.
And he was like, oh, no, let's do another album.
And I was like, I really want to, you know, shop my music.
So I bombarded Eminem and Dr.
Dre Torbus. They were doing Up and Smoke and met proof from D12 and introduced me to Al Lewis.
Al Lewis was the road manager for R. Kelly and Within six months, I was signed to R. Kelly.
So that was the beginning of my career.
First of all, I think it's every single's dream to be big in Poland.
It's even better than being big in Japan.
So you should have been happy about that. Now, as someone who's now, and we'll get to sort of the meat of the matter regarding your recent comments.
Are you Polish? I'm sorry? Are you Polish?
My name is Polish.
It's Stefan with an F, so there's definitely family background.
I'm sort of half-Irish. Half German, but there's definitely some Polish in the deep DNA down in there somewhere.
So it's funny because the stuff you've been talking about lately, which we'll get to in a nice circuitous timeframe, but if I were to sort of write a movie or write a script where someone was going to come out talking about sexual corruption in the music industry, having that person discovered in the orbit of R. Kelly would be something where people would say, no, no, that's too obvious. It's too obvious because he's had his own problems.
With that as well. But you have said in your interviews, Kaya, that you didn't really experience any of the predatory stuff that showed up later when you were younger.
I didn't. That's what's actually really tough is, you know, I also have known Hugh Hefner and I'm hearing a lot of things about him coming out.
It's weird. I think it's case by case, clearly.
And or people are fibbing at times.
We have to dig deep and there has to be some kind of root to the truth on this.
R. Kelly was never inappropriate with me.
I mean, I have no reason to lie about that if I'm talking about everything I've gone through in the music industry.
Not to say that I didn't see artists he worked with that were inappropriate with women.
I saw a lot when I was very young, but he himself was never inappropriate with me.
So I was super professional.
And there was always a lot of people around me and I was very, very young.
So no, he did not pee on me.
No, he was not interested in me.
It was nothing of that measure. He was a very, very serious man.
It was almost like boot camp vocally with him.
I'm grateful for that because he taught me to be a better singer.
Yeah, I never went through it.
Was your mom, I guess it seems like you have a strong bond, was your mom sort of protective or around you?
I do sort of get this idea of stuff that happens inappropriately to child stars or to child performers may have something to do with a certain amount of distance between parental intimacy and being around the kid and being protective and dead mother kind of thing, although not the dead mother you're talking about later.
Yeah, no. My mom was around, but I had an advisor.
I had a manager. My advisor was R. Kelly's aunt.
So I had a little army around me of people that took care of me.
So no, it was never inappropriate because I was never really alone with that person.
When you're 17, 18, you're living alone.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yes.
Well, I left R. Kelly because 9-11 happened, or sorry, Aaliyah died August 22nd.
9-11 happened. This is all in the same year.
And he was moving his work over to another company.
And then this tape comes out, which is very suspicious if you're moving companies.
And that was kind of it for his talent.
We all had to just be shelved and held.
No one would buy me out because nobody knew who I was.
I was being developed. I was under a production deal.
However, other talent he had, he had Gaudi and Boo.
They got bought up by Cash Money.
They did the song Fiesta with him.
Really talented boys.
And I was just held.
And for three years or five albums, whichever was greater, Crystal, Naria or Naria is my real name, which is why the last album is actually my name.
It's my reveal of who I am finally, not just Kaya.
Kaya is part of me, but it was a persona and it still is.
And it was a name to get me out of my R. Kelly contract.
I had to ask him, hey, can you release me if I go under another name?
And he said, sure, if you can get a deal under another name, you're good.
Went, auditioned for Capitol Records.
Julian Raymond and Andy Slater signed me to a development deal.
Julian, I think, is over at Big Machine in Nashville right now.
And yeah, we went into live instruments and me being able to sing and jam with real musicians.
And the development was so extensive into punk.
We had Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols came in and said, You should put Jones at the end of your name and tell me about my daughter.
It's really punk rock.
And I thought, who can say a saxophist still named him?
Take the name. So I took Jones and that's how Kaya Jones was born.
And I knew that punk rock was not who I was.
And in the first right of refusal, the 90 days after the development, I asked if I could walk away and they accepted.
And that was a bit of a struggle of understanding the paradox of how contracts work yet again.
And then, you know, went and auditioned for the Pussycat Dolls and went from the 2000 to the 200 to the 40 to the 20 to the 2.
Sorry to interrupt. Was that a blind audition to begin with?
Did you have someone you knew who got you in?
They had invitation-only auditions, and I called a manager, actually, and asked him if he could help me get one because I had been signed to R. Kelly and signed to Capital.
So if you'd had anything like that, you could get an invitation, but someone had to submit you.
And he said, oh, I already have a girl going.
You're probably not going to get it anyway.
I ended up getting the job.
She didn't. A bit of a pattern.
Yeah, a bit of a pattern there, yeah.
People underestimate me a lot, I think.
And I think most artists, you know, you're not pretty, you're not skinny, you're not this, you're too short, you're too fat, you're too small, you're too big.
You know, inevitably it comes down to when everyone goes away, can you command or demand or pull focus?
And so they wheedled down the 2,000 girls in, literally in just dancing alone, we hadn't even sang yet, to 200.
And then from there into 40 to 20 to two.
And then they brought three other girls in.
And then they narrowed us down with the five down to three.
And that was myself, Nicole Scherzinger, and Melody Thornton.
What an exhausting process, though.
I mean, how long did that take?
Months. Yeah. Months.
Yeah. Now, the view from outside, you know, you got your thigh-high boots, you got your space outfits, you got your abs, you got your booty shakes.
And it doesn't seem like there's a huge amount of creative potential.
I mean, you like to write, you like to create and so on.
Was there... Room or scope for more creative stuff within that band?
Initially, yes.
