October 14, 2025 • 57 mins
Tupac like you’ve NEVER heard before.
New York Times bestselling author Jeff Pearlman discusses his groundbreaking biography Only God Can Judge Me, the most in-depth look ever at Tupac Shakur — his rise through West Coast hip-hop to his time at Death Row Records, movies like Juice and Poetic Justice, and the myths that still surround his murder.
In an ALL THE SMOKE exclusive, we’re also joined by Davonn Hodge, the real-life baby from Tupac’s iconic song “Brenda’s Got a Baby.” For the first time, he shares his story and how his life connects to one of the most powerful songs in rap history
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back season two of Unplugged Man. It's been a
good off season, needed to refresh, but we got a
great one today to kick season two off. Obviously, with
the NBA season right around the corner, we will touch
on that this show. But first we are joined by
New York Times bestseller Jeff Pearlman and Devon Hodge. You're
(00:20):
probably asking who Davon Hodge is, and once we start talking,
you'll know exactly who he is. But let's get to it. Jeff,
only God can judge me. Tell us about that book
and when is it out comes.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Out October twenty First we can get everywhere now. It's
a biography of Tupac. Shakur worked on it for three years,
interviewed six hundred and fifty people. Dove Deep, Deep, Deep Deep.
It's kind of the book I always dreamed of writing.
I've been a sports writer my whole life. It's my
first non sports book, and that's what led me to Devon,
which is this incredible journey I went on, and he
was probably the most incredible part of it.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
We'll speak speak to us because again I want the
world to know who he is. And once he starts
telling you who he is you'll understand why.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Okay, So basically you're obviously a Tupac Diehard. Brenda's Got
a Baby to Me is a really important song in
the Tupac. They kind of sent him on his way
after same song with his underground and he was he
he was filming Juice Back, his first movie, and one
day he gets an article. He reads the daily news
because he got the newspaper every day.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Give me the year. This is ninety, This is ninety.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
And he's reading the New York Daily News because his
mother and Fanny raised him reading the newspaper every single day.
So Pa brings him the newspaper and there's a there's
an article Cries in the Night, Cries in the dark,
and he reads it and it's about a twelve year
old girl in the Noble Duelle public housing in Brooklyn
who was raped by a cousin, gave birth to the
(01:44):
baby on the floor, wrapped the baby up in an
odd job plastic bag, threw the baby down a trash heap.
It was disposal day, so it is the day the
incinerator was going to go off. A guy downstairs, here's
a baby crying, and saves a baby. They take the
baby to the hospital, and they later take the mother
(02:08):
to the hospital. And Tubac reads this article about this
and he says to Omar EPs, holy shit, his coach star,
holy shit, goes into his trailer. He says, leave me
alone for a little bit. Comes back out truly on
a piece of paper. Brenda's got a baby, Brenda's barely
got a brain. A damn shame. The girl can hardly
spell her name is inspired by it. I work with
(02:29):
a great, great genealogist named Michelle Sooley, where I actually
graduated high school with Weirdly, and I said to her,
it would be amazing, amazing if we could find the
baby who inspired this song. And she's like, give me
a few days, and she gives me one day. She's like,
I think I found him. And she sends me a
phone number, and you know, you can't just call people
(02:50):
anymore because nobody answers her phone. Like, if I just called,
there's no way he's answer. So I sent him the
most disturbingly clumsy text ever, which is basically which is basically, hey,
my name is Jeff Pearlman. I'm writing a book about Tupac.
By any chance, is this you? And I've sent the
article attached to a text.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
But he at this time he has no idea.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
This is no well a little bit, a little bit,
so now you want to chuse me? Thank you?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
You would know?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Oh yeah, absolutely, So I sent him a text and
he writes back and he basically says, give me a
call tomorrow. And a couple of weeks later, not even
a couple weeks, maybe a week later, Las Vegas sitting
with Davon and he is the baby from the article
that inspired the song Brandon's Got a Baby, And that
is how I lead off the book, this story Dave,
(03:41):
and he's one of the best people you will ever meet.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I felt when he came in when he said, I
wanted to smoke with you. We're gonna do that, but
tell me. I mean, obviously you were telling me a
little bit about the journey when we were down there,
because again I'm a huge Tupac fan, and obviously that
was one of his biggest in early songs. To just
point kind of, you know, steered his career. How did
you learn that you were the baby from Brenda Man?
Speaker 4 (04:08):
You know, who would have thought, you know, a ninety
nine dollars ancestry DNA tests were literally unlocked, you know,
a whole Tupac. You know, Red Revelation of a song
that was one of his first hits, and I had no.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I found out a little bit before Jeff.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
As soon as I did the ancestry test, I reached
out to the closest family members is on there. You know,
when you do an ancestry test, you never know what's
going to pop up. I wasn't really doing it for
the family side. It was more of the diasporas side,
where you're from your ways.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Why I do this? So you do that?
Speaker 4 (04:45):
You know after you know, I had lost my parents
literally a year before that. My mom and dad died
ten months apart. And you know, when things like that happened,
you kind of you know you rein discovery mode. You know,
you're trying to reinvent yourself and find find your way.
And uh that led me into this. And uh as
(05:06):
soon as I called one of the people that was
within the close range of my family member, she knew
exactly who I was and put me on the phone
with about ten different people that's sharing the stories Brooklyn, Brooklyn,
North Carolina.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Uh, South Carolina.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
It's telling me to showing me the newspaper clips of
back in the day and was telling me about what happened, and.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I didn't even kind of followed. You were able to
keep tabs on you or you kind of just popped
up on them like here I am.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
They it was, it was it would have been hard
for them to find me.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Uh, to be honest with you, my last name changed
even though I was still in Brooklyn. I was raised
in Crown Heights. Uh, we was, you know, not so
far apart from each other. But you know, my mom
did a good job by sheltering me from that exposure.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Well back up a little bit, because you were adopted
at how old newborn?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Probably about five.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah, when my mom when they found uh me, uh
down there, we went to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
My mom actually went to school.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Uh the song of what Tupac said for her going
to school after it's true, you know, after she did it,
she walked right to school. And after that it kind
of transpired into a big thing. And they took her
to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
And uh.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Uh, due to the magnitude of the situation, they wouldn't
let me stay with her. So, by the graces of God,
I was, you know, blessed in to the family that
I was raised in. Me and my mom had visitation rights,
so I was around two.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
No, I was probabably first second grade.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Is your birth mom's name Brenda?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
No?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Okay? What's her? Could we say her real name? Or
would you rather? Okay, I want to make sure. I
want to make sure I'm you're talking about birth mom
and then adoptive mom and dad as well.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Right, I refer to Brenda as Brenda. I don't want to.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
She doesn't want to be on this and I respect
her to the respect her wish.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Uh so, Uh, me and Brenda had a close I
wouldn't say a close relationship.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
We was on vegetation rights.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
For around until I was about first second grade, so
I changed my last name and uh the courts actually
stopped us from uh seeing each other. So after I
was like one or two.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Uh come.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
My mom also adopted other children as well, so you know,
it was getting kind of strange and and you know,
when you're trying to raise a family, you know, and
my mom is a very big family woman. You know,
she's like she was the big mother of the house
of the family, you know, So my mom liked to
(07:46):
keep it tight knit and loving.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Understanding, you know, once you did the ancestry test and
and all these things kind of start happening, and you
go back and listen to the song with the new ear.
What was your first thought when you heard Brenda had
the baby? Knowing damn.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
To be honest with you, I cried, man.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
You know, I was on the phone with my best friends,
and I'm reading the newspaper, and you know, I grew up,
you know, you know, you grow up so long and
you're not understanding a tragic story is about you, and
now you're reading it, and now it's you know, you're.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Opening your eyes to what actually happened, you know.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
So I start replaying the conversations that me and my
mom had when I used to ask her about Brenda
and all that. And my mom was NYPD at the
time of this happening, and when the news broke, I
was in the newspaper for about, I'll say a month
and a half up around New York. And she did
(08:46):
her best to keep me within her to keep me
within her arms. And what she did a great job.
I think she sheltered me from a lot of the
story growing up. She never told me that my mom
was raped in anything. She was just like there. You know,
your mom was very young. Something had happened and she
(09:06):
had to give you up.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
For Have anyone from Park's side, family or a state
or anyone reached out. Have you met anyone on that side?
Speaker 3 (09:15):
No?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
No, I don't think they would know about it. Yeah,
comes out really Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
I don't think anybody really because I didn't. I mean,
just like I said, you know, I've lived thirty two
years without knowing, you know, listening to this song my
whole life, you know what I'm saying, you know, and
and now listening to it in this light, it is something.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
It's something different.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
We're not going to hold you that you're a Biggie
fan against you a bigger.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
You know, from Brooklyn. So I will always be you know,
Biggie will always be number one from New York. Yeah, yeah,
but it's a Brooklyn thing.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
You told me. You told me something interesting though about
Brownsville and and and once you started meeting your family
and how Mike Tyson taught your family had a box
like like you kind of started learning about the family
and that that dynamic absolutely.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
So you know everybody knows bo the boxer from back
in the day. He's from the same projects there as
my family read it both. He never left the apartment,
stayed in the apartment career.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Absolutely, you can check it out the plazas in Brownsville.
And these are stories that I'm listening to my family
members that are there telling me what's going on. Mike
Tyson didn't live that too far away from us, and
you know, when you're from Brownsville, you're kind of from Brownsville.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Everybody kind of know each other.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
And Mike Tyson always been big in the community, helping
out the community and also making sure people could defend themselves,
especially out there in Brownsville.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
It's interesting, interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Typing up one thing that crazy, even crazier than the
story you just heard. I need him. And then we're like,
we need to find the mom. Yeah, we should find
the mom. Yeah, And this genealogist, Michelle Souley, who's a wizard,
writes me back a few days later. She's like, I
think I found the mom. She calls the mother. We'll
call her Brenda. She calls the mom and she goes, hey,
(11:01):
I'm working with this writer Jeff Perma. Basically blah blah blah,
do you know where my son is? Do you know
where my son is? She's screaming and crying on the phone.
Do you know where my son is? I've been looking
for my son for twenty something years. Do you know
where he is? This is the craziest part. This is
the craziest part of all I swear. She goes, I
live in New Jersey, but I'm away from home right now.
