Episode 489

full
Published on:

23rd Nov 2024

Benzino Full Interview | Diddy, Coi Leray, Jay Z, Source, Eminem, Durk, Biggie, Jaguar Wright+MORE!

Benzino passionately addresses the cultural ramifications of how society discards its historical figures, arguing that this trend threatens the legacy of influential black leaders. He shares his experiences growing up in Boston during a time of segregation and racial tension, providing a personal lens on the systemic issues faced by the black community. The conversation delves into the complexities of fame, the impact of social media on celebrity culture, and the challenges of navigating personal relationships in the public eye. Benzino also discusses the significance of authenticity in the music industry and the dangers of allowing culture vultures to exploit the artistry of marginalized voices. Throughout the episode, he emphasizes the importance of supporting one another and preserving the integrity of the culture amidst the noise of modern media.

Chapters:

  • 00:00 - The Legacy of Black Leaders in History
  • 03:40 - The Segregated Streets of Boston
  • 19:31 - The Impact of Social Media on Black Culture
  • 36:25 - Benzino's Journey Through Love and Fame
  • 44:42 - The Importance of Friendship and Loyalty
  • 56:07 - The Impact of Female Artists in Hip-Hop
  • 01:02:35 - The Turning Point: Benzino's Legal Battles
  • 01:12:52 - Facing Indictment: The Mental Toll
  • 01:26:57 - Media Landscape and Its Challenges
  • 01:36:45 - Reflections on the Eminem Beef
  • 01:45:53 - The Impact of Culture Vultures
  • 02:01:05 - The Impact of Media Personalities on Community Culture
  • 02:12:39 - The Pivotal Night in Hip Hop
Transcript
Benzino:

We're so quick to throw everybody under the bus and forget about their accomplishments and just throw them the fuck away, that that's what's gonna end up killing our culture.

Benzino:

You know, how are we gonna have anybody else in the history books if at this rate, Malcolm and Martin will be the last two?

Benzino:

There won't be no other black man in the history books that people can laud or people can applaud or people can love because they've made us our greatest weapon towards each other.

:

Real Life street stars.

:

You know what time it is?

:

Real life street stars, man.

:

We got a real legend in the building, man.

:

Boston's very own man.

:

Real legend.

Benzino:

It's an honor to be here, man.

Benzino:

For real.

Benzino:

You know, I've been checking out Yalls platform and y'all doing y'all thing, and the hospitality is just amazing.

Benzino:

So, you know, I just want to come down here and hang out with y'all.

:

Bro, you have a knack for just going viral just for the things that come out of your mouth.

:

But did you know that you were gonna be able to be one of those people that are sought after to just interview, to hear what you have to say?

Benzino:

You know, the whole act of going viral, I guess.

Benzino:

I guess even before the Internet, I was, you know, the act of going viral was just to me, you know, say what's on your mind.

Benzino:

Stand on whatever you believe in.

Benzino:

And I'm a firm believer in that.

Benzino:

You know, I come from the old school, so it's like I'm very vocal about certain things.

Benzino:

I've experienced a lot in my life, so things that I stand on might not click to everybody at the time, but they've clicked in my mind to be something that I have to speak out.

Benzino:

And I guess I'm a cancer.

Benzino:

So, you know, we're real emotional.

Benzino:

We wear our emotions on our sleeve.

:

Yeah.

:

Now our platform is named Real life street Stars.

:

Right?

:

And our whole thing is we, like, getting the underground.

:

The people that have a story that didn't get to tell their story.

:

Okay, but Benzino, what is this?

:

What does street star mean to you?

:

Like, what is a street star, in your opinion?

Benzino:

See, that's what Benzino is.

Benzino:

That's what, you know.

Benzino:

You know, I came from a general.

Benzino:

You know, my father and I always started out with him because that's where it starts off.

Benzino:

He was in the streets heavy.

Benzino:

And I started doing street activities at an early age because of him.

Benzino:

And I don't say that in a negative way, but that was the environment, and that Was the life that I lived.

Benzino:

You know, I came out that house probably about 12, 13 years old, and just, you know, hit the streets.

Benzino:

Started, you know, of course I'm going to school.

Benzino:

My mother loved her to death, so I didn't want to disappoint her.

Benzino:

So I'm balancing going to school because I have to go to school, because that's what my mother says.

Benzino:

And my father.

Benzino:

My father's in and out of jail, but I'm doing things for him at an early age.

Benzino:

Grew up in projects in the 70s.

Benzino:

See, it's different.

Benzino:

I grew up really in the 70s.

Benzino:

I came out the house in the 70s.

Benzino:

You know, I'm 59 now, so I'll.

:

Be 70s in Boston.

:

Ooh, what was that like?

Benzino:

Ooh, Boston in the 70s was.

Benzino:

It was a different place because, like, it was segregated, of course, like most places.

Benzino:

Like most cities were.

Benzino:

But Boston, you know, Boston is old city, old values.

Benzino:

You know, that's where Plymouth Rock is.

Benzino:

Remember when Malcolm X said, you know, we didn't land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us.

Benzino:

That motherfucking rock is still there.

Benzino:

Nasty Ass rock is still there, right?

Benzino:

So as kids, they would take us field trips to go see that motherfucking rock.

Benzino:

Now, the rock got graffiti on it.

Benzino:

There's all kind of shit on it.

Benzino:

And the rock got smaller.

Benzino:

But it just goes to show you that Boston's where it all started from.

Benzino:

Like, racism really started right there.

Benzino:

Like, colonialism started there.

Benzino:

Quincy, Braintree, Boston were the first towns of America before the thirteen colonies.

Benzino:

Like, that's where everything started right there.

Benzino:

So you gotta understand that is their territory.

Benzino:

You know, white, Anglo, Saxon, Protestants, Irish people, Italians, Jewish, black people really always took a backseat.

Benzino:

So growing up, it was segregated.

Benzino:

A lot of projects, a lot.

Benzino:

A lot of street shit.

Benzino:

But then you have to deal with all that.

Benzino:

A lot of drugs.

Benzino:

But then you gotta deal with white people crossing boundaries.

Benzino:

If you're in some parts of somewhere, you risk getting fucked up.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, that was fucked up.

Benzino:

And, you know, the boundary, Dorchester's right there next to Roxbury.

Benzino:

And Columbia Point projects is right next to South Boston.

Benzino:

And, you know, East Boston's downtown, which downtown couldn't be neutral.

Benzino:

Like, black people had to stay at the south end, Roxbury, little 15, maybe 10 mile radius back then.

Benzino:

It expanded, but it was fucked up because I grew up in schools beefing with white people and getting chased by white people.

:

That's crazy.

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

What was like, one of the most racist things you've ever experienced.

Benzino:

Oh, man, oh man.

Benzino:

A bunch of them.

Benzino:

Like, let me tell you.

Benzino:

So most of the time, what people gotta understand is when you're watching something on civil rights, it's usually in black and white, right?

Benzino:

When you watch an old video about a whole bunch of people white going against black, it's usually in black and white, right?

Benzino:

If you look in Boston, it's in color.

Benzino:

Like the busing started.

Benzino:

It was the busing where they was trying to get kids out of the inner cities to get them to go to a couple of black kids.

Benzino:

Just a couple, not a bunch.

Benzino:

Just.

Benzino:

We want them to experience some good schools because we know the schools in Boston, in the city are fucked up.

Benzino:

So they would ship a couple of kids out there and not just the school and not just a couple of people.

Benzino:

The whole city town would come out, thousands of people, and throw stones at the bus and try to turn the bus over.

Benzino:

And we talking little kids sticking up their middle fingers.

Benzino:

Six, seven, eight years old, grown ass old ladies, get them the fuck out of here.

Benzino:

We don't want them in our.

Benzino:

We're talking three or four kids coming off a school bus to go into a school in their neighborhood and to the point where they had to get police escorts.

Benzino:

So this was going on in the 70s, right?

Benzino:

You know, so you grow up with this sense of like, damn, like, this is crazy.

Benzino:

You grow up with a sense of like, man, white people are against you.

Benzino:

And I grew up with that because I didn't.

Benzino:

Wasn't no white people in any projects we lived in.

Benzino:

We probably started out in two or three of them before we moved into a second floor of a house, which was a nice house, but it was still in the hood.

Benzino:

So I grew up, if it wasn't later on in life for my father introducing me to his guys, like Italian guys, older men, Irish guys, men that he had did time in the feds with or he's doing business with.

Benzino:

And these guys were like serious men, you know, these was like, these were serious, serious men.

Benzino:

If it wasn't for me to meet them, I would have thought all white people were bad.

Benzino:

You know, working with him and working with them over the years and then, you know, dealing with them and their families, you start learning, even though it's coming from a criminal aspect, because we was doing criminal activities, but you still.

Benzino:

At least it didn't make me like, all white people are bad.

Benzino:

Because I grew up thinking that.

Benzino:

Because every time you turn around, you know what I'm saying, you fighting somebody who's white.

Benzino:

My first year of high school, I went to Boston Tech.

Benzino:

My first semester I kicked out because there was a racial beef.

Benzino:

A bunch of white kids I had got stabbed.

Benzino:

We had two, like riots with him and shit.

Benzino:

One of them I got stabbed.

Benzino:

They kicked me and like seven other guys out and they kicked a bunch of white guys out.

Benzino:

We went to Boston Tech.

Benzino:

You had to take a test to get in there.

Benzino:

And I ended up getting kicked out.

Benzino:

My mother was.

Benzino:

But yeah, yeah, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I got stabbed over.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like on the bus.

Benzino:

Like the first time we was beefing with them, the second day they came with knives and shit.

Benzino:

And mind you, you gotta understand, like, it's segregated black.

Benzino:

Like, okay, Boston's not that big, but you know, everybody.

Benzino:

South Boston's Irish.

Benzino:

East Boston and North End is Italian.

Benzino:

Roxbury, south end, black.

Benzino:

And you did not cross the borders.

Benzino:

If everybody would see each other downtown where the stores was and that's where the fights would take place.

Benzino:

So the chases would take place.

Benzino:

If we seen a white dude out of bounds in our spot, we'd stomp him out.

Benzino:

If they was a black dude and they thought he get stomped the fuck out.

Benzino:

And I grew up with that probably my entire life in Boston.

:

That's crazy.

:

So we're gonna be bouncing around a lot of these interviews.

Benzino:

Yeah, Come on.

:

Yeah, so we're gonna take it to, you know, gotta go to Diddy first, right?

:

Have you ever been to a Diddy party?

Benzino:

I went to one Diddy party, but it was in Manhattan.

Benzino:

It wasn't at his crib, it was in Manhattan.

Benzino:

He had rented a hall or whatever and I was there.

Benzino:

It's crazy because there was a couple of well known women and they was arguing.

Benzino:

It was almost like some real live, loving hip hop shit I was going through.

Benzino:

But I can't even mention.

Benzino:

I ain't gonna mention their names.

Benzino:

I'll save it for my book.

Benzino:

But they were arguing situation with me.

Benzino:

They was arguing with each other.

Benzino:

I think they was about to beef.

Benzino:

But I just remember Diddy coming by.

Benzino:

He never really, you know, me and Diddy's relationship.

Benzino:

First of all, right, just wander.

Benzino:

I just want to take.

Benzino:

We just got to go through a timeline of who Diddy is so.

Benzino:

And what he's accomplished.

Benzino:

And then I can give my opinions and everything else.

Benzino:

But before I give my opinions on that, which a lot of people like to talk about, we need.

Benzino:

I want to set up the timeline of what Diddy did before we knew about artists, right?

Benzino:

So Diddy started Howard Intern and then he went over to Uptown Records.

Benzino:

He helped with Mary J.

Benzino:

Blige and Heavy D.

Benzino:

Then big time promoter in New York, went on to do Bad Boy.

Benzino:

Broke many, many, many, many, many artists.

Benzino:

Sold many, many.

Benzino:

Sold a lot of music.

Benzino:

Fashion wise.

Benzino:

Really was one of the moguls in fashion as far as getting his stuff in department stores.

Benzino:

Reality tv, he killed that.

Benzino:

You know, there's not gonna be too many men that's done what Diddy's done in our culture, all right.

Benzino:

All the years that he did it in, in that time, he's employed a lot of.

Benzino:

A lot of people, Right, right.

Benzino:

Cirac came and just blew out the water, employed more people.

Benzino:

One thing I do know as a person, when I had a situation like that and when I had money like that and I had power like that, is that it's not easy for a black man from the streets, right?

Benzino:

And not that I'm saying Diddy's from the streets or maybe the same, but he's from that.

Benzino:

His father, he's still from that.

Benzino:

My father, we're from that.

Benzino:

Right.

Benzino:

It's not too many black men that's going to be able to accomplish that in this country.

:

Yeah, that's right.

Benzino:

And especially moving forward with the way things are.

Benzino:

So things went wrong and we'll get to that.

Benzino:

But I just want to just kind of stay there a second.

Benzino:

Of the accomplishments, and not just the accomplishments, but all the people that he's employed.

Benzino:

Because, you know, in this business, yes, contracts, it's a dirty business.

Benzino:

Lawyers, contracts, things get fucked up.

Benzino:

Publishing, that's all of us across the board, right?

Benzino:

No one's hardly ever happy with the label ever.

Benzino:

The happiest fuck when the label give them money.

Benzino:

Towards the end, when shit ain't cracking, it's the telltale story, right.

Benzino:

From every artist, right?

Benzino:

But you know, you gotta look at all the hundreds of people he's employed and put on if it's so easy.

Benzino:

And I know the artists, there's a lot of artists that personally have dealt with and business wise, and it's not for me to say how they feel because it's not fair, because they've actually, business wise, dealt.

Benzino:

If they said that Diddy jerked him in publishing, then that's up to them to say.

Benzino:

But what I can say is that as an artist, right, you know, in your head, you're only as good as you are rapping.

Benzino:

Business wise.

Benzino:

Most artists don't know what to do, right?

Benzino:

And you know, you know when you're dealing with people, most of the time, you're coming with nothing but your rhymes, right?

Benzino:

Yes, that's it.

Benzino:

So when people invest money, time, effort, emotions, stress everything into you, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

That part has to be accounted for.

Benzino:

Something.

Benzino:

And I'm just saying that a lot of people who you just have to look at, you know, a lot of bad stories come out about a lot of artists.

Benzino:

Like, you hear them about Diddy, Suge, Irv, Birdman.

Benzino:

You hear anybody who's a mogul, anybody who had multiple.

Benzino:

Multiple artists, you're always gonna hate.

Benzino:

There's always in common.

Benzino:

There's gonna be somebody.

Benzino:

Problems with it.

Benzino:

Right.

Benzino:

It's just the nature of the business.

Benzino:

So all them artists, though, wouldn't have got on or as big as they did without a certain person.

Benzino:

You can best believe every artist that's been through Diddy has had another manager or another way that they tried to do it and didn't even come close to the stardom and everything as they did when they got with Diddy or with Suge or with Birdman or with Irv or with any of the big moguls.

Benzino:

Right.

Benzino:

Of course, at the ending story, it's not gonna work out for them because they're the artist and they didn't have the business acumen in the first place to understand it.

Benzino:

I'm not saying that, and I'm gonna go to the current stuff, but I just want to make it clear if I'm gonna get the platform right now is that, man, we're so quick to throw everybody under the bus and forget about their accomplishments and just throw them the fuck away, that that's what's gonna end up killing our culture, you know, how are we going to have anybody else in the history books if at this rate, Malcolm and Martin will be the last two?

Benzino:

There won't be no other black man in the history books that people can laud or people can applaud or people can love because they've made us our greatest weapon towards each other.

Benzino:

So now speed it up to now.

Benzino:

I'm thinking Diddy got a problem, man.

Benzino:

Did he have some type of.

Benzino:

Did he got what happened or didn't happen?

Benzino:

I'm not there to say, so I don't speak on that.

Benzino:

But I would just think, based on everything, he has some type of sexual.

:

Right, right, right.

:

How was he when you met him?

Benzino:

Real quiet.

Benzino:

When he came to me, he gave me a blunt of weed, a split for weed, and he didn't even say nothing.

Benzino:

And kept it moving.

Benzino:

I don't know.

:

Could you see this happening at all that when you see.

Benzino:

Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah.

Benzino:

No, I couldn't see all this happening because the music industry is usually a safe place for this type of shit.

Benzino:

Look, all this sexual shit's.

Benzino:

The Internet is exposing shit.

Benzino:

It's the reason of the Internet.

Benzino:

The Internet wasn't never around.

Benzino:

The Internet's the gift and the curse if social is cursed.

Benzino:

If social media wasn't around then this has been going on since the industry has happened.

Benzino:

Not just the music industry, Hollywood, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

People want to be on TV and in the music business so bad that they'll do anything.

Benzino:

They'll give their bodies, they'll do anything.

Benzino:

That's where selling your soul is.

Benzino:

So, you know, people, unfortunately, people take advantage of that.

Benzino:

Women get taken advantage of, men get taken advantage of.

Benzino:

That's the nature of the business.

:

Why do you think we put so much of our judgment on the individual who offered the opportunity?

:

No matter what you were willing to give, I gave you that in exchange for what you were willing to give.

:

I still gave you that opportunity.

:

Why do we put so much judgment on the person who offered the opportunity, you think?

Benzino:

Because black people, man, we're just.

Benzino:

We're mad even if we try to act like we're not.

Benzino:

Like, you know, we're in a fucked up situation, man.

Benzino:

We been.

Benzino:

And it's taking tolls on people's minds.

Benzino:

And then here comes social media that is conditioning the fuck out of people when they seeing everybody else doing good and they're not.

Benzino:

It just fucks them up in the head, man.

Benzino:

It just, it breeds a lot of different negative feelings.

Benzino:

And I just think like, it's just, you know, I watched R.

Benzino:

Kelly, I watched.

Benzino:

Do you know how like the music and everything and then.

Benzino:

Okay, yes, I understand.

Benzino:

Because people are quick to get, oh my God, he's sticking up.

