Guerilla Black on Biggie, Game, Daz, $20M Credit Card Fraud Case, 9 Years in Prison (Full Interview)

all right here we go gorilla black welcome to vlad tv good good good you have him here man definitely i'm glad you're having me well you're someone that's always been around that i've always been familiar with we ran in some of the same circles at one point right but we may or may not have actually crossed paths before we're trying to figure it out it may not yeah that's yeah that's i mean that's like i said a minute ago i mean you was around some of the same people that's so crazy but that's why i asked you had you lived out here and you was like yeah i'm back and forth but you stayed up in jersey and stayed up in hell's kitchen was you up bizarre and i was like yeah you know because i was a bizarre quite a bit going back and forth to new york and so forth that might be it maybe one day when i was up bizarre jimmy henchman's uh studio yeah cause i was up there recording doing mixtapes up there and then whenever i would go out there to to virgin up to capitol i'll be up there as well well let's get into your whole story so you were born in chicago but you were raised in compton yeah pretty much yeah so it's crazy how that all came about because you know i was young and so i was born in cook county hospital and so that's like joliet illinois and so uh my family migrated went down to mississippi and then ended up my mother ended up coming out here to california so when she did she ended up bringing you know myself my brothers and all of us out this way so we've been out here ever since okay and your brother is hot dollars yeah definitely yeah okay who did his thing around the same time yeah yeah you know i was saying sidekick that was my joint that was my i know that wasn't his big song but to me that was the song that really yeah yeah definitely streets unlock was the song that he really yeah kind of came up off of yeah streets unlocked yeah man i mean that was it was just phenomenal man he just caught a record man and he caught a vibe and it was just beautiful man he had a lot of dope records around that time he had recorded he recorded sidekick and you know it was a lot of records that i thought that you know that could have did a lot better than they did but streets unlocked was the one that a lot of people gravitated to and they really a lot of dudes just like okay that's the one right so you're growing up in compton and this is compton in the 80s no this is compt in late 80s late 80s 88 89 90. okay yeah and back then i mean compton was pretty pretty crazy right right right what was some of the craziest things you experienced during that time i mean around that time early in compton you know in that time we was going i was going to whaley middle school and my mother she stayed on poncetti and elm and so that's when you know we had curls we're walking around there with khaki suits yeah okay oh come on vlad i had a full blown jerry curl now i'm keeping 100 with you now i you know and i remember you know my boy casper my boy d um we used to you know go to whaling and so you know back then you know you know that gang life and that gang culture it existed everywhere and was prevalent throughout compton and you know one of the first experiences that i had is you know my boys you know we rolling and my boy got his blue rag in his pocket so it is what it is we're rolling and we're walking down rosecrans and before we even knew it man there was so many dudes just came across across our rose crayons from lewis park and they pretty much surrounded us at that time and they was like you know you know what's up and my homeboy he's just banging so he was like what you being belligerent for and from there you know we we we got our ass handed to us but that was the culture that's what what it was it wasn't you know dudes just pulling out and just shooting your ass the [ __ ] up dudes beat your ass back then i remember one of your songs you said you'd never claim [ __ ] or blood right right so you yourself never really got affiliated well i'm affiliated to an extent with a lot of different people that over the years that you know uh raised me and so when you look back to that extent you know i'm affiliated with dudes from harlem because those are the people that really you know nurtured me and cultured me through this music and so them the people that i ran with and so yeah okay so at what point did the rapping start rapping for me man it's rapping man it has always been something for me man since i was young and playing instruments i played trombone i played trumpet all of those things and so you know hearing hip-hop back then in the early days and i was like you know first my first inclinations with music would be me you know playing you know vanilla ice with a trombone and with a trumpet so just imagine i didn't even know you know i just hear it and was able to sonically be able to duplicate it with a trumpet and so from there then i just started freestyling and just freestyling and freestyling with little homies of mines and from there just it just stuck it just felt natural well your first mixtape in uh 1999 right it was actually called notorious black right right and at that point were you already being compared to biggie with the way you rap i mean obviously with that name i'm assuming word right well i don't remember that mixtape being called that it was a bunch of songs that we had recorded and so once i recorded those songs those songs ended up it was like a bunch of songs that i ended up cutting for a demo so it wasn't that i named that mixtape notorious black you know um no that wasn't the case and i think more than anything when we ended up cutting those records we was just really trying to cut records for the album and a lot of records over periods of time got leaked and put together and a lot of different dudes took songs that was from those early days of me cutting records and they made mistakes it was mix tapes all over new york it was mixed tapes out here and i didn't even know that the records had been released i'm just we cutting records so i think i cut a hundred records for that album and so when i started hearing the records i'm like damn where did these records come from even to this day i'll be still hearing music like damn where the [ __ ] did this come from and i'll think back to it because i know i cut it but i don't know what happened to those records and those records didn't make the album eventually and so you just hear them like and i still see records like damn i heard this record in a while so yeah okay then by 2004 that's when you came out with your first single right so so leading up to that at what point did you get signed i want to say it had to be late 2003 early 2004 around that time but it was prior to that single being released and i probably had been signed i want to say about six eight months because we was cutting a bunch of records or whatever not so yeah i was signed okay that was the virgin records yeah yeah okay and i guess right before you sign your girlfriend died yeah yeah meningitis yeah yeah she died of spinal meningitis um wow how old was she she was like 20 about 20 21. wow 21 year old dying from yeah meningitis that i've never even heard of that before right right right um how bad was that when you when you found out yeah but um you know it was so crazy because um um at that time you know in this life man vlad you find you know people that you really lock in with that you really really bond with and so when i locked in with her and we just bonded it was just like you know they say maybe in this life you meet one or two of your real soul mates and that was just like she was like boom locked in with me and so we lived on 10th ave in the 60s for a long time and there on 10th ave i used to hustle and all of that and so it was you know she just opened me up and let me see things from so many different viewpoints and after that we ended up moving and we moved to gardena and we stayed on burundo and she worked for this little place you know where it was kids that you know that had disabilities and you know had autism and so forth and usually you know she would just carry her lunch to work and you know she would always have her food there but this day she drank out of a cup and so when she drank out of that cup that day whatever it was on the cup meningitis usually your stomach's ashes kill it but it passed and the same fluid that's on your spine is the same fluid that's on your brain so unfortunately the stomach acids didn't kill it and i remember when she came from work she said i just had this terrible headache she started screaming so i ended up calling the paramedics and so forth and so they came and so when we got her to the hospital they did tests and they did a spinal tap to pull the fluid and they said that she had spinal meningitis and um i was like yeah well what how serious is it doc and it was like uh you know um there's three types you know there's tuberculosis there's a bacterial and then there's viral and she has the worst one which is viral and with viral