[What is some of the best advice you've ever heard?]
“Once I was waiting for the bus right and this man walked up and just got to telling me about his entire life. And at first, I was kinda like, "Why is he telling me all this?" And he could look at me and tell that’s kinda how I was receiving it, and so he was just like, “Don’t mind anything about what I’m telling you; I don’t mind if you judge me; we’ll probably never meet again." He told me that was another way of therapy besides going to a therapist, just venting and talking to random people, and he won’t really care if they judge him or not because it’s like this’ll probably be his first and last time seeing them. I was just going down to school in North Carolina; that was my first and last time seeing that guy. That was 5 years ago, and once he told me that, I got home, and I was just thinking about it for a minute, and I was just like, that’s some real ass shit. And then, after that point, I kinda was just open to talking about anything with anybody. You never know who could relate, and that’s why I do talk to anybody about anything. I’d want people to feel the same with me, whoever I’m talking to. I want you to feel like you could talk to me about anything. You know what I’m saying? Cause it’s like I know how that shit feel, to not have nobody to talk to about little certain shit that really bug you or is heavy on your mind. Like you feel like you have nobody to talk to; walls closing in; all that shit. That’s also something I learned when taking psychology too. It’s good to talk to people. Psychology was an election at Wilson, I took it because I was interested, but then I really got interested. So I made it my major, but then I realized how much school I had to do. I’m like, "Na, I’ll do social work." Because it was kinda the same thing. And really, I wanted to be there for the kids who experienced major trauma as a child. I lost my first friend when I was 13 years old. Seeing a nigga get stabbed, walking in the rec. My man Apple, R.I.P. Apple. We was in the rec, he got stabbed down the street by Tiki's, and he walked all the way back to the rec just bleeding out. He came in the rec just bleeding, and you know shit like that—don't live your mind. I’ve seen a lot of shit though. That’s why it's just like little shit, like what happened to me last night it's just like "WTF". That was just wrong place wrong time; I was just walking to the store. Like it was with my man two years ago, going on two years now. At 18, I seen my man Bucket shot in my parking lot. I lived uptown when I was younger; me and my mother used to stay with my grandmother until I was like 7 or 8, and then we moved down 7th Street, and I been there ever since. But yeah, I got exposed to violence early, like 13 or 14. Seeing that shit in the rec, I lost a big homie at 14, my 9th grade year at tech. And then, it was just people that I knew that I’d hang around that was older, nobody really my age then. And as years would go on as I got older, like 16, 17, and 18, it’d really be a lot of niggas I met at Wilson. After we graduated, people just started dying. Like 2015-2019, people that I remember being in hallways with type shit, like having little conversations and interactions, details I still remember, and they just gone. Stuff like that really wig you out; it really do sometimes. I really be feeling Herb when he say “I got over 50 dead friends." Like I got literally over 30 friends that died to the streets, and I just turned 25 in October. I real live know more people that died in the streets than how many years I’ve been here. Niggas been threw a lot of shit, so that’s why I say it’s really good to just talk, cause you never know what the next person is going through, you really never know. A lot of people don’t agree with the whole therapy thing. And I get it, but if you don’t want to talk to a professional, go talk to somebody that you trust. And if they really love you, they gonna sit there for days and talk to you. I be telling people, sometimes all someone needs is somebody to listen. It’s been people who I’m not even super close with that have confided in me with the deepest, darkest shit, and all that’s going to my grave, like, you know what I’m saying? Just because they trusted me with that, I won’t say it’s like a duty, but I’m glad to listen; they could get it off they mind and I’m glad I was able to be apart of that.”
[Tell me more about how it was for you growing up in DC.]
