SPEAKER_06 0:00

What's going on, y'all? Welcome back to the Corpus Christi Originals podcast. I'm here in the Riding High Studios with uh DJ King. How you doing, man?

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Hey, what's good? What's good? It's your boy DJ Lil King Riding High Podcast in the building, riding high with DJ Lil King. You know what I'm saying? Hey, we're in this thing. Corpus Christi Originals, you know what I'm saying? Got my dude as Hesus up in here. Shout out to the rest of the Riding High crew, wherever y'all at, man. You know what I'm saying? Hey, we in this thing, man.

SPEAKER_06 0:25

Yeah, man. So this is the on the road uh portion of the Corpus Christi Originals podcast. And uh I reached I reached out, and then Kree was like, You need to stop by the Riding High podcast. And you were like, Come back over here, bro. That was dope, dude. Yeah, so DJ King manager. The people that don't know who you are, uh, you you could you introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Uh my name, like I said, DJ Lil King. My government name is Derek Boston. I grew up on the west side of Corpus Christie before eventually moving to the south side of Corpus Christie. I I was raised in between my parents and my grandparents, you know what I'm saying? So growing up, lived on the south side growing up, and then we moved to the west, lived on the west for a little while, lived on the south. Man, I lived back and forth between everywhere besides the uh flower bluff, north side, and the east side of corpus. So basically, between Molina and Crestmon is where I spent my upbringings. I went to Carl Island Elementary, which is part of the West Oso School District. I went to West Oso Junior High School, and I went to West Oso High School for ninth grade, and then I went to Carroll High School for 10th grade, then I went to Carroll High School for the start of 11th grade and went back to West Oso for I don't know. That's it's all mixed. I was back and forth between Garroll and West Oso. So I would go like half a semester to one school and go half half a semester to another school, and then I would start failing. So my people would send me back to West Oso, all types, you know what I'm saying? So that type of stuff.

SPEAKER_06 1:51

So what did that teach you?

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Like like different environments, like yeah, yeah, straight up because uh at West Doso High School, that was a school of like, and you gotta remember, like I said, I went to West Oso like from elementary to like well, in fifth, I started going to West Doso in fifth grade, so fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, these are all my classmates, and I get to West Oso High School, and between the freshman and senior classes, West Oso only had maybe like 450 kids. So then, whenever after I leave West Doso High School after the first semester, and I go to Carroll for second semester of high school, and I get to Carroll, and Carroll literally probably at that point had like 1800 kids. Oh shoot, the freshman class alone was like all of Westoso's population.

SPEAKER_06 2:32

Dang, so it's like how do you go about making friends over there?

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Yeah, well, this is the good thing though about Carroll, because I went to Castores Elementary whenever I was younger. So Castores Elementary uh it feeds into okay to Carroll High School, but whatever, depending on what middle school you end up going to, which was like Tom Brown, South Park, or whatever, or Grant. A lot of those kids that I went to elementary school, I went and I went to Castores from like third, fourth, and fifth grade before we went to West Oso. So whenever I went back to Carroll, I still knew a few people that had made it to Carroll from like Castores Elementary.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

So shout out to my homeboy DJ Rakage, my homeboy Rico. He was one of the like he was man. I I've known him. Him, my dad and his dad were like real good friends. So I've known him since we were kids. So whenever he found out, like we never went to school together. None. Whenever I never told him I was checking in to Carol, so whenever he saw me, like the first day that I was uh actually on campus walking around, he like had to do a double take, and he was like, What the fuck are you doing here? I'm like, bro, I checked in, he's like, You fucking line. I'm like, yeah, he's like, No more West Though. So I'm like, nah, I'm here now.

SPEAKER_06 3:35

He's like, bro, hell yeah, that's about to go down. Damn, that's what's up, dude. Hell yeah, yeah, I can relate to that. I went to uh Robert Wilson, and then same thing when I went to Ray, I seen some gifts from Robert Wilson. I'm like, Dang, what are you doing? Yeah, they look to say I mean, look the same. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 3:50

Yeah, that's what's up, man. For sure.

SPEAKER_06 3:51

Yeah, so so man, you're really into music, you got this right and high thing going, man, and you're really into music. What was music like in your household?

SPEAKER_02 3:58

I know you live with your grandparents kind of the majority of the time, but uh were they listening to did you listen to what they're listening to, or uh definitely, and I would say, like, growing up with like when I live with my because I live with my mom and dad from whenever I was born to probably like I was like 11. So from during that time, I'm listening to like Z95. So we're hearing like the rap music that's on the radio. My people didn't really have money to just be going record shopping and stuff like that. So whenever income tax season would come, then my dad might go get some new records or something, you know, new cassettes or something like that. So he was uh damn, what was my dad? Uh on let me think he was on like a lot of old school stuff. We would listen to like a lot of Isley brothers and like like a lot of Joe to see RB and stuff like that. And whenever it was my dad didn't really listen to rap that much.

SPEAKER_06 4:42

What about like disco? Not so much like disco type stuff.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

Uh, this is where it gets because I ain't gonna I ain't gonna say disco, but whenever I end up moving in with my grandparents, we would take like and I didn't even realize this, bro. Like until I get older, like whenever I was younger, I went out of town a lot. So whenever I was younger, I was always going to San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Austin, and I didn't realize like till I got older, like a lot of people don't travel like that. Like some people's parents don't even have cars, cars to go to the grocery store, much less San Antonio stuff like that. On those trips that I would take with my grandparents, they were always listening to the blues. Wow, so that's how like blues isn't necessarily disco, but it's like kind of around that same era. So I came up on like Johnny Taylor, like Marvin Cease and Bobby Blue Bland, and like guitar players, yeah, for damn sure. You know what I'm saying? Like a whole bunch of like blues, guitar playing blues, uh chitlin' circuit music is what they would call it.

SPEAKER_06 5:39

That's interesting, bro. I'm a guitar player, and do you think like I guess your culture has forgotten about the guitar? Like uh, because a lot of those blues players were like black dudes, yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

And a lot of those old uh blues players didn't even get they were uh either played or wrote for a lot of the popular white artists, yeah, and didn't even get credited, you know what I'm saying? Like that's how it was back in those days. Oh shoot, for sure, for sure.

SPEAKER_06 6:07

Do you see that in the music culture nowadays? As far as like you know, black dudes writing stuff and then you know taking credit.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

I mean, thing is now you gotta have like all your publishing and all that stuff like down. So it's all about having like your writers' credentials, your publishing credentials, and all that stuff, and that's based upon individual. Like, you gotta have your stuff, you gotta have your stuff in order for yourself. You can't expect nobody else to have your music business in order. The only person that has your best interests when it comes to this music stuff is yourself. So if you write a song for someone, it's on you to make sure that you get those proper writer credits because in the music game it sucks to say it, but it's an ugly business. And it might be your homeboy who you wrote the song for, but he don't give you credit, and now he's taking 100% of the song, and it happens all the time. Now you and your homeboy done had a fallout because he didn't made millions off this song, and damn all he gave you was fifty dollars to help him write you, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_06 7:04

Do you even think there that there is mute money in the music industry? Because it seems like only a certain few make it or make it quote unquote, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 7:12

But I think there's money in the music game if you're doing it like independently, and you could build up like a cult following independently. Okay, no, you could get signed by a record label and they'll probably give you like a huge advance, which you can consider that money, but most of that money, I ain't gonna say most of it, you you owe all that money that they gave you in an advance is what you owe them, plus more, probably. You know what I'm saying? So as an independent, I say if you could build up maybe like a cult following of maybe like 50,000 fans, and let's just say you drop a project and you drop a project and you release that uh project for for $9.99, $10, and let's just say only a thousand out of the 50,000 people that follow you buy it. If you get a thousand people to buy that, you didn't make ten thousand dollars. Assuming they're buying physical products or a digital copy, you can sell a digital copy online for for $9.99. That's what I was thinking. Uh a physical copy, we're finna sell that for about $15.20. Depending on how many songs on there, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_06 8:14

That's come back, the physical, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Like the the uh definitely the albums, the CDs. Hopefully the CDs will make a return, but I'm definitely seeing like a uh a huge return on like the vinyl, like you see a lot of artists pressing up like vinyl copies nowadays, even though they ain't pressing up CDs or cassette, they still press up them vinyl copies. Oh, for sure. And they're always like a limited number, they always like be like a specialized vinyl, like marbleized or something, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_06 8:37

Man, for sure. Yeah, do you think, man? Wow, there's a lot packed in there, bro.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

Yeah, damn. Do you think that uh I think it's all about how you package it now, bro? Like you can if and I feel like if it's an artist that you really like, and they let's just say you're a huge Wu Tang fan, Wu Tang comes out with a new album and it's they drop it online, yeah, but they also drop it on vinyl, yes, and they also give you a poster and uh a t-shirt with damn, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Inside of a collector's edition box, they can sell that for a hundred dollars because a true Wu Tang fan isn't gonna be like paying a hundred dollars for that shit. They're gonna look at that like I'm gonna be one of the thousand people who own that, so I'm gonna get that.

SPEAKER_06 9:22

That's crazy, bro.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Because that's how I look at collectors items. When I see something that's like I got a uh a book that was a collector's edition, shout out to Lance Scott Walker and Peter Best. They were uh they had written a book a while back uh called Houston Rap Tapes, and then they had did like a special edition that came with like vinyl and posters and pictures and all that, and there was like a special edition limited to like 150 copies or maybe even 100 copies, and they were selling that for like 150 bucks. Man, I jumped on that thing so quick. I still got all that stuff. I should have had some of it displayed up here. But next time we do something, I have it displayed up here.