Benzino:

No, no, no, no.

Benzino:

Anybody that fucks with underage kids needs to be dealt with the punishment.

Benzino:

We live in Atlanta laws, they deal with that.

Benzino:

So I don't stick up or I don't co sign, none of that.

Benzino:

But, you know, how do you 20, 30 years rock with somebody so hard where they come in your life every day?

Benzino:

Music is so important to us.

Benzino:

And for black people, it seems like music and TV and everything is really important to us.

Benzino:

So if it's really that important to us, where you're focused in on it so much, why are you quick to just throw away the people that gave it to you all them years.

Benzino:

And I understand because of what people did, God gives everybody other chances.

Benzino:

And if people.

Benzino:

I'm not in the church, but I got common sense to know that that part that God gives people other chances and no one should be able to judge.

Benzino:

I know at least that part.

Benzino:

So if that's the case, then we gotta stop doing it to each other.

:

We do, but.

:

Okay, let me ask you this, right?

:

Because you had a platform, the biggest platform, right?

:

We have a platform.

:

People always try to, you know, send us shit.

:

So did nobody ever send you certain things on Diddy or.

:

And make you be like, damn, some of the shit that he's doing wrong?

:

Because people like us, right, the general people are looking like how he beat Cassie on that videotape.

:

They're like, damn, people gotta be complicit in this.

:

This didn't just come out of nowhere.

Benzino:

He beat hurt again.

Benzino:

When you an old nigga like me, you've seen your whole life, and it's not saying it's right.

Benzino:

In the 70s, that was a regular day, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

In the 80s, that was seeing that shit all the time.

Benzino:

Like, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

As a young kid, I never liked men beating on women.

Benzino:

That always made me feel uncomfortable and nervous when I'd seen that.

Benzino:

My father never did it to my mother.

Benzino:

God bless.

Benzino:

My mother's first husband did it to her.

Benzino:

But from what I have seen, oh, that was a regular thing.

Benzino:

So, you know, I can't listen again.

Benzino:

People have the condition in their mind that we are.

Benzino:

That our minds ain't the same with the Internet now as it was before.

Benzino:

It was our minds that we have to condition ourselves to what's coming now.

Benzino:

Because one, okay, one situation you seeing, then you should condemn that man for the rest of his life.

Benzino:

Now, if it wasn't the Internet, then nobody would see nothing and nobody would be getting condemned.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

And the privacy would be within themselves to work it out within themselves.

Benzino:

Right now we're in front of millions of people every day being judged by millions.

Benzino:

That's not how humanity was supposed to be.

Benzino:

God didn't make this earth for everybody to be in tune with each other.

Benzino:

Millions.

Benzino:

It's impossible be in tune with who's in front of your face.

Benzino:

Let's get back to that.

Benzino:

Because this shit here, it don't take a blind man to see that people are losing it, are cooked from social media.

Benzino:

The shit that's happening, see, I'm a nigga that was here before it.

Benzino:

The shit that's happening, this is almost like real talk.

Benzino:

And I'm not just trying to hype this up.

Benzino:

It's almost like I'm living in a different type of time or a different planet or different.

Benzino:

It ain't the same.

Benzino:

Do you think that we should separate the man from the artist?

Benzino:

Because, like you said, someone may do something that we find distasteful or displeasing.

Benzino:

Should we throw away their catalog, all their music, all their accomplishments?

Benzino:

Because it was.

Benzino:

I mean, it became a big thing when R.

Benzino:

Kelly.

Benzino:

We're gonna stop listening to R.

Benzino:

Kelly's music because now he's in prison for these things.

Benzino:

Do you think we should separate those things?

Benzino:

First of all, I think the beauty of music was always the greatness of music was that the artist could express himself through the music, and it got to the audience musically, and then they pulled out of it what they want.

Benzino:

Social media has fucked up music in so many ways, right?

Benzino:

Images, like, images like what you see on YouTube with these.

Benzino:

With young niggas with guns.

Benzino:

You see the images now, and women showing everything.

Benzino:

Our images, the images in our environment are conditioning our mind to just lust after these things.

Benzino:

And it's a powerful energy that this is all you want.

Benzino:

These young kids, this is all they want to do.

Benzino:

Their minds haven't even.

Benzino:

Even in their 20s, their minds haven't even developed to understand anything else.

Benzino:

And if the only images they're getting is guns, sex, drugs and low base, then, man, by the time they reach 30s, it's not gonna look good.

Benzino:

It's not gonna look good.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, to me, we're in emergency mode that we don't even know, like, the black culture.

Benzino:

We need help right now.

:

You know, I see a lot of people who are more so disappointed in the actions of, like, people like Puff R.

:

Kelly or because they wanted to be like them.

:

Why do you think we just want, like, we see these individuals and we want to be them so bad, and we want to attain what they have.

Benzino:

But who doesn't like that as black people that were just 400 years ago, slaves from picking cotton for nothing, getting beat and raped for nothing?

Benzino:

Who wouldn't want that?

Benzino:

Who wouldn't want to see a black man at his top employing other black men and women and.

Benzino:

And having a good time doing it?

Benzino:

When you looking at Puff, Puff looked like he's never worked in his life.

Benzino:

When you look at Puff, it's just always party, happy music.

Benzino:

Let's go dance.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

The unfortunate side is hip hop is the streets.

Benzino:

Hip hop is the streets.

Benzino:

So there's going to be that street element with it.

Benzino:

And you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, we're all from the streets at the end of the day, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

So you're gonna run into street activities because the guys around you are in the streets.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, you know, so you're gonna run into these things over the years.

Benzino:

And money, power, that shit, you know, starts to get to people mentally.

Benzino:

It never got to me, to the way that it got to, of course, to the situation that he's in.

Benzino:

And it's unfortunate, the situation he's in.

Benzino:

And I say prayer for all the victims who, if, you know, we're gonna see how this plays out, but it's gonna be a bloodbath.

Benzino:

Like, it's getting ready, like.

Benzino:

And then after this, right, it'll be another year, because this is all people gonna see.

Benzino:

We ain't.

Benzino:

When the trial come up, you gotta understand, Puffy made his lawyer tell Harvey and said.

Benzino:

The lawyer came on and did one interview with Harvey just to really say puffy's taking a stand.

Benzino:

That's all Puff wants.

Benzino:

And Puff in there, like, let everybody know I'm taking a stand.

Benzino:

And everybody coming at me, oh, watch this shit.

Benzino:

I'm gonna say, and you know, the feds got tapes since 209.

Benzino:

Diddy got tapes since, what, 93, right?

Benzino:

You think, like, you think you get to do all the stuff and all the business deals that Diddy did by being stupid.

Benzino:

Now, granted, he may have some type of sexual problem.

Benzino:

That's to me, at this point, it's obvious that's not.

Benzino:

No disrespect.

Benzino:

That's not trying to be funny.

Benzino:

People have sexual problems.

Benzino:

Believe it or not.

Benzino:

That's a big part of everybody.

Benzino:

A lot of people's problems, they don't even know it.

Benzino:

Like, the addictions of sex.

Benzino:

And then once money and drugs and unlimited.

Benzino:

And then it's like you almost had carte blanc.

Benzino:

Because this is what the music industry is.

Benzino:

The music industry to people is music and gossip.

Benzino:

And they watch people's lives now.

Benzino:

But to the filthy rich, see, the filthy rich, the filthy rich, they don't necessarily can't go to the hood and find a plug and find the drugs they want.

Benzino:

The filthy rich can't find the chicks they want because.

Benzino:

You know what I mean?

Benzino:

Because they just can't risk being out there.

Benzino:

They need somebody Diddy's been the party guy forever.

:

Yeah, no facts forever.

Benzino:

Now the music industry, not just Diddy, but the rich and famous, they love coming over to.

Benzino:

This is their playground is the music industry.

Benzino:

Because the women singing are the highest trophies.

Benzino:

The men rapping are the highest trophies.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Yeah, there's other good looking women out there, but they're not her who the world is going crazy over.

Benzino:

Rich people like to see.

Benzino:

Rich people don't really like women, you know, like this beautiful woman, like, eh.

Benzino:

But to them, they want somebody that the world yearns for, so they want stars.

Benzino:

So the music industry now has been exposed because those rich, you don't think, forget about the artist who's on tapes.

Benzino:

What about the politicians and the politicians, nieces and nephews and sons and brothers.

Benzino:

Because everybody wants to go to a party.

Benzino:

Usually when you're the rich and powerful and you're around your family, you want to impress them.

Benzino:

I call Diddy right now.

Benzino:

You want to go to his party.

Benzino:

Boom.

Benzino:

And then they done went over there now, you know, they just want a party.

Benzino:

They over there with the lampshades probably fucking everything moving right too.

Benzino:

And every drug over there going crazy.

Benzino:

My father's the fucking senator of the United States, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

You think that he ain't got that in his pocket?

Benzino:

Yeah, straight up, like, yeah, this just isn't gonna be about, oh, you gonna see some rappers and shit.

Benzino:

But at this point, at this point, man, at this point it's almost like, is anybody really gonna be super surprised and crazy?

Benzino:

Like, I think people's conditioned enough to like, kind of like if somebody's on the tape doing.

Benzino:

Having gay sex with somebody that, you know, I don't think everybody's gonna be fainting at this point.

Benzino:

I think at this point we done seen so much that what's gonna surprise us anymore.

:

Right.

:

So in your past you've had, you've been at the very top of all this.

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

Is there any demonic force?

:

Illuminati?

:

Is that a real thing?

Benzino:

Like, listen, people with billions of dollars get together.

Benzino:

That's a real thing.

Benzino:

Damn right.

Benzino:

Whatever the fuck they call it.

Benzino:

There's a lot of things, but the Illuminati, the word's been around as long as I can know it, so it must be.

Benzino:

It must have some type of something with it.

Benzino:

Yeah, people with money, people with thoughts, people with desires and lusts.

Benzino:

Of course.

Benzino:

Yeah, that's to me, that's out there.

Benzino:

I remember me and Dave one time And Dave, if y'all ever get Dave Mays, he could tell the story.

Benzino:

Dave Mays, that was my partner for the Source magazine.

Benzino:

And you, right, we was on top of the food chain in New York for a minute, for a brief minute.

Benzino:

But at least we made it there, right?

Benzino:

So there was these people that came and wanted to meet, and I would take some meetings, and I would take.

Benzino:

I would look at motherfuckers and just wouldn't take those meetings and be like, dave, you tell me first, and I'll do the second meeting this time.

Benzino:

I didn't take this meeting with these people.

Benzino:

Something didn't feel right.

Benzino:

I just remember coming up to the office.

Benzino:

Cause I didn't have an office in the Source.

Benzino:

I'd be all around the country, around the world, come to the office, chill on Dave's couch, smoke.

Benzino:

We have a meeting, and I'd be out.

Benzino:

One time I walked in there, there was some strange characters in there.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Some different type of guys.

Benzino:

Was there a woman?

Benzino:

It might have been.

Benzino:

And I just remember Dave was like, yeah, they wanted pa, pa, pa.

Benzino:

And I just was like, yeah, okay.

Benzino:

So Dave went out to dinner with him.

Benzino:

And I remember Dave.

Benzino:

I don't.

Benzino:

I don't.

Benzino:

Because there's just a lot of stories, you know, it was a lot of shit.

Benzino:

But Dave was some shit that had to do with something of that nature, right?

Benzino:

And, yeah, you have to ask him about that one, because he.

Benzino:

He was at the meeting.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I just remember I told him we didn't want to deal with him no more.

Benzino:

Cause he came back to me, and I just remember shutting it down.

Benzino:

Like, nah, fuck that.

Benzino:

Back then, I was a lot more wilder.

Benzino:

So, man, fuck them.

Benzino:

And I was.

Benzino:

You know, I know me back then.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

So, you know.

Benzino:

But I remember that.

Benzino:

I remember once you reach a certain tax bracket, they coming, so they're not gonna come.

Benzino:

If you got a couple of mil, that ain't it, man.

:

Some people say that once you get to that window, you have to make a certain choice.

:

And depending on the choice you make, it will either propel you to another level, or your life will start to change and the success will not be as prevalent as it was.

Benzino:

Yeah, I believe that.

Benzino:

And that's why I chose God.

Benzino:

And that's why I'm in the situation I'm in now.

Benzino:

I'm still out here grinding, and I'm proud of it.

:

I mean, you look good, niggas.

:

You're grinding.

Benzino:

No, no, ain't nothing.

Benzino:

Listen, I appreciate it, but you know, I got to stay in shape because the hustle don't stop.

Benzino:

And my thing is.

Benzino:

My thing is when me and Dave fell, we lost everything, right?

Benzino:

Got indicted by the feds.

Benzino:

We lost everything.

Benzino:

We had millions and millions of men, we lost the source, everything.

Benzino:

It was almost like we was banished from New York.

Benzino:

That was a big thing, all the executives and everything.

Benzino:

Because a lot of them, a lot of those guys didn't fuck with me.

Benzino:

They had to deal with me, but they didn't fuck with me.

Benzino:

They was nervous, scared, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like the Leo Cohen's of the world and Steve Stouts of the world and you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

The Russell Simmons and these guys, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I would deal with these guys, but these guys like to deal with Dave.

Benzino:

They didn't like to deal with me.

Benzino:

And it was because I just didn't have it for the bullshit.

Benzino:

And I wasn't with like I've always been for the struggle and for the people, no matter what.

Benzino:

And that's because I grew up in Boston.

Benzino:

So I was always like.

Benzino:

I looked at me being a revolutionist from Boston because I stuck up for black people.

Benzino:

The light skinnest nigga ever.

Benzino:

I never even knew my color back then.

Benzino:

Cause I always considered myself black, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

So.

Benzino:

But you know, I, you know, it's just ill to watch everything, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, you know, I have my morals.

Benzino:

I was taught well by my father, my mother and my upbringings to where is that?

Benzino:

Money wasn't everything because I always was a hustler.

Benzino:

I could always get it.

Benzino:

You know, when we lost the source, it was all right.

Benzino:

That was like me losing a couple of bricks.

Benzino:

I'm gonna get out there and get it again.

Benzino:

I gotta get out there and get it harder to get homie the money back.

Benzino:

And that's how I felt.

Benzino:

We re up.

Benzino:

We read up with Hip Hop Weekly after Hip Hop Weekly, right to reality tv after reality tv.

Benzino:

I'm not gonna stop.

Benzino:

I'm a hustler.

:

How does it feel like when you have these relationships and then you lose a bit of your power or your bit of your status, and then the people that you once had access to, you don't have access to them anymore.

Benzino:

Power to a egotistical motherfucker might have been something that they miss.

Benzino:

But me, it's just again, I always looked at life like I'm from 4.

Benzino:

Anything past me making it past 25 was just a fucking God given bonus.

Benzino:

And I appreciate now, I do.

Benzino:

When you get older, you start seeing life through a whole different lens.

Benzino:

I appreciate shit now.

Benzino:

Do you understand the shit that I've been through that I should have been dead many, many, many times?

Benzino:

And it's like.

Benzino:

Or locked the fuck up forever.

Benzino:

So it's like damn like all my niggas that are dead, close, close people.

Benzino:

I got four on my arm and probably know another hundred, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like you start valuing shit different, making it to 59 years old, you know, who the fuck would have knew?

Benzino:

But you know, I just, I always was for the people.

Benzino:

I never looked at myself as like, I still find it hard to believe a celebrity when people see me in the airport and shit and they be like benzino, it's my people.

Benzino:

It's people from the hood and struggle and they smile and that's what's doper than that.

Benzino:

That's what keep me going.

Benzino:

Even not having the money I had before.

Benzino:

Not even close.

Benzino:

But money don't.

Benzino:

And I'm telling you, I'm saying this is the truth.

Benzino:

Money is meant to be made and spent.

Benzino:

I used to get fucking whatever I had, heroin, coke, weed.

Benzino:

I'm going to take that shit to the block.

Benzino:

The first profit, I'm going to go my profit.

Benzino:

I'm going to go fuck it off, go buy me some shit and you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Then bring the plug his.

Benzino:

And I might come back a little short, but I'm going to get another just to go back at it.

Benzino:

That's just my.

Benzino:

That's how I was at a young age.

Benzino:

So it kind of.

Benzino:

And I'm not saying that that was good because I mismanaged money like craz crazy.

Benzino:

I fucked off money.

Benzino:

But I also was Robin Hood.

Benzino:

I gave away a lot, I bought people a lot like you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Not just like ridiculous shit.

Benzino:

So you know, and I would do it again, man, but this time I'm older and I know how to manage money better.

Benzino:

Like I just.

Benzino:

Whatever I had, I spent.

Benzino:

I spent it on people and I kept it moving.

Benzino:

Even when I had millions.

Benzino:

I just, if it.

Benzino:

Whether I.

Benzino:

If I had 5,000, I'm gonna go break that 5,000 tomorrow, I'm gonna get another one.

Benzino:

If I have 5 million, I'm going to break this 5 million.

Benzino:

We can get some more.

Benzino:

It's just what it was.

Benzino:

So of course we all know this source was huge.

Benzino:

Who didn't want to be on the COVID Who didn't want to be in business?

Benzino:

What's one of the craziest things you were ever offered in exchange for business or in exchange for being on the COVID or exchange for that connection with you and the company?

Benzino:

Well, you know.

Benzino:

You know, well, before I say this, I'm in a relationship now, and I love my girl deeply.

Benzino:

Ashley, I love you.

Benzino:

We're gonna get married.

Benzino:

But back then, right, pre Ashley, you know, being the position, I was, you know, of course, female artists, rappers, of course, they're looking at me like, what's up with Zino?

Benzino:

You know, what's up with.

Benzino:

And then me, you know, one thing about me and I got from my father, like, if I'm.

Benzino:

If I'm dating you, if I'm fucking with you, I'm just gonna pour everything into you.

Benzino:

So you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

You might get a cover, might get a diamond.

Benzino:

I flew Jacob one time, well known rapper.

Benzino:

Y'all know her well.