“I didn’t start getting into the streets for real until I was older. Like when I came back from NC. That’s when I started hustling. I grew up in the hood. I was from the hood, but I wasn’t from the streets. I wasn’t hustling or nothing like that yet. Even when I was selling weed in high school, it was from a friend, so I never had to go to the street for it. It wasn’t until I got older that I was like I’m outside every day. So now I’m really affiliated with the shit now, more niggas starting to know me by face and name. I’d say my mother did a pretty good job because she didn’t let me go to Dunbar. If I had went to Dunbar, I would've got into it way earlier, like 15/16, because everybody from the neighborhood was at Dunbar. I had a 3.9 coming out of middle school, and I got into every school except Walls. I ended up choosing Tech my 9th grade year. And my mother was cool with that because it wasn’t too far, it had good academics, and there wasn’t much hood activity. I was on my basketball shit. I forget about it sometimes because I let go of it kinda early. When I was at the JuCo, shit was too political, so I said fuck that shit. I didn’t want to put up with it. But yeah, I was on sports heavy as a kid, so I never really had time to get into nothing else. My mother always kept me in sports camps. I’d go around Riggs, but that was just to go to the rec with my mans Rod and Jones. We wasn’t really outside doing dumb shit we just played basketball a lot. It was just basketball and parties in high school. I met friends outside the neighborhood; I had my hood men and I had friends from school, so it was separate. Rod, he ended up being like my best friend; having him was cool because he wasn’t in the streets like that either, so I always went to his house, and we just did shit. Playing the game, playing basketball all day, whatever. So I really never had time to be in the streets, but when I got older and came home from NC, I really started making my own decisions. And I needed money, so it was like, fuck it, I’m outside. And that’s how it was. I felt like that’s what I had to do. I was in NC for 4 years. I had my own place, own whip, I had everything. Now I gotta come home no whip, no money and live with my mother. I had to find some motion, I had to get some paper, and I tried to get a job at a coffee shop, but they fired me after like 3 days because they said I kept coming late, so I was like, fuck that shit, so I just did that. I already sold stuff before, and I knew people, so it was nothing to ask for a favor. So off that, I was like, Okay, yeah, this what I’m doing now. But I always told myself, “Get in and get out.. don’t be hustling for 10 years and you still on the block; don’t do that bruh.” And I know people that’s like that, and it's no offense to them, but I know they think about it too, like if things could’ve went different if they wasn’t still hustling. It’s years of regret that come with that, and I didn’t want to be like that. So I told myself, "Get in, get out." I just needed cash. It was also after I just went through this breakup. So I was thinking, I need some way to consume my time, or I'ma just go crazy thinking about this girl. We were together for about 3–4 years. My first real relationship, my best friend and all that. I got a job that didn’t work, and I was already in a depressed state, so I was like, I can't be in here all sad and broke as shit, so I got up. It helped a little; I still had to heal from that separately, but it was one of the reasons why I decided to hustle because I didn’t want to think about being sad. Its a few things I would've did differently, but mostly I would've just been smarter, made better decisions toward the people in my life, I wouldn’t have been as selfish as I was in the past. As far as regrets go, I probably would’ve just treated people differently and appreciated things more."
[Where do you want to go in life?]