SPEAKER_06 9:55

That's what's up, man. Yeah, for sure. That it seems like you have to find your tribe and how long is it gonna take? Everybody's trying to find that tribe. Well, not only that, like you gotta find your life. Who are you gonna upset? Because yeah, that not everybody's gonna agree with you if you if you're going, it seems like if you're going that route, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

You know what I mean? Well, thing is too, you always say you could always go listen to it on Apple Music too. If you don't want to pay the hundred dollars for the package, it's it's on Apple Music, pay your $9.99 a month, and there you go. Yeah, listen to it for I ain't gonna say for free for nine tank for live.

SPEAKER_06 10:24

What's up, Lete, and then we got Gustavo in there talking about uh rest in peace, Mr. Three. Uh for sure.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

RP Mr.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Three, too, for y'all that see my shirt. Oh, let me give a shout-out real quick because I told homie I would give him a shout out, man. Go ahead, shout out to Richard at ATT Store, or right over here on Alameda and Doddridge. He got me the new iPhone 17 Pro Max, you know what I'm saying? For huge discounted race. So y'all go see Richard at ATT Store on Alameda and Doddridge. You know what I'm saying? I just have to plug that in because I told him I would give him a shout-out since he uh bro, gook me up, man. Go ahead, man.

SPEAKER_06 10:59

You know what, dude? I you follow we're on the on the group page for Corpus Christi Podcast, man. Yeah, and I just want that pet that group page to be uplifting, bro. Sure, like because you're a podcaster, I'm a podcaster, we got our stuff going on, dude. And I just want to show that we can do we can do this together, yeah. For sure, you know what I'm saying? Like, and uh we got a lot of commonalities, which I think is something that we didn't really need to press on, yeah, for sure as a society, you know what I mean, just to keep growing together. Uh yeah, man. So man, I heard your uh your interview with Scoop Dose. Shout out off the Kush podcast. Shout out to Scoop Dose, man. He had one not one, but two episodes with you, bro. You had to come back with number two. On that, I think it was on that first one or that second one. You used a talk boy, bro.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 11:43

To make your mixtape, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

My mom had got my mom and dad got my brother a talk, but when me and my brother were still in with my mom and dad for one Christmas, they had got him. He had one of, I guess when like home alone, yeah, yeah, came out and he wanted the talk boy for Christmas, so he got the talk boy, and that's whenever I started hearing about like DJ Screw and screwed up tapes and I just tried to figure something out.

SPEAKER_06 12:04

So when it worked. So when did you when did you like think that it when did at what point it wasn't a myth after all? That whole DJ screw, because every you were saying that everybody thought he was a myth, or it was a machine, or it was this or it was that. When was the point you were like, okay, he's an actual person?

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Actually, probably like in 1998. And in 1998, for me, because that's whenever my grandparents, like I said, we moved in with my grandparents in like '97. So whenever, like, my grandparents, they tried to do like everything they could to like, they knew where we came from, yeah, from living with my parents and the stuff, you know what I'm saying. And no disrespect to my mom and dad, but they just knew the type of life that we came from. So my grandparents basically tried to like give us everything that we basically wanted that they could afford. So we'd go to my cousin's house and they'd have a brand new computer. So we get back, uh, and could go to my cousin's house in San Antonio, they got a brand new computer. We're on down on America Online. We come back to Corpus like a month later, we got a computer, you know what I'm saying? And we're on America Online. So my uh the internet, I would say, and probably to a lot of people, that was the first time that you were able to like maybe like see uh pictures of people. Okay, yeah, okay, okay. Because other than that, like you could go to the record store, and yeah, you go buy like an Aaliyah CD and you see an Aaliyah picture of Aaliyah on the cover. You know what I'm saying? Those DJ screw tapes weren't they didn't have nobody's picture on them, so you didn't really know what none of these dudes look like unless you were in Houston, unless you were going to concerts, or unless you basically had the internet, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 13:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you were mentioning also on the podcast, too, that they don't even want to be on camcorder, yeah. Exactly. Because of what they're associated with that lifestyle, for sure. Yeah, that was definitely interesting, man, for sure. Yeah, so uh so your DJ, so you went from that talk boy to so after that you went onto the turntables vinyl. Like, when did you get into the actual you know turn tables? Because you got a setback here, it looks nice.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Thank you, appreciate you. Yeah, I probably uh got into actual. I started DJ, and I wouldn't say necessarily turntables, uh probably like around whenever we moved in with my grandparents. My grandparents like had like record players, and me and my brother would like mess around and stuff like that, but then it goes back to that damn computer, bro. Like, I feel like the computer, bro. Yeah, the invention of the computer and the internet was like the the new world type shit, you know what I'm saying? Like it's we're basically where we're at today. So I'm in my homeboy's house one day, and I come home from my homeboy's house, and my brother's like, Hey bro, I discovered this program where you could uh screw and chop songs, and it's called I think it was called like PC DJ. And for for y'all that for that for y'all that are old enough, one of the main reasons why we wanted that computer too was because of a program called Napster. Napster, you know what Napster is? Yep. Napster was like the first ever peer-to-peer uh program where you could share music, which was illegal as hell back in the day. I'm pretty sure it's probably still illegal now. But say if I had the new DMX uh CD on my computer and Jesus had a computer, I could basically just he could download those files that I had on my computer onto his computer, so everybody was just stealing and sharing music all over the damn world. So that's where like we were getting like music from, and he was downloading music from there. And I remember the first song he showed me was like Ludacris, what's your fantasy? He had like like uh he was like going back and forth with a mouse, he was actually DJing with a mouse.

SPEAKER_06 15:39

Wow, crazy, bro.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

So from there, that like really sparked the interest from like just messing around on the the turntables and vinyl records and record players that my grandparents had to seeing it. This ain't how J Screw's doing it because I'm computer, yeah. But this is kind of what we're getting the feel of what he's doing, right? So that kind of wanted us to take it like to the next level.

SPEAKER_06 16:00

Wow. So even so obviously it's a visual thing. Do you and I see a lot of videos and stuff, you're looking at your computer still, yeah. To to visit like do you think it's easier to visualize as opposed to hearing the you know that mix going on? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Well, the thing is with the computer, it just changed the game now because you have the wave files to where you don't necessarily have to listen with headphones and try to track, yeah, bring it back and try to track where the song needs to be brought in or brought back, whatever. You could literally, if you could read wave files, which is easy as hell, then it's it's easy as it's easy as hell, I think.

SPEAKER_05 16:37

Wow, man.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

So that's why so many people are DJing nowadays. All it takes is just to read wave files, you don't have to use no headphones. That the essence of really DJing ain't even there no more. So that's why I still take pride in like the essence of real DJing. That's why the uh the cis the setup that I use are like full full size vinyl size, uh actual turntables, even though they're CDJs, they're new mark CDX C DJs, and they're actually the size of a vinyl. A lot of people have like controllers, and no disrespect to the people on controllers. Okay, I know some people that's cold as hell with them goddamn little baby controllers, you know what I'm saying? But me personally, I just prefer big the big boys, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 17:15

Right on, right on OG shit. So there's a different camp, like you got this camp, that camp, whatever, yeah, and the naturalists and your peers probably all and not just that.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Some people the a setup like I got back there will probably run you maybe about four or five thousand dollars. Yeah, for real. Some people only got four hundred dollars to invest into a DJ setup, they ain't got four to five thousand dollars to invest into a DJ setup, so all they got is four hundred four or five hundred dollars. So that's where you go and get the little baby controller, start doing you some gigs, get paid for the gigs, and then you go to the next side. Wow, that's so crazy. It's all about you know what I'm saying, it's all about building up. You start off with the baby Mercedes and then you build your way up to the 500.

SPEAKER_06 17:49

You remember your first gig, like your first actual like paid gig?

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Uh let me see. Let me think. My first paid gig because this goes back into one of the questions that you had. My first actual paid gig. I didn't I didn't never take a paid gig until I had to store the plug in 2015 because before then, and this is what uh uh uh I was thinking about this the other day. Like me, my brothers, and shout out to my homie Rakage. I see him tune in right now. My homie Rico. We we were our we never had plans of DJing inside of clubs or DJing for anybody. Our whole plan or our whole goal was this is what what we're where we're at right now. Yeah, we wanted to do DJ screw style mixtapes. We wanted to have one of us on the turntables, one of us have the mic doing the uh hosting the shout outs. We smoking, we sipping lean, whatever we doing, and we just having a good time. Wow, you know what I'm saying? That was our goal wasn't never to oh, let me learn how to uh play the new record so I can be the hottest DJ in the club. Like that was never our goals. Our goals was to make jamming ass mixtapes that we could ride around with our homies and sibling and get hot to.

SPEAKER_06 18:59

Damn, that's a culture right there, bro, in itself.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Like a motherfucker.

SPEAKER_06 19:02

Damn, for real.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

In my line wreckage, you tune in right now. My line was that not our goal, straight up.

SPEAKER_05 19:08

Wow, bro.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

We we never had plans like between me, my two brothers that DJ also, and uh my homie records.

SPEAKER_07 19:15

Like, I've never like man, I'm trying to get into this club to DJ.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Right. Our whole goal was a for a giant choice to jam, and it was mainly us, uh, even though a lot of people would jam our mixtapes, we were all our big our biggest competitors. Okay, like me and Wreckage, like we were like each other's biggest iron sharpeners iron type shit. Like, yes, he would let me hear one of his mixes, I'm letting him hear one of my mixes, and we would just uh share mixtapes of each other. Yeah, oh, he's doing this, I ain't doing this on my mixtape. So let me start trying to incorporate this on the next mixtape that I do. And it wasn't like oh, I'm stealing what he was doing because we're all growing at the same time, yeah. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_06 19:59

Type shit. Oh man, they do that's a co so was it all was it okay. What type of music was it? Was it was it like a Houston type of music, corpus type of music?