Benzino:

Everybody in this room know her well.

Benzino:

I flew him in there on her birthday and put a diamond chain around her neck in her city.

Benzino:

I used to do it big.

Benzino:

And, you know, I threw some covers through some, hosted the Source Awards, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I mean, not because they didn't deserve it, because obviously they had to be big enough to do it.

Benzino:

Because it would look crazy if I'm just doing it with somebody who doesn't.

Benzino:

Like, people can't.

Benzino:

But they were big enough.

Benzino:

It just all worked out.

Benzino:

It just all worked out where we would date.

Benzino:

And you know what I'm saying, you know, that's why, like, when love and hip hop came, I was like, yo, I was private with my shit.

Benzino:

Because nobody knew.

Benzino:

Like, I've dated a bunch, a bunch of celebrities that y'all be like, damn, but I don't kiss and tell, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Till my book come out.

:

Is it.

:

Are the celebrities overrated?

Benzino:

Are the celebrities, right?

:

The celebrity women, are they overrated?

Benzino:

Are they overrated?

:

Yeah.

Benzino:

No.

Benzino:

Hell no.

Benzino:

These are the.

Benzino:

These are the ones.

Benzino:

These are the ones.

Benzino:

These are the ones that y'all grew up loving, you know?

Benzino:

Yeah, yeah.

Benzino:

Hell yeah.

Benzino:

Definitely.

:

But I do gotta ask.

:

Cause I did watch the reality TV show, and I watched it all play out.

:

And then later on down the line, you see, you know, the whole child support situation, right?

:

And I was just gonna ask you.

:

There's something need to be done about child support in general and how much Money people is paying, I think.

:

What, Kanye, 200 grand a month, bro.

Benzino:

Child support.

Benzino:

Like, I hope, like, I don't know.

Benzino:

Did Trump say anything about, has he said anything about changing child support?

:

We haven't heard that yet, no.

:

Yeah, not yet.

Benzino:

If Trump said that he was going to abolish child support, he would have had my vote.

Benzino:

I don't give a fuck.

Benzino:

I don't give a fuck what anybody say.

Benzino:

Fuck it.

Benzino:

I would have been Maga Hat, Maga Sweatsuit, the goat ass motherfucking man.

Benzino:

I would have been what?

Benzino:

But child support's fucked up, bro.

Benzino:

Like, child support.

Benzino:

But again, not just child support.

Benzino:

There is a system set in place to fuck us up.

Benzino:

And child support is one of them.

:

It's one of them for sure.

Benzino:

I got three child's mother whom I thank dearly for bringing me my beautiful children.

Benzino:

You have to put all these things on this because you don't want to disrespect anybody because they still are the mothers of my child.

Benzino:

And without them, I couldn't have my children.

Benzino:

But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but they fuck your life up when they take you to court.

Benzino:

Because it's not just about giving money.

Benzino:

You're giving it through the system.

Benzino:

You have to go through the system.

Benzino:

So when you don't do something, right, they locking your ass up, right?

:

And they taking money off top as well.

Benzino:

It's not fair.

:

See, you get a new job, they hit that boy, they go crazy.

Benzino:

It's not.

Benzino:

But then they overcharge you and you can't get a modification until about a year or two.

Benzino:

Like, I could tell you more, but I don't wanna go through it, man, because you know what I'm saying.

Benzino:

Yeah, I'm still going through, you know.

Benzino:

Yeah, man, like, you know, my dad was on child support for my older stepbrothers and sisters.

Benzino:

I remember for Mikey, Eddie and Ricky, he ordered, he owed a lot, but they ended up dropping it.

Benzino:

But it was like they're damn near 50 something.

Benzino:

And the child support thing was still coming in like, no, that shit is fucked up.

Benzino:

It's not right.

Benzino:

It needs to be overhauled.

Benzino:

Something needs to be done.

:

And that's what the question I had was, if you could, what would you do to it?

Benzino:

I would just do like this, right?

Benzino:

Okay.

Benzino:

There has to be an average of every child based on age 1 to 5, 5 to 10, because, you know, they eat more as they grow and shit.

Benzino:

If it's gonna be the 18, right.

Benzino:

First of all, I would bring it down to 15, it wouldn't be 18.

Benzino:

He's a damn near grown ass Goddamn, man.

Benzino:

He got a kid by himself.

Benzino:

He has a kid.

Benzino:

What the fuck?

Benzino:

How the fuck am I paying?

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

So I would lower it to about 14.

Benzino:

14.

Benzino:

Ish.

Benzino:

Let's say 14, right?

Benzino:

And then I would say, look, 13, give me 13.

Benzino:

I would load the 13.

Benzino:

And then it would be in spurts on what's needed.

Benzino:

It would go now, yes, it would go to the mother, but the mother would be responsible to show what she's done with it.

Benzino:

Just like I have to show in.

Benzino:

She has to clock in to them what she's done with that.

Benzino:

She needs to show receipts for everything.

Benzino:

That.

Benzino:

That particular money.

Benzino:

If it was 1,500, you need to show what it was.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

If it's $100,000, you need to show what the fuck you doing with this 100,000.

Benzino:

That applies to the child.

Benzino:

Cause if it's child support, doesn't say child and ex support.

Benzino:

Cause if it's child and ex support, say so.

Benzino:

If it's child support, then whatever the mother spends needs to be a receipt to the court.

Benzino:

And they need to be going through it just like they be going through our shit.

Benzino:

Right?

Benzino:

Y'all like that?

:

Yeah, I like that.

:

And let us file taxes on it.

:

God damn it.

Benzino:

And let's file taxes on it, man.

:

You got.

:

You got a lot of thoughts.

:

That be Superman.

Benzino:

Y'all like that?

:

The thoughts.

:

But now the thoughts gone.

Benzino:

I love it.

:

The young, the boppers gonna be.

Benzino:

First of all, first of all, when a rapper.

Benzino:

When a young rapper come to tell me, yo, can you give me some advice?

Benzino:

OG Yo, Unc.

Benzino:

Yo, Unc.

Benzino:

Unc.

Benzino:

OG I can't give you some advice with your rap crew.

Benzino:

You listening?

Benzino:

Don't get nobody pregnant.

:

That's it.

Benzino:

You win.

Benzino:

They be like, huh?

Benzino:

Don't get nobody pregnant.

Benzino:

Wait till your late 20s, 30s.

Benzino:

You're not missing nothing right now.

Benzino:

Just chill out.

:

Thanks.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Get through your 20s, see if you're stable by then.

Benzino:

If you have your own spot right before you bring a child in here.

Benzino:

Cause when the child.

Benzino:

Because the problems, our problems start when the child comes.

Benzino:

We all wasn't.

Benzino:

I wasn't ready.

Benzino:

Nobody's ready.

Benzino:

We're not.

Benzino:

We love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love but we're not ready.

Benzino:

We're not financially ready.

Benzino:

We're not spiritually ready.

Benzino:

We're not emotionally ready.

Benzino:

All right?

Benzino:

We're not mentally ready at all.

Benzino:

But we all do it.

Benzino:

It's part of life.

Benzino:

But when you think about it as far as what it does, and the struggle you got to go through when you don't have shit.

Benzino:

And you got to be out there in the streets to hustle to get it.

Benzino:

Now you can't spend time with your kid.

Benzino:

Then later on it comes back and it bites you in your ass.

Benzino:

You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.

:

Great advice.

:

Back to Diddy.

:

One more thing.

Benzino:

Stevie J.

Benzino:

Stevie J, My brother, right?

:

How did you.

:

Well, he was very vocal about taking up for Diddy.

Benzino:

Yeah, I mean, you know, shit.

Benzino:

I mean, Diddy made Stevie who he is like.

Benzino:

Listen again.

Benzino:

People gotta understand, right?

Benzino:

How many I'm gonna look on the camera.

Benzino:

How many of yalls family did some horrible shit or did some bad shit or even just made little mistakes, and you still stuck by a family member.

Benzino:

Your father, your brother, your mother, your sister, your cousin, right?

Benzino:

Okay.

Benzino:

Just because Diddy and Stevie ain't blood, that doesn't mean that the feelings aren't there to stand by him no matter whatever he's going through.

Benzino:

There is nothing the matter with that.

Benzino:

See, now everybody's worried about being canceled.

Benzino:

Everybody's worried about being who's Yo.

Benzino:

Stand by your motherfucking friend no matter what they do.

Benzino:

If it's murder, I don't give a fuck what it is.

Benzino:

Stand by him because that friend's gonna need you no matter what, regardless of what happens.

Benzino:

It's unfortunate, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

But that's still supposed to be your friend.

Benzino:

That's just me.

Benzino:

That's real serious, right?

:

Too many people that's backing off, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I don't.

Benzino:

You know, I haven't talked to Stevie in a minute, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I wish him well.

Benzino:

I hope everything's all right with him, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I just know that him and Diddy had a relationship for years and years.

Benzino:

He's got a lot of money with Diddy, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

They had a lot of business together.

Benzino:

I'm sure Diddy has been an amazing influence on his life musically.

Benzino:

And, you know, they, you know, they've got some.

Benzino:

Stevie's responsible for over 90 million goddamn albums sold with his production.

Benzino:

That's because of Diddy.

:

Any wild stories with Stevie J or anything like that?

Benzino:

Stevie J's a wild boy.

:

Yeah.

Benzino:

You might as well say what story you don't have is like.

Benzino:

So I'm saying.

Benzino:

So I'm gonna tell this Wild.

Benzino:

He probably gonna be mad as fuck, but I love him to death.

Benzino:

And whatever I'm gonna tell him right now.

Benzino:

This camera.

Benzino:

I love you, my nigga.

Benzino:

Call me.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Regardless, you know what I mean?

Benzino:

So.

Benzino:

But it's just some funny shit.

Benzino:

Y'all gotta understand.

Benzino:

Stevie on Bad Boy was like the black sheet.

Benzino:

Me at the Source magazine was like the black sheet.

:

So y'all click.

Benzino:

There was a point in the 90s, we both had money and we both was wild boys.

Benzino:

And we.

Benzino:

God made us link up.

Benzino:

Why did that happen?

Benzino:

We just seen a lot of things eye to eye, like, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

We under.

Benzino:

Where is that?

Benzino:

Everybody else would be like, yo, like crashing cars, brand new cars and leaving them, shit like that.

Benzino:

Just, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Trashing hotel rooms, like $800 night hotel rooms, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, just wild shit that the industry, you know what I mean?

Benzino:

So I remember I was in Miami and Stevie was single at this point.

Benzino:

You know, at this point.

Benzino:

This was before the love and hip hop thing.

Benzino:

So he was staying with me in Miami and shit.

Benzino:

And I think he was.

Benzino:

I think him and Whoopi's daughter was, you know, really friends and shit, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Stevie.

Benzino:

Stevie.

Benzino:

Whoopi Goldberg.

Benzino:

Whoopi.

Benzino:

Whoopi Goldberg's daughter?

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

That's random as hell, but okay, I'm following you.

Benzino:

I mean, you wanted the story, right?

:

No, no, no, it's already.

Benzino:

This is already.

:

Yeah, yeah.

Benzino:

So I remember when Whoopi's daughter came to him, and Whoopi were cool and everything, but then it was like there was this white chick that really dug him.

Benzino:

Blonde haired, chicken, little snow bunny.

Benzino:

Excuse me, Dr.

Benzino:

Uma.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

:

Sorry, doctor.

Benzino:

No, no, no, Uma.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

So I remember she liked them.

Benzino:

Whatever.

Benzino:

So you know saying Stevie got the whip one time, she had a bench truck, G wagon.

Benzino:

He pulled up on us, yo, what's up?

Benzino:

I said, oh, shit.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying, nigga, you know, he had no license.

Benzino:

Me and Stevie never had a license, man.

Benzino:

Me and Stevie were notorious for just getting whips and just crashing them and don't have licenses.

Benzino:

Like, we wild.

Benzino:

So he pulls up, I was like, oh, we saw jumping, we riding and shit.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I was like, yeah, so Then I think the next day, he probably had the white chick.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

She was bad, like, model type shit.

Benzino:

Beautiful.

Benzino:

So nice thing, you know.

Benzino:

A couple days went by, I ain't seen Stevie.

Benzino:

No one seen Stevie and shit.

Benzino:

We had the studio.

Benzino:

So then I forgot, because where we was at was the compound.

Benzino:

So when the cars come, you'd have to see us outside until the white girl comes over and she's in a ride with somebody, with another chick.

Benzino:

She's like, hey, you guys seen Stevie?

Benzino:

You know, he hasn't brought the car back, you know, since it's been a few days.

Benzino:

I was like.

Benzino:

I was like, no, no.

Benzino:

So I get the call from Stevie and shit.

Benzino:

He's like, yo, yo, come get me, yo.

Benzino:

So Stevie's, like, on Collins.

Benzino:

I go over to the.

Benzino:

Ben's truck is on cinder blocks, like, with no tires and rims on it, right?

Benzino:

Sold the ribs off the car, right?

Benzino:

So you know.

:

Savage.

Benzino:

Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo.

Benzino:

I really yo that.

Benzino:

I know it's about me, but you just had to be there, yo.

Benzino:

Like, I pulled up and the was on blocks.

Benzino:

Like, I was like, what the.

Benzino:

I didn't even want to say nothing.

Benzino:

I didn't even say they picked it up.

Benzino:

We rode out.

Benzino:

Like, we got so many behind the scene, loving hip hop stories.

Benzino:

We got so much shit.

Benzino:

Like, oh, I'm loving hip hop.

Benzino:

Yeah, man.

Benzino:

Me and Stevie.

Benzino:

That's what I'm saying.

Benzino:

Like, it's only because we the same.

Benzino:

Like, we just.

Benzino:

We're good dudes.

Benzino:

We give.

Benzino:

We're givers.

Benzino:

Stevie's a giver.

Benzino:

Stevie, he wants everybody.

Benzino:

Like, when you come in, like, if y'all was around, he would.

Benzino:

Yo, y'all straight.

Benzino:

Y'all need some food.

Benzino:

Y'all need some weed, need some drink.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

He get it.

Benzino:

But he's.

Benzino:

He's just a wild boy.

Benzino:

And back then, I was a wild boy.

Benzino:

And, like, we together, it was just wilder.

Benzino:

Everything we did was crazy off camera.

Benzino:

That's right.

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

Now, I gotta ask you this, man.

:

I got a couple source questions, right?

:

So.

:

No, no, go ahead.

Benzino:

No, no.

Benzino:

I was gonna say, ask everything.

:

I finish say, yeah.

Benzino:

Cause we gotta get it.

Benzino:

Jaguar.

Benzino:

Shit.

:

Do you think.

:

Do you think Diddy has something to do with the Tupac situation?

:

They're trying to pin that on now.

:

They're trying to say that Diddy has something going on with this.

Benzino:

Tupac had beef with a whole coast.

Benzino:

You understand what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Tupac had beef with A whole coast.

Benzino:

Do you know how many thousands of niggas on the east coast is gonna want it to fuck with Tupac at that point?

Benzino:

So to choose one guy, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

And there's really no physical evidence.

Benzino:

There's no real evidence.

Benzino:

It's just conspiracy.

Benzino:

Like, anybody could say that because they had beef.

Benzino:

But do you know how much beef?

Benzino:

How many niggas Pac had beef with?

Benzino:

And that's one thing about having beef with multiple niggas.

Benzino:

You ain't gonna know who the fuck did it.

Benzino:

And that's really what happened at this point.

Benzino:

You know, I mean, they look, you know that the whole situation in Vegas when they had stomp dude out, right?

Benzino:

Do you think that if they didn't stomp dude out, you think Pac would be dead?

Benzino:

Yes or no?

:

He'd be alive.

Benzino:

Then what did Diddy have to do with it?

Benzino:

That was the question.

:

Because, you know, it's like the media is always able to rewrite it.

:

It seems like they trying to rewrite the history.

Benzino:

The media is nuts.

Benzino:

They cooked, yo.

Benzino:

Yeah.

Benzino:

And so the media don't want the story.

Benzino:

The media wants to.

Benzino:

The media wants the sensationalism of it.

Benzino:

They don't want the facts.

Benzino:

The facts are boring to a lot of people.

Benzino:

They want to blame shit.

Benzino:

The problem with being a scapegoat is like, Diddy's the scapegoat for everything right now.

Benzino:

He's taking the brunt.

Benzino:

I've never seen Instagram ads.

Benzino:

It's almost like a wanted Diddy.

Benzino:

If he fucked with you, click here.

Benzino:

I've never seen no shit like that.

Benzino:

Like, what the fuck is that?

Benzino:

There's ads out now almost back in the day when it was wanted dead or alive, like that.

Benzino:

That's what they doing a Diddy on Instagram.

Benzino:

So I don't.

Benzino:

The Tupac thing.

Benzino:

I just know that if they didn't stomp out Orlando at the shit, and Pac was right there, the main one, right.

Benzino:

I think Pac wouldn't have got killed that night in Vegas.

Benzino:

That's just my opinion.

:

Did they try to make you choose a side in that whole East Coast, West Coast?

Benzino:

Nah.

Benzino:

Because I was west coast out.

Benzino:

I was a New York nigger.

Benzino:

My father, whole grandfather from New York.

Benzino:

I spent half of my summers, I mean, five months out the year in New York from Boston, three hours.

Benzino:

But I listened and was influenced so much by Eazy, E and west coast music as a rap group to where it's like, it really was a good place for me to be because I could kind of understand both.

Benzino:

And don't take a side like, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I actually.

Benzino:

And when you think about it, at that time, Death Row and Bad Boys music was so fucking amazing at that period.

Benzino:

And that music will live on forever.

Benzino:

A lot of this music right now you'll never hear again ten years from now.

:

No for sure.

Benzino:

Ever.

Benzino:

There'll be no publishing for a lot of this shit.

:

Now, a lot of people like to bring Biggie's sexuality into question now.

Benzino:

Biggie?

:

Yeah, because of his.

:

Some of his lyrics.

