Lil Jon on His Biggest Hits, Family, Faith, and Finding Happiness

Grammy-winning rapper and producer Lil Jon joins Keke to discuss the stories behind his iconic hits, including Usher’s “Yeah!” and Ciara’s “Goodies,” and his memoir, I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me. He opens up about discovering the truth about his biological father and grieving the loss of his son Nathan. He also shares advice on using faith, meditation, acceptance and gratitude to manage difficult emotions and find happiness. Plus, he leads Keke through a meditation. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Keke Palmer?

  My next guest has been turning us all the way up for more than 30 years. He's a Grammy-winning producer, rapper, and DJ who helped put crunk on the map, gave us massive hits like "Get Low," "Turn Down For What," and "Yeah," and became one of the most recognizable voices in music. But after all these years, he says we've only seen one version of him. Now, in his new memoir, "I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me," he's finally letting us into the world beyond the music, the catchphrases, and the larger-than-life persona. Baby, this is Lil' Jon.

• 1:07Keke Palmer?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Apple Watch. We spend so much time checking in on everybody else, but when's the last time you checked in on your heart? Apple Watch Series 12 has an all-new health-sensing system that unlocks even more powerful health insights. In health, heart is everything. Now, let's get into today's show. Where you at?

• 1:33Speaker 01

  I'm in here.

• 1:34Keke Palmer?

  Oh, my God, it is so good to be here.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  I can't believe I'm here.

• 1:37Keke Palmer?

  I can't believe that you're here either. I'm so happy. Hey, you got me some stuff.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I brought you some cowboy shirts.

• 1:44Keke Palmer?

  Thank you so much. I love it. It's so weird seeing you in person because I've just known you for all my life, even though I never met you in my life.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Same.

• 1:53Keke Palmer?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  And you seem like, you feel like one of my cousins.

• 1:58Keke Palmer?

  Come on, Cousin Kix.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  I feel like I already know you. Your personality matches like, I'm sure you get this all the time, but like, family members.

• 2:06Keke Palmer?

  Oh, my gosh. Whenever, when anybody time, that somebody tells me that, I feel so happy. There's no greater compliment than feeling like family.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Because you're real. Like, you, you, I've never met you, but you seem like you are yourself when you're on camera, whenever you say whatever, and you're just happy, too.

• 2:24Keke Palmer?

  Oh, my gosh. Thank you. I do try to keep the spirits high, which I feel like we relate on. I feel like you always bring in the high energy.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:31Keke Palmer?

  And so, I'm so happy to have you on the show and to talk about all those things. Before we get into them, though, I gotta do my pre-show pull-up.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:38Keke Palmer?

  And so, I actually don't believe that, can't believe I don't know your sign. What sign are you?

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Capricorn. I got the same birthday as Betty White, Steve Harvey, the 17th.

• 2:51Keke Palmer?

  Capricorn is my perfect match. Virgo, I don't know if you, you usually get along with Virgos?

• 2:56Speaker 01

  I don't really know too many Virgos.

• 2:57Keke Palmer?

  Oh, wow. That's crazy.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:00Keke Palmer?

  Okay, so Virgo, a sun. Do you know your moon or rising?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  I do not know that part.

• 3:09Keke Palmer?

  Okay, boom. Okay, now, what is your love language? Meaning, like, how do you receive love, like, recognize when somebody loves you? And then, how do you give love?

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Uh, well, I guess it goes back to how my mother loved on me. So, I like to be, like, hugged and kissed and just have someone next to me. So, my love language is just spending time with somebody and just being in their presence. That's what it's about for me.

• 3:37Keke Palmer?

  So, your mom was very, is a very affectionate person. That's how I am with my son. I love to hear that because my son now, as he's getting older, he's three now, going from when he was a baby and I was hugging him, kissing him, everything. Now, he'll say, "Can I have a hug and kiss?"

• 3:51Speaker 01

  It melts your heart, right?

• 3:53Keke Palmer?

  Yes.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, my daughter's like that now.

• 3:55Keke Palmer?

  It is so cute. She's two, your daughter.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  She's about to be two.

• 3:58Keke Palmer?

  She's about to be two. Congratulations on that.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 4:00Keke Palmer?

  Shout-outs to your partner as well.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 4:02Keke Palmer?

  Um, okay, so, no matter how much money you have, what is one thing you'll splurge on?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  My family.

• 4:08Keke Palmer?

  Oh, excuse me. You'll never splurge on?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 4:10Keke Palmer?

  What is one thing you'll never splurge on?

• 4:14Keke Palmer?

  My bad.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  I try to not splurge on things that are, like, gonna go away. Like, you know what I mean? I want something that's gonna last. If I'm gonna spend a lot of money on something, I want it to be able to last.

• 4:26Keke Palmer?

  I feel the exact same way. I mean, every now and then for a little item or something, but, you know, I used to, I used to feel guilty about jewelry, but then I realized, like, no, jewelry...

• 4:34Speaker 01

  It's an investment.

• 4:35Keke Palmer?

  It's an investment. So, then I started getting a little bit too crazy on that. I got to calm down.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hear you. But, you know, gold is never gonna, gold is always gonna be useful, you know? So, if you get some gold, diamonds, I don't know, but gold in itself is always gonna be useful. It's always gonna be currency.

• 4:55Keke Palmer?

  Come on. That's gonna take it back to that, them Egyptians. They was getting buried with their [BLEEP]. That's so crazy.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  I had some billionaires tell me, "Get gold, uh, blocks." They were like, "You put your money, put some of your money into gold block, into gold bars." Because if anything goes to, if currency goes away, we still gonna have gold. You gotta think, back in the day, there was gold coins.

• 5:19Keke Palmer?

  Yeah, and it's material, it's from the earth, too, right? So, it's like, it has some type of energy to it, some [BLEEP] we probably don't know yet, but we gonna find out. Okay, um, what is your most unpopular opinion, if you even have one? That sometimes that's hard to think about.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 5:36Keke Palmer?

  Right, I know that's a hard one.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  You know, these days, you can't even damn share your damn unpopular opinions. So, I'm keeping my unpopular opinion to myself.

• 5:45Keke Palmer?

  No, seriously.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  I'm just saying. We can't, like...

• 5:50Keke Palmer?

  That will get you.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  That's the thing about today compared to being born in the 70s and then raised in the 80s.

• 5:57Keke Palmer?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Everybody's opinion didn't damn matter.

• 6:00Keke Palmer?

  No, because it was just yours.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  And everybody wasn't offended so easily.

• 6:04Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  You get what I'm saying? So, we can't say what we used to say.

• 6:09Keke Palmer?

  Yeah, it's interesting, though, because when it comes to the opinion, it does feel like everybody's opinions matter so much. It's like, but actually, I don't even know you.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Right, and it don't matter.

• 6:17Keke Palmer?

  So, why do I care what you think?

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Right, we don't.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 6:22Keke Palmer?

  Okay, last one. The one thing in your fridge you'll never run out of is?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Uh, one thing I will never run out...

• 6:31Keke Palmer?

  For me, it's eggs. I'm gonna always love eggs.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do two eggs a day. The family does two eggs. Everybody in the family does two eggs a day. I always got, I drink this drink called Zevia. It's no sugar, and it's a soda. And so, we stay stocked up on Zevia's because you can get a soda fix with none of the guilt, like, no calories, no bad stuff. It's zero everything.

• 6:56Keke Palmer?

  I love that. You know what I started getting into, just thinking about the taste, but not whatever comes with it? I started getting into some non-alcoholic wine.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:05Keke Palmer?

  Little wine. It tastes like wine, but it ain't got none of the alcohol. I'm winning. I also start to feel like I'm getting into it, even though it ain't in there.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Everything is in your mind, you know?

• 7:15Keke Palmer?

  You know what I mean?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  We create our own reality. So, if you feel like you're getting a buzz and you're feeling good, then that's what you getting.

• 7:21Keke Palmer?

  Exactly, exactly. Okay, so, like I said, I feel like I've known you all my life. I mean, it's given, "Yeah, what? Okay."

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Okay, that was pretty good.

• 7:30Keke Palmer?

  You know, I tried to put it out there. Um, but now, you're saying, "Hold on, like, let me, let me let y'all really know what I'm about." And you have your memoir coming out, which is "I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me."

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:41Keke Palmer?

  And I love that title.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 7:44Keke Palmer?

  I love that title.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, it, it kinda came about, we were trying to figure out a title, and we were just on a conference call one day, and it just kinda came out. And it's basically, what it means to me is I'm deeper than you think. You think I'm just these three words, but I'm way deeper than that. And it's also because people, a lot of times, think I'm just, I got lucky, and I'm always screaming and hollering, and it's no death to me. And it's no, like, I'm very calculated in everything I do throughout my entire musical career. And some people just think I'm just an idiot, you know, dumb, and just screaming and hollering. And I'm like, nah, it's a lot, it's a lot more to me.

• 8:24Keke Palmer?

  I remember when I was coming up in the game, and I would be in the studio sessions and stuff like that, something that the people always said was Lil' Jon is one of the most intelligent people in the game.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:33Keke Palmer?