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Like what all we definitely came up on Houston music because back to that computer 1998, prime swisher house. So you're listening to these swisher house tapes, and they're talking about sipping lean, they're talking about go to our website www.swisherhouse.com. So before I even have a computer of my own, I'm over there at Wreckage's house, and we're fucking on www.swishahouse.com. Wow, and back in those days, this is whenever you go to a website, and the website would have like an intro song. So I remember like the Swish House website, they had like an intro song. If I find mistaken wreckage, it was the uh if your smell with the rock is cooking, and then it was like the uh before the kappa 2000, like fucking uh intro. So uh it would only give you like a snippet. So I remember just reloading that page so many times just to keep hearing that song, but then again, we're on Napster, so we just go to Napster and just download another one, download it. But thing is on Napster everything was just so mislabeled. Oh wow, you put in uh DMX How It's Going Down or DMX Rough Riders Anthem, and next thing you know, you got a Mariah Carey song, you know what I'm saying? Like everything on fucking Napster was like mislabeled like a motherfucker type shit, you know what I'm saying? Or it may it may be the proper artist, but the song's wrong. Wow, you know what I'm saying, or it may be the proper song title, but it's a whole different fucking artist with the same song title and not the same song.

SPEAKER_06 21:40

Dang, bro. And it's like, dude, how come it wasn't like rock music or something? I I heard you do was it uh uh sex and candy or yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

Rick is probably doing rock music, but in my household, we just like we didn't grow up on that type of stuff. We was on like blues, and like I say, like my Parents didn't even really listen to rap, it was more of like RB, H Town, Joe to see Silk, all that type of stuff.

SPEAKER_06 22:06

Yeah, so if it would be if it would have been rock or whatever, would you would you you think you would have liked rock growing up?

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Yeah, but I just think in the time that I came up in, it wasn't like because I got an uncle, bro, an RP to my uncle, Kenneth Armstead. Like he played that guitar until he passed away. He was part of like the whole Woodstock era, and I just feel like the blacks that grew up during that during that time, yeah. My my generation wasn't part of that culture. We almost looked at a black dude my age playing guitars like now at the age I'm at now, it's like, yeah, I look at a black dude my age playing guitar like hell yeah, that's dope as fuck, right? But being a 20, 21 year old playing, see no black dude play a guitar, it's almost like what you want to be white. Wow, you know what I'm saying? Like that it was almost frowned upon, like what you want to be white. Wow, bro.

SPEAKER_06 22:56

Dang, that's so crazy, man. Like you associated with a certain race, or yeah, for sure. That's so crazy, man.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

Yeah, so you so how do you carry that to to that well, I guess that screw culture, that screw tradition, uh into the into the future by continuing to make mixtapes and to continuing to striving to keep his name alive, shouting him out and mixtapes, always making sure to give credit where credit is due, letting it be known when it's DJ Screw's birthday, when it's DJ Screw's death day, when it's DJ Screw's uh they be having like the DJ Screw Day at the at the uh in Houston. It doesn't necessarily fall on his birthday anymore, but letting everybody know this is when DJ Screw Day is coming up. So even if you ain't in Houston, hey, I'm in corpus letting it be known that if you represent this is what's going on. Wow, spreading the news, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_06 23:49

Like so so do you think people still listen to screwed and chopped? Hell yeah! Wow, well, it's like you said, there's a trial.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

DJ Screw specifically, you know what I'm saying? And there's a lot of other DJs that do the screwed and chopped stuff too, but there's a whole there's a whole uh cult following of DJ Screw fans who don't even give no other DJs a chance, myself included.

SPEAKER_06 24:13

Can you imagine the people like in Europe and stuff, like all over there, dude? Yeah, man, that would be dope.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

But I know people in Houston straight up that they won't listen, they won't listen to no other DJ besides if DJ Screw didn't do it, they don't want to hear it. So basically, they don't want to hear no new music. If it's slowed and chop, they don't want to hear it, they just want to hear DJ Screw tapes.

SPEAKER_06 24:33

What about so okay? So, what about the Corpus Christi uh scene? How do they how do you think they respond to the the screw culture?

SPEAKER_02 24:42

Now man, that's that's here and there, bro. And it's like because that's what I do, I do the personal mixtapes for like a hundred dollars, I do projects for like 250. And it's for it's few and far in between. I would like more people to be getting their projects done. I don't know if my prices are too high or whatever, but I just feel like a lot of people don't really care about getting their projects done. I'll have people hit me up more so for like one-offs. Hey, can you slow and try my song? And more of so are those, and be like, Hey, I got my new project dropping. I want you to do the whole project. Wow, like that's that's that's rare nowadays. It's more of just hey, can you do these two songs for me? Can you do these three songs for me? I got can you do this one song for me? Like, so most of the time that I spend is doing personal mixtapes for people where it's say maybe you may make a list of 14 to 15 songs that you want me to DJ and mix and slow and chop and put my touch on. And you may want to come in here and talk and give shout-outs to your homies, but you don't want to rap on the tapes, and none of the songs are your songs, these are just all your favorite songs.

SPEAKER_08 25:45

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 25:45

So I do those, though, I do those way more than I do the people that are actually like you were doing before.

SPEAKER_06 25:51

Yeah, for sure. Wow, for sure. Man, so uh some some flowers, uh, some people that uh that I guess that you know in the culture because you've had all kinds of dude, all kinds of artists for sure. Uh man, even just the scene. Do you even even any thoughts on the scene that we have going on here? I know you guys got smokewalk second year anniversary, dude. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

Man, people always come on here and give shout outs to the to the rappers. So I'm gonna do a little different. I'm gonna I'm gonna give shoutouts to the DJs that I see that's making noise, you know what I'm saying? And no disrespect if I leave your name out. There's a lot of DJs that I don't know, which y'all I should know, y'all. Should we got one of the hottest podcasts in Corpus, one of the few hip hop-based podcasts in Corpus, so I should know you, you know what I'm saying? So oh dude, that's a good idea. Shout out to uh shout out to my dude DJ Crazy. You know what I'm saying? He's part of the Chopaholics, he's from Mathis, Texas. You know what I'm saying? He's came on a couple of times. DJ Crazy, he's out there in H Town now, and he's basically killing the whole Slowden Chop game. He just got signed to the Chopaholics, which is like a Mexican-based DJ uh crew that does Sloan Chop mixtapes. They were real popular in like the mid-2000s, and then they kind of went on like a hiatus, and then they came back once they were looking for new DJs. And my homeboy DJ Crazy got that opportunity, and now he's one of the DJs for the uh Chopaholics. Shout out to my dude DJ Fab, he's over there in Kingsville, Texas, holding it down. He's doing projects for people all out of H Town, people from Dallas. He's really making a noise too with this Sloan Chop sound. You know what I'm saying? Shout out to uh DJ Fame, he ain't in corpus no more, but he was killing it with the RB scene. Everything that he was doing in corpus was damn near a fucking sellout. You know, saying he was doing the RB uh brunches, the RB uh takeovers and all those things that he was doing, like at the uh rooftops and all that stuff, killing it every time, having sellouts every time. Every time I'm looking on Facebook, I'm seeing videos of him doing his damn thing. Wow, shout out to my dog DJ Dynamite. DJ Dynamite, he might be the hardest working DJ in the city. Yeah, this dude has a gig every damn day, straight up. DJ Dynamite. I don't know if you too did, but bro, you one of the hardest working DJs I know straight up. DJ Hurricane, what's up to my dog hurricane? You see dynamite, you're gonna see hurricane. So he's right there with them doing the damn thing too. Most of the time, dynamite's mixing, hurricanes hosting. Sometimes you catch Hurricane DJing them by himself doing the damn thing too. So shout out to them, too. You know what I'm saying? Whoever else I got, like I said, my dog DJ Records ain't even in corpus no more. He lived, he lives in Chicago, he's been in Chicago Friday for like the past 15 years, and he's still doing slow and chop mixtapes over there. Wow, you know what I'm saying? So that just shows you like he ain't lived in Texas in probably like 10 at least 10 years, and he's still over there doing slow and chop DJ Screw style mixtape. He's not over there doing go-go music or whatever the fuck Chicago do. No disrespect to what y'all do over there in the Midwest, but he's over there holding it, holding down the Texas culture musically over there. You know what I'm saying? That's what's up. Putting his Chicago people on the Texas music that he does.