(11:21):
At a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. Michelle says, well,
where's the concert? She says, Las Vegas. They meet that night.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah, yeah, right as a stylist right now.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
The man talked to us about that, Michelle. You know,
Michelle is a great lady man. She does she she
has a wizard. She knows her stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I tell you that.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
And prior to, prior to all this, I was also
trying to, you know, find her myself. She's a very
hard person. She don't want to be seen. Okay, she
ain't gonna be seen. She called me, she was like, hey, uh,
I got your mom on the other line. I said,
excuse me. She was like, You're not about to believe this.
(12:04):
And I was like, what's going on? She was like,
she's in Vegas. I said, what, So two seconds later,
she puts me on the phone.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Brenda's crying hysterically.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
We exchanged contacts and I hopped in the shower, got dressed.
I lived about twenty twenty minutes away from Caesar's Palace
and we met, writing right in the writing the line
yeah look alike, yes?
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Which is which is crazy looking at somebody that resembles you?
You know it's crazy. She had a big she has
a big dave on.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
She has my name, Taddy, she had it since she
was fifteen sixteen.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
What's that first experience?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Like?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Obviously one and two. I don't know my earliest memory
to probably four or five, So probably you don't even
really remember the one in two do you at all?
Speaker 4 (12:52):
I do I do remember, because you know, I had
to go from Brooklyn to Manhattan every week to meet her,
and uh, and you know some of the I remember
she used to bring these two little kids that we
now we know each other, but we it's funny how
we used to talk, how we used to play around
with each other back in the when we used to
meet up.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And now they're the same age as me, and.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
So reuniting with her Vegas after possibly thirty years almost Yeah,
what was it? What was that like?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
It was good?
Speaker 4 (13:21):
It was you know, it's as anybody could expect it.
It's not all you know, shunshines and rainbows. You know,
we're human. We're both taking the proper steps to create
that great bond like we should have.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
But it's great.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
I won't take anything from it or I want, you know,
I'll do it all over again.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
How'd you guys, relationship now as we talk?
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yes, she moved. She moved to Las Vegas.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
She lives probably about thirty minutes away from me. We
don't see each other as often, but we do communicate.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Right, Jeff, you said the Paka State would obviously love
this story. And it's crazy how he's working. You know,
thirty years been removed and he's still doing magical work.
Were you working closely with the estage or oh not
at okay, so you just kind of were doing your
own thing.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
I was doing my own thing.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Talk to us about just this process in this journey.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I mean, it's been the hardest just being blunt and obvious.
I'm a white sports writer writing a Tupacs chore biography.
I'm aware of the weirdness of that, but I you know,
real quick.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, one of my producers. How do you feel like?
I don't really mean he's you know, he's a great
writer and he's at a bunch of sports. I mean
if if the writing's great, doesn't matter. But I kind
of got where you're saying, because some people probably feel
a certain way. Course you are white writing about one
of our heroes, A.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
One hundred percent get it, one hundred percent get it,
And I think like the approach I took, and the
approach I take, is like, nobody needs a white sports writer.
You certainly don't need white sports writer to explain to you, well,
here's a Tupac thought about this and that. So what
you do is you interview six hundred and fifty people
like I went to New Orleans, sat down with his
sister sat She almost never talks to anyone, yasmine Fula
(15:05):
who helped raise him former panther spent hours and hours
with her, leylah Steinberg, who helped him get his career,
money Bee and schop Master J and all the digital underground.
So I just like it was a wide wide So
I found the EMT who first got to him at
Quad Studios. He'd never been interviewed before just NonStop, find them,
find them, find them and let their voices speak.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Were you a Pock fan going into this?
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:26):
So what was it? This is almost probably like a
dream come true for you as you're talking to all
these people and you said you never got a chance
to meet him, but as you're kind of discovering his
life and his journey through the closest people to through
his eye, through their eyes, what was it like for you?
Speaker 2 (15:40):
First of all, right, here is the highlight of my career.
And I'm not just saying that the highlight of my career,
and this is thirty years in journalism. By far, the
number one emotion I left this with is sadness, Like
I don't and I actually think it's interesting. I would say, like,
I actually think every white person should write a Tupox
book because if you really, if you really want.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
To understand, put yourself in our place.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Go to the rowhouse in Baltimore he grew up, and
I knocked on the door and I'm looking inside and
you could see where the rat you know, the places
that set told me where the rats are running along
the forward. Go to Marin City, knock on the apartment
where Fenny was deep into crack addiction, and set was
raising herself and Tupac is kicked out of the house
and he's living with his friend to meet your's stripling,
(16:24):
you know, go to these places and see what it is,
and you realize, like what Tupac was rapping about was
this shit he carried with him his whole life and
this pain, And like again, it's easy to be a
white middle class guy in Mayo, Pac New York and
everything's great and haha, but when you see it and
you travel it and you dig through it, I can't.
(16:45):
Like again, you don't need me to tell you things
about you, don't need me to explain Tupac to you.
But I feel like the people in the book explaining
it through me.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Did you get a chance to either, you guys get
a chance to see the Tupac Museum? Oh I did, No,
he didn't, did you. My girl surprised me for my birthday,
so like a whole I think some of the people
in here came with us too. Yeah, it was a
whole little surprise. It was amazing along your journey with
writing this book and interviewing over six hundred people. Double
question the probably the most intriguing person you sat down
(17:16):
with and the hardest person to track down.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
All right, the most intriguing besides Dave on we Tupac
had a girlfriend in high school named Mary, and everyone
told me Mary will never talk to you. This is
when he was a Baltimore School for the Arts. She
was a white ballet dancer whose parents are Communists, and
the family loved Tupac. And I reached out to Mary
and I talked to her, and she lives in Nebraska,
(17:38):
right in Nebraska, and she said to me, and this
is one of those moments as a journalist.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
She goes.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
My mom recently found one hundred and fifty letters that
Tupac wrote me under the bed. If you come out
to Nebraska, I was shown to you.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Wow, I'm like, I will.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Be there tomorrow. I fly out to the middle of nowhere.
Nebraska e't the worst big I've ever had thing Mike
Orave the bagel on Nebraska. I don't even know what
this is the Jewish New Yorker. It hurts me. But
she has these letters in a folder and she brings
them and just reading through them and his writing, I
consider Tupac almost more poet than writer, Like his It
(18:15):
was so good and it was like horny and angry
and sad and excited.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
But it spelled it out so well. His writing was
and this is teenage possible. It is a sixteen.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Sixteen year old pock Tupac and he was a better
writer than I ever even hoped to be. It was
so good. So that was my joyful fine and getting
his sister. I mean, there was one point I was
in there.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I was.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
I drove down to New Orleans and I sat down
with Set and.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Set does not talk, and that's big sister, no little sister.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, he only has one sister, yeah, and and that's
a Fenny's daughter and Matulu.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So at one point I said to her, what was
it like moving from Baltimore to California? And she said
to me, right there, that's your white privilege showing. And
I go, I'm like, what do you mean? She goes,
we didn't move, we were relocated. And I actually thought,
like I got shows just like that's the kind of
shit I needed to hear, and the kind of like
(19:14):
I mean serious, like that's when I say like I
needed to hear that, because in my head it's like, oh,
you move and She's like, we're moved, we're relocated, and
she's like, I have nothing good to say about Marin
City and living there. There's a most traumatic, harrifying experience
in my life. And she just oohed this pain.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
So Davon, I mean, this book drops in a week.
It's gonna change your life again. What do you thought?
Have you thought about kind of what's coming ahead? Because
this is this is a huge again, one of the
biggest songs ever. And now they know who Brenda's baby is.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
It's you.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
You're a thirty three year old man living your life.
Now have you kind of thought about what's on the
horizon in the next six, eight, ten months for you?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
No, to be honest with you, I haven't.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
I'm still fascinated by the artistry of part I mean
somebody that could literally sit there and read.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
A newspaper and put human.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Value to it, you know, and paint a picture that
nobody would would, you know? Nowadays a lot of people
can't you know, read a book like that and spin
out this poetry with Jeffer saying, I mean, beautiful writer
and just a beautiful visionary is I'm still teething off
the listening off the song, you know, and still breaking
down the different dialects and stuff that he says in
(20:34):
the songs that now I'm listening to the real stories,
you know, mapping that out. I haven't, no, I haven't
thought about what this could do or what this will do.
You know, I'm an average guy from Las Vegas, you
know that now lives in Las Vegas, and you know,
I'm excited to see what what the journey brings.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
You're thrilled to come here, you know, I.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Said, Matt Barnes and Stevens, what you talk about? He said,
do you know all the smokes? I said, do I
not know?
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Jeff? Obviously a Foene passed not too long ago. Through
the talkings of you know, the people you spoke to,
What did you learn about her and her in Pok's relationship.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
First of all, I honestly think everybody it is a
crime that more people in America don't know about the
Panther twenty one trial, don't know about Ifenny shit court.
I've been saying this all long throughout this process. I
don't know what it's like to be a black kid
in America. But if you're a white kid in America
and you go to mostly white high school. They take
one day in history to teach about civil rights, and
it'll say Martin Luther King had a dream and we
(21:39):
should all have a dream too. Next now we're moving on,
you know, like it's the biggest garbage. And like her
role with the Panthers, she was twenty one years old,
pregnant with Tupac, on trial, facing a lifetime in presenting herself,
she turned down a quarter pointed attorney to represent herself.
She's going back and forth to every day moult nurse
(22:01):
being treated like shit by the guards, and she wins.
And to me, she is a historic figure who nodded up.
There's a movie to be made about a Fenni Shakur
And I would say her laser with Tupac, it was complicated.
She was his hero. He would brag to everyone. My
mom was a black panther, my mom, panther, twenty one,
my mom. And at the same time she was a
(22:21):
crack addict who is unavailable and really struggled. And I
think Dear Mama obviously is one of his two or
three most famous songs, But as Jasmine Foolish said to me,
it's a little bit aspirational like it's not just this
is who my mom is, but also this is who
I want want to be. So I think that kind
of is it?
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I mean, you wrote award winning sports pieces, you know,
Bo Jacks and Walter Payton, a handful of the bad boys,
Like what drew you to Tupac?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I just think he's a culturally uber significant artist who
never had Like there are great biographies about John F.