  I always would hear that coming up. I never got a chance to meet you, but people would always say, "I'd be in Atlanta in the scene, whatever."

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:39Keke Palmer?

  And they would always say, like, "Yo, he be on some next-level stuff." And so, it's so cool that at this point, you're really, you know, you wanna share kind of what is behind that, because it's true. People perceive you, and I even feel like I've experienced that to myself, where people only see clips of you. They only see what, what it is you're putting out there, but they're not knowing everything that goes into it and why you're shouting.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:59Keke Palmer?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 9:01Keke Palmer?

  So, you described yourself as a new human being.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:06Keke Palmer?

  Obviously, we always are becoming new versions of ourselves. If you're not, then that's like crazy, right? Especially every five to 10 years.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 9:13Keke Palmer?

  So, what is something that would have surprised the 20-year-old you about who you are today?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Uh, that I would kinda slow down on partying, because I've been partying, like, since 16 years old, like, in a major way. Because I was, I, I had the house, everybody came to. I threw the craziest parties in high school.

• 9:35Keke Palmer?

  Yeah, I know. You said your parents let you turn the basement into a little party joint.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had basically my own apartment in the basement. So, I had turntables down there, and whenever we wanna have a party, we just get on the phone and just put the word out, and then the party's just crazy. So, I've been partying since 16, and I thought I would never, like, slow down on that. And then, I slowed down. I never thought I would be in the meditation and helping to heal people through meditation, and I never thought I was gonna be who I am. When I was younger, when I was a, you know, teenager, and when I was elementary school, I was a quiet, I was quiet as a, as an elementary school kid. I was just kinda more reserved and quiet.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  And but as a teenager, I got into the punk rock music and punk rock scene and skateboarding.

• 10:25Keke Palmer?

  I'm just a teenage turn back baby. Come on punk rock.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  But it wasn't cool then. This was the eighties.

• 10:32Keke Palmer?

  Right, right.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  There wasn't no black punk rock kids or black skater kids in Atlanta. It was only a small community of us, about ten, fifteen of us, right? So, I never would have thought that I would become a rapper. Cause I grew up listening to Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick. You know, all of those artists. I never, I never would have imagined I would be an entertainer, yet alone being in pop culture the way I am. So,

• 10:57Keke Palmer?

  Right.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  None of that I would have ever, ever imagined.

• 11:01Keke Palmer?

  So let's go back to the beginning because, you know, you were shy as a kid, but you, you know, you kinda got into playing the drums because you had a crush on your music teacher.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had a crush on this teacher. And I was like, I wanna get, I wanna learn how to play drums because of her. And so I got my, I got my mom to get me private lessons so I can have that private time. Yeah. So I had the private teacher.

• 11:26Keke Palmer?

  That is so funny.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  What's crazy is the things that we learn as kids can, you know, help us out as adults because drumming, drumming and DJing are the foundations of how I produce music. And starting in drums and then being in high school and in drums and middle school, it taught me like how to make music in a sense of how it was formatted. Like everything had a place, you know.

• 11:51Keke Palmer?

  Kinda mathematical.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, most drummers know that a producer understands space. A lot of guys that learn more, uh, you know, keyboards and all of that, they get more to, they, they overproduce sometimes.

• 12:07Keke Palmer?

  Sure, sure.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  And drummers, we kinda simplify things and strip it back so everything's got a spot. So I think that helped me to become a, a great producer as well.

• 12:16Keke Palmer?

  Yeah. What do you think it was that you felt with music that obviously taken out of the reason, the initial reason why you wanted to get into it? When you started actually drumming and then obviously eventually DJing, et cetera, what was it that kept you coming back to that practice?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  It was, so DJing, I'll just jump into it from DJing. One time I was having a party at my house, and this is what made me wanna be a DJ. Uh, my boy Cersei, he was the DJ for the crew.

• 12:42Keke Palmer?

  Shout out to Cersei.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Yep. And I just was amazed one night how he could control the emotion and the energy of a party by playing different types of music. So I was like, that's why I wanna learn how to DJ and that's what keeps me coming back to music is the energy. And I realized through making music and DJing that I could, I give people a good time. Like I understand that's part of my purpose. Earlier in my life, my purpose is to give people music that makes them feel good to release and forget the problems of their life. And now I have a different purpose, but I understand, you know, even, we just finished the American leg of this, this tour, the I'm Back Tour I'm doing with Pitbull.

• 13:26Keke Palmer?

  Yes.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  And we getting ready to go back to Europe. And just looking out on the crowd and seeing different generations of people singing the songs and seeing them have a good time just makes me feel good. So, yeah, it's the energy.

• 13:39Keke Palmer?

  But it's interesting, right? Cause even when we think about the, somebody might see, oh, the music being totally different from the meditation or from the things you're doing now. But they're actually the same thing.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:49Keke Palmer?

  Because it's a transference of that energy.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:52Keke Palmer?

  You, it started, and that's so interesting about like paths, and I always talk about that with people that are like, I wanna be this person, I wanna be that. Per, focus on the function of why you're doing something.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:01Keke Palmer?

  You know, and that will lead you to a million different things. That could show up being a meditation teacher, being a yoga teacher, being a musician, DJ, producer, rapper. Because you really, you know what it is you actually love about it, which is that transference of that energy.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  You have to be open to receiving too. Because sometimes people push away things that they don't think they, that he need to do or they don't understand. Well, you gotta be open, like meditation kinda came to me, uh, because I was going through a divorce and I didn't like the way my mindset was. I'm a, I'm a very positive individual. And I was like, I don't like the way I'm thinking right now. This has got me off. So I was like, let me start saying affirmations every day. So I could change my mindset because that's the key to welcoming good things back into your life is to change your mindset and think positive things. So, I was like, let me start saying these affirmations so I would drink tea every morning and sit in this pyramid. I had a copper pyramid.

• 14:54Keke Palmer?

  Fabulous, copper. Come on, T.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  I would go sit in the pyramid and, and say my affirmations. And then around the same time, uh, my good friend Doug Davis introduced me to a guy named Kabir Sagal and he was in that space. So I'm meditating basically every day and he's in that space and then we start to come together and talk. And we decide to collaborate and just start doing these meditations albums. So that just kinda came, you know, that was the path that God was steering me towards.

• 15:21Keke Palmer?

  That's right.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  And I accepted the calling. And so many people, after I dropped these albums, would hit me and say, I never meditated before. Thank you for helping me meditate. Your, your meditation's helped me sleep, helped me to sleep better. Your meditation helped me to deal with grief, you know, so. All of that makes me feel good because I feel like the music, it, it did a certain amount of good too. But to, to be able to help and heal is a whole nother level of answering the calling that God has for us all.

• 15:52Keke Palmer?

  Yes. Oh my gosh, I love everything that you said. I know this book is gonna touch so many people. And again, it all happens in God's timing because all the people that you touched when, from your entry point, they get to be also a part of this new chapter with you. So it's like, if everything is in God's timing. So I really love that. Uh, something also that you reveal in your book is that you've recently found out the man that raised you was not your biological father.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:16Keke Palmer?

  Now that's T. How did you get into that?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  It's real crazy because it was a family rumor that my, you know.

• 16:23Keke Palmer?

  We love that. It's definitely giving seventy.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was trying to put this family rumor to bed. Like, man, you come on, y'all don't believe that. Uh-uh, let me just go get this DNA done. And I realized, as in doing this, my, one of my cousins on my dad's side,

• 16:39Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  he has his full DNA profile in the same company that I do. And then when I started to look at it, he wasn't popping up as a relative. And he's my first cousin. So I was like, something off here. And then, so I, I got the real forensic DNA stuff done and they were like, nah, he's not. But this person over here is your brother and this person over here is your sister. And I'm like, whoa. So it's crazy because it knocked me backwards a million feet. Cause I had just seen a movie about this chick and she found out her dad was not her biological dad. And it's things that you see in movies that you like, that would never happen to me.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Oh, that's crazy that happened to that person. And then it happens to you and it's like, wow. So that was a, I dealt with a roller coaster of emotions.

• 17:36Keke Palmer?

  Mm.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  And my mother's not here, my father's not here, my biological father's not here. So I can't even go to any of them and ask them questions, you know.

• 17:47Keke Palmer?

  Now that's tough.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:49Keke Palmer?

  That's tough. When you look back on your childhood, are there, were there certain things that started to come to you or that you reflected on?

• 17:57Speaker 01

  I've never had an inkling that my brothers weren't my, you know, one hundred percent blood brothers like that. And, um, I never, we kinda thought we didn't look alike sometimes. But you know, that's family. Sometimes kids don't look alike.

• 18:13Keke Palmer?

  One thousand percent.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Uh, but I never would have thought, and like I said, I just did the test to like, to just put the rumors to bed and be like, no, y'all tripping. I don't believe that. But it's, it's more even intense in the book. When y'all read the book, you'll get more of the story, but,

• 18:29Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  it was just so shocking. I, I just could not believe it. And my biological siblings reached out to me through the DNA site. But I, I just mentally haven't been able to, to, to talk to them yet.