SPEAKER_06 28:58

What's up going on? Uh, Chris uh Dynamite Hernandez says what says what's up. He put these uh shot looks like shotgun shells, but they're actually dynamites, yeah. Man, dude, that's awesome, dude. Wow, that's a lot of DJs, bro. Yeah, for sure. It's Mo 2.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

No disrespect if I didn't name y'all. DJ Paper Chase, he always out there working, too. You know what I'm saying? Everybody that be out there, man. A lot of people be doing the damn thing out there, man. If I ain't meant you, no disrespect, man. A lot of y'all be out there working, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 29:22

Man, shout out that's awesome, dude. Yeah, you that that's a really great idea, man. Shouting out the DJs, yeah, yeah. Man, so all these you're talking about mixed tapes. You actually had a store called the Plug. It was in the Trade Center, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude, what so so doing the mixtapes and all that stuff, you got into wanting to open up a store. Oh, because you had screw tapes or whatever, you wanted to sell those.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

DJ Screw's always been like obviously our biggest influence. They were other DJs that uh influenced us, like I say, that Swish House Swish House definitely influenced us because you were able to go to a Swish House website years before you could go to a DJ Screw website. So Swish House to us was more accessible to in Corpus Christie to us because we we didn't have cars to drive to Houston back in those days. The only way you were gonna get a DJ Screw tape was if you literally drove to DJ Screw's house, yeah. Or whenever he opened up his shop in 1998, you would go to DJ Screw's house. So sometimes people would go like to Houston and maybe buy like 50 screw tapes and have a store in the trade center, and then they sell screw tapes like that, and you got to catch them while they still got them and stuff like that. So uh our thing was like, like I say, being influenced, like man. We we it was it was it was our whole goal to like open up a store because do you see DJ Screw opening up a store and Swisher House? They didn't necessarily have a store, but they had their this is this is different between Screw and Swish House for y'all that don't know. Screw sold everything himself. Swisherhouse them they went and dropped their products off at different stores all over Texas and Louisiana, Arkansas on consignment. Wow, so whenever they make their rounds, they drop them off, they come back in two weeks and pick them up and drop off new products. You know what I'm saying? That's how Swisher House did it. So dropping all those mixtapes, I never had a lane to sell those mixtapes besides just out of the trunk or out of the house, however you want to put it, you know what I'm saying? So the opportunity arose in 2015 to open up a store with my homie B Miller, and I jumped on the opportunity. I had dropped the mixtape, and I dropped like two one mixtape in 2013 that had did real well. I dropped another one in 2014, it did real well, and I sold all these on my own, just basically just out the trunk. So in 2015, I had dropped a mixtape call on a Tuesday. And man, I kept on selling. I sold probably like 70 copies the first day that I pressed them up. And I mind you, I'm selling these like for 15. I mean for $10 a pop. I didn't do no wholesales on that first batch. I didn't do no wholesales, I sold them all for straight ten dollars a pop. And with some of that money, and just with the with the demand that I saw, and my homie B, he had a store at the time, but it was like a women's store, so we just saw the demand, and we're like, bro, we should open up a store selling these mixtapes and also getting some clothes and putting some clothes in there, and then selling clothes too. So we were just cruising one day, smoking, and we came up with the idea. I remember never forget it. We're on the freeway, riding on the freeway. And we're like, Man, we should open up a store. We're jamming that on the Tuesday mixtape, and we're like, Man, we should open up a store, like, yeah, hell yeah, one day. But growing up, everybody always talks about talks about opening up a store. And I ain't gonna lie, where I'm from, don't nobody really own shit. Motherfuckers is renting all their life type shit, you know what I'm saying? So to me, it never ownership was never a possibility in my mind. But whenever we're cruising, B is telling me how much it cost him to open up that women's store that he got, and I'm thinking in my head, that's obtainable. Now, if we split that in half, that's really obtainable. So while we're cruising, like I say, we was like, Okay, we'll do that probably like next month, two months, whatever. He's like, bro, why don't we just do it right now? Because if we wait another month or two, it's just gonna be a plan. Let's just go do it right now. Wow, he's like, What you got to do right now? I ain't got to do, bro. I'm free. What you gotta do right now? Shit, I'm free. I ain't got to do by six o'clock. It's like 1:30 in the afternoon. Hey, let's just go to the courthouse right now and do it. Wow, let's go. I said, How much is it gonna cost? He said, I think it's gonna cost like I can't remember the price, man. This was like 10 years ago, but I want to say for the we had to get a DBA and then we had to get a tax license. I want to say the tax license was probably like 75 and the DBA was like 25 or 35. So we literally walked out the we went to the uh DBA place first, or just we went to the tax one of them places first, and they were like, No, you gotta go to the other place first. So we went to the other place first. We got what proper paperwork that we needed, then we went to the other place, got the proper paperwork that we know. Oh, while we were on the freeway riding downtown to go get the paperwork. We're like, What are we gonna what are we gonna call the store, bro? We don't even know what it we're gonna call it. We just we going so fast, bro. We don't even got a name for the store. We literally five minutes from the damn city hall, and that's when we like the connection. Nah, nah, that's this is not we call ourselves the plug. Hell yeah, that sounds live. The plug, yeah, that'll be live because I didn't want it to just be like DJ Lil King's records and tape, you know what I'm saying? Like, so that's why we came up with the plug, and we ended up going in there and we end up telling getting all the proper paperwork. Wow, 45 minutes after we walked into the first building, we were in business. 45 minutes and a hundred dollars, 120 later. We had a business. Wow, now we didn't have not one piece of merchandise. Now we didn't have we didn't have a storefront, but on paperwork, we and on on uh we had a tax ID and we had a doing business as license. Damn. So from there we started scouting like locations, and we were scouting like brick and mortar locations, like trying to get like an outside location, and we were like going to all these places that had like all these release signs and all this, bro. We weren't getting no calls back, and we were just feeling like, are we getting blackball? Like, like we didn't know what it was. So we go to the trade center just to see. We weren't even like really like looking even to get a spot in the trade center. We just kind of felt like we were getting blackballed. So we were just putting it, we just put an application at the trade center to see if we were getting blackballed because the trade center it's it's always been known that it's easy to get a spot in the trade center, they got hella spots in that motherfucker always open. So we go to the trade center, and the dude's like real cool this shit. I remember his name and name was Czar. He shows us around, he's like, We're gonna have a couple come open in the in a maybe like a couple of weeks, maybe like a month, and I'll give y'all guys a call. We leave there thinking, like, you know, that's what that's what the five other places and told us, you know what I'm saying? Bro, like a week later, this dude calls us, said, Hey, got one that opened up, y'all want it. He said, What? And it hit us by surprise, bro. Because like I said, at this time we're still waiting for actual brick and mortar locations to call us, but ain't nobody called us, so we're like, you know what, it let's just jump in the trade center for now. So we ended up jumping in the trade center, and bro, that first weekend that we opened the trade center, like shit, like really like took off. Like we ended up ordering all our merchandise, like we'll say, like, we got the business license like a month before we actually opened. We gave ourselves time to like get all our merchandise in order. We ordered like all the shelving, all the shelves, and all the stuff that we needed to put up on the wall. So after like a month, we opened up, I think it was February 20th, 2015. We was it was opening weekend at the plug.

SPEAKER_08 36:37

Wow, hell yeah!

SPEAKER_02 36:38

And that was like a real good weekend for us. Like, we had a lot of my homies and a lot's homies that came through to support us, but we also had a lot of people that didn't know us that came and supported because it was something new, yeah. And people in corpus love new stuff.

SPEAKER_06 36:52

Oh, hell yeah, dude. That's true, man. Man, it seems like you just wanted to sh you just wanted to make that culture available to the people here for sure.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Because we started doing like in-store signings and we would buy locals. Uh people see these things. Switch house and them did consignment. We didn't do consignment, we wanted corpus rappers to be able to say because I was raised on like Houston culture, Dallas culture, all that type of shit. So those rappers made money. So to me, it was always funny why corpus rappers weren't making money. Why are y'all doing this for free? Wow, yeah. So me and B came up with the plan like, hey, bring us your product pressed up properly, and we'll buy this off of you straight up. Now it's on us to sell it. Bring us your product if you got your CD that's pressed up properly, sealed up, or however you got it, long as it's pressed up properly, and ain't no burnt CD that you bring in that's trying to get us to sell. That's in a see-through case. Any CD that was brought to us that was properly pressed up, you literally walked out the door with cash money. So if you brought us 10 CDs of your latest album, you literally walked out the door with $50 because we sold them for 10. So we're like, you get five and we get five. Damn, that's like and we never did no consignments, we never asked nobody to leave their CDs here and come back. Because my thing is, bro, growing up in the streets and in the game, I've always hated for a motherfucker to be bugging you, like, hey, you got that money, Yomi? Hey, you got that bread yet? You got that like I always hated that growing up. So our thing was we didn't want nobody coming up here harassing us, asking us, have we sold their CDs? Yeah, so we just gonna buy the shit off of you and put it in, put the faith in ourselves that we could get rid of this shit because we know we're some real hustlers and we know we're gonna get rid of this shit. Wow, yeah, dude. That's amazing. And also, like I said, we wanted every rapper that came through there with their stuff pressed up property to feel like I'm fucking making money off music, I'm not just doing this for nothing, like right, I'm seeing a return. Yeah, something even though it may not have been what I invested, I'm still seeing something off of what I didn't put in.

SPEAKER_06 39:01

Dang, for sure. Wow, was wow. So, was that actual was that actual reality to you for you and being a business owner at that point? Like, because you said you started that business, and then did you have that idea initially?

SPEAKER_02 39:16

Like, no, we didn't have that idea that we didn't have the idea initially, and uh that idea straight up came for um Mr. Playboy, my dog Mr. Playboy, Brian Rivera. He does the crooked Christie.

