#39 Struggle Jennings

Shawn Ryan Show Sponsored by Ridge Wallet. Check them out here: https://ridge.com/shawn USE CODE ''SHAWN'' Also sponsored by Bubs Naturals "Take the best S*%# of you life" https://www.bubsnaturals.com (USE CODE SHAWN) and by MUD/WTR https://www.mudwtr.com/shawn (USE CODE SHAWN) The story of William Harness AKA Struggle Jennings childhood drug dealing gang member to country music rap superstar. Please leave us a review on Apple/Spotify Podcasts: Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shawn-ryan-show/id1492492083 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5eodRZd3qR9VT1ip1wI7xQ?si=59f9d106e56a4509 Struggle Jennings Links: Website - https://www.strugglejennings.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/iamstruggle YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-1dnd5sdAQXHLCfDFTsFKg #VIGILANCEELITE #SHAWNRYANSHOW Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 0:40Speaker 02

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• 0:50Speaker 01

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• 0:53Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:54Speaker 01

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• 1:30Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, everybody. This next one is super important. This is about a guy that literally came from nothing and built himself an empire. This is important shit because there are so many people in the U.S. today that feel that they don't have a chance or they're getting cheated and they can't make anything of themselves. That's complete bullshit, and this is proof. Everybody has to start somewhere. Generally, it works out better if you start from the bottom. Love you guys. Thank you for always being here and supporting me.

• 2:04Shawn Ryan?

  Enjoy the show.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  I had been in another shootout where I had actually hit somebody.

• 2:19Shawn Ryan?

  Where'd you hit him?

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Uh, shoulder, leg. The world getting crazy, baby chill. Don't medicate, just meditate. You waking up now, well babe, you hella late. Educate, look at what's going on, let it resonate. Accelerate, find your inner hunger like you never ate. Agenda is to push the hate, separate and segregate. Don't celebrate, quiet, the storm is coming. Cue for heaven's sake. And I hear my mom crying in there. And a few minutes later, cars just start pulling into the driveway. And they come in, family comes in, they sit me down there like your dad's no longer with us. You late, intimidate through fear and force. Forcing us to sit and wait till we come together, congregate, and then we liberate. Praying that you give me strength to find some love amongst the hate. Marching on these streets of blood.

• 3:03Shawn Ryan?

  We're getting into the biggest cocaine bust in Nashville history, which was...

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Maybe still to this day.

• 3:10Shawn Ryan?

  All the way.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  We're talking about a special delivery of cocaine. They're all meant for sale on the streets, but a tip led investigators to this situation. The bust happened here in Nashville. Metro PD and DEA agents following this.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  They put a million dollars behind this guy's album. We done put a dollar. That means the people are speaking. So we released it. Next thing you know, phew, right back to the top. I'm like, what is going on? Every viral video.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Ten people hear it and it brings them closer to God and makes them stronger and makes them rally up and fucking feel strength right now in this time of, uh, where a lot of people are feeling weak and vulnerable and afraid and fearful. This gives just a handful of people a little bit more oomph in their fucking fight than I'm happy.

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• 5:24Shawn Ryan?

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• 5:57Shawn Ryan?

  Struggle Jennings, welcome to the show, man.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me, brother. It's so honored.

• 6:04Shawn Ryan?

  Right back at you. So, just a brief introduction. You grew up in a low-income family. Your grandpa was Waylon Jennings. Your dad died when you were 10 years old. You're a former gang member and drug dealer. In fact, you were the biggest cocaine bust in Nashville, still to this date, I believe.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Maybe so.

• 6:27Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe so?

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. I haven't kept up with it in a while.

• 6:32Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. You're a rapper, a father of seven. You own your own record label with artists underneath you. You show a lot of patriotism for the United States of America. And "God, We Need You Now" was number one in the charts for how many?

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Multiple weeks.

• 6:51Shawn Ryan?

  Weeks and a half?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  iTunes months.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Billboard, two weeks. Two weeks? Two weeks in a row. I think it actually hit number one, maybe three or four times. But number one for two weeks in a row.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Even the week that Drake released his album. Which had millions of dollars of promotion behind it. At one point, I was number one, and he was number two through 20. Damn. On songs. Were you expecting that to happen? Absolutely not. No? No, not. We had actually dropped the song nine months before that happened. And it had cool momentum, a little bit of steam, got a bunch of views on YouTube. And then it started to die off, and we started working on. We actually released another song or two. And then out of nowhere, I get a call like, "Hey, man, you're number fucking one on iTunes right now." And I was like, "Get out of here." And they're like, "No, for real. Like, the song is number one."

• 7:54Speaker 02

  And...

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Number one on iTunes out of all the... Out of... Out of everything? Everything. All genres. Damn. Independent. No, we didn't put a dollar behind it, marketing-wise. It was literally a song from the heart and the people speaking up. That's incredible. Yeah. It caught wind. Like, all the videos of, you know, all the... It kept recycling because of all the issues that were going on in the world. You know, back to back to back, and it would just continuously... This is... Yeah, I'm gonna have to cut this off.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Baby, if anybody calls, you just let them know that I completely cut my phone off.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it just, it kept cycling because these new issues were happening, and people were using it as their battle cry. And behind all the videos, you could hear, "God, we need you now," every time. And, uh...

• 9:04Speaker 02

  It was surreal.

• 9:05Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  So many monumental, like, videos that went viral, and that's cool. But it's the meaning behind the videos, you know, seeing just the destruction or or the pleads of, you know, people putting these videos together and the flags flying and my song behind it was just a whole different animal.

• 9:29Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, that's cool. There's just gotta be so much satisfaction in in

• 9:38Shawn Ryan?

  in multiple different areas.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure.

• 9:40Shawn Ryan?

  Where it's not just success as a musician, but it's also the message behind it, the people rallying and the time. What, that was 2020?

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Twenty twenty, twenty twenty one is when it hit number one.

• 9:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  We released it in twenty twenty and hit, hit number one in twenty twenty one.

• 9:59Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. And, yeah, the timing, you know, when that came out, I remember it was just, it was perfect. Well, I guess it had been out, but it just caught a wave and took off.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, we released it in twenty twenty, you know, when everybody was fighting, you know, to, to gain some kind of ground. And then twenty twenty one, you know, with them pulling out and everything going crazy in the Middle East and then then with the Canadian truckers, again, it shot up.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  So it's just, you know, every time that something big would happen, people were just gravitating towards that song. And watching something that you put out and you create, you never know how people are gonna latch on to it, you know? It's just gonna fly over their head, because this is from my heart. This is from an idea that I have or a feeling or an emotion that I have, and you never know how that's gonna translate with fans.

• 11:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  So when it does, and then it does it in that much of a meaningful manner, you're just like, you know? It feels good. The satisfaction, like you said, the satisfaction and being able to be a part of history like that.

• 11:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  The best accolade beyond any kind of award that I got hanging on my wall. Or, you know, any amount of money that I make off of it. Those are the moments that you feel like you did something great.

• 11:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, well, we'll get into that more towards the end of the interview. Everybody gets a gift.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. So I see all these cool knives on your wall and I was like, man, I should have bought them some. I got a really nice collection. I actually just got this one.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  It's Montana Knife Company.

• 11:59Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Have you seen them yet?

• 12:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Seth Ferochi, I just went and spent some time with him, trained with him. You familiar with him?

• 12:09Shawn Ryan?

  No, I'm not.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Axe and Sledge and American Roughneck.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  He's a bodybuilder, just a tough Pittsburgh. A man's man, you know. He's a bodybuilder and now he's owns probably the fastest growing, definitely my favorite supplement company called Axe and Sledge.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 12:42Shawn Ryan?

  There you go. We're just talking about sugar, so.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:45Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I'll get you some more of those for your family.

• 12:51Shawn Ryan?

  I can only fit so many in a box.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Gummy bears. My favorite. That's my thing too. I love like fruity. That's my thing, like over chocolate and shit.

• 13:05Shawn Ryan?

  Cool, dude. Well, you dig those.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  My biggest vices are literally fruit snacks and peanut butter and jelly.

• 13:16Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  And they told me I could lose weight and stay fucking strong, eating peanut butter and jelly, that's all I'd eat.

• 13:25Shawn Ryan?

  Let's get into your background and, and your childhood. I did some research on you and, and that was just a fascinating,

• 13:34Shawn Ryan?

  piece of content that I consumed, talking about your backstory and your upbringing and, and how you got to where you're at today. So, I know you grew up here in Franklin.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:45Shawn Ryan?

  How was that?

• 13:46Speaker 02

  It was, it was great. You know, the first, first 10 years of my life,

• 13:54Speaker 02

  looking back, was completely different than the next 30. But it set us, it planted a seed. And there was a purpose for every, you know, every phase of my life. There's definitely been a purpose as I go back and analyze it.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Which I try to do all the time.

• 14:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  To know where I want to go, where I've been, remember where I've been without losing sight of where I'm headed, knowing I don't want to go back to where I've been, you know? So trying to make the right decisions and moves throughout my life to continually progress is definitely important. So I, I analyze it a lot.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  First 10 years of my life, my mom, my, my mom had me at 16. She was the daughter of Waylon Jennings and Jesse Coulter. Actually, Duane Eddy was her biological father. And he was married to my grandmother, Jesse Coulter. And then Waylon and Jesse were putting the studio together to the same record label and ran off in the sunset together. So my mom was adopted by Waylon at an early age. And was like her father.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  My grandfather, Dwayne Eddie, who's a famous guitar player and musician. He's in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He actually still lives here in Franklin. Oh, really? Yeah, so. Are you guys stayed? Uh, you know, I grew up. He was my grandfather, loved him, loved my step-grandmother, his wife, Deed.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Super close, growing up, life kinda pulled us in different directions. Still, I just talked to him recently, just reached out to me. He reached out to me while I was in prison and I wrote him, you know, a long letter back and love him to death. He was definitely a great inspiration in my life.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  You know how it is, there's just some family you see eye to eye with and some you don't. Yeah. And we had a few issues, not me and him particularly, but they just kinda, you know, put a little bit of wedge between us, but, you know, I love him more than anything and been trying to see him since I've been home, but he's been battling with, uh, he had a couple of strokes and, you know, dealt with a lot of health issues. So they've been kinda being careful about who I was around him, so. And I travel a lot and, you know, some people just, some people, you know, they're a little bit more fearful. Different times now.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, different times now and I'm, I'm not like, I don't walk up to anybody in a room of a thousand and shake your hand, look you in the eye, you know? But, so.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Let's see, where are we at? Growing up. Growing up here in Franklin, my mom and my dad, she was sixteen, uh, he was eighteen. They met at the skating rink. My dad was an old west Nashville, bad boy, good old boy, you know? Drove fast cars. He was the type of guy that would buy stolen guns from his friends that were thieves and sell them to his cop buddies, you know? He was just one of those, like, everybody loved him, give you the shirt off his back, come home two hours late from work soaking wet, where he pulled over on the side of the interstate to help somebody change a tire, you know? Just one of those guys and, uh.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  But he was, you know, he was wild. Oh, West Nashville, born in severe poverty. A big family.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  So him and my mother met at the skating rink. She was going to a private school, some friends had got her to come to West Nashville, to the big skating rink. He was the king of the skating rink, you know, in high school. So they met, had me, they lasted about four years.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  My grandfather Waylon had bought them a house here in Franklin to live and to have, you know, a place.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  So I guess I was about four when they split up. So then my mom was just a single mom. She sang backup for Waylon and just went through a couple really abusive relationships. She was married for two years to a guy that, you know, just beat the hell out of her all the time. And finally that came to an end.

• 18:41Shawn Ryan?

  Did you see all that?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw it. You know, I heard it more than I saw it. There's a couple of times that I can vividly remember, you know, seeing him. There's one time in particular, she had been traveling, singing backup for my grandfather. And I came home from school and saw her car in the driveway, so I like rushed up to the house. Riding my bike, get to the house. And front door's locked, I run around the back. And when I looked through the back window, trying to get through the sliding glass door, he's just in there beating the shit out of her. And I ran next door, called my dad. And

• 19:21Speaker 02

  so that's one moment that I can really remember, like vividly watching her beat the hell out of her. Watching him beat the hell out of her. And. So like, you know, I I beat it into my boys now, like you never put your hands on a woman. Uh, one of the last things that I can remember my dad really telling me was that is your job on the face of this planet. Is to care, love, protect the women in your life. Yeah. They're the givers of life. They're the ones that birth. Children like they are the superior. It is your job to just be the guy that works his ass off, protects her. And make sure that she's got everything she needs. So.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  And then being raised by a single mother, of course, my grandmother Jessie's. You know, she's my rock. So I was raised by a lot of women.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  So, you know, she went through some abusive relationships. How'd she get out of them? Well, she finally, I I remember there was a tipping point. Uh, my dad beat the hell out of him. Um, my grandfather came over there. My grandfather Waylon came over there and kicked him out. Told him, don't come back. Um, and there was a few of those tipping points until it finally was like he was just gone, you know? I was nine, I think.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  And she finally got out of that relationship. Um, shortly after, uh, I was outside playing. Actually, at Devon's house. I was outside playing football with a bunch of friends and my mom calls me. Or yells out the door, hey, your dad's on the phone. And I was like, well, tell him I'll be back. I'll call him when I get back in.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  And. When I come home that night from playing football. I never forget, I remember like it was yesterday. I came in. Sat down, had a friend of mine that had been playing football with me came in the living room. We turned on Roseanne TV show. And I hear my mom crying in there. And so I go and I listen and she's bawling crying. So I tell my friend, I had an aunt that had cancer at the time. I told my friend, I was like, hey, I think you need to go home. I think my aunt died. You know, she's got cancer. And. Few minutes later, cars just start pulling into the driveway. And they come in, family comes in, they sit me down. They're like, your dad's no longer with us. Alright, so.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  They had told me that it was a suicide.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  I lived with that regret and that

• 22:09Speaker 02

  that feeling of,

• 22:12Speaker 02

  you know, that pain of what if I would have answered that phone because they told me it was a suicide? What if I would have answered that phone? Would things be different? Would my dad still be here?

• 22:24Speaker 02

  How long did you struggle with that? My entire childhood and teens to the point where I was suicidal. Damn. Most of my life, you know, my dad killed himself. I was gonna go out the same way. Every time I, you know, hit a big roadblock in my life, which we'll talk about a bunch of those. First thing I would do is, you know, put a gun to my head, you know? And I actually even pulled the trigger before. I misfired. So,

• 22:59Speaker 02

  I actually one time was sitting in a hotel room, ready to blow my brains out. And the people at the hotel are beating on the door because I'm in there six hours past. I'm supposed to be in there. I don't have the money to get the hotel room again. Shit. Same day I found out that I had my first daughter was about to be born. Damn. So definitely a huge turn in my life.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Crazy part about that was I struggled with it until my uncle, my uncle Tabpo, who's my dad's brother, he got custody of me when I was 15. My mom just couldn't control me anymore. And, um, you know, I was running around, I was a gang member, you know, out breaking into cars, selling weed, you know, doing everything that you, that a teenager, you know, living that life does. But, uh, my uncle Tabpo finally, when I was 18, looked at me and said, you know, your dad didn't commit suicide. I was like, what do you mean he didn't commit suicide?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  He's like, he didn't kill himself, boy. He was like, the autopsy came back, there was no possible way he killed himself. The angle of the gun, there was no way that it actually, that was, you know, the reason of his death. And I was like, so you're telling me somebody killed my dad? And he was like, yeah. And I was like, well, why would you let me live all those years with that regret? Of feeling like I could have done something different and my father still be here? And he said, son, I would have rather you live with regret than revenge. So I'm ten years old, dad's gone.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  My grandpa's Waylon Jennings. So he literally walks into this school and goes, hey, just let y'all know, he's not gonna be here for the rest of the years. Dad passed, see you next year. You know, no, I didn't have to do any schoolwork. I didn't have to pass the fifth grade. I'll just see you next year, you know?

• 25:12Speaker 02

  And I was, I was, I went over there for a few weeks to Waylon's, stayed there. He lived right here in Brentwood.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Stayed there, you know, he'd take me and my uncle Shooter, who's just a year older than me. He'd take us towards our Russ and, you know, we had all the laser tag and all the, you know, cool stuff. And then going back home,

• 25:36Speaker 02

  I didn't have to go to school. So I'm riding around the neighborhood on my bike. The only people that aren't in school are the high school kids skipping.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Well, they can't leave their house. So, because they'll get caught for truancy if they get caught out walking around. I got the free pass. So I ended up becoming the neighborhood courier. Right? I'm the guy that, you know, you got these kids that are huffing Scotchgard in high school. They'd send me to Kroger with five dollars to go get them two cans of Scotchgard or whatever it was, you know? Or you got, hey, you go pick up this bag of weed from this guy, you know, on the other side of the neighborhood, because they can't, you know, they didn't have cars and, you know, so. And I've got this free pass, so I'm just doing whatever the high school kids want me to do, kind of running around the neighborhood. And.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Didn't realize that that was the start of a long uh, career in trafficking.

• 26:38Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, so that was, that was a ten years old? Did you even know what you were buying?

• 26:43Speaker 02

  I had no clue. I mean, just whatever the cool kids said.

• 26:46Shawn Ryan?

  Literally just the messenger?

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Just, yeah, I'm just riding back and forth, you know? Um, and so, you know, that, that went on for a little while. Waylon, uh, that next year, sixth grade, put me in BGA, Battleground Academy here in Franklin, footed the bill and, um, for me to go to BGA. And it's like suit and tie, private school. Um, I made it about three quarters of the year. And then some guys tried to jump me and a friend. Uh, older kids tried to jump me and a friend in the basement of the, uh, gymnasium.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  And we fought back as well as we could. I picked up a fire hydrant. I'm swinging the fire hydrant at the guys that were trying to, you know, they were just bullying us, picking on us because we were younger. And then I sprayed them with the fire hydrant. We ran. Well, I get expelled because of hitting one of them with the fire hydrant and spraying the fire hydrant. And they're like, you know, football team, high schoolers, or, you know, middle schoolers. Of course, they took their word over ours. And, um, so I get kicked out. Uh, my mother decides that she's gonna get into another relationship.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Just got out of that terrible divorce. My dad just died. Here she is, jumping into another relationship with a guy that she had met. And my grandpa Waylon was like, Jenny, no. Like, stop.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Just take some time, work on your career. My mom's got one of the most beautiful voices. And, uh,

• 28:31Speaker 02

  You know, work on your career. Leave these fucking guys alone and, you know, just fo- you know, focus on your son and your career.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  She didn't want to hear that, you know. He said, "Well, how about this then? That guy's not moving into that house I bought." You know, "I'm not gonna have no freeloadin' guy moving in." Um, 'cause he was a musician also, the guy that she was dating. And so she moved this guy all the way from California to come be with her. And Wayland's like, "Absolutely not." And she's like, "Well, you're not my father." You know, and Wayland's been raising her since she was a baby.

• 29:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  So, that of course, you know, in turn, my mom was like, "You know what? I wanna do it on my own. I'ma show y'all I don't need your money. You know, I'ma go out here and get it on my own."

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Right into low-income housing.

• 29:29Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  So, where I had had this, not picture perfect, you know, because, you know, my father being murdered, um, you know,

• 29:41Speaker 02

  running drugs and, and stuff for all the kids in the neighborhood, like, definitely not picture perfect, but a very stable environment, you know. Um,

• 29:54Speaker 02

  wasn't the worst, worst childhood a kid could have, for sure.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Moving out to Nashville, and moving out towards the Hermitage area. Um, complete culture shock.