Kennedy and MLK and Marilyn and a million different but
I never felt there was the definitive understand this guy's
life and full and also I want to take the
journey like I wanted to understand Tupac's life.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
So so three years and six hundred interviews later, we're here.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
The book exists.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I'm excited to to jump on.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
It is definitely the best Tupac book ever written by
a Jewish sports writer.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Is it the only one? But I know I'm definitely
looking for this.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
I'll say one thing, Jeffers Jeffer, jeff is definitely a
genuine reporter. He you know, in the old school movies
you watch the reporters, the one that makes the phone calls,
the one that doesn't try to, you know, get you
by any means they actually genuinely, passionately want to understand.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Jeff is one of those people.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
And when I sat down and you know, the first
question we you know that came up.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
You know what it is a.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
White guy writing a book about Tupac and you're telling
me something that you know. Yeah, family is now telling me.
But I'm still like in shock, this book is done.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
The right way.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Jeff, what did you learn about yourself writing this?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
I think I learned how much I didn't know, Like
I really mean that. I'm not even that's not like
that sounds like something.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Like that's not about just overall, Yeah, but it is.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
It's kind of both. Like I just think, honestly, God Like,
I think there are a lot of people. I think
there are a lot of white people in America who
like they feel like they understand black culture because they
listen to hip hop and their favorite actor is Denzel
Washington and blah blah blah blah blah. Right, and until
you immerse yourself in it, I'm not saying I have
a full understanding, obviously can't. But immersing myself in it
(24:43):
gave me a PhD level of sort of education at
least at least on what it was to be.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
You know, you're definitely invited to the barbecue now.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
I think, thank you because my mom my mom puts
raisins in the potato South.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Oh no, you can't come there. You gotta lean that out. Yeah,
we got I've read the reasons.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Dave Love. We appreciate you, man. Your journey's incredible. We're
definitely going to continue to check on you and have
you back out and have you come do some stuff
with us. Man. But it was an absolute pleasure to
meet you, Jeff.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
If you guys want to check me out, I'm on Instagram, TikTok,
my name Davon Hodge, d A v O N N
h O d G E brand new to TikTok, brand
new Ticto and Instagram.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Get ready, man. I think obviously, once this story really
hits like it's supposed to you, it's going to be
a whirl winning man. And you know, I asked you
how you know, I briefly share with you. I just
found out I had an older brother after forty two years,
and like, although there's love, like we just missed so
much time. We kind of check in from here to
there and I asked you, like, how do you how
do you deal with all this? And if you don't
(25:48):
mind sharing, tell tell me what you told me. Smoking
and working Now, that's it, you know, that's life.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Taking it one step at a time, not rushing into anything,
just letting it naturally occur occur.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
You know, it's still an eye opener.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
For me to be honest with you, even I'm pretty
sure for you understanding that you know, you got a brother,
you know, and you're.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Like, wait, hold on, what happened exactly? You know? This
is it something that I missed obviously?
Speaker 1 (26:19):
So we sat down for the first time. He was
on all No, yeah, we had him at a NBA
All Star last year.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
I bet he was good, right.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
He was good. But you know what's interesting is when
you hear, like when you hear about players in their
primer early on, and then you get a chance to
meet him after, you're like, damn, because it's weird, because
I feel like when I tell people like who my
dad is now or who my dad was and who
he is now, like yeah, right, no, he wasn't and
people like don't believe me. But I kind of feel
like when I hear certain athletes are a certain way,
and then you meet him at the end, it's just like, damn,
(26:46):
you're nothing like I heard you were.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Do you know you're baseball of a huge base No,
Sean Green.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
So Shann's a good friend of mine, Okay, And he
said to me weirding lunch time. He's like, you know,
we're always nicer after it done. He's like all athletes
and this year, like athletes are just after they retire.
And that's how he explained Bonds, because Bonds was the
worse when you're not even so bad.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
How when when you're doing that, I mean, you've Barry Bonds,
you know, rest in peace, Walter Payton, Bo Jackson. Are
you working alongside any of them about this? Do you
check it with them at all? Or you just kind
of go and find their circle and dig into that.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Well, I always try to talk to them, Okay. So,
like I did a book about the eighty six Mets.
I interviewed most of those guys. I did the showtime
Lakers that became winning Time.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
That was amazing. I want to talk about that, but
keep that thought but back to kind of how Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Well, I'm like, so I try to and Bonds like
Bond is one of the weirdest experiences in my life.
So actually, Bonds and Brett fav are tied for weirdest.
All right, Bonds he was always tough. I was a
baseball writer for Sports Illustrated as I was working on
that book, and Bonds was a standoffish tiptoe up to
his locker.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
I'm sure played with guys like that who people are
just like. So I finally at the end, I have
all my research done and I walk up to Barry
bonds as locker and I'm like, hey, Barry, I'm Jeff Peerlan.
I'm the guy working this book. This is uh oh fourish,
so he's still active. He's with the Giants three maybe
hey blah blah blah blah. He goes, and I was shocked.
He turns around. He goes, hey, man, it's all good.
(28:10):
He shakes my hand. He goes, I'm not going to
talk to you, but it's okay, okay. He gets up
and I go, and that's as nice as he could
possibly be because he was tough. He gets up and
he's starting to walk away, and he goes and I go,
I even interviewed your cub Scout den mother Marlene Rossi.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Man.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I talked to Marlene Rossi and he goes, dude, I
was never even in the cub Scouts. And I literally
have his cub stout photo of him in it. He's like,
and that's how he did with us. He was just like,
I think he enjoyed us having these nightmares with him.
And I just want to say, Brett farre I talked
to everyone in Farest family, like everyone, mom, sister, brothers,
(28:50):
And one day I called his sister Brandy. I reached
out her on Facebook and I was like, hey, I'm
working this Brett fire By, a book about your brother.
She goes, well, when if you come down to Mississippi,
hit me up. I go down to Mississippi. I call
her and she's like, why don't you just come to
the house. My mom will be there, and Brett is
not talking to me.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
For the book.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
I'm like, well, this isn't gonna go well. I go
to the house, Mom, Benita, sister Brandy greet me. Mom goes,
so is Brett talking to you? And I'm like I
don't think so. And I'm like waiting. She goes, all right, well,
come on in. And two hours of interview and then
she sends me home with his scrap books. She literally says,
just take the scrap books. You can send them back
to me whenever. So I never talked to Brett Fire,
(29:32):
but in my house I had bred Fire's scrap books.
Whow she just never knows.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Super weird Showtime Lakers obviously turned into Winning Time, and
I really liked, like, why did I only get one season?
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Two seasons?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Excuse me? Why did I only get two seasons?
Speaker 2 (29:43):
So, as far as I understand, it was as expensive
to make as Game of Thrones, but didn't have Game
of Thrones ratings. It was well, it had good ratings,
but not amazing ratings. You don't put my kids through college.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Like.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
It was a very great experience for me. I had
cameos in it.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And someone also said that it came at a weird
time with the strike and right after COVID. Yeah, thing,
so that may have played a little.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
It was insanely expensive at a time when HbA was
cutting back. It cut my heart out that the season
ends with the Boston Celtics winning, like that's how it ended.
The Celtics win, and.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
I'm like, what the yeah, what was that? Like though,
I mean you had a lot of great actors in it.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean that that was dope.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
The probably the biggest career throw of my life was
they had a premiere a premiere party. I'm just a writer,
Like I'm just a schlove writer, you know, And they
had a premiere party at a movie theater, an old
movie theater in la I forgot which one, and my
wife is out of town, but my kids were with
me and they call and they're like, we're going to
send a car for you. And I tell my kids, like,
(30:44):
they're gonna send a car.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
We get off.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
There's a red carpet, mister Pearlman. We want you to
walk down the red carpet. Dad, they want you to
walk down the red carpet. And it's this whole thing
and all the stars are like, hey, Jeff, blah blah blah.
And there was a moment when Adam McKay is on
the stage, the creator of it all, and my kids
are sitting next to me and all these actors around
me and all these people, and he goes, Jeff Pearlman,
stand up, and I stand up, and he goes, Jeff
(31:08):
Pearlman is one of the great sports writers of all time,
and none of this would have happened without him. Almost
none of that is true. I do not consider by
someone of the great arguments, but like my kids sitting
next to or how that happened, Yeah, is maybe.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
The greatest moment of my life. I love that you
got to do, Shaq, Kobe and Phil, Yeah, talk to
us about that. I mean, you know Shaq, I know
both actually yeah, no, all three.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
I would say, first of all, Shaq was awesome. I
didn't get to Kobe would not talk. Shaq was amazing.
And I would say, like the book came out after
Kobe died, it was done before Kobe died, came out
after Kobe died, and the book is not it's not
incredibly kind to Kobe. And I remember sitting with Shaq,
and one thing I said to Shaq was, this is
(31:54):
before Kobe died. I said. One thing that always seemed
weird to me is like you always had nicknames for yourself, right,
Big Aristotle, Shack, Diesel, Superman. But it was always like
with like a wink, like Shack always seemed like he
was in on the joke. And Kobe nicknamed himself Black Mamba,
and actually thought of himself as like literally the black.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Mom gave hisself that nickname. Yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
And Shack goes to me in the deep voice. He goes, bro,
now you know what I was dealing with. And then
I went to Montana to see Phil Jackson. And the
only reason Phil talk to me is because Genie put
no word for me. And I show up and we
needed a cafe and I go, man, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
You have sandals on?
Speaker 2 (32:31):
He did have santos on. Holy cow, he did have
sand Yeah. He goes, I'm not doing this for you.
I'm doing this for Genie. And I'm like, fuck, this
isn't going to be good. I thought I get an hour.
He's like, why don't we take a tour around the lake.
He drives me around a lake for three hours. Let's
stop for lunch here. You want to come back to
my house hanging out up for you gave me eight hours?
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (32:50):
And he was awesome. It was like win. There's like
some like heads fun douchebag wins the like spend a
day with Phil Jackson trip. That's literally what I got.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Amazing sweetness, Walter Payton.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
I mean, I love Walter Payton. Yes, hard book to
write was very hard first off. So I interviewed Walter
Payton one time. I was a very young writer at
Sports Illustrated.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
He passed the what age early, like forty six.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Nineteen ninety nine. Man, yeah, a bioduct cancer. And I
was a writer at Sports Illustrated, young writer at Sports Illustration.