Initially, there was a lot of creative scope.
The executives wanted all the girls to try to sing, wanted all the girls to try and give names of people we wanted to work with.
I immediately picked Biff.
He'd created a lot of music for the Spice Girls.
A lot of the girls didn't know who he was.
I also chose Kanye West and Pharrell.
My guys were not picked.
They went with other men. Those men went on to do lots of good things.
At the time, a lot of people weren't going with those guys.
Initially, there was.
Then it became a controlling situation where it was just myself and Nicole or Melody.
Then more and more and more of Nicole.
Yeah, and that was tricky, I think, for the other women, for sure.
Yeah. And you've talked a lot about this sort of...
The phrase is grooming or breaking people down and so on, which culminated in some very dark processes.
But what was the initial part of that process?
You know, just a little smudge on the vision or the little bit of cloud on the sunny day.
Was there something that you look back and say...
With hindsight, this was the beginning of something that turned into a pretty dark path.
Yeah. I mean, we had a very strict owner of the Pussycat Dolls.
She came from being a dancer and a performer herself.
So it was a lot of cracking the whip.
But when you're really young, and we all were really young, me and Melody were the youngest in the group.
That It damages young girls.
I mean, being told that you're overweight or something's wrong with you or you don't have big enough breasts or your hair is, you know, nappy and it needs to be more of that, uh, more of this or no, you know, take out your belly button ring, things that define who you are starting to become.
You're in a very impressionable time where you're developing who you want to be as a woman.
You're coming into your own from being a teenager into a woman.
Um, Yeah, so the issues, one by one, we all became, whether one became bulimic or one became anorexic, or everybody became very heightened aware of what we needed to constantly look like.
That was never not discussed.
I mean, it was established. So that was very demanding.
Of course, when you're singing, you need to have food in your stomach.
You need to sustain. You're an athlete.
Dancers are athletes.
So to be really depleted is hard and you're drained and you're overworked and you're underpaid.
By the time you get advances or people doing things that are not acceptable or saying things that are not appropriate, your self-esteem is shot.
Well, there's also a lot of brinksmanship in management of artistic talent in that, I don't know if this happened to you, but there is this impression that is created among the artists.
It's like, it's this or nothing.
It's now or never.
If you fall out of here, you fall all the way back down to busking on a street corner and selling pencils at karaoke bars.
Like, there is this, you know, this bomb bay opens and you fall forever.
There's no fallback position.
And it's just like... That is like not a very creative artistic space to be working from.
No, you are 100% correct.
I mean, you learn in every profession that you're replaceable.
You as a human being, your spirit is not replaceable.
But unfortunately, in the workforce, everyone is replaceable.
And that's established. If you don't want to do it, someone else is going to get your job.
You know, if you're a minute late, and you're $20 a minute, we were taxed, when you're only making $500 a week, I mean, come on.
And you're doing, you know, how many shows?
You're selling out the Viper Room for four weeks and doing two shows a night at 8 and 11 p.m.
You're going on the road and constantly doing shows.
You're, you know, on NBC. You're on VH1. You're on MTV. You're not getting any.
In fact, I remember the first time I got an AFTRA from being on one of the shows we had done.
I think it was Divas Live. And I got a $500, a $550 check.
And I remember just being like... That's more than I made in the week with the dolls, you know, just for that one day because I had registered with the, you know, with the association that protects artists' rights.
That was a good month for me that I had an extra $500 to eat.
Now, that is astonishing to me.
I mean, I'm showing my musical age here, but sort of when I was growing up, you know, you heard about Billy Joel's problems with his accountant stealing from him, and Sting had the same issue, had to take the guy to court.
Queen's got a whole song called Death on Two Legs about being ripped off in the music industry they ended up having managed themselves.
It's very common. And you hear this kind of cliche, and I thought, okay, well, this was big in the 70s, man.
It's got to be dealt with by now.
But the disparity between the money you were generating and the money you were receiving, you'd think that the leftists would be all over this as a huge amount of exploitation.
Yeah, you would think. But, you know, I've come out as a conservative and a Trump supporter, so I'm sure that's not something they want to stand behind.
But the truth is the truth.
It doesn't matter what political side we're on.
Basic human rights are human rights.
You know, I mean, if this was any other job, you would say that that's unethical, you know, making what we were making, and the demands that were on us, and the abuse that we were put through.
And it's so strange, this disparity between the public and the business persona, because, you know, people are out there looking on you on stage, you're commanding and powerful and famous and all of that.
And people are like, wow, that's a really, really big, powerful human being.
But at the same time, in order to underpay you and to keep you under control, behind the scenes, they're just like whittling you down and grinding you down.
And so you get bigger in the eye of the public, but smaller in the eye of yourself.
And that's a really hard disparity to live with.
That's a very good assumption.
That's a good analogy of exactly the process.
That's 100% the process.
You are huge and magnified publicly.
Internally, you're that big.
So there is a moment, I mean, for myself, there was that moment, you know, of being at Divas Live, 30,000 people in the arena, 23 million people were going live to in their home that night.
Patti LaBelle singing on stage.
I'm being told how fat I was while I'm getting my earpiece put in by the sound guy under the stage.
And I get to the front of the walkway.
The other doll, one of the other dolls, Melody, she and I were coming through the audience.
The rest of the girls were coming up on a riser in the back of the stage.
And there's these two little girls in the front row.
And one was like four or five, and the other one was like seven or eight.
They were sisters, and their mom and dad were beside them.
And the four-year-old looked at me like I was Superwoman, you know?
She literally went, she's a pussycat doll.
She was so excited.
And it really just penetrated that I was giving this lie to young little girls.
And I wanted to be a Spice Girl growing up.
I looked at them like, wow.
When you look at them, they're over-the-top caricatures.
You knew who the girls were.
You can kind of remember the songs, but you knew them more than you knew their music.