SPEAKER_06 39:26

Oh, yeah, crooked Christie. Shout out.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

He hit me up one time and he was like, Hey, I got ESG coming to corpus, and we're doing a concert wow at the uh at the club live. Would you be down to do an in-store signing with ESG? Crazy, and I know nothing about in-store signings at this time. I'm thinking, like, oh yeah, that'll be dope, but I ain't got five thousand dollars to pay this dude, right? Right, right, right. Accommodate at this point. Yeah, I got you. And uh, Mr. Playboy is like, nah, nah, bro, we're gonna we're gonna take care of that, everything's gonna be covered. He just dropped his new project, and basically, y'all just bought some copies of the new project, and he's gonna basically just sign them for whoever buys the project off of y'all. So we set that up. ESG is up ends up showing up. Wow, he shows up and he shows up with a box of CDs. And mind you, we ain't done this before, so we're not knowing what the hell's going on. We're not knowing if he's just gonna use our store and just sell his CDs for ten dollars and just make everything. But what if we started the in-store signing? I want to say it was from like three to five, so he gets there like 230, 245, and he's basically like telling us like straight up, uh, I'm gonna sell y'all 20 CDs off top for a hundred dollars, and then y'all turn around and sell them to the people who want them signed for 10 or 15 or whatever y'all want to sell them for. So that's where we got the game to do the in-store signings from because that's whenever he sold us like 20 CDs off top, and everybody was lined up out there to buy them CDs, and after them first 20 CDs turned around, we turned right around and gave them another 100, and he gave us another 20 CDs, and we basically sold those other 20 CDs, you know what I'm saying? So that's when I learned the game, and I was like, Hey, let's build up our local artists. Like, why are we doing this just for niggas from Houston? And no disrespect, ASG is my dog, right? But it was like, Why isn't Corpus making rappers look good? Like we make these uh, why is it that a rapper from Houston could just come down here say they want to do an in-store sign and they're accommodated that quick, right? Right, right. But if a dude from Corpus said that he wanted to do what ESG asked me to do, uh, most of the stores would have probably tried to charge the rapper to do that type shit, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_06 41:28

Yeah, you know, I got a question on that, man. Do you feel like the are the do you feel like the corpus musicians, rappers, whatever, that their music is is at that level? It you think that may be a reason why they're like, Oh, we this is why we like Houston rappers because maybe they're better.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Where I feel like a lot of people, a lot of people don't even give corpus rap a chance because I always tell people this too, myself. I was one of those people who didn't really give corpus rap a chance. I didn't give corpus rap a chance to like 2014. So whenever people were like making music in like uh 2005, 200 uh seven, all the way to 2014, like I was literally just stuck in Houston mode. Like, I didn't I didn't even want to hear no music that came out of corpus. I was like deucing corpus rapping, like you serious?

SPEAKER_06 42:14

And it wasn't so you were there, you were at that point.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

I was at that point where I was like, Are you like because I would hear music that came out of corpus, and it would sound like the beats were made on like a motherfucking uh uh a Mattel, like a little like a toy, you know, and I'm like, nah, this stuff in Houston, like it's sounding so to me, like the the music in corpus wasn't up to par. The music that I heard, so I ain't saying all corpus music, I'm just saying the music that I heard at that point in time, it just wasn't up to par with what I was listening to, yeah, coming out of Houston and Dallas, and that DSR and all the screwed up clicks, Switch House, and uh even San Antonio, they had like third degree, you know what I'm saying. It I it was I was just on all that type of shit, you know what I'm saying? And I feel like a lot of dudes in corpus were trying to make like uh songs whenever we were stuck in that we didn't want to hear songs, we want to hear freestyle, you know what I'm saying? And it finally got to a point to where yeah, we it's cool to hear a song from Lil Flip, but before that, we didn't care about Lil Flip doing a song, we just want to hear Lil Flip freestyle for 10 minutes, right? Right, that's all we want. We don't care about Lil Flip song, we just want to hear Lil Flip Freestyle for 10 minutes. And I remember, bro, it got to the point where this was a concert I was at, it was a screwed up click concert, and bro, it was so disappointing. The screwed up click came down here, bro, and they did a concert, and all they did was their songs, and they did their jamming ass songs, but I guess listening to those screw tapes growing up, this was my first screwed up click concert ever going to, so I really didn't know what to expect. But I'm expecting to go to the concert, and it's gonna be like a screw tape. The DJ just playing different beats, and they all obviously DJ Screw was passed had passed away by the time I went. My first screwed up click concert, but I'm just expecting whoever the DJ is just to play beats and Big Pokey gonna freestyle and after Big Pokey get done. Uh Big Mo gonna backdo him, and then after Big Mo fall off, then ESG gonna backdo him. I didn't know, I knew they had songs, but I thought a screwed up click concert was gonna be straight freestyle, yeah. Yeah, the whole time.

SPEAKER_06 44:24

Man, that's definitely a culture, man. Yeah, I'm just wondering how how honest we are about the music here in France, you know what I mean? That's that's my main, even like the heavy music that's out here, too. Because I'm I'm more into like heavy stuff, yeah. Like, how honest are we? That even when I was in a band, I was like, dude, is this even good? Like, are why we didn't even show this to people? This sucks, you know.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 44:44

Like, I think a lot of people who make because I used to make music in freestyle and make songs with my brothers and stuff, and we would always have those same feelings ourselves too. And just let me get back to the in-store signing thing. So once I get the in-store signing with uh ESG, shout out to my homie New Money. He was coming up with a pro, he was about to do a project. He had like all these videos that were on YouTube and they were hitting like thousands of views. So he was about to do a project and put all those songs on a CD. And he uh he had hit up Mr. Playboy once again to get all the artwork done. He hit me up, and then he I was I pressed I pressed up CDs for y'all that don't know. I've been pressing up CDs for probably about the past uh probably like 10-15 years. No, probably like 10 to 12 years. I've been pressing up CDs. So new money hit me up to press up his CD, which was called Extra Trappy. I pressed it up, and whenever I pressed it up, uh I was like, Hey, what is your plans to do with this CD? He was like, I'm just ride through the hood and sell this motherfucker out the trunk. I was like, That's cool, but let's do something bigger than that. Damn, you can still do that. Don't get me wrong, you can still do that, you know what I'm saying? But let's try to do something bigger. Let's do a uh a uh a meet and greet CD release. Wow, so we set up the CD release, meet and greet August 20th, 2015. And it just so happened I was in the process of making a DVD called Welcome to Corpus, which I spoke on before, and it was gonna be a DVD with all nothing but corpus DVDs, and that's kind of where I gained my respect for corpus music because I saw putting together that DVD that it was some real good quality stuff coming out of corpus, quality uh visuals, quality uh production, and quality uh vocals, everything was quality by that point. You know what I'm saying? When I first heard corpus rap, that shit was like in 2002, you know what I'm saying? So from 2002 to what I heard in like 2015, it was like a huge difference, you know what I'm saying? By 2015, this shit was sounding like it was comparable to like Houston rap and Dallas rap, you know what I'm saying, and stuff like that. So that's when I had decided to put together that DVD got played, boy, to do the DVD cover again. Welcome to Corpus. Nice, pressed up the DVD. It just so happened that the week I got the DVD was the same. We had already planned that we're gonna release the new money project in store sign in August 20th. I ended up getting it, which was a Saturday. That DVD ended up coming in my mail like on Tuesday, which I can't remember which exactly day it was, but wow, that Tuesday, I was like, bro, should I just hold on to this DVD and set a release date? But I was like, nah, because it this is this is the beginning of the time where people starting to lose their attention span, you know what I'm saying? Nowadays, people can't keep their attention keep their attention on for nothing for a minute of time, you know what I'm saying? So my whole thing was I had already promoted it good enough to where I don't think I needed to promote it for like a whole nother month. So I literally just got the DVDs and posted DVD dropping this Saturday, and it ended up coinciding with the new money CD release, and new money was on the cover of the DVD, so it was like perfect. We're releasing this new money extra trappy CD and the Welcome to Corpus DVD on the same day, bro. So wow, everybody is pulling up that day buying the DVD, buying the CD, buying the DVD, and the CD. New money had his shirts and everything out there. Like man, people was coming out there spending that day. That was a real good look for us. August 20th, 2015. Man, we released extra trappy and welcome to corpus the same day.

SPEAKER_06 48:04

Wow, yeah. Do you consider yourself a historian, Corpus Christi historian?

SPEAKER_02 48:08

I try to be, but uh, there's a lot of guests that I haven't filled yet.

SPEAKER_06 48:12

So that's amazing, dude. Are you thinking about a book? That would be freaking awesome.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

Yeah, uh, I've definitely been thinking about doing a book. I think that would be dope as hell to do a book.

SPEAKER_06 48:21

Yeah, bro, dude, that's awesome, man. So, do you consider yourself an entrepreneur? It seems like that's what that is. Because you got now, you got the right what we'll go on to the I guess the right and high high right and high podcast.

SPEAKER_02 48:33

I've definitely always considered myself an entrepreneur, just based upon even going back to like I say, even being 16, 17, 18 years old, making those mixtapes and just selling them to our homeboys. Yeah, even though they were just our homeboys buying them, it was still starting create creating a lane of a business on your own, right? Even though it may not have been consistent at that time, it just it showed you then that you were able to hustle a product that you created on your own.

SPEAKER_07 49:05

Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

And I think that's rare, even in today's time. Most people hustle someone else's product, but it's rare that one creates a product and is able to sell that product on their own, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Like, man, that's crazy, bro.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

I won't say there's like a lot of laws in technology that don't even allow manufacturers to like you know what I'm saying, sell their products directly to consumers and shit like that.

SPEAKER_06 49:27

Wow, man, hell yeah. So, how did you so you got into podcasting? How did how did that come about?

SPEAKER_02 49:33

Uh, the podcasting thing took uh it's the first came about in 2019. We were me and my homie SUC Holden, uh, and uh my homie Taylor May. We were gonna take a trip to Houston for 420, and we were uh real cool with DJ Lil Randy. Shout out DJ Lil Randy of the screwed up click. And SUC Holden had asked him would he do an interview? Would he be down to do an interview? And mind you, we didn't have no equipment or nothing, but we we had a page called Screwed up Community, which we still got a page called Screw Up Community on Facebook.

SPEAKER_06 50:03

Is that TV really bright?