One day an editor said to me, do you have
any interest in going to meet Walter Payton and talking
to him? And he was dying at this point, but
he was trying to raise money for a charity. And
I said yeah, And I flew out to Illinois and
I'm in an office and this old man greets me,
(33:33):
old black man wearing like a taxi driver cap and
a windbreaker. And I was about to say, I'm looking
for Walter Payton. And it was Walter Payton and he
was that decimated. And I sat across from him and
his eyes were yellow and from jaundice. And it still
remains the saddest interview I've ever done in my life.
But it inspired me to write that book and crazy Life, Yeah,
(33:54):
fascinating life.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
And you did Bo Jackson too, right, Yeah, Well, he's
one of my he's my hero.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Have you met Bo Jackson?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Never got a chance to. I remember him from what Superstar?
What was the cartoon? He was a superstar? Michael Jordan's Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
None of them voice themselves in that yeah cartoon. He's
a tough guy, Bo Jacksley, he's he's he's an he's
a prickly guy. And you know he ran a four
to one three forty.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
He's incredibly the greatest athlete of all in my opinions,
I don't even think there's a question about it.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Runs a four one three forty at college, signs with
the Raiders. Tom Flores is a coach of the Raiders,
asked Bo Jackson to run a forty on grass. Doesn't
in a four one nine. They don't believe it's accurate.
They remeasure it, and he runs a four to one seven,
which is think about Tyree Hill doesn't run thirty two
twenty at that point, man.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
He could have been one of the greatest football players
of all time.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
The funny thing is, I'll tell you one thing interesting.
He You probably remember this from being a kid. He
let off the All Star Game and seven run. Okay,
crazy story about this. He leaves off the game with
the home run. Nike is planning this enormous rollout of
bo Knows for the All Star Game, and the stadium
was papered with bonos bonos, and they're going to have
this commercial air I think two innings after he leads off,
(35:09):
but they have no idea how this is going to go.
So all the Nike executives are sitting together and Mickey
Manto's restaurant in New York City watching the game. Bo
Jackson leads off with a homer, not just a home run,
like a perfect home run dead center field. The guy
runs on the black, he finds the ball, he builds
it up. Bo Jackson, he looks like a god running
around the basis, and the Nike executives are screaming and
cheering in Mickey Manos restaurant. Ever, one's like, what the
(35:31):
fuck is wrong with these people? And they're just going crazy.
And that was the most serendipitous advertising moment ever.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
I want to say, both are Wade bogs bat a secondly?
And what did Wade Box do you at home run?
Speaker 2 (35:42):
He sure did.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Back wait, Tony.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
LaRussa came up to them, he was the manager. He
comes up to them the day before the game because
Bogs would usually lead off in that sense, and he goes, wait,
I'm going to have bo lead off just for the effect.
And it's the icon. Who is pitching? Do you remember?
Speaker 1 (35:55):
I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
There's Rick Rushall who's forty years old and built like
a beanbag, and he threw this like the allience.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah it was eighty seven. Yeah, your baseball was seven
years old.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah, wow, you remember it.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
But I remember the back to back because we went
outside and played baseball after.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
And Vin Scully and Ronald Reagan were in the booth
calling it.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Ronald Reagan, yeah, hostly yeah yeah, yeahah yeah. Uh tell
us about your YouTube page.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
So I have a thing called press Box Chronicles. It's
a show. I do it every week. It's just a
dive back into obscure, random like sports topics in the past.
I didn't think anyone would care. Somehow people want to
do I know, I don't even know what is it? Sports?
Just people like sports stories.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Would you say, well, I mean, I just think from
your I mean, you know, we interviewed everyone under the Sun,
and one of my favorite interviews is Jim Gray, and
I think because you guys have been entrenched in it
for so long, and you have the good, the bad,
the in between. You just have so much information that
just hearing you speak is like, oh shit, like you
feel like you learned something. So that's probably why people
are interested.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well, if you think about it, we're like paid not
just to be there, but to record it and observe it.
So I would probably remember some of your games better
than you would because I literally am keeping it, rotating it.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been cool. It's been great.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Real quick, before we get out of here. Pot you
interviewed the EMT at the Quad City shooting and they
said Poc shot hisself. Was he trying to pull his
gun out? I was guessing.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
So basically.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Nobody had interviewed this guy ever ever. Literally I called
him and he's like, nobody's it's weird you're calling me.
Nobody's ever called me, and I've always had this thing
in my head. Basically, two had the gun in the
waistband and I interviewed his his manager Watani, who said
the gun he out the glockiad was easily dischargeable if
not him correctly when the guy got up. So basically
Tupac went upstairs and the EMT goes up to see
him and Tubacs there. He said, I got shot in
(37:39):
the box. He didn'ty shot himself. He never had, and
the MT remembered that there was no entrance to the
there's no entrance tear through the jeans or.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Through the under deals underneath his waistband.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
So he had in his waistband went in. The ball
then embedded in his leg.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
So he was getting shot at trying to pull the
gun out and excellently shot itself correct. He also was
shot once in the head and a crowd is how
many time to get shot was three and.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
One in the hand. The other thing I'll tell you
that was crazy. Tupac's mom is from Lumberton, North Carolina,
and I went there because I want to see where
she was from. And she bought a house years later,
like maybe twenty tenish in Lumberton, her hometown, and she
built this. She built a house on this property. And
(38:22):
I found the guy who takes care of it, and
he said, do you want to the estate owns it now?
The way he's ever bought this house. Do you want
to take a tour of the house now? If you're
working on a Tupac book, and someone says, do you
want to take a tour of a Feniship Court's house?
You always say yes.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
He goes, do you want to see you where Tupac's
grave is. I'm like, I'm literally I don't even know
what that means, because he was his ashes Malibu. He goes, no,
she buried some of his ashes here. I'm like, what
he's like? Come with me. Literally, on an abandoned lot
in Lumberton, North Carolina, is Twupox the Court's grave. There's
(38:58):
a tombstone, a thing over it. I don't know what
you call that, and there it is. So I was
literally standing above incredible.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Because I want to say, one of the Hughes brothers
told us the story about how some of it was
let go in Malibu in the ocean. Yeah, and so
that wasn't all of it though, Yeah, some of the ashes.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
And also some of the outlaws have said they smoked
his ashes, but nobody believes that. So would you really
want to you know, is that really? I don't know?
Speaker 1 (39:19):
I smoking the.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Whole Would you smoke ashes?
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Would you smell?
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Probably? Would? That's what these That's what these whys are
talking about. But I'm cool I'm a little too old.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
I'm gonna put in my will.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Matt Barn, what's your message to young authors writing these
type of books, from athletes to historical figures. What is
your one message to them?
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Call everybody, Call absolutely everybody. Like if I were doing
a book about you, right let's star, I was writing
a Matt Barn. There are obvious teammates to talk to,
but every ball boy was there, every team official was there,
The Laker girls were there. When you're with Lakers, you
know like everyone, and you just cat. This is why
I always say I'm being serious about this. You may
not remember the guy who is in training camp with you,
(40:00):
who played basketball old Dominion and he was in camp
for three weeks. You may not remember that guy, but
he's gonna remember being in camp because that was the
greatest moment of his life. So he's gonna have memories
that you wouldn't have.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yes, that's it, man, Jeff. We appreciate you. Only guy
can judge me. Many Lives of Tupac comes out October
twenty first. You can pre order it now. Jeff. It
was wunder Man. Yeah, thank you for coming out.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Jeff Prowlman. The NBA season starts next week, and the
producers came up with five big topics heading into this season. Obviously,
wouldn't be right if we didn't start with Lebron. First off,
it was announced recently that he has a sciatica issue
and he will be out the first four weeks of
the season. This is your twenty three King. James will
(40:45):
be forty one in December, and I think the question
everyone is asking, is this the last season? Very interesting?
I think Lebron is gonna want to go out on
his own terms. But what's made him great obviously is
(41:05):
his ability to stay healthy, and there's no running away
from father time. All the greats have eventually broke down,
and hopefully this is just a situation they get control.
But will this be his last year? The Lakers kind
of handed the keys to Luca this offseason while he
(41:26):
got hisself in shape, and now Brown will start the
season on the sideline. I don't know if it will
be his last season. I think it's safer to say
that it's most like his last season with the Lakers.
I don't know if it's his last season in basketball. Obviously,
he has bryce over in Arizona, and I would think
that he probably wanted to play, you know, play with
(41:48):
him as well. So we'll see if that comes to fruition.
Last year with Luca, the Lakers are eighteen or eighteen
and ten. Luca averaged thirty four almost thirty five a game,
eight and eight fifty wins last year for JJ in
his first season. It's gonna be interesting seeing this is
a very young Western conference. We all know that year
(42:08):
twenty three for Bron, so you know, hopefully he gets
healthy and we can see what the Lakers can do.
I think they're more of a bottom of the playoffs
slash play in. I think they're around the six seven
to eight range, and that's no knock on the image.
I just think it's more of a tribute of how
strong the Western conferences and how young and youthful the
(42:31):
Western conferences. So will it be Lebron's last year. I
can't say anything wild like that because I don't know,
But we'll have to see. Producer Nate Good good question.
Lebron starts off on the side, and the Lakers get
off to a hot start, and Luca's playing Luca ball
and the team's gelling. I wonder what that transition is like.
I've always wanted to kind of ask a superstar what
it's like to kind of hand the keys to someone
(42:52):
else later in his career, whether it be willingly or
or or kind of just happens, you know. That's what
they wanted to do. With Ad it didn't really happen,
but I feel like with Luca, this is something that
can happen. So it'll be interesting to see if Laser's
experience some success out the gate and have great chemistry
without Braun, how that will affect his mental and how
(43:13):
it will affect him when he comes back to the team.
Next up, Cooper flags expectations. He got a chance to
start at point guard the other night. At six' ten
is That i'll. Tall he is six' nine six Ten
and i've been a huge Fan Of cooper flag since
we've been talking. ABOUT him i got a chance to
see him PLAY in au and, to me the one
thing that impressed me the most about him And aj
(43:35):
debansa who's at byu wiould most likely be a top
two pick, next year is His MOTOR and, i, think obviously,
you know being, so young there's a lot of game to.