• 18:43Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  I will, but I just had, it was so heavy because you think, you, you know, your life is, I'm fifty something years old when I find this out.

• 18:51Keke Palmer?

  Mm.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  And I've lived an entire life and then you realize your life wasn't the life that you thought it was.

• 18:56Keke Palmer?

  Yeah. Yeah. Your story is different. It can sometimes make you question your identity. You know what I mean? But it's interesting because you don't actually have the ability to have those conversations with your parents.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  That's what hurts the most.

• 19:08Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Because I can't go talk to my biological father and say, what's your favorite food? What's your favorite color? Let's go to a movie. I didn't ever get a memory of him taking me to a baseball game. I mean, I can't have no conversation. I don't know anything about him. I got some pictures because, shout out to my, you know, my biological siblings. They sent me some pictures so I see what he looks like and we do look alike. And I, one picture they sent me, he was in the club. I was like, oh, that's probably, that's where I get it from. I probably get some of that from him and my mom, uh.

• 19:45Keke Palmer?

  Do you feel like he knew about you?

• 19:47Speaker 01

  I don't think he did.

• 19:48Keke Palmer?

  Wow.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Because they also said in the DNA, T, he had other kids that he did not know about too. So I got some Latino family members too.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  So maybe that's why I'm so connected in the Latino community with all of this stuff I do.

• 20:09Keke Palmer?

  I'm all that.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's crazy.

• 20:11Keke Palmer?

  Oh, my gosh, that is so interesting.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:13Keke Palmer?

  I've always wondered that too with men where it's like, oh, my gosh, what would you do if you found out that you had kids you never do? You know what I mean? Or even dudes that go and give their sperm to banks. It's like you might have forty of them out there.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:24Keke Palmer?

  You ain't got no clue, you know?

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:27Keke Palmer?

  So we, you know, I want to talk about the glasses because in hip hop culture, image and branding is everything, right? I mean, and in pop culture, period, you know what I'm saying? We think about Left Eye, you know what I'm saying? We think about Aaliyah in the early days. But something actually did happen to your eye when you were younger.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:44Keke Palmer?

  That brought you to doing the whole sunglasses.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a couple of things. So initially, when I started to become an artist, I was like, I want to stand out. I'm always marketing. I'm always thinking of, you know, how can I stand out in a crowd of other southern artists? And even in the group I was in, it was Lil Jon, Eastside Boys. So I initially started with these Elvis glasses. I wanted, I was like, I'm gonna do something really off the wall. I'm gonna get these Elvis sunglasses and I was started, I started with the Elvis sunglasses. But yes, it's also, I had an eye injury when I was a kid. I poked myself in the eye with a syringe.

• 21:21Keke Palmer?

  Oh.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Playing around with it. My mother was a diabetic and I got into her syringes and I poked myself in the eye. And I was like seven years old. So I had all these eye surgeries and like, I had a traumatic cataract and I had to get my lens replaced.

• 21:38Keke Palmer?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  As a kid, I, I think this is also what helped to mold me to who I am today. It's because I had to endure so much as a child and be tough and work hard because I had to do all these eye exercises because the muscles in my eye got weak and so my eye would drift a little bit.

• 21:56Keke Palmer?

  Mm-hmm. My son has a bit of a lazy eye.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  So all of that helped me to have to work hard. I had to learn to work hard as a kid.

• 22:05Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  To, to strengthen my eye and then endure going to school with an eye patch on or my eye drifting a little bit and all of that. So, yeah, I had issues with my eyes from an early age. And then, so I would, you know, wear sunglasses also to kind of hide if my eye drifted or whatever.

• 22:23Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, it was just, it's just stuff that, you know, I wouldn't go back and change anything. People, I, I like to get into that sometimes because people say, would you change anything? And I'm like, I, no, because if I change anything, I wouldn't be who I am today. Everything that I went through in my life gave me knowledge, experiences, and molded me to be who I am. I might not have the creativity that I have. I might not have the work ethic that I have if I change anything. So, yeah, it was tough to endure that going through school and certain parts of life, but it made me who I am.

• 23:04Keke Palmer?

  Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. It, it's like that butterfly effect. I don't know if you've ever seen that movie, but it's like one small change.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:10Keke Palmer?

  And every, and things ain't gonna be the same. So I'm cool with it. Um, you know, you also had your own HGTV show.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:17Keke Palmer?

  Which it was all about interior design, but you found your way into interior design and just from trying to do your own house? Like, what was the storyline with this?

• 23:24Speaker 01

  So, uh, we had a flood in our house. We were living in California, back and forth between LA and Atlanta. And the water was running on the top floor of our house for a week. So it.

• 23:38Keke Palmer?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  It ruined the entire house. We had to gut the house. And so in trying to put the house back together, I was watching home renovation shows on TV. And so I came across this show and it was called Megadance. And it was the designer named Anitra Mekadon. And I really loved her work. And I was like, I'm gonna reach out and see if she want to do something, help me out. So I reached out, she was like, yeah, let's, let's, you know, let's get together and do something. So me and her started to put together my house and that's how I fell in love with interior design. It's, it's really just being creative, like, just like music. She, she has all of the book smarts and, you know, on the job training and all of the history. And I just have creative ideas.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  And so we come together and she helps me to, we play off of each other, but she helps my crazy ideas come to life. And so, yeah, we put back together my house and my house came out to be really nice. And her, um, her husband, who's like behind the scenes, her manager and stuff, he was like, y'all work really good together and y'all designs are crazy. Like, we should kind of shop y'all to try to do a TV show. So we shot a pilot and we got on HGTV for two seasons.

• 24:52Keke Palmer?

  That is so fire. Again, following the flow and the vibe.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:57Keke Palmer?

  You get what I mean? Like, I, it's like, it's so interesting. People are like, why are you getting that? Just being true to me.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:02Keke Palmer?

  That's how I found myself up in there. Because also, I found out when I was getting ready for this, you was a bodybuilder too. You were in a bodybuilding competition.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:11Keke Palmer?

  And you made it actually to third place?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:14Keke Palmer?

  Okay, what made you say, I'm about to get swole? Okay, we going from getting low to getting swole?

• 25:21Speaker 01

  What's crazy is, it started from Super Bowl.

• 25:31Keke Palmer?

  This message is a paid partnership with Apple Watch. Our heart can tell us a lot about our health. And most of us are just out here ignoring it like an unread text from someone who's right. I've learned that one of the best indicators of how you're really doing is your heart. Apple Watch Series 12 has the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable. And the readiness score gives you one simple number every morning that says, yes, go conquer. Or maybe sit this one down. It pulls from your recent activity, your vitals, your sleep, and it adjusts throughout the day. So you know when to push and when to pull back. Oh, and the vitals app now tracks HRV, or heart rate variability,

• 26:13Keke Palmer?

  which is basically your body's inside scoop on stress and recovery. And you can check vitals day or night to catch shifts in your health status before they even think about becoming a whole thing. And that's on self-care, honey. Your heart tells the story of your health and with Apple Watch Series 12, you can understand it better than ever. Visit apple.com slash apple watch series 12 to learn more. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Heart rate accuracy based on Apple conducted study August 2026. Visit apple.com slash HR accuracy.

• 26:51Keke Palmer?

  I've been scrolling Airbnb, planning Thanksgiving, and I already know I want to take the family somewhere instead of hosting at home this year. I'm thinking Hudson Valley Orchards, farm-to-table restaurants, maybe a cider tasting that turns into a whole afternoon? I want to hit a local market the morning of and get everything fresh. Find a bakery for the pies because let's be clear, I do not bake. I perform other talents. Walk through town after dinner when everyone's too full to function but too happy to go inside. And then we'll come back to the cozy home at the end of the night to relax, get comfy, and of course, enjoy those leftovers at midnight. That's what I love about booking trips with Airbnb.

• 27:33Keke Palmer?

  You get the comforts of home while exploring new neighborhood, discovering local gems, and living your best life. If a cozy holiday getaway is in your future, play your next family gathering with Airbnb.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  I got the call from Usher that I want you to work on the show, but I want you to be in the show.

• 27:54Keke Palmer?

  Okay.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  And so I was like to myself, I need to look fly on that stage. I was like, I'm not about to look crazy up here. I'm not about to be overweight and look, nah.

• 28:04Keke Palmer?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  So one of my homies that I used to party with, we used to drink and eat pizza at five in the morning. He moved to LA and he became a bodybuilder. He got ripped and he was competing. So I went to him and was like, yo, can you train me to get ready for Super Bowl? So we got me, whipped me into shape, got nice shape. And then after that, he kind of, he went and competed at Muscle Beach, Venice Muscle Beach.

• 28:30Keke Palmer?

  Wow.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  And he was telling me, yo, I see, you know, your category, I'm fifty years old. So he was like, your category fifty and up, if forty-five and up, you probably could have won. You know what I mean? If we, if we would have trained right and got you in there. And so I was like, he was like, should we, you know, you want to do it next year, maybe? I was like, yeah, let's do it. So we started training. So it was, it was rough because I was still on the road. I'm still doing shows. I'm still doing nightclubs.