SPEAKER_02 50:05

Yeah, okay, yeah, on like 70,000 or like like 70,000 uh followers on screw the community page. And at that point, we probably only had like 20,000 followers, so we were just doing different stuff to try to grow the page. So Adrian hit up uh Adrian, which is SGC holding, he hit up uh little Randy because him and little Randy had done a lot of business before. He had got a lot of personal mixtapes done from Little Randy because little Randy does the same thing that I do, the DJ Screw style mixtapes. And he had asked Randy for an interview and asked Randy what he would charge. And Randy said, Man, I got y'all, I ain't finna charge y'all. We were gonna go up there and get a mixtape done by little Randy. So we said as a bonus, I'll just throw in the interview for y'all. Just don't have me sitting there for no three, four hours, you know what I'm saying? So we're like, nah, we'll make it quick, we'll just do like a quick 20-30-minute interview. He was like, Okay, I'm down with that. So we go to Houston, we end up going to Little Randy's homies house, RIP dip one, you know what I'm saying? He had like a barbershop slash studio. We go in there and we're doing the mixtape, and we end up doing the mixtape. We talk on the mixtape, give our shout out. Shout out to my homie can too. He ended up pulling up from college station and met us in Houston. And so we ended, he ended up going with us to do the mixtape too. We get done with the mixtape, and Randy's like, Okay, y'all ready to do the interview? And we're like, Yeah, we got everything ready, we got our questions. He's like, How y'all gonna what y'all gonna record with? Where the wheels at, right? So we pull out the cell phone and we recorded it. Home dude, he had like a loud, like uh a shop fan going on in the background and this shit. So we're like, Can't you turn off the fan? So we basically did we did it and we basically did the best that we could. It came out good, the quality was good, you know what I'm saying? Because we didn't do a live, I just recorded it in 4K with my iPhone. Wow, and basically just came back to Corpus and then I edited it, and then we released it, and that kind of like sparked a bug for me. So I want to say the next interview that I did after we did Lil' Randy, I was like, bro, let me interview one of my homies and see how that goes. So I entered Cantu had came to Corpus one weekend. I ended up interviewing Cant 2 and it did real good. We released it, but it was just a straight raw interview. Once again, no microphones or nothing. I had a microphone on the table, but it was just a prop. So I let it was on it was on YouTube probably for like a coup probably until I started the new Rodden High because this was in 2019. Yeah, so I started the Rod. I started I started the Roddenhawk. I came up with the Rod and High podcast logo right after we left Houston, so that was probably in like summer 2019. I did the first Rodden High interview in like 2019, it was on on YouTube. I can't even remember if it was under Rod and High Podcast. I don't even remember what it may have been under just DJ Lil King or something like that, and but it was up there, and I left it up there. Then I interviewed, I wasn't really comfortable with it, but it was content, so I left it up there. A lot of people were doing those type of interviews at those times, too.

SPEAKER_06 52:47

Okay, I was gonna ask you, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02 52:48

A lot of people like wasn't really a lot of professional podcasts, it was just more or less just people just putting the camera in front of someone, just asking them questions. I wouldn't even really call that podcast. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna ask you. Would you even call that podcast? Like exactly. So then uh meta from downtown, shout out Meta. They were doing meta entertainment. I hit up Meta and Meta. Uh, he was down to do an interview. I did the interview with Meta. The interview with Meta was like an hour long, and I had so much trouble like transferring it from my phone to my laptop that I never got to release that damn interview. And after that, I kind of just like went on the hiatus until like 2022. 20 was 2022, 20. I can't remember 2022, 2023. I think I did the Daddy Cree interview in 2020. After COVID, it was after COVID, yes. A whole COVID thing comes around, and I'm just sitting around and my homie SUC Holden man, he has sparked he has sparked me because we're running that basically that screwed up community page together, but he was also telling me, like, bro, you got all this fucking equipment by the time this time I had the couch, the chair.

SPEAKER_07 53:59

Um these lights are dope, dude, for us.

SPEAKER_02 54:01

I had the mics, bro. I had the lights in the podcast because I was just like, I just didn't know what to do, bro. Like, I was watching all these different podcasts, and I probably I knew what to do. It was maybe just that nerve that was just sitting at me, like kicking my ass of somebody, like basically telling me, bro, you got all this equipment and you ain't doing shit with me. You felt like you were too critical of yourself, like basically what it was, and I didn't know if people I was based, I didn't know if I wanted to do it Vlad style, I didn't know if I wanted to do it no jumper style. I didn't know if I wanted to sit in front of the camera. Yeah, I didn't know if I wanted to sit behind the camera because the interviews that I had did with Cantu and Meta, I had set behind the camera. Oh okay, so I didn't know if I wanted to get in front of the camera now. That's my dude, uh Tim Snow. Shout out to my homie Tim Snow, he lives in uh Galveston County, and I was like, Hey bro, I'm thinking about starting the podcast. What do you think? And he like he had done that, he does a Texas prison story. He's like, Yeah, bro, that'll be dope, you know what I'm saying? And he just straight up told me, like, like, get all the he get all the proper equipment that you needed, which I already had at the time. He was like, You bro, you basically got everything. So you so you were getting ready to get it? He tells me some straight up, some real shit, and this is no homo, no homo. He goes, Bro, you ain't a bad looking dude, bro. Get in front of that camera. He said, one thing people don't want to do is look at an ugly motherfucker on camera. So that's whatever. I was like, okay, bet, I'm gonna get in front of the camera. And then basically I uh hit a freak. I can't remember if I hit up freak or daddy cree first, and uh I think I hit a fucking freak first, and I was like, Hey bro, I'm thinking about doing a podcast. I told him I did, I think I told him my oh first interview. I think I wanted to be Daddy Cree. He's like, Hell yeah, I'm with it, I'm with it. And then I hit up Daddy Cree, and Daddy Creek was like, Hell yeah, I'll be your first guest. And from Daddy Cree, that's when it kicked off. Started off with Daddy Cree. I want to say my second guest. This is still in the beginning stages, so I'm confused. I don't know if it's live. My whole plan, I didn't want to do nothing live, I wanted to do everything pre-recorded and break it down into parts. Okay, Vlad style. Okay, but it was like, bro, that takes too much time. Fuck that. Nah, hell no, sitting there. This is just wasting all this memory on the give.

SPEAKER_00 56:16

I got a gift for you, bro. Oh man, man, he brought this babe. That's what's up. There you go. Man, see that right there. Hell yeah, man. Appreciate you. Good looking. They've been asking for these too, man. Hell yeah, bro. Get the name out there, bro. For sure. Appreciate you.

SPEAKER_06 56:32

Yeah, that's what's up, man. Uh wow. So so you never even consider you were like, is this even a podcast? That that's that's amazing. Yeah, then because go ahead. No, I was just saying, like, because the podcast I thought was just somebody just talking to a camera and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 56:45

Well, starting off, I to me, and no disrespect to people that are doing it that way, but I just didn't feel like I just knew I could do better, right? And I've just always been the type how can I critique others and then not be on top of my game myself? Like, I'm telling these artists, if you want to make music in my store to bring me your product professionally pressed up. So, how am I gonna be telling them you need to do your shit professional, but then I'm over here doing some shit not professional? Wow, so me, that was like I gotta do it professional, and even though those interviews that I did with Cantu and Meta were good interviews, it just they just went up to par with what I wanted. So, like I say, we did the Daddy Creed one, we did the DJ Fame one, and my whole thing was to like try to interview like legendary inspirational, like people in corpus club owners, bar owners, uh promoters, uh officials, uh anything, people that like uh NAAC people, uh double ACP people, like yeah, people that have made significant contributions to like the community, but I was also conflicted between what do I don't want to smoke, do I want to do a smoking show too? You know what I'm saying? So wow. After that, after the DJ Fame one, it was like the next interview I won't say was like so far and few between. That's when I came up with the idea and I hit up a couple of people. I was like, How about I just do like a news thing and I just invite a couple of people to ask them to be host on the uh news, and we'll just cover like news topics every Monday. Yeah, that way I can have a show that's going every week, right? So even maybe I only do one Rod and High with DJ Lil King interview once a month. I'll still have content coming every week because we have the news, right? Right, right, right. So that's why we brought the news. We started doing the news. I started with all the different hosts. Then uh, I want to say the next show was Let's Shop It Up. That started with uh the uh damn, what's the what's the hell is it? Shout out my homie uh crash, GG Crash. He had hit me up. He was like, Hey, we felt like we've been black balls in the uh and gatekeeping and the corpus music uh scene. So can we come on the podcast and talk about it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, Oh wow, I really didn't create the podcast for that. Oh, and that ain't really like news. So, how about we just create a new show for y'all? So we literally created Let's Chop It Up. Wow, and let's chop it up. We've already done now. I want to say let's chop it up. We've done like 70 episodes. So let's shop it up.

SPEAKER_06 59:20

Like combined, like what three 300 or something like y'all got me personally.

SPEAKER_02 59:24

I just I was just checking the numbers the other day. Me personally, I've done like 40 Rodden How with DJ Lil King interviews, and that's just me interviewing people by myself. Scoob has like 75 off the cush episodes. The sports has like 65 uh sports episodes. Let's chop it up has like 70 let's chop it up episodes. Daddy Cree, uh Man Look Show and uh Trill Talk uh by loud, those are fairly new shows, so they probably reaching like 10 and 20 episodes.

SPEAKER_08 59:53

Ah, it's amazing, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:55

Yeah, Lee. So we've had it's almost like like I said, like a network, bro. Like, like we've had shows that came and we they didn't they didn't last, so we just replaced them with a different show, you know what I'm saying? So after the let's shop it up, that's whenever uh I think we ended up doing like the off the cushion after the off the cushion. That's whenever we end up doing like the Drew PM show, which he was doing like the conspiracies. We did like six episodes of that one.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:18

Uh yeah, whatever show.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:19

We start the Ron Hot concert series where I would have the rappers come in and do like the virtual performances, and uh then end up uh who was uh Daddy Creed came through with the Man Look show. It was he was doing Man Look on his own, but it was on the hiatus for a long time, and I kept on bugging him like, bro, you're already down with the podcast, just bring the show over here. Took him like a year, but we got the man look show over here. A lot of wisdom, man, like a motherfucker. Then we got him over here, and then uh after that, it was uh we ended up getting uh Lau Mouth over here. He was doing the uh trail talk show, he was doing it on his own. Loud uh freak ended up talking to him and shit. Next thing you know, Lau was down to become part of the team. So then we got loud on the team. That's awesome. Trey, Trace Boogie, he was doing the uh Texas Takeover at Wild 105, the radio station, which was like a hip-hop uh RB-based radio station here in Corpus Christie, where they end up changing their whole format and end up going like completely away from like hip hop, RB, or and pop. I want to say they people that were working there, they all got new jobs and everything. So basically, Trey's show was just left with nowhere to go. And I basically said, Hey bro, let's just do what you're doing on the radio, but let's do it over here. And since we're doing it over here, we we don't even have to keep it clean. And on the radio, they can only listen. We could do it over here and they can listen and they can see.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:32

Oh my gosh, wow!