• 30:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Uh, we were now living in an apartment. Um, wasn't long there before my mom woke me up. Bloody nose, blacked eye from this new guy saying, "We gotta get out of here." You know, um, so then they split up. And it was just me and my mom, uh, living in a one-bedroom. She took the, at one point, she had took the living room. We would a daybed as a bedroom, and I had the bedroom, or we swapped up, you know, 'cause we moved apartments. My mom had that. She had that thing in her that, like, she didn't really know how to face shit head-on.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Without changing everything, you know, it'd be like, we need to change. Yeah. So we moved a lot. Okay.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Like, we just need a fresh start. We just need to change. Uh, which is very easy to do, you know, and I, I completely understand the concept. But I never really had friends because I was always the new guy. You know, so I was always like trying to fit in or just into a new situation, you know.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Didn't really have a lot of friends that I like grew up with and got that, you know, they got that experience to have friends all the way from elementary to high school. I went to four different high schools, went to three, four different middle schools, five different middle schools, you know. Holy shit. But then moving out to Hermitage, immediately I got wrapped up in the gangs.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  How did that happen? So, the original way it happened, I was going to Dupont Tyler Middle School. And it's funny, I work out with a guy now who went there at the same time and we've been friends for quite a while. Um, didn't really know each other, like I, I knew who he was, he knew who I was, but we weren't really like friends back then. He, cause he grew up there and he was like friends with everybody and he was one of the cool guys and I was just another new guy. But he, uh, we just had this conversation and talked about this the other day and we're reminiscing on those days.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  So, just got there, there was this girl in the science class and she would talk to me every day. And nobody really talked to me, I was new, nobody really knew who I was. Um, I had plaits in my hair, little cornrows and stuff, braids, you know, pants hanging down around my knees and

• 32:47Speaker 02

  nobody really knew who I was. So there was this girl that she would talk to me every day. Well, all of a sudden. You know, she's telling me about her boyfriend and, you know, we just talked every day for a couple of weeks. And I had met a couple of guys, you know, that automatically kind of clicked with, and I'd hang out with them after school sometimes and, there was a big family of them called the Hardy Boys. There's a bunch of them uh in that neighborhood. And so,

• 33:26Speaker 02

  I guess her and her boyfriend had got into it and she had told him, there's a new guy at school. So I didn't even know this was going on.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  I hang out, stay after school with these new friends that I met.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Philip Hardy and Rod Hardy, uh Philip Hardy and, yeah, Rod Hardy and Tony Hardy. And I hang out with them after school. When I get back to the apartments, they're like, "Hey, this car full of guys followed our bus home and they were looking for you. They're looking to jump you." And I'm like, I didn't know who it was. I had no clue what it was. So the next morning, I tell these new friends that I got, I'm like, "Hey, man, I heard that it's like some guys tried to uh follow my bus home yesterday. So they give me a thirty-eight, thirty-eight pistol."

• 34:24Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, how old are you?

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Twelve.

• 34:26Shawn Ryan?

  Twelve years old, you getting handed a thirty-eight pistol?

• 34:28Speaker 02

  So I got this little thirty-eight and uh I put it in my backpack and I carried around for a few days.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  You know, there's like rumors going around school, "Oh, they're fixing to get you. They're fixing to get you." And so I'm just like trying to be cool, whatever.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Walking out one day and I see him there. I I still picture it right now and I know everybody that was in the truck now. Been friends with a bunch of them. We just buried one of them uh from a drug overdose not long ago.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  But Chris Mangrum and, you know, Jimmy Womack, which is Worm, a good friend of mine that just passed away. And then his brother Sam was the one that was dating the girl. So they're all sitting there in a little red S10 pickup truck. There's about six of them in the truck and they're waiting for me. So I can remember like it was yesterday, it was tunnel vision. And I just see it and so I reach in my back and I pull that 38 out and I've got it behind my back and all of a sudden I just hit the ground. The school cop was just leaning up against the pillar, against the brick pillar. And I just, here comes this little kid walking by with a gun behind his back.

• 35:44Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  And he literally got me right there, took the gun from me, put me in handcuffs. And of course, once again, Waylon had a lot to do with me not going to juvenile for long. But they kicked me out of Metro Public Schools. So we had to leave that school.

• 36:08Shawn Ryan?

  What were you gonna do? Are you gonna wait for them to do something or were you just?

• 36:12Speaker 02

  I was probably gonna pull it out and, you know, at that point I had never shot a gun. I was ready to though. Like I was gonna protect myself, like I had it in my head. Like if I'm not gonna get beat up, I'm not gonna let them jump me. I had played Cowboys and Indians enough in my life that I probably would have shot one of them.

• 36:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Uh, you know. But I don't know. And I've never had anybody ask me that. I don't know what the hell I would have done. I might have dropped the gun and ran. I might have shot, I might have, uh, they might have all backed up and I might have took off running, you know? But, um, so they kicked me out of Metro Public Schools for a year. There was like a no, a zero tolerance policy with a handgun. And so my mother takes me to, um,

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Mount Juliet, which is like the next town up. And she enrolls me in Mount Juliet Christian Academy. So I get there and here I am once again, you know, a little thug, nobody knows who I am. Now I'm in a whole nother culture shock. You know, this is like country boys with like big jacked up trucks. At a Christian school. But we lived in this one little, it was an apartment complex, again, based on your income. And it was like just one little strip of one way in, one way out apartments.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  And it was the poor part of, you know, Mount Juliet. Just me and my mom at this point again. And so go to the school, I'm there for a couple of months. They say, hey, look, because at this point I'm in eighth grade. They're like, if the lights go out in the eighth grade hallway, just stand up against the lockers. It's just the high schoolers coming in. You know, they'll come in and knock stuff off the walls, push a couple of people over and run out the other side of the hallway, just like a hazing thing.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  So, lights go out. They're, you know, I see them running and I just lean up against the locker. I'm like, you know, whatever. And they stop right at me, grab me. And I'm like trying to fight back and they're like holding me down. And I could feel them just like, it was like stabbing in my forehead, you know? And I guess it went on for about a minute or two. And then they let me go and they took off out the hallway. So I went to the bathroom and they had carved [BLEEP] in my forehead.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Are you shitting me? Yeah. At how, how old were you? I was twelve, that's when I was in eighth grade. Holy shit. Probably at this point. And so, of course, you know, the teacher sends me to the office. I'm like, I got blood coming down my face and it, it, I don't know if it was a, I don't think it was like a knife per se, or maybe a, a pen that was like super dry or whatever, but they like etched it in there to the point where you could read it for, you know, a month or so, a couple of weeks, a few weeks or whatever, as it was scabbing and healing up. But it was their senior soccer team. You know, they didn't have football at that school, they just had soccer.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  So it was like they were the, you know, the soccer team that was winning the championship, you know? So it was one of those things, they just got demerits, the same thing you would get chewing bubble gum.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Well, around that time, I was still hanging out with the guys from the last school, you know, that I had met. And I went to the Hermitage Lanes every single weekend. It was like this bowling alley and then there was a movie theater across the street. So we get dropped off at the movie theater

• 40:24Speaker 02

  by our parents, you know? And then you'd walk across the street to the bowling alley where all the high school kids and everybody, you know, hung out.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  And I had told them, you know, they're all gang members and I had told them like, man, I wanna, I wanna be a part of that. And one day, as I'm walking through, six guys come out from the bushes. And they're like, you said you wanted to be a part of it, let's go. And sat there, I got jumped for six minutes by six people, just fighting back.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Um, trying not to hit the ground, every time I hit the ground, I'm trying to get right back up. And, you know, ended with a hug and went up to the, up to the lanes, to the bowling alley, you know, got a coat, hung out and.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  You know, started that path of at then then after that point, it didn't matter what neighborhood I went to, where my mom moved me to, I had people there.

• 41:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  You know, I wasn't I wasn't just a new kid. I'm like, oh, you're.

• 41:26Shawn Ryan?

  Initially, why did you want to join the gang? Was it for protection? You were tired of getting fucked with?

• 41:30Speaker 02

  I didn't have I was raised by a single mom. I didn't have any siblings.

• 41:34Shawn Ryan?

  You just wanted to belong to something?

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just want to be a part of something, you know, I wanted to have friends. I wanted to, you know, feel like, you know, I was a part of something.

• 41:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  My mom, you know, at that point, she was working two jobs and going to cosmetology school and trying to work on her music. You know, she was doing everything she could, just, you know, digging in the mud, trying to get us out, you know, and trying to prove that she could do it on her own and trying to make a way. And you know, that's one thing that I can say about my mom is she, you know, she may have, what some people would think, gave up a lot of times, but she never, she was a fighter. She never gave up. She's, you know, even to this day, you know, she's still trying to make ends meet, you know, and I do everything I can for her, of course, now, so she's not just, she definitely doesn't struggle at this point.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  But she's still, she still does struggle, you know, she's still, I've got a little brother that's eighteen, that uh, she's raising and taking care of.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  We don't really see eye to eye on that. He hasn't left the house in five years. He's a, plays video games and is caught in this bubble, you know, and she's a, you know, he kind of runs her ragged and tells her what to do and aggravates the shit out of me, you know, I want to go there and beat his ass. And my mom is like, well, no, he's like off limits. And I'm like, you're fucking enabling him.

• 43:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  He hasn't walked out the front door in five years, mom. He's gonna be fucked up. He's gonna be a fucking, you know, but. You know, she's got a million excuses for him like any mom would and you know, just

• 43:22Speaker 02

  kind of having to let her deal with that on her own, you know.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Not deal with it on her own, I'm here for her, hundred percent, but I'm having to let her make that decision because if it was up to me, I'd go drag his ass out that fucking house and say, no, you're gonna go to work. You're gonna go to the fucking gym, you're gonna, you know, finish high school. You know, he's online school, gaming all day and, you know, who knows, he might be the next fucking, he might invent the biggest video game in the world and be a multimillionaire, you know. But, you know, it drives me crazy to watch, especially when I talk to my mom and she's running to three different fast food joints to get him food, you know. Well, he likes fries from here and he likes the coke from here and he likes the meal from here and I'm like,

• 44:14Speaker 02

  make his fucking ass get up and go get it, like, you know, he's eighteen, he's never drove a car, like.

• 44:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  But, you know, I say all that definitely not to bash her because I love her and she's, she's doing the best that she knows to do. Uh, we can always do better, you know, any of us in life, you know. So I don't want to use the term best she can do because we can all do better, but

• 44:39Speaker 02

  uh, it is frustrating, especially like, you know, I'm a, I'm a man's man, I like to be out, outside, like, hard work. I like labor, you know, uh, I'm working

• 44:51Speaker 02

  seventy, eighty hours a week, you know, um.

• 44:55Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's go, so walk back in the bowling alley.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I walked back in the bowling alley and, uh, that was the beginning of me becoming a gang member and.

• 45:07Shawn Ryan?

  Was it immediate acceptance?

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:10Shawn Ryan?

  When you walked in there?

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure, especially there because of who brought me in. Um, now, through those years, especially like as I'm going.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  To different neighborhoods, moving to different places, meeting other members. There was a lot of discrepancy on if white boys could be GD. You know, that's what I was a part of, Gangster Disciple. What's it called? Gangster Disciple. Okay. GD, Larry Hoover, which, you know, they're fighting to get him out of prison now. Cause he's got, you know, hundreds of years, been in Supermax, Kanye West, Drake. Just teamed up with his son Larry Hoover Jr. To get him out because, you know, his. The thing about GD that made me gravitate towards it was it was originally Gangster Disciple. But then it evolved into Growth and Development.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  And as Larry Hoover, who was, you know, a street guy from Chicago. Was, you know, how, you know, he started this gang and it. It progressed as he went to jail and he started seeing the way things were and started to grow up as a man himself. It became less of a gang and more of an organization. And he changed. He evolved it from Gangster Disciple into Growth and Development. And would write, you know, these pieces of literature and knowledge to try to inspire. These what once were violent gang members into being business owners.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Into being, you know, politicians or, or, you know, whatever. So a lot of the knowledge that came from it.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Will live with me forever. You know, there's a lot of pieces of their literature that are inspiring. You know, there's laws and policies, there's codes, you know, you don't. A lot of these other gangs are free for all, killing each other and, and robbing and raping. Not allowed to rob, not allowed to rape, not allowed, you know, there was like a lot of. Rules that made you uphold a certain amount of integrity. Now, of course, everybody in the gang's not doing that. You know, it's still one of the most dangerous gangs in the world to this point, especially in the prison systems.

• 47:41Shawn Ryan?

  How many members roughly, do you know?

• 47:44Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't know for sure. I would definitely say anywhere from seven hundred and fifty thousand to one, one point five million. I mean.

• 47:53Shawn Ryan?

  Members?

• 47:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 47:54Shawn Ryan?

  Is this a global?

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:56Shawn Ryan?

  National?

• 47:57Speaker 02

  United States, national.

• 47:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 48:01Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, that's a big fucking gang.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's would be one of the largest. It's probably, you know, it probably is the largest if you take away, you know, Bloods and Crips, which are just, you know, they're the, they're, but like, once again, there's so many sets of those that a lot of Crips don't get along with other Crips. You know, you got the Five Deuce Hoover don't like to roll in sixties or, you know, whatever. They're constantly beefing amongst those gangs to where GD was one organization that was, you know, governed and actually, you know, had literature and laws and policies.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  And so it was, it was definitely, there was for me always having those seeds planted of righteousness.

• 48:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  It was, that was what I gravitated towards. You know, I had friends that were in all the gangs that I was seeing growing up, but that was always the one that, you know, sexy to me. That was the one that was like, I want to be that, you know.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  So, and, and, you know, and in the prison systems as well, they're the same. Like, you see the way that the GD's move in prison is completely different than a lot of other gangs. You know, um, they're more uniformed, they're, you know, they're out there working out. They're, you know, they're, they're like trying to better themselves. If they really follow the teachings of Larry Hoover or, you know, um, people in position that have written that literature about bettering yourself, you know. So, definitely was a, a major part of my life.

• 49:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  For twenty years, you know, uh, twenty-five years. So, um, getting the gang.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Next move after the whole thing at, um, Mount Juliet Christian Cat, and we moved back to Franklin.

• 50:18Shawn Ryan?

  You moved back to Franklin?

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Moved back to Franklin. This time we moved to the apartments right on the other side of Cherokee Projects, um, down by the ball field. Uh, lived in the back of the apartments. Once again, based on your income, um, a little trail goes up right into Cherokee Projects. I don't know if you know where that is?

• 50:41Shawn Ryan?

  I don't.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  Um, but so, you know, my mom's back working. Two jobs, going to cosmetology school. I'm at home by myself all the time. Um, and you know how it is, especially starting high school, you're the kid whose parents are never home. So, my house, my apartment became the hangout spot. Um, and it was, you know, the same thing, like, I was, I'd go to Wayland's on the weekends to spend time with Shooter. And at Wayland's house, you know, there's Cadillac, Jaguar, Mercedes, big house.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  I knew what was possible. Hearing the stories of Waylon coming from nothing, dirt floor in Texas, to becoming the icon that he was and, you know, the man that he was at the time, or will always be, but having him as a fatherly figure in my life. Of course, I wanted what he had. Going back to my neighborhood on the weekdays, the only guys that had Mercedes, Cadillacs, Jaguars were the drug dealers. My mom was never at home. She was working her ass off to barely make ends meet. I watched my mom break down while I was in high school in tears because I asked her for lunch money

• 52:07Speaker 02

  and she didn't have it to give me, you know. Which, once again, you know, that was her wanting, you know, I see the nobility in it. I see her wanting to prove that she could do it on her own. And I hope that she doesn't have a lot of regret from that because I could have had a completely different life.

• 52:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  You know, if she'd have listened to Waylon and listened to the family and... But, you know, we got all make our own path and she felt she was doing the right thing by breaking away from that. I try to teach my kids that now. Like, I'm not trying to keep you under a rule. I'm not trying to keep you contained. I want you to blossom. But I've been through shit. I've seen shit that I don't want you to ever have to see, that I don't ever want you to have to go through. It's the kind of same thing Waylon was doing to her. But she rebelled.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Wanting to prove that she didn't need their money. She didn't need, you know. It's like, yeah, you don't need my money. You know, all my kids know that. You don't need my money. You can go out there and get it. Like, you can be ten times more successful than I could ever be. You don't have to go through all this shit that I already went through. You know. If you just listen to me, it'll, the path will be a little easier. I'm not gonna say it's gonna be easy at all by any means. It's not gonna be easy. Everybody's path needs some roughness to it for you to even appreciate where you get.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  But, you know, when I look back at it, I do see the nobility and I see that she was, you know, really trying, you know. When I was younger, I had a little bit of resentment because I thought it was just stubbornness. And I was like, oh, she was just bucking the system. And now look at me, look at the life I've had to live and the things I've had to endure because I wouldn't change any of it. And now I applaud her for it, but also, you know, wanna tell my kids, like, hey, don't do that.

• 54:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  You know, like, uh, but, so we moved back to Franklin.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  Started Franklin High School.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Still had the gang affiliation. So, you know, I would still make trips to go see the guys in Hermitage or they'd come down to Franklin.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  Automatically linked up with the guys that were a part of the same gang in Franklin, you know.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Run around wild Franklin for years.

• 54:55Shawn Ryan?

  At what point did you start running drugs for them?

• 54:59Speaker 02

  Well, so I never actually ran drugs for the gang per se.

• 55:03Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  I actually dealt to most of them.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  I guess I was probably, um, the first time I ever started selling drugs was around twelve.

• 55:20Shawn Ryan?

  Twelve years old?

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, in middle school.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Getting small amounts of weed.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  Cocaine, anything that I could sell to make a little bit of money.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Fourteen, when we were living here, is when I got my first large amount, I got my first pound of weed. They were building Cool Springs Galleria.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  It wasn't even up yet. And I was living in some apartments called The Landings, right behind it. That was after Franklin High School.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  Went there for a year, got into a bunch of trouble, you know, running from the police, skipping school,

• 56:08Speaker 02

  fighting.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  And so my mom had tried to move us more, once again, fresh start, move us out towards Cool Springs. I went to Brentwood High School, which was, once again, another culture shock. You know, just those different environments, which really taught me that the environment doesn't change the person.

• 56:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  You know, you can adapt to the environment if you're willing. And the environment can definitely inspire you, or, you know, you can progress or fall backwards if you allow the environment to affect you like that. But the person's the person, you know, regardless where she put me, I was still the same person. I might change the way I dressed, I might change my accent a little bit, you know, but I was always the same person deep inside.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  So Brentwood High School, get a pound of weed from a guy, an older kid, and broke it up. And I remember the day they opened Cool Springs, I was in there with a backpack full of dime bags.

• 57:25Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  All my friends were like walking around trying to holler at the girls, and I'm trying to sell dime bags of weed, you know, I've got a backpack full of, you know, a pound of weed.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  And that was ninety-four, ninety-five, so I was fourteen, fifteen.

• 57:40Shawn Ryan?

  So what was the conversation like with whoever gave you the pound of weed? I mean, they were just like, hey, here's a pound of weed.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  No, it was, it was me looking for it.

• 57:49Shawn Ryan?

  You were looking for it.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was always looking for it. I had, I had kind of decided, you know, so I spent the weekends throughout my childhood.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  A lot of times either going to shooters in Waylands or going out and seeing my dad's side of the family in West Nashville. So when I would go out there with my uncle Tapole to West Nashville as a child, that's when I was around a lot of that. And I'd see the guys that were like, you know, hustling and selling weed and selling cocaine.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  So

• 58:26Speaker 02

  I was, I had pretty much made a decision by the time I was 12 that I want to be a drug dealer. Okay. You know, they were, uh, we were just talking about the other day, uh, in the gym with my friend Bobby. I was like, man, I still want to go get those Jordans from 92, the red and black ones. I know what you're talking about. The crossover it. And they had the blue and purple ones, and then they had the red and black ones and the, the things cross across the front of them. Cause I couldn't afford them. Back then, my mom couldn't afford to get them to me, get them for me. And I remember a guy named Randy Riser, he had them with the matching Bulls jersey.