Benzino:

Really?

Benzino:

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Benzino:

Yeah, I know, man.

Benzino:

You know, I don't.

Benzino:

That's a good.

Benzino:

I don't know why n be doing that shit.

:

You gave him 5M.

Benzino:

He's a.

Benzino:

He's dope.

:

No, I'm saying.

Benzino:

I'm saying the album's dope.

Benzino:

Just because.

Benzino:

Listen, listen, listen.

Benzino:

If he had a couple of Suspect lyrics that don't take away from the album, right?

Benzino:

And guess what?

Benzino:

There's a whole LGBTQ community who probably love those lyrics now.

Benzino:

How about that?

:

Amen.

Benzino:

We don't want to exclude them, do we?

Benzino:

No.

:

Hell, no.

:

So.

Benzino:

Yeah, see, nobody wants to see everybody pick and choose they battles.

Benzino:

See, you looking at it a little different now, right?

Benzino:

Yeah, see, I got.

Benzino:

You see, I'm good at this.

Benzino:

You can.

:

Now, you being from Boston, there's a lot of famous people from Boston.

:

Matt Damon, Uma Thurman, Mark Wahlberg.

:

Have you ever.

Benzino:

What do they all have in common?

:

They all white.

Benzino:

All right.

Benzino:

I just wanted to just get that.

Benzino:

Yeah, but.

:

But, you know, you in them circles.

:

No, you run into a famous.

Benzino:

Yeah, man, I'm in Uma Thurman circles.

Benzino:

All right.

Benzino:

I never thought that.

Benzino:

But, yeah, I mean, look, I mean.

:

Nigga, you growing up, you was bigger than life to me, so.

Benzino:

Man, I didn't.

Benzino:

Man, that's a.

Benzino:

That's a.

Benzino:

You know, and that's probably what it is for me, is that I never could.

Benzino:

I never seen that.

Benzino:

So that's probably why, like, I never seen that.

Benzino:

I never, ever seen that.

Benzino:

I just know that I was trying to hustle, trying to get my shit off as a groups, the Made Men, RS Soul.

Benzino:

Trying to learn about brand management with the Source and learn more about magazine stuff and just try to expand myself from the streets, because at that time in the 90s, it was like I was heavy, heavy, heavy gang banging and selling drugs at that time.

Benzino:

And so it's like when I met Dave and went to the Source, you know, it Was a transition period.

Benzino:

Once we started, you know, for the first, I mean, 10 years, wasn't really no money being made, so I still had to hustle.

Benzino:

So, you know, not no money like that.

Benzino:

But once we started, once like 99 came, that was it.

Benzino:

I ain't had to do none of that no more.

Benzino:

Comes a time where you be like, shit, I ain't gonna die.

Benzino:

I'm not even getting this money like this.

Benzino:

And I was getting some real coins.

Benzino:

,:

:

Amen.

Benzino:

Amen.

:

Man, who got five mics that didn't deserve it?

Benzino:

Not for real.

:

Everybody deserved it.

Benzino:

Everybody deserved it.

Benzino:

There might have been some.

Benzino:

There might have been some four and a halfs that needed to be fives.

:

Damn.

Benzino:

Five.

Benzino:

Damn.

:

What the fuck you got against?

:

No, I'm just asking.

:

The album's fire, though, but fire.

Benzino:

First of all, right, first of all, right, all right.

Benzino:

It was good.

Benzino:

But so look, right, let's.

Benzino:

Let's give props where props is due.

:

Okay, let's do that.

:

I'm just talking shit.

Benzino:

Kim came in.

Benzino:

See, that's why when you're a female that can get street niggas and real hardened niggas to listen to your shit and rap your shit, then, you know, you've really transitioned.

Benzino:

And back then it was a male dominated industry.

Benzino:

Kim broke through that shit.

Benzino:

She actually was cute enough and sexy enough and put all that designer shit on blast to where it's like she started the whole culture of what rap is right now.

Benzino:

She really, to me, single handedly started it.

Benzino:

Kim, then Foxy came in and helped, but Kim was the first one because of the platform she was on with Biggie and she was put out there and the song she was doing the beats was so hard.

Benzino:

Niggas was like this.

Benzino:

It's not easy for a female back then for n just to be like streethood niggas.

Benzino:

Like.

:

But that was my question.

:

So was it more so that did the female part play a role in why she got five mics?

:

Because the album was fire.

:

But five mics.

:

When I think five mics, I'm thinking legendary.

:

Legendary.

Benzino:

Me and Kim was dating around that time.

:

Okay, there it is.

:

All right.

:

Real nigga.

:

Real nigga.

:

Ain't he real nigga.

Benzino:

I would do the same.

:

Six mics.

:

Yeah, six mics.

:

15.

Benzino:

I created a mic.

Benzino:

No, but I don't want.

Benzino:

But I'm saying.

Benzino:

Don't look.

Benzino:

But I'm saying.

Benzino:

But I'm saying, though, to me.

Benzino:

To me.

Benzino:

She.

Benzino:

To me.

Benzino:

When you think about it, she deserved it.

Benzino:

She did.

Benzino:

She did.

Benzino:

As a.

Benzino:

This nigga.

Benzino:

Come on.

:

I was really just asking.

:

I was just really.

Benzino:

No, no, no, no, no.

Benzino:

But I'm saying she was an amazing friend.

Benzino:

Really, really cool person.

Benzino:

Dave was actually dating her manager at the time, Hillary.

Benzino:

Hillary at that time.

Benzino:

So, you know.

Benzino:

But let me ask y'all a question.

:

Okay, let's do it.

Benzino:

Let's say that y'all had, like.

Benzino:

Okay, let's say the platform right here.

Benzino:

And let's say Megan good.

:

Yes.

Benzino:

Y'all fuck with Megan good.

:

Yeah.

:

I met her firstly.

Benzino:

Okay, give me somebody who y'all really fuck with.

Benzino:

Like, really?

Benzino:

Like, wow.

Benzino:

Like.

Benzino:

Oh, my God.

Benzino:

Like, really?

Benzino:

No, no, that.

Benzino:

No, that.

Benzino:

You like, sexually, Johnny.

Benzino:

Yes.

:

Artist, actress, act like Nikki.

:

JT beyond jt.

Benzino:

What?

:

Jt.

Benzino:

Okay.

:

Oh, yeah.

Benzino:

Okay, okay.

Benzino:

Yeah, I'm on Shout to Shout.

Benzino:

All right, now.

:

I'm on jt.

Benzino:

So let's say you young Miami.

Benzino:

You jt.

Benzino:

Let's say y'all here.

Benzino:

This is y'all shit.

Benzino:

Let's say.

Benzino:

Look, fellas, we gonna go on a double date.

Benzino:

And let's say y'all the most number one podcast in the fucking world.

Benzino:

And y'all go out to dinner with them.

Benzino:

Y'all ain't putting them on whatever they want to be on before the dinner.

:

They coming to do an interview after the dinner.

:

We shoot him a music video.

Benzino:

Right, right.

:

We got.

Benzino:

Right.

Benzino:

So.

Benzino:

So.

Benzino:

So that just goes to show you.

Benzino:

Now, does that up the integrity of what y'all are doing?

:

Absolutely not.

:

Nah, I wouldn't say.

:

I wouldn't say.

Benzino:

Why not?

:

It does.

Benzino:

Well, it does or it doesn't.

:

It doesn't.

:

If she's actually fired and she was.

:

She was fired.

Benzino:

What you mean?

:

You talking about.

:

Look, him.

:

We talking about something.

:

Little Kim was really that.

Benzino:

There it is.

Benzino:

So There it is.

Benzino:

So that you can justify it.

Benzino:

Right?

Benzino:

The means are justified.

Benzino:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Benzino:

I told that.

Benzino:

And shout and shout out to Queen Bee, because again, without Queen Bee, I'm sorry, none of this would be happening with these females right now.

Benzino:

It just doesn't happen without Queen Bee.

Benzino:

And Nikki is just as up there now.

Benzino:

Nikki is and in some ways surpassed.

Benzino:

But there's no Nikki without Kim and there's no Glorilla and Set.

Benzino:

There's none of them.

Benzino:

So you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

You have to give it to her because it was a male dominated, and the females that were doing it did not do it like that so she deserved it.

:

Who's out right now?

:

Male and female artist who deserves five mics.

Benzino:

You know, what albums.

Benzino:

Well, I mean, Future.

Benzino:

How about that?

Benzino:

Let's go.

:

You said future.

Benzino:

Future.

:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

:

Hell yeah.

Benzino:

Yeah, Future.

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

Why don't they ever put him in the big three?

Benzino:

When they say big three, it's like, future's underrated, man.

Benzino:

Because future's one of the greatest artists that'll go down the history of our time, not just hip hop of our time.

Benzino:

Like, he just.

Benzino:

There's certain people that God's just gifted to them, that they just got it, that every time they go in there, they're giving us what we want to hear.

Benzino:

The melodies, the harmonies, the beat, whatever it is, the mood, we're getting it all.

Benzino:

He's not trying at this point.

:

It's just him, me and my brother like to have this debate.

:

Who do you think more is more legendary?

:

Future or Scottie Pippen?

Benzino:

Look, now, I'm here to tell y'all.

Benzino:

Look, I'm here to tell you.

Benzino:

I'm here to tell y'all, look it, look it, look it.

Benzino:

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Benzino:

We don't want to do that.

Benzino:

Because we need all the legends we can get.

Benzino:

And that's real.

:

That's real.

Benzino:

We need all the legends We.

Benzino:

You know, that's the only thing that.

Benzino:

Those are the legacies that are gonna be left to move to these generations.

Benzino:

Cause this generation needs help.

Benzino:

They need somebody to look at.

Benzino:

It can't just be one or two or three.

Benzino:

And that's why I don't get into top fives and top tens and fuck all that.

Benzino:

Because without it, where would black people be without music, without the hip hop industry, without, like, where the fuck would we be?

Benzino:

Like, we need to be top, top 1 million, goddamn it.

Benzino:

Like, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Because, yeah, whoever went out there and did it, they contributed.

Benzino:

Hopefully they got their money.

Benzino:

Hopefully it progressed them.

Benzino:

It helped their families.

Benzino:

Because that's all it is, is an opportunity.

Benzino:

You can't.

Benzino:

A lot of people think this is what you're gonna be doing for the rest of your life.

Benzino:

Like, it's impossible.

Benzino:

You know, you gotta.

Benzino:

You gotta be.

Benzino:

You gotta be able to use one thing, do it good, and then from that, morph something else.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

That just makes sense.

Benzino:

That comes from it.

Benzino:

Because believe me, like, hip hop, these young n getting this money right now, listen, man, same thing how football players that played back then, and, you know, you can't forget those Guys, they wasn't getting no money.

Benzino:

They would go to work and then come in with leather helmets being fucked up, you know, playing for no money.

Benzino:

And now niggas is getting millions and millions and millions.

Benzino:

You know, we gotta.

Benzino:

We gotta.

Benzino:

We have.

Benzino:

What I'm saying is that the guys that get it now, they have to respect it more.

:

Amen.

:

So, Benzino, man, you did it, man.

:

Somehow you beat a RICO case, nigga.

:

Was it a rico?

Benzino:

It started out as rico.

:

Okay?

Benzino:

So we was getting.

Benzino:

This was.

Benzino:

This was the time at the source.

Benzino:

We started.

Benzino:

This was, like, around.

Benzino:

I mean, in Boston for a while.

Benzino:

I had been getting always.

Benzino:

They had always been fuck with me in Boston, the gang task force, and looking into my situation up there because, you know, my father had did a couple big bids in the Feds, and my brother Porky, you know, free.

Benzino:

Porky's locked up now, also did a couple of big bids.

Benzino:

So Boston small.

Benzino:

And, you know, you know, they had been trying to fuck with me for a minute, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I did a couple little small bids here and there, like six months.

Benzino:

But it was like, they always was trying to.

Benzino:

I was Ray Dog back then.

Benzino:

They always was trying to get Ray Dog because, you know, we was a gang city and I had my rap group, but we was big, you know.

Benzino:

And not just that.

Benzino:

Where I was from, Four Corners.

Benzino:

Everybody from Boston, that was.

Benzino:

Somebody would always come to Four Corners.

Benzino:

So just, you know, like, man.

Benzino:

And I was, you know, I just.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I had a good run in Boston, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I mean, you go through the stuff with your guys getting killed and stuff like that, but, you know, for the most part, you know what I'm saying, Boston growing up back then was dope.

Benzino:

When we was making money, when I was with the Source for a good period of time at the beginning, the Source really wasn't making no money for me to get a cut.

:

Got you.

:

So it was like more like I still had to be in the street, too.

Benzino:

I had to still had my foot and, you know.

Benzino:

But once the source started, we was getting that money, money, then I didn't have to do that anymore.

Benzino:

It didn't make any sense.

Benzino:

So the feds had.

Benzino:

They was investigating me on some other shit.

Benzino:

And it kind of morphed into the, how is he getting all this money?

Benzino:

You know, the IRS is like, how the fuck is this dude making all this money?

Benzino:

He's never had a job.

Benzino:

What the fuck is going on?

Benzino:

And they really didn't know about it.

Benzino:

The feds didn't know that Source magazine was making.

Benzino:

At our height, we was making 2, 3 million a month.

Benzino:

So it's like cash, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

So they didn't know.

Benzino:

They'd never seen nothing like that before.

Benzino:

So it's like they probably didn't believe it.

Benzino:

But when they first came to Charges World, when the criminal investigation, they had interviewed about 160 people.

Benzino:

They interviewed the whole soil staff, which the accountant had wall wire.

Benzino:

They interviewed.

Benzino:

They was pulling guys in and out of prisons out of Pennsylvania, out of Fed joints, interviewing them.

Benzino:

They went to Boston and interviewed a bunch of people.

Benzino:

But altogether they interviewed over 150 people.

Benzino:

And they just couldn't connect the dots.

Benzino:

It was extortion, money laundering, tax evasion.

:

Right.

Benzino:

Was one of them, tax evasion.

Benzino:

But what people don't realize.

Benzino:

Yeah.

Benzino:

So tax.

Benzino:

The officers are different.

Benzino:

Anything criminal was criminal.

Benzino:

Whatever's taxes is taxes.

Benzino:

They're two different offices.

Benzino:

They're under the Fed, FBI, but they're two different offices.

Benzino:

So this is a different investigation, this criminal investigation and tax investigation.

Benzino:

They don't know.

Benzino:

One of them doesn't necessarily know even what they did.

Benzino:

Because when I got indicted, it was only because the criminal broke down and they had been investigating me for almost two years and they couldn't get nothing.

Benzino:

It was wasting money.

Benzino:

So it was wasting millions of dollars.

Benzino:

So that broke down and they said, fuck it, you know, but they offered me 20 years.

Benzino:

They God rest my mother.

Benzino:

They went to my mother's house and told her to tell me to take 20, 25 years.

Benzino:

Cause they was gonna hit me with a kingpin, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

And I'm like, kingpin for what?

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Wait a minute.

Benzino:

You know, in my mind I'm like, okay, I was doing my thing in Boston, but from the shit that they were saying, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I'm like, nah, they, they mixing it up, they remixing it.

Benzino:

It wasn't like that.

Benzino:

I'd already got out by the time they really, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

And they was talking about bodies in Boston, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

There's a lot of unsolved bodies in Boston, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, you know, they just trying to.

Benzino:

They was trying to.

Benzino:

And that was in what?

Benzino:

Zero.

Benzino:

Shit, that was.04.

Benzino:

I mean, 07, I think.

Benzino:

No, well, I can.

Benzino:

Yeah, that was like 05.

Benzino:

Like 04.05.

Benzino:

So:

Benzino:

So, you know, that was way back then.

Benzino:

They tried to hit me with that.

:

So when you beat this, right, did you say your lawyer fainted after he found out that you won, or he fainted in the trial?

Benzino:

Salute to Leonard Sands.

Benzino:

Leonard Sands, low skinny Jewish guy out of Florida.

Benzino:

Dave got him.

Benzino:

I don't know where Dave got him from, but thank God he did.

Benzino:

And I just remember he cost a lot.

Benzino:

Little motherfucker boy cost a lot.

Benzino:

But I could have beat that case.

Benzino:

Like, first of all, right, the case was based on.

Benzino:

First of all, I had an all white jury in Boston, Mass, in the federal building.

Benzino:

Because when you pick your jury, the questions are, do you know Ray Dog Made Men, Source magazine.

Benzino:

Every black and Latino is putting their hand up, so they gotta go.

Benzino:

So I had an all white jury.

Benzino:

So I figured, you know what they said, look, all right, you're gonna get five.

Benzino:

Most you can get is five years.

Benzino:

Take three.

Benzino:

Take the three.

Benzino:

We don't gotta go to trial.

Benzino:

I was like, hell, no.

Benzino:

It's like, nah, it's like, fuck that for what?

Benzino:

Let me shut this off.

Benzino:

I said, fuck that for what?

Benzino:

And, you know, Corey had just been born, so I wanted to spend more time with her.

Benzino:

And if I had took her to trial, I was like.

Benzino:

I knew I was getting locked up.

Benzino:

I said, miss is fucked up.

Benzino:

But my thing was, they wired up our accountant, right?

Benzino:

The accountant, George Moore, was somebody that Dave hired.

Benzino:

Now, he'd been working with us for five years, paying him over 150,000 a year.

Benzino:

He's on the business side of the office, where Dave and his office are next to each other.

Benzino:

So when I come up there, only thing me and him are talking about is Celtics and Jets.

Benzino:

He's from New Jersey.

Benzino:

I mean, Patriots and Jets football.

Benzino:

That's it.

Benzino:

I don't have any other conversation.

Benzino:

I don't know you half Jewish, half Italian guy, George Moore.

Benzino:

So I used to go up to office, used to be like, ray, we gotta file these taxes.

Benzino:

I was like, okay, well, follow him.

Benzino:

Get the information from Dave.