• 28:57Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  So we trained, trained, trained. And I eventually, what's crazy is the day before, I was all the way in like Connecticut or something, or Boston. So I had to take two flights to get to LA just to be there for the competition in the morning. So we like, so I'm at, the night before I'm on stage jumping around at nine o'clock.

• 29:20Keke Palmer?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  At night. Um, when most bodybuilders are just relaxing, getting ready, they're eating the right stuff.

• 29:27Keke Palmer?

  Definitely not on no plane getting inflamed.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I, I come to LA, go to Venice, and I enter and I get, get third place. So that was a major accomplishment and. You know, I thought that's a great motivation for so many people, like especially people my age. I'm fifty years, I'm fifty-four now. That was like fifty-two, fifty-three.

• 29:49Keke Palmer?

  You look great.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Thank you. So, uh, I thought, you know, this is also motivate, I was like, no matter what place I come in, it's gonna be good because it's gonna motivate others to get healthy, get in shape, and that they could also just try it.

• 30:03Keke Palmer?

  Yes. What were some of the things in that discipline that you feel like, even though you might not always be competing every day, that you're like, I wanna keep this from the bodybuilder world? Cause it's so, in order for them to do that, it's a lot of discipline.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  It's one hundred percent discipline.

• 30:16Keke Palmer?

  It's helpful to your life.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Cause people, most people can't stop eating the [BLEEP].

• 30:19Keke Palmer?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  And drinking the [BLEEP]. They can't put the freaking sodas down, they can't stop the sweets, they can't stop the bread. Yep. And so for me, I don't really do, once you, once, for me, I, once I get myself into a rhythm, I don't crave things anymore. Like, so I don't really do the sweets anymore. I don't really, you know, I don't do the sodas. Like I said, I got the healthy sodas I take. And I realize I need to put more quality protein in my diet.

• 30:50Keke Palmer?

  Come on.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Little bit of carbs and no bread. And once you get into it, it's like normal. Like, so now I'm like twenty-four seven, I'm generally eating pretty healthy.

• 31:00Keke Palmer?

  Oh, I love that. That made me think about my boy Jermaine Dupri. Cause obviously also you all ended up working together at So So Def.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:07Keke Palmer?

  I remember he was telling me, he was vegan, he been vegan since before people was talking about vegan. I'm like, it's crazy.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  We tried to get his, his ass to work out too. He, he, he ain't trying, cause I, the guy, his name, shout out Jay Galvin. He's both of our friends. I met him through Jermaine.

• 31:22Keke Palmer?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  So he used to look out for us in New York, but we tried to get Jermaine, Jermaine ain't. He in the studio, so you know, he ain't got time. You actually, here's the thing, people.

• 31:32Keke Palmer?

  Eating up on them terror chips.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  I don't wanna hear people say, I ain't got time. You make time for what's a priority to you.

• 31:37Keke Palmer?

  It's true.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  And I only work out three days a week. You know what I mean? You only, you don't have to work out seven days a week. You can work out three days and be good.

• 31:47Keke Palmer?

  Because they say that eating is the eighty percent and the working out is the twenty percent, which I believe.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  High protein, high protein. And then you don't have to run, you just get on an incline. One secret for y'all, real easy. Stop eating the [BLEEP]. Number one. Number two, incline, uh, treadmill, fifteen.

• 32:05Keke Palmer?

  Yep.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Fifteen incline. You do that for twenty minutes a day, weight gonna fall off. I'm telling you, it, it worked for me. I didn't believe it either. I thought I had to run, cause I used to run here and there when I was trying to get myself in shape. Yep.

• 32:19Keke Palmer?

  All that running.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  And it hurt my ankles, so but walk on that incline, fifteen incline, it's gonna drop the pounds off of you.

• 32:26Keke Palmer?

  It's so true. I do that. My workout, I'm very low impact. I try to work out at least three times a week, all low impact. Pilates, you know, yoga, nothing crazy and intense, and that, uh, fifteen incline, it's incredible.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  It's gonna kick your ass for the first month, but once you get used to it, it's easy.

• 32:42Keke Palmer?

  Yeah. So how did you end up working with Jermaine? Was y'all just out in the scene? Was the Eastside Boys already a thing?

• 32:50Speaker 01

  I was DJing around the city.

• 32:52Keke Palmer?

  Cool.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  He, he had Xavier and the Straight Jackets, he had, uh, Silk Times Leather. These are his early groups. This is when we met. So this was early nineties. And we just used to see each other all the time, everywhere. And then I started DJing at this one club called The Phoenix. And he tells a story that he came in there one night and was like, can you play my record? And I played his record. And he was like, what the [BLEEP]? Ain't nobody ever done that. And so we got cool. And whenever I saw he had a show with some of his groups, I go support. And he would come to the club. And then one day he was like, yo, I'm starting my label nineteen ninety-three. I remember, cause I started in ninety-three. He said, I'm starting my label, I want you to come over and be A and R and street promotions, cause you everywhere in the streets, I want you to be A and R and street promotion.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  I was like, what the [BLEEP] was an A and R? Cause I just, I was just DJing in the club. I don't know what the hell that is. And so he was like, just come over and, you know, find talent and just you, do you, be out, you know? So that's how we ended up clicking up. And I thank him a lot because I was able to learn the ins and outs of record companies and the music business, like from the beginning. Because he was, he was a major, but he kinda operated like differently because he had his own thing, but he was on Columbia. So I got to, like, I, knowledge that you can't really get, I was able to get because I'm dealing with, you know, his side, but I was also talking to the people in New York at the big label.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  So I was able to learn so much. And he, he just gave me a lot of opportunities. And he also like hired me to do remixes on some, some, like I did remix on You Make Me Wanna. I think that was like one of my first big remixes on a major artist. So that's foreshadowing because I do You Make Me Wanna remix. And then

• 34:37Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Later, I do Yeah.

• 34:40Keke Palmer?

  When you hear, when they Yeah come, I mean, yeah, it's yeah, yeah. We know, think about Usher with that little chain. I mean, what was, what was happening that got y'all to do that song? What made you say, what made y'all do that?

• 34:54Speaker 01

  So it's an interesting story. So I was still working at So So Def. And, uh, this young lady, her name is Delicia Hassan. I gotta shout, shout her out because she's the reason the writer Sean Garrett got the beat.

• 35:08Keke Palmer?

  Come on, Sean.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  So Delicia had my beats and Sean said, he, he said he was trying to get in touch with me, but I don't know about that. So he called Delicia, cause she, he knows she could get access to me. He was like, you got some Lil Jon beats? So she was like, yeah. So she gave him a beat CD. And so he wrote Yeah to the beat that is now Freaka Leak. So it's, it's a long story.

• 35:32Keke Palmer?

  Freaka Leak, Delicia, Delicia.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  I would go in the studio for labels, right? And like say, I would, they would book me in Circle House for a week.

• 35:42Keke Palmer?

  Sure.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  And I would do as many beats as I can. So this was for Jive Records. This was Jive Records at the time.

• 35:48Keke Palmer?

  Wow.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  And they booked me doing Mystical beats. So I'm doing beats for Mystical. So I do a week in Circle House. All these beats are done. One of the beats is that beat that turned out to be Freaka Leak. And that was for Mystical and he turned the beat down. He didn't like the beat. So the beat CD is sitting, well, Jive has the beats. Little, did I know that one of my homies named C.O., that's a writer from Miami, shout out C.O. He kinda wrote part of Freaka Leak and gave it to Jive. And then Petey ended up recording it.

• 36:24Keke Palmer?

  Yep.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  We don't even know this. Like, we know, this is behind the scenes.

• 36:28Keke Palmer?

  Petey Pablo.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Another thing is that when you hear, yeah, Lil Jon on Freaka Leak, that's not me, that's C.O. He did that as a demo, a dummy track, people, just imitating me. And he want, cause he wanted me to do that later. And they ended up mixing the song. I never, you know, like I said, I didn't know. So they end up mixing the song. So the engineer didn't know it wasn't me, so he kept it. So on the other side, we had the beat CD. Sean has it. He writes Yeah. We go record it. We think it's a smash. And I remember it was around Christmas time. The album is done. Usher's album is done. First single is gonna be Burn.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  So the album is done. L.A. Reid calls Jermaine, it's Christmas time. And he curses Jermaine out.

• 37:15Keke Palmer?

  Oh.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  And calls me on three-way. L.A. is like, what the [BLEEP] is going on? Why [BLEEP] is this Usher song playing in Miami on the radio? The Freaka Leak bed was being used on the radio for them to talk over. So we're like, what the [BLEEP]? I don't know what the [BLEEP] is going on. So we find out Petey Pablo uses the beat. So then we try to get Petey to take another beat. They like, nah, we keeping this song. So me, I, me and my crew, shout out to L. Rock, my boy L. Rock, we go in the studio, back in Circle House in Miami. I say, I don't think this Petey song gonna be that big. Let's just keep the drums, take all the music off.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  So if y'all wondering why the beat sounds similar, it's because I used the exact same drums, because I didn't think the Petey Pablo record was gonna be big.