meningitis only your body can kill it only your body so no matter all the antibiotics that they put in through her body only she can kill it so eventually um she stopped she wasn't able to feel her legs and um i kept asking you know rubbing her legs with oil and everything and i'm like yo what's going on she was like i can't feel my feet i can't feel them i was like you know press your feet against my hand and everything and she could never really you know um yeah but um they told me that she was finally they finally told me that she was paralyzed and so you know i stayed there in the hospital with her you know a few months you know she finally succumbed you know yeah that's tough see yeah you were actually there seeing the whole the whole process yeah yeah that's a tough one especially so young yeah she was really young man but if you would have knew her and seen her and how she moved she was a rider for real and not only that but she was a real person on every level and to be able to share that with somebody man is very very rare in this life very very rare yeah to have somebody to really be you know you know close with it she really believed in me and she told me that all of the possibilities was there for me and she you know i should sit there and all the time write and be like yeah what you think about this and she was like anything you want to do you can do it and um she passed away prior to me getting a record deal so yeah sad sad i mean to have something you know such a great moment you know on one side and then the tragedy on the other side has made it kind of bittersweet i'm sure yeah man because you know she used to see me sitting out there on 10th avenue i used to be freestyling i used to be freestyling with the homie just freestyling freestyling and so she would always just tell me like your opportunity gonna come black your time gonna come you just gotta keep staying doing it and so you know when you you living you you ain't making no rap money so you trapping and that's what i was doing i'm trapping i'm full-fledged witty so at that time you know i would be you know any for real for real so yeah well being in that life when you're trapping i mean it comes with a lot of violence it comes with a lot of rip-offs right comes with arrests it comes with death yeah it comes with shootings yeah all that how much of that were you experiencing during that time you know when you in the life you just see so much you know you know i watch one of my homeboys get killed you know and you know the paramedics you know they scoop him up you hear his brain coming off the concrete so i mean this is a dude that i was just with two hours previously and i went to the store to go get a plum i'm like yo i'm gonna meet you over here on law and you see paramedics you're police cars and you see you hear his brains coming up off the ground so you know being robbed i've been robbed i've been shot at shot i mean but you've gotten shot well yeah yeah where i've been shot blew my my finger was blew off and my you know i tried to grab a pistol and you know it just the situation you know i was high off cocaine at the time and so i tried to grab the pistol and sub toby you know you know when when somebody up on you and they got to drop up on you you know i'm already knowing you keep asking me for something you not asking me no more you at the point of trying to figure out you know it's that time i'm finna blow i'm gonna kill your ass so at that point i'm like my first inclination is try to at least get the gun as fast as i can i got a gun on me but it don't matter i got a gun on me he got the drop on me so yeah my whole thing of it is is to delay as much time as i possibly can in between that to get away as fast as i can by the time i grab that pistol that i've got off pop pop it's you there it's there so it blew your finger off it didn't blow it off if you can see this one's been sold all the way back up bullet exited here they resold all of that [ __ ] up but yeah okay so you get your record deal finally right and was jimmy henchman your manager at that point no he wasn't my manager when i first got my record deal um me going to new york a few different times or whatever not it a friend of mine named waifu he was telling me about jimmy and him having the credibility not only streetwise in new york but he had a lot of clout with a lot of different executives throughout the industry and he'd be able to help me facilitate a lot of different things and so forth so it was definitely it was you know something in which i you know i i was at the time i had been entertaining benny medina and other different management you know resources and so forth and so you know he was like yo man i think that this might be a good fit for you black so at the time i was like all right all right okay you know so me and jimmy we sat down we met we talked a few times and i like jimmy's vibe overall man so yeah so what year did you actually hook up with jimmy man to be exact i can't remember i want to say maybe a probably almost a year after i had my record deal okay so that's about what year i want to say anywhere about to end 2004 2005-ish if you wanna okay so was this before you released the compton single or no actually it was before the compton single okay so you're assigned a virgin and you're working on various records there's no single yet right and then you end up signing to jimmy henchman for management right correct so what happens after you signed a jimmy i mean at that point i got management and so jimmy is pretty much essentially the liaison that's what management is is between the liaison between the artist and the label and so a lot of things that needed to be spoken on different levels it made it a lot easier because jimmy was able to go and sit down with match atletic and larry stell and all the different people at virgin and say hey this is what black need this is what you know i need to kind of like help facilitate it and the label was able to say well these are the things that we need black to do so yeah man i mean whenever jimmy came on to the to um the whole project it gave it a different feel because jimmy was able to go in there and get [ __ ] done that previously just wasn't getting done well jimmy had a very notorious reputation in the music industry oh yeah i mean uh of course there's the whole ties to tupac right and you know tupac mentioning him on uh on his last album right uh you know blaming jimmy for the shooting robot studios right i mean we'll never quite know what happened there but but there's that uh you know and and how he kind of had a kind of fearsome street reputation right of doing certain things and getting certain things done right and i know jimmy i've interviewed him from prison we've had conversations before we know each other right uh so being associated with jimmy henchman right what started to happen and what kind of changed in that regard what do you mean in regards of what i mean or regards you know now you're rolling with jimmy i mean it's almost like a east coast suge knight in a way right you see what i'm saying right so so being part of that did that make your perception a little different or did that possibly cause issues with certain people or to resolve issues with certain people i mean jimmy was jimmy man jimmy approached it with a business mind jimmy approached [ __ ] with a business mind but how jimmy approached [ __ ] from a street aspect is how jimmy approached [ __ ] from a street aspect i had full confidence in jimmy whenever he would step inside of a setting of a board room with nothing but execs to be able to talk to them on my behalf and be able to represent me in a way that would be essential to get my project done whenever it was time for street [ __ ] whenever we would be doing videos and [ __ ] jimmy carried his own i mean [ __ ] know who jimmy is no matter what coast jimmy's gonna be jimmy and so he always carried himself in that manner but i respected that because he was able to go inside the boardroom with matt serletic larry mustell very powerful people and sit down and be able to explain himself eloquently and be able to get across the message of what he was that would be needed and at the same time he would be able to go to the streets and be like hey [ __ ] this is what it is and that's what it ain't we ain't moving like that and this is how we moving yo black i need you to do this i need you to do that hey [ __ ] need to get together over there and then at the same time you would be able to go inside of a boardroom and say hey we need these budgets for this and this and this we think that this might be a single we may need mario wines on this we may need money over here allocated we need money allocated over here so you know jimmy wore different hats you know and definitely man he was able to go inside and work out a lot of things for me man yeah he really got them to push the the level of money that was allocated increase it substantially well then in august 2004 you dropped your first song compton right featuring beanie man right whose idea was beanie man oh man you