With the dolls, it was the brand.
It wasn't about us.
In fact, more times than not, now people know who the dolls are because I'm shedding light on what went on inside of this.
But up until this, Most people who weren't fans, they only knew Nicole.
They didn't even know that we were in the group.
I mean, one blonde was as good as the other blonde.
One redhead is as good as the other redhead.
Anyone is interchangeable, which they had done.
They turned Jessica into a redhead after Carmite left.
And you can look at photos and take a look.
When I left, they turned Kimberly into me.
She had darker blonde hair before I left.
You know, so people really weren't sure who was whom.
And that's the disconnect where little girls can't go, oh, I connect with her.
And here I have this little girl looking at me, and it doesn't say caution, this is a lie.
This says that this is what beauty is, that this is what power is as a woman, this is what female empowerment is, this is our mission statement, which was our mission statement.
And I am going to end up fueling this little girl going into a business where she's treated in the manner that I'm being treated, and I would never want her to be me.
And I would not want her parents to think that This is what it is to be a beautiful woman or this is not the right approach and I need to leave this situation.
It was a coming to Jesus moment.
It was very heavy for me because it was the first day that I realized I am living a lie and I can't do this anymore.
Yeah, I know. Fame is a beast where everyone wants to be you except you.
And that is a pretty brutal thing.
And the other thing too is that Did you?
Because when it comes to performing, performing is always a great thing to do.
And I was very peripherally in the acting world.
Loved the performing. It was just every time I wasn't performing, people were just not great, you know?
And so being actually out there on stage under the lights with the crowd, fantastic.
Yeah. And everything else to do with it, like everything outside of those two hours or those three hours, you say two shows a night, everything out of that was pretty repulsive.
But that actual thing was the drug that keeps you going.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's what's so crazy is like, you know, even after I left and I would see the work that the girls were doing, I knew exactly where I'd harmonize.
I knew exactly where I would be in the lineup, how I would fit.
You become a pack on stage.
You look out for each other on stage.
You know, Carmique got a heel in the eye and we all made sure that she exited very quickly back to stage.
Wrapped her head with a bandana, put a hat on, and came right back out because she was scared that she was going to lose her job.
True. True.
And the other thing, too, is that when beautiful people are in the public eye, there is this great illusion that people say, oh, like people like you and so, they must feel beautiful.
I'd love to be beautiful.
It's the old thing. I think it was Plato who said, you know, there are three things that we want, wealth, health, and beauty.
But the thing is, of course, when you are physically very beautiful, what happens is everyone's standards just rise.
You know, I get a pimple.
Who cares? You know, I mean, it's my third eye of wisdom right up here throbbing away.
But of course, if you're...
Oh, we get pimples.
Right. But, you know, it's like, but if you put on three pounds, that's a huge problem.
And so this idea that sort of physical beauty, people envy that.
And, you know, physical beauty is a great thing, but...
When you have that kind of standard, it's hard to enjoy your beauty because people are constantly complaining that you're just not quite beautiful enough, as you say.
You know, people would look at you and say, wow, that's physical perfection.
But there are other people with those, you know, cold critical robot eyes saying, ah, left boob too big, right heel looks fatty, you know, where it's just you can't ever be satisfied.
Yeah. No, we build people up to break them down.
I mean, we all do it. We're all, you know, our own worst critics, too.
I can't tell you how many different celebrities I've met over the years and complimented them, and they don't know how to receive the compliment, or they downright don't believe you, you know?
You know, Fergie has one of the best butts I've ever seen in my life, and they always showed her stomach, but she has incredible legs.
You know, she works out really hard, and I remember I used to say that to her, and she'd literally say, Oh no, you know, like didn't even know how to accept it.
Because the demands are that extreme.
We're athletes. So you not only have to look a certain way and sound a certain way or be able to move a certain way, but you have to do it on a very, very high scale.
Energetically, it takes a lot of energy.
You know, and your competition is just as good, sometimes better, younger, younger.
You know, thinner, fiercer.
So it just becomes this, you know, thing of like, I gotta be better.
I gotta be my best. I gotta be better.
I gotta be better. What's gonna give me that edge?
And at the end of the day, I mean, I think, in truth, when you are a singer first, before you're pretty, before you're, you know, When you're a dancer and able to captivate movement, when you're really good at something, I think with singing, it's a very powerful thing.
You can stand up, hold a microphone, and just by opening your mouth, create people to stop or pay attention.
It's a very powerful tool.
Yeah, I never really cared about the way I looked.
I was just pressured to always not eat.
Or you're looking a little fat.
But in my head, I was like, yeah, but you can't do this.
So it was always confidence in the back of my mind, because of working with R. Kelly, that I could do things with my voice that a lot of those girls can't.
I know that. They know that.
But they could also dance circles around me.
You know what I mean? We were all very aware of what we were great at.
But that in the back of my head, I think when you are a vocalist, there's a little kind of diva attitude where you're just like, but I'm good.
You know what I mean? But I know what I'm doing.
You know what I mean? You have a little edge where you're like, do I need to do that really?
And so I think because of R. Kelly and because of Julian Raymond and Andy Slater and being at Capitol and Working with real guys, like being able to work with Josh Fries as my drummer at 16, or Mike Dimkish or Michael Ward,
and real guys that technique-wise know what they're doing on a guitar or a bass, you earn your stripes where it's like, yeah, that girl can blow, she can sing, you know, so you kind of hold your own in a setting with men that are dominant in an instrument.
So then to come into this girl group where it's like, I have to out-sang, out-dance, out-look, now maybe out-sleep.
No, I don't need to do that.
That's literally what went on in my head.
I never had to do that with them in Capital.
I never had to do that with R. Kelly.
I hold my own on stage with boys that play music, that play beautiful instruments that took them 20 years to learn.