• 59:09Speaker 02

  You know, and I can remember like yesterday, I wanted those shoes. Both pair, the, the, the Charlotte colored ones and the Chicago Bulls colored one. So

• 59:20Speaker 02

  we were just talking about that the other day, but it was around that era, you know, moving to Nashville and seeing, you know, guys that I would hear were selling drugs and, you know, they, they had the shoes I wanted, or they had the pretty girlfriend, or they had a car, you know, before they're even old enough to drive. And

• 59:41Speaker 02

  so I had realized at a young age that I wanted to do that.

• 59:46Speaker 02

  So was the money. It was the money. It was, I was tired of seeing my mom struggle. I wanted to make something. I was hearing my mother say that, I can do it without you. I can do it on my own. I can do it on my own. I can do it on my own. I could hear my dad's voice, son, you know, sometimes you might have to do wrong for what's right. You know, you take care of your family by any means necessary. You know, it's okay to do wrong if it's for the right reasons. You know, those, those irrational beliefs that were instilled in especially.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  Poverty areas, you know, and the families and it's that way of thinking. You know, it's like by any means necessary, whatever you got to do to feed your family. You know, try not to hurt nobody, but whatever you gotta do, family over everything. Yeah. You know.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  And that that was a big part of prison, stripping those irrational beliefs, tearing down all those. You know, those things that I had been ingrained with and taught for years as being law and truth. You know, and realizing like, no, that's completely fucking irrational. Yeah. Like, yeah, protect your family by any cost. But when I went to prison, the same people that I had justified all my actions and said, I'm doing this for my family. I'm doing this to feed my kids. I'm doing this to give my kids a better life. They're the ones that ended up in the fucking projects in drug houses, being molested and drug through the mud.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  While I'm in prison and can't protect them. Yeah. You know what I mean? So they became the victims when I justified all my fuck shit and all my poor decisions. By I was being a man and taking care of my family, when in actuality. Almost ruined my family, you know, how they went through so much because of the decisions I made. So that was a major, major part of my transformation. Oh, God. And me saying, here I am in prison, a guy that thinks I've got everything figured out. And I've got all this control. I've got this power in the street. I've got this power through money.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  I've got this, this say so, you know, I have no control. I'm behind bars. Anything can happen to them. They're going through this and I can't do anything. Yeah, I could maybe send a friend over there to try to protect them if something happened. Or I can send a friend over there with a couple of dollars to cover rent. But that's not, you know, the mother of my children was a fallen victim to addiction. So she's dragging them to the mud. She died like two years ago from a drug overdose. My youngest three's mom.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  So watching that happen and saying, I don't have any control.

• 1:02:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  This point, the only control I have is of me and of what I do at this time. And the control, uh, the, the opportunity to sit here and figure out

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  what I want out of life, who I want to be, who I am, who am I? Who do I not want to be and who do I want to be?

• 1:03:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  You know, and stripping all of that out, getting rid of all of it.

• 1:03:15Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, uh, let's stay on.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:18Shawn Ryan?

  Let's stay on gangs first. We'll get to prison.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:22Shawn Ryan?

  And then, uh, and then, and then into music, but so you're, you're 14, 13 or 14.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  14, 15.

• 1:03:29Shawn Ryan?

  You got pounded weed.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  Selling drugs.

• 1:03:32Shawn Ryan?

  Selling drugs at the Galleria.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:35Shawn Ryan?

  And what did that develop into?

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Um, developed into

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  just the same cycle for years, um, hanging out with a bunch of friends, you know, running around wild, breaking into cars. Comes to the point where, um,

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  my mother, I had ran away for a little while. She had called the police, of course. The police officer that showed up to the house, she kind of had a relate, started a relationship with him.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  So fast forward a few months later, uh,

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  I call her and I'm like, hey, you know, I think I want to go back to Brentwood, you know?

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  At this time, I'm at the new school. They had just built Centennial. I'm like, I think I want to go back to Brentwood, um.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  You know, can we see if we can get rezoned there, see if we can get me back in there? I'm just, I'm in the wrong crowd, I'm just, at this point, I'm like driving a stolen car to and from school, uh, breaking into cars at night, I'm selling weed during the day, you know? And she goes in my room, for whatever reason, finds some stuff that she thinks looks sketchy, calls her cop friend, says, "Hey, if there's stuff in the house, you know, will I be charged with it?" If, you know, and he's like, "Oh yeah, sure," and like, you know, whatever. He comes over there, searches the room, um, firearm, stole a bag full of stolen radios,

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  bags, weed residue, scales, you know, uh, and so they come pick me up from school. Um, tried to run, didn't work, um, took me to juvenile.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  Sitting in juvenile, uh, you know, my mom, when I get in there, they're interrogating me, they're asking me about the gang, asking me about my trips to Nashville to get drugs, uh, cause by this point, you know, I'm giving my mom money and I'm, she's my mom, you know, she was the only thing I ever had for a long time, so I had confided in her about some of my criminal activity and about what I was doing and, uh,

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  and so she had told them, of course, everything I had told her. And so I get in there and they're interrogating me and I just, you know, I just completely shut down, didn't tell them anything.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  Uh, going to court, they're seeking to send me off to D Y D, which is Department of Youth Development. Could have been there as far as up to twenty-one, you know, but probably eighteen is probably where, it probably would have been about three years incarcerated.

• 1:06:40Shawn Ryan?

  So this is fifteen, you're in juvie.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  And I'd already been to juvie a couple of times before uh for a grand theft auto. Yeah. My mom's door got kicked in for that.

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  She had been with uh she was in another abusive relationship. Me and the guy actually pulled guns on each other at fifteen, right before all that other stuff happened. And uh but he was the same way. He was putting his hands on her and stuff. Which we got him back the good way. We he had a BMW. He thought he was all cool, you know. He came out one day. The thing was completely destroyed. No windows, no tires, no wheels. Gas tank uh full of sugar, you know, just we completely uh he put his hands on my mom. One too many times. Um but

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  uh so I'm sending juvenile. They're looking to send me a D Y D. And it was like out of a movie. I'm like in the courtroom and like a door swings open and you hear these fucking cowboy boots clicking across the floor. And it was whaling and he came in there and

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  talked to the judge behind the chambers. And pretty much just told him like, hey, this kid just needs a father figure. His uncle Tadpole, who was my dad's brother, has stepped up, said he wants to take custody of him. You know, give this kid another chance. So moved from Franklin to West Nashville, to where my dad's side of the family was. My uncle Tadpole was hustler.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Drug dealer, hardworking motherfucker, though. Construction, cars, hydraulic work, I mean, every bit of it. He can do it. He's great at it and he's always been a super hard worker. But of course, you know, if he can make a couple of extra dollars selling a couple of pounds of weed, he would, you know. Um like to grow his own weed.

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  And uh I didn't know any of that at this point, though, you know, like I moved in like, oh, man, I'm going to I'm send me to prison. Like he's fixing to kick my ass because he's just old West Nashville tough motherfucker and.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  So I get with him, uh, I get taken out of my mom's custody.

• 1:09:09Speaker 02

  And get put into custody with my uncle Tabo. He, uh, automatically, straight out the gate, puts me to work. I got chores, you know, uh, taught me how to rebuild a motor.

• 1:09:26Speaker 02

  Teaching me construction, you know, doing construction on the weekends, whatever job he may be on at the time. And, um,

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  lived with him for about two years, but so I moved out to West Nashville with him. And of course, new environment, same thing. I know a lot of the kids already because I had been out there on the weekends and, you know, went to the skating rink and, you know, um.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  Changed high schools, went to high school out there, immediately found the guys that smoked weed, started smoking weed.

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  One of the neighbors, uh, that I had known from the skating rink, happened to be a weed dealer, jumped right back into it. Fell right back into it. Right back into it.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  But Tabo was a different animal. You couldn't get over on him. Like, you know, anything that you're doing, he's gonna, he's gonna know. So where with my mom, I could walk to the store, smoke a couple of joints and come back high. She wouldn't know I was high. You know, uh, Tabo was like, where the hell did you get that? You know, like, what was going on? And so, once I had kind of proved myself to him, you know, then he started to like, okay, well, it's in you. You're not gonna just change overnight. Let me just teach you how to be smart, how to do good business, how to work hard. And he, he taught me how to be a man, you know?

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  He taught me how to work with my hands, not be afraid of, you know, hard work and putting the work in myself.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  Taught me how to grow weed, taught me how to sell weed, taught me how to not get caught by the police. You know, taught me how to, you know, uh, budget money, feed my family. Taught you a lot of shit. Taught me a lot of shit, you know, um.

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  Just found out a few days ago, he's got stage four cancer. They just cut part of his lung out. He been hiding it from me.

• 1:11:40Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  He's just so tough some bitch, but.

• 1:11:43Shawn Ryan?

  Sorry to hear that.

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's gonna, I think, I think he's got a lot of fight left in him. He'll be around for a while. I don't see this being the end of anything yet.

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  But, you know, if it is, he lived a fucking hell of a life.

• 1:11:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  And he definitely, uh, his legacy will live on through me and my kids. Cause I still, you know, I still teach my kids a lot of the same principles that he's, you know, instilled in me.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  But so moving to West Nashville, falling right back into the same thing.

• 1:12:20Shawn Ryan?

  When did, when did it go from weed to opiates to cocaine?

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was, it was weed, it was weed and cocaine out of the gate. And then ended up just being weed for a long time. When I was seventeen, I got addicted to cocaine.

• 1:12:41Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  I was selling cocaine, started playing with it a little bit. Um, well, I guess sixteen ish, yeah, sixteen, cause it was, uh, my, my prom. I'd been up for four days. And my, I've got some friends that still pop up my prom pictures every once in a while. I'd be like, fuck, yeah, my eyes are this big, I'm like, bleached blonde hair and shit before Eminem. Uh, bleached blonde hair, eyes big as hell.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  But, um, yeah, so I guess about sixteen, you know, late sixteen, early seventeen.

• 1:13:22Shawn Ryan?

  How much cocaine were you pushing?

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  At, at, when it first started, just a couple ounces at a time, you know, which is still, you know, a few thousand dollars, so.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  Sixteen years old, you know, you got ten grand put up, you're rich. Yeah. So. Started off and I was doing.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  Probably consuming a half ounce a day, you know, just between partying with everybody and, you know.

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  But I was selling enough to where I was still making good money and.

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  But dealing with cocaine, you burn a lot of bridges, especially when you're using. So I was burning bridges left and right and then got to a point where I was a quote unquote cowboy, you know, I was robbing just as much as I was selling. Damn. Kicking, you know, finding big lakes and, you know, kicking doors in and wilding out like literally being a fucking young terrorist, you know, just terrorizing.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  In any form that I could.

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  Right about eighteen, nineteen, found out that I was having my first daughter.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  I'd just been low level, low level drug dealer, I guess it was eighteen when I found out. Low level drug dealer, you know, selling enough to keep my habit and still make money and, you know, wear gold jewelry and drive a decent car and, you know, party and

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  be known for being a drug dealer, but definitely nothing substantial.

• 1:15:10Speaker 02

  And I found out that, you know, through, you know, just when you're living that life, you may be rich one day, you know, and then next day lose it all, you know.

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  So, right before I found out, the day I found out, earlier that day, my hotel room was up, didn't have any cocaine, didn't know what I was gonna do, where I was gonna go.

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  Pulled a nine millimeter that I had had out. Put it to my head.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  Crying tears, ready to just end it all. Still living with that regret, you know, from my father, thinking that he had committed suicide and

• 1:16:01Speaker 02

  the girl that I was with had left me, you know?

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  And

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  right as I pulled it back, they just, they're beating on the door. And I just, all I remember is thinking, I don't know where to go. Can't go to my mom's. At this point, I'm kicked out. Me and Tab Pole have already fell out. We're not seeing eye to eye right now.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  You know? Really, no friends that I trust. You know, nobody that I can really call on to go crash on their couch or, you know?

• 1:16:42Shawn Ryan?

  So the gang wasn't really working out at this point?

• 1:16:44Speaker 02

  No, it's, they're all in the same position I'm in.

• 1:16:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  They're all in the same situations. They're all doing the same thing that I'm doing.

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  And

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  so

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  I remember vividly being like,

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  this isn't where I want to die. I'm in the Congress Inn on Dickerson Road. Like shitty hotel, you know?

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  This can't be it.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  Get up and I leave.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  I went, walked to my mom's house, which was straight up the street, about three, four miles.

• 1:17:30Speaker 02

  I go over there.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  Get a couple of my things, pack a little bag. I'm not allowed to stay there. She's got a, at this point, she's got a fiance that's doing really good for himself, you know? He's not abusive. He's, he was an awesome guy. She was with him for a couple of years. And they gave us, they gave me a chance to live there before and I had gotten into a shootout with a guy and blew this half of my finger off.

• 1:18:03Shawn Ryan?

  What was the shootout over?

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  Drugs. Same shit as always.

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  But my mom had came home and I was laying on her couch, passed out, covered in blood and shit.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  And so there was just a lot of times when there were

• 1:18:21Speaker 02

  those moments where she was just like, I've had enough, I can't do this, you know? She never gave up on me though. Again, like, that's why as soon as I got a record label, I recorded an album with her. Because, you know, trying to give her that back and be able to give her some of that because she gave up her career, a lot of it. You know, we talked about her nobility and stubbornness and stuff, but a lot of it was chasing my badass around, you know? Trying to figure, we were figuring life out together. She was sixteen, she was just a baby. You know, we kind of raised each other.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  But, uh, so I was kicked out of my mom's.

• 1:19:00Speaker 02

  My best friend, uh, Crazy Jay, who he's doing eighty-two years, he had just got picked up.

• 1:19:10Speaker 02

  When I got kicked out of my mom's, he was staying with me. So he went out to South Nashville to stay with another friend of ours.

• 1:19:19Speaker 02

  And somebody had robbed them. He chased the guy down, the guy shot at him, he shot back, killed the guy. Freaked out because he was seventeen, freaked out. There was a, you know, a junkie, a drug addict, running around the neighborhood. He paid the guy twenty dollars to get rid of the body. Because he didn't know what to do, he was seventeen, he flipped out. The guy drags the body around the back of the store, throws a mattress over it, sets it on fire. Takes the gun, takes everything out the guy's pockets. So when the police come, it looks like a robbery and somebody tampering with the body, you know?

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  There was no, uh, proof of a shootout, no proof the guy shot at my cousin first, or my best friend first. You know, so he's been sitting in prison. Hopefully, it looks like this year he might get some love and maybe get, um, because he's been in twenty-five years, you know, since he was seventeen, he's forty-two now.

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  And it was self-defense, you know, there's no proof of that, there's no way to prove that. But uh, I know that Governor Bill Lee's trying to do some reform with some of those old murders. Guys that, you know, got life sentences seventeen to twenty-one and have done over twenty years of their sentence. Giving them parole options, they don't have that. So, uh, hopefully he's gonna get some love, but so he had just went, you know, I didn't really have anybody else at the time.

• 1:20:58Speaker 02

  Took a uh, bus back to West Nashville. Cause at this time I was living in East Nashville where my mom had been. And um, where the girl that I had met and was dating had been, but me and her were like broke up, whatever. Moved back to West Nashville and uh, she comes out there and tells me that day. She was, cause I called her from a payphone, like, hey, just letting you know, I'm in West Nashville now. She's like, I got something I gotta tell you where you at, gave her the address, she pulled up over there and told me, I'm pregnant. It's yours. I'm like, well, we ain't been together in six months, like, ah, you know, it's mine.

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  And she was like, trust me, it's yours, like, it's six months, I wasn't fucking with nobody else when we were fucking around. So then I was like, okay, well, this is the time when I need to change my life, you know? Quit doing cocaine, quit robbing and settle down to become a weed dealer, right? It's kind of what you did, what you kind of did in my neighborhood, like, you settle down to do good business, you know, instead of uh. Instead of living on the edge. Yeah. So uh, of course I had a lot of bridges I had to mend and I had a reputation I had to rebuild. Cause you know, nobody's gonna meet me in a dark alley to buy weed from me. And I think I'm a robber or something. So uh.

• 1:22:26Speaker 02

  Linked up with some people, started selling weed again, rebuilt that. A lot of those relationships in the streets, bought our first house. And then it just snowballed. Met a friend from high school that I hadn't seen in a long time. Come to find out, he was the man, you know? He had, since high school, had, you know, moved up the ranks and was, had the weed, had a lot of weed. So, you know, went from getting one or two pounds to getting a hundred pounds.

• 1:23:00Shawn Ryan?

  When you're building a weed network or a weed business, or any drug business, how, how did you start? I mean, because it's not like you're getting referrals and shit, right?

• 1:23:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of times.

• 1:23:13Shawn Ryan?

  You gotta hit it.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  You're meeting people, you know?

• 1:23:16Shawn Ryan?

  Hanging out at parties, just handing it out, or?

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  You're just living life.

• 1:23:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  Everybody smokes weed back then, you know? I guess everybody really smokes weed now, it's legal half the places, but. And you just get a reputation for having good weed, doing good business, you know? I always tried to be, uh, super competitive with prices. And I always just had good energy. People wanted to buy from me, people wanted to be friends, they wanted to be a part of whatever I was doing.

• 1:23:52Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  Um, there's one thing that I always had, was that light in me, you know? I had that light, like, I'm gonna do something great. I don't know what the fuck it is, but I'm gonna do something. So I was, you know, especially in those older years, I was super popular, you know, as far as well-known. I guess is what it would be.

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, it is that you build a network, you know, you just, a lot of times like, oh yeah, you know, the person that I'm selling weed to goes and tells the person they used to buy weed from, uh, and then eventually you just get clientele, uh.

• 1:24:38Shawn Ryan?

  Was it territorial at all back then? Did you have to worry about where you're selling?

• 1:24:43Speaker 02

  Uh, I never really dealt with that that much because, um, you know, I was a gang member.

• 1:24:50Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  Uh, even at my height, when I was selling, you know, kilos of cocaine and hundreds of pounds of weed, I would sell to the other major gang members, you know, like the guys that were, um, the big homies.

• 1:25:09Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:25:10Speaker 02

  Uh, so yeah, I didn't have too much. I, I never really had a lot of problems with, uh, people trying to rob me because I already had the reputation of having a gun and using a gun and being willing to go to any lengths to, you know, protect mine.

• 1:25:31Shawn Ryan?

  How many shootouts do you think you've been in?

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 1:25:37Speaker 02

  More than I could count.

• 1:25:39Shawn Ryan?

  How would they transpire? You only shot twice?

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  I've been shot twice, yeah. Um, what was, what was the question you asked?

• 1:25:46Shawn Ryan?

  How would they kind of transpire?

• 1:25:49Speaker 02

  Uh, you know what? Most of the times that I've been in shootouts has been me coming to the aid of somebody else. Uh, two people getting into an argument, somebody robbing somebody that I knew, um, or trying to rob somebody that I knew and me going to.

• 1:26:12Speaker 02

  Try to save somebody.

• 1:26:14Shawn Ryan?

  So a lot of this wasn't actually from dealing?

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  Um, it comes with it.

• 1:26:20Shawn Ryan?

  Was from protection.

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  Because it'd be like, you know, uh, you got a guy on the other side of town that tries to rob one of your good friends of some of your stuff.

• 1:26:30Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, they're robbing drugs.