know what it was so crazy because we ended up cutting that record i ended up cutting that record with a producer by the name of carlos brody and so the record was ideal because i seen the belly you know movie and i liked it that that lady saw sample and so i swear carlos sampled the [ __ ] and i was we was in memphis and so i i just want to correct you real quick i don't think that's lady saw wait wait wait wait wait sister nancy sister sister nancy oh my jamaica wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait there wait sister nancy originally did the original yeah bomb bomb is sister nancy it may have been redone by other people yeah it was sister nancy but it was redone as well tons of people redid it but i'm saying yeah the original bomb bomb the original one from belly right it's sister nancy okay okay cool so i think there's a few versions yes there there's a bunch of versions you know how jamaica is yeah exactly you know like so i remember what jumps on the screen i didn't know whose record it was i just know i loved the intro of belly and i loved that record and i wanted to i wanted to sample it yeah so good looking out i appreciate you getting that clarified because yeah cause i i'm thinking ladies also sister nancy yeah you're right but um when i heard it i loved it it was dope and so carlos sampled it and when he finished sampling it i pinned the verses and so after i pinned the verses we laid it and so the label heard it and so at that time beanie man was my label mate and so beanie man they sent it to beanie man and beanie man sent it back and we was like what the [ __ ] he killed it and he just i'm sitting there listening to it in the office and i remember pete he was like yo black watch this and he played it i said oh [ __ ] he was like yo we sent it out to beanie man he he tracked the hook and so when the label heard it the label went crazy like when i heard it i was blown away and so the label they grabbed it and they was like [ __ ] this is the single right here let's go yeah beady man killed it yeah he killed him he really made that song he put it together by it by doing that guilty yep okay so then the song comes out and it hits number two i'm sorry his number 22 on the u.s rap charts right but with that and all the attention of it everyone starts saying hey this guy sounds a lot like biggie right now this has happened in hip-hop before like shine when he first came out right he sounded a lot like biggie especially before like his first real singles and stuff like that he kind of sort of developed his own style later on right right so here you come some years later right and once again people are like this guy sounds a lot like right right right how did you feel when people are saying this i mean i look at that you know i've always been a deep voice to do period and i've always been deep voiced in my whole life and when people compare me to biggie and say oh this dude look like big and you sound like big you know it's like you take away from that from what big did i can only be me and big did him and he was the first to do it on the greatest level that you could even imagine he made it viable for big dudes especially dark-skinned dudes like myself to even move throughout or do what i've done so ultimately though when you look at it i've always looked at it like when people really sit down and dissect my body of work and look at it and listen to it and they start to hear it and listen more they like okay and then you got those who they hear things at first glance and then they take it for face value they don't delve into it and be able to subsequently be able to break it down to a level and say okay we can see the artistic differences between the two artists and again man you no one big is in his own league and in his own rights and as a youngster i'm looking up to him i'm looking up the pocket i'm looking up to that so yeah i always felt that you can't even compare the two and big is definitely in his and his right one of the biggest legends to ever do it in his music industry probably the biggest so yeah okay so this song comes out it does well has like a high budget video right everything else like that so you're on your way uh you drop your album right gorilla city right it does cool but it doesn't do as well as the single right essentially right was that a letdown i mean you know vlad when i looked at the first you know you look in this day and age and i compared and i sit down and you know i thought about it from a lot of different perspectives and um when you look at today's you know game you sell 50 000 units the label is high fiving your ass they high-fiving everywhere right back then we were selling physical copies of [ __ ] albums physical this ain't no what no [ __ ] streaming world 50 000 copies in the label looking at you like what the [ __ ] what happened you know so and then i looked at it as the experience i looked at the blessing because i had the opportunity and i was given the opportunity and the people who surrounded themselves and so you know when you look back at things a lot of things with the label could have transpired in a lot of different ways there's other things that could have happened um but overall i look at that even though it didn't take off the way that we want to i still look at that as success i do because i was able to run around i did 200 promo dates i was able to meet people people was able to get my music people was able to know who i was as an artist i was able to touch you know touch the fans be able to get out there in the moms and pop stores and it gave me an opportunity i don't think if i would have hadn't had that opportunity i don't know where i would have went mentally after losing losing my girl yeah so that it took me from a place of darkness from a place of despair and it gave me happiness in my life for something that i've always done and i've always loved doing so i don't look at it as a disappointment in any way shape or form now how it may be looked at by the industry standards i look at it and compare it today to look at it as a success because you know you look at today's article what you you sell 50 000 you're the one but our first week we did almost what 40 000 units the first week and we continued to and then it kind of fills it out a little bit but hey we did we i look at that and i'm still proud of that because the people that were involved a lot of hard-working people got out there put the posters up people that reached out different magazines different articles different different people had they they hand in it and you know a lot of times we look at the glass half empty instead of half full we do and when you start looking at the glass the opposite way and start looking at it like hey i had the opportunity and so this allowed me to be who i am people travel around the country oh that's gorilla black and so yeah definitely man i mean i don't look at it as anything disappointing at all well you're being managed by jimmy henchman and he has other artists on his master right one of which is game right right and around that time i'm running around with game a little bit i actually my first dvd project ever was with games it was called the devil's advocate so i'm running around with the video camera recording him as he's going on his promo runs and so forth in new york and and you know i'm going out to compton and everything else like that right and at one point it seems like game starts to diss you right right he was calling you guerrilla whack or something like that right right right uh now but you're both being managed by jimmy henchman right so does jimmy try to somehow get in the middle of this or i mean ultimately man men gonna be men and i think that jimmy took a neutral position to it due to the fact that he really admired game like he really admired me and he just seen two people with differences and he felt that it wasn't his position to get in the middle of it he you know he's from the old school so men deal with men you know man and man man you know what i mean so i think that overall jimmy took an approach and he stepped away from it you know he was dealing with me on my business and dealing with the things that were needed for my career and he was dealing with the things for game and dealing with gamers needed and he didn't intertwine the two because he looked at it as business it wasn't personal for him right because at one point a game gets into a 50 cent he gets dropped from g-unit and then this kind of war begins between g-unit and game but jimmy henchman is a central player in that also right jimmy you know jimmy henchman in g-unit starts to go at it right right which ultimately culminates right jimmy sun getting you know smacked up right and then the guy who ended up smacking him up ends up getting killed right and jimmy ends up going to prison and getting i think double life in 2013 right right right uh and you're going through your own things i'm already in prison at that time right but i mean things things got very messy right on that i mean with that going back again i'll say this again jimmy