What is this? This to me was a joke.
And it felt just very undermined of the ability of what real music is and what the integrity of music should be.
And that it is a job, but it is something that can light and inspire the universe.
And, you know, what is this?
I'm in a ring of Just constant sexual, sexual, sexual stuff.
And I think there's more to art than that.
And I think there's more to the integrity of sound.
Violin, again, that's the world I came from listening to classical music growing up.
You know, the integrity of music is real.
What is this that I'm in?
Because this has nothing to do with music.
This has to do with just selling quick records and getting everybody inspired.
And that's great. I love Britney Spears.
I love Backstreet Boys. I love all that stuff.
At the end of the day, it's not just about pop, pop, pop records.
It's about significance. Are you going to change the world for the better?
And to this day, people know Bob Marley.
They know John.
They know John Lennon.
They know Nina Simone. Their music surpasses their time on this planet.
Well, it is one of these things like Mozart didn't need to do 3,000 sit-ups a day, oil up his body and buy a pair of tearaway pants.
You know, like this wasn't particularly necessary.
And the thing I wanted to mention as well, just before we move on to the next topic, is you've mentioned a couple of times that, you know, singers are athletes.
However, I would invite the audience to try just the following little experiment.
You can pause this or maybe come back to it.
Just try a little experiment. So try this.
Try sprinting up and down stairs for five minutes.
While singing America the Beautiful.
Because that is a thing. Athletes can just go, but you can't do that when you're a singer.
So this combination, it's real.
I mean, such a complex act to be able to sing and dance, hold the notes, to have enough food in you that you don't fate, but not so much food in you that somebody takes a picture from an unflattering angle, to be able to do that intense a workout.
When you go to aerobics classes, the aerobics instructors are panting.
They're not singing, but singing and doing that amount.
A physical effort is really quite a feat.
And I admire the people who can do that.
I mean, they make it look easy, which of course is the job of the expert, but man, it's rough.
It is. Oh, no. And let me preface it by saying, I love popular music, but at the end of the day, you remember the moments where it stands out.
Backstreet Boys have done that.
NSYNC have done that. There are songs of theirs that You remember, they were magnificent.
Pussycat Dolls, to me, I didn't feel that we were moving in that realm, which is why the first album did better than the second album.
I mean, the proof is in the numbers.
Numbers don't lie. Britney Spears has been able to sustain, because she's a born performer, and she morphs.
You know, when working with her, before she gets on stage, she is that beautiful southern girl, accent and all, and just before she goes on, You literally see a switch happen, and I literally watched her lose 10 pounds in front of me.
No, not kidding.
Myself and Nicole went, did you see that?
It was that astounding.
She literally sucked her stomach in, threw her shoulders back, chin up.
It was like, boom, she was on.
That is an actress.
That is a born performer.
That is a technique. It should be about the integrity and not about sleeping your way to the front of the line.
Because at the end of the day, if you're good at what you do, you don't need to do that.
You don't. And you don't need to project that to young people.
So, okay, let's talk about some of the allegations, the more explosive allegations that you have made recently.
Okay, so in the Pussycat Dolls, you're touring and, of course, you're striving and straining and there's this whole balancing act and you're trying to figure out how to live on ramen noodles while selling millions of albums for older men.
When did...
The sexual predation or the feeling or the belief that sexual favors were required for advancement or even maintenance of your career, when did that really begin to creep in?
When one of the girls did it first.
Then you're all fair game.
Pretty much. So one of them chose to do something she shouldn't have.
Then you're all fair game. Had you guys discussed that beforehand and had a sort of idea of holding the line against those kinds of temptations?
No. We weren't a fist.
We were a bunch of fingers.
Girls from the dance troupe were fired, including Robin, in order to make room for the singers.
Myself, Melody, and Nicole were the singer-dancers, and then there were the dancer-singers.
So the dancer-singers already didn't like us.
Their friends were fired for us to come in.
We knew why we were there.
You need us to do this.
And they knew why they were there, but yeah, but you can't do that.
So there was this, you know, but me and Nicole sent home on a private plane and the rest of the girls sent home on a bus.
I mean, I don't know how you're going to be a pact when they're separating the girls that they feel are more important to them than the ones that are lesser important to them.
And you can pull tape of Jessica talking about, you know, breaking a ribbon, being sent home and never being asked back.
And not having anywhere to live, you know.
But their statement now, which I don't believe is their statement.
I do believe that that statement that was sent out after my statements on my Twitter was from Robin.
Because it's very similar journalism to her statement.
You should put them side by side.
So I feel that they're written by the same person.
And the girls have all individually talked about why they left or what went on if they've talked about it.
So I'm not, you know, I'm not making up the anorexic stuff or the bulimia stuff or how we were treated poorly.
I'm just being more honest and letting you know how much we made and that there were times where men tried to make their way into our bed or get us to be into them or sleep our way up.
The chain of command. That's all I'm doing is just shining a bit more of a light on it.
And the only reason why I did it, can I actually let everyone know?
Because nobody actually knows why I said the truth.
It had nothing to do with Harvey Weinstein, by the way.
It just so happens timing.
Timing is everything.
And this is God timing for me because I was in a shooting.
It was insane.
I could have been dead.
You're thinking, what are you doing with your voice?
You're here. You really now have to live.
And I get a Google alert from Cosmopolitan magazine, which isn't a rag mag, that's a pretty well-established magazine, that the Pussycat Dolls are coming back together.
They are reuniting.
And I'm in the press release.
Melody Thornton, Nicole Scherzinger, Jessica Sutta, Ashley, Kimberly, Carmeet, and Kaya Jones set to reunite.
And I knew that Robin was using a massacre that my name had been involved in because I was now all over the media with that incident to launch the group again.
And I said, no effing way are you doing this using 58 people that died in my hometown And I've worked really hard to get away from your psychosis of crazy.