Benzino:

I don't know, you know, I didn't know a W9 from a W2 from a W5 from.

Benzino:

That's what the fuck you were here for, right?

Benzino:

That's what I thought.

Benzino:

So, all right, I go back up at the office a couple of weeks later, hey, Ray, we really gotta file these taxes.

Benzino:

I'm like, why don't.

Benzino:

At this point, it's like, bro.

Benzino:

I said.

Benzino:

I go talking to Dave.

Benzino:

Listen, talk to him, man.

Benzino:

I don't Know why he keep asking me now the whole time, right?

Benzino:

He's wearing this.

Benzino:

He always wore a button up shirt.

Benzino:

And the source, 50, 60 people on staff.

Benzino:

The journalists are over here.

Benzino:

The business is over here.

Benzino:

The Journal side is way more wild.

Benzino:

Business is quiet, advertising money, journalists, you know, stories, art direction, photographer.

Benzino:

They partying.

Benzino:

It was crazy over there on that side.

Benzino:

So I'm just trying to wonder, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like what?

Benzino:

Like why did he wear the wire, right?

Benzino:

So when he came, he testified against me.

Benzino:

I'm sitting right here, I got a suit on.

Benzino:

And he came and testified me.

Benzino:

The way they had their witness.

Benzino:

Thing was it sits right in front of you.

Benzino:

So he's right there and I see he's flushed out.

Benzino:

He can't even look at me.

Benzino:

The jury's right here.

Benzino:

He's sitting right there.

Benzino:

I'm looking at like surreal.

Benzino:

I could not fucking believe this shit.

Benzino:

I'm like, what the fuck did I do to this dude?

Benzino:

So he told.

Benzino:

When my lawyer asked him why he wore the wire, he said they approached him over to George Washington Bridge at a Dunkin Dome.

Benzino:

That's when he was going home from, you know, from the office.

Benzino:

And they told him the situation.

Benzino:

They bought him some donuts and some coffee and he said he decided to wear it because he thought he would be like adventurous, intriguing.

Benzino:

It was intriguing.

Benzino:

And the nigga had like a fucking.

Benzino:

He always wore a white collared shirt, so that was normal.

Benzino:

But then I did notice that he had like a clip on.

Benzino:

Name tag, right?

Benzino:

Looked like an id, but the ID had a metal piece in it.

Benzino:

Now I'm not thinking nothing.

Benzino:

At first I'm like, why does he got that on?

Benzino:

But then I'm like, maybe that's something.

Benzino:

My mind is like, and I'll never forget this.

Benzino:

That's something that all accountants have to wear in the tri state area.

Benzino:

Because all of a sudden he's wearing it.

Benzino:

That's what I.

Benzino:

That's what.

Benzino:

Cause nobody else got no fucking tag on in the office unless he.

Benzino:

Unless you got another job that you're going to after.

Benzino:

But I didn't think nothing of it.

Benzino:

But that was the wire.

Benzino:

So the jury must have felt like, listen, first of all, you're trying to trap him.

Benzino:

Second of all, you are the accountant, you should have done it.

Benzino:

And third of all, he wasn't doing nothing illegal for you to wear the wire on him.

Benzino:

They found me not guilty in two hours.

Benzino:

Closing arguments.

Benzino:

The lawyer passed out.

Benzino:

This was the day before he passed out.

Benzino:

Closing out.

Benzino:

He Fainted.

Benzino:

And they came in, they picked him up and he went back to the judge's chamber.

Benzino:

He came back out with the ambulance with oxygen.

Benzino:

He's waving at me.

Benzino:

So I was like, damn, I don't know what the fuck is going on.

Benzino:

So I didn't even hear from him for the night.

Benzino:

Next day, went to court, they said his heart defibrillator went out or something happened with it.

Benzino:

Need a new battery, some shit.

Benzino:

But he said his closing arguments and two hours, they found me not guilty.

Benzino:

And you know what I'm saying, so, you know, there's not too many people and Lord knows I'm not bragging about this.

Benzino:

I'm just explaining the situation that beat a federal tax case.

:

What were your nights like knowing that you're being indicted by the feds and you could possibly lose your freedom?

Benzino:

I never worried about shit, man.

Benzino:

And to this day I've learned I got this ability right to where and maybe, you know, I got this ability to where it's like whatever it's gonna be, is gonna be, and I gotta face whatever it is head on with no worry.

Benzino:

You gotta.

Benzino:

I condition my mind with that.

Benzino:

And just whatever's gonna happen, I gotta just face it because it's gonna happen anyway.

Benzino:

So you might as well get used to facing it than you are worrying, right?

Benzino:

You know, because it's coming now.

:

Somebody who just came home from the feds was Big Meech.

:

And he did a long ass time.

:

20 crazy, man.

:

Did you ever have any dealings with BMF?

Benzino:

Big Meech, I fuck with Meech, Blue, all of them.

Benzino:

J, Bo.

Benzino:

I just talked to Bo.

Benzino:

A lot of them, the twins.

Benzino:

I mean, it was so many niggas in BMF at that time.

Benzino:

You gotta understand, it just, you know, of course it was Meech and Tea.

Benzino:

And you know what I'm saying, I didn't have too much interaction with Terry, but there's a lot of niggas with, you know what I'm saying, in Atlanta, that was with bmf.

Benzino:

But I remember particularly around the Source awards time, I had Club Zino, my club down there.

Benzino:

And I remember that the feds were down there watching them.

Benzino:

Like they were there, they were at the club and everything.

Benzino:

Young niggas, like a black and white dude.

Benzino:

Like there was, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I think there was about six of them, but I definitely seen two of them, you know what I mean?

Benzino:

Cause we knew everybody that was in the club.

Benzino:

So Meech wanted to have a meeting with me.

Benzino:

I think two GS told me.

Benzino:

My man.

Benzino:

I forgot.

Benzino:

So the meeting was at this.

Benzino:

And Coral Gable was at this mansion.

Benzino:

This was the night before the awards.

Benzino:

And he was, you know, him and Blue, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

We there chilling and shit.

Benzino:

Of course they know who I am and shit.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I know who they are, but we smoking.

Benzino:

They was like, man, we just want to pick your brain, man.

Benzino:

I'm like, what's up?

Benzino:

He was like, yo, how you beat your fake case?

Benzino:

I was like, bro, I'm be real with you, my nigga.

Benzino:

I couldn't even answer that because I'm not even want to be playing around with anybody.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I don't even.

Benzino:

Just for the moment, and nothing clouting none of this shit.

Benzino:

I just said, look, everybody's just different.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

He knew that they were following him.

Benzino:

He knew that all this shit was coming down.

Benzino:

He basically said it right there.

Benzino:

He was like, look, Blue, too.

Benzino:

And, you know, pretty much they knew what was getting ready to happen.

Benzino:

They had that same attitude like, fuck it, you're already in too deep.

Benzino:

And what I did tell him, I was like, look, I said, this is what I can do for you since the feds are down here looking at you and everything.

Benzino:

I said, the awards is tomorrow.

Benzino:

I said, how about I just make up an award for you so that you could look legitimate?

Benzino:

Because I knew that the feds was going to come to the awards, too.

Benzino:

They had been there the whole weekend.

Benzino:

They really was there taking on everything.

Benzino:

Like, you know, of course they was watching them, but you know what I'm saying, they want to be around shit, too.

Benzino:

They see all them women and all the celebrities.

Benzino:

But they was at the awards, too.

Benzino:

The same two that was at Zeno.

Benzino:

It was obvious at that point.

Benzino:

And we gave him the Best Independent Label award.

Benzino:

And I did that based off of.

Benzino:

Because when so Icy came out, I really.

Benzino:

To be honest, how I knew so Icy, Gucci and Jeezy was really through bmf.

Benzino:

Like, when they came to Miami that time, and they was killing that.

Benzino:

That's really how I first time, I really heard both of them was really through bmf, and I'm just thinking of that now.

Benzino:

But you know what I'm saying, they won the award.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

But, you know, that was it.

:

Did you ever wonder why neither one of them two went to jail?

:

Who, Gucci, Arjeezy?

:

Who Gucci or Jeezy?

Benzino:

Gucci been in jail?

:

No, I mean for the bmf.

:

Cause they both had BMF ties, you know?

Benzino:

I mean.

Benzino:

I mean, like I said, they was.

Benzino:

Them niggas was fucking with everybody, so a lot of people didn't go to jail.

Benzino:

You know what I mean?

:

Gotcha.

:

Okay.

Benzino:

It just depends on where you was on the.

Benzino:

On the chain.

Benzino:

Like, gotcha.

Benzino:

Like, the separation.

Benzino:

Are you 6 degrees, 8 degrees.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

:

This is what.

:

I got a question.

:

I was watching an interview with one of the BMF guys, and they were saying that Terry was actually the one that, like, had more money than Meech, because he had a lot of more.

:

They were saying that he was buying lottery tickets.

:

He had a limo service.

:

And when they met, it almost seemed like he worked for Terry because the way that he was moving.

:

So why does Terry never really get glorified in the BMF when they talk to bmf, you never really hear anybody talk about Terry.

Benzino:

I mean, just from me outside looking then.

Benzino:

Terry wasn't as flashy as Meech.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

But they were brothers.

Benzino:

They each had their own mind at the same time.

Benzino:

Shit, at the end of the day, they still riding for each other.

Benzino:

But, you know, he.

Benzino:

Terry had a way of doing things.

Benzino:

Like, listen, at the end of the day, the plug is accessible to both of them.

Benzino:

Now, how you do it is how you do it.

Benzino:

How he do it and how he do it.

Benzino:

I don't think it was as unified as people thought, even through business.

Benzino:

But I'm sure, brother, it always was.

Benzino:

You know, that's just how me looking at it, you know what I'm saying?

:

So regardless, when the feds are investigating you, you pretty much know it ain't no secret.

Benzino:

Oh, they was following us.

Benzino:

We come downstairs, just like in a movie.

Benzino:

They cross the street, and they would follow us to the restaurant.

Benzino:

Because we'd always go up right after the source.

Benzino:

When Dave and them are done, we always go eat somewhere.

Benzino:

They follow us to the restaurant.

Benzino:

Wait, the restaurant.

Benzino:

Follow us around.

Benzino:

We go to the club.

Benzino:

They follow us to the club.

Benzino:

Sometimes they leave.

Benzino:

Sometimes.

Benzino:

Like, we knew when it was.

Benzino:

This was happening for a long time because it was too much.

Benzino:

Like, I had already been investigated for a bunch of shit in Boston.

Benzino:

So I got the fuck out of Boston, you know?

Benzino:

The reason why I left Boston was because of that, was because of the investigation.

Benzino:

Like, it wasn't looking good for me if I would have stayed in Boston.

:

Your daughter, Coi Leray, right?

:

Coi Leray, there's a lot of Internet people saying that you weren't there for when.

:

Yeah, you weren't there for her.

:

You didn't take care of her.

Benzino:

Yeah, the Internet.

Benzino:

Then what is the Internet?

Benzino:

No, like, listen, I take pride into what I've done for all my kids.

Benzino:

I got four beautiful kids.

Benzino:

And I take pride to know that, you know, I love my kids dearly.

Benzino:

You know, me, me.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

And anybody that tunes into something that has to do with that type of thought, they don't have anything to do with it.

Benzino:

You know, I don't.

Benzino:

When I came up taking care of my kids, I didn't do it because other people were looking.

Benzino:

It wasn't too many pictures or the Internet of videos.

Benzino:

I did it because I love my kids.

Benzino:

And I knew that that is what I had to do is my responsibility as a young man.

Benzino:

Now other things come and play, like the streets and hustling.

Benzino:

I'm not working a job.

Benzino:

I'm not going to college.

Benzino:

I'm a street n and I sell drugs.

Benzino:

Well, that takes on a different type of fatherhood, for sure.

Benzino:

That doesn't mean I don't love her any different from the doctor that's going to work coming home to the picket fence and his daughter, our love.

Benzino:

I'm sure he loves his daughter.

Benzino:

I love my daughter the same.

Benzino:

But the way I have to move is gonna affect how I raise her.

Benzino:

But I raised her.

Benzino:

Make no mistakes about it.

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

How is it, you know, being a father and having that spotlight, we see Boosie going through it.

:

You know, he has a hard time, you know, in the public eye dealing with his children, not through his relationship with his children, but, like, people seeing how he reacts to certain things.

:

And while in our eyes, it's just him parenting or you would just be parenting, other people have so many judgments on it.

Benzino:

I mean, first of all, you know, when, you know, you put the work in and the sacrifice, what you've done and everything you went through back then for it to slam, you know, smash back in your face, that hurts, right?

Benzino:

That hurts for a nigger.

Benzino:

Because we take pride into that because we watch so many other motherfuckers around us don't do half of what we did, even though we wasn't perfect and we wasn't Cliff Huxtable and you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

You know what I mean?

Benzino:

But within raising a child in the hood as a street guy, well, I'm high up there as far as raising her like the movies and Cliff Huxtables.

Benzino:

No, I'm low on the totem pole, but this was my life.

Benzino:

And when you're in the streets, you got the number one thing is when you have a child is you have to feed them.

Benzino:

They gotta eat.

Benzino:

All right?

Benzino:

That's number one.

Benzino:

Number two is you take pride in how they look.

Benzino:

You don't want to be out there in the hood and going places and everything.

Benzino:

Your kid look crazy, so you gotta get them fly shit so that they look good.

Benzino:

Cause they represent you, all right?

Benzino:

That shit costs.

Benzino:

If you don't have a fucking job, you have to go out there and hustle to get it.

Benzino:

Well, I'm not gonna be able to be home all the time.

Benzino:

And we're not gonna be able to go on trips all the time and.

Benzino:

Because, you know, we hustling.

Benzino:

But when we do, we go to Disneyland when we do, we.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

And if I'm not with the mother, then she's coming to stay with me.

Benzino:

So, you know, I think people.

Benzino:

That's a very touchy subject.

Benzino:

And there's a lot of broken families with single families, single mothers especially.

Benzino:

And it's a touchy subject when it comes to daughters and dads.

Benzino:

And, you know, I love my daughter dearly.

Benzino:

That'll never change.

Benzino:

It's unfortunate what happened on the Internet, but it's the Internet.

Benzino:

I don't put too much stock into the Internet.

Benzino:

I don't put no stock into it.

Benzino:

I don't give a fuck what's on the Internet when it comes to me.

Benzino:

Because when I see people, the love is ridiculous.

:

Right.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

What do you feel about.

:

Like, when you see your peers lusting after your daughter?

:

How does that make you feel?

Benzino:

Just like any other father.

Benzino:

I'm not.

Benzino:

You know what I mean?

Benzino:

I don't understand.

Benzino:

I don't wanna be around that shit.

Benzino:

I don't wanna see that shit.

Benzino:

Yeah, like, who the fuck wanna see that?

Benzino:

Not me.

Benzino:

Like, my thing is, you know, if you gonna be.

Benzino:

If you're gonna treat my daughter.

Benzino:

If you're gonna be a man, you're gonna be with my daughter, then I'd rather you marry her.

Benzino:

And then I'd want to meet you and holla at you.

Benzino:

And I don't know how long you're gonna be around for me to be.

Benzino:

And I'm not the dude to be meeting you than meeting him and meeting.

Benzino:

I don't want to meet nobody.

Benzino:

I want to give her the privacy and I'm sure for her it's.

Benzino:

But believe it or not, you know what I'm saying, it's always good that your parents accept the person that your child brings.

Benzino:

But it's also important that the child know that we want to make sure that he's the right one for you because we've already experienced everything you're about to experience and him.

:

Right.

Benzino:

I'm just being a dad, man.

Benzino:

What do motherfuckers want me to do?

:

Does Corey Lerae make it without the Benzino name?

Benzino:

Does she make it without the Benzino name?

Benzino:

Of course.

Benzino:

Like, Corey's relentless.

:

Well, like in the game.

Benzino:

Well, she's my DNA, so that's a relentless DNA.

Benzino:

She got like that DNA she got from her dad is a motherfucker, which passed on from my father, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

She got some real DNA.

Benzino:

And her mom, Coy's mom, Coy comes from.

Benzino:

You know, I know Asia don't like me to say this, but Asia, her family's street, no jokes and, you know, they group projects and that's what Coy is, you know.

Benzino:

But I managed to take advantage of opportunities and get myself out the hood and do things through music.

Benzino:

But I had been doing that all my life.

Benzino:

Coy comes out and do music.

Benzino:

It's no coincidence.

Benzino:

My son just did a show in Chicago last night.

Benzino:

He's three years older than Coy.

Benzino:

They got different mothers, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Of course they're gonna do music.

Benzino:

They came out the womb in studios their whole life.

:

Do you think you'll have any more kids?

Benzino:

I got an eight year old and he just turned nine.

Benzino:

And I'm 59.

:

Oh, shit.

Benzino:

Yeah.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Me and my girl.

Benzino:

You know what I mean?

Benzino:

You know what I mean?

Benzino:

Yeah.

Benzino:

Like, you know, I mean, she's.

Benzino:

I mean, listen, ain't no more abortions.

:

He said, whatever happened, happened.

Benzino:

Yeah, you got to keep that motherfucker.

:

Do you still feel like, you know, let's say you had one on the way.

:

Do you still feel like you have that energy?

Benzino:

Oh, man, let me tell you something.

Benzino:

If I was who I was older at 50 to Corey, Ray, Ray and Taj, man.

Benzino:

And that's where I could apologize to them on camera because I'm such a better father now.

Benzino:

And I'm so much more slowed down there, but it's the life I'm living now.

Benzino:

I had to move more.

Benzino:

I'm more focused now.

Benzino:

I know right from.

Benzino:

There's no gray area for me so I'm more slowed down with Zen, you know, I'm enjoying it more.

Benzino:

It's, you know what I mean?

Benzino:

Not that I wasn't with the moments with them, but I was moving so fast with the Source magazine and street shit and everything.

Benzino:

It was.

Benzino:

They come stay with me and long as they got money, money, money, money.