dealt with things that i needed him to deal with at that time and he was going in you know dealing with the label dealing with me making sure my shows was done and he was dealing with game making sure the things that were done with game he wasn't looking at it from a personal perspective like that he was looking at it as business it's business now for him to intervene on a personal level you know you know it's he understands that there's conflicting and there's he has his view and i have my view so ultimately he's dealing and doing business with this man and he's doing business with me and i just think that his view of it was strictly business all the things that culminated after the fact it happened with 50 and with g-unit and with him and with game and all of those different things those things took different cycles and they went into different directions and things went to this went to that and you know but ultimately man like i said i appreciate jimmy for being who he was when i needed him the most the album wouldn't have gotten done the budgets wouldn't have been allocated the tours wouldn't have been done if jimmy didn't go in those offices and make things happen for me and that's what he did he did his job period it wasn't for him to sit and mediate between myself and gang you know well uh in 2007 you end up getting dropped by virgin right well i didn't get dropped from virgin i asked virgin for a release okay because was that before or after you dropped your second album no that was whenever i ended up with virgin i was getting ready to drop a second album i was contractually combined uh uh i was contractually binded to do a second project and at that time it was a lot of things that were going on at the label there was ensuing blood baths you know different execs start coming in different people start taking over and in that became a lot of disagreement with the staff myself and with management you know i'm relaying messages to jimmy jimmy going back and he's relaying messages to the staff and it just seemed like our interests were not aligned and so at that point i just said hey you know what i think that it's time for me to you know press the button on my claws and then to release me okay so you end up leaving the label and uh you dropped your second uh album at that point i did a different album with an independent company god bless the child yeah yeah yeah so you put that out independently yeah independently yeah okay and then i think the next year you dropped 400 shots the funeral right right and you end up taking shots at various people correct correct uh the game right i guess there's a response to all the stuff he was saying but also daz right and jermaine dupri right what was dad saying in order for you to respond to him like that i mean there was a long-standing differences between and again earlier you asked the question about oh this mixtape the notorious black again there was a lot of songs that were cut and so one of those songs was a song that i myself super fly dads we cut we went out there to super fly houses we cutting the record so we're cutting records man we just chopping it up okay let's do this beat boom boom boom dash there go yo verse boom superfly there go your verse here go my verse boom boom so i come to the label one day and when i pull up to the label my a r he has the record and he was like i hear the record but i hear a snoop verse on there and i hear the rest of the verses on there and i'm like oh [ __ ] this [ __ ] is dope as [ __ ] and so he was like yeah okay okay and so next thing you know i guess they were asking for a certain amount of money for the record and i was like well maybe i need to sit down with them and maybe we could recut the record and edit the record and do different things like that of that nature but yo we're not gonna i'm not gonna allocate that out of the budget so that record ended up being a record that was with a lot of other records that was cut but that record ended up being released and when it was released they hadn't been compensated by the label and it wasn't a record that i had released and so daz has said some disparaging mark remarks about me that when he seen me he was going to kill me and so it ensued from there and then there was other things that were said and i just think that things got out of context and whenever they did that led to different things happening over periods of time and so with that being that he said things i said things and so forth but it was he don't really know the truth that i didn't have anything to do with that i wasn't even responsible for that i didn't even know that the record had been released but the man said he gonna kill me like for real yeah i mean i know dad's that was a hot head and a lot of times he don't really mean the things he puts out there you know not to say that he's not a thorough guy or whatever else right i don't want him to take it that way but it's like he gets worked up and he he gets on the internet and right you know so he he made those remarks and then i made my remarks at the end of the day though man i look at him man he a west coast legend this is a man who with snoop with some of these legendary figures that i i'm a little kid running around compton listening saying his versus verbatim so that crushed me to hear him say those things about me because i looked up to you and corrupted superfly and snoop and these as legends so i mean still to this day i just think that it was just a misunderstanding and uh things that did happen and maybe he took it to that point or whatever not but still he's still a legend in his right and he's helped put the west in a place that at that time put us on top so regardless of i look back at it now in the past and i think you know i've grown a lot and you know he's grown a lot and so i look at that and i say you know it was just a point in history in a time that we just seen different views of things but really all in all i've always looked up him i've i've been a fan i'm i'm one of his fans you know what i'm saying me too i'm a fan of this so yeah that's dope yeah daz has always been dope uh now what about the germain de pre-thing the jermaine dupree thing you know at that time when you look back the label they were doing a bloodletting there was a lot of different execs that were being fired and at this time jermaine dupri he came to virgin and when he came to virgin he brought janet and he brought all of these different entities that were coming there and again jermaine is another legend and creatively and artistically he and i had differences at the time instead of me thinking things through rational i became emotional like yo like for real and i think on certain records i spazzed and i spazzed on a lot of [ __ ] on records but i look back at that and i look at him like and i look at the situation and i look at it that you know again him he's been a legend he's one of the original you know innovators out of the south that helped bring that sonic sound out of the south and he is one of those gatekeepers if you look throughout hip-hop and you know look out through you know hip-hop he was one of those people that was always have been there so i think that i allowed myself to get emotionally charged in that situation and you know when i snapped i snapped on 400 shots i i look back at it and you know certain things that happen and we do and over the years i've been able to sit back and look and i'm like you know what man i've always been a fan of jermaine always been a fan of him you look at some of the music he's produced you look throughout the culture and you can see where he's at in the culture and the things that he's done so yeah man i mean yeah that man is is a legend in his rights well you fast forward four years later to 2012. [Music] news broke that you got indicted right 22 counts for buying stolen credit cards in bulk right i mean according to reports you would purchase 27 000 stolen credit cards and the amount of money spent on them is is different i said i saw 150 000 in one report i saw 1.5 million in a different report so talk about what led up to that indictment i mean i think at that time man you know again i had some things that was going on and i had my own financial issues and so me i've always been i've been in the streets my entire life so you know i've always even at the height of my fame i've always been in the streets i've always been in compton i've always been a watch no matter what i'm always there so for me my first inclination because of the way that i've thought for so many years about in my relationship with money and whenever i'm without money is to just go out there and get it no matter what by all costs by all means and i was in a place of where you know what i need to take care of my family i need to take care of my kids i need to do these things and so when that came about and i jumped out there with it i jumped in it full fledged i jumped in in full fledge real fast and uh i made a considerable amount of money doing it but i look back at it and now i realize that a lot of people were hurt i look at it a