I'm going to let everybody know what you did to us.
So that night in Vegas, you were at the festival.
You left and so you were in a sense scooped out accidentally.
No, we literally left.
I was meeting for the first time my friends, big and rich.
We had been going back and forth talking music.
I'm going to Nashville to cut a record.
I go to, you know, hang out, and John Rich says, hey, you know, we're doing this thing where we bring up our military, and we honor some veterans, and you do so much for our veterans.
They know you. I think it'd be really cool.
ExpoxyCat doll, beautiful girl, solo artist.
You be the honorary, you know, bartender, server, and we get you to give them drinks, and, you know, we sing all God Bless America, and we toast to them.
And it seemed like a cool thing, and I got asked up on stage with these guys How weird.
I'm on stage with them and it was really open and beautiful and I thought, whoa, this is really open.
I threw that thought away.
Don't think anything like that.
It was a bit too open for me.
I've done a lot of those festivals and it was a bit open.
We left stage, we're backstage, we're hanging out with different friends.
My friend DJ Silver, he was on stage with us.
He DJs with Jake.
We introduced Jason and Aldean.
And as Jason is walking up the stage, our bus pulls out and we go four minutes down the road to the Redneck Riviera, which is John Rich's bar, and they jump up on stage.
We were 15 minutes out when the shooting began.
I have friends that have friends that are dead.
Sorry to interrupt, but how did you find out about it?
I was tapped as the guys got on stage.
The guys didn't know until they were alerted, of course.
But I was tapped.
And I turned and our friend Dan said, there's a shooter.
And I said, where?
And he said, at the stage, by the stage, at the venue.
And I said, where we just were?
And he's like, where we just were. And I said, well, what's the information?
He goes, I don't know. So I immediately got to my phone and I texted DJ Silver.
Who was there. And his wife.
And I'd met his baby earlier in the day.
You know, families were there. So I was worried because his son is very little.
Thinking, like, are they okay?
Silver let me know that, you know, they were bunkered down behind the stage that they were being shot at.
And his wife and him were like, oh, you know, the baby's in the most safest place.
He's in the Mandalay Bay.
And he happened to be on the same floor.
And the suite beside the shooter.
Wow. Yeah.
And that's one of these spine-tingling forks in the road in your life, where there is this sort of sudden zoom back, right?
Where you have a long picture of your life, a larger picture of your life, not just through time, but across space.
And what are you doing in the world?
And how can you use your gifts for the better?
And in particular, Are there ways in which you can stand up more for goodness and virtue and truth and all of that kind of good stuff?
At least that's happened to me on occasion, usually around life-threatening.
There's nothing like a death scare to make you really value living and want to commit to it.
So what was the thought process that snowballed out of that narrow escape into what you began to tweet about?
No, I mean, I started to...
I was doing a lot of Fox commentary because I've done a lot with Fox and Sean Hannity, really grateful to him for the opportunity he's given me with his show.
And of course, he flew out, everyone flew out, they wanted to know what happened.
And so I was kind of in this really fast of don't cry.
I would have pockets of every interview afterward breaking down.
My manager, Patricia, knows because I would call her and cry.
Or, you know, you're holding it together.
But that's my hometown. I grew up there.
Vegas is not just I was, you know, just there as a person visiting.
You know, I have friends that have lost people.
I have friends that were there.
My first boyfriend ever that I was with for many, many, many years, the man beside him was shot dead.
You know, you meet a husband who, his wife dies in his arms, 32 years, they're married.
She was shot in the back of the head.
These people have names.
These people have families that forever are broken.
Our city is upset.
Our city is hurt. They're confused.
We don't know what's going on.
The media doesn't really want to talk about it.
You know, they want to talk about gun laws.
They want to talk about things that are not really fair to the fact that 58 people were gunned down and there's no rhyme or reason why that should ever happen in the United States.
This is not a third world country.
This is not a war zone.
This is a really well-established, financially secure country.
How is this happening where someone thinks that they can just do that and get away with it or take their life and who cares?
I mean, it just is really evil and sick.
So that week was this like, you know, pull it together.
I have to do interviews for the people that are gone.
The message needs to be told what happened.
You know, I had gone into this world of speaking my narrative of politics.
Now I'm involved in news and so It was imperative that because I'm attached to the town, because I was there, and now I'm involved in commentary, I have to continue talking about this.
Hold it together.
Don't lose it.
If those people were there, they would need someone to speak for you if you were gone.
We need to know what happened.
Talk. So that became my week.
And then doing a tribute for the people that passed away, the victims and the survivors, At UNLV at the football game and ESPN not wanting to air it because of my political views of supporting our president.
Having to take to my periscope to get people to understand what happened and the releasing the 50 white balloons from the first responders and our military.
And then I saw the press release that was released by Robin.
And I just was so mad because it was like, again, you're trying to take something again, you selfish bitch.
This is the 33-year-old me, and hell no, you're not going to use my name in a massacre because it has traction to prop your dated girl group up when you undervalued, undermined, mistreated, abused all of us.
Whether they have the guff and the gumption to come forward and say it, they all will one day.
Trust me, mark my words.
And everyone will know that I was never lying, that what I said was true.
Each one of those girls will write a book in their 40s or their 50s when certain people are dead and they may feel more powerful at that point.
But everyone will know the truth eventually.
And I just got so mad that I just said, I'm going to fear her?
Please. I could have been shot last week.
Literally. People went out for date night and were gunned down.
I'm not going to fear a dead mother from hell anymore.
She doesn't hold this power over me anymore.
I'm going to start telling people what I went through.
And it just so happened that so was Rose McGowan and so was Mina Sorvino.
So was Gwyneth Paltrow.
So was Reese Witherspoon.
It just so happened that it was all in the same time.
That wasn't purposeful.
It wasn't thought out.