• 38:03Keke Palmer?

  It's huge.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I got lucky. So we take all of the music off, keep the drums, and then he's messing around with lines. And then he goes, plays the, that's it, that's it, that's it right there, that's it, lay that. Then I lay something else. And I'm like, all right, let's go to the club. Woo, we outta here.

• 38:23Keke Palmer?

  Come on, let's go to the club.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  But the blessing is, Yeah is a better song with the beat that it has now than Yeah over Freaka Leak.

• 38:33Keke Palmer?

  Yeah. I can't even imagine it. You know, I'm sorry, I mean, it's a great song, a great song is a great song, but I can't even imagine it with that. But I know what you mean by the similarities. That's just history. When you were doing it, I'm sure there was no way that you knew it would be history. But when you think about the impact of that record now and all the different spaces that it lives in, the moment that it comes on, it transports people back.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:55Keke Palmer?

  How do you really, can you really feel that impact?

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember when Yeah came out. And I remember I was like in the hood, hood. And I seen somebody bumping it in their, I heard him bumping it in their car. And then I was somewhere else and it's white girls playing it. It's like the, the, the reach of it was like this. And then just the fact that all of the, the craziness, you know, when, as an artist, you know, when it's crazy stuff that happens, that's when you know you gotta hit. So all of the crazy stuff, we almost didn't get the video shot in time. And then, you know, we get hyped to do the videos, incredible video. And then hype at the end is like, yo, take this mic. No, something that y'all didn't know, it's a, it's a little nugget. When Usher's doing all his dance scenes, his big numbers,

• 39:40Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  I'm on the mic, hyping him up. I'm like, crank it up, crank, I'm like hyping him up. So he's getting a little extra gear. And then at the end, hype was like, why don't you just do these chants at the end? And that's why it's only in the videos, because we just did it live. And that's live in the video.

• 39:57Keke Palmer?

  Oh my god.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  So that turned iconic. But it's, yeah, it is crazy to reach the fact that we went from Having to redo the beat to being at the Super Bowl performing it is that's like such a blessing, man. That's God.

• 40:13Keke Palmer?

  And it's also so you. It's so yours. It's Lil Jon, like you, your personality. Yeah, like it's your whole vibe and how did you, cause I know before you said. Yeah, hey Sean, Sean Garrett, he know me, I love him. So you said you kind of became an artist accidentally, but how did you become one of the most defining voices in hip hop accidentally?

• 40:35Speaker 01

  It's because like we said, we just right, we just go along with the flow. We go where we were led. Like I didn't fight things. You know, doors opened up and I walked through the doors or I saw an opportunity, the door cracked and I opened the door, you know? We, we can't just sit back and expect everything to come to us. We have to go fight for it and we have to, you know, so we get a God will show you something, but you have to choose the path, you know? So I, I, I, I just kept not giving up and just kept, you know, seizing opportunities and doing the work and yeah, it just kind of happened. I became like every, like I said in the book, everything is calculated. Like

• 41:16Speaker 01

  I saw something just going over here and I'm like, we should go over here and do this over here. And then like the image changes and the music changes or whatever it is. I just don't fight things. I just let it flow.

• 41:31Keke Palmer?

  Being in alignment, don't push against physics is so real and God will lead you there. There's no way.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  That's why people relationships fail.

• 41:39Keke Palmer?

  Come on, let's wake that tea up. You trying to put, what did they say? Force a, a square in a peg hole?

• 41:44Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, man, they, come on, you seen the signs is all, you can always go back and see this, the sign that you ignored.

• 41:52Keke Palmer?

  Oh my gosh, Virgos are good for that. We just sit back collecting data. Don't nobody care about your data, girl? By the end of it, we got a soliloquy and this is how I know you are who you are. Girl, they already know that.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:06Keke Palmer?

  They was hoping you didn't find out so soon.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 42:08Keke Palmer?

  Child. Um, so how did you say, hey, this is crunk music? Cause in the beginning, people were kind of like, okay, it's chanting. They didn't really know. You were defining what your sound became and what Lil Jon is in the beginning. How was it navigating that when people really didn't get what they know to be now?

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So at the beginning, when me and the Eastside Boys came together, the first song we ever recorded was this song called Who You Wit? And, um, we just wanted to make a song for Atlanta people to get crunk to in the club. That's all we wanted to do. And at the time, Master P was popping, uh, Eight Ball, MJG was popping, later Three Six Mafia came. We were listening to all these other artists in the club that we would turn up to and tear the club up to, but it wasn't really much Atlanta stuff like that. So nineteen ninety-five, ninety-six is when we went in the club and we did this first song. First song we ever recorded turned into a hit anthem for freak me like nineteen ninety-six.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  And so that started, like, I wasn't trying to be an artist, but the song became a hit, became a hit and we had to do an album then. And then each album, we got better and better at it. So the sound started to emerge from all of the influences and then just being in the club. We would notice things and we like, I would say, hey, let's make a record out of that. Or I noticed how the certain stuff made the people move and it just kind of just, just grew. It just kind of grew from just normal progression.

• 43:42Keke Palmer?

  Yeah. I'm curious of what you think about timing, especially in an era that we're in now where everybody's expecting everything to happen so fast. But nobody is built overnight, right? Like when I think about when Lil Jon name became Lil Jon, it was the early two thousands. However, you talking about ninety-three, ninety-six, this is like so many years before then. And some people might've been like, oh, he came out of nowhere, but you didn't. So I'm curious of what you would say to artists, uh, uh, people that are creating and just trying to get their things off to the ground around that, around timing and when things are gonna happen.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Timing is everything. Everybody wants to rush now with the internet. Everybody thinks they can make jump steps and jump, you know, jump ahead and it don't work like that for everybody. Some, like Kasanad and all these other, you know, streamers, they have been doing it for a long time. It might seem like you, they just got popping in two years, but they've been doing it a long time and building, building, building. Same thing with me and a lot of artists, other artists from my era. We built slowly. It was, and then being from the South, we had a bigger fight because southern artists weren't respected like they are now. Southern art, southern hip hop runs the game, but back in the nineties, it wasn't, you know? I mean, that's why Jermaine, I think is looked at

• 44:59Speaker 01

  not as he should be. Jermaine is one of the greatest songwriters of, of all time.

• 45:04Keke Palmer?

  Without a doubt.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Great, a great producer as well. And he's not, if he was from New York, he would be looked at differently. I feel like the same thing with me. If I was from New York, they would look at me differently. But that's just the time we were coming up and we just had to fight a lot harder and we had to.

• 45:20Keke Palmer?

  It's tough being the first.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Right. We, we, no matter what accolades we had, it was still, we needed to triple those to be on the same level as where hip hop started and so on and so forth. So.

• 45:31Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:32Keke Palmer?

  You know, and then it's interesting because you know, it's all this success, but another important thing that I think we ought to always think about and sometimes it ends up happening when we are forced to, is the business piece.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:43Keke Palmer?

  Cause you were dealing with, you know, battling your record label while you mean, while you're having all of these huge hits on the radio, but you like, where my money at?

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:50Keke Palmer?

  So what was, what did you kind of have to learn in those early days of like, okay, I gotta get my business right?

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Early on, I had a partner when I was doing my producing that he, he taught me like, yo, you need to get put your money away for your taxes.

• 46:04Keke Palmer?

  Sure.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Uh, shout out to Paul Lewis, my brother Paul Lewis. He kind of was like mentor with me and we were like producing a lot of records together. Um, and he, he, he showed me stuff early on, but some stuff I didn't listen. Like, you know, make sure you get attorney to look over your right paperwork. So I ended up signing a deal and it was like, uh, to, to get that first single out, right? To get that Who You Wit song out. We ended up doing some paperwork. I can't remember was on that single or on the album, but I was basically gonna be stuck in this lifetime contract. And I didn't know it until Too Short came to me and wanted to work with me and sign me to his label.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  And we found out, yo, I'm in this terrible deal and dude don't want to let me out. I thought we had a, I thought we had a great you know, relationship and we did this work together, but you know, I didn't know I was locked in like this forever. And so

• 47:02Keke Palmer?

  Slavery basically.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Blessing, Too Short gives me out of that situation, gives me an opportunity to work with him, work in his studio. And, and co-signs me with the, one of the biggest things that an artist can get from an established artist like Too Short is get to co-sign. So get out of that situation and then I ended up signing the TBT.

• 47:22Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  And I'm in some difficult positions in that deal. And we end up fighting Pitbull the same way. He's fighting the label. I ended up getting off the label, but it was a fight. Um, and Pitt gets caught up in the same type of situation. He ends up getting out when I think TBT, I think we all got out when TBT went bankrupt.

• 47:45Keke Palmer?

  Okay.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Because of some legal stuff. So they had the, this big Def Jam fight they had with Lior Cohen and

• 47:52Keke Palmer?

  Uh oh.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  I think it ended up getting the label up out of there, but yeah, you gotta, you know, I, I learned that you gotta take time. Don't sign anything without your attorney. That's what I learned.