Work ON but i think on the, DEFENSIVE end i
think he's going to be AN all nba. Defensive performer
on the, OFFENSIVE end i think his game is definitely.
Coming along and if you could put a kid six'
nine six' ten at the point and him being able
(43:56):
to distribute the ball, and run a team that is.
GOING to be scary i Don't know What made god
bless patrick dumont in that ownership after the Bullshit, They
pulled with LUCA but somehow them nba lottery balls work
their magic again to be able to have one of
THE craziest trades in nba history and get rid of
A franchise player like luca and then get the number
(44:19):
one pick in the lottery and be Able to. Grab
A cooper flag the lord is Definitely watching. Over that
mavericks ownership their whole job is just not. To fuck
it up kyrie's Timetable To, return Somewhere. January february possibly
march he's recovering From A. Torn acl anthony davis he
is going to be the. Key to this team he
only played. Nine games last year he was at. Twenty
(44:39):
ten and four he's coming. Back with, the, cream look now.
Right he's wearing goggles he announce he's wearing goggles. Rest
Of his, Career anthony davis alsander so we'll see how.
He LOOKS this season but i REALLY like this team,
i Thought initially obviously, trading LUCA is crazy but I
felt like the dallas was the most ready to. Capitalize, on,
(44:59):
that trade obvious see you know, they were injury ridden
but if they can come back healthy this, year With You,
Know The, cooper flags klay thompson he had, A Hot,
Boys Summer, pj washington, derek lively the guy A Big.
Fan OF jason kidds So i really like dallas to
be a top Three Team in the. Western Conference This
year if anthony davis can. Stay on the court so
(45:21):
this is the team. To Watch. OUT for cooper flag
i think the sky's. A liver for him look for
Him To. Be an all star i'll probably say within.
The FIRST Three Years definitely nba all defense in the,
same amount of time and really excited to see how
talented and where this. Kid can, take it Another storyline
can the warriors be Favorites In? A stacked western conference
(45:41):
they can, definitely NOT be favorites But i definitely think they're.
Still in the mix the One THING about the warriors
i feel like is they just have a lot of,
miles on their body particularly their their Their core Guys.
And steph and draymond steph, Is entering your seventeen draymond,
Is Entering your fourteen jimmy. Butler's Entering your fifteen the
west is a very Young conference With the okc's WITH,
(46:05):
houston obviously adding kd but it's still. A Very. YOUNG
team The minnesota's i think denver had. A Really good
year is kawhi going to be healthy enough? To Contribute
This year but golden state was twenty two And five
With both jimmy and, steph on the court they won
eighteen out of. NINETEEN at one point i think a
big key to this team is going To Be whatever
(46:28):
issue Steve. Kerr has with kaminga he's gotta let that
shit go because They're definitely. GONNA need kaminga scoring i
think he averaged what fifteen last. Year in minimum minutes,
On the flip side kaminga's gonna have. TO lock in
mentally i REMEMBER going To who i think draymond's wedding and,
THEY were telling us i don't. REMEMBER who it was i.
DON'T even want to i WILL tell, you IF i remember.
But i don't remember we were smoking a lot of.
(46:48):
Weed at that wedding someone was Telling Me how, good
jonathan kaminga is but he's just it's not he has.
Issues between, his ears super talented but between his ears.
Was THE biggest issue and i think you See Probably
that's what steve kerr has. Such AN issue with But
i think with steph being as, old as he is
let's not forget he pulled the hammy. And in the
(47:09):
playoffs it's gonna take An incredible year from steph to
get this team where, they need to go A big Year,
from JIMMY and Dre but i think kaminga and some
of these younger guys are gonna have to be able
to have the freedom to step up this year to
be competitive And hopefully stay save steph legs if they
are able, to make the playoffs to be able to
make a. Move in the playoffs so very interesting season
(47:32):
in a Very top heavy young western Conference where this older.
Warrior team fits in but you never want, to count
out champions so we will. See Where They land the eastern.
Conference is. Some shit this year i'm not even. Gonna,
lie to You Obviously, the Devastated Boston, celtics Losing Jason,
tatum Losing, al Horford. Losing porzingis losing holiday it'll be
(47:55):
interesting Season To see what jaylen brown is able to.
Do With His, guys the cleveland cavaliers they're always. A,
mystery to Me Obviously. They added lonzo ball i'm hoping
he can put a Healthy season together because i've always
loved his. Ability in his game my dark horse who
could possibly Come. Out of the east and this is
(48:17):
gonna take a lot of praying and a lot of
treatment and just a lot of stars to align. The
Seventy Six ers if joel, embiid can stay healthy which
he hasn't been able to do. HIS whole entire career
i think he's missed over four hundred games and played
just over four hundred and fifty games in, his career
including playoffs probably five so he's played about five hundred
(48:38):
games including playoffs and missed, almost four hundred games. Which
is fucking unbelievable but what bothers Me about him is
i'm such a huge fan of his but when you
hear people say. He's not a, leader he's, always late
he's lazy he doesn't put the work. In to stay
healthy this is, the product you see and there they're
making him. A TON of money so i think this
is Really to me, if i'm in management this is
(48:58):
the make or BREAK. Season for drawl inmbiid if he
can't get his, SHIT together this year i think you
got to cut your. Ties at some point and then,
On The flip side. PAUL george knee injuries i think
he had. Two Procedures this summer, if i'm not mistaken
can he find? Some sort OF glory and then i
REALLY Like. THEIR core vja edgecom i REALLY like young
athletic i think average about twelve To Fourteen. In the
(49:20):
Summer league McCain a sacramento boy coming back. Off of
acl meniscus excuse me for. McCain was A MENISCUS and
then tyrese maxi. A great young cores but if you CAN,
GET a healthy embiid i would probably say you need
about sixty to SIXTY, five Games from embiid and i'd
(49:44):
probably Say The same for paul george and then for
them both to be. ABLE to Be healthy i know.
I'm talking. CRAZY shit with now i, haven't Even smoked,
today but i'm saying if that can Happen With The,
DEPLETED west eastern conference i think they could. Possibly Be
a representative but i'm probably Going, to pick the knicks
to be, be honest with You First. Year coach mike
brown mike has always had a great track record of
(50:04):
being great. In his first year after the first year
is where shit. Normally HITS the fan but i, think,
this first year obviously with his new, fresh energy and
style and obviously the vets they, HAVE on That Team
i think new york will probably Come Out. Of THE
eastern conference but i also. LIKE the Young, TEAMS i Like,
(50:25):
ORLANDO i like detroit I. Kind of like atlanta on,
THE back of that i look for all three of
those teams to definitely be, in The playoff hunt with orlando.
TAKING a big jump i Think That trade for bain bain.
WASN'T the second option i think he was forced to
be A. SECOND option in memphis i think he's a
Great third Option Behind. Polo and ronz wagner i'm a
(50:47):
big Fan Of both the polo paulo SHOULD be in the.
MVP conversation this SEASON i, feel like i mean this
guy's a career thirty pointy game. Score in, the playoffs,
he's bigger he's stronger he, works His ass off so
i'm definitely looking forward a big season From. Him and
then detroit detroit came out of nowhere and have done,
(51:07):
it the right. Way putting. Pieces together i'm? Glad what's
his name did he? Ever get? His money the beasy really,
no one signed him some weird shit man messed. The
man's career up. If he didn't bet, if you Did
bet but the, feds are off you so normally When,
you beat the fed it means you. Did a good
job there's a couple of very Few. People beat the
feds very Few. People beat the fes but, Again, to
(51:29):
my point, detroit good young. Core good young team interested
to see what they do in Any Year that the.
Eastern conference is down so my pick to Come out of.
The EAST this year And i don't think i've Ever
been alive when i've been able to say this or
at least, paid attention To basketball but the knicks will
most likely Come Out of the. Eastern Conference this year
so i'm excited For The city Of New york and jayden. Brunton,
(51:52):
and those guys, last But Not least will russell, westbrook
find a team And Right now the houston rockets may
be a Suitor Finding out the van fleet has. A
season ending, injury fred get, better bro, rest up, but
again you. Know injuries open doors they do. Need. A
(52:14):
point guard now Obviously We know The Kevin durant and
russell westbrook history hasn't been as pretty as. It NEEDS
to be but i think they're both older in both
past that and understand they're both, playing not borrow time
but you know it's coming towards an end for Both
of Their great. Hall of fame careers so it'd be
(52:34):
Interesting to see if westbrook does come in. How THAT
will Work but i mean westbrook had a. SOLID year
last year i think he was at thirteen Six. And
five for denver don't know why, he didn't go back
but that's probably some teams are questioning why. He didn't
go back but, kd IS coming over and i think
this was The consistent score that houston. WAS missing Last
(52:54):
year i think kadi was at what at twenty, seven
game year eighteen still shooting fifty three from the field
and over from, the three point line the most efficient
score this. Game Has Ever seen the, Thompson twins over there.
Jabbari Is over there sing. GOON is a goon i.
Like Him a lot this houston team can definitely make
(53:15):
some noise if they're able to stay healthy and solve.
That point guard issue. I'm excited To See, BUT for,
russell westbrook i Mean it's Been a. Hall of fame
career obviously towards the end he's bounced. Around a little,
bit but you. Know, YOU always hear unfortunately i think
there's a tale of two stories when You Hear, a
rus russell westbrook, because there's a media a story, that
the media paints and then there's a story that teammates
(53:36):
tell and their night and day they couldn't be. Further
from each other you always hear he's such a dope
dude and cool with a locker room. And a super
vet but the media will paint him as the worst.
Guy on the planet So we'll see if houston bias
into that and if he's. Able To join Them If,
i'm a RUSSELL westbrook if THE, nba IS an Nba and.
I think, I'M done i mean i don't think. HE'S
(53:58):
hurting for money i think he's still doing right off.
THE court business wise i know for a fact he's
doing great off, The COURT business wise so i don't
even really think. IT'S about the money i think it's
still about the love and the passion and wanting to
finish his. Career ON his terms. The nba is crazy
professional sports is crazy because rarely do you find guys
that get to end their career the way they want
to or walk away. On their own, Accord And to
(54:19):
me russell westbrook should be a guy that's. Able to
Do that First BOUT. Hall of famer mvp when you
think of leaving it, All On the court russell westbrook
is one of the first guys. That comes to mind
so we will See. What happens with, russe best, OF
luck but regardless I really like this Houston. Team in
the west not sure Who's. COMING out the west i think,
(54:41):
my top three teams just kind of guessing going into
THE Season would be Okayc houston and Probably dallas with the.