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, robbing drugs or, um, I've got two assault charges on my record. Uh, both of them are from seeing a guy beating up a girl, intervening, getting the guy off the girl. Both times the girl called the cops on me. That I just saved her fucking ass, you know what I mean? Like, all of the, a lot of the trouble, a lot of the violence that I've been in has always been coming to the aid of somebody else. Cause like I said, nobody really brought it to my door. I had a reputation of I will come down through there and light this bitch up.

• 1:27:06Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  You know? Um.

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  So a lot of things, and I've always been one of those guys. My dad told me when I was a kid, told me that my name, William, meant Defender of the Week.

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  So I always had that in the back of my head. So anytime, you know, somebody was getting bullied or, you know, through high school or anything, I never condoned that. Like, I would be the first one to jump in front of five people and try to fight all five of them for picking on somebody, you know? Um, cause my dad had just instilled that in me and gave me that. So I held on to that as well as, you know, protecting the women that I love and the women in my life and all women. I held on to those as like badges of honor because it was, you know, the last thing that I remember my dad really talking to me about.

• 1:28:06Speaker 02

  So yeah, I've been in a lot of shootouts.

• 1:28:14Shawn Ryan?

  You got shot twice?

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  Been shot twice, been shot in the shin and then in the back of the leg.

• 1:28:19Shawn Ryan?

  Same gunfight?

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  No, two totally different ones.

• 1:28:22Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, let's go into those.

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:24Shawn Ryan?

  Where'd you get hit first?

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  Uh, the first time was in the back of the leg.

• 1:28:29Speaker 02

  And once again, a friend of mine, we're at the movie theaters. He had heard this girl was cheating on him, pulls up to the movie, runs it, runs in, can't find her. We go out back to smoke a cigarette. She's out back with the guy.

• 1:28:47Speaker 02

  We run over there, all his friends are there. My friend's frantic, his girlfriend's messing around on him and quick scuffle, gun, running.

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  I'm shooting back, they're shooting at us. Didn't even realize I was hit. Felt the pressure, kind of knocked me down, thought I had tripped.

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  A few minutes later, felt the burning, thumping pain of, of it, you know, hit me, hit me in the back of the leg and my hamstring.

• 1:29:25Speaker 02

  Second time,

• 1:29:28Speaker 02

  the Wendell Smith's parking lot, West Nashville, on the corner of Marrow Road in Charlotte.

• 1:29:37Speaker 02

  I had been in another shootout where I had actually hit somebody.

• 1:29:43Shawn Ryan?

  Where'd you hit him?

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  Uh, shoulder, leg, twice, leg.

• 1:29:52Speaker 02

  And it was a retaliation, guy saw me, was like, oh, that struggle.

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  Quick altercation, car to car. He draws, I duck, I'm shooting over the car, he's shooting. Bullet comes underneath the car, catches just the right way, bounces off the concrete, hits me right here in the shin.

• 1:30:19Shawn Ryan?

  Into the bone?

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:20Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:30:21Speaker 02

  Shattered that thing.

• 1:30:28Shawn Ryan?

  What happened to the guy you hit?

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  Uh, he left. He did? Um, I had a friend had called me, said, hey, man, I got a guy that's got something. Um, these guys wanna buy ten pounds. I really need to do this deal. I need to make some money. My girl's pregnant. I'm like, alright, cool, you know, whatever. Go to do the deal with him. It was a setup. We get in the car. My buddy goes, does the transaction, comes back, money's counterfeit. I know it's counterfeit as soon as he puts it in my hand. So, the, one of the guys that's in the front seat is one of their friends.

• 1:31:13Speaker 02

  So, of course, I put a gun to him, like, tell the other guy, catch up to him. Pull up side by side, I'm like, hey, man, I'm yelling through the window, hey, money's no good. Like, let's just, let's make this easy, make this, you know, exchange. They act like they're gonna pull the weed. I put the weed out the window.

• 1:31:33Speaker 02

  Pull the bag back.

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  Nine millimeter Beretta comes out the window. Toot toot toot toot toot toot. I'm wearing a two-door Saturn. I'm in the backseat.

• 1:31:43Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:31:45Speaker 02

  They fired every one of those into that back window.

• 1:31:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's a little ass window.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, every one of them. And I just remember just sitting there, and I'm like, fucking praying in my head, you know what I mean? Like, there's nothing I can do right now, you know? I mean, it's just fire after fire after fire after fire after fire, and I'm froze.

• 1:32:08Speaker 02

  Soon as I hear it stop, they're pulling off, I raise up, just start shooting. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I've got a forty-four, um, short dog-like, uh, revolver. Got two speed reloaders locked in my pocket. Lighten, lighten the car up. We're driving like this, we're on Bradley Parkway. Finally, the car goes to the side, veers off. We're driving too fast, we pull up, I see one of the guys take off running. We go up, come back down the exit, come back up. And one of the guys is hit. The other guys are gone, out of the car.

• 1:32:48Speaker 02

  The guy who was with me, they had thrown a bag out before they went off. We stopped and said, go get that. And wait right here for us, you know. Of course, he didn't, he ran off too. Which we found them all and, you know, I got all my stuff back. But uh.

• 1:33:12Speaker 02

  When we looked at that car the next morning, it looked like, and I had, you know, my face was like strawberry, you know, like powder burnt and stuff, like I had marks on me and stuff. Wasn't hit a single time. Damn. Every one of those bullet holes was through the seat. No shit. Like, literally like they went through me. Every single one of them. Wow. Uh, another one of those moments that brought me closer to God. Yeah. Okay. There's definitely, so somebody's got my back right now. The shit doesn't just happen like this. Yeah, this, that's not, it's, you know, I have some kind of purpose.

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  Had a few instances like that, it's the reason I quit smoking weed when I was 21. A friend of mine called me, said, I got these stories for days, dog. But a friend calls me, he's like, hey, man, you know, I got somebody that wants to buy some weed. And I'm like, alright, cool. Come to the house, he comes to the house, we ride over, I pick it up from where I kept everything. And me and my baby mom at the time had been arguing. So I had a bag full of clothes where I had went and stayed at a hotel, cause me and her were arguing. Got a bag full of clothes in the back. Run in, grab the 10 pounds he wants, put it in the car, driving to the park.

• 1:34:35Speaker 02

  And I've been, you know, I'm sitting here smoking, uh, back to back, you know, blunts. And I'm sitting in the car, we're in the park, waiting on him, you know, his person to come pick it up or whatever. All of a sudden, I hear a scuffle and they start shooting. Boom, boom, boom. And so I put the car and drive and duck down and mash the gas as he's jumping in the front of the car. Blew the headrest off of my seat.

• 1:35:07Speaker 02

  They had run up from my side, but because I was smoking, I wasn't paying any attention. And I quit smoking weed that day because I was like, you know what? I can't live this life and be out of my element.

• 1:35:21Shawn Ryan?

  Man, how like, you know, a lot of people get it. Coming from a military background and being in war for fourteen years, you get addicted to this shit.

• 1:35:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:30Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, that adrenaline, there's

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 1:35:33Shawn Ryan?

  There's no drug in the world that can give you a high like fucking getting shot at in the middle of a gunfight.

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  No, for sure.

• 1:35:41Shawn Ryan?

  You know?

• 1:35:41Speaker 02

  Especially if you're allowed to do it.

• 1:35:45Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I think it might be more adrenaline if you're not allowed to do it.

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:49Shawn Ryan?

  Because then you got two things to worry about. But um, but do you think you got addicted to that lifestyle?

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  Oh, a hundred percent.

• 1:35:56Shawn Ryan?

  Addicted to that adrenaline at all?

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  A hundred percent, and I still, I still crave it.

• 1:35:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  You know, uh, I've been out of prison six years now. I did five years in prison, so I'm eleven years removed from that life. Eleven, eleven years because I was all the way up until the day I got locked up. But eleven years removed from that life and uh, I still crave it.

• 1:36:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:15Speaker 02

  I've got, I have friends that don't do anything illegal, but they'll keep something illegal around them just because they crave having something to hide.

• 1:36:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:24Speaker 02

  Having something to feel like they're still in that element, you know?

• 1:36:31Shawn Ryan?

  That's interesting.

• 1:36:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I definitely, of course crave it. I, I find a lot of relief in the gym.

• 1:36:41Speaker 02

  Touring, on stage, you know? Um, I get to release a lot of it, writing songs about it, you know?

• 1:36:52Speaker 02

  But I still, I, I crave, I crave the chaos.

• 1:36:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:57Speaker 02

  You know? Um, and my, my life's chaotic enough to where I get enough of it. And I've still got so much, even though I'm removed, you know, uh, I still get calls of, you know, um, so many family members dying from overdoses, gang violence, DUI, suicides, like nonstop. Um, that's why I did the song, did the cover for Have You Ever Seen The Rain? Cause it's like, even though this is my best life yet, and it seems like our brightest hour, it is still thunderstorming on us. And I still have a lot of that chaos. I'm removed enough from it, you know, to where how I deal with it is my choice now.

• 1:37:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You can manage it.

• 1:37:45Speaker 02

  I can manage it. I don't put, I'm not in a, I don't put myself in situations to where it's fight or flight and I have to deal with it right there, you know, but, and I've got a couple of friends that I still call to get a little bit of the tea, get a little gossip, you know, to see what's going on in the neighborhood, just to kind of.

• 1:38:01Shawn Ryan?

  Keep a pulse on things.

• 1:38:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Kind of feel, get a few minutes like, what happened? You know, but, um, yeah, no, it's definitely, uh, definitely addicting. More than the money.

• 1:38:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:15Speaker 02

  You know, being the man or having that power and that constant strategic, well, I gotta move like this cause they're moving like this and, you know, playing that game is so addicting.

• 1:38:33Shawn Ryan?

  The tactics of it all.

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:38:35Shawn Ryan?

  And the trade draft.

• 1:38:37Speaker 02

  Yes. Especially when you get like up to higher levels, you know, like one of the most fulfilling things is when I sit down, when I used to sit down with a guy and be like, you know, he had reached out to a friend, wanted to get drugs from me, you know, wanted to get some weight. And he reached out to a friend and so I sit down with him, you know, I'm like, okay, well, cool. Like I'll sit down, we'll talk, meet at a restaurant on, you know, Thursday or something. And I'll sit down with him and I'm like, uh, all right, cool. So, you know, what are you looking for? He tells me what do you, how much he wants. I'm like, all right, cool. What do you want? Dropped off at your mom's house, your baby mom's house, your sister's house? And he's like.

• 1:39:22Speaker 02

  How do you know where all those people live and be like, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you if I didn't know where all those people lived? You know, that's, there's a, there's like a power and like a, uh, adrenaline and even, uh, you know, being that,

• 1:39:37Speaker 02

  that strategic and, and being that guy, you know?

• 1:39:41Shawn Ryan?

  You let them know, you know?

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:43Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck me over.

• 1:39:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:44Shawn Ryan?

  I know where everybody lives.

• 1:39:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm, I'm here, like.

• 1:39:49Speaker 02

  So, of course, there's like, and, you know, as much as we can sit here and talk about it and get kind of riled up, there's no glory in it.

• 1:39:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:57Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Like, it's, it tears the threads of this beautiful country apart.

• 1:40:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:04Speaker 02

  I'm watching so many loved ones, fucking great people, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, die from drugs, especially with this, you know, with fentanyl and the opiates now. In the last four years,

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  I watched my three youngest kids and my two stepchildren's entire family disappear.

• 1:40:31Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:40:33Speaker 02

  So me and my wife, we've been best friends for, like I said, twenty years. We're in two, we're in different relationships. I was with my ex-wife, who I had three kids with, and she, my wife now was our best friend. And, uh, she

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  lived with us, you know, my, the mother of my kids had a drug problem off and on most of our relationship. And so, you know, she'd be in and out, um,

• 1:41:06Speaker 02

  not physically, but, you know, uh, mentally and, you know, drug wise. And so, my wife now, taboo, she helped me raise my sixteen-year-old daughter.

• 1:41:20Speaker 02

  Izzy, like she was there from birth. Because the mother of my child was, you know, of course, she dealt postpartum and used that as an excuse to stay fucked up for months. And, um, But she was one of our best friends and then when my ex-wife's brother got out of prison, they hooked up. So my wife then and my wife now, so my, my wife that I, my ex-wife that I had three kids with, her brother and my wife now had two kids.

• 1:41:54Shawn Ryan?

  So your sister-in-law, not by?

• 1:41:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, but not by, they, they actually never got married.

• 1:41:59Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:41:59Speaker 02

  But so, so you got me and my wife now, I was with a, a girl. And my wife now was with the girl I was with's brother.

• 1:42:11Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:42:12Speaker 02

  Um, so our kids are first cousins.

• 1:42:15Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:42:17Speaker 02

  Um, but then when I, by the time I came home from prison, my wife had went all the way out. My ex-wife had went all the way out bad, um, to the point of, you know, back page and, you know, and she was out there, out there.

• 1:42:33Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 1:42:35Speaker 02

  And I tried to save her. We sent her to multiple rehabs, you know, every time she'd be in and out of them. We'd buy her new clothes and try to, you know, give her a support system, but she had left the kids. My kids were in foster care when I came home from prison.

• 1:42:50Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:42:51Speaker 02

  But in the last, I've watched my ex-wife die from an overdose. Her dad died from an overdose. My stepkids, my ex-wife's brother, my wife now's baby daddy, just died in February from a drug overdose. Their other brother, Zach, just died from a drug overdose. Their grandmother died from an overdose and their mom just died from an overdose.

• 1:43:20Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:43:21Speaker 02

  So my, so my kids, grandpa, grandma, great-grandma.

• 1:43:27Speaker 02

  My kid's mother.

• 1:43:29Shawn Ryan?

  Uncle's.

• 1:43:30Speaker 02

  Uncle, and then my stepkids, father, aunt, grandmother. Like, our five of our kids just lost six of their family members in two, three, four years.

• 1:43:43Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  From drug overdoses. You know, and that's one of the beautiful parts about me and my wife's relationship is we're the two that made it out of that fire.

• 1:43:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:51Speaker 02

  You know, when I came home from prison, I was like, I want to be with you. I want to spend my life with you. You're my best friend. And she was like, fuck you. She was like, I'm not having it, you know? But, uh, as she says, I was persistent, you know? Um.

• 1:44:08Speaker 02

  I knew what it could be. We had been through the hell together, you know? So I knew, and I knew I had a rough road. I knew that, you know, fighting to get custody of my kids back, staying clean, breaking the, breaking the, um, statistics, you know, not going back to my old ways. Really focusing on music and focusing on whatever I was gonna do to pay the bills. Uh, I knew it was gonna be a tough road while dealing with probation and parole, you know? But I was determined, and I had went through so much in those five years in prison, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, that I knew I was ready and I knew I was gonna make the best out of the rest of my life.

• 1:44:52Speaker 02

  And that I was not gonna go back. I was not gonna fall victim to those, you know, to the streets and to my own way of thinking.

• 1:45:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:02Speaker 02

  My old, own way of thinking.

• 1:45:06Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's, uh, let's take a quick break.

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:09Shawn Ryan?

  Then when we come back, I want to talk about the big bus in Nashville Airport, prison, how you got started in music.

• 1:45:16Speaker 02

  Sounds good.

• 1:45:22Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of you have heard me talk about my psychedelic journey this year and all the benefits that came from doing it. One being, I haven't drank in seven months. I haven't had any caffeine in seven months. My anxiety's gone, my anger's gone. A whole list of benefits came from that. And that led me down this journey of researching benefits of mushrooms and fungi in general. And in my research, I found this company called Mudwater. Mudwater is a coffee alternative with four adaptogenic mushrooms and herbs. With a fraction of the caffeine as a cup of coffee, you get energy without anxiety, jitters, or the crash of coffee.

• 1:46:03Shawn Ryan?

  What I really like about Mudwater is that they took the time to find the perfect ingredients to make a product that's gonna make you feel better every day. I genuinely believe that this is a good product. Mudwater is Whole30 approved, 100% USDA organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, vegan, and kosher certified. Mudwater also donates monthly to the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, as Mudwater believes the country is in a mental health epidemic, and so do I. Go to mudwtr.com/shawn to support the show and use code Shawn for 15% off.

• 1:46:43Shawn Ryan?

  That's mudwtr.com/shawn, use code Shawn for 15% off. Serious question. Who wants to take the best shit of their entire life? Right here, I do. How do you do that? You go with Bubs Naturals Collagen Protein. You rip the thing open, you put it in your coffee, you stir it up, and you're on your way. Now, if taking the best shit of your entire life doesn't interest you, collagen will also give you beautiful hair, great skin, and nails to die for.

• 1:47:27Shawn Ryan?

  So, and you'll recover a lot quicker in between workouts, if that's your thing. So now that we got the good shit out of the way, get it? Let me tell you a little bit about Bubs the Company. Bubs is a tribute company to Glenn Bubs Doertie, who was a Navy SEAL and a CIA contractor, who died defending American freedom in Benghazi, Libya. Bubs donates 10% of all proceeds to veteran organizations like the Glenn Doertie Foundation, and 100% of all proceeds on Veterans Day. Let me tell you about Bubs's latest product that helps with energy, healthy digestion, your immune system, and your metabolism.

• 1:48:13Shawn Ryan?

  Bubs Naturals Apple Cider Vinegar Gummies, which actually tastes so damn good that I ate all 60 of them the first night I got them. They taste amazing, and man, I got a lot of energy now. Anyways, go to bubsnaturals.com, use promo code Shawn to take 20% off your order. Thank you, Bubs Naturals, for being a sponsor of The Shawn Ryan Show.

• 1:48:47Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Struggle, so we're back from the break. We're getting into the biggest cocaine bust in Nashville history, which was...

• 1:48:55Speaker 02

  Maybe still to this day.

• 1:48:56Shawn Ryan?

  All you.

• 1:48:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, all my guys, man.

• 1:48:59Shawn Ryan?

  So let's walk through that deal.

• 1:49:03Speaker 02

  Well, I'll kind of start from the beginning, because the story is, even going farther, I haven't actually ever said this on an interview, just six months ago, I guess it's been. Six months, babe? Baby, baby?

• 1:49:24Speaker 02

  About six months ago, they called me and they told me that my dad's sister, Baby Baby, my aunt, is passing. She's only got a couple of days to live. And this woman was like, she's my, you know, my aunt, she's been, you know, such a great, great force in my life, like, she's always there when I needed her, you know, whether it was financial problems, legal problems, she always showed up. Baby Baby was a warrior. She had uh, two sons that are my two cousins that are still on death row right now. Yeah. For killing their dad. Uh, who was abusive, you know?

• 1:50:05Speaker 02

  But she's a, she was just, you know, she's been through hell and back. Baby Baby's, you know, she's been at the bottom of the barrel, grinded her way up, hustled her whole life, scratched, clawed, you know, been in terrible relationships, you know, um, and she's just, she was a survivor. So they called me and they told me Baby Baby's passing. She's only got a couple of days. She might not make it through tonight. So I go over there and I see her and her spirit is just one that I hope that I have in my final days. You know, her son was like, Mama, this is the most I've seen, seen you eat in days.

• 1:50:49Speaker 02

  And she goes, it's the last supper, motherfucker. (laughing) So it's just that uh, that spirit, you know, and I'm like, Baby, what are you doing? She's like, I'm just waiting to see what's on the other side of this door, Baby Baby. You know, so that's why we called her Baby Baby, because she always goes, oh yeah, Baby Baby, like, that's how she talks, so. Um, but so we're sitting there

• 1:51:17Speaker 02

  and I've got my arm around Baby Baby. And like I said, this woman's been a very, very, very powerful force in my life, like a rock. I mean, never gave up on me, you know, um.

• 1:51:34Speaker 02

  I would want my daughters to strive to be as strong as this woman. She's been through hell and back. And uh, never gave up, never lost hope, you know, always just been a fighter.