And then it became clear, like, I'm not alone.
There are a lot of women that endure abuse in this world.
A lot of boys that endure abuse in this world.
And if I can't stand up now and share the truth, as now the media wants to talk about this, how am I going to be a good voice for the youth of today when their father is abusing them, or their priest is abusing them, or their teacher, or their neighbor, or their babysitter?
How am I going to be a voice for the youth if I can't stand up to a coworker and a boss?
That's a joke. I mean, you want a kid who's six or seven to tell their parent that something's wrong, but you're not setting an example for them.
So it just felt like, now I have to talk about it even more.
And the threats of, oh, you know, the lawsuits, it's like, well, bring it, let's go.
Let's do some discovery on this, right?
Let's do some discovery on it, because we can pull tape of all the girls talking about different things.
Everyone in the industry has heard it, whether they want to talk about it or not.
I can't tell you how many people have called me and go, yeah, I know what you're saying is true.
You know what I mean? They've all heard it through the whispers, through the industry.
And I still have my paycheck subs, so I can prove how much we made.
We can go down that road.
I even have old demos with all of us singing without any autotune, so you can hear exactly how we all sound.
I mean, I have contracts, too.
My recording contract, I still have it.
So we can do all of that fun stuff if she'd like to.
Because I know I'm not a real member.
I only was there for three years, but Oh yeah, they say they were just trying you out.
Just, you know, three years. They're a very indecisive bunch.
Right? But that's the thing.
So that's why I want everyone to find that press release from Cosmopolitan because under a week before, I was a member joining the reuniting of it, right?
And then a week later when I said why I don't want to be a part of this and why everyone needs to know what went down, she was never really a member.
Well then why am I in the press release a week before?
You know, it's like liars have completely forgotten that there's such a thing as the internet, where people can actually just put things side by side.
You know, you should get away with that in the past.
Yes. The internet.
So the allegations that you put forward in your Twitter about prostitution and, as you pointed, this den mother from hell who was abusive, who functioned, as you put it, as a kind of pimp.
Now, this wasn't, you know, here's some cash, you know, do something sexual, but it was a more sort of...
Well, you know, there was 10 grand for the girl who could give the best lap dance at a Christmas party.
That's cash to me. Well, I stand corrected.
Thankfully, I'm not sitting corrected.
I haven't gone into the details because I start remembering stuff.
I kept a journal. So it's so funny.
It's like you start remembering stuff and you're like, oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, so that went on.
Or if you sleep with so-and-so, you'll get further up the chain.
I mean, yeah.
What is the difference between accepting a job that's going to help you go further and I mean, I don't really see a difference.
I think prostitution is actually just a bit more honest.
It's like, well, that's what she does, and therefore that's what she is.
This is, you're an icon.
You're an idol. You're somebody that's to uphold values and things to, you know, unite people, inspire young women to be more, be stronger, be cooler, be better, be fierce, like, and really you're just a prostitute.
Like, I don't get it.
To me, that's like, that's so...
Disingenuous. Right.
There is a funny thing, too, and a really tragic thing, and I think it's as true in the entertainment industry as a whole.
Of course, we've seen it show up in the church.
We've seen it show up in professional sports now.
But it's sort of this idea that if I speak out, because, you know, if you're around good people and you point out a bad person, the good people thank you.
The good people applaud you.
The good people, like, you'll actually have, you would do it for career advancement, but you'd have career advancement...
and pointing out the bad person in the room.
My concern and where I just wonder, my suspicion is that this goes very deep and it goes very wide and it goes to places far darker than has been revealed.
Because if the industry as a whole is gonna ostracize you for pointing out a bad person, if your career is gonna be destroyed by pointing out a bad person or bad people, everyone's implicated, everyone's involved, Everyone's helping to cover up the secret.
And this is why, to me, it is such a powerful moment in switching the light on because I'm having a tough time finding people who I say, you know, yourself and other people, I have a tough time finding people in this business who I can say, wow, you know, they're doing the right thing.
They would be applauding people coming forward because what kind of people are out there that you fear almost universal repercussion for pointing out abusers?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No, it's... That's not a question.
But if you could fashion a question out of that, I'd really appreciate it.
Yeah, that's why I'm agreeing with you. I'm agreeing with you because the statement is very true.
Your statement is very, very true.
It is beyond...
It's beyond words that we, you know, are so embarrassed about sex and so embarrassed about sexuality and That we want to not address the fact that we have sexual problems and predators and people that prey on the weak.
To me, to hurt a child, to molest or rape a child or a woman or a man is worse than murder because you take something forever from them and they have to now live with It's hard because death is final.
You can move on. You can be at peace with yourself.
To be still walking around with a hole in you is horrible.
I was abused when I was a little girl.
So by the time I am now in the dolls, you know, by a family member nonetheless, I was abused.
Do you mean sexually abused or physically abused?
Oh, I was sexually abused. No, sexually abused as a child.
I'm so sorry to hear that. I'm sorry that it happened to me too.
But that is a big catalyst for me of why a guy, you know, at 18 trying to do that again, it was like, I don't think you understand when you survive that, you become a fighter.
So for me, it was not something I leaned into.
In fact, it was like, I'm going to fight you back.
And there were a couple occasions of being attacked in the back of a car, attacked in a hotel room, and having to fight a guy back and let him know, no, it's not okay to touch me that way or to try and force himself on me.
But some of the other times, it wasn't that blatant.
It was more, you're going to get a ride home with so-and-so, and then there, you know, Hey, can I come up?
Or would you like to go back to my hotel for a drink?
You're having to come up with excuses.
But it's like, why am I having to go through this every time I want to go home?
I should just be able to get a ride home.
I shouldn't have to go through levels of this maze in order to get out of a guy's car and just feel like I'm okay and he didn't jump on top of me tonight.
That's not normal.