Denver right behind them those two teams can flip flop if.
Doubts IS not healthy BUT i really Like I think
this Kevin durant signing and houston puts them at the top,
of the excuse me The Top, of the western conference and.
(55:02):
It's gonna be, fun, we all know okay see paid,
their top three guys so it to be interesting to see
these next few years how that team is able to
stay together because they they paid the whole bank For their.
For their big three so that's a young team. Coming
off a championship see how. They respawn this season but
it's gonna BE a. Really fun nba season. I'm excited
(55:22):
as normal and you gotta have a little bit of
MONEY to watch, the nba this season and shit's going
to be, all over the place so make sure you.
Check your local listings but WE kick off The, nba
SEASON next monday and i think we're Live streaming What
the Warriors. And lakers on tuesday catch Our Live, Stream Me,
stack burn rasheed wallace and a few other special guests
(55:47):
you already know, we're gonna be doing so make sure
you guys tap in All New season of unplugged season
two is here with a bunch of. New twists and
turns we kicked it off within an amazing story today
by The Best, selling author jeff pearl dropping his, New
Two Box Book Only God can judge. Me october twenty
first you can pre order that now or catch. It
On The, Date and, davon hodge brenda's baby got a
(56:11):
chance to. Sit down with him he did a great
job of just letting us know about his. Journey and
his life so make sure you guys tap in. And
check this out we'll have special segments, all throughout, the
seasons special guests and we. ALSO have a hotline i
want to, talk to you guys so you can leave
us a voicemail at two seventy nine call ats or
email Questions At all The. Smoke productions dot com tell,
(56:33):
us what you're thinking whether you like me. Or, Don't like,
me no i'm. PLAYING but tap in i want to
really get interactive with. Our fans this year we want
you guys to be. A part of it we may
be live streaming at some point this year where you,
guys can tap in so we want to make sure
we give the fans their voice and their. Opportunity to
tap in so you got the line two seventy nine
call ats And Emails questions at. Alldosmoke productions dot Com that's,
(56:57):
A wrap week. One season two unplugged you Can catch
Us On all the smoke Productions YouTube And. The draft
kings network we'll. See y'all next week
Welcome back season two of Unplugged Man. It's been a
good off season, needed to refresh, but we got a
great one today to kick season two off. Obviously, with
the NBA season right around the corner, we will touch
on that this show. But first we are joined by
New York Times bestseller Jeff Pearlman and Devon Hodge. You're
(00:20):
probably asking who Davon Hodge is, and once we start talking,
you'll know exactly who he is. But let's get to it. Jeff,
only God can judge me. Tell us about that book
and when is it out comes.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Out October twenty First we can get everywhere now. It's
a biography of Tupac. Shakur worked on it for three years,
interviewed six hundred and fifty people. Dove Deep, Deep, Deep Deep.
It's kind of the book I always dreamed of writing.
I've been a sports writer my whole life. It's my
first non sports book, and that's what led me to Devon,
which is this incredible journey I went on, and he
was probably the most incredible part of it.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
We'll speak speak to us because again I want the
world to know who he is. And once he starts
telling you who he is you'll understand why.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Okay, So basically you're obviously a Tupac Diehard. Brenda's Got
a Baby to Me is a really important song in
the Tupac. They kind of sent him on his way
after same song with his underground and he was he
he was filming Juice Back, his first movie, and one
day he gets an article. He reads the daily news
because he got the newspaper every day.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Give me the year. This is ninety, This is ninety.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
And he's reading the New York Daily News because his
mother and Fanny raised him reading the newspaper every single day.
So Pa brings him the newspaper and there's a there's
an article Cries in the Night, Cries in the dark,
and he reads it and it's about a twelve year
old girl in the Noble Duelle public housing in Brooklyn
who was raped by a cousin, gave birth to the
(01:44):
baby on the floor, wrapped the baby up in an
odd job plastic bag, threw the baby down a trash heap.
It was disposal day, so it is the day the
incinerator was going to go off. A guy downstairs, here's
a baby crying, and saves a baby. They take the
baby to the hospital, and they later take the mother
(02:08):
to the hospital. And Tubac reads this article about this
and he says to Omar EPs, holy shit, his coach star,
holy shit, goes into his trailer. He says, leave me
alone for a little bit. Comes back out truly on
a piece of paper. Brenda's got a baby, Brenda's barely
got a brain. A damn shame. The girl can hardly
spell her name is inspired by it. I work with
(02:29):
a great, great genealogist named Michelle Sooley, where I actually
graduated high school with Weirdly, and I said to her,
it would be amazing, amazing if we could find the
baby who inspired this song. And she's like, give me
a few days, and she gives me one day. She's like,
I think I found him. And she sends me a
phone number, and you know, you can't just call people
(02:50):
anymore because nobody answers her phone. Like, if I just called,
there's no way he's answer. So I sent him the
most disturbingly clumsy text ever, which is basically which is basically, hey,
my name is Jeff Pearlman. I'm writing a book about Tupac.
By any chance, is this you? And I've sent the
article attached to a text.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
But he at this time he has no idea.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
This is no well a little bit, a little bit,
so now you want to chuse me? Thank you?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
You would know?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Oh yeah, absolutely, So I sent him a text and
he writes back and he basically says, give me a
call tomorrow. And a couple of weeks later, not even
a couple weeks, maybe a week later, Las Vegas sitting
with Davon and he is the baby from the article
that inspired the song Brandon's Got a Baby, And that
is how I lead off the book, this story Dave,
(03:41):
and he's one of the best people you will ever meet.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I felt when he came in when he said, I
wanted to smoke with you. We're gonna do that, but
tell me. I mean, obviously you were telling me a
little bit about the journey when we were down there,
because again I'm a huge Tupac fan, and obviously that
was one of his biggest in early songs. To just
point kind of, you know, steered his career. How did
you learn that you were the baby from Brenda Man?
Speaker 4 (04:08):
You know, who would have thought, you know, a ninety
nine dollars ancestry DNA tests were literally unlocked, you know,
a whole Tupac. You know, Red Revelation of a song
that was one of his first hits, and I had no.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I found out a little bit before Jeff.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
As soon as I did the ancestry test, I reached
out to the closest family members is on there. You know,
when you do an ancestry test, you never know what's
going to pop up. I wasn't really doing it for
the family side. It was more of the diasporas side,
where you're from your ways.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Why I do this? So you do that?
Speaker 4 (04:45):
You know after you know, I had lost my parents
literally a year before that. My mom and dad died
ten months apart. And you know, when things like that happened,
you kind of you know you rein discovery mode. You know,
you're trying to reinvent yourself and find find your way.
And uh that led me into this. And uh as
(05:06):
soon as I called one of the people that was
within the close range of my family member, she knew
exactly who I was and put me on the phone
with about ten different people that's sharing the stories Brooklyn, Brooklyn,
North Carolina.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Uh, South Carolina.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
It's telling me to showing me the newspaper clips of
back in the day and was telling me about what happened, and.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I didn't even kind of followed. You were able to
keep tabs on you or you kind of just popped
up on them like here I am.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
They it was, it was it would have been hard
for them to find me.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Uh, to be honest with you, my last name changed
even though I was still in Brooklyn. I was raised
in Crown Heights. Uh, we was, you know, not so
far apart from each other. But you know, my mom
did a good job by sheltering me from that exposure.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Well back up a little bit, because you were adopted
at how old newborn?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Probably about five.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah, when my mom when they found uh me, uh
down there, we went to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
My mom actually went to school.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Uh the song of what Tupac said for her going
to school after it's true, you know, after she did it,
she walked right to school. And after that it kind
of transpired into a big thing. And they took her
to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
And uh.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Uh, due to the magnitude of the situation, they wouldn't
let me stay with her. So, by the graces of God,
I was, you know, blessed in to the family that
I was raised in. Me and my mom had visitation rights,
so I was around two.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
No, I was probabably first second grade.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Is your birth mom's name Brenda?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
No?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Okay? What's her? Could we say her real name? Or
would you rather? Okay, I want to make sure. I
want to make sure I'm you're talking about birth mom
and then adoptive mom and dad as well.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Right, I refer to Brenda as Brenda. I don't want to.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
She doesn't want to be on this and I respect
her to the respect her wish.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Uh so, Uh, me and Brenda had a close I
wouldn't say a close relationship.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
We was on vegetation rights.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
For around until I was about first second grade, so
I changed my last name and uh the courts actually
stopped us from uh seeing each other. So after I
was like one or two.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Uh come.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
My mom also adopted other children as well, so you know,
it was getting kind of strange and and you know,
when you're trying to raise a family, you know, and
my mom is a very big family woman. You know,
she's like she was the big mother of the house
of the family, you know, So my mom liked to
(07:46):
keep it tight knit and loving.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Understanding, you know, once you did the ancestry test and
and all these things kind of start happening, and you
go back and listen to the song with the new ear.
What was your first thought when you heard Brenda had
the baby? Knowing damn.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
To be honest with you, I cried, man.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
You know, I was on the phone with my best friends,
and I'm reading the newspaper, and you know, I grew up,
you know, you know, you grow up so long and
you're not understanding a tragic story is about you, and
now you're reading it, and now it's you know, you're.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Opening your eyes to what actually happened, you know.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
So I start replaying the conversations that me and my
mom had when I used to ask her about Brenda
and all that. And my mom was NYPD at the
time of this happening, and when the news broke, I
was in the newspaper for about, I'll say a month
and a half up around New York. And she did
(08:46):
her best to keep me within her to keep me
within her arms. And what she did a great job.
I think she sheltered me from a lot of the
story growing up. She never told me that my mom
was raped in anything. She was just like there. You know,
your mom was very young. Something had happened and she
(09:06):
had to give you up.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
For Have anyone from Park's side, family or a state
or anyone reached out. Have you met anyone on that side?