• 1:51:54Speaker 02

  They never took shit from anybody, you know. Literally pulled up to her house before and she's sitting out by her pool. And there's bullet holes all in the window. I'm like, baby, what in the hell happened? She was like, oh, that motherfucker, talking about her husband, Cluck. That motherfucker, he got to talking shit. I tried to get his ass up out of here. You know, she's just, she's a fighter, bro. So I got my arm around Baby Baby and I'm hugging her and I know it's gonna be the last time I ever see her. And my other aunt says, hey, your uncle's on the phone. He wants to talk to you. And this is uncle of mine, my uncle Paul, he was military. Came back super fucked up.

• 1:52:38Speaker 02

  Drinking heavy, got into a bar fight, stabbed a guy in the eye with his thumb. You know, went to prison, in and out of jails, drinking heavy, then gave his life to God. And quit drinking, built a huge, uh, rock company. Like Riverbed Rock and stuff, Delivering Rock. Built a huge company, he's done great for himself.

• 1:53:06Speaker 02

  But I haven't talked to him in, you know, I was in prison for five years. I've been home for six. Don't think I've talked to him since I've been home, you know, been a while. And, uh, so he gets on the phone, I'm sitting here on the phone, speakerphone, and he starts crying.

• 1:53:24Speaker 02

  I'm like, what's going on, Paul? And he's just mumbling. I can't understand what he's saying because he's so like frantic. And I'm looking around the room and I'm feeling the energy change, right? And I look at, I look around, I'm like, what is he saying? And my cousin goes, something he shouldn't be fucking talking about.

• 1:53:46Speaker 02

  So I kinda, I kinda at that moment, I'm like, okay, I'm like, Paul, what are you saying? And he was like, I'm so sorry to tell you this, but Baby Baby's the one that killed your dad.

• 1:53:58Speaker 02

  And I've got my arm around her, you know.

• 1:54:02Speaker 02

  And it was one of those moments where it tested everything that I've been through in life.

• 1:54:11Speaker 02

  I didn't feel any different about Baby Baby. Whatever reason that she killed my dad thirty one years ago. I don't know. I wasn't there, you know.

• 1:54:28Speaker 02

  Of course, I wish she wouldn't have done it. I miss my dad. I love my dad. He was my fucking hero. You know, my life would have been completely different with him in it. But here I am right now. I wouldn't change anything that happened in my life. Any hard time, any decision that I made, at this point, I wouldn't change it because it all led for me to be right here where I'm at right now, doing what I love to do, having a testimony to share with others.

• 1:55:04Speaker 02

  But it was that that moment where, you know, ten years ago, I might not have been in the same place. You know, I might have fucking choked her out and killed everybody in the damn house.

• 1:55:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:13Speaker 02

  You know.

• 1:55:16Speaker 02

  But I didn't feel any different about her. And she was such a gangster, she didn't budge. She didn't make a face. She didn't move. You know, like when he said that out loud, the whole room got silent.

• 1:55:32Speaker 02

  And I just said, Paul, we're not here to talk about that right now. Now's not the time. She passed that night.

• 1:55:42Speaker 02

  You know, and I don't know what the reason was. You know, it could have been numerous things.

• 1:55:50Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think Paul knows the reason?

• 1:55:52Speaker 02

  They all did. And you know what? As much, because we, you know, there's

• 1:55:59Speaker 02

  two brothers, and there was two brothers, two sisters

• 1:56:04Speaker 02

  to my dad.

• 1:56:07Speaker 02

  Might be more that I'm missing, just not thinking right now, but in the tight circle.

• 1:56:13Speaker 02

  And I don't hold it against any of them.

• 1:56:18Speaker 02

  I know that at this point, I've had, you know, conversations with a few other people. And it was one of those moments where it was like, damn, we just lost our brother. We don't want to lose our sister. Whatever the instance was, if it was an accident, if it was, you know, heat of the moment, if they were arguing, gun went off, whatever it was.

• 1:56:41Speaker 02

  It was definitely

• 1:56:47Speaker 02

  something that they all made a pact and held on to, which I respect, you know?

• 1:56:57Speaker 02

  And, you know, it sucks that

• 1:57:02Speaker 02

  I'll never know what really happened. Like, I would have loved to have had one more day with her to just say, hey, baby, look, I'm not mad at you. I just wonder what happened, you know, like, like, what, what? To bring some closure to myself, which closure was already met. Because when I was told that he didn't die from a suicide, that was closure from that one chapter where I was suicidal my whole life, thinking that, living with that regret and thinking that I could have changed that.

• 1:57:35Speaker 02

  But then when my uncle told me that he had been killed, then you got another 20 years where I'm like revengeful and like, well, who killed him? I want to know, like, what was it? You know, my dad was a hustler. He had, I found out he had made, he had won $8,500 gambling that night. He was going through a divorce with my little brother's mom.

• 1:57:59Speaker 02

  You know, was there somebody that was jealous behind that? Did they rob him? Like, you know? So then finding out that it was her did bring closure to that second, you know, time period of living with revenge. Because now I don't have revenge, you know? I got rid of the regret, then I got rid of the revenge. So it brought me to a place of just utter peace with that situation that, you know, tormented me since I was 10 in different, different ways, in different aspects. Making me suicidal, making me violent, making me seek revenge.

• 1:58:38Speaker 02

  Guilt, you know. So, definitely close the chapters, you know, close, it was some really great closure. I would love to just, I would have loved to know, you know, what really happened that night. But, um.

• 1:58:55Speaker 02

  It, it is good to, you know, have that, find that peace, whatever the cost may be, you know.

• 1:59:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, let's go back to when you were after your dad died.

• 1:59:09Speaker 02

  There's a lot of lessons that I learned in it, you know. Um, I'd been selling weed, selling pills, um.

• 1:59:22Speaker 02

  Cocaine here and there.

• 1:59:25Speaker 02

  This sixteen year old kid, they came and got weed from me. Um, he was living on his own, took care of his mom. She, he, he lived in his own place, had a baby, had a wife, you know, young Hispanic kid. Sixteen, seventeen. He would come and get weed from me, fronted. He worked a full-time construction job, hard-working kid. You, if you met him, you'd think he was twenty-five, thirty, like, um, young guy, though.

• 1:59:57Speaker 02

  And, uh, he was getting weed fronted from me, you know, ten pounds at a time for a while, pay his bills. Um, he tells me one day, he's like, man, he's like, I'm tired of nickel and diamond. He's like, I'm going to see my family.

• 2:00:15Speaker 02

  He leaves, goes and sees some of his family, comes back the man. Like, this man comes back with a semi following him. Um, set up a whole organization.

• 2:00:29Speaker 02

  And I can talk about a lot of this because the statute of limitations are passed. But and I just fell right into fell right into line. You know, it's one of those things. It's like, you know, I learned early, especially in the drug business. I may be the boss today, you may be the boss tomorrow. You have two options, either fight each other or fall in line, work together. You know, a motor has a thousand parts, thermostat being one of the smallest ones. But if that thermostat goes out, that whole motor is going to run hot and not run. You know, so always, always never had jealousy.

• 2:01:13Speaker 02

  It was always play your position, you know.

• 2:01:18Speaker 02

  Same way he played his position when I was the big guy, you know. So kid comes back and he was, you know, he had a lot of big dreams. He started getting huge loads in.

• 2:01:36Shawn Ryan?

  So he's obviously connected with the one of the Mexican cartels.

• 2:01:40Speaker 02

  Well, there was that, yeah, there was actually, um, he was from Honduras. He's actually in Honduras right now.

• 2:01:46Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:01:47Speaker 02

  Uh, they sent him back, uh, still have contact with him. You know, he's turned his life around, uh, as much as you can in Honduras. You know, like since he's been over there, he's been shot, um, ran over by the police. Been in a couple of huge accidents, like it's, it's a different world over there for sure. And he was born, he was born in Honduras, but brought here when he was three.

• 2:02:15Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:02:15Speaker 02

  So he had lived here his whole life. When, uh, when we went down, he was 24. Um, and a multi, multimillionaire. But they, you know, of course, they took everything he had. Um.

• 2:02:33Speaker 02

  So, you know, there was loads coming in every way that we could find a way to get them in. You know, sometimes by vehicle, sometimes by plane, sometimes by, um, you know, car, semi, whatever, whatever, you know, there's a lot of different ways to transport. Uh, when I was actually doing transportation, we'd have false bottoms and pickup truck beds, um, dash compartments, you know, where the whole airbag would come out like a, lift up like a fucking transformer, you know?

• 2:03:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:08Speaker 02

  And, uh,

• 2:03:10Speaker 02

  so, uh, that load got busted.

• 2:03:18Shawn Ryan?

  At the airport?

• 2:03:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:19Shawn Ryan?

  What was it in?

• 2:03:21Speaker 02

  It was in the airplane.

• 2:03:22Shawn Ryan?

  It was in the airplane?

• 2:03:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:23Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, in a suitcase?

• 2:03:25Speaker 02

  Um, I'm not sure how it was actually packaged that time.

• 2:03:28Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:03:29Speaker 02

  There was, you know, um, there was also a load that came up at the same time in a truck. And that's what caught it all was there was a guy on the case who had got busted and he was giving them, he didn't wanna snitch on us or rat us out. But the feds had him and they were, he was spoon feeding them whatever he could to stay free.

• 2:03:56Speaker 02

  So one thing led to another where, um,

• 2:04:02Speaker 02

  they had had enough of enough surveillance and they had GPS on a lot of the vehicles. So they caught an actual truck coming up.

• 2:04:15Speaker 02

  It delivered. They caught the truck coming out with cash. Um, small amount of cash. Trans- transporters only get like per unit.

• 2:04:29Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:04:29Speaker 02

  Paid, but they get paid cash right then, per unit. So say he was transporting fifty kilos of cocaine. He was getting a thousand bucks a kilo, the transporter was. So he made the drive from Southern California to Nashville, made fifty grand, three days.

• 2:04:49Speaker 02

  Catch him with the cash. Same night, they hit four different houses. Found one with like half a million dollars cash in it. Found a house full of guns.

• 2:05:04Speaker 02

  There'd actually just been a robbery a couple of weeks before that. Where they got my guy and us.

• 2:05:14Speaker 02

  For, you know, a large, large amount of money. So it was kind of like when, when they busted, it was like on a rebound.

• 2:05:24Speaker 02

  And.

• 2:05:27Speaker 02

  I don't know the full details of the airport.

• 2:05:31Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:05:31Speaker 02

  I just, I know because my, where my portion of the case came in was from the truck. The airport was a.

• 2:05:44Speaker 02

  Same load. Different route.

• 2:05:48Shawn Ryan?

  Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I read was two million dollars in cocaine. At that time.

• 2:05:54Speaker 02

  It was actually four million.

• 2:05:56Shawn Ryan?

  What is four million dollars in cocaine? How much is that?

• 2:05:59Speaker 02

  Uh. That would be about a hundred and forty keys. Hundred and fifty key, uh, let's see, four million.

• 2:06:09Shawn Ryan?

  A hundred and fifty keys. That's a lot of coke.

• 2:06:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, actually, it would have been two hundred keys.

• 2:06:15Shawn Ryan?

  Even more.

• 2:06:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. But. You know, they also do street value.

• 2:06:23Speaker 02

  So when they say.

• 2:06:28Speaker 02

  When they say. Two million dollars, right?

• 2:06:36Speaker 02

  When they say two million dollars, to us, that would be eighty keys.

• 2:06:41Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:06:41Speaker 02

  To them, that could be fifty keys. Cause they, they're looking at street value compared to wholesale.

• 2:06:47Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:06:48Speaker 02

  So yeah, two million dollars would have been fifty keys. And then it was another fifty kilos in the truck. So it was what would have been four million dollars.

• 2:07:00Speaker 02

  In reality, you know, probably three amongst the two and a half amongst the two loads.

• 2:07:11Speaker 02

  But that's also before we get it and re

• 2:07:15Speaker 02

  package it, because you know, we're getting cocaine at a certain level, a certain percentage to where we're able to break it back down to a paste with an isotope and acetone, reprint the bricks and take, you know, fifty keys and turn it into sixty.

• 2:07:34Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:07:34Speaker 02

  Which is a quarter million dollars profit on a wholesale level, not even on a street value level.

• 2:07:42Speaker 02

  Just, you know, in a night of re-bricking them, you know.

• 2:07:47Shawn Ryan?

  Are you given a directive on how much you can dilute it?

• 2:07:52Speaker 02

  Uh, no.

• 2:07:54Shawn Ryan?

  No, it's all up to you. Once it changes, once it's in your hands, it's all up to you.

• 2:07:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's ours, but you know, we sell, we sell to a lot of people that, you know, used it for

• 2:08:08Speaker 02

  purposes to like re-cook, so they would, you know, turn it into crack, which anytime you're dealing with people that are using it for that purpose, it has to stay pure enough to where they don't lose.

• 2:08:20Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:08:20Speaker 02

  Because they'll take the product and they'll cook it up to see what comes back, you know, because it'll come down to its purest form. So, and of course, you want to always compete and have the best, you know, unless you're just dumping it off to make money, you know, but um, there's a lot more pride and power in having really good product.

• 2:08:45Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:08:45Speaker 02

  So, uh, never

• 2:08:51Speaker 02

  never sold any bad, bad shit.

• 2:08:53Shawn Ryan?

  Alright.

• 2:08:53Speaker 02

  You don't stay in business long if you do, or you know, the guys that really diluted too much are

• 2:09:00Speaker 02

  short-lived or, you know.

• 2:09:04Speaker 02

  But, uh, yeah, so Drug Bus happens.

• 2:09:10Speaker 02

  Hits the, hits the news, right? Um, they're calling it the George Burley cartel, right? When, when it first hits the news. I'm looking at a. I'm watching the news.

• 2:09:26Shawn Ryan?

  So you see this shit all happen?

• 2:09:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, like literally see it happen.

• 2:09:30Shawn Ryan?

  Your shipment, you're watching your shipment get busted on the fucking news?

• 2:09:33Speaker 02

  Watching, cause the robbery had just happened. So they had, when that happened, my guys lost all their guns. So I had just brought them a whole bunch of guns. Um, so I'm looking at all this cocaine, all this money, all this weed.

• 2:09:56Speaker 02

  And some of my favorite guns I've, I had ever owned in my life, sitting on this table on the fucking news, just like, holy fuck. They call it the George Burley Drug Cartel. The name George Burley was just a fake ID. It wasn't anybody's real name. The guy who, they had him booked at first under George Burley, then they changed it to Octavian Palma. Uh, neither one of those were his name, you know? Um, but the house I was living in was under George Burley. Lights, water, all of that.

• 2:10:34Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:10:35Speaker 02

  Um, so I'm sitting there like, literally looking out the mini blinds like, holy fuck, they're coming for me, full force, to the point that I moved out of the house, took my wife at the time and kids and went and lived in a hotel in Brentwood, in one of those extended stays.

• 2:10:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:57Speaker 02

  Like I've got this five thousand square foot house in Brentwood and I won't even step foot on the property. Um, nine months go by.

• 2:11:11Speaker 02

  They even came and got me. I'm fighting a federal case on pills already. I had a good friend of mine, I'd been dealing, rewind a little bit, I'd been dealing with this girl for years, um, getting pharmaceuticals. She'd bring me tens of thousands of Loratab pain pills, um, a week. And I'd been doing that with her for a while.

• 2:11:40Shawn Ryan?

  How many?

• 2:11:41Speaker 02

  About twenty, ten to twenty thousand.

• 2:11:43Shawn Ryan?

  Ten to twenty thousand a week?

• 2:11:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:45Shawn Ryan?

  You, you get rid of all that?

• 2:11:47Speaker 02

  Every bit of them, of fashion, we could keep them. My wife, who's here with me now, used to break them out, count them and run them all over town for me. She was my best friend at the time, you know. And, um, crazy, I had a, I had a job, I was the maintenance supervisor of an apartment complex in West Nashville, where it's all one-bedroom apartments and literally gated community. I could sit in an apartment that I had rented, showed as rented, um, to a fake file, sit there and watch every person come through that gate and could run them down.

• 2:12:28Speaker 02

  Poor apartment complex probably still has thousands of empty bottles behind the drywall.

• 2:12:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:34Speaker 02

  You know, but had our own little organization in those apartments. It was, uh, it was long-lived and, uh, you know, but, so she had told me, she said, hey, I wanna, you know, take a little break. And I was like, all right, cool. Like, you know, we made a bunch of money. So she takes a break. Literally six months later, she calls me back, like, hey, you ready to work again? And I'm already doing fine with everything else. And I'm like, yeah, sure. Like, you know, it's extra money. We had always done good business, made a lot of money together. She goes, well, all I have is the big ones. Talking about OxyContin. And I was like, I don't mess with those. I had a friend pass from them. I'm watching the opiate.

• 2:13:20Speaker 02

  You know, you don't, and I didn't feel, feel this bad selling lower tabs. A lot of people that buy lower tabs are the construction workers, the car dealers, the, you know, just the mechanics, people that pop a couple pain pills and go on about their day, work, take care of their business. Still terrible drug, but not to the level that I'm watching OxyContin destroy people's lives.

• 2:13:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:46Speaker 02

  You got a 10 milligram pain pill and you got an 80 milligram pain pill that they're snorting and shooting, injecting, you know. Uh, it was a big difference for me morally in the two drugs. So I've never sold one or ingested one, ever. Still to this day, I've never sold one or taken one.

• 2:14:06Speaker 02

  Did five years in prison for them.

• 2:14:09Speaker 02

  So she calls, she's like, hey, uh, I got these. I'm like, absolutely not. One of my best friends at the time, Army Ranger, went and did two tours in Iraq. I wore his dog tags while we were, while he was gone, watched over his kids. He was like, man, dude, my benefits ain't kicked in yet. I don't, I can't do anything with weed and cocaine. All the guys at the fucking base will buy these, man. You know, they're, they're taking these pills. Please get them for me.

• 2:14:41Speaker 02

  So I'm like, he's like, look, man, you're getting them for this price. They sell for this. He was like, I can make a lot of money. I'll make you some money. So I was like, all right, you know, we'll get them. She's supposed to bring them to me. She calls me last minute, says, I need you to meet me halfway to Memphis.

• 2:14:59Speaker 02

  I'm like, all right, cool. Jump in the truck, driving out there.

• 2:15:04Speaker 02

  She calls, hey, my car's late getting out of the shop. I need you to come all the way to Memphis. By this time, I'm already halfway there. I'm like, all right, fuck it. Caught her like, hey, where we meeting? She's like, hey, just meet me at Walmart. I had to run in Walmart real quick. Um, just meet me at this Walmart and, you know, we'll go do the deal. I'm like, all right, cool. Pull in. It's me and him and, um, my ex brother in law, the one that passed.

• 2:15:35Speaker 02

  And we pull up. She hops in the back of the truck.

• 2:15:41Speaker 02

  I got the radio up a little bit, so the, the wire is not that good, you know. But, long story short, I show her some money. She goes, okay, jumps out the truck and runs across the parking lot.

• 2:15:57Speaker 02

  So automatically, I'm scrambling, hit the button for the, you know, the dash pops up on all the vehicles that we drove. Shove the money in there.

• 2:16:06Speaker 02

  And, next thing I know, lights everywhere. They hit the truck. No transaction went through, they didn't find the money. Um, they take us, they interrogate us, they confiscate the truck, put us out in the middle of Memphis. Like, I guess, trying to be, you know, trying to scare us or whatever. So we get people to come pick us up from Nashville.