How come every flower I try to pick is a Venus flytrap that tries to take off my hand, right?
Yeah, exactly. It really struck me what you were talking about regarding death.
And what popped into my mind, Kaya, was when you die, everyone puts up your prettiest picture.
They all gather around and they say wonderful things about you.
But if you survive abuse and you talk about abuse, generally what happens is people put up your ugliest picture.
They all gather together and slander the living crap out of you and try and destroy your reputation.
Wow. What an analogy.
My God. I need to tweet about that.
You need to tweet that and send it to me because I need to repost that.
That is the antithesis of what Corey Feldman has been put through.
Exactly. He was a good friend of mine.
Nobody believing him.
I think about Barbara Walters in that interview.
Cold-faced, pushing back.
Well, you're maligning an entire industry.
No, he's speaking the truth of his experience and the lack of sympathy.
I think anyone that doesn't want to face it is either someone that was abused and they're embarrassed or they're complicit in a way that's allowing it to continue.
And the goal of this is to not shame them.
I'm not trying to shame the pussycat dolls.
I don't want to embarrass the girls.
But they know what I'm saying is true.
Okay? I'm not trying to name the executives in a list that did what they did to me and tried to advance sexual innuendos or jumping on top.
They all have families.
I'm not trying to ruin anybody.
What I'm trying to say is that if you shed a light on it, if we talk about it, if we expose it, this is everywhere.
And this is a problem.
We should be able to discuss sex without it being something that's this thing where you have to, like, sneak it around or it needs to be dirty in a way that's so kind of scary.
And some of the fetishes and things are scary, which is total either, you know, either evil that is seeping into you, into your mind, or mental disorder, period, end of discussion.
You know, if we shed a light on it, you start to make predators nervous.
If I did this, I might get caught.
That person might have a camera on them.
You know, maybe they're going to tell.
Then they don't want you as much.
And what you do for the victims is give them that power and strength to know that they're not alone, that you are part of a club now, and you have a lot of brothers and sisters in this club.
And we have to unite together, which is why all abuse victims, whether it's verbal, medical, or physical abuse, or sexual, Um, should know that they have a voice that you can be heard.
You know, one in five men have been raped or molested.
One in three girls have been raped or molested.
You know, I was talking to my girlfriends in Denver about this one night.
We were having wine and just drinking.
It was three of us. And I was telling them the statistics and literally my two girlfriends go, well, I haven't been, I haven't been.
And I go, well, I have, I'm the one in three.
It is that serious.
And if we don't talk about it, And if boys don't know that they can talk about it, because men are big with being preyed upon as well when they're very young too, and they're scared to tell because they're boys and they're men, or you're not supposed to cry, you're not supposed to be emotional, you're not supposed to tell certain things, they just are built very differently, that I think that really damages a man.
It really does. And in later years can break him down, and it's not fair to do that.
There should be this open discussion where they know that there is a safe place that they can talk about this and that what was done to them is wrong.
They're not in the wrong. What was done to them was wrong.
And I'm glad that Oprah started to expose that with, you know, she did a huge show with nothing but men that had been abused and it's heartbreaking to know that it affects marriages.
It affects, you know, where men decide they want to be or how they conduct themselves with their wife or their girlfriend.
This is a real issue.
We have to bring a light to it.
We have to talk about it.
Well, and if you're not, you're covering up.
I mean, I think this is really key.
Like, if I'm out in the African bush, I'm not really worried about the lion.
I'm worried about the tall grasses.
Because the tall grasses mean, I can't see the lion.
If I can see the lion, I can do something about it.
I can run, I can do whatever.
But if I can't see the lion, and what astounds me, what absolutely astounds me is the brazenness.
With which people act. You look at Harvey Weinstein and the other people who were accused.
For years, they do the most egregious, allegedly criminal, vicious, vile, evil stuff.
The person who abused you as a child.
I mean, they do it seemingly with invulnerability, seemingly with impunity.
And people, oh, well, we can't get Hillary Clinton in jail.
It's like, well, that's an important issue, but how about all the other assholes in the world who are preying on children, walking around this world, and they are like...
Everyone seems to act as the grass for the lions.
And that's the great danger, not the lions, the cover.
No, it is the cover.
It's the cover. If you're going to constantly cover for the predator, you're allowing it to happen.
You are complicit in it.
If I stayed in the Pussycat Dolls...
And that little girl ended up becoming an artist who ended up going through what I went through.
I was complicit in that because I chose to show her this is what being a powerful woman is.
You are going to be complicit, whether you like it or not.
You either know that as a vocalist, as a singer, as a recording artist, as an entity that is in the public persona, you have a responsibility to shed the light because you have the microphone, you have the loud voice.
People will listen to you.
When you get that podium, what are you going to say?
A lot of artists go into, I want to help feed the world.
I want to help build wells.
I want to help do something. Angelina Jolie has done it.
Many artists have done it. That's what it's about.
This is a real issue.
I was affected by this issue.
Many people I know have been affected by this issue.
It's not being discussed.
This is a problem. Human trafficking is such a serious thing going on in our world right now.
Children going through abuse is a serious thing, and we're not wanting to talk about it.
You know, Michelle Obama holding up bring our girls home, you know, on Facebook when she's sleeping with the only man in the world that could bring those girls home.
Why are you holding a sign up?
Yeah, the big issue for most kids is not that they don't have an optimally nutritious lunch.
It's a big, bigger... So, I just wanted to have two more very quick questions.
One is around fatherlessness.
Now, I've read your bio, and I did not know that your father had left.
Your father was a native... Native Canadian, if I remember rightly.
Native American. Do you think that the fatherlessness, particularly with regards to girls, I guess also with boys as well, that the fatherlessness has something to do with vulnerability to this seeking male attention and an inability to have reasonable boundaries around male authority?