lot of people were hurt well explain to me what exactly you did so i mean according to reports there was a i guess a hacker kid from maryland right who had stolen all these credit card numbers from a bunch of businesses in seattle right and you bought those credit card numbers from him yeah correct yeah okay so how much does it cost to buy 27 000 stolen credit cards well you know what i mean we i just bought 27 000 credit cards okay let's just say that you gave him a bag he gave you those credit card numbers and then you start with just buying stuff with them i mean yeah pretty much i've just from there i enrolled the crew and from there i would just enroll that crew and we would just go out and just card just card card card card well do you have the actual physical cards or just the numbers yeah i had the actual well how it's done is once you have the actual number you imprint the number on a card it has a magnetic strip and that magnetic strip reads in which is called a pause which is a point of sales machine okay i'm not familiar with this i just want this explained so how do you create how do you press up a credit card just when you have the number and how do you get that magnetic strip because there's all right well you know one of my charges was means of sophistication of it's just simple it's me using a different you know uh how do you how do you put it um you get a box there's a reader or writer box and it's legal to have a reader in writer box and that reader and writer box comes with the system in which you upload it and you're able to take the numbers and you're able to imprint them on actual it reads it and it puts that number on anything you could well a driver's license anything that has a magnetic strip it can put that number on it so this you take this machine you pop in the credit card number you put in your name the expiration date all the little three-digit things all the back and now you have a brand new credit card brand-new does it have your name on it or the person's name on it well pretty much it don't have no name on it give a credit card with no name because i knew how to go bypass that and actually i just use a gift card i walk in the store and get a gift card and take that gift card and and bought it and just put the number on the back of that magnetic strip and then from there we'll go in the store and after store after store after store and continue to use it so if anything would happen they could just leave the card there and get up out of there okay if they did it they read on it it just says gift card okay and it was a crew of people right i'm looking at uh these names right i'm not gonna name them all but right from 23 year olds to 41 to 54 year olds just a bunch of people were involved right in this so you got other people right as part of this now when you got busted this was a july 13 2012 did you know that they were on you whenever you know i didn't really you know i never even knew i mean it was just so crazy they had hit my man shop and then you know i contacted an attorney and for me contacting attorneys like yo they have a federal warrant for you you have a federal one with 22 count indictment and so before i know it i just remember 40 cars pulling up with agents in them and they walked to my front door and they had a warrant in their hand and they said are you charles williamson i said yes are you gorilla black yes can you please step outside of the house we have a 22 count indictment for your arrest how did that feel because up to that point had you done any prison time at all or no i haven't did any i hadn't did any prison time okay so you were completely clean now they're telling you 22 counts 40 cars i mean that's got to be frightening i mean you know what was so crazy is i knew the indictment and so i cuz i you know i contacted my attorney and i was like yo what's going on because they hit my boy's motorcycle shop and they turned it upside down and i had just came back from puerto rico for my birthday and i had celebrated in puerto rico my birthday and on june 23rd they have this ritual in which you fall into the water backwards and you see people all alone and i did this ritual and you know i was just having different i was in a different place in a different mind state and i was just really trying to even though i know i was doing a lot of criminal activity i was still searching myself you know a dude told me man has plans but god truly has a bigger purpose for everything in all things and so when my boy i rolled up to his shop i seen his eyes like what the [ __ ] you don't got yourself into he's like what the [ __ ] you don't got yourself into they tore the shop the [ __ ] up literally and so when i opened my front door and it's nothing but agents all crawling all the way through my front yard through the neighbor's front yard all up and down the streets and so um yeah okay so you get arrested by the feds right right 22 count indictment 22 count indictment you actually get released on 250 000 bail yeah yeah yeah and then you go right back to doing credit card scams again yeah i guess i mean according to reports that i read is you wanted to have some money saved up so right you'd have someone you got out right i mean i mean but doesn't that sound crazy like you're you're facing all these charges right and you go back to doing the same thing as you're out on bail right right right explain to me the rationale at that time i was in a in a different mind state once i realized exactly what it was that i was facing i'm facing 108 135 months in a federal penitentiary after i sit down and i really start figuring everything out with my attorneys and i'm like yo you're like your time ain't going nowhere you feeling to sit down and you finna do this time so you need to mentally get yourself together get your family together make sure everybody's on the same page and understand that and in my mind i'm like i'm going to jail i'm going to go sit down and do some tick so in the meantime in between time and anything else that i can do to make sure that my family and my loved ones just taken care of i'm gonna do it because i already accepted the fate of me going to prison and so that's where my mind stayed that's what my rationale was when i realized that they ain't offering no lower numbers ain't no lower numbers coming ain't no lower number coming this is what it is this is what my federal guidelines are 108 to 135 months and that's the first one and with the feds the time only goes up it keeps going up so it's not in my mind i'm like i got two kids i got a wife i got family members i got a lot of people that were dependent on me and my criminal activity and so that was my rationale and i look back at that in hindsight because everybody got hurt the victims my children my wife my brothers everybody was hurt no one came out unscathed and i look back at that now and i'm like damn this how far off my mind was i didn't even have the capacity to sit down and rationalize like wait the [ __ ] a minute it could be a possibility that the judge may have lenacion because i've never had a criminal record ever i hadn't had any criminal records to that extent outside of a few charges you should ask you know petty tickets yeah it's a white-collar crime there's no violence because no one got killed but that wasn't my right now my rationale was balls against the wall i need to go get the bag [ __ ] all this [ __ ] i'm finna just go all out in the bang and and and hail storm and this is the way i'm sitting here rationalizing this [ __ ] because i didn't have no filter i was just unfiltered and so i looked back in hindsight and was like damn a lot of people got [ __ ] up right because then six months later you get arrested again yeah for the same thing exactly and at this point they don't give you bail hell [ __ ] all right later everything is happening at this point that time when they came they didn't come in the civil manner that they came before this time they brought the battle ram they fired flash banks to my window oh it was all it was armageddon this time it was like no ain't gonna be no you just yeah well then july 9th 2013 you actually pled guilty right to everything right right they're saying it was over two million dollars in credit card fraud no it was 20 million 20 million dollars 20 million because i tried to plead out to the 30 000 credit cards but the judge pretty much said it doesn't [ __ ] matter under the federal guidelines under booker 30 000 credit cards is 20 million dollars this is a 20 million dollar fraud so yes don't you know i tried to plea i'm thinking i'm you know maybe they you know it's just 30 000 cars [ __ ] out of here it's 20 million dollars worth of card because under each card each card equivalents to 500 okay i mean during the heyday of all this what was the craziest thing that you bought with these stolen credit cards i mean it wasn't nothing that i was just really buying that was just significantly you know because the money was there but you know everybody eating so i mean it's just a means to survive it wasn't like it was some extravagant [ __ ] you're not buying lamborghini you know i pulling up in rolls royces and none of that [ __ ] it's just i'm making money and i'm making sure that people around me that's fed and people you know you know that's fair that's it just making sure that they got food on their table making sure that they build this pay making sure that my bills is paid making sure that everybody around me good well you plead guilty right and uh i mean the charges were crazy i mean each of the charges you played guilty to right you know carrie there was a two years five years 15 years and 30 years right for some of these charges yeah ultimately what did you get sentenced to how i got sentenced to 110 months 110 months 110 months do the math for me that's nine years two months nine years it took me a minute vlad to figure this [ __ ] out because i remember right hey this [ __ ] was crazy i'm sitting in the courtroom and when you sit in the [ __ ] courtroom and you sitting here and the judge like 86 months for these charges another 24 months mr williams says 110 months well the first thing he told me is he was like you know this is a crime that's really really prevalent he was like and so my attorney was like well respectfully your honor we're asking for 55 months and everybody in my [ __ ] courtroom got silent like [ __ ] you think 55 months where they get that where they do that at and so the next thing you know the judge was like man i can give him 20 [ __ ] years today he said ms williams i ain't going to give you 20 years 86 months plus another 24 months 110 months so i look over there my at my wife and i look at her and i'm like yeah we good i'm good i'm good so everything good we're good [ __ ] she put her hand her head in her hand and just leaned down flat like this and i'm like [ __ ] you tripping folk i'm gonna be home so i get back to the pod and so the homies just playing dominoes and so my seller he jumped up and my set he was like yo how much time they gave you i said [ __ ] they just gave me 110 months he was like [ __ ] that's nine years two months right and so i staggered back and [ __ ] i stutter step like i couldn't get my my trying to get my foot up on the mother under my body i'm like [ __ ] he was like come on over here play some domino i'm like no i don't want to play them i need to go i need you to sleep this [ __ ] off okay because you're how old at that time i was 35 35 they're telling you nine years two months i staggered back and he was like out when he said it he calculated you know i ain't always been the best with mathematics man vlad i i've been the best with bad but when he said 110 months i'm like i haven't even equiv you know so when i get in the cell by myself i'm like 24 24 oh that's four years 24 24 oh okay damn i just [ __ ] i just sat there and just [ __ ] tears roll from my eyes like [ __ ] i [ __ ] up i [ __ ] that i [ __ ] this plate all the way up this package i [ __ ] the package all the way up like yeah i just sat there and just i'm keep it real with you man i i that day [ __ ] you know that day was a bad day it was a bad day okay so then you start your sentence yeah yeah i guess you were locked up like harry oh yeah i was up there yeah i talked to harry oh good dude he's out now good [ __ ] yeah we got a trump party hey man listen harry oh i never forget when i get there i hit the yard so when i hit the yard or whatever not the buzz going on the yard gorilla black on the yard gorilla black on the yard and so you know i was different homies they pull up on me and you know what i'm saying so you know they was like you know you're going back to jadon and so okay cool i'm going to jade on boom i go back to j dorm j dorman laid back dorm or whatever not and so you know what i'm saying i run into oh and i know who harry was i never knew you know all i knew was the legends as me being a child is the dude who started death rose so they was like you know ariel back there i'm like harry oh i was like [ __ ] ain't that the dude who started oh okay but um once i i met oh man i met a person with a mind unlike anything i'd had ever seen like his understanding of worldly views of religion of money of financial literacy the books that he was reading and he seen that i would devour books as well and he would just you know come through was like read this [ __ ] right here and i'm like um bless me with a book oh [ __ ] if he if he giving me the book i know what the [ __ ] it is and so he would just come through and give me the everything store by jeff about jeff bezo he'd come through in um and uh e myth by michael gerber um um retired young retired rich robert kiyosaki just come through and just hit me with different books just you know just open my mind up to a whole different level but whenever you sit down and you talk to uh talk to old just i mean his [ __ ] just i'm like [ __ ] and just me and him would you know walk the yard and just sit down and he would just give me so much understanding of things and in which i never i was never privy to i was just blind to it but i believe that over a period of time me being able to and indulge in reading and opening my mind to different viewpoints and opinions and looking at things from different aspects it allowed me to look at things in a whole different mindset and i really accredited that to him because a lot of the people that i met while i was in prison he was one of the most influential persons to that extent of him being highly educated not just educated but highly self-taught educated yeah well i mean we talk about prison right you know there's the violence that goes on in prison both with the prisoners and the guard right right there's the gang lines right the racial lines the rapes the extortion right i mean every possible thing you could think of what do you think was the worst incident that happened while you know during those nine years i mean you know you know the first bad thing was you know the first big standoff that we had on the yard and we out there i think it was 2014. and we all go from the back unit and we go to the center compound and it's probably about a good 400 blacks but it's 800 hispanics and it's about 800 hispanics and they calling y'all recall and you know you sitting here looking at a wall of the uh an enemy in front of you and you know i got a picture of my baby in my pocket i got a picture of my wife i got my pictures in my pocket you know if whatever gonna happen i'm gonna die with them and that's how my mindset was whatever gonna happen i'm gonna die with my kids i'm gonna die with my family but i'm prepared to defend this to whatever extent it may be so then again at 2017 and it was a big ride that broke off on the yard and you know a lot of good dudes that i [ __ ] with got hurt a lot of people got [ __ ] up and when that [ __ ] go down man people you know people could tell y'all all this is this and they see [ __ ] on tv no when you actually there and the [ __ ] go down and it go up all that heroic [ __ ] all of that tv for drama [ __ ] and the cameras no [ __ ] is really losing their life [ __ ] is really getting hurt you really hearing grown men scream and a pitch that's unrecognizable like god damn just send shrills to your body like [ __ ] and you they're into action like ain't no time to be um i'm here oh [ __ ] out of here look at these [ __ ] got knives and blowers they they you hearing muffler hitting [ __ ] hitting the bone like you hearing that [ __ ] in this bone like you know he's gonna go see jesus yeah you know ain't no answer for butts about it but in that you know it's it's a hurtful thing that it get to that point because you're confined with all of these different people and you get to have relationships with them outside of your race you know these guys jesus guys who brought you books hey man if you read this book but you're standing here looking at him he's the enemy now imagine that [ __ ] right because he's mexican in your black exactly yeah this dude right here he even showed me how to he was like look man take the carnitas put it in here put the [ __ ] onions in there make your dice in this when you guys finish cooking i can't eat with him but he's telling me how to make you know by prison rules i can't eat with him but this dude is cool as [ __ ] but he on the other side he got family he got kids he got a wife he got love in his heart he ain't just a [ __ ] up dude it's just now the divide is there and it's us against them and i i got family i got loved one i got pictures of my kids in my pocket but it is what it is well then in 2021 you finally get out right you did the whole nine years two months no i didn't do the exact whole nine years two months um i did a program in there it was a cognitive behavior program and it's called rdap a lot of people you know watching this they probably know about it's a drug program or whatever not and so um you know um i didn't get the full year i was supposed to went to it earlier out um in 2018 but um my mother passed and um i didn't um i couldn't i couldn't it's a rigorous program and my head wasn't rap type to go into that program because i'm mourning my