“I wanna experience the world. I plan on (Inshallah) going to different countries and experiencing different places, different cultures, all that shit. Sometimes I be thinking, I might not even have a kid in D.C. But then it’s like, do I really want that? I really think about it because even when I went to school in NC it was different. Just little stuff, like down to awareness was different. When I first went down there and people would compliment me on what I had on, I got on defense mode, like in my head, I’m wondering, “What you telling me you like my shoes for?”. Back home, a nigga tryna see wassup with you if they tell you that! And they didn’t even know that was really a thing in the city. Out there, they on some chill shit, yeah, but they’ll be easy to bait in cause they wasn’t even aware something like that could be taken the wrong way easy because they ain’t grow up like that. They didn’t grow up worried about getting bagged for your shoes or having to be on point on the train, but I still be thinking, "Do I not want my kid to grow up in DC?" And I could move to any other state in a black-populated area, and it could be like that too, but do I not want them to grow up in DC.? Like, growing up in DC is different, just like how it probably is growing up in Chicago, Compton, or any of them cities. I feel like it's different; it's a lot you see and learn early, you exposed to a lot of different things. But the best thing about growing up in DC is the culture you get, everything that come with DC. And everybody got they own culture, yeah, but DC? DC really has like real history, real culture. Fuck the politics, the White House. I’m talking about real black history. The shit that went down in DC and how big shit was and how major it is. DC was a goldmine in the 80’s. That’s why when the old heads be talking the way they do, I understand it because its no order out here now; you got young niggas not giving fuck and doing super reckless shit. And I don’t want to say I get it, but if you give a youngin a gun and racks of money, I see why it's like, "Shit, wtf ima listen to you for?”. I get it, but I don’t because it's so many people under 18 just dying. Like when I was actually in middle and high school, people wasn’t dying at our age really. There was a few on some tragic shit, but now its babies thats not even making it to prom. And I see how it is now, so I be thinking about that, like, what is DC going to be like when my kids growing up? Do I want them to be exposed to that? Because growing up, it wasn’t like this. Back in the day, before us, it was worse. Then we came, so I feel like our era might’ve been the most chill because I be feeling like now it's getting just as turnt as when DC was the murder capital, you know. So sometimes I do think about that and if I want my kids to grow up here or not. I’d probably still bring them around just so they can have a taste of DC. I know when I have kids, they ain’t gonna have to go through nothing I went through. I don’t want my kids to have to go through nothing I went through and be exposed to none of that shit if they don’t have to. I had to be just because of the circumstances. My mother tells me all the time she never wanted to live in an apartment. She grew up living in a house, and that’s always what she wanted for me—a house with a backyard. And I tell her, "Ma, I’m not mad at you for none of that," because (Inshallah) I could go and get her all the stuff she been saying she wanted to get for me. So I tell her, “I don’t fault you for that, Ma; I don’t look down at it. You a superhero to me; I done seen you turn nothing into something my entire life.” So, you know, I don’t want my kids to have to experience living in a neighborhood because we have to and because it’s all I can afford. Na, I want us to be in a big house somewhere so all they friends could come over. That’s how I want my kids to grow up. But I’m also going to instill that mentality in them, the same my mother instilled in me. My mother done been through shit, but she was able to raise a son because of what she went through.”
[How would you describe DC to someone who isn't from here?]
“It’s wild, when people think of DC, they think of the White House, the president. It be catching me off guard because they only think of like the monument and all that shit, but they don’t think that DC is just like a smaller Chicago or all them other lit cities. They dont know the real DC, because it's overshadowed cause they trying to gentrify DC. Like when all them riots was going on, people was surprised, and I was like, "Wtf you surprised about?" It was a lot of people from DC down there—hood niggas and all that—that's with that stuff because this they city. But at the same time, the shit they worry about we don’t even worry about on the daily like it’s crazy. When my man got killed on January 7th, about 2 years ago, the shit with the Capitol happened on January 6th, that happened that night at 12:30 in the morning. I went down Atlanta because it was Rod and Jones birthday. I figured I just had to get the fuck away. I just went through the most craziest shit in my life, so I just wanted to get away from DC. So I went down there, and at a party somebody asked me,“What’s the real DC?” and I was just like, Look, I'ma break it down just like this. I asked him, “What just happened a couple days ago?” And he knew exactly what I was talking about; he said, “The Capitol got breeched right,” and I’m like, yeah, right, and while they guarding the shit out of the Capitol and the White House, while all that’s happening, later that night I’m rushing my man to the hospital, he bleeding out, and I’m trying to save his life. So I just told him, “You put that into perspective." I told him that we fighting our own war. And I was just telling him, That’s the difference right there. What was the headlines? The Capitol. The Capitol. My little man just got killed. It ain’t no headlines for him. That’s why I be saying it’s really the opposite of what you see on TV. This shit goes on every single day in our world. And I live 10 minutes from the capitol driving. They talk about monuments and shit, but if you just come up the street, you’d think it’s a whole different world.”