Benzino:

That was the love language.

Benzino:

But I'm just a different person now, you know, and.

Benzino:

Yeah, man, are you kidding me?

Benzino:

See, energy's not a problem.

Benzino:

Like I just, my metabolism has always been up, man, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

That ain't the issue.

Benzino:

So I still got swimming, so, you know, why not?

:

Man, I was gonna ask you about, you know, you being with the Source, right?

:

And you seeing the landscape of media right now, right?

:

What is your take on it?

:

I have a two part question, but what's your take on the media landscape right now?

Benzino:

Media's a joke right now.

:

Why do you say that?

Benzino:

Media sucks.

Benzino:

Nobody's taking the time to be a great journalist.

Benzino:

You gotta research.

Benzino:

You gotta get into somebody's life, you gotta research what they've done and then put it on paper so that the people that you're projecting it to comes back with the sense that they really understand the person you're writing about.

Benzino:

Nobody does that anymore.

Benzino:

Everything is so quick.

Benzino:

We had nine page stories and articles.

Benzino:

We had some of the greatest writers and journalists on this land that have all went and done movies and your favorite TV shows.

Benzino:

They've done great things, man, but they put research in.

Benzino:

They knew that they had three weeks to sit and they would 10, 12, 13, 14 hours a day on that story, but they would go deep into things that nobody cares about anymore.

Benzino:

Everybody just wants clicks and comments and whoever's saying the craziest shit.

Benzino:

So everything else gets glossed over as boring.

Benzino:

But that's really the fabric of who we are, is all that shit.

Benzino:

And now that you're not giving people the opportunity to write those type of stories or give those stories out, then people are losing out so much.

Benzino:

Hip hop loses out so much not having that type of journalism anymore, honestly.

:

So now like you have the emergence of all these podcasts, right, that are getting their own money, right?

:

You said you were making $2 million a month on advertising.

Benzino:

Three, sometimes four, right?

:

And you see a lot of these podcasts don't have advertising.

:

They're really just getting it out the mud, doing themselves.

:

In your opinion, if you were in their position where you were the podcaster, would you be shooting for advertisement or would you Just keep it authentic, raw, real, and just getting it out the mud.

Benzino:

You know, nowadays advertisements have gone so far and platforms can make so much money doing different stuff like.

Benzino:

And a big credit of that goes to people like Dave Mays, Steve Stout.

Benzino:

I gotta give credit where credit's due.

Benzino:

When I criticize, I can criticize them, but I can still give them credit for where it's due.

Benzino:

Not everybody's perfect in all aspects, but that advertising, they really helped birth that as far as in hip hop and nowadays.

Benzino:

Excuse me, that's that Mexican Chinese rights we just had.

Benzino:

Nowadays, like, you take a platform, Tina would go to TV with it, and you could get subscriptions, right?

Benzino:

Okay.

Benzino:

You can go to a movie theater with it and get that money.

Benzino:

Then you can come and get the streaming money, right?

Benzino:

Then after the streaming, after that slows down, you can go take it and make it free and get the ads to come in and show ads while people are watching it.

Benzino:

That's three forms of revenue right there.

Benzino:

That's crazy.

Benzino:

Off of one piece of content.

Benzino:

You understand what I'm saying?

Benzino:

So I think podcasts are amazing.

Benzino:

I think it's.

Benzino:

Once everything's getting oversaturated, of course, and there's too many of them that just put out garbage.

Benzino:

I think you're only as good as your podcasters, as the people asking the questions, and as the host, again, who's kind of like a journalist.

Benzino:

And get, you know, because I do so much of these.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

That.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying, It makes it interesting when you ask the interesting questions, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

And you do your research on the person.

Benzino:

A lot of these guys just wanted.

Benzino:

Just wanted to talk.

Benzino:

And eventually what's gonna happen is the stories are gonna get boring and you gotta find ways that are given content that is not only entertainment, that is moving the culture forward now.

:

I mean, you've mastered this.

:

You've done it for several years.

:

Why not a source podcast or the source blog?

Benzino:

Well, the source is already.

Benzino:

Somebody else owns it right now.

:

Yes.

Benzino:

We can't use the name, but I mean, I could use from the creative source of our money, right?

Benzino:

Yeah.

Benzino:

Eventually I'm gonna do a podcast.

Benzino:

Eventually I'm gonna get that.

Benzino:

I feel a lot.

Benzino:

I mean.

:

Cause it just seemed like it'd be so easy for you.

Benzino:

No, I mean, eventually.

Benzino:

But with me is.

Benzino:

I just.

Benzino:

Everything gotta be, like, on point, you know me, you know, everything gotta be on point, man.

Benzino:

Like, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, the Universe.

Benzino:

Like, with me, the universe has to click a certain way that I'm ready.

Benzino:

So, you know, see, eventually, you know, I want to.

Benzino:

I definitely want to, but it just has to be right.

Benzino:

I think a lot of podcasters mess up.

Benzino:

And this is where I love Yalls podcast, because y'all don't make it about y'all.

Benzino:

Whereas a lot of these podcasters are making it about them.

Benzino:

They're making it about them now.

Benzino:

Like, they start out humbling now every time they get by a car, then that's part of the show.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Look at the new car I bought.

Benzino:

Like, I don't.

Benzino:

To me.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Or the.

Benzino:

You know, it's about me and what I wore today and how I'm talking and I talk like this.

Benzino:

It's like, it's just these podcasts and salutes everybody.

Benzino:

And there's no hate.

Benzino:

But their egos are gonna get in the way when they make it.

Benzino:

Make it about.

Benzino:

Keep having amazing content with your interviews and the people you bring on.

Benzino:

And don't make it so much about yourself.

:

Okay, Now I want you to give some free game to the podcasters.

Benzino:

What?

:

Who?

Benzino:

Vlad?

Benzino:

Fuck dj.

:

We talking about the niggles, the niggas.

:

Get it out.

:

The mud that escalated.

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

Nah, for real.

:

You ever be for Vlad?

:

Yeah, probably.

:

Yeah.

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

You gotta do your research.

Benzino:

That's a culture vulture for sure.

Benzino:

A for sure culture vulture.

Benzino:

We can all agree on that, right?

Benzino:

Vlad instigates beefs with people, black people.

Benzino:

Right.

Benzino:

He don't do it with white people.

Benzino:

Like, Vlad used to be humble.

Benzino:

He's not no more.

Benzino:

And now the thing about Vlad is Vlad pays good.

:

Yeah.

:

So niggas going to come up there.

:

So what does that say about black?

:

No, but before that, I was going to ask, like, for the black people that are in position that are trying to get it, what are some of the ways they're missing money?

:

What are some things that they should be looking at?

:

Cause like you said you was getting that check.

Benzino:

What are you saying?

Benzino:

I'm saying, like, not all money's good money.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

First of all, like, I'm just the wrong person to ask that.

Benzino:

Cause I just don't believe in just being the clown for the dollar.

Benzino:

Even when I went on love and hip hop, I wasn't trying to date two women at the same time.

Benzino:

And all that shit, all that.

Benzino:

The shit happened at the reunion.

Benzino:

I didn't know that shit was gonna happen.

Benzino:

Johnson Ran across and started punching on people.

Benzino:

And who the fuck knew that was gonna happen?

Benzino:

I didn't go on TV for that.

Benzino:

I didn't.

Benzino:

So I'm not with the clown shit for clicks and comments and dollars, like, and just say anything.

Benzino:

And I'm not risk, and I'm not like, I think it's silly to risk your life for clicks and comments and a few coins.

Benzino:

Niggas really say shit.

Benzino:

You risk their life on here like that.

Benzino:

That shit blows me like, that shit's crazy to me.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, they say shit to risk their life, like, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

So I don't do that.

Benzino:

I'm not with that.

:

Why do you think our culture runs to Vlad so much to tell their story?

Benzino:

Money.

Benzino:

He pays more than everybody, you know.

:

I heard you say that.

:

But then, you know, we just seen him disrespect Marlon Wayans.

Benzino:

He disrespected Farrakhan.

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

Oh, wow.

Benzino:

We, you know, we keep going.

Benzino:

Just keep going back to him.

Benzino:

But you know what I'm saying, If you somebody and you need to check.

Benzino:

And he got 10, 20,000.

Benzino:

I heard.

Benzino:

I heard he never paid me no shit like that.

Benzino:

Now, mind you, I've been doing Vlad interviews since he started over maybe 12, 13 years.

Benzino:

Long time, maybe even more than that.

Benzino:

Vlad used to come by the source like a little puppy and just sit there, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Just like, you know, just sit there and watch me and Dave and like, yo, yo.

Benzino:

He used to be amazed with that.

Benzino:

Was Dave's son.

Benzino:

Real talk.

Benzino:

Vlad was Dave's son at 1.

Benzino:

Now I will give him his props.

Benzino:

He's one of the first to do this interview shit off camera and have the person do it.

Benzino:

So I'm gonna give him his props.

Benzino:

But again, where he went wrong is ego.

Benzino:

His ego, like, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, get the fuck out of here, Vlad.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

You can't have an ego with our culture, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Because you're not even supposed to be here.

:

I feel like we allow a lot of people to come in our culture and just kind of like, maybe Eminem.

Benzino:

Eminem earned his way, man.

Benzino:

You think so?

Benzino:

Eminem raps good, man.

Benzino:

He has a whole state, Michigan, that support him.

Benzino:

We don't even have to say Detroit, because Detroit people kind of get it twisted with Detroit, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

A lot of people in Detroit don't even listen to Eminem.

Benzino:

Because it's a black city.

Benzino:

But Michigan is so huge.

Benzino:

There's way more than Detroit.

Benzino:

So he earned his way.

Benzino:

Beastie Boyz earned the way.

Benzino:

If you nice with it, you nice with it.

Benzino:

He nice with it.

Benzino:

I wouldn't say that he didn't earn his way, but he's still.

Benzino:

He's a rapper, right?

Benzino:

Hip hop is our culture.

Benzino:

Came to be our culture.

Benzino:

It took on a different type of meaning with black people.

Benzino:

He's not a part of that.

Benzino:

Part of it.

:

That's what.

:

Cause a lot of things that often get me is people will say he's like number one in hip hop, or he's the best.

Benzino:

And that's up to them to feel that way.

Benzino:

Everybody.

Benzino:

What makes us individuals from 8 billion people on this earth is our.

Benzino:

And it's good to respect it.

Benzino:

I respect anybody that likes him.

Benzino:

Cause you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I don't.

Benzino:

His fans have a hard time respecting anybody who don't like him.

Benzino:

That's the problem.

Benzino:

Because in there, it's like, oh, because he's white.

Benzino:

No, you might not just like his music.

Benzino:

There's a lot of black people music I don't like.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

That's all right.

Benzino:

There's a lot of black people music I do like.

Benzino:

I like white people music, too.

:

If you go back in time, is there anything you would have changed with the Eminem beef or anything like that?

Benzino:

Nah, man, I don't go back in time, man.

Benzino:

I just don't.

Benzino:

I swear to God I don't, man.

:

Like, do you get tired of talking about this?

Benzino:

No.

Benzino:

Well, the Eminem thing is, I'm attached to it.

Benzino:

It's normal.

:

Right.

Benzino:

But you know what I'm saying, I'm not one to regret or.

Benzino:

Because I just feel like it's such a different time now.

Benzino:

Like, if you probably asked me that, maybe if it was 5 years old, but this is like 20 something years old.

Benzino:

So it's like, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I mean, there's a lot of things that, of course, everybody would want to change, but I don't think about it because I'm here healthy now.

:

It seemed at one point that the Source was kind of geared toward destroying Eminem.

:

Like, I can remember a picture that.

Benzino:

When I was beefing with him.

:

Yeah.

:

Like, you had a picture where you was eating MM's.

Benzino:

I had.

Benzino:

You snatched them out the spine with his head.

Benzino:

Like this.

:

Yeah.

:

Like, do you think that was maybe a little bit much to use that platform?

Benzino:

Oh, no.

Benzino:

Man, y'all just said earlier, right, when you went out with JT and my young Miami, that they come and do whatever they want.

:

Nah, for sure.

Benzino:

All right, well, you know why?

Benzino:

Because it's yalls shit to do what you want with it.

:

Right.

Benzino:

See, I didn't want the source to get up involved with it, but it was my magazine, and he had Interscope, so he had a big platform.

Benzino:

I had to use my platform.

Benzino:

It turned bigger than just me battling him or me going against him.

Benzino:

It's like, oh, now this is bigger than that now.

Benzino:

So I have to use all my ammunition.

Benzino:

I have to use everything.

Benzino:

Like, why.

Benzino:

Why would you go in a war with a motherfucking bat when you got five tanks right there?

:

Right?

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

You gonna bring everything you got.

Benzino:

Yeah.

Benzino:

So, you know, source got into it and it was.

Benzino:

It was.

Benzino:

It's history.

Benzino:

When you look back, it's always gonna be history.

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

Do people realize that you beat a case against Interscope when you used that Eminem.

:

A federal.

:

Another federal case when you used Eminem's racist slurry?

Benzino:

They had to pay our lawyers.

:

Yeah.

:

Did that start the Fair Usage, the Fair Use act, or.

:

No?

Benzino:

No, but it's gonna be something that people could use.

Benzino:

You know, you always.

Benzino:

Lawyers go back and they use different cases, you know, as the model for their case.

Benzino:

But it was a situation where we was a magazine and we had the fair right to use this to put it in our magazine for people to see it.

:

And for those who don't know.

:

For those who don't know who we're talking about.

:

We're talking about the Eminem.

Benzino:

The Eminem racist tapes.

:

Yes.

Benzino:

And when we.

Benzino:

Then we, you know, he.

Benzino:

We couldn't put the whole tape in it.

Benzino:

The tape was like an hour.

:

Damn.

Benzino:

So he.

Benzino:

The judge said, okay, I'll let you do it, but you can only do 30 seconds.

Benzino:

So we put 30 seconds of all the curses and racist words and shrunk, wrapped about 2,000 copies and put it out.

:

Why do you think black people didn't.

:

It like, they didn't really.

:

They didn't cancel Eminem behind this.

:

They didn't.

:

They were offended for a little second, but they got past it.

Benzino:

Why do you think the Internet wasn't out?

Benzino:

The Internet wasn't out.

:

Yeah.

:

It was not like that.

Benzino:

And at that point, Interscope was so big and so influential with Tre Snoop 50 One thing I do notice, man, you make good music, man.

Benzino:

Motherfuckers, man, they just.

Benzino:

It don't Matter what you do, I kill it for some reason.

Benzino:

You make some good ass music, boy.

Benzino:

You can be and do whatever you want out this bitch.

:

There's a clip of like you crying about the beef.

Benzino:

I was drunk.

Benzino:

Drunk.

Benzino:

I was drunk, right?

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like drunk as a motherfucker.

Benzino:

I want to get drunk.

Benzino:

You know, me and Norrie, that's one of my closest friends.

Benzino:

And I've done about three interviews, four interviews.

Benzino:

I said, this time I'm gonna get drunk this time.

Benzino:

Cause I wanna open up.

Benzino:

I got too drunk.

Benzino:

There's a stage of drunk where it's like, okay, I'm talking good.

Benzino:

Then towards a little more.

Benzino:

My mouth is getting numb.

Benzino:

I could barely move it.

Benzino:

I don't think I can.

Benzino:

And a little more.

Benzino:

I'm starting to kind of get black and dizzy now.

Benzino:

It's like I'm getting emotional.

Benzino:

And then right after it was over, I passed out.

Benzino:

My girl drove me to the hotel.

Benzino:

So, like, you know, you want to hear some crazy shit about that interview?

Benzino:

Yeah.

Benzino:

I never went back and watched it ain't that crazy, right?

Benzino:

I never went back.

Benzino:

I seen clips, right.

Benzino:

But I never went back and watched the whole interview.

Benzino:

There's still a lot of love and hip hop of the third season episodes I don't watch.

Benzino:

I just.

Benzino:

I don't know, I don't be watching shit.

Benzino:

But I know that it was a real moment and what I said was from the heart, you know?

Benzino:

Cause alcohol make it come out.

:

Oh yeah.

Benzino:

And I do know that part where it was probably 20 years of frustration of people coming at me, pages getting deleted, me going at people, fuck you, fuck you.

Benzino:

I can't fuck your money.

Benzino:

Like, that's after a while, man.

Benzino:

I should have got 20 years of this shit.

Benzino:

It's a long time of that shit.

Benzino:

And like 15 pages later, Instagram pages later.

Benzino:

You know what I mean?

Benzino:

I probably just a little frustration came out.

Benzino:

I'm human, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

But I was, I was.

Benzino:

You see how I was tipping that?

Benzino:

You see, I was right.

:

Did the.

:

Did this beef ever get real?

Benzino:

Like, it wasn't really a beef, man.

Benzino:

Beef is, you know, people get killed.

:

Yeah.

:

So it would never.

:

It never was.

Benzino:

This was a moment, man, in hip hop history.

Benzino:

You know what I'm proud of the most?

:

What's that?

Benzino:

When me and Eminem's dead, you're not gonna be able to say his name without mentioning Benzino.

:

That's a fact.

:

That's a big fact.

:

That's how I know about you.

:

Yeah, this opened your whole.

Benzino:

You're not gonna be able to say.

Benzino:

You're not gonna be able to say his name without mentioning me and his people know that.

Benzino:

So.

Benzino:

Not that that really makes a big thing to me.

Benzino:

Cause I got my own name like Benzino's.

Benzino:

People have named dogs, cats, frogs, turtles, hamsters, all Benzino.

Benzino:

Yeah, like, there's only one Benzino now.

Benzino:

Benzino.

Benzino:

There are people, babies being named Benzino.

Benzino:

Like, Benzino's a real name now.

Benzino:

Yeah, Trev named me Benzino.

Benzino:

Free Big Trev in Boston now.

:

I ain't gonna lie on rap Elvis.

:

That was the one.

:

I feel like you got him.

:

I felt like you was on his ass on that rap Elvis, bro.