• 2:16:31Speaker 02

  Don't hear anything. Month later, they come and arrest me. I get, uh, Bond, of course. I'm out on Bond fighting that case. My guy who was the Army Ranger, uh, I'm not gonna say his name, cuz I would never do that to him. Um, we're not friends anymore, of course. He completely told on me, told him everything. Gave him everything that he could give him to save his ass. And, um, you know, I justified it by saying, you know,

• 2:17:05Speaker 02

  they would've took all his benefits. He was disabled. He called, uh, kicked in the door, some shit blew in his face, lost his lung behind it. You know, he went through hell. So, um, I just cut ties with him. He told on me, but, you know, I never seek revenge on him, cuz, you know, he was a really good friend.

• 2:17:28Speaker 02

  Uh, every, not every, you can't expect everybody to fucking really stand in the face

• 2:17:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:17:35Speaker 02

  of the federal government and say, no, I'm gonna fucking own this and take the fall, you know?

• 2:17:45Speaker 02

  I made the decision to, knowing...

• 2:17:51Speaker 02

  You know, that I was gonna be gone, I was gonna go away from my kids. They were gonna go through some shit, I was gonna go through some shit, you know, but I wanted to come out with my head high. And know that I never told on anybody and that I accepted my fucking.

• 2:18:07Speaker 02

  My charge and accepted my responsibility and laid down, did what I was supposed to. Cause that's how I was raised, but you can't expect everybody to do that and. Eight out of ten of them won't, you know, that's why. It's one of the thousand reasons I would never sell drugs again.

• 2:18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:28Speaker 02

  But, so I was fighting that case already. And the big cocaine bust happened and I'm just like, I'm knowing they're coming for me, I'm literally.

• 2:18:42Speaker 02

  Those ten, eleven months were torture. I mean, you know, you, like I said, I lived in a hotel for a while, then I moved in, actually me and Jelly Roll moved in together.

• 2:18:59Speaker 02

  Got a place, but it was like, you didn't wanna really. I didn't wanna. You know, grow any roots anywhere.

• 2:19:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:09Speaker 02

  Cause they're gonna come, fixing to come pick me up and charge me with millions of dollars of cocaine, a shit ton of guns and a whole lot of weed.

• 2:19:20Speaker 02

  So, you know, it was, it was a really, really rough time, just knowing they were coming, but not knowing when.

• 2:19:28Speaker 02

  I get a call, my guy's in there, he's like, hey man, feds dropped the charge. We're all getting out. They originally arrested eleven of them, I think, the first night.

• 2:19:40Speaker 02

  None of them legal.

• 2:19:43Speaker 02

  Legal to a point, you know what I mean? But all of them from different El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico. And he calls me, he's like, man, feds dropped the charge. Didn't have enough evidence. So I'm like, oh, man, like, fucking yes, my guys are coming home. This is behind us. Couple of days later, I get a call from the feds like always. Hey, you need to come take a drug test. I'm like, all right, cool. Go to take a drug test. I'm in gym clothes, about to go to the gym.

• 2:20:13Speaker 02

  Go take a drug test. Go up, take my drug test. They're like, hey, can you just hang out for just a second? Somebody needs to talk to you. Like, all right, cool. And here they come.

• 2:20:25Speaker 02

  Hey, we're with the, you know, drug task force, Metro. You're under arrest. And I'm like, for what? And they're like, conspiracy of 200 kilos of cocaine and 300 pounds of marijuana in a school zone. And I'm like, fuck. All right, so I go in.

• 2:20:47Speaker 02

  They set my bond to half a million dollars.

• 2:20:53Speaker 02

  Yellow Wolf is one of the first people that I called. He's like, man, I'll come make the bond. You know, I could get out 50 grand. He's like, I'll come make it. But then the feds put a hold on me because I was already fighting a federal case. So it was one of those days where it was just like, okay, I'm here. And reality sunk in. I was going to be there for a while. And I decided to make the best of it. But as the case went on,

• 2:21:23Speaker 02

  of course, the first offers they were throwing around were like 40, 50 years for the cocaine. It wasn't but a couple of months into it when they started realizing they didn't have as much. We filed a motion to get the GPS thrown out. The wi- all the wiretaps were illegal as fuck.

• 2:21:45Speaker 02

  So as their case starts unraveling, they started, they went from 40 for me to 15.

• 2:21:55Speaker 02

  And of course, I asked my lawyer, I'm like, well, it's two hundred keys of cocaine, three hundred pounds of weed. I've never been caught with anything. They don't have me talking about anything but money. Uh, can we not just like plead out and say that I was selling weed? And he's like, yeah, if you make a statement that you were buying weed from these guys. I was like, well, I'm not gonna make a fucking statement that I was doing anything with these guys. You know, like, that's just straight out snitching. So ended up, uh, I pled guilty to cocaine conspiracy of special amounts. Uh, I got a thirteen year sentence, class A felony, thirteen

• 2:22:33Speaker 02

  year sentence. Um, supposed to be run concurrent with my fed time. In the process, I go to court for the feds, they give me fifty seven months for attempt to possess with the intent to distribute OxyContin, um, which is the dumbest charge and the attempted to possess with the intentions to distribute.

• 2:22:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:58Speaker 02

  Uh, but it's, it's all falls under conspiracy, you know, like, I'm a, uh, third time convicted drug felon, uh, international drug trafficker, have all these tags and labels on my record, and I've never been caught with anything.

• 2:23:17Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:23:18Speaker 02

  Um, it's always been phone conversation, hearsay, or, you know, um, just

• 2:23:28Speaker 02

  wrong place, wrong time for them, you know?

• 2:23:32Shawn Ryan?

  But you were doing it.

• 2:23:33Speaker 02

  Oh, I was a hundred percent doing it.

• 2:23:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:35Speaker 02

  And, ha, that was why I didn't fight. I, I fought, I fought enough to make sure I wasn't gonna be gone forever. You know, like, I, I got a great lawyer and, you know, we made some valid points and, you know, showed that they had holes in their case. But, um,

• 2:23:57Speaker 02

  It was, when I went to jail, it was such a relief. It was like this brick, a pallet of bricks lifted off my chest. You know, because I'm like, okay, I don't, now I have to, of course, I'm in prison, so I gotta watch my back. But I don't gotta watch over my shoulder for the police. I don't gotta keep hiding, running, um, you know. It was a, as much as prison is chaotic in its own, it was such a peace from the mental and emotional turmoil that you go through in, living in that life, you know.

• 2:24:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, uh, you know.

• 2:24:49Speaker 02

  Prison was literally the best thing that's ever happened to me.

• 2:24:52Shawn Ryan?

  How long were you in prison for?

• 2:24:53Speaker 02

  Five years.

• 2:24:56Shawn Ryan?

  Did you feel like relieved the whole time you were in there, or when did you start getting antsy?

• 2:25:01Speaker 02

  Uh, it was off and on, you know, like, I was, I was relieved when I got there. And then, of course, you wanna get home. You know, I'm watching my whole world fall apart. I'm watching the mother of my kids and my wife at the time start dating other guys, getting into drugs again. Like, when I left, she was sober. So, watching her fall back into that vicious cycle.

• 2:25:26Speaker 02

  Calling home, my five-year-old daughter, uh, is crying, you know, mommy hasn't woke up all day. You know, I've got a ten-month-old baby at home, a three-year-old daughter and a five-year-old daughter, two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and a five-year-old daughter. And having to talk my five-year-old through, teaching her how to make macaroni and cheese so she can feed her siblings from a prison phone, because they haven't ate in two days.

• 2:25:58Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:25:59Speaker 02

  You know, or hearing her cry because mommy's passed out on the front porch and she won't wake up.

• 2:26:05Speaker 02

  My ten month old baby, Sincere, my son, he was like one, one and a half, got completely ran over by a car in the driveway. Cause they're all over there on drugs and shit and he's just playing in the driveway. They backed over him. Like literally, and then backed, back over him when they realized they had ran over him. Luckily, he was just soft enough as a child to not break any bones. But had like tire tracks in his fucking forehead. Jesus.

• 2:26:39Speaker 02

  Not gonna say names, but had daughters molested in drug houses.

• 2:26:47Speaker 02

  You know?

• 2:26:50Speaker 02

  Just everything, just crumbling and just falling apart and watching them just get drug in like. Kids couldn't come see me because they were so ate up with bedbugs. You know what I mean? Yeah. And here I just had them in this big mansion and living this whole life and. You know, all this money and thinking that I was doing this for a righteous cause or to fucking. Give them a better life and I drug them through a deeper hole than I had ever been through. Damn. You know?

• 2:27:20Speaker 02

  And so it was that realization that like.

• 2:27:26Speaker 02

  I have to let go of all those fucking irrational beliefs that were ever telling me that that was okay. Because.

• 2:27:38Speaker 02

  Right now, in that moment, I'm a pure piece of fucking shit. You know what I mean? Yeah. Where I thought I was this noble, stand up father, good father, feed my kids. Got them in nice schools, nice clothes, driving fancy cars.

• 2:27:56Speaker 02

  Now I'm just a deadbeat in prison and my kids are out there fucking living the worst life possible. I'm being drug completely through the mud by my decisions. You know?

• 2:28:09Speaker 02

  And that's what really started me saying, now fuck this. I'm gonna get out, I'm gonna be a good father, I'm gonna give those kids a real life, real stability.

• 2:28:20Speaker 02

  I'm gonna break this cycle. This is the same life that their mother had lived. You know, I didn't live it as much because my mom wasn't an addict. Um, had a lot of family members that were, you know, alcoholics and addicts, but not to the point where it affected my childhood like that. My mom was a good fucking mom and, you know, um, she may have dealt with a lot of abusive husbands and shit like that, but I didn't. I didn't have that kind of, I didn't have to go through that. And so watching them go through that was like, okay, uh, this isn't it. This is not what I want for them, you know, and I'm gonna make sure this never fucking happens to them again.

• 2:29:03Speaker 02

  And I knew, like I told you before, I knew I had lost control of anything outside. And I had friends, incredible friends that would go through and, you know, break a little rent money. Half the time it wouldn't get spent on rent, you know?

• 2:29:21Speaker 02

  If there was, you know, a situation I could, you know, get people to go help out, but we were only about, I was only about two years into my prison sentence. When she completely lost control and the kids went into foster care. Luckily they went with some friends of mine at first. And throughout the whole time they're in foster care, they're with foster parents that I knew at least. Uh, there became one point where they were getting close to going, being separated and sent to separate foster homes. And, uh, a lady stepped in and got custody. Uh, you know, became a foster parent and fostered all of them.

• 2:30:05Speaker 02

  But that also came with me like finding friends to make sure that money was, you know, that extra money was helping the kids. And, you know, like it was, uh, the last person that finally had, had them in her foster care. Um, you know, she was in love with me and that was a whole, turned into a whole nother thing where she was using them against me. To try to manipulate me to be with her when I came home. So that was a battle and then they were getting taken from her or they had to be, uh.

• 2:30:42Speaker 02

  Adopted because they'd been the foster system for too long. So it got to a point where it got down to the wire to where like, no, you're gonna have to sign these papers and never see your kids again. And not be allowed to reach out to them, ever.

• 2:30:58Speaker 02

  You know, and I'm fresh out of prison at this point, like, absolutely not, like, fuck that, whatever it takes, whatever, whatever I gotta do, you know. And um,

• 2:31:11Speaker 02

  within my new rational belief system though. Yeah. Of course, you know, because the old me, if I wouldn't have went through everything I went through in prison, transitioning and, you know, transforming into the man that I am now. You know, I would have made the same decisions when I came out, and that's what happens to a lot of guys. They go in, they make a lot of changes. They got all these goals and all these aspirations and all this shit they're gonna do when they get out. And when you get out, the fucking life hits you, you know. Obstacles, obstacles, obstacles, and you have to be able to persevere. You have to say, I am not going back there. I will fucking dig ditches. I will do whatever I gotta do to make an honest living.

• 2:31:55Speaker 02

  I'm not going back to prison. And if you really have that mindset, you won't go back. Uh, the, the parole system,

• 2:32:05Speaker 02

  it's not designed to put you back in prison. It's designed to keep you out, transition you back into society, and help you build. But so many people buck it, and they just had, they had those same irrational beliefs, that it's us versus them, you know. That, you know, I hear it all the time. I'm sitting in my parole office, I gotta go there every time I need a travel pass, and I'm sitting there and I'm listening to these guys. Nah, she trying to violate me, she doesn't wanna see me do good. I can't get no job, I can't. I'm sitting there like, dude, I've seen guys come out of twenty-five year prison bits for murder, and get a job the next day. Like, if you want it, you can have it.

• 2:32:47Speaker 02

  And that's something that I've, I've really been able to like, really preach to my platform and my fan base is like, look, man, I came home six years ago with nothing. Had an ankle bracelet sleeping in my brother's basement. Six years later, I've got custody of, my kids were in foster care. Six years later, I got custody of all of my kids. We got seven kids. Just bought my family the biggest house we've ever stepped foot in. And then I give them this little spill, I'm like, you know what? I just did, the other day, I was walking a family member through the, through the house, giving them the tour. And after about the fifth time she said it, I had to stop her. She kept saying, boy, you so lucky. I had to finally say, this ain't got nothing to do with luck. This is faith and hard work.

• 2:33:31Speaker 02

  The American dream is alive and well. If you want it, you can have it. You just gotta fucking stand on your feet and grab it. You have to put the fucking work in. Faith and hard work, that's all it takes. Believe and believe in yourself. You know? Um, so, you know, through that whole process, I've been able to really, it's given me a purpose, you know? Um, my kids, of course, give me purpose, but the fans give me such a purpose as well. I, I get to see them, meet them, and they're like hugging me like, man, dude, your music got me off drugs, got me through a prison sentence, got me through a divorce, took me back to my wife, got me back with my kids. Whatever they've been through, my music has been able to inspire them to just keep pushing.

• 2:34:17Speaker 02

  And those are the moments that fuel my next step. You know, cause I'm like, man, I can't let these people down. I can't take steps backwards. They're looking at me like, I made it out. I, I did time in the streets, I did time in prison. I was addicted to drugs, I was addicted to the life, I've been, you know, I've been through all of this and I'm just like them. But I made the decision to fucking change. And now, you know, here I am. I beat the statistics, you know? Recidivisions, three years, and I think it's like seventy percent or some shit

• 2:35:01Speaker 02

  of people that, that go back to prison within the first three years. Like, I beat that twice now. You know what I mean? Like, we're six years out. And we had a speeding ticket.

• 2:35:15Speaker 02

  So, you know, being able to show people that that's possible has been, and to be able to be inspired by their stories, the strength and hope in their eyes and what they've gained from my music and what they've been through in their life and made it through. It just, it continues to fuel that fire and keep my integrity in check, keep my, my path in check, you know?

• 2:35:42Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's definitely a positive message. When, when did you discover your talent in music?

• 2:35:50Speaker 02

  Uh, I've been writing poems since I was a little kid. I wanted to sing, I wanted to rap, you know? I was an eighties baby, so by the time I was ten, eleven, rap music was really, you know, coming to the world and, uh, huge Tupac fan, you know? So, I always loved music. I had the opportunity, like in summertime sometimes, to go on the road with Waylon when my mom was singing backup and get to go see shows and, you know, go on tour with him,

• 2:36:28Speaker 02

  riding the tour bus, stay in hotel, you know, be backstage in Waylon's concerts. And so I always had like a love for music. Deep, deep, deep, like it's, it's what I, I can, I can literally pinpoint every moment or time in my life to a song.

• 2:36:52Shawn Ryan?

  Oh.

• 2:36:53Speaker 02

  Like what song was like just the soundtrack of that year or that three months or that, you know what I mean? Like, um, I've always just really held on to music like that and like really gravitated towards, um, the emotion in music. So, um, I always wanted to do it.

• 2:37:19Speaker 02

  Early teens, you know, while I'm selling drugs and stuff, I used to always take these little tape recorders and record me rapping, freestyle rapping.

• 2:37:31Speaker 02

  When I was 21, I caught my first set of drug charges. It's for a sale of 25 pounds of marijuana. And I went and did 13 months for that. Came out, was on community corrections for three years. Single father with Brianna and Little Will, which are my two oldest. Brianna's now an artist, working on her second solo album, 22 years old, fucking killing it.

• 2:37:57Shawn Ryan?

  That's amazing.

• 2:38:01Speaker 02

  You know, she's the one that I really like changed my life for. And in the first time, I changed my life. Got off drugs and, you know. But, uh,

• 2:38:15Speaker 02

  I was sitting in jail then, and in 2002, and all these guys were there writing these songs and rapping, like they'd be in a circle in county jail. So, one day I was just in there, I was like, man, I'm gonna write a verse. I'm writing, writing, writing. And I sat there and practiced it, practiced, practiced. Came over there one day, they were just in the circle, and I just got the nerve up to walk over there and I just started rapping. And they were like, oh shit, like, we didn't know you rapped. And so there was a friend of mine in there. He had a song on the radio, but had caught a drug charge and was sitting in jail. And a guy named Little Homie Rip. And now he goes by Cashville Ace.

• 2:39:00Speaker 02

  But, um, he was my cellie at the time. And so then I got out and recorded a song with him, and then I was like, man, I'm gonna do this, friend of mine, um... His mother had passed away and he got like a little settlement or you know, whatever he got from her passing. And he bought a home studio. So we put it in my apartment. I was a single dad with two kids and just started recording songs and decided this is what I want to do. And of course it wasn't paying the bills.

• 2:39:29Shawn Ryan?

  So it started in a small apartment?

• 2:39:31Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:39:32Shawn Ryan?

  With your buddy's inheritance?

• 2:39:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:39:35Shawn Ryan?

  Which probably wasn't much.

• 2:39:36Speaker 02

  He got like seventeen grand. He spent like five of it on some studio equipment. Bought a car that got stolen two weeks later and a bunch of clothes that were in the trunk of the car that got stolen. It was completely broke within three months of his mom dying. But, uh, you know, but we had the studio, you know, for years. And, um,

• 2:39:59Speaker 02

  he, uh, yeah, so it started in, started in there recording. Me and Jelly Roll met. Uh, I was out passing out flyers for a show that I was doing. Um, selling my CD. He was there hosting a rap battle downtown and we bumped into each other.

• 2:40:20Speaker 02

  And, uh, just became best friends. And so we did music. I was, you know, uh, did good for like six years till about two thousand eight. And then I got back into the drug industry, probably two thousand seven.

• 2:40:37Speaker 02

  Got back into the drug industry and, you know, took off from there.

• 2:40:40Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you get back in the drug industry? Were you just getting discouraged that you weren't?

• 2:40:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was just, it's straight up. Like I literally got an eviction notice on the door.

• 2:40:48Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:40:49Speaker 02

  You know, and I was working full time, worked at a restaurant. I'd waited tables. Went back to working for my uncle Tabo doing construction. You know, winter time hit, no work. Um, by this time I'm ha- I've got two kids that I've been a single dad with. Now I got a new old lady. Her two brothers are living with us. Cause they're underage and their mom's a drug addict. Um, now I've had my third child, Innocence.

• 2:41:20Speaker 02

  And it was just, you know, I had a lot of mouths to feed and I can sit here and justify it, but it was because I wanted money, you know? And I could have went and tried to find a better job or picked up a second job. There's a lot of things I could have done in hindsight.

• 2:41:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:36Speaker 02

  But in that moment with the belief system and that I had been raised up with and instilled with, I was like, man, I ain't got no choice.

• 2:41:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, fuck you, well, back to what you know.

• 2:41:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, and that's how I got back in selling drugs. And then I got a record deal. They were gonna do a movie about my life. Uh, signed to a record label out of New York named Mass Bomb. Uh, they had another artist signed at the time and came down, started recording records, signed me to a deal, um, went down to Atlanta, recorded a bunch of records with drummer boy, who at the time had, he's a huge producer, had tons of fucking songs on the radio, all the Jeezy implies and like, you know, all the stuff that was happening right then.