Speaker 3 (09:15):
No?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
No, I don't think they would know about it. Yeah,
comes out really Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
I don't think anybody really because I didn't. I mean,
just like I said, you know, I've lived thirty two
years without knowing, you know, listening to this song my
whole life, you know what I'm saying, you know, and
and now listening to it in this light, it is something.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
It's something different.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
We're not going to hold you that you're a Biggie
fan against you a bigger.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
You know, from Brooklyn. So I will always be you know,
Biggie will always be number one from New York. Yeah, yeah,
but it's a Brooklyn thing.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
You told me. You told me something interesting though about
Brownsville and and and once you started meeting your family
and how Mike Tyson taught your family had a box
like like you kind of started learning about the family
and that that dynamic absolutely.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
So you know everybody knows bo the boxer from back
in the day. He's from the same projects there as
my family read it both. He never left the apartment,
stayed in the apartment career.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Absolutely, you can check it out the plazas in Brownsville.
And these are stories that I'm listening to my family
members that are there telling me what's going on. Mike
Tyson didn't live that too far away from us, and
you know, when you're from Brownsville, you're kind of from Brownsville.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Everybody kind of know each other.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
And Mike Tyson always been big in the community, helping
out the community and also making sure people could defend themselves,
especially out there in Brownsville.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
It's interesting, interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Typing up one thing that crazy, even crazier than the
story you just heard. I need him. And then we're like,
we need to find the mom. Yeah, we should find
the mom. Yeah, And this genealogist, Michelle Souley, who's a wizard,
writes me back a few days later. She's like, I
think I found the mom. She calls the mother. We'll
call her Brenda. She calls the mom and she goes, hey,
(11:01):
I'm working with this writer Jeff Perma. Basically blah blah blah,
do you know where my son is? Do you know
where my son is? She's screaming and crying on the phone.
Do you know where my son is? I've been looking
for my son for twenty something years. Do you know
where he is? This is the craziest part. This is
the craziest part of all I swear. She goes, I
live in New Jersey, but I'm away from home right now.
(11:21):
At a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. Michelle says, well,
where's the concert? She says, Las Vegas. They meet that night.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah, yeah, right as a stylist right now.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
The man talked to us about that, Michelle. You know,
Michelle is a great lady man. She does she she
has a wizard. She knows her stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I tell you that.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
And prior to, prior to all this, I was also
trying to, you know, find her myself. She's a very
hard person. She don't want to be seen. Okay, she
ain't gonna be seen. She called me, she was like, hey, uh,
I got your mom on the other line. I said,
excuse me. She was like, You're not about to believe this.
(12:04):
And I was like, what's going on? She was like,
she's in Vegas. I said, what, So two seconds later,
she puts me on the phone.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Brenda's crying hysterically.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
We exchanged contacts and I hopped in the shower, got dressed.
I lived about twenty twenty minutes away from Caesar's Palace
and we met, writing right in the writing the line
yeah look alike, yes?
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Which is which is crazy looking at somebody that resembles you?
You know it's crazy. She had a big she has
a big dave on.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
She has my name, Taddy, she had it since she
was fifteen sixteen.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
What's that first experience?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Like?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Obviously one and two. I don't know my earliest memory
to probably four or five, So probably you don't even
really remember the one in two do you at all?
Speaker 4 (12:52):
I do I do remember, because you know, I had
to go from Brooklyn to Manhattan every week to meet her,
and uh, and you know some of the I remember
she used to bring these two little kids that we
now we know each other, but we it's funny how
we used to talk, how we used to play around
with each other back in the when we used to
meet up.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And now they're the same age as me, and.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
So reuniting with her Vegas after possibly thirty years almost Yeah,
what was it? What was that like?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
It was good?
Speaker 4 (13:21):
It was you know, it's as anybody could expect it.
It's not all you know, shunshines and rainbows. You know,
we're human. We're both taking the proper steps to create
that great bond like we should have.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
But it's great.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
I won't take anything from it or I want, you know,
I'll do it all over again.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
How'd you guys, relationship now as we talk?
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yes, she moved. She moved to Las Vegas.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
She lives probably about thirty minutes away from me. We
don't see each other as often, but we do communicate.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Right, Jeff, you said the Paka State would obviously love
this story. And it's crazy how he's working. You know,
thirty years been removed and he's still doing magical work.
Were you working closely with the estage or oh not
at okay, so you just kind of were doing your
own thing.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
I was doing my own thing.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Talk to us about just this process in this journey.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I mean, it's been the hardest just being blunt and obvious.
I'm a white sports writer writing a Tupacs chore biography.
I'm aware of the weirdness of that, but I you know,
real quick.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, one of my producers. How do you feel like?
I don't really mean he's you know, he's a great
writer and he's at a bunch of sports. I mean
if if the writing's great, doesn't matter. But I kind
of got where you're saying, because some people probably feel
a certain way. Course you are white writing about one
of our heroes, A.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
One hundred percent get it, one hundred percent get it,
And I think like the approach I took, and the
approach I take, is like, nobody needs a white sports writer.
You certainly don't need white sports writer to explain to you, well,
here's a Tupac thought about this and that. So what
you do is you interview six hundred and fifty people
like I went to New Orleans, sat down with his
sister sat She almost never talks to anyone, yasmine Fula
(15:05):
who helped raise him former panther spent hours and hours
with her, leylah Steinberg, who helped him get his career,
money Bee and schop Master J and all the digital underground.
So I just like it was a wide wide So
I found the EMT who first got to him at
Quad Studios. He'd never been interviewed before just NonStop, find them,
find them, find them and let their voices speak.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Were you a Pock fan going into this?
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:26):
So what was it? This is almost probably like a
dream come true for you as you're talking to all
these people and you said you never got a chance
to meet him, but as you're kind of discovering his
life and his journey through the closest people to through
his eye, through their eyes, what was it like for you?
Speaker 2 (15:40):
First of all, right, here is the highlight of my career.
And I'm not just saying that the highlight of my career,
and this is thirty years in journalism. By far, the
number one emotion I left this with is sadness, Like
I don't and I actually think it's interesting. I would say, like,
I actually think every white person should write a Tupox
book because if you really, if you really want.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
To understand, put yourself in our place.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Go to the rowhouse in Baltimore he grew up, and
I knocked on the door and I'm looking inside and
you could see where the rat you know, the places
that set told me where the rats are running along
the forward. Go to Marin City, knock on the apartment
where Fenny was deep into crack addiction, and set was
raising herself and Tupac is kicked out of the house
and he's living with his friend to meet your's stripling,
(16:24):
you know, go to these places and see what it is,
and you realize, like what Tupac was rapping about was
this shit he carried with him his whole life and
this pain, And like again, it's easy to be a
white middle class guy in Mayo, Pac New York and
everything's great and haha, but when you see it and
you travel it and you dig through it, I can't.
(16:45):
Like again, you don't need me to tell you things
about you, don't need me to explain Tupac to you.
But I feel like the people in the book explaining
it through me.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Did you get a chance to either, you guys get
a chance to see the Tupac Museum? Oh I did, No,
he didn't, did you. My girl surprised me for my birthday,
so like a whole I think some of the people
in here came with us too. Yeah, it was a
whole little surprise. It was amazing along your journey with
writing this book and interviewing over six hundred people. Double
question the probably the most intriguing person you sat down
(17:16):
with and the hardest person to track down.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
All right, the most intriguing besides Dave on we Tupac
had a girlfriend in high school named Mary, and everyone
told me Mary will never talk to you. This is
when he was a Baltimore School for the Arts. She
was a white ballet dancer whose parents are Communists, and
the family loved Tupac. And I reached out to Mary
and I talked to her, and she lives in Nebraska,
(17:38):
right in Nebraska, and she said to me, and this
is one of those moments as a journalist.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
She goes.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
My mom recently found one hundred and fifty letters that
Tupac wrote me under the bed. If you come out
to Nebraska, I was shown to you.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Wow, I'm like, I will.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Be there tomorrow. I fly out to the middle of nowhere.
Nebraska e't the worst big I've ever had thing Mike
Orave the bagel on Nebraska. I don't even know what
this is the Jewish New Yorker. It hurts me. But
she has these letters in a folder and she brings
them and just reading through them and his writing, I
consider Tupac almost more poet than writer, Like his It
(18:15):
was so good and it was like horny and angry
and sad and excited.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
But it spelled it out so well. His writing was
and this is teenage possible. It is a sixteen.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Sixteen year old pock Tupac and he was a better
writer than I ever even hoped to be. It was
so good. So that was my joyful fine and getting
his sister. I mean, there was one point I was
in there.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I was.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
I drove down to New Orleans and I sat down
with Set and.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Set does not talk, and that's big sister, no little sister.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, he only has one sister, yeah, and and that's
a Fenny's daughter and Matulu.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So at one point I said to her, what was
it like moving from Baltimore to California? And she said
to me, right there, that's your white privilege showing. And
I go, I'm like, what do you mean? She goes,
we didn't move, we were relocated. And I actually thought,
like I got shows just like that's the kind of
shit I needed to hear, and the kind of like
(19:14):
I mean serious, like that's when I say like I
needed to hear that, because in my head it's like, oh,
you move and She's like, we're moved, we're relocated, and
she's like, I have nothing good to say about Marin
City and living there. There's a most traumatic, harrifying experience
in my life. And she just oohed this pain.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
So Davon, I mean, this book drops in a week.
It's gonna change your life again. What do you thought?
Have you thought about kind of what's coming ahead? Because
this is this is a huge again, one of the
biggest songs ever. And now they know who Brenda's baby is.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
It's you.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
You're a thirty three year old man living your life.
Now have you kind of thought about what's on the
horizon in the next six, eight, ten months for you?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
No, to be honest with you, I haven't.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
I'm still fascinated by the artistry of part I mean
somebody that could literally sit there and read.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
A newspaper and put human.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Value to it, you know, and paint a picture that
nobody would would, you know? Nowadays a lot of people
can't you know, read a book like that and spin
out this poetry with Jeffer saying, I mean, beautiful writer
and just a beautiful visionary is I'm still teething off
the listening off the song, you know, and still breaking
down the different dialects and stuff that he says in
(20:34):
the songs that now I'm listening to the real stories,
you know, mapping that out. I haven't, no, I haven't
thought about what this could do or what this will do.
You know, I'm an average guy from Las Vegas, you
know that now lives in Las Vegas, and you know,
I'm excited to see what what the journey brings.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
You're thrilled to come here, you know, I.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Said, Matt Barnes and Stevens, what you talk about? He said,
do you know all the smokes? I said, do I
not know?