Benzino:

It was just a good time and period.

Benzino:

Like, I was with the right group of guys.

Benzino:

We came up with it.

Benzino:

The beat was dope, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

And, like, it was long as hell.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Long ass track.

Benzino:

I like Voltorious because that beat was so gangster and that was just so dope, the first one I did.

Benzino:

But, yeah, I got his ass back.

Benzino:

I'm sure he knows that too, you know?

Benzino:

And who knew that it would end like that?

Benzino:

Because I thought it was over.

Benzino:

When he came back with that song saying something about me and Coy, he just opened the door.

Benzino:

So I said, wait a minute, hold up now.

Benzino:

This is the time where I was like, oh, viral, okay.

Benzino:

Did the two songs.

Benzino:

Went right to Mom's Spaghetti.

Benzino:

Stayed out there for about a week.

Benzino:

And it was just like.

Benzino:

It went crazy.

Benzino:

It was up for that whole few weeks with that shit.

Benzino:

So you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

It was pretty dope.

Benzino:

It's hip hop, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, look, I respect Eminem, who he is as an artist.

Benzino:

At some point, we gotta move on.

Benzino:

He's dope.

Benzino:

I can name a million other black guys that are dope.

Benzino:

You know what I mean?

Benzino:

At some point, you know, it's like, yeah, man.

Benzino:

Like.

Benzino:

But I understand that he's white.

Benzino:

He's white.

Benzino:

Doing something in a predominantly black.

Benzino:

I mean, but Cooper.

Benzino:

Do people feel this way about Cooper Cup?

Benzino:

Damn, they ain't even gonna be talking about Cooper Cup 10 years from now.

:

There was this one song he said, basically he was talking and he was like, there was no gangsters in Boston or something like that.

:

How did everybody feel about that?

Benzino:

Nobody paid attention.

Benzino:

Eminem did not grow up gangster.

Benzino:

And Eminem knows that.

Benzino:

Eminem.

Benzino:

And you gotta look at Eminem's life.

Benzino:

Eminem's been sheltered his whole life with security.

Benzino:

So Eminem probably got mad anxiety.

Benzino:

He probably can't even be by himself and walk through a mall.

Benzino:

Of course, I'm sure he would get mobbed, but just feeling safe, like his whole life he's been sheltered.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

You can catch me at the most craziest gas station in any hood in America.

Benzino:

He'd be like, that you, Zino.

Benzino:

And I'm like, yo, getting some swish downs.

Benzino:

What's up, buddy?

Benzino:

Yo, let me get that picture.

Benzino:

Yeah, we're different.

:

That's a gas station.

:

You made me think of a gas station out here.

:

I won't even pull up to that.

Benzino:

Bitch and you'll see me right at that motherfucker.

Benzino:

Get some swishes and a vitamin water.

Benzino:

Real talk.

Benzino:

And it's like.

Benzino:

And somebody would want to take a picture or somebody.

Benzino:

And I'm proud to say that I'm proud of that.

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

Culture vultures.

:

Oh, do you feel like there are.

:

Is there any more culture vultures that you think are people that you think are culture vultures right now?

Benzino:

You know what I'm.

Benzino:

You know, And I like, listen, if I'm saying, look it, yeah.

Benzino:

I'm gonna say Adam's a culture vulture.

Benzino:

And I like Adam.

Benzino:

Yeah, I don't like Vlad, but I like Adam personally.

Benzino:

From the time I met him, cool dude, treated me with respect.

Benzino:

And he was a good dude, but I believe he's a culture vulture.

Benzino:

No disrespect.

Benzino:

A culture vulture to me is like, well, he's hiring black guys and giving them jobs, right?

Benzino:

I don't know how much money everybody's making or whatever, but Adam just gotta realize, man, like, Adam is a smart guy.

:

Definitely.

Benzino:

He gotta realize at some point that what he's doing is hurting us in ways that he don't even understand.

Benzino:

You know, without yo Adam, it's none of that.

Benzino:

Just.

Benzino:

Cause I don't want the back and forth shit.

Benzino:

I'm gonna explain it in a manly person that I'm hoping I'm not offending him.

Benzino:

But he has to realize that the stuff that he does, the stuff that Vlad does, it's hurting, it's instigating, it's creating problems within.

Benzino:

He goes back home, he's not coming back here.

Benzino:

They still gotta deal with each other here, right?

Benzino:

The thing with him and Brick baby and Brick baby not going out, Shout out to Brick babies.

Benzino:

Like, there's gonna be probably issues with the people who are still working there.

Benzino:

You just.

Benzino:

These are how real street issues go on that have nothing to do with the podcast.

:

Right?

Benzino:

That's what I call a culture vulture who do things to our culture that hurt us within.

Benzino:

And then they just get.

Benzino:

Then they go fly back to their people when they want to.

:

I was thinking Post Malone and you know, he's from Dallas.

Benzino:

Post Malone.

Benzino:

Look what Post did.

Benzino:

Came out with all them heartbeats and then switched up.

Benzino:

Kid Rock did the same thing.

Benzino:

Let me go get him on some hip hop shit.

Benzino:

Once I get him now, I'm gonna go.

Benzino:

Because in their minds, they wanna get the bigger white audience.

Benzino:

And you can't blame them for that because that's a money decision.

Benzino:

But yes, they used us and they kept it pushing culture votes.

:

How do we block that?

:

Is there any way to stop.

:

Is there a way to gatekeep hip hop to keep from them from approaching Source magazine?

Benzino:

We're gatekeepers.

Benzino:

We was at one point, right?

Benzino:

And I try to gatekeep against the Eminem situation, right?

Benzino:

It just was too.

Benzino:

Nobody was with me.

Benzino:

I'm trying to fight a fight and I turn around, ain't nobody there, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

That's not to say keep Eminem out of it, but just to organize and make sure hip hop is for us, by us, Fubu, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Because that's how we keep the money within.

Benzino:

Amen.

Benzino:

That's how we get the zillions of white people to keep buying up within us.

Benzino:

Now it's theirs.

Benzino:

It's theirs.

Benzino:

Now it ain't ours, right?

:

Cause there's so many white rappers now.

:

It's like.

Benzino:

It's not just that though.

Benzino:

It's just the whole thing that the streams and the.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

The way they robbing us with that, the way they're putting music out and the way music is monetized now is one of the biggest fucking robberies ever.

Benzino:

It's probably just up there.

Benzino:

How much is slavery like pitting cotton for nothing?

Benzino:

Getting your songs heard for nothing?

Benzino:

A quarter of a percent of a penny every time somebody listens to your song.

Benzino:

So yeah, streaming is fucked up.

:

Love and hip hop, how scripted is that?

Benzino:

How scripted?

Benzino:

Reality tv, everything has an organized script of the basis of how it's gonna go.

Benzino:

But what reality TV does is they give you the kind of like the outline, then they let and see what goes on.

Benzino:

They set it up.

Benzino:

They set up drama situations and they let the drama take place.

Benzino:

In my case, love and hip hop would give us beats.

Benzino:

Beats is Like a script of what they expect out of the scene and what we should say and what.

Benzino:

It's the truth.

Benzino:

And you could ask my producers at Love and Hip Hop.

Benzino:

I didn't do the beats.

Benzino:

I just did what Benzino did.

Benzino:

They would tell me, you know, okay, Benzino, this is over here.

Benzino:

Then they would let me do my thing.

Benzino:

Yeah, everything you seen with Benzino was all authentic.

:

What's the pros and cons of being on reality?

Benzino:

The cons is your love life and your personal businesses are TV to be scrutinized by everybody, right?

Benzino:

And then the cons is a lot of people can't.

Benzino:

The lies are blurred between reality TV and real life.

Benzino:

And off camera, it becomes a mess, Right?

Benzino:

That's the cons.

Benzino:

Those are the biggest cons.

Benzino:

That's what ruins relationships, ruins careers.

Benzino:

Ruins a lot.

Benzino:

Like, if you don't understand what it is and know how to navigate it, you'll ruin your career, yourself, and any relationship.

Benzino:

You win.

Benzino:

And, you know, I've.

Benzino:

My relationship got ruined through it, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

But I did it, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

And you know reality tv.

Benzino:

I know reality.

Benzino:

I know reality tv, it's all entertainment at the end of the day, but it's still a representation of who you are.

Benzino:

And I know how I want to be represent.

Benzino:

I know how I want to be seen.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

So, yeah.

:

We interviewed D Haven.

Benzino:

Shout out to D Haven.

:

Did you know about a D Haven when Jay Z was first coming up?

Benzino:

Yeah, you know, I'm from Boston and D Haven't named.

Benzino:

Came up a bunch of times.

Benzino:

Course.

Benzino:

Right.

Benzino:

You know, I mean, everybody knew De Haven was like Jay's muscle.

Benzino:

I mean, that.

:

Okay, so that's, that's.

Benzino:

That's how I looked at it, what I heard dehaven and then, you know, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I know a couple of guys from Marcy and shit, but that's how I looked at it.

Benzino:

That's how people looked at me, as Dave's muscle, not knowing that I was making a lot of the business decisions at the Source.

:

Right?

Benzino:

So, you know, that's how you're looked upon because De Haven had a rep in Marcy, right?

:

Nobody fuck with D Haven.

Benzino:

Yeah.

Benzino:

Like, Jay really wasn't what DeHaven was.

Benzino:

But that's all right because that's how it happens.

Benzino:

Look, not all the rappers.

Benzino:

Well, it's crazy because back in the day, the rapper just had a rap.

Benzino:

Now we all from the hood.

Benzino:

It's not like you had to go out there and kill somebody.

Benzino:

It flipped now to where is that?

Benzino:

The rappers, the killers are the ones because of the Internet getting the most attention.

Benzino:

The ones who are killing the ones who do the most killing, the ones who do the most crime.

Benzino:

The ones who are the bravest, the ones who live more dangerous.

Benzino:

That shit is backwards as hell.

:

We had this kind of discussion.

:

They was like with D Heaven and they was like, well, what was Jay Z in the group?

:

And I was like, he was the rapper.

:

They was like, no, what was he?

:

The rapper nigga.

Benzino:

Right, right.

Benzino:

But that's a big part.

Benzino:

That's the money drug niggas get.

Benzino:

Listen, nine times out of 10, a lot of these niggas that was out here hustling wasn't gonna get no money.

Benzino:

Like rap money at its peak.

Benzino:

Like rap money at its peak is good ass money.

Benzino:

And you know, you ain't gotta be risking your life for it on no corner or risking your freedom.

Benzino:

So you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, you can't downplay that.

Benzino:

Jay was a rapper, the N was a dope ass rapper and shit.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

If you a real ass nigga and you the street nigger and you the nigga with the rep, it only makes sense.

Benzino:

Play your position.

Benzino:

Everybody play their position and we gonna be all right.

Benzino:

When the rapper starts trying to play the killer or when the killer starts trying to play the rappers where again, the lines are getting blurred and this is where all the problems we're having now.

:

Yeah, when you start seeing like the drill scene and you start seeing like Aquando Rondo and Tim and Von situation, we're actually watching rappers kill rappers and rap about it and seeing it in real time.

:

Like, you know, you being from the streets, did you see this coming?

:

And now that's here, what do you think about it?

Benzino:

Nah, but I mean, you know, I'm no hypocrite and I guess I had some responsibility to it with doing gangster rap not knowing that it was gonna turn into this.

Benzino:

But yeah, and it's sad.

Benzino:

It's unfortunate.

Benzino:

Like these kids, they have opportunities and they're not making it.

Benzino:

They're not making it to 30.

Benzino:

And it's unfortunate because shit, they've never had nothing.

Benzino:

I mean, we're talking the type of poverty that some of them came up in to what they are now, you would think they would chill up.

Benzino:

But you gotta understand there was no, there's no training, there's no instilled knowledge.

Benzino:

There's nothing that's gonna help them think beyond the shit that they're doing.

Benzino:

The mother, the father's not there, the mother ain't on that level.

Benzino:

So what the fuck is a kid to do but go out in the streets and that's it.

Benzino:

That's gonna be your teacher right there.

Benzino:

Whatever goes there is gonna go there.

Benzino:

Now couple that with the fucking Internet.

Benzino:

Something that is just showing shit that's half of it's non attainable.

Benzino:

The other half of it is just a bunch of bullshit.

Benzino:

And the other fucking half is lies.

Benzino:

The other half is porn.

Benzino:

Like, what the fuck is go.

Benzino:

What is his mind being fed on a daily, hourly, minutely basis?

Benzino:

Niggas is getting cooked out here, bro.

:

Facts.

:

When you see someone like Jaguar Wright on our platform and she says a lot of stuff about people, things that she say, now it comes true.

:

What are your thoughts on that?

:

Do you have any, like.

Benzino:

I mean, it's not just Jaguar, right?

Benzino:

Everybody's saying things.

Benzino:

Everybody.

Benzino:

People know, the more, the more outlandish shit you're gonna say is gonna be the, that's gonna be.

Benzino:

It's gonna make the blogs.

Benzino:

That's what's gonna get the traffic.

Benzino:

That's it.

Benzino:

Now it's the thing to do.

Benzino:

Now it's taken over a lot of people.

Benzino:

You know, my thing is some of the stuff that I've heard Jag say makes perfect sense.

Benzino:

You could tell she comes across as intelligent, talented, and then other shit she says you could just see as just starting up bullshit.

Benzino:

Because there's no reason to start up shit with anybody if you're not willing to take the consequences.

Benzino:

If you want to take the consequences, then you shouldn't be speaking on anybody.

Benzino:

Because when the consequences come, then don't.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

And then people, I'll call the police.

Benzino:

But that's not fair.

Benzino:

Now you're not playing fair.

Benzino:

You're starting the problem.

Benzino:

Somebody sees you in person, reacts, and you call the police on them over the shit that you started.

Benzino:

I don't know.

Benzino:

That's not manly and it's not womanly.

Benzino:

And there's too many people that do it.

Benzino:

Charleston White does it.

Benzino:

I mean, every, you know, it's just not, you know, you don't gotta antagonize to get your point across.

Benzino:

And you ain't gotta, you know, just to get your point across, start problems with people.

:

Well, I think people do it because that's what people want to see.

:

Almost kind of like, what is that?

:

What do you think that's about?

:

Like the bodies.

Benzino:

Yeah, but people want to see.

Benzino:

But if we live by what people want to see, do you understand what type of life that would be?

Benzino:

What about your own integrity and your own.

Benzino:

And then if you are for the culture, then you have to know that you're causing more damage than you are good.

Benzino:

I mean, all this about, I'm a community activist and I've done this for the community.

Benzino:

How can you be doing this and you're causing problems, Disrespecting people on a daily basis.

Benzino:

Black people, people who are in the struggle every day, all day.

Benzino:

How does that help the culture?

Benzino:

Like, that's bozo shit to me.

:

Well, he says, you know, that he's doing it.

:

He's just putting on a character for the end.

Benzino:

That's an excuse.

Benzino:

Look, Charleston White, one half of Charleston White could be where Martin and Malcolm is.

Benzino:

All right, maybe, maybe, eh?

Benzino:

But the other half is a bunch of bullshit con man weirdo shit.

Benzino:

And you know, to me, it comes across as a nigga that didn't get too much pussy back in the day, that now you get a little bit of fame and fortune.

Benzino:

You see how this you getting it.

Benzino:

So you gonna do anything, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, when you a comfortable nigga that always was good with the women, you don't do this dumb shit, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, his mind, I'm sure he has done for the community, but it gets thrown away from me.

Benzino:

When you're starting trouble with guys and then when they come to you, then you're telling on them, how the fuck is that helping these guys?

Benzino:

How is that helping these guys, parents?

Benzino:

How is that helping anything?

Benzino:

You're just helping the system eat them up like everything else.

Benzino:

I don't get it.

Benzino:

And then, you know, the problem is people like Charleston, everybody see people in the comments, oh, I love him.

Benzino:

Nobody can make me ate him.

Benzino:

He ate that up.

Benzino:

Like, when you look, I want people to dig deeper at these type of people who are commenting like that and see who that type of person is.

Benzino:

And like, this is.

Benzino:

You're happy because that person, like, they don't even got their shit together.

Benzino:

Look at the people who are commenting and going a little deeper and be like, this is the support you want from Then they're just saying that just to be a part of something people know.

Benzino:

People know how people are crying out so much to be a part of something that they want to be a part of something in the comment section.

Benzino:

They don't mind coming every day being a commenter because they're a part of the other commenters.

Benzino:

What they say is not even the point.

Benzino:

It's just the fact that they're a part of something.

Benzino:

Charleston could do us a lot more good if he stopped with all that other extra bullshit.

Benzino:

If you, for the community, you doing the same thing.

Benzino:

The same thing that you talking about.

Benzino:

You done became.

Benzino:

Since you can't rap, you.

Benzino:

Everything else but not kicking.

Benzino:

You want to be the entertainer.

Benzino:

Hold on, hold on.

Benzino:

Wearing the Confederate flags and all that shit.

Benzino:

Like there's no.

Benzino:

And if you go for an excuse for that.

Benzino:

I'm in character.

Benzino:

Then you're just as much of a bozo as he is at times.

Benzino:

And I don't got no beef with him.

Benzino:

Cause I think he's a smart, intelligent man that can do good.

Benzino:

But he's took a left turn again.

Benzino:

His celebrity has gotten the best of him, where he's just saying shit.

Benzino:

And I'm sure he'll get on here and try to say something.

Benzino:

I ain't got no problems with him.

Benzino:

I got no problems with nobody.

Benzino:

It's just my.

Benzino:

This is my mature way of looking at it, that he could do our culture a lot better if he stops with all this bullshit.

Benzino:

Stop antagonizing these kids on here.

Benzino:

Stop snitching on them.

Benzino:

For sure we don't do that.

Benzino:

I don't know where the fuck anybody thought it was cool.

Benzino:

And all these people who agree with that, only agree with it until it's happened to their mother, father, brother, sister, cousin.

Benzino:

And then they mad.