mother i'm in prison my family in shambles because all of my brothers the people who support me i could hear they pain in the phone like they [ __ ] up we lost mama and you couldn't go to the funeral no i'm in federal i'm in federal custody yeah so my brother he want to pay for me to go but i'm like i don't want to be here in shackles with two guards at my mama oh man that ain't cool i ain't cool so you know my brothers they had to facilitate and take care of everything with my mama you know straight up real talk so yeah i was in that mind state so i couldn't really go into the program but then i started understanding what the program was about and being in a program like that to have a place where i could sit down and talk to skilled help about some of the ways that i thought about things i approached things in my past you know my condition in the neighborhoods which i grew up in and the things that i did and be able to have a place where i can talk about things in an open setting with skilled help you know a lot of you know it's a cliche for for people to talk to psychologists you know [ __ ] you doing talking to it but sometimes you know one of the people there inside of the program told me your best thinking puts you here mr williamson your best thinking put you in a federal prison your best thing can put you here i ain't put you in jail at the end of the night i'm gonna go hit this lot hit the other lock and i'm going home i'ma lay on my couch i'm gonna eat a ham sandwich and drink some orange juice and watch whatever [ __ ] on netflix but you you're gonna be here and i want you to understand that this is like motel 6 the lights is always on and you could leave but the prisoner continued to keep moving and so i just took it into myself like when she said that it just resonated to me in a way just like maybe i need to really give this [ __ ] a try and try to get home and so you know i ended up getting seven months off of my sentence i could have got more but i wasn't prepared to go into that program like i said and i was dealing with all the emotional you know things with my mother passing and you know it's so crazy back to harry oh you know he was sitting there and the chaplain came and he was like uh you know when the chaplain comes you know the chaplain you know he like the reaper you see the chaplain pull up with the beard and he look over at you everybody know know something that happened here somebody said hey rio the first one he's like black everything all right and i ain't even know how to just tell oh like man i just lost mama and he just he's like black it's gonna be all right whatever it is i guess spiritually he just felt something was bigger when he watched the chaplain come he knew he knew it and i you know i finally told him and uh my boy piggy you know he pulled me outside i was like man damn black you know you know so yeah 100 feet have finally come outside after almost nine years i mean the world has changed uh you know back then the sidekicks were the [ __ ] like how your brother you know wrapped about no one uses a sidekick anymore now there's iphones right now there's streaming services right now there is the world worldwide there's social media that wasn't really around back then so you got to understand vlad when you're in prison you're taken away from everything yeah time just stops from what i understand it's like imagine going and being put on an island but you're on a little island with 1500 criminals so all day they thinking of criminal [ __ ] the only way we able to see the world is through a tv so the tv almost is like god in prison everybody like this we get letters we get magazines we have music which through true links or whatever not but you literally you looking at the world through a bubble yeah your world is prison the first year is always the hardest you got to remember you knew come on for that you know you've been around me vlad you've been around i was 473 pounds i'm smoking two packs of cigarettes a day literally so imagine going in a place where all your freedoms are gone you don't have silverware they give you a [ __ ] sport it's a spoon with a fork right oh you're able to you got a [ __ ] sport imagine this [ __ ] you go from being able to spray i'm i love cologne i'm a i'm a big dude i'm i'm a fly big dude i like to put on cologne and smell you ain't got none of that you got a prison issue deodorant that don't smell like [ __ ] it's just some clear [ __ ] up under your arm feel like you just rub some slime under your arm imagine going into the child hall and they just slot you know slapping some [ __ ] on you don't even know what the [ __ ] it is what on the box it says this is not made for human consumption this is what the box say so imagine being taken from your world that you're in the luxury to wear your tennis shoes your gold chain your rings your phone your iphone getting your car with your air freshener being able to pull up get your frappuccino and slide your credit card and you're living in this whimsical technologically advanced world to being put in a place with fifteen hundred men day in day out that's miserable than a [ __ ] and then you do have bright spots like harry you do have bright spots with people who are very highly intelligent but other than that it's dreary it's the same every single day so you know i used to always you know think of my grandmother she was like happiness is a choice it's a mind state so me coming out here for the first time i remember that you know we sat in r d almost a whole day waiting on them to just process our [ __ ] talking about what we gonna eat you know that's just that's the first thing you you think you need about what the [ __ ] i'm gonna eat because you haven't ate street food and nine [ __ ] you ain't street food you have i don't even know what a hamburger tastes like no more you know all you do is look at on tv like damn i'm gonna eat that one you talk about this [ __ ] year one year two year three and you come out and there's just so many choices it's just when i came out it was colors people wearing colors i seen youngsters with tight pants on i'm like damn them look like the pants in the early 80s i see youngsters with tight pants and little shirts on and they you know the hair dreaded up and i see females i'm like damn only females you see the guards there you see them year after year but just to be able to just see the world just walk i walked no lie pure honesty they the bust the van took me from lawn pop to santa maria santa maria busted i walked almost 30 blocks to go buy me a phone out of cvs a [ __ ] ass little phone but to me it was a technological like whoa look at this [ __ ] and you know i called my brother he was like man if you don't get rid of that [ __ ] that [ __ ] that 711 phone and let me go get you an iphone 12. that dumb [ __ ] i'm like bro i'm not gonna get rid of this he like black bro you [ __ ] up you [ __ ] up he was like bro what are you he was like bro i'm gonna go get you a phone you need a phone you need a [ __ ] phone i said bro this [ __ ] do everything he said black that's a 7-eleven phone [ __ ] that's that's not this i got an iphone this [ __ ] got three cameras on the back [ __ ] this [ __ ] do everything you can facetime you can do every so imagine i thought this [ __ ] that 711 phone was the end-all be-all so i mean that that taste of freedom man is when your liberties are taken away from you for so long and you able to be sat down in a place and you think about freedom what it's like to sit down and eat a meal what it's like to take a [ __ ] by yourself yeah take a real [ __ ] by yourself the door closed don't close by yourself take a [ __ ] you know and you know take a shower by yourself yeah exactly so you know my brother you know he got me apartment and [ __ ] he was like yo man black you you had i'm sitting in there i'm still it's some days i'm i'm still [ __ ] up you know my brother was like bro you [ __ ] institutionalized yeah and you know because i got everything lined up and i wipe and mop the floor all the time because in prison this rules the [ __ ] yeah you use something you clean that [ __ ] if you use the bathroom you spray and you wipe that [ __ ] off your bed area has to be clean for inspection it's your clothing have to be a certain way especially the program that i was in it was almost like military barracks and you know you was held accountable for every little thing that you did you said if you cursed if you didn't so trying to get out of that type of environment you had to follow a set regimented set of [ __ ] rules so you know i mean just to you know take a [ __ ] without a dude [ __ ] next to you you read this magazine yet oh yeah hell yeah past that okay cool oh oh okay damn you haven't come he taking [ __ ] you taking the [ __ ] right you taking a shower and [ __ ] across the way taking the shower we talking about the laker game man kobe man you know so we we you know you interlocked in with all of these dudes and so these dudes ultimately almost are and again they like family and a lot of them they are my family you know because i did