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Jeff? Obviously a Foene passed not too long ago. Through
the talkings of you know, the people you spoke to,
What did you learn about her and her in Pok's relationship.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
First of all, I honestly think everybody it is a
crime that more people in America don't know about the
Panther twenty one trial, don't know about Ifenny shit court.
I've been saying this all long throughout this process. I
don't know what it's like to be a black kid
in America. But if you're a white kid in America
and you go to mostly white high school. They take
one day in history to teach about civil rights, and
it'll say Martin Luther King had a dream and we
(21:39):
should all have a dream too. Next now we're moving on,
you know, like it's the biggest garbage. And like her
role with the Panthers, she was twenty one years old,
pregnant with Tupac, on trial, facing a lifetime in presenting herself,
she turned down a quarter pointed attorney to represent herself.
She's going back and forth to every day moult nurse
(22:01):
being treated like shit by the guards, and she wins.
And to me, she is a historic figure who nodded up.
There's a movie to be made about a Fenni Shakur
And I would say her laser with Tupac, it was complicated.
She was his hero. He would brag to everyone. My
mom was a black panther, my mom, panther, twenty one,
my mom. And at the same time she was a
(22:21):
crack addict who is unavailable and really struggled. And I
think Dear Mama obviously is one of his two or
three most famous songs, But as Jasmine Foolish said to me,
it's a little bit aspirational like it's not just this
is who my mom is, but also this is who
I want want to be. So I think that kind
of is it?
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I mean, you wrote award winning sports pieces, you know,
Bo Jacks and Walter Payton, a handful of the bad boys,
Like what drew you to Tupac?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I just think he's a culturally uber significant artist who
never had Like there are great biographies about John F.
Kennedy and MLK and Marilyn and a million different but
I never felt there was the definitive understand this guy's
life and full and also I want to take the
journey like I wanted to understand Tupac's life.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
So so three years and six hundred interviews later, we're here.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
The book exists.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I'm excited to to jump on.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
It is definitely the best Tupac book ever written by
a Jewish sports writer.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Is it the only one? But I know I'm definitely
looking for this.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
I'll say one thing, Jeffers Jeffer, jeff is definitely a
genuine reporter. He you know, in the old school movies
you watch the reporters, the one that makes the phone calls,
the one that doesn't try to, you know, get you
by any means they actually genuinely, passionately want to understand.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Jeff is one of those people.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
And when I sat down and you know, the first
question we you know that came up.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
You know what it is a.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
White guy writing a book about Tupac and you're telling
me something that you know. Yeah, family is now telling me.
But I'm still like in shock, this book is done.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
The right way.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Jeff, what did you learn about yourself writing this?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
I think I learned how much I didn't know, Like
I really mean that. I'm not even that's not like
that sounds like something.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Like that's not about just overall, Yeah, but it is.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
It's kind of both. Like I just think, honestly, God Like,
I think there are a lot of people. I think
there are a lot of white people in America who
like they feel like they understand black culture because they
listen to hip hop and their favorite actor is Denzel
Washington and blah blah blah blah blah. Right, and until
you immerse yourself in it, I'm not saying I have
a full understanding, obviously can't. But immersing myself in it
(24:43):
gave me a PhD level of sort of education at
least at least on what it was to be.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
You know, you're definitely invited to the barbecue now.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
I think, thank you because my mom my mom puts
raisins in the potato South.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Oh no, you can't come there. You gotta lean that out. Yeah,
we got I've read the reasons.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Dave Love. We appreciate you, man. Your journey's incredible. We're
definitely going to continue to check on you and have
you back out and have you come do some stuff
with us. Man. But it was an absolute pleasure to
meet you, Jeff.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
If you guys want to check me out, I'm on Instagram, TikTok,
my name Davon Hodge, d A v O N N
h O d G E brand new to TikTok, brand
new Ticto and Instagram.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Get ready, man. I think obviously, once this story really
hits like it's supposed to you, it's going to be
a whirl winning man. And you know, I asked you
how you know, I briefly share with you. I just
found out I had an older brother after forty two years,
and like, although there's love, like we just missed so
much time. We kind of check in from here to
there and I asked you, like, how do you how
do you deal with all this? And if you don't
(25:48):
mind sharing, tell tell me what you told me. Smoking
and working Now, that's it, you know, that's life.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Taking it one step at a time, not rushing into anything,
just letting it naturally occur occur.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
You know, it's still an eye opener.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
For me to be honest with you, even I'm pretty
sure for you understanding that you know, you got a brother,
you know, and you're.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Like, wait, hold on, what happened exactly? You know? This
is it something that I missed obviously?
Speaker 1 (26:19):
So we sat down for the first time. He was
on all No, yeah, we had him at a NBA
All Star last year.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
I bet he was good, right.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
He was good. But you know what's interesting is when
you hear, like when you hear about players in their
primer early on, and then you get a chance to
meet him after, you're like, damn, because it's weird, because
I feel like when I tell people like who my
dad is now or who my dad was and who
he is now, like yeah, right, no, he wasn't and
people like don't believe me. But I kind of feel
like when I hear certain athletes are a certain way,
and then you meet him at the end, it's just like, damn,
(26:46):
you're nothing like I heard you were.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Do you know you're baseball of a huge base No,
Sean Green.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
So Shann's a good friend of mine, Okay, And he
said to me weirding lunch time. He's like, you know,
we're always nicer after it done. He's like all athletes
and this year, like athletes are just after they retire.
And that's how he explained Bonds, because Bonds was the
worse when you're not even so bad.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
How when when you're doing that, I mean, you've Barry Bonds,
you know, rest in peace, Walter Payton, Bo Jackson. Are
you working alongside any of them about this? Do you
check it with them at all? Or you just kind
of go and find their circle and dig into that.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Well, I always try to talk to them, Okay. So,
like I did a book about the eighty six Mets.
I interviewed most of those guys. I did the showtime
Lakers that became winning Time.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
That was amazing. I want to talk about that, but
keep that thought but back to kind of how Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Well, I'm like, so I try to and Bonds like
Bond is one of the weirdest experiences in my life.
So actually, Bonds and Brett fav are tied for weirdest.
All right, Bonds he was always tough. I was a
baseball writer for Sports Illustrated as I was working on
that book, and Bonds was a standoffish tiptoe up to
his locker.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
I'm sure played with guys like that who people are
just like. So I finally at the end, I have
all my research done and I walk up to Barry
bonds as locker and I'm like, hey, Barry, I'm Jeff Peerlan.
I'm the guy working this book. This is uh oh fourish,
so he's still active. He's with the Giants three maybe
hey blah blah blah blah. He goes, and I was shocked.
He turns around. He goes, hey, man, it's all good.
(28:10):
He shakes my hand. He goes, I'm not going to
talk to you, but it's okay, okay. He gets up
and I go, and that's as nice as he could
possibly be because he was tough. He gets up and
he's starting to walk away, and he goes and I go,
I even interviewed your cub Scout den mother Marlene Rossi.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Man.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I talked to Marlene Rossi and he goes, dude, I
was never even in the cub Scouts. And I literally
have his cub stout photo of him in it. He's like,
and that's how he did with us. He was just like,
I think he enjoyed us having these nightmares with him.
And I just want to say, Brett farre I talked
to everyone in Farest family, like everyone, mom, sister, brothers,
(28:50):
And one day I called his sister Brandy. I reached
out her on Facebook and I was like, hey, I'm
working this Brett fire By, a book about your brother.
She goes, well, when if you come down to Mississippi,
hit me up. I go down to Mississippi. I call
her and she's like, why don't you just come to
the house. My mom will be there, and Brett is
not talking to me.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
For the book.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
I'm like, well, this isn't gonna go well. I go
to the house, Mom, Benita, sister Brandy greet me. Mom goes,
so is Brett talking to you? And I'm like I
don't think so. And I'm like waiting. She goes, all right, well,
come on in. And two hours of interview and then
she sends me home with his scrap books. She literally says,
just take the scrap books. You can send them back
to me whenever. So I never talked to Brett Fire,
(29:32):
but in my house I had bred Fire's scrap books.
Whow she just never knows.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Super weird Showtime Lakers obviously turned into Winning Time, and
I really liked, like, why did I only get one season?
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Two seasons?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Excuse me? Why did I only get two seasons?
Speaker 2 (29:43):
So, as far as I understand, it was as expensive
to make as Game of Thrones, but didn't have Game
of Thrones ratings. It was well, it had good ratings,
but not amazing ratings. You don't put my kids through college.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Like.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
It was a very great experience for me. I had
cameos in it.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And someone also said that it came at a weird
time with the strike and right after COVID. Yeah, thing,
so that may have played a little.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
It was insanely expensive at a time when HbA was
cutting back. It cut my heart out that the season
ends with the Boston Celtics winning, like that's how it ended.
The Celtics win, and.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
I'm like, what the yeah, what was that? Like though,
I mean you had a lot of great actors in it.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean that that was dope.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
The probably the biggest career throw of my life was
they had a premiere a premiere party. I'm just a writer,
Like I'm just a schlove writer, you know, And they
had a premiere party at a movie theater, an old
movie theater in la I forgot which one, and my
wife is out of town, but my kids were with
me and they call and they're like, we're going to
send a car for you. And I tell my kids, like,
(30:44):
they're gonna send a car.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
We get off.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
There's a red carpet, mister Pearlman. We want you to
walk down the red carpet. Dad, they want you to
walk down the red carpet. And it's this whole thing
and all the stars are like, hey, Jeff, blah blah blah.
And there was a moment when Adam McKay is on
the stage, the creator of it all, and my kids
are sitting next to me and all these actors around
me and all these people, and he goes, Jeff Pearlman,
stand up, and I stand up, and he goes, Jeff
(31:08):
Pearlman is one of the great sports writers of all time,
and none of this would have happened without him. Almost
none of that is true. I do not consider by
someone of the great arguments, but like my kids sitting
next to or how that happened, Yeah, is maybe.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
The greatest moment of my life. I love that you
got to do, Shaq, Kobe and Phil, Yeah, talk to
us about that. I mean, you know Shaq, I know
both actually yeah, no, all three.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
I would say, first of all, Shaq was awesome. I
didn't get to