• 48:02Keke Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Though all those situations taught me that. And so now I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's just a something simple. I, my attorney gotta look at everything.

• 48:11Keke Palmer?

  Mm-hmm. That's how I feel. Me and my attorney like this since I was eleven.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, baby.

• 48:17Keke Palmer?

  Okay. Um, okay. So I love getting all the tidbits behind the scenes, right? So like with Ludacris in the book, he brought you a demo and you ain't know if it was a hit for real. Like, and then you had me thinking really differently about goodies that used to be called cookies.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:34Keke Palmer?

  And you didn't like it originally. So tell, tell me about, you know, how you came in and, you know, put your, put your spin on it.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  So, uh, we worked with Ciara, I worked with Ciara and, um, shout out Sean Garrett again.

• 48:48Keke Palmer?

  Sean Garrett the pen.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, Sean the pen. Uh, so him and Ciara wrote, I, I remember I did the beat in Miami again.

• 48:57Keke Palmer?

  Come on.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  I wasn't that circle. I think I was at Audio Vision this time, but I, I laid the, I did the beat. Get it to Sean and Ciara. They come back like, oh, we got it. We got another one. We got it. We got it.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  I know you want the cookies. What the hell is this? Cookies? That's terrible. So myself, along with rest in peace Shakir Stewart.

• 49:22Keke Palmer?

  Oh, yes.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  No, that ain't it. Y'all gotta go back in. So we go back in the studio in Miami and I just leave them in there. And then all they do is change cookies to goodies. And it, you can so interesting tidbit for y'all. If you listen to the song, she says, I know you want the goodies because they're in the jar. It's because it was cookies in the damn cookie jar. So they only changed one word and it went from a flop to a up the top, at the top.

• 49:53Keke Palmer?

  Cause I'm my goodies, not my goodies.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Can you imagine my cookies? Not my cookies.

• 49:59Keke Palmer?

  Why does everybody love that tiki type thing back then?

• 50:05Keke Palmer?

  I live for it so bad.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  That's that old school R and B. We need it back. We need it back.

• 50:11Keke Palmer?

  Yo, we need that back. And it was also like that, it was like pop. Like it's R and B, but it was so, it's so undeniable.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:19Keke Palmer?

  That it is, it creates the landscape for pop culture.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  It's the sound, it's the sound. It wasn't, it was, like you said, it was pop. It was R and B vocals, but this different kind of sounding synth, the synthesizer. And it's still, but it still had the knock.

• 50:35Keke Palmer?

  Yup.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  That's the difference in that type of pop, basically. The records that I was doing, they had the brightness, but then they had that, that hood. That gato, if you might say.

• 50:49Keke Palmer?

  Okay, that Lil Jon.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, gotta had a knock. If it wasn't beating in the Cadillacs, I wanna hear the Cadillac trunks rattle. That was my gauge.

• 50:57Keke Palmer?

  Woo.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  So if they was riding by in a Cadillac and it was, then you, you got it.

• 51:04Keke Palmer?

  Uh, okay, so we have to take it to the Super Bowl of it all. I just wanna know how you felt. Obviously, you talked about it a little bit. Usher called you up. And you're like experiencing the history of what you've created on stage at one of the most insane times of the year, not just for America, but worldwide. You know what I'm saying? This is a Super Bowl. What was going through your mind?

• 51:21Speaker 01

  So one main thing is when, I was part of the team that, you know, did the, uh, musical production. So I put the show together too, and the Vegas residency too. So I was a part of all of that. That's why he called me also for Super Bowl to put it together.

• 51:36Keke Palmer?

  Incredible.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  So I was just kinda like, this is the biggest thing I'm gonna ever do with my life. And at one point, we put Turn Down For What in the show. I was like, I hope he don't take that out. Cause he could've took that [BLEEP]. He could've easily said, nah, [BLEEP], this is my show. Get that [BLEEP] outta here. But he let it stay in there. And so I remember when we went to rehearsals and they showed me what it was gonna be. And I'm like, oh, I'm gonna be in the crowd with these people? Like, yup, that's a layup for me. Lil Jon in a crowd of people is pandemonium. So I was just like, wow.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  And when we ran through it the first time in the stadium, I was just like, this is gonna look insane. So I would just feel, I, I, you know, I have so much gratitude every single day.

• 52:29Keke Palmer?

  Amen.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Every day I wake up, I'm happy. Every day I can get out of, the strength to get out of bed, I have gratitude. So to be there, to be a part of it, I have gratitude. To be there, to perform, yeah, gratitude. But to be there and have my own moment is so huge. And that's an iconic moment. I even had a, a picture of that saved on my screensaver of my phone because it was such a pivotal moment. And the interesting thing is that 10 years after Yeah, Turn Down For What came out. And I got a number one with Turn Down For What. So most artists don't have that kind of longevity where you can have a song.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna say it's, it's big as Yeah, but it was a worldwide monster number one smash. 10 years after my biggest song of my career. So I'm just, to be able to be on that. So many artists can't be on a Super Bowl stage.

• 53:24Keke Palmer?

  Oh my gosh.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  And to be in it, a part of it the way I was, and to close it out with Yeah with my brothers, Usher and Chris, on that stage is just, man, that's, that's once in a lifetime. And now is, that's why we start the book with it. Because it's the pivotable, it's a pivotal moment, pivotable.

• 53:43Keke Palmer?

  I live for pivotable though.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, pivotable, pivotable, libidable though. Say that [BLEEP] fast. It's a, it's a top moment in my career.

• 53:53Keke Palmer?

  Straight up.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  It's literally the top. So, um, yeah, man.

• 53:57Keke Palmer?

  Shout out to Chris too. I love Luda.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:00Keke Palmer?

  He's dope. Um, well, I mean, to heighten your success, this just, people was just, just to get you in a room. We not even talking about the success of the song becoming a hit. It was given a hundred thousand dollars just to get Lil Jon to sit down and talk to him.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:13Keke Palmer?

  And then at two, around 2008, you kinda was like burnt out from it all.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  I couldn't do it anymore.

• 54:18Keke Palmer?

  Like what did they, what did, cause we're talking about burned out a lot nowadays. I feel like in our generation, everybody's like, I'm, I'm having, I'm experiencing burnout, you know what I mean? But back then, I don't know, people probably thought you was crazy for, for, I don't know. Like how was your experience of discovering, I'm experiencing burnout and it's best for me to stop?

• 54:43Keke Palmer?

  You know how every episode I go deep on whatever I can't stop thinking about? Well, lately, it's been my living room. I walked into my local IKEA store last week just to look around and left with a whole new vision for my space. Because here's the thing people don't realize. There are hundreds of new products every season. New colors, new patterns, whole new collections I had never seen before. It's not just about style for me. It's the functionality of it all. I found new storage pieces that solved problems I'd been ignoring for months. Plus, some design updates that made my space feel fresh. I feel like every time I go back, there's something new waiting for me. So if you haven't visited in a while, trust me, go see what's new.

• 55:26Keke Palmer?

  Discover what's new at IKEA. Shop the latest products in store or online at ikea.us/discovernew. So here's something that genuinely surprised me. Over 80% of Americans are not getting enough Omega 3s from food alone. 80%. That means most of us are walking around with a gap in our nutrition and don't even realize it. That's where Nordic Naturals Ultimate Omega Soft Gels come in. EPA and DHA Omega 3s support your heart, your brain, your immune system, your eyes, your mood. These are foundational nutrients that show up everywhere in your body doing important work.

• 56:07Keke Palmer?

  And most of us are just not getting enough. And before you say, fish oil, no thank you, let me stop you. Nordic Naturals has a clean lemon taste. Plus, every batch is thoroughly tested for purity, potency, and freshness to meet strict international quality standards. Clean ingredients, no drama. Use promo code Nordic, N-O-R-D-I-C, for 15% off your next order at Nordic.com. And discover the power of Omega 3 with Nordic Naturals, the number one selling Omega 3 brand in the U.S. Supplements are not evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent diseases. Coming up.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Let's close our eyes.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  And let's take three deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. I want everyone to think of three things you're grateful for.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  To be able to create so easily and then that just get dried up, it's like, it's a fear. It's a fear. And it's like you continue to try to do what you always have done and it's just still not coming out. And you realize you just gotta take a step back. And I just realized, I just, I was going so hard, so long, so many years producing so many artists. We had our own label. We did, you know, we did so much. I did so much and I just gave too much of myself out. And I realized I needed to take a step back. And I remember, it's in the book,

• 57:50Speaker 01

  uh, Reggie Bush invited me out when he was playing with the Saints to the first game back in the Superdome since Katrina. And after that game, he had a party. And it was a DJ killing it that night. Shout out DJ Spider. And he just inspired me a lot because it was just something that brought me back to what I loved about music in the beginning. You know, he was, the way he was mixing, the way he was flipping the songs. And I was just like, I need to start DJing again. So I got his number. And then what's crazy is in the airport leaving the next day,

• 58:32Speaker 01

  some white kid comes up to me like, hey, what's up, bro? He's me. I'm like, who [BLEEP] you? He's like, I'm the DJ from last night. I was like, oh, [BLEEP] my bad, dog. So after then, that was, that was God to me. That was God putting him in my path to say, make sure you connect. Because this is gonna be something that helps you to go somewhere else. So we connected and that became my dog. And we started, he got me back into DJing again. And I started to get into that DJ wave before a lot of people even was on it. So in the open format scene, so me and Spider started DJing together, doing a couple of mixtapes. And he just got me back into the club scene where, where I started, where I found the passion and love.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  And that opened up a whole nother scene eventually for me getting into Vegas, having Vegas residency.