so much time with them and i shared so much of my life with them they share so much are they life with me you know you go out on visit you see them with their family with their kids you know just small glimpses of how it could be you know forced to be free and so i talked to them quite regularly a lot of dudes that got out so yeah well while you were locked up they had the beanie man and bounty killer versus battle right and when beanie man performed compton right was in the comments okay basically saying wait that that isn't biggie you know what i'm talking about yeah i heard about it i definitely heard about it and you know [ __ ] oh [ __ ] that ain't big literally man hurry up oh my come on this gorilla blocked that yeah yeah that's gorilla so i mean yeah man i mean nas is is is is a legend man and he you know he's a staple and a cornerstone of hip-hop definitely so yeah definitely man i mean i think he just at that time everything going on he brought but oh man that's oh [ __ ] wait a minute and so beanie man was like yo that's gorilla block there so yeah man but uh definitely yeah and you know when you look on spotify the compton song has almost four million views right right so you know after all that after all those years back then there was no streaming platforms or whatever else four million people still tuned in to that one song right all those years later plus another 3.6 million listen to you're the one right sunrise got about 1.7 million that's it and that's my most favorite song on that album is that right that's my favorite song on that album and again as an artist that's what i was telling reggie earlier and he asked me he said man black what is your favorite song on that album it's sunrise me and my brother we was in hawaii and we was in the airport and i wrote the hook to it and i had to beat and i was just like and when i heard the song and i was like this is my favorite song but um you know i think more than anything man over the years people have been able to listen to my music they've been able to see my own artistic you know way of doing things and they've been able to understand a lot more and a lot of people never knew who i was a lot of people have never heard me not never heard my story have ever talked to me you know i come from the age of print media so a lot of people they were caught unto this perception that it's this dude and he trying to be biggie and so when you dealing with labels at that time sometimes they begin to pigeonhole artists and put artists in this box and so at that time it's different now like you know you can go on youtube and artists can just jump on there or you could i just seen the other day what is this [ __ ] called live you can go on i can go on instagram and just go live and talk to [ __ ] hey what's happening the [ __ ] y'all doing hey man what's going on oh man what's happening man but it's different different world it's a different world only people knew about me is through print media they was able to read about me and so they a lot of people didn't get to know who i was and then those who met me and was up close with me and was like oh okay i [ __ ] with this dude okay all right i like his music or record it with me and you know that was just the difference man and me being able to just [ __ ] with different people on genuine levels and i just think that people still have a curiosity about me that never have known me or never heard my story or never talked to me or never you know they only had one way and so time has went by and people and things have changed and so now you have the millennials and a lot of them look back and be like man what happened to this dude or you know so yeah well gorilla black quite a story quite a story quite a journey uh you know and you made your mistakes but you did your time yeah you didn't you didn't get away with it you know you you paid you know your your debt to society and you belong to start you know out here and you have the opportunity to start your life over right and it seems like you're surrounded by people you know your brother yeah uh hot dog is right here next to you right now definitely uh you know you have a bunch of people with you seems like you have genuine love out there you know you got your kids right you got your wife right right and uh you know it doesn't seem like you're ducking from what you did right you took responsibility for what it is that you did in your mistakes right and i think that's the important part you're not sitting there saying you know and i interview a lot of people and there's always the excuse oh the judge did be dirty or oh you know they they i never did this and they blame now like no you said what you did and you did the time for what it is that you did and it could have been a lot worse it could have been 20 30 years yeah it could have and i look back at that man and you know the warning signs was everywhere but at that time i wasn't in a place mentally to be able to discern the differences because i allowed myself to put myself in one way and one way of thinking and i couldn't be open and i couldn't open myself up to different possibilities and so when i cut myself off from being open to all of the different possibilities i just started drawing drawing down to one set of rigid segmented thinking is this it's this it's this [ __ ] everything and [ __ ] that and [ __ ] this i'm just gonna do this and i look back on it and you know i really understand now that no matter how much i've planned and no matter how smart i think i am i realize that god truly has a bigger purpose for my life and you know definitely at this point where i'm at me being surrounded with people like my brother if i hadn't had my brother who's been so instrumental to helping me reacclimate myself with society without having to support the love of my children without having the support and love of other people because again like i told you i hurt these people um when i went to prison man i really hurt a lot of people i didn't even take it into consideration what how far reaching my actions hurt people you know the people whose credit cards that i use were hurt my children do not have a father in the home they're hurt my wife doesn't have a provider or a strength and her husband because he's gone my brothers no longer have counseling a confidant to sit down and sit down and talk to on different levels no one went unscathed and so i'm so blessed and thankful to be here at this point in my life to have all of those people around me and have given me a second chance and you know it's deep because you know i could say this from my point of view and for me sitting here they didn't have to give me a chance you know my brother could have wrote me up and said man [ __ ] you on some weirdo [ __ ] you just you said [ __ ] all of us but he was like yo black he welcomed me back into the phone and say hey let's do this let's do this let's move forward let's get this going let's do this let's do this and so i'm really really proud you know i'm proud of my brother and the accomplishments you know he has a hairline that hairline definitely is dope and it's been really really successful to this point and he's been there that you know even when i was in there in a dark place i was in a dark space in there and he was like yo your time is coming you gonna get up out of there um when i was in the program a lady said something to me and it was so crazy and she said to me she said mr williamson you got a date to leave here but it ain't about you leaving it's about who's leaving it's not about when you leave the blp the bureau of prison says you have this date you're going home but it's about who's going home and so i learned that as humans we don't change because we just see the light we change because we feel the heat and that heat sometimes it's one of those things to say damn what if what i thought about and how i moved on so many levels was [ __ ] wrong period but only whenever we get to that point to where we could question ourselves and say hey you know what the way i've been looking at this might have been in a backwards way for a long long period of time and so yeah man i'm now back and i'm cutting a lot of music and i'm back in the studio doing something that i'm passionate about and you know yeah when they killed nip that really really crushed me in there you know because i lost my mother and nip and you know me and you know my brother and all of us was real close with nipping i hadn't wrote anything in prison i never wrote i never i didn't have the the passion to write and i just felt like you know what i'm gonna start writing again and so i ended up writing almost close to almost 600 verses before i walked out in the last 11 months of my incarceration there you have it gorilla black man appreciate you sharing your story man wish you all the best no doubt man until next time thank you man peace

Channel: djvlad

Views: 300,324

Keywords: VladTV, DJ Vlad, Interview, Hip-Hop, Rap, News, Gossip, Rumors, Drama

Id: CcI5lOcV4_w

Length: 83min 14sec (4994 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 25 2021