• 2:42:29Speaker 02

  And then the owner of the label was fa- father passed away. And, you know, his dad was his best friend, mentor, father, you know, uh, and so he just kinda like lost his shit and shut the label down. And I had quit selling drugs again, you know, was just living off the label and, you know, just recorded this album, fixing to try to, you know, have my big break. And then that tragedy happened in his family. And, uh, he shut the label down. I went back to selling drugs, got super discouraged, was like, fuck music. You know, this, this isn't it for me.

• 2:43:14Speaker 02

  I'm tired of, you know, doing it. Still ended up releasing the project as like a mixtape. Um, and then he came back. Uh, I got indicted for the federal charge. Right after I got indicted for the federal charge, he hits me up like, hey, man, like, you know, I'm so sorry, man, you know, I just had some personal shit I had to deal with. My dad li- you know, dying and I was like, well, I'm going to prison. I just got a federal indictment. And he's like, man, I'm so sorry. I was like, well, it's not your fault. You know what I mean? Like. But so then he jumped back into the picture. We ended up scurrying between that year and a half that I was fighting that federal charge before

• 2:43:56Speaker 02

  all the state shit happened and I, you know, got picked up on the cocaine bust. He jumped back into the picture and we were just working. I was recording, recording, recording, recording. And that's where outlaw shit came from, which now has sixty million views and started an entire genre. Damn.

• 2:44:19Speaker 02

  That's, you know, um, so, and then he stuck by my side all the way through prison. Like, he started my Instagram. I was in prison when Instagram started, you know? He started my Instagram, started my YouTube channel, started everything and really helped build my brand. I would write these like inspirational letters from prison. He would fucking type them up and post them, you know, and built my fan base through my entire journey of me before prison and going into prison. And he's still my right-hand man. He's the one that I said, he's in Florida right now. He's usually following me with a camera, cause uh, I mean, do we, we have documentary footage starting in two thousand seven. Nice. To today. Nice.

• 2:45:03Speaker 02

  Going to prison and me getting out of prison. Holy shit. Like, he picked me up from prison, uh, with the cameras. Wow. So we've got, which there's some great episodes on YouTube. Um, I think there's like fifteen, maybe seventeen episodes before prison and then after prison. Uh, but they're getting pulled pretty soon, cause we're gearing up to get that puppy on Netflix. That's awesome. Yeah, cause it's a, we've got a lot that never, that we never put on YouTube because it was like too dark and too deep. Yeah. We've got final interviews from the mother of my child, of my children before she died.

• 2:45:48Speaker 02

  Like, in full-blown, hair-wind out, in the middle of the streets, like, some gangster shit. Damn, dude. So we've got, you know, we've got, we got a lot of stuff that we haven't put out. So we're working on putting that together as a collective whole now, but. So, you know, he came back in, we were scurrying, we got, uh, I am struck, we got a.

• 2:46:11Speaker 02

  I am struggle finished right before I went to prison. And then, of course, I got, we didn't know I was gonna get locked up when I got locked up. We released outlaw shit the morning they arrested me.

• 2:46:23Shawn Ryan?

  The morning?

• 2:46:24Speaker 02

  The morning, dude. Like, so I was on the high. I was like, I just got my first video out, you know? And then, boom, I got arrested that morning. So, uh, you know, watching, there was no country rap when I released that. Like, Colt Ford was kind of starting and had like a little, you know, name buzzing. But there was no like major country rap records. And I hear I had a whole project of them.

• 2:46:55Speaker 02

  So as we dropped that, it just really sparked this whole genre, you know, of music that is now massive. But, uh, so he, yeah, he stuck by my side through all that, um, through prison and...

• 2:47:13Shawn Ryan?

  Did you release anything when you were in prison?

• 2:47:16Speaker 02

  Well, I released that album when I was in prison. And that album had a song on it called "Black Curtains." And it was a sample of Waylon singing "A White Room." "In a white room with black curtains," right? And, uh, the song is talking about me breaking the cycle. From my father to me to my son. I'm sitting in County Jail and they're like, "Man, we really need to shoot a video. We gotta figure out how to shoot a video." So they shoot this whole storyline and they're like, "Man, we just really need to get some footage of you." So this camera crew, they had already been in and done a couple documentaries for people in prison.

• 2:47:58Speaker 02

  And Nashville Scene had just come in there and did a interview with me for an article they were doing on me. So I was like, well, y'all can try. So they get in, they come in, we do an interview like me and you were doing. Um, I give a whole bunch of inspirational stuff, which has all been used in documentary stuff. But then we're sitting there and the, the PR for the, the publicist for the jail is there. And they're like, would, would you mind if he rapped this verse? And she's like, oh no, that'd be cool. So I wrapped the verse, turned it into a music video.

• 2:48:38Speaker 02

  Get sued. They try to take us, take it down. The sheriff at the time, fucking, he loses his shit. He actually walked in on his kids watching the video.

• 2:48:47Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 2:48:48Speaker 02

  Right? And here it is, an inmate in county jail, maximum security, in my uniform.

• 2:48:57Speaker 02

  Rapping and then the camera following me through their fucking jail.

• 2:49:02Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 2:49:03Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? So like, he was super pissed.

• 2:49:08Speaker 02

  We had all the proper paperwork signed.

• 2:49:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:10Speaker 02

  Uh, but it, it hit all the news. I'm in prison by this point, right? I had already got moved from jail to prison.

• 2:49:18Shawn Ryan?

  So if anybody wants to know the layout of the Nashville jail, they just gotta watch your video.

• 2:49:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they could have, they could have. Um, but so I'm sitting in prison. They're like, struggle your own fucking, the news. I'm like, oh God, here we go. They got another indictment, like some other bust is happening, it's going down. And I go in there and it's literally my music video is playing on the news. You can look it up. It is fucking hilarious. And that poor publicist, she was just trying to, she was trying to scramble to save her ass.

• 2:49:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:52Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? She was like, we were completely duped. He, you know, they, they acted like they were coming in here to do a documentary. And then we didn't know they were going to turn into a music video, which we did do, the documentary is out. Like we didn't lie. We just. Used it to our advantage to get some things that we didn't.

• 2:50:12Shawn Ryan?

  Some extra credit.

• 2:50:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Thank God I was already in prison by the time that happened, or he probably would have sent some of them goons in there to beat my ass. Sheriff, he was so mad. He tried to make us take it down, but we had all the proper paperwork, so we just refused and they let it sit up. And the thing was, it was a really good fucking story. It's a good message. You know, so as much as, much as they wanted to try to, you know, be mad, it's like, fuck.

• 2:50:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So that, that hit and went viral.

• 2:50:45Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah.

• 2:50:45Shawn Ryan?

  While you were in.

• 2:50:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:47Shawn Ryan?

  Although that fired everybody up in prison.

• 2:50:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. No, that was nuts. And I didn't actually get to see the whole video, um, until I was being transported, I made parole from the state and I was being transported to the feds. So they'll throw you in a van, and they'll take you to these little podunk towns, going from state prison, which was in East Tennessee, all the way down to Osilla, Georgia, and then fly me from Atlanta to Oklahoma, but that, to where their, uh, classification is, the feds. But all the, they'd like, take me in a van, drop me off at a county jail, dip out, three days later, another van come pick me up, take me to another county jail.

• 2:51:32Speaker 02

  So I was like in this transportation for like a month. And one of those little county jails, I was sitting in the holding cell, and one of the guards kept looking at me, and I was like, man, I don't think this guy likes me. He's like, hey, man, are you Struggle Jennings? And I was like, yeah. And he's like, he's like, man, I fucking loved them outlaw shit and Black Curtains video. And I was like, dude, I haven't even got to see Black Curtains. He said, well, you have now, and he turned his big screen around and hit play on that thing. I'm sitting in a jail cell, you know, through glass, but I got to watch the video for the first time.

• 2:52:07Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, that's.

• 2:52:08Speaker 02

  I was just, I bawled like a baby. Fucking so emotional.

• 2:52:12Speaker 02

  So it was, you know, I was gaining steam and momentum while I was in there. Um, and of course, Yellow Wolf was one of my best friends before. Jelly Roll was my best friend before. And so they're gaining a bunch of momentum. Yellow Wolf had signed with Eminem. Jelly Roll's climbing up the ranks, you know, um, busting his ass touring and putting out music. And the whole time they're screaming, free struggle, free struggle, free struggle. So when I came home, I had that sense of hope also, you know, watching them making it. And them both saying, bro, it's possible. Just don't go back to prison. Just keep working. It's possible.

• 2:52:55Speaker 02

  So I hit the ground with just full faith and, uh, full motivation and full, you know, um, determination and discipline and dedication and, you know, just stuck to it, stuck to my guns and kept doing it and it's just continued to grow, you know? That's incredible. So what, what, what was the next big hit after you got out? So when I first got out, Yellow Wolf produced a whole project on me. And there was one on there called Like Father, Like Son. Kind of the same thing as Black Curtain, just talking about the, you know, my grandfather and then my dad becoming who my grandfather was and then me becoming who my dad was.

• 2:53:39Speaker 02

  Um, and there's a point in my show every night still where I get to give a speech and say, you know, the biggest thing that I learned in prison was I gotta be the man I would want my sons to be. I gotta be the man I would want my daughters to date. You know, it's up to me to break that cycle. Um, and I tell them to go home and raise those boys to be the fucking men we need. You know, it's like a really good, powerful moment, but in the show, but that was the next, uh, big hit that came out. And I was fresh out of, you know, fresh out of prison. And, um, they, they tried to send me back once because I was releasing these documentary series on YouTube.

• 2:54:22Speaker 02

  And the, the federal halfway house was like, oh, fuck no. And the feds were like, no, what are you doing? Like, you're not allowed to do this, you know? And so they tried to send me back, violated me.

• 2:54:38Shawn Ryan?

  Wait, hold on, you're not allowed to do what, release content?

• 2:54:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:54:42Shawn Ryan?

  Why?

• 2:54:42Speaker 02

  Not at what the time you weren't because that's not like you're supposed to be doing this.

• 2:54:50Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:54:50Speaker 02

  You're supposed to have a job, go to work every day, like how like so. One of the the loophole where they were trying to send me back was because when I left the federal prison. They give you five hours to get to the halfway house. It's a three hour drive. I haven't seen my kids in five years sushi restaurant, hibachi restaurant, one block from the halfway house. I stopped and ate with my kids. They told me I couldn't veer from the path. So I thought that meant like, don't go way out the fucking way. Don't be somewhere you're not supposed to be. I stopped to eat before I went to the halfway house with my kids. Hadn't seen my kids in five years. Well, I'd seen him in like visit, but first time seeing him free.

• 2:55:33Speaker 02

  And uh, so they use that saying that I wasn't supposed to stop and eat is what they're trying to violate me for. But the lady was like total cunt about it. She was like, listen, you know, I think your message is bullshit. I think you're just another convict. Uh, you know, I saw, I watched your little documentary series. Uh, I don't, I don't fall for any of it, you know, you're going back to prison.

• 2:56:00Speaker 02

  I go to, I go to work that day, which was at the studio. I was employed at a studio so I could record.

• 2:56:08Speaker 02

  But I wasn't allowed to record. I was having to say that I was just working at the studio.

• 2:56:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:13Speaker 02

  So that I could be there recording. And uh, so I go that day, tell my kids I'm gone. I gotta go back to prison for a year. So sorry. They cried, we hugged, fucking emotional, terrible time. I go back to the halfway house and staff's like, yeah, man, marshals will be here in the morning to get you. You gotta go back. Like, all right, man. So I pack up all my shit, you know, my buddy comes and picks up everything. So that I don't got, you know, got to tote nothing there.

• 2:56:48Speaker 02

  They come wake me up early in the morning. He's like, come on, man. I'm like, oh, the marshal's here. He's like, no, come on. So I go down there and that lady that was violating me is on the phone. And she's just giving it to me. Everything I just told you is what she's saying. I don't believe your message. This is what she did. She said, but somebody above me seems to think different. So I'm putting an ankle bracelet on your ass and you got one more chance. I'm like, oh, shit. Like, I got one more chance. I'm like, OK. So they hang up with her. No, she, she's actually in the room. She gets up and leaves.

• 2:57:25Speaker 02

  They hit speakerphone on the phone that's in there. And this lady comes across and she was like, I just want to tell you that I love your message. She was like, I'm actually gonna start using your documentary as training for my, uh, for all of the federal government staff on transition houses. Because we tend to get too caught up in black and white and forget the greatness is in the gray areas. I had to put the ankle bracelet on you because that lady was giving us hell and she wanted it. She was like, but in return, I'm gonna give you an extra 10 hours a week free to record your album. She was like, go out there and make us proud and fucking.

• 2:58:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like, so there's an episode about it on YouTube called Silver Lions.

• 2:58:15Speaker 02

  But so I, you know, I had a lot of shit like that happen, you know, that.

• 2:58:18Shawn Ryan?

  That's amazing.

• 2:58:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:21Shawn Ryan?

  That is amazing.

• 2:58:24Shawn Ryan?

  Do you keep in touch with her?

• 2:58:26Speaker 02

  No, I don't, but I'm going back.

• 2:58:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:28Speaker 02

  Um, actually Devon was supposed to set it up with, uh, the charity that does all the federal halfway houses and go back and speak.

• 2:58:40Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man, that would be a.

• 2:58:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:43Shawn Ryan?

  That would be huge.

• 2:58:43Speaker 02

  You know, they, they kind of want, you know, I'm getting to that point now where I've proven that I'm not going back.

• 2:58:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:50Speaker 02

  You know, they don't, they're really careful about who they let come back in there. A lot of times it'll be somebody that's like 10, 15, 20 years released. You know what I mean?

• 2:58:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:00Speaker 02

  And, um.

• 2:59:02Speaker 02

  But I'm getting to that point now where like now I'm coming off of state parole. So I can go back into the state facilities. I can go into a lot of these places like right now I'm kind of confined to like. Public schools, which I went and done um public schools. I went and done some rehabs. So but now being able to get back in those actual facilities and get clearance to like go into jail, prison. Federal halfway houses and be able to share this with people that are because I. I shared every night. With a bunch of fucking survivors, you know, people that are in that crowd that have been through hell and back.

• 2:59:43Speaker 02

  And uh but I think it'll be even more effective. To be able to do it to the guys that are right there on that edge. Cause when you're coming home or you're about to come home from prison like that's when you're on that edge or when you're in prison. What are you gonna do with the rest of your time? Cause you walk into prison, there's really only two kind of guys. You got the guys that are gambling, smoking, eating honey buns, watching TV all day. Maybe working, you know, just getting by, really just living that life. And then you got the guys that are fucking reading every book they can, they're training like fucking animals.

• 3:00:25Speaker 02

  They're better, they're going to every class they can, they're bettering themselves. And as soon as I got to prison, I knew what where I wanted to be. I didn't want to be fucking smoking cigarettes, which I'll smoke again now, but I didn't want to be in there smoking cigarettes. Fucking eating honey buns, watching TV, wasting my time. Yeah. I wanted to become the best person, father, human being that I could become. And I did, I took every class. What kind of classes were you taking? I took every class, I took psychology, I took parenting, I took health and nutrition, I took um.

• 3:01:02Speaker 02

  I did all the drug programs, anger managements, to the point where I was teaching the classes by the time I left.

• 3:01:09Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:01:12Speaker 02

  Because, you know, I, of course, I had a passion to grow and to become better, but then that turned into a passion to

• 3:01:21Speaker 02

  help others become the best people they could be. And I've always had a good job with, I've always had, you know, been really good at

• 3:01:31Speaker 02

  relating to people, you know. It made me super effective, like when we were in the drug program and I ended up becoming, you know, like a mentor in there. To be able to dig into some of these guys that were stone cold killers, that were, you know, had been through, didn't trust a fucking person on the face of the planet. You know, and being able to crack that shell and get down in there, you know, and say, hey, bro, you can do this. And I've got a couple of them that I still talk to to this day. I've talked to one, we're talking about setting up a family vacation together. This guy was toughest of the tough. Born in a fucking border town, whole family, you know, half white, half Hispanic.

• 3:02:13Speaker 02

  Cartel running shit back and forth and this guy had a super rough life. Now he's, you know, making a couple hundred grand a year welding, owns his own fucking iron business, like. And this dude, I didn't think he'd ever make it out of prison. I mean, I did, I saw it in him, but like all the signs were there that he was gonna, if he even got out, he was gonna come right back.

• 3:02:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 3:02:38Speaker 02

  And now, you know, but I, I worked my ass off to like really, you know, crack that shell he had. And he put a lot of work in and now he's, Greg's got all his kids, you know, he's living the dream.

• 3:02:53Shawn Ryan?

  You're gonna have a lot of impact on these guys.

• 3:02:55Speaker 02

  I think so, and I'm really excited for it. And I really think that it'll be an incredible.

• 3:03:04Speaker 02

  Incredible phase in my life to be able to go in there and do that.

• 3:03:08Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, do you realize the impact you might have?

• 3:03:11Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 3:03:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:13Speaker 02

  Definitely. Which it's intimidating, but at the same time, it's like, bring it on, like, you know, but that comes with me keeping my integrity intact, too. That's the toughest part about it.

• 3:03:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:25Speaker 02

  It's like, you know, I was telling you earlier that I just recently slowed down on drinking and I quit drinking at shows because I was starting to lean on that. And saying I couldn't, you know, go out there and perform without having a few drinks. A few drinks turns into a bottle of tequila.

• 3:03:44Speaker 02

  And so I'm going out and I'm giving this powerful message every night. And then I'm going back on the bus and I'm shitfaced drunk. And I'm laying there like feeling like I'm making this huge impact and I'm doing God's work. But I'm sitting here preaching to these people drunk as fuck, you know? And so, and of course, I was beating my body up and stuff, but more than anything, it was just that, that spiritual battle that I was in.

• 3:04:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:11Speaker 02

  You know, like.

• 3:04:12Shawn Ryan?

  You weren't the example that you wanted to be.

• 3:04:15Speaker 02

  Exactly. Like, I'm sitting there telling them that they can do this, they can do that. All they gotta do is get their life right. And half the ones in the room, it might have been alcohol. They might be full-blown alcoholics and that's what was stopping their life from progressing. And I might have been too, you know? I definitely know that, you know, since I was, you know, slowed down and quit drinking, I've lost 50 pounds. I'm in the best shape of my life. So it was definitely holding me back from reaching goals that I wanted to reach.

• 3:04:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:50Speaker 02

  And I noticed that I'm a lot sharper and stuff, you know?

• 3:04:54Shawn Ryan?

  Mentally?

• 3:04:54Speaker 02

  Mentally, emotionally as well. I feel like I'm falling apart. I think that tequila was keeping me good and lubed up.

• 3:05:05Speaker 02

  I go drink and my knees started popping. I'm like, damn. Yeah, the agave had me, uh, had me fluid. I gotta grease the wheel. Yeah. But, you know, and even now, you know, I still, I still have a drink every once in a while, you know, it's picking your battles. Like, um, if I know that in two weeks from now, uh, I've got an event that I want to have a couple of drinks at with a couple of buddies, I won't drink till then. There's a lot of nights when, you know, friends might be having a drink or a glass of wine and I'll be like, oh, I can have one, you know, I'd be fine. I'm like, fuck, I got legs tomorrow, you know, I got, I got a big chest workout tomorrow. Nah, I'ma skip it tonight. Yeah.

• 3:05:48Speaker 02

  You know, so I just, it's setting your priorities, you know, knowing your limits, knowing your boundaries and finding that balance.