• 59:21Keke Palmer?

  Incredible.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Starting in 08. Um, so, yeah, that's how I got back into it. And that's, that's what made me, you know, follow the love.

• 59:30Keke Palmer?

  Cause a lot of times, especially when you're thinking about the success that you've experienced, it becomes a, a thing that you're, and I don't wanna say up against, but it becomes kind of this thing where every, no longer is, am I just able to practice the thing and do the thing? It's now attached to a particular outcome or otherwise it's seen as it's a failure. And the industry, the music industry is big for that.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:50Keke Palmer?

  Suddenly, if it's not, if it's not platinum, or if it's not diamond and it goes platinum, you ain't what you used to be.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I definitely experienced the, the same people that was picking up your calls, not picking up your calls and not messing with you. And even my team was like, you wanna DJ? Like, bro, you make a hundred grand a beat. They didn't understand that the creativity was no longer there. But I am always able to pivot and start and move somewhere else. And so I was able to move into the DJ world and that just, and that actually is what happened to open up the lanes for me to work with Steve A. Yoki and LMFAO and all of those guys. Because I was in the open format world, which is part, house music is a part of that.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  And being at festivals and all of that stuff. So I was able to go work with all of these guys and create a whole nother lane. And I remember the hip hop community was like, what is he doing this EDM, this house music? And then 10 years later after that, I was already in it. Everybody start wanting to get in it and do records and so on and so forth. But I've always been early. I'm always, I, I always tell people, I'm in the future. I'm always thinking ahead. Even like with the Super Bowl, I was manifesting, before I had got on the stage, I already manifested. I rocked it and I had moved on to something else. Cause I'm already there. I already see it.

• 1:01:12Keke Palmer?

  Wow. Where do you think that that comes from? Is it just you just so tapped in with Source? Or how do you actually like know the difference between, um, this is an idea that came from something that is being pushed on me just in the world to, oh, my antenna, this is the information. How do you know?

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  You gotta learn to listen to. Your spirit and not like your mind. It's two different things. Your spirit is never gonna leave you wrong. Never. My spirit, if I'm at a stop sign and in my head it says go right, but my spirit says go left, I'm gonna listen to my spirit. Cause your head, you just thinking. You don't know, but your spirit knows everything. Your spirit is connected to every single thing. It knows everything, so on and so forth. So I'm always gonna listen to my spirit and that's what's music. That's what music is, it's spiritual. That's why when you hear Aretha Franklin sing, it goes through your chest. It hits your heart.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  I remember hearing Whitney Houston sing Happy Birthday to Bobby Brown at Tavern on the Green in New York on a **** system that was the house system for the restaurant. And it gave me **** chills through my body. That was her spirit going through me. So if you're spiritually connected and aligned, then you're gonna always follow the right paths and you're never gonna be led astray. So that's what I learned. I'll tap into my spirit and let it guide me.

• 1:02:45Keke Palmer?

  I really love that and I really thank you for sharing that with me and everybody watching cause those are important things that you can know propositionally, but you have to experience. So you've experienced so many things. So to hear you share that is very, very useful. Um, but you, that doesn't mean you didn't experience unhappy times. You talk about that in your book too, which I think is important, right? People think gratitude means always happy or knowing what, you know, how to be guided means everything's gonna, that doesn't mean that. You've lived in the nuance and so I'm curious how much of your being honest about what, what doesn't make you happy? Because I'm speaking about specifically when you turn 50, you asked yourself.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Keke Palmer?

  What makes me happy, which then made you kind of, yeah, really consider the question. So how do you answer that for yourself today?

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, it was interesting to go back to what you was talking about is I was just woke up one day and was like, I'm 50 **** years old. Like, I don't know how much time I got left. Like, I realized I'm not happy in my life and I was like, what makes you happy? And I could not tell myself what made me happy, but doing other stuff for other people. Like what makes you happy though? And I couldn't answer that and I said, I need to go find my happiness so I can live my life and be happy. I need to go find my happiness. And so that's what made me institute change in my life and

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  I, I think Allah did because that led me down all these new paths. And it got me,

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  God was slowing me down to get me ready for so many things, you know? And I didn't know it. And I even uh, reflect now even around that time, my son came to me and was like, I wanna have a better relationship with you. Let's do, let's talk more, let's do more things together. All of those things were starting to happen around 50, 51. So

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  I, I just always just try to, I'm, I'm, all of these things I've been through in the last four years have just spiritually elevated me so much. I'm vibrating at such a high frequency. I keep negativity away from me. I, I, one thing that I started to do at 50 was eliminate, when I started to do those affirmations, I eliminated negative thoughts, eliminated them from my psyche. I don't wish ill upon anyone. Always say Allah gonna deal with them, God gonna deal with them, God gonna, anybody do any negativity, negative things to me, I just step back, God gonna handle it, you know?

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  I don't put any negative, because whatever you put in the universe, whatever you say, whatever you think, the universe don't know what you want and what you don't want. It only knows what you put out. So whatever you put out is gonna come. So if you put nothing but love and goodness and positivity out, that's what's gonna come. And you have to also realize, you have to let things go to be able to receive the blessings that are truly meant for you. We, we hold on to so much **** and we hold on to so many thoughts and emotions that don't matter, that are not contributing to anything in our life. You have to cleanse, free and open.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  And then you can receive the blessings. We all got blessings. We all can get blessings and and we also have to realize that you create your own reality. If you're not happy and you constantly saying I'm not happy, what the **** you think is gonna happen every day? You're gonna be un- happy. If you say, I'm happy, I'm loving life, then you're gonna open yourself up to bringing things in that can help you love and live, but you have to truly believe it. You can't say it and then have doubt. Doubt is like a, it's a cancer in your mind. So if you have doubt, it's blocking the blessings too. So you have to truly open yourself up and, and be willing to just accept what comes, you know?

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  And another thing that I do too is, no matter what happens to me, it's always some positive that can come out of that situation. So it's like I'm saying, I totally eliminate negative thoughts. So no matter what happens to me, ah, this might've been bad, but I learned from that. You know, this happened, but maybe God is choosing me to be someone that can speak and inspire and help someone else that might've been giving up on life, you know, like with the loss of my son. I've been able to, you know, I, I'm so giving and forthcoming of what I was going through because I believe God has chosen me as a vessel to speak and inspire and to uplift and to

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  be able to give people someone they can relate to, someone that's full of joy and party. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. And if I can get through it, you can get through it. You know, and I, I even say that in my shows, if somebody's out here dealing with loss, understand that you have to keep living. You're, God brought your loved one or friend home, but you're here. He chose you to keep living. So you have to keep living, you have to enjoy life and your loved one would want you to keep living and enjoying life and not give up. Cause they, if, if you wanna give up, they would love to trade places with you and come back, you know what I mean?

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  But we have to keep living, we have to keep spreading love, we have to keep spreading joy. And that gets me to another thing real quick.

• 1:08:19Keke Palmer?

  Don't be real quick. I'm here for all of it.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Going through my grief, going through my loss of my son, I realized I was just in a, of course, I'm in a not dark, but I'm just in a very down place. I'm in a crying every day. I'm just on the couch. And I realized I had to pick myself up because my daughter and my partner don't need to see the worst of me. They need to get the best of me. They deserve that. So I, it made me pick myself up and, you know, smile, learn, I had to learn to smile again. And I had to learn to laugh again because I think I talk about in the book, but

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  my first, I remember the first party I had to do after burying my son and it just felt wrong to smile. Every day when I, something, whatever, it would feel wrong to just be happy about ****. And I had to change that. And being on this tour with Pitbull, I, I, I broke down on the last show we had in America because I, it was, I realized that day that I needed to be out on the road. I needed to be, feel all of that energy from all of those people in every city to see those smiling faces, to see them having a good time.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  I needed to be around the crew, my crew, people making me laugh again, making me joke, have a good time. I needed all of that to uplift me. To help me, that helped me to get through the darkness of loss, cause loss is, can become a dark place. But all of those things, realizing for myself, I needed to be better for my daughter because I would look at my daughter, like I said, and she would just be looking sometimes like, or just come next to me and I, it would lift me back up, but realizing I, I didn't need to be the dark, in that dark place around her and my partner. And then, like I said, being on the road, all of that helped me to be able to laugh again.

• 1:10:29Keke Palmer?

  It's something just so poetic about all the love and energy that you were giving out in your music. All these years at the toughest time of your life. Those same people could give it back to you.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly.

• 1:10:43Keke Palmer?