Benzino:

Or their girl or their man or their woman.

Benzino:

Like, we live in a pick and choose society now.

Benzino:

Like the shit that Charleston does, man.

Benzino:

Like, he could do better.

Benzino:

He has the ears now of everybody now.

Benzino:

Switch it around and do better, bro.

Benzino:

Do better, bro.

Benzino:

Like getting on thing with girls and this and that.

Benzino:

And like, come on, man.

Benzino:

You a grown man.

Benzino:

Set the example of a Malcolm or a Martin.

Benzino:

You don't gotta be.

Benzino:

I'm saying, like, all the way.

Benzino:

But don't do the clown shit and stop antagonizing and causing problems.

Benzino:

Because he starts a lot of this shit.

Benzino:

He says shit about people thinking because it's a viral and because it's a news and he has opinion.

Benzino:

But that shit, the shit he says is disrespectful.

Benzino:

And, you know, I'm just.

Benzino:

That just I don't feel it.

:

And I feel you.

:

But in all fairness, a lot of individuals that Charleston go after, after you do their research, they don't really be good people.

:

They don't really be solid individuals.

Benzino:

Why?

Benzino:

Because Charleston says so?

:

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Benzino:

Well, name one.

Benzino:

Give me one.

Benzino:

Who did he go after?

Benzino:

That's not a good person, Von.

Benzino:

I'm saying, like.

:

So hold on, hold on, hold on.

Benzino:

Wait a minute.

Benzino:

Okay, hold on.

Benzino:

But let me go there.

Benzino:

Let me go there.

Benzino:

This is good.

Benzino:

Von is a young man that came up in a fucked up situation like all these other young men.

Benzino:

Have some fucking empathy, right?

Benzino:

Like, yes.

Benzino:

Von got himself into, like, all these other young men, and he ended up like all these other young men.

Benzino:

Have some fucking empathy.

Benzino:

If it happened to his son, would he be saying that?

Benzino:

If it happened to his nephew, would he be saying that?

Benzino:

No, no, no, no.

Benzino:

You can't say Vaughn was.

Benzino:

Vaughn was loved by his mother.

Benzino:

Vaughn was loved by God.

Benzino:

Vaughn was loved by a lot of people.

Benzino:

Vaughn did bad, like, we all do bad and make mistakes.

Benzino:

Who the fuck is Charleston White to disrespect Vaughn after he dies?

Benzino:

And who is he to say something about Vaughn?

Benzino:

What makes Charleston better than Vaughn?

:

All I'm saying is he ain't saying nothing that the old head on the corner wouldn't say that.

:

Seeing Von get shot and killed.

:

The old head would be.

:

Like I be telling these young, the.

Benzino:

Old head would know Vaughn.

Benzino:

He don't.

Benzino:

So you don't have.

Benzino:

You can't do that.

Benzino:

Yeah, you see, the old head's gonna know Von.

Benzino:

We're gonna watch Von grow up.

Benzino:

And Vaughn developed a respect for the old head.

Benzino:

He don't know him.

Benzino:

It's disrespectful.

Benzino:

And you wouldn't do it to his face.

Benzino:

You wouldn't do it to him.

Benzino:

All that.

Benzino:

Everybody going everybody's block and just jump and.

Benzino:

No, no, no, no, no.

Benzino:

You wouldn't be there.

Benzino:

Because if you come, you coming with police.

Benzino:

Nigga, you ain't playing, right?

Benzino:

That's not how we do it.

Benzino:

To me, he's the cancer.

Benzino:

He's not.

Benzino:

He's not uplifting anybody out here.

Benzino:

Who the fuck is he uplifting?

Benzino:

He on the motherfucking Internet every other day talking shit about somebody.

Benzino:

Niggas got it bad enough already, but I get it.

Benzino:

Clicks, comments.

Benzino:

Oh, he ate up.

Benzino:

That's my man.

Benzino:

Or if that's how you look at it, you looking at it wrong.

Benzino:

You looking at it wrong.

Benzino:

Von ain't never done nothing to nobody personally.

Benzino:

For anybody to hate him so much when he was living there, playing the music, I bet you in the club, bouncing to his shit, watching the video.

Benzino:

People.

Benzino:

People gotta understand that, you know What I'm saying, like.

Benzino:

Like, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Like, if you got a platform, use your platform, because these kids need help.

Benzino:

Don't use to damage them.

Benzino:

And I'm afraid that he's doing more damage to the community than he is.

Benzino:

Good.

Benzino:

That's just my opinion.

:

Well, you know, on this platform, we do fuck with Charleston White.

:

He says that he just sits around and wait for people to come at him, and then he'll go at them.

Benzino:

Who the fuck is he?

Benzino:

See, Again.

Benzino:

Again.

Benzino:

Again.

Benzino:

He's put himself in his celebrity thing to where that he's making himself.

Benzino:

That he's relevant now, because that's what he does.

Benzino:

But his relevancy is only because he's disrespecting everybody.

Benzino:

Take away the disrespect.

Benzino:

Does anybody know who he is?

Benzino:

What has he accomplished in our.

Benzino:

What has Charleston Whitehead accomplished?

Benzino:

Well, somebody tell me, what has he accomplished?

:

He's turned over laws.

Benzino:

He's what?

:

Turned over laws?

Benzino:

No, no, no, no, no.

Benzino:

We don't know what law this man has turned over.

Benzino:

I need you to give me some proof.

Benzino:

Just like niggas can show paperwork or snitches.

Benzino:

I need to see some proof of what law Charleston White turned, please.

Benzino:

So while you find that out, let's figure out something else he done in hip hop.

Benzino:

Charleston White ain't done shit.

Benzino:

He ain't had no hit record.

Benzino:

He ain't put on no hit TV show.

Benzino:

He ain't done nothing.

Benzino:

All Charleston White does is come on the Internet and talk shit about people who actually have accomplishments in this game.

Benzino:

So again, can somebody.

Benzino:

If somebody could tell me what he did, then I'm all for it.

:

Now, one could argue what has a drill rapper done for anybody?

Benzino:

No, no, no, no, no.

Benzino:

I'm not saying a drill rapper because it's not just.

Benzino:

Because that's not just drill rappers that Charleston White goes up.

Benzino:

Charleston White goes after everybody.

Benzino:

He just don't, like, he goes after rappers.

Benzino:

He just know he don't.

Benzino:

He go after niggas, mamas.

Benzino:

He go after, like, women, everybody, bro.

Benzino:

What do you.

Benzino:

I don't.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

:

And, like, so I guess it's a different character because you meet Charleston White in person.

:

He's a totally different.

Benzino:

No, no, no.

Benzino:

I'm sure me and Charlie will get along in person because he'll be a man, and I'm going to be a man, and we was born around the same time.

Benzino:

I'm not with the troll and dumb shit.

Benzino:

I'm just not with that.

Benzino:

I'm just.

Benzino:

It just ain't me.

Benzino:

It ain't.

Benzino:

I think it hurts people, bro.

Benzino:

I think it hurts.

Benzino:

Like, why get on the Internet and start beef with everybody?

Benzino:

Why is that?

Benzino:

That's the way that so getting on.

Benzino:

So let me ask y'all.

:

I feel like it makes a crazy check, too, like that.

Benzino:

But that's.

Benzino:

But all money ain't good money.

:

No, you facts.

:

You ain't saying that I could get.

Benzino:

On here and say a bunch of shit and go, give me a crazy check.

Benzino:

Why would I want that type of check, right?

Benzino:

For what?

Benzino:

And you already said niggas then already clocked him in the barbershop.

Benzino:

I thought that was a.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I thought that was a thing, right?

Benzino:

He already got.

Benzino:

So that happened as a direct result from the Internet shit.

Benzino:

So does he want that to keep happening the rest of his life?

Benzino:

Because motherfuckers are not gonna like some of the shit he said when they see him in person.

Benzino:

That's just how it's gonna happen.

Benzino:

It's just people don't forget some of the horrible shit you say about dead people and people's mamas and.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

When you.

Benzino:

You know what I mean?

Benzino:

I don't know.

Benzino:

That's just me, man.

Benzino:

You know, that's just me, man.

Benzino:

Like, I try to show love and I try to show respect because I, you know, I want it.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I mean, I got kids.

Benzino:

Why am I starting.

Benzino:

Why would I put my kids in danger?

:

Thanks.

Benzino:

Why would I be on the Internet?

Benzino:

Why would I put my kids in danger?

Benzino:

I mean, don't get me wrong.

Benzino:

Shit happens.

Benzino:

And sometimes.

Benzino:

But he makes a living off of this, and I just don't think.

Benzino:

I don't.

Benzino:

I mean, the shit that happened at the comedy show when they just like, who wants to live like that?

Benzino:

I don't think any of y'all would want to live like that.

:

Oh, everybody's built different.

Benzino:

Right?

:

What is some.

:

So, you know, just you being in the streets, right?

:

Like, what is some advice that you can give to some of these cats that are doing music right?

:

There are no gatekeepers now, right?

:

So it's just kind of a free for all.

:

What advice would you give them, you know, for you being at the top of the game, you seeing the height of where music can go.

Benzino:

I don't.

Benzino:

Man.

Benzino:

It's hard now.

Benzino:

Music, such a different man.

Benzino:

Music is so confusing now, man, the way it is because of the streaming, because of the over saturation, all the labels and what they're like, it's just a weird time for music right now.

Benzino:

These young guys know what to do, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

You gotta get your hood to love you, the people around you loving you and your block and people support you.

Benzino:

When you get that local support it could, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Belly up and make a dope ass song.

Benzino:

But it's hard to give advice now because it's all over the place, it really is.

Benzino:

I can't even lie.

Benzino:

It's just make good music, stay consistent, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

You know, and put hours in your craft, like, you know, you ain't gotta be 24 hours with it, but get a job, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

And then eight hours work and the other eight hours doing, you know, fuck with your music and don't get nobody pregnant, man.

:

Before we get out of here, man, you had a crazy ass story about Scott Storch and I just had, oh shit.

Benzino:

So Scott Storch, Scott, good friend of mine, man, you know, produced Scott.

Benzino:

I remember one day Scott, see Scott had this like, he was Tony Montana.

Benzino:

Scott used to really believe he was Tony, but it was weird, he would dress like him.

Benzino:

His house on the island, I think it was star ride.

Benzino:

He'd come in, he'd have the cigarette, you know, he had Dominican chicks everywhere.

Benzino:

So you go in, he got the all gold motorcycle.

Benzino:

He don't know how to ride a bike, nevermind a motorcycle.

Benzino:

It's in the, I mean the white pearl piano and just, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

So you walk in, they got the things that you go up, you know, like the room, the staircases, like Scarface comes in and shitty glasses, he's wired.

Benzino:

It's like, hey, come on in.

Benzino:

There's a room over here with a pool table.

Benzino:

A bunch of other rooms on the first floor.

Benzino:

Going in this room, there's like big pile of coke hair.

Benzino:

Then there's another pot of coke hair.

Benzino:

And Worcester is like nine piles everywhere.

Benzino:

On the pool table, on the side of the pool table, on the glass.

Benzino:

So then we walk out the thing and then we go over there, over there, by the way, where you hang your coats at.

Benzino:

Big pile of coke there, like straws, just I mean every fucking way you want, man.

Benzino:

He's like, you know, I'm cool, I'm good, I'm good, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Broad daylight, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

I'm all right, right now you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Now don't get me wrong, I done been through my wild boy antics.

Benzino:

Like, I'm not.

Benzino:

I don't judge, I'm just saying.

Benzino:

But Scott was really one of the only ones that really had that scar face thing down, boy.

Benzino:

Like he thought he was Tony Montana to the key.

Benzino:

Like, for real.

Benzino:

If Tony Montana could produce beats, he'd be Scott Starch.

:

But in his defense, Dominic is walking around with a pearl white grand piano.

Benzino:

You do got a feel like Dominican women.

Benzino:

He likes Spanish women.

:

And you could play it too, except it was everywhere.

Benzino:

Oh, he could.

Benzino:

Oh, he was the.

Benzino:

Oh, he would get on it.

Benzino:

But he was with a cigarette all the time and just, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Just glasses and you have the coat on and just his whole mannerisms was.

Benzino:

When you walked in, all you heard was June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June.

Benzino:

That's all you heard.

Benzino:

Let me get the fuck outta here.

Benzino:

I see where he's coming.

:

Man, Are you working?

Benzino:

You gotta give his props.

Benzino:

He's one of the dopest producers to ever do it to this day, man.

:

Are you working on anything?

:

You got anything coming up that people need to know about?

Benzino:

Source Awards documentary coming.

:

What?

Benzino:

Oh, that's going 95.

Benzino:

The 95 Sorcerer wars documentary.

Benzino:

Me and myself, man Robinson have been working on it.

Benzino:

We're working with the Horn brothers now.

Benzino:

Yeah, been working on for almost a year now.

Benzino:

Got a bunch of amazing interviews of people that were actually there.

Benzino:

We're still in the last part of the interview stage, going into the editing stage.

Benzino:

But it'd be like a three part series and I'm gonna be narrating it and it's gonna be pretty.

Benzino:

I got some real heavyweights.

Benzino:

I wanna shout.

Benzino:

I don't wanna let anybody know, but I wanna shout everybody.

Benzino:

But it was a lot of the people that were in 95 and we kinda highlight 94 too.

Benzino:

Cause that's where Pac was there.

Benzino:

Pac was locked up in 95.

Benzino:

But a lot of stories that people didn't know.

Benzino:

A lot of backstories that I didn't know that was going on because it was such a tense night for hip hop.

Benzino:

Like, people gotta understand 95 is when hip hop just wasn't about New York or LA anymore.

Benzino:

It was everywhere, you know what I mean?

Benzino:

Like Midwest was there.

Benzino:

The South.

Benzino:

That's what Andre said.

Benzino:

The south got something to say and the south just took over.

Benzino:

Like that night was a pivotal night.

Benzino:

Pivotal, pivotal, pivotal, pivotal, pivotal night in hip hop.

Benzino:

So the Night that changed hip hop forever.

Benzino:

Be on the lookout for that.

Benzino:

o be, of course, coming up in:

Benzino:

I'm on every Wednesday, Celebrity crime files on TV One, Wednesday night, 10 o'clock.

Benzino:

Been doing that.

Benzino:

And, man, just, you know, I'm planning on.

Benzino:

I'm a release of fitness tape and program on my 60th birthday in next July.

Benzino:

And, you know, just a program for guys 50 and over how to stay fit, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

And not just stay fit, but just how to give them tips on how to just be more of a ladies man, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

The guys, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Some of these guys need a little bit of help.

Benzino:

So you know what I'm saying, man.

:

You gotta come back.

:

Cause I wanted to touch on that with y'all.

Benzino:

Gotta come back, come fuck with y'all.

Benzino:

This is dope, man.

:

Man, how many chin ups you think you can do?

Benzino:

I'm not good at chips, But I benched 315 the other day.

:

Hey, turn it up.

Benzino:

I benched 315.

Benzino:

Yeah, man.

Benzino:

You know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

Yup.

Benzino:

I finally got it, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

So I only got it one time, but you know what I'm saying?

:

That's all that matters.

Benzino:

Yeah, it takes a while.

Benzino:

You didn't kill you.

Benzino:

So I'm almost, almost, almost.

Benzino:

But I got that bitch, you know what I'm saying?

Benzino:

You know what I mean?

Benzino:

It was good because I got it one time before.

Benzino:

And then it was like, man, the thing about when you get older is if you stop even for a couple of months, you lose everything.

Benzino:

So I can never stop going to the gym now if I want to keep my strength.

Benzino:

When you're young, your muscles stay with you, but when you get older.

Benzino:

So I'm proud of that.

Benzino:

Like, if I was staying the night here, I'd been right after this, I'd been going right to LA Fitness.

Benzino:

Oh, wow.

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

I love the gym, man.

:

We just want to thank you so much for coming, man.

Benzino:

I want to thank y'all, man.

Benzino:

For real and Angel.

Benzino:

Me and Ashley are coming on that cruise in January with y'all.

:

Trust me, man, that's gonna be lit.

:

Hey, man.

Benzino:

Yo, shout out to the Treats, man, too.

Benzino:

The Treats.

Benzino:

What's his name?

Benzino:

Monte.

:

And he gonna love that.

Benzino:

Yeah, for real?

Benzino:

Yeah.

Benzino:

That made this possible.

Benzino:

Shout out to Dallas, man.

Benzino:

I'm in the D, man.

:

We just want to thank you for coming to sit down with us.

:

Can't wait till the next one, brother.

Benzino:

Are y'all cowboy fans?

Benzino:

Hell, yeah.

Benzino:

Yeah.

:

I mean, yeah.

:

I mean.

Benzino:

Y'all want to talk about that?

Benzino:

Oh, y'all want cut, Cut, cut, cut.

Benzino:

Look at y'all.

Benzino:

Can see their faces.

:

Hey, hey.

:

They'll beat you.

:

Hey, with that being said, Patriots might.

Benzino:

Have a better record than y'all.

Benzino:

Imagine that.

:

That's the craziest.

:

Damn, man, they up the prize picks.

:

Prize pigs.

:

They fucking up the prize, Benzino.

Benzino:

Appreciate it, y'all.

:

You are a real life street star.

Benzino:

I heard that, baby.

Benzino:

Real life stars.

Benzino:

It ain't real life.

:

Real life street stars.

:

You know what time it is?

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Reallyfe Street Starz Podcast
Reallyfe Street Starz the platform that brings you the underground Street legends!
"Reallyfe Street Starz" is where the streets meet the spotlight. Every episode brings you raw, unfiltered stories from the legends who shaped the culture in cities across the world. From street hustlers to music icons, we dive deep into the lives of the people who lived it, showing you the real behind the headlines. We’re here to bring the untold stories of the streets to the big screen—authentic, uncut, and unforgettable. Get ready for a front-row seat to the life and times of the true street stars, only on Reallyfe Street Starz.
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JEFFREY OYENEYE