• 3:05:59Speaker 02

  Let's talk about God, We Need You Now. Yeah. When that came out. It was incredible. I mean, so I'll tell you how the song came about.

• 3:06:11Speaker 02

  Kaitlyn Curtis is an artist that I signed, uh, to Angels and Outlaws, my label. And we had been working on her album, uh, working on my new stuff. 2020 is in full swing, all right? So,

• 3:06:33Speaker 02

  everything's kind of still being figured out, you know, like, okay, here's this COVID thing. Is it real? Is it not real? The mask, we gotta wear the mask. Oh, fuck the fuck these masks, you know? All, all of it was kind of cycling, you know, we're like, as things are happening, we're just figuring it out as people, uh, with the information that, not that we're given, because, you know, of course, uh, we're searching for information, right? Um, anybody that I am close with, you know, we're gonna find our own information, we're not just gonna be fed what's given. So, so I'm like, you know, I'm reading this stuff and I'm in the studio and I'm kind of on my rants, you know? I'm like, man, this is crazy. You seeing this? You seeing this? And?

• 3:07:18Speaker 02

  Kaitlyn wasn't, she didn't, she didn't know anything about right or left or, you know what I mean? Like, um.

• 3:07:26Shawn Ryan?

  Not into politics.

• 3:07:27Speaker 02

  She didn't grow up in a political house. I didn't either, you know? Uh, most of my life, I thought I was a Democrat because I was poor and I had food stamps. And I thought this was the way it was supposed to be, you know? It wasn't until I became a man, a father, a business owner, you know, a tax paying American. And I was like, oh no, fuck, what the fuck? Like, absolutely not.

• 3:07:51Shawn Ryan?

  That's interesting. Is that, is that a commonality?

• 3:07:54Speaker 02

  Super.

• 3:07:54Shawn Ryan?

  Growing up like that, you just automatically assume, oh, we're Democrats.

• 3:07:58Speaker 02

  Automatic, a hundred percent.

• 3:07:59Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 3:08:00Speaker 02

  The Democrats have been so good at masking themselves as for the people, right? With welfare, healthcare, you know, racial equality, whatever the issue is. They do a great job at masking, I mean, Malcolm X was talking about it. You know, saying that the, the biggest enemy was the white liberal. Because they would, they were wolves in sheep clothing. They would mask like they were, and they would always use, um, you know, black powerful leaders to try to get their message out, right? Um, they've been guilty of that for centuries.

• 3:08:47Speaker 02

  But, so I always thought I was a Democrat because, you know, I, I live in the hood.

• 3:08:54Speaker 02

  I got, I'm on welfare, I've got food stamps, you know, um. That was just how I was raised, thinking that that's what it was. I didn't know anything about real politics, you know, until.

• 3:09:08Speaker 02

  I became until it started to affect my life, you know, till I started seeing taxes. Till I started seeing, it's like, hold up, no, I'm not fixing, I don't wanna give fifty percent of my money. So that this person that doesn't, won't get up off the fucking couch can live the same way as me, like.

• 3:09:29Shawn Ryan?

  You don't like doing that?

• 3:09:30Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely not, I refuse. I refuse, dude, like, when I started getting into conversations about socialism, dude. I literally had one of my favorite artists in the entire world, I'm not gonna mention his name. Sitting in the studio and he goes, "Struggle, but don't you understand? Guys like me and you, we just have a knack to make money. You know, we, we have a lot of drive. And shouldn't we give fifty, sixty percent in taxes? So that people that are lazy or just don't have the same drive we have can enjoy the same life that we do?

• 3:10:05Shawn Ryan?

  It's a real conversation?

• 3:10:07Speaker 02

  Yes. This, I, I'm beginning to think that liberal is a mental disorder.

• 3:10:16Speaker 02

  Seriously.

• 3:10:20Speaker 02

  Far liberal, I don't know, fuck, whatever.

• 3:10:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I got some liberal friends and, you know, whatever, but, like. Yeah, no, they really believe that shit. I literally had an argument with another friend of mine, he's like, I'm like, bro, this is the only country that you can come from nothing and become a fucking billionaire, dog, because of the American dream. Because, because, because of capitalism and because of conservative beliefs. And he goes, "Yeah, struggle, but in socialist countries, nobody comes from nothing." I'm like, "Yeah, but nobody has anything past this." You know what I mean? Like, there's a ceiling, you can't, that's the beauty of the American dream is you can go as high as you fucking want. If you're willing to put the work in, take the fucking chances, sacrifice.

• 3:11:12Speaker 02

  You can have whatever you want. That's the beauty of the American dream. You know, and yeah, it's a real conversation.

• 3:11:20Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. I've not had to have that conversation before.

• 3:11:26Shawn Ryan?

  We don't have a lot of that in the military.

• 3:11:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:11:31Speaker 02

  God.

• 3:11:32Shawn Ryan?

  So God, we need you now.

• 3:11:34Speaker 02

  We have a lot of it in the music business.

• 3:11:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I've heard.

• 3:11:38Speaker 02

  So God, we need you now. So I was doing my rant and, you know,

• 3:11:45Speaker 02

  Kaitlyn sends me a voice note a couple of days later. She was like, hey, I kind of got this from what you were saying the other day and this was just on my heart boom. And I hear it and it's that hook. And I'm like, holy shit, this is a fucking hit. You never really know in music, you know, like you can hear a thousand songs and everyone that you really love, they don't. And the ones that you hate end up being the ones you have to perform for 20 years.

• 3:12:09Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 3:12:10Speaker 02

  Cause they love it. You never know what a hit record is. You just gotta keep recording music and fucking hope the shit sticks.

• 3:12:17Shawn Ryan?

  So, hold on, now I'm getting off track, but fuck it. So when you record an album, what, maybe 12 songs in an album, right?

• 3:12:24Speaker 02

  10, 12 songs, yeah.

• 3:12:25Shawn Ryan?

  You don't know which one's gonna be a hit?

• 3:12:27Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 3:12:27Shawn Ryan?

  You don't, you're not like, this is the one.

• 3:12:30Speaker 02

  No, you hear it, you say that a bunch of times.

• 3:12:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:33Speaker 02

  And you're like, oh, this is the one. And it's not the one. It's the one that you're like, fuck, I don't really like this song, but I think they might like it. I don't know. And you put it out and it goes haywire. And then for 10 years, you gotta fucking perform this song that you hate.

• 3:12:51Speaker 02

  Bubba Sparks, Miss New Booty. Dude, he still gets paid $5,000 to walk in a strip club and perform Miss New Beauty, Miss New Booty. And he fucking hates that song.

• 3:13:02Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:13:03Speaker 02

  You know?

• 3:13:04Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 3:13:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's like his least favorite song he's ever recorded, but he has to do it because that's what he got. That's, that's the one that blew.

• 3:13:12Shawn Ryan?

  But you called this one.

• 3:13:14Speaker 02

  I, I called this one. I said, this is gonna be a big song. It's gonna be great. It needs to be heard, even if it fucking flops. If 10 people hear it and it brings them closer to God and makes them stronger and makes them rally up and fucking feel strength right now in this time of, uh, where a lot of people are feeling weak and vulnerable and afraid and fearful. If this gives just a handful of people a little bit more oomph in their fucking fight, then I'm happy. Right? But I knew it was a good song. So we released it, did good. Five million views, I think, on YouTube. It's like, oh, yeah, boom. In a couple of months, like, it was smoking. I was like, oh, this is great. Then it starts to die down.

• 3:13:59Speaker 02

  We released the next single.

• 3:14:03Speaker 02

  Next thing you know, phew, right back to the top. And I'm like, what is going on? Every viral video, uh, Kaitlyn's working it on TikTok, you know? Um, and it just, it translated and it just snowballed and snowballed. And all of a sudden, I'm watching us climb the charts, climb the charts. And then here's Lil, um, what's that weirdo's name? Nas X knocked him out the top.

• 3:14:30Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:14:30Speaker 02

  And I'm like, man, they just, they put a million dollars behind this guy's album. We didn't put a dollar. That means the people are speaking.

• 3:14:38Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:14:38Speaker 02

  Right? That means that, and that's, that's iTunes. So that means they're hitting buy. That's not just people listening to it. That's them hitting purchase. Number one, uh, most sold rap song, two weeks in a row on Billboard.

• 3:14:57Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:14:59Speaker 02

  During those two weeks, Lil Nas X dropped, um, Cardi B dropped, and Drake dropped his whole album. At one point, I was number one and Drake had the next nineteen slots on iTunes.

• 3:15:13Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:15:15Speaker 02

  For all his songs off that album.

• 3:15:17Shawn Ryan?

  Had you, had you ever been on the charts before?

• 3:15:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we hit iTunes charts quite a bit. Like, when we first release, we'll have a day or two where we're, you know, on the top of the iTunes charts because we got a great fan base.

• 3:15:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 3:15:34Speaker 02

  This was singles. This was one song. Never had a song do that.

• 3:15:38Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:15:39Speaker 02

  This is, and we, you know, me and Jelly had fallen in the fogs, a gold record. It didn't do that.

• 3:15:45Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:15:46Speaker 02

  So, um.

• 3:15:51Speaker 02

  Number one, and it sat number one between number one and number five skipping back and forth. For like four or five months.

• 3:15:59Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 3:16:00Speaker 02

  On iTunes. Now, it was on, number one on Billboard. Two weeks in a row was the longest. I think it might have hit two or three times. But um, for the longest, two weeks in a row, that's Billboard, that's every fucking song in the world.

• 3:16:14Shawn Ryan?

  That's all genres.

• 3:16:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, well, on the Billboard, it was rap.

• 3:16:19Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:16:19Speaker 02

  Uh, but on iTunes, it was all genres.

• 3:16:22Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. That's fucking incredible.

• 3:16:25Speaker 02

  And you know, I, I tell them every night, I'm like, no record label, no management, no publicist, no big budgets, no marketing strategy, just a song from the heart and the people. And I let them know every night, I'm like, when I watched Lil Nas X and Cardi B get knocked out of that top slot, I, I knew, and it solidified that the people's voice is still worth more than all the corporate sponsorships, all the dollars that those corporations can throw around. The power's still in the people, and that song proved it last year.

• 3:17:02Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, that's amazing.

• 3:17:03Speaker 02

  So.

• 3:17:05Shawn Ryan?

  That is amazing.

• 3:17:06Speaker 02

  Now I gotta try to follow it up, fuck.

• 3:17:09Shawn Ryan?

  So what's, what's next? So speaking of that, what is next?

• 3:17:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 3:17:12Shawn Ryan?

  What do you got coming?

• 3:17:13Speaker 02

  Got a new album coming, working on it right now, um, actually, we'll be recording on it today. Um, album's called Monte Carlo.

• 3:17:21Shawn Ryan?

  Monte Carlo.

• 3:17:22Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:17:23Shawn Ryan?

  When's that coming out?

• 3:17:24Speaker 02

  Uh, it'll be out in November.

• 3:17:26Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 3:17:26Speaker 02

  Uh, gonna start releasing singles for it end of July.

• 3:17:30Shawn Ryan?

  Do you wanna make any predictions on what's gonna be the hit?

• 3:17:35Speaker 02

  No, 'cause I haven't recorded half of it. Still working on it. But, the, the album, I think, and I think you'll love this concept.

• 3:17:48Speaker 02

  I bought a eighty-four Monte Carlo.

• 3:17:52Speaker 02

  Uh, completely original.

• 3:17:58Speaker 02

  With all the chaos that I've seen, that I've been through,

• 3:18:05Speaker 02

  and the complexity of my life, and all the shit that I deal with, I find my most peaceful moments

• 3:18:16Speaker 02

  in the simplest things, in the simplicity, right? So like getting in that eighty-four Monte Carlo, just has a fucking radio. I don't even gotta plug the plug the phone up. I can't even charge my phone in the car, right? And just turn on that radio

• 3:18:34Speaker 02

  and driving, just this basic, you know, nineteen eighty-four. The smell of the seats, smell of the motor, reminds me of my childhood, you know?

• 3:18:51Speaker 02

  But it's so peaceful.

• 3:18:54Speaker 02

  Just driving that car. I don't have all the distractions, all the buttons. I can't, you know, answer my phone through the fucking speaker. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's just that simplicity that brings like a state of peace in the complex, chaotic world I live in, right? So I said, you know what? I'm gonna buy that and drive this car every day to the studio.

• 3:19:22Speaker 02

  And I want to convey

• 3:19:26Speaker 02

  whatever comes from that. The nostalgia of the car, the chaos that I've been through, the peace that I've found, the complexities and the simplicities. I wanna bundle that all into one project and tell my story.

• 3:19:42Speaker 02

  So it's turned out pretty fucking cool. That's awesome. Yeah. And it's a lot more country. Really? I'm actually singing a lot on it. Um, some of the songs have, uh, eighties vibe.

• 3:20:00Speaker 02

  It's all over the place. It's gonna be one of those albums that it doesn't matter what kind of music you like, there'll be a song for you.

• 3:20:09Shawn Ryan?

  That's.

• 3:20:10Speaker 02

  You know, it's like gonna be that if you were to sit there and run through that radio, that little turn knob radio and stop every other channel. That's what it's gonna feel like.

• 3:20:23Shawn Ryan?

  Something's on there for you.

• 3:20:25Speaker 02

  Something's on there for you.

• 3:20:26Shawn Ryan?

  Nice. I can't wait to hear it.

• 3:20:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm excited.

• 3:20:30Shawn Ryan?

  When you, uh, when you get it released.

• 3:20:34Speaker 02

  Uh, before I get it released, I'll send you a link. I'll send you a private link.

• 3:20:37Shawn Ryan?

  Do you do vinyl? Do you release vinyl?

• 3:20:39Speaker 02

  I have been trying to do vinyl. You know the problem with vinyl and I'm gonna, I'm gonna fix it this year. The only problem with vinyl is it's like all these places that print vinyl are like eight to 12 to 16 weeks.

• 3:20:56Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 3:20:56Speaker 02

  How much time they need.

• 3:20:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:58Speaker 02

  So to order a vinyl, you know, you're talking about 10, $20,000 to make a nice vinyl order. That's a lot of money to throw away for six months waiting on it to come back.

• 3:21:11Shawn Ryan?

  I got you.

• 3:21:12Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? It's like, that's an investment. But I am, this year, we're gonna do vinyl. Cause I love vinyl.

• 3:21:17Shawn Ryan?

  Well, if you do vinyl, I got a request. I need one signed by you so I can frame it and put it up in the studio. It's like a museum in here.

• 3:21:26Speaker 02

  I got you. I'm gonna do a vinyl.

• 3:21:28Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, man, best of luck to you. I can't wait to hear it and, man, I just, you and your six, six artists under your record label?

• 3:21:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, five. I'm the sixth, yeah.

• 3:21:42Shawn Ryan?

  I just wish you guys the best of luck. The message you're putting out now, you know, and where you came from is just, I mean, you don't hear a lot of positive shit in the world anymore, you know, and from what you've come from and what you've. Morphed into, I mean, it's amazing. And it can bring a hell of a lot of people hope. And the, and the fact that you're gonna be going back and speaking, you know, the guys coming out of prison and show, and you're living proof. Hey, you know, there is a fucking second chance. And if you really work at it, you know, life can be beautiful.

• 3:22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and don't take it for granted. Cause you, on, and on your end, you know a lot. On my end, I know a lot of guys that didn't get a second chance.

• 3:22:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yep, yep.

• 3:22:27Speaker 02

  First time they got hit, first time and they're gone. You know? And so for the guys like us that did get second, third, fourth, fifth, six chances, don't take it for granted.

• 3:22:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 3:22:38Speaker 02

  You got another opportunity, I, you know, I like to tell them every night, if you're here, your story has not ended. Do not let your past define you, make it refine you. You know, I use the analogy of gold a lot. To make gold pure, you put it in the fire. You pull it out, you wipe off the imperfections. Put it back in the fire. Don't be afraid of the fire.

• 3:23:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 3:23:00Speaker 02

  Fall in love with those flames, make them purify you. You gotta go through shit to appreciate, you know, you gotta go through bad shit to appreciate the good. But like, uh, you know, my whole life, people say, are you ready? And I said, I was born ready. I finally realized I was not fucking born ready.

• 3:23:23Speaker 02

  I had to go through hell to get ready.

• 3:23:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:23:26Speaker 02

  To, to be able to handle, to be worthy of, and to be deserving of the blessings and the light that I have right now. I had to fucking go through some things, you know? And now I don't take it for granted. And so.

• 3:23:42Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you.

• 3:23:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23:44Shawn Ryan?

  That's incredible.

• 3:23:44Speaker 02

  Appreciate it.

• 3:23:45Shawn Ryan?

  One last question.

• 3:23:47Speaker 02

  Let's get it.

• 3:23:48Shawn Ryan?

  If you had three people to recommend to come on this show, who would they be?

• 3:23:58Speaker 02

  I would love to see Wes Whitlock on here.

• 3:24:00Shawn Ryan?

  You'd like to see Wes Whitlock?

• 3:24:02Speaker 02

  I, I would like to see it, just to see, uh, with, what, um,

• 3:24:07Speaker 02

  have you, have you had a chance to tell him? Does he know about you wearing the?

• 3:24:14Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, he sent it. He sent it over to us. That was many, was a long time ago.

• 3:24:19Speaker 02

  That's cool. I would like to see that, that rekindled, um.

• 3:24:26Speaker 02

  Man.

• 3:24:31Speaker 02

  That's a hard question.

• 3:24:34Speaker 02

  Who do I want to really know the deep, dark truth of?

• 3:24:40Speaker 02

  I tell my wife outside, I said, man, another thirty, forty-five minutes with that guy, he gonna get some shit out of me. Nobody knows.

• 3:24:50Speaker 02

  Get Matthew McConaughey on here, huh?

• 3:24:53Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 3:24:55Speaker 02

  No, you know somebody that you, that would be fucking badass on here?

• 3:24:58Shawn Ryan?

  Who?

• 3:24:59Speaker 02

  I just opened up for him. And he's a fucking batshit crazy wild and real deal. Ted Nugent.

• 3:25:08Shawn Ryan?

  Ted Nugent, the Nuge?

• 3:25:10Speaker 02

  Dude.

• 3:25:12Shawn Ryan?

  You know him?

• 3:25:12Speaker 02

  I just opened up for him in Panama City.

• 3:25:16Shawn Ryan?

  Hook a motherfucker up.

• 3:25:17Speaker 02

  I got you. I got you. I'll call his wife this week.

• 3:25:19Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 3:25:20Speaker 02

  For sure. Let me tell you something. That motherfucker, he is everything you think he is. He is that.

• 3:25:27Shawn Ryan?

  He's going on the list.

• 3:25:28Speaker 02

  Yes, Ted Nugent.

• 3:25:30Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know.

• 3:25:30Speaker 02

  I might not have three for you, but I got him and I'm gonna make it fucking happen.

• 3:25:35Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect. Well, man, I just. It was a real pleasure interviewing you and getting to know you. And I just wish you the best of luck. You.

• 3:25:45Speaker 02

  Likewise.

• 3:25:45Shawn Ryan?

  And your, and, and your family and, um, we'll be watching.

• 3:25:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. I'll be watching too.

• 3:25:52Shawn Ryan?

  Cool.

• 3:25:52Speaker 02

  I got, I got it this morning. It was like, who do you have on there last? I was like, ah, great. They got it. Fucking killed Bin Laden. Like, what am I gonna talk about?

• 3:26:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is amazing, man. I'm so proud of you.

• 3:26:06Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 3:26:07Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 3:26:07Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. All right.

• 3:26:09Speaker 02

  Thank you, brother.

• 3:26:10Shawn Ryan?

  Cheers.

• 3:26:19Speaker 06

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