  That is really, that is really.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Because that is exactly what it is. And I talk about in the, in the show, I, I say, you know, I lost my son and I thank everybody for all of their prayers. And their concern and their positivity. And I said, that's what helped me to be able to get to the stage. Because it was a lot, I had to, you know, put the show together. We were still putting the show together when I lost my son. So I had to fight through all of that and, and get it together. And then I was also, shout out to Tonyo Armani.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  He's a Southern soul artist that, uh, I started to work with him the year before. And he had hit me right after I buried my son and he gave me something to focus on too by working on his project. So his project, getting the tour together and then getting on the road, all of that helped me to, to come back to life, you know? And not just be in my, in my darkness, you know?

• 1:11:45Keke Palmer?

  Everything you just said for the past, I don't even know five minutes, I feel like I was lost in, I feel like you put me into a transcendent state. I feel everything that you just said. I know I needed to hear it. From the beginning to this last part. And starting with everything you were saying about just how you remove the negativity from your life, how you allow yourself to be in alignment with what you say so easily. I've had to check myself on this because I've been talking a lot about what I want, what I want. But then I'm looking at what I'm spending my time doing. And I love how you put that where the universe is trying to, you know, don't fight physics. It's trying to keep up with, it's trying to be in alignment with you. But what you're saying and what you're doing are not matching. So how can it be in alignment with you?

• 1:12:30Keke Palmer?

  I had two situations that happened to me this past week while I've been talking about what I want. And then two situations that are completely opposite of what I want showed up in my life and I ignored them. Literally, the next following couple of days. What I was saying that I'm interested in came into my world, just came into my stratosphere, right? Just came into, it was just, if anything, it was the God, it was the universe saying, remember your promise to yourself and let's keep it at this frequency. So we can just flow and vibe out. But I just appreciate you allowing yourself to be used. You can, you can just tell when somebody is letting, those words were flowing through you.

• 1:13:12Keke Palmer?

  It's a blessing and I really want to say, I'm so sorry for your loss. God bless Nathan, your son, and I hope that he's resting beautifully in peace. But I really do appreciate you for your testimony and for you sharing that because it, I felt that in my core.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I mean.

• 1:13:29Keke Palmer?

  I really did.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  What helped me to open up, because I've been private my whole career. I always want to keep family private. And then my team, like two, two years ago, we started on this book. My team was like, yo, we need to tell your story. Like, you know, you've done so much, you've accomplished so much. We need to tell your story. So we started to write. And then when I hit fifty and all of these life changes started to happen, it allowed me to open up. And be vulnerable and share. Because I could have easily taken out what happened with my mom, you know, that my biological father is not mine. I could have easily said, I don't want to write about what happened with my son. But I want to share everything because I, I, like I said, with the meditation,

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  people would hit me and say, you helped me. And I think God was showing me that you've been able to give people positivity through music and give people good times through this, but you can also do it this way too, with this meditation, you can help people, you can so on and so forth. So I just feel like that opened me up to, to understanding, we have to be, when God chooses us to be a vessel, we have to let it flow. So I talked to my co-writer when this stuff happened with my son. And I was just letting him hear everything that was my sentiment, what I was feeling like, everything that was going on in my head. I wanted it true.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  And I want people to hear those words and see those words. Because somebody else is going through the same, you know? And I wanted to be able to say, if I can get through it, the party guy can get through it, you can get through it. You know, so, uh, I'm, I'm, like I said, I, I have so much more gratitude every day. I have gratitude for Allah for giving me my son for twenty seven years. I appreciate every memory. I appreciate every single day. I don't forsake, don't never forsake God. Because it's a reason everything happens to us. So I, even when I've heard my son was found, I did not

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  curse God or forsake God. Uh, I immediately knew I was gonna have to step up and be a vessel for, for God. And to, to, to help others. And it's only, I think it's partly because of my reach and who, what I am known for that I can show people that, like I keep saying, if I can get through it, you can get through it. So I'm here to share. That's, that's who I am now. I'm the guy that shares and I cry every day, not every day, but I'm way more

• 1:16:13Keke Palmer?

  Open to it.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Open to letting emo, the, the more you vibrate at a higher frequency, you let these energies and emotions come through you and flow. It's okay to cry, men. Men out there, it's okay to cry. Be, be one with your emotion. That means you have a heart, you have a soul. If you don't cry, you hold it in and you're always, you don't, you can still be a, a tough guy if you freaking cry. You got a mom, don't you? You know, you got children. You wouldn't cry for your kids, you wouldn't cry for your mother. You can cry, it's okay to cry. Let those emotions out. Let it out, be one with them. Don't fight it. We tend to bottle up and try to be so tough for the world.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  But you have to be one with yourself. You are your own world. Be your world, be happy in your world first. And then let that shine outward and then nobody can like affect you, you know? I'm gonna give two more things of advice for people. One thing I learned recently. Well, starting at fifty. The key to it, life is acceptance. The key to life is acceptance. Because if you accept things, it can't hurt you. It can't bother you. And if you accept it, that means you acknowledge what lessons are being taught to you.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  What, whatever, it, it just doesn't harm you. If you have acceptance and a lot of people try to fight the positions that they're in and what they're given because they want something else, but you have to have acceptance for what you have. And not be angry and try to force what you want. Because God don't give you what you want, he give you what you need. You know, sometimes we, we're looking out of our means and we realize it later, oh, this is what God was trying to show me. This is what I needed to learn. You know, so I have acceptance and number two.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  Number two, these, only these two things, you, you do these two things, you're gonna have a wonderful life. Let God drive the car. Trust God. If you trust God and have faith, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. I've learned to trust God. I, when I started to eliminate those negative thoughts, at the same time I trusted, I learned to trust God. I learned to trust a lot. Let him drive and I don't have no questions. Is this where you taking me? Alright, I'm gonna get out the car and do what I gotta do. This is where you wanna drop me off? I understand.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna question it. I'mma, I'mma go on the journey and see where it leads me and then I'll understand why by I get, time I get to the end. Those two things is what are, are helping me to have a, a happier life, you know? Even the, we go through some up tough but we're supposed to. We're supposed to go through it because it makes us better. You know, you don't learn by getting it easy. You learn by the stuff you go through. So yeah, I had to learn some tough lessons too, being angry, being mad. You know, like why is this happening to me? You know? Not forsaking God, but just like you just, sometimes you're like, in general, in general, you're like, damn.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  But it's, it, it's, it, it's giving us knowledge and it sometimes pushes us out of the comfort zone that we're used to. And we, we get to a place of then, like I said, now I'm in a, I'm vibrating in extremely high frequency. I'm at peace. Every day I'm at peace. And some affirmations I would say all the time was, I am happy, I am healthy and I'm at peace. Every single day. And after a while, I noticed that that's what I had in my life.

• 1:20:26Keke Palmer?

  You know, I had originally had us close out with a ga, with a game, but I'm curious if you would be, not to put you out on the, right on the line, but would there wanna be, um, maybe some affirmations or a quick moment of meditation or something that you would wanna take me and the, and the listeners through?

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, why not? So we, we, we just ended with, I'm happy, I'm healthy at peace.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  Let's close our eyes.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  And let's take three deep breaths. In through your nose and out through your mouth.

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  And I think what we're gonna do right now is just give gratitude. I want everyone to think of three things you're grateful for. Think of three things that make you happy. And I want you to say, "I am happy for whatever," or "I am grateful for whatever." Say it to yourself, and we're just gonna give gratitude. Because gratitude is also a key to being happy in life. We have to be thankful for the things we have, not for the things we don't have,

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  but we have so much more than somebody else out there in life right now. So we have to be thankful and give gratitude to Allah and the universe for everything we have. So let's take the moment and give gratitude.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  And I wanna give gratitude to Kiki for having me on her show. I wanna give gratitude for Kiki for bringing so many wonderful guests on her show and sharing, sharing her positivity and her beautiful heart and her beautiful spirit, and reaching so many people out here in the world. And I'm giving gratitude to everyone in my life and all of the crew here today that's making it possible to do this show. I thank everyone. And we're gonna have a blessed day.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  And remember, eliminate those negative thoughts from your head. Only think about the good. And I guarantee your life will be a better life and the sun will shine more often.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  All right? Whenever you wanna come back, you can come back slowly. And you can let out a deep breath.

• 1:23:41Keke Palmer?

  Lil' John, what a blessing.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  Life is good.

• 1:23:44Keke Palmer?

  What a blessing you've been to the show, to me, to people, everybody in this room, and to the people that are gonna be listening to this. I really do thank you.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:23:54Keke Palmer?

  I really do.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:23:57Keke Palmer?

  I'm so, I'm so glad. Wow. That is just too awesome.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  You're making me cry too, baby.

• 1:24:09Keke Palmer?

  You know what I love about Lil' John? He spent his whole career getting everybody else to turn up, but somewhere along the way, he discovered the power of turning down and listening to himself. And I think that's a reminder that we don't have to just be one version of ourselves. We can grow, change, and discover new parts of who we are without losing what makes us us. Because sometimes, the most important voice you need to hear is your own. Until next time, baby, this is Keke Palmer.