SPEAKER_02 1:01:34

So we brought the Texas Takeover show that he was doing on Wild 105 over here. So now we're doing that live every couple of Sundays, too.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:42

Wow, yeah, dude. So, how much imp how much of an impact do you think uh podcasts have on the culture or just in general?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:50

Man, they're beginning to have a lot more impact on the culture now. And I was just seeing the uh I was just seeing a thing too, uh on uh I can't remember what platform it was on, but the dude was basically saying, like, rappers aren't really getting that many views now off of music. Okay, oh shoot, for real. They're getting a lot of their views by going on these different platforms and doing interviews and stuff like that. You know what I'm saying? And I don't know how true that is, but that's what I saw that dude say on that platform, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:02:21

Right, right, right. Yeah, for sure. What's something that that people don't understand uh that goes on behind the scenes of a podcast? What it takes to run one, because it seems like people just watch it and kind of really don't see what what all it takes to keep one going, you know what I mean, to keep the network going.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:40

It depends on what level that you're trying to do a podcast on, because you could just turn on your phone and press live on Facebook and have your homeboy sit next to you and call that a podcast and shit. To me, that would be free, right? But if you want to do a high production value podcast, it it's gonna it takes investment. You got to get you some microphones, you gotta get you a good running laptop, you gotta get you a nice camera, maybe even multiple cameras. If you want to have multiple angles, get you an audio interface, you know what I'm saying? If your microphone don't directly connect to your uh camera or your uh computer, then you gotta get you a good audio interface. So thing is, if it you just gotta don't be cheap with this shit, even with the rap shit. Man, I think the podcast and the rap shit ties hand in hand, bro. Like the rapper doesn't necessarily have to invest into equipment, but you gotta invest into your cameraman, you gotta invest into your beats, you gotta invest into shit the uh engineering and all that, you gotta invest into your wardrobe. The podcast people, we gotta invest into our equipment.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:45

Not only that, like social media and social media, also too.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:49

You got if you want to uh stream to multiple platforms at once, yeah. You gotta invest into like a restream or something like that, something that gives you multiple multi-stream uh platform uh streaming at one time. For sure, man. Them shorts are huge, I think. And that's twenty dollars a month. So let's just that's are you ready to commit at minimum two hundred and forty dollars a year to podcasting? At the minimum, are you are you willing to commit two hundred and forty dollars a a year? Yeah, yeah, and that's just that's just for the program, yeah. Now you still got to get your microphones, your cameras, and all that. You know what I'm saying? And you could get cheap equipment. I'm not saying all this equipment is expensive, just depends on what your buddy is. You can have a but a podcast budget of anywhere from five to six hundred dollars to five to six thousand dollars, yeah, maybe even fifty to sixty thousand dollars, you know what I'm saying? But you could get you a good five hundred dollar setup that that that will work wonders, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:40

For sure, man. For sure, yeah, definitely. And then, like, of course, like you got a lot of followers, and it's like uh, of course, you're gonna get those people that that hate on you or whatever and stuff like that. How do you find yourself going about uh I guess like not dealing with those people, but just like not having to defend yourself because I feel like we don't have to defend ourselves because we're doing what we want to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:03

That's probably one of my flaws. Because, and they always tell me that in the group chat that we have, bro. Like, just leave that shit alone, bro. Like, bro, bro. I grew up like that. Like, I want to call out everything I see, right? Motherfucking shoe might not even be for me, but fuck if it look like it's my size, I'm gonna try it on. Yeah, and maybe that's one of my flaws, like, and I admit that's something I need to fall back from because it's like not that I find myself in a bunch of bullshit behind shit like that, but it's just more or less like I'm in a position now where I should where that's just what comes with the territory, yeah, exactly. And instead of me just trying to address every little fucking thing I see on Facebook, Instagram, or whatever platform it is on YouTube, you know what I'm saying? You see a hater comment on YouTube, you want to quit, you know what I'm saying, to say something like bro, and all that at the same time, all it does is is is is Is uh make the algorithm go go your way.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:03

Wow. So so everything you've been doing, the DJing, the the podcast, the networking, all this stuff. Uh, have you did you ever feel like this is always where you were headed?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:15

Never did I ever thought I would be doing a damn podcast. So I have to give I have to give shout-outs to like some of the influences, man. Definitely a lot of people don't fuck with him. I don't really watch him too much, but definitely Adam 22 of No Jumper. He was definitely watching No Jumper and the No Jumper platform in general was definitely a big influence to the Rod and High uh podcast. Wow, by seeing them have like the different shows and by seeing them letting different every Adam wasn't interviewing everybody that came through. He sometimes will let different hosts interview. It would be a big guess, but he still will let the other hosts interview him type shit. You know what I'm saying? Right, right, right, right. Straight up, shout out to No Jumper. Wow, uh Donnie Houston, probably my number one influence, man, to see what he did for the city of Houston and how he documented the city of Houston rap culture literally like step by step. That definitely influenced me to want to document my city's rap culture. And man, shout out to Donnie Houston. He definitely probably like the number one influence I had in the podcast game. Wow. From seeing him getting the stories because a lot of the podcasts, bro, a lot of these podcasts they get people on the podcast and they don't ask them nothing about their life. Oh wow, a lot of these podcasts get people on there and ask, they're asking them about other people.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:35

Oh shoot.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:36

So watching Donnie, he was gonna get your life from the beginning to where you're at now in chronological order.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:43

Oh, dude, I can see that in your interview style.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:45

You know what I'm saying? Big time, yeah. Straight up, see that. You know what I'm saying? So I've always been built, been real big on the let's get it in chronological order. Let's not jump all over here, yeah, and then jump whenever you 30 and then go back to when you're 17, and now we jump into when you're 27. Now we're going back to when you're 21. Let's let's try to keep it all in chronological order.

SPEAKER_08 1:08:04

Wow, crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:04

So definitely got part of that from Donnie Houston. Shout out a big shout out to Donnie Houston, the Donnie Houston podcast, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:10

Dude, yeah, I definitely I see that in your interview style, and I I like it because it's like you're saying it's a chronological order, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:17

And you're like, wait, let's go back to this and get this out of the way first. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:21

We keep going, yeah, definitely, man. Uh uh, what do you want people to feel when they hear the right and high name 10 years from now?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:32

Man, the same thing they the uh way people feel when they were the plug, was only open for like a year, maybe 16 months. Yeah, the plug been done for 10 years, and people still know that name the plug. Wow, like literally, people still call me to this day. What up, plug? What up, plug? And I'm like, bruh, I ain't done the plug in like nine, 10 years, bro. And y'all still call me that. That's crazy. But to me, like that just showed the impact that we left on the even though it was only a short amount of time, we left a huge impact. And with this riding high, no disrespect to anything that me and B did with the plug, but I feel like the impact that we're leaving with Rod and High is a bigger impact. Maybe not a big, I would say it's maybe equal. Because back then, the impact that we were giving was we were paying people, people were leaving with money, people were leaving with feeling good. Like, I'm a fucking rapper. Wow, I'm walking out the trade center like I just made fucking fifty dollars off of my music. Like, wow, I'm a fucking rapper, so I don't know if that can ever be matched, you know what I'm saying? But at the same time, with the podcast thing, man, to be able to uh have these stories documented, that's what changes the game. There's only few photos and videos from the plug. Everything that we've done on the Rod and Hot Podcast is available on YouTube right now at Rod and Hot Podcast. Wow, from the first ever interview to the last one that we just did last week.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:58

Wow, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:58

So that's the difference, I think, in the impact that is leaving. So until YouTube gets shut down, until our account gets permanently banned, which I hope that never happens. You know what I'm saying? Like that content is gonna be there.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:11

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:12

So that thing's the impact that that that it that lasts that the impact that we like. You could go to there's an Instagram page for the plug, and there's some photos, there's some videos on there, but it doesn't capture the whole essence. A lot of people would come to the plug just to freestyle, you know what I'm saying? So there's a I posted a video uh like a week or two ago. I posted a video of Daddy Cree and paper shades, they were freestyling at the plug. Wow, yes, there's probably like 30 more videos of those types of scenarios floating around that I have no access to.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:40

Wow, yeah. So it's like the it's like the it seems to me that and you you said it earlier about people left knowing that they made money, so it's like how a person feels like you want to invoke that feeling exactly in the people with your your brand or what you're working with, right? For sure. Wow, it's amazing. Create a culture in itself, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:00

For sure, and I think we definitely created a culture, bro, with like between all the different people that have we put together on the team, you know what I'm saying? Man, it'd be too many people to try to name between all the different shows that we have. Like, so man, shout out to everybody because everybody could have done these shows on their own, they didn't have to come under the platform. So, shout out to everybody that brought their show to the Rodin Hot Podcast, man. Definitely appreciate all y'all.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:22

Yeah, man, and I can attest. Like, I remember hearing one of one of your episodes before I came back to doing my podcast, and I was I was listening to it, I was like, dude, they're talking like me. They're like this is the where I live in this area, they're talking like and I it was so like cool because I was like, damn, they're like me, dude. Yeah, you know, and I and I felt that I was like, dude, I and it kind of inspired me to want to keep doing the mine, you know what I mean? I had started a while back, but I was like, dang, this is a culture right here, and my take on it is different from y'all's take, you know, for sure, for sure. And I don't see any problem with us.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:57