Of course. Oh, of course. I mean, you know, for boys, if you've never seen a man, you can't be a man.
It works both ways.
For girls, then you yearn for attention from men, you know?
Same with a mother if you don't grow up with a mom.
Take a look at Madonna. She's open about not growing up with a mother.
I'm not happy about her political stance and some of the stuff she said, but it speaks volumes when she's very sexually motivated to captivate people.
If she had a mother, would she have been that girl?
I don't think so. And last question was, at the age of 21, you walked away from a $13 million record deal at the height of fame and power and influence and potential.
Was that like a slow process or sometimes it just hits you like a thunderbolt from a clear blue sky?
Like, this I have to change.
This I have to do. Was there something that happened to provoke that moment?
Did it slowly accumulate in a dam break or what was it?
Yeah, well, the little girl that night and the same night, hours after that little girl had said...
You're a pussycat doll and feeling responsible.
That was the night that that executive jumped on me in the back of the limo.
Same day. So that for me was the jolt.
But at the same time, it was also, I'm a jumper.
By nature, I'm a jumper.
I'm like zero to 100.
It's yes or no with me.
I don't go in between.
I love gray when we're negotiating or wearing it as a color.
For me as a human being, I'm like all the way or nothing.
I'm about the truth, about integrity.
To me, integrity is imperative, which is probably why I've survived in this business.
The amount of time I have is I'm consistent.
I'm consistent, that's for sure.
To me, it was just like, you know what?
I had moments of thinking I was going to kill myself or I shouldn't be here or how am I going to live like this?
I feel alone.
But I had faith.
I had God in my spirit, in my mind, and I spent a lot of time in prayer and a lot of time crying on the bathroom floor, which is why I got this tattoo on my wrist.
You're curled up in a ball, and I would open my eyes, and I wanted to remember that I heard a very still voice tell me, get up, and all of that, woe is me, that there's something above me.
There is something above all of us.
There is an energy that created us all.
I'm sorry, what does it say on your wrist?
Oh, it's just a cross.
It also says, do not cut, I assume.
Because if that was your other alternative, right?
Maybe. That could have been it.
Maybe. Yeah, I didn't even think of that.
Psychologically, I didn't even think of that.
Yeah, so that to me was, you know, I'm questioning.
I would have calls with my mom and cry and say, I feel like I'm going crazy.
I feel like I'm weird that I don't want to be okay with this.
And the other girls are okay with this.
Something's wrong with me. And Yeah, I mean, I was dating a Backstreet Boy who didn't believe me when I told him.
He didn't believe me. He's not coming out to my aid now.
He knew it back then.
Is he surprised I'm talking about it now?
Well, there's nothing like personal courage to help you figure out who your friends are.
Nobody said anything. You know, nobody said anything.
It was kind of like, I actually had friends go, don't you feel bad?
Like, they're all over the news.
They're all over everywhere. Like, when you see their photos, like, don't you wish you were in it?
And it's like, You're being so mean.
It's like, yeah, of course I wish I was still there, but it became, it was my sanity, my spirit, my heart, or, you know, selling it, selling my soul for something that I knew was wrong.
And at the end of the day, having a moral compass that said, no, I can't.
You know what? Jump off the cliff, start flapping your hands and maybe you'll sprout wings before you hit the bottom.
And that's kind of just what I had to do.
I just jumped and thought, you know, I hope it makes sense one day.
Today I'm really proud I did.
But I can tell you for the past 10 plus years, no one wanted to hear when I talked about it.
Nobody wanted to support what I was saying.
I tried many times to say what I was saying.
Nobody picked up on it.
They didn't publish it or they published only half of what I said.
So journalists know too.
And that's what's upsetting is that everyone's going, really, we want to tell all now.
But it's like, you have known.
You knew about Harvey.
Come on, we all know about Harvey.
Pull tape on Jennifer Lawrence at the Golden Globe saying, oh, Harvey, you scoundrel you, when the tape, the cameraman pans to Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts, who literally are going, they're rolling their eyes going, well, you know.
It's that well known.
Come on. We all have a responsibility.
We, as a community, it's not just the celebrities.
It's not just the producers.
It's not just the camera people or the media.
I think that's what's important about what Trump is doing and what administration I'm seeing is doing.
They don't get his agenda.
His agenda was to wrecking ball all of the cracks And try and rebuild something.
Everyone's like, oh he's destroying.
It was already destroyed.
He's just shedding a light on it.
That's the whole goal. This is about rising up and giving everything back to the people.
The people need to help each other.
We can't wait for government to build our inner cities.
We can't wait for government To be the voice of what's going on with abuse, we have to be that voice.
As a community, we have to help our children and our people and our educators.
As a community, we have to.
We have a responsibility.
And that's what's so upsetting is that it's turning into this, like, half want to agree and half don't want to agree, half want to say and the other half want to hide and not say that they ever knew.
We all have to be honest and say that we know You know, we know.
Be honest.
And maybe it didn't happen to you, but you know it exists in this business.
You know, I have friends that it's never happened to in this business.
They were lucky. They said, it never happened to me, but I mean, I've heard.
You know, so they've heard.
You know, so not everyone's guilty, but let's talk.
Let's communicate in order to be better to our community of everybody, not just entertainment.
Little kids that are down the street from where I'm sitting right now that might be in a situation that's really bad.
You know? Yep.
Switch the light on the Predator's Flea.
It's a three-point business plan.
Speak the truth, shame the devil, save the world.
I really want to thank you for your time today.
It was a great conversation.
I wanted to remind everyone to check out kayajones.com for some great, great music at twitter.com forward slash kayajones.
I really applaud your courage and forthrightness in speaking out.
This is a... A job that we all need to stand abreast with.
Link arms together. March forward together.
Turn on the lights. The predators will flee.
The children will be saved. And the future has a damn slight chance of being better and better.