Well, my whole thing is uh also like being transparent with everything, too. Like, somebody wants to know what it costs to start a podcast, and that's why I tell people whenever I have guests, and I don't know people, maybe people like it, or maybe people don't, but like I've interviewed people that like had music videos like in 2005, 2006, and I'll ask them, like, hey, what did that music video cost you? No, because I want I want the viewer to know this dude paid ten thousand dollars for that video in 2005, you know what I'm saying? Like, I want I want the people to be transparent, and it's not even to be bragging or nothing like that. I just want people to know what this cost. So you came in, like you came in here today, and you told me straight up what this camera costs. I don't know if you want me to let the people know, but he's using this badass camera, bro. And I literally asked him what the camera cost, and he told me straight up what the price was. Like, there's so much, I ain't gonna say gatekeeping, but a lot of people don't want to give you the game because they feel like you're gonna get the game and take it further than they are. No, so for the people that aren't like that, we have to salute them, you know what I'm saying? And that's what I know. Like, with the podcast, shout out to you, shout out to Fat Man the Boss, sit down with the boss podcast, uh El Voyo podcast, like, bro. Like, we've all done each other's podcasts, like we've never hated on each other's podcast, it's been all love. Anytime anyone has ever asked anybody to come on their platform, it's always been open arms and welcome opportunities, yeah. Straight up, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:19

Man, definitely definitely. I that's interesting how you want it to be transparent with because art is just our is art is basically free nowadays, yeah. You know what I mean? And long are the times past where you they actually paid for art. Yeah, they still do, but it seems like it's it's not well.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:38

I want the aspiring. So say I'm interviewing, say you're interviewing me and I'm a rapper, or let's just say, okay, you're interviewing me right now and I'm a DJ. You're a dude that's watching this show right now, and you're aspiring to be a DJ, but you don't know what it costs to get in the game. So let me tell you exactly what it's gonna cost you. You could go get you a little pioneer DDJ, uh S I can't even remember what it's called, but a little baby pioneer controller that probably starts off at like $250. Now, if you really got a good budget, you could go get you a big boy pioneer DDJ SX2. They probably had SX3 now, that's gonna cost you about $1,500. Now, and that's professional grade, club level. You know what I'm saying? Now, if you really want to step your game up, they got like the state-of-the-art pioneer, I can't the pioneer rev seven. That one got the mobile turntables and everything. And I want to say that one is $2,500. Wow, you know what I'm saying? So I hate when people like try to like I can't tell you how much I pay for that.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:33

Yeah, dude. I started with this uh MacBook, right? I was doing the camera on this one, yeah, because I left Dusty Studio. I mean, I still do Dusty Studio, but I wanted to do it out obviously for financial reasons a little less cheap, but I invest in the camera, the stuff right now, because it's that camera was like almost like six seven hundred bucks, bro. It's a Sony ZVE 10, not really made for this type of this type of stuff, man. But uh, and it's like invest in that for now, and then that way I won't have to keep making those monthly every time I need to go into Captain. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I got it there, so definitely, man. Uh dude, thanks a lot, Kim, for coming on the show, man, and letting us come on to this place, bro. Is there anything you want to share?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:16

Man, Rodin High Podcast, man. Y'all make sure y'all check out all the shows. Matter of fact, I got a film in like an hour. I got Lau with Trill Talk coming through. He got a guest coming through. I can't exactly remember her name, but they will be going on about 9 45. So y'all tune into that. Man, we still got the Rodin High concert series. Man, we got the uh Trill Talk with Lyle, uh Rodin High News. We just missed it this past Monday. A lot of people was busy, but we still do the Rodin High News. Uh, I just did an interview this past not this past Sunday, but two Sundays ago. You know what I'm saying? 3D the Mob, so you know what I'm saying. Y'all go look at that one, you know what I'm saying? So y'all just be on the lookout for everything we got going. Oh, the smoke walk. When it's like we were talking about smoke walk earlier, and get to talk about that so much. So, smoke walk was a thing that we came up with because I everybody always asks, bro. What is smoke walk? We're gonna clip this too. I'm gonna tell y'all what smoke walk is for everybody that always asks. Smoke walk is an event that we do that coincides with the art walk on the same day, but it has no affiliation with the art walk. And don't quote me, but if I'm not mistaken, QBR used to have a booth inside of smoke walk, I mean inside of art walk, but basically, art walk didn't want to have nothing to do with that type of culture no more, so they didn't want to allow QBR to have their booth inside of the art walk. So QBR and Block Bleeders, Skateboarding Universal, Public Zoo, and Ride and Hot Podcast, we all came up with the idea to do the smoke walk, which, like I said, would so it coincide with the art walk, but we would also have vendors out there, we would have live painting, we would have uh acts, we would have DJs, and we would just be doing our thing out there, basically coinciding with the art walk, but in our own little parking lot. And from the first month that we did it, it was real small till man, we're about to have our two-year anniversary. Actually, this Friday, today's what Tuesday? So this Friday, March 6, Smokewalk, two-year anniversary. Man, y'all come out to that 7 to 10 p.m. at 2 3 2 5 2 3 Taylor Street, QBR. You know what I'm saying? We'll be downtown corpus, you know what I'm saying? For the smoke walk, yes, sir.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:16

Across from the old caller times, yeah, across from the caller times.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:18

It's still the caller times, the famous thing. Yeah, it's still the caller times. They just don't know if they do print no more, but they still still call it times. Don't park at the caller times if you don't want to get told, don't park at the caller times.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:29

I'll tell you that. Rapid rapid fire before we go, bro. Uh uh, one corpus cruise restaurant, you take uh a first time visitor.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:41

Oh corpus restaurant. I'll take a first-time visitor. I'm gonna give you two. I'm gonna give you Red Boat and Pompanos, Pompano's or whatever that place called.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:54

What's Red Boat? A song that defined your era coming up.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:59

For some reason, this song is in my head right now. It's hard to think when your mind goes blank. Yeah, you just can't think when your mind goes blank, and that's yeah, bro.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:10

Yep, I remember that song already. Definitely. Uh, one thing about Corpus Christie that people always get wrong.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:21

That it's the home of Selena? Selena came here from Lake Jackson, Texas. You know what I'm saying? And give you a quick fact my grandpa was Selena's eighth-grade history teacher at West Oso Junior High School. Hey, shout out to Edward King, bro. Yes, sir, RP to my grandfather, RP to my grandma, too.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:38

Hey, man, awesome. One piece of advice you'd give young Lil King. Wait, where'd you get that name? Can you tell me about your name? Well, I know King is your grandfather's name.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:48

Okay, yeah. Uh, whenever I was young, even though I didn't go to West Oso as a youngster, uh, I would always my grandpa was real big into like West Oso's athletics, so he would always take us to the West Oso basketball game. So I'm like in second, third, fourth grade, going to these West Oso basketball games with my grandfather, and nobody knows my name because I don't go to none of the West Oso schools, so they just call me Lil King. So as time went by, I'm like in sixth, seventh, eighth grade. By the time ninth grade comes around, all the all the juniors and seniors at the high school know me because that's where my grandpa was teaching at at the time. So when I be I become a freshman, they don't they still don't know my name, so they just literally call me Lil King. Wow, so the name Lil King just stuck with me because just from running with my grandpa, from being at all the basketball games and football, West also football games with my grandfather, nobody knew my name, they would just call me Lil King. So one time I got to the high school, all my grandpa students, a lot of those people that my grandpa taught, they didn't know my name, so they would just they were just used to seeing me with my grandfather, so they just called me Lil King.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:47

Man, that's that's a dope name, dude. For sure. Appreciate you, appreciate you. Uh so what was what's one piece of advice you'd give give your your younger self? Man, stick to the plan.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:00

Stick to the plan and I don't know, maybe this is a bad piece of advice, but to me, if you if you got if you got a plan, try to do it by yourself. If you need help with it, yeah, you need help, but it's easier to do stuff by yourself than it is to do with a partner or various partners, yes, sir. You know what I'm saying? I think that was the biggest downfall that we had with the plug, you know what I'm saying? Like it's you got to make decisions when it comes to buying merchandise and buying this. Basically, two people have to say yes instead of what you know saying it's just one and one, then we just kind of how do we figure that out? We didn't have a third party, you know what I'm saying? And then when you got a third party, was then it starts feeling like, well, damn, it's two against one. Like, yeah, so that's why every business venture that I've gone into after the plug was basically just something I did on my own.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:50

Yeah, I think that's I agree to that, man. That's really good advice. There's a saying, it's it goes uh the only ship that doesn't sell is a partnership, all right, except like in marriage or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:59

Alrighty, and that shit fucks up a lot of friendships, too, bro.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:02

Straight up partnerships with your friends and homies, and it sounds super fucking good, but it fucks up friendships. I definitely me and B are still cool. Don't get me wrong, we're still fucking super cool as fuck, though. So straight up shout out to him, man.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:13

He's over there cutting hair and shit. Well, DJ King, man, thanks a lot for thanks for a lot for being here. Alrighty, appreciate you having me. Appreciate you coming through to the Rod and High Studios, man. You guys uh give them a follow at Riding High everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:25

What at Rod and High Podcasts on every platform, uh Facebook, uh YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and yeah, that's all we on right now. Oh, kick to yes, sir.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:35

All right, y'all. Thanks a lot for joining. Stay tuned for the uh next episode Corpus Christi Originals and tune into Riding High, you guys. Thanks a lot. Hey, follow me at underscore DJ Lil King.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:45

Corpus Christi Originals, we out this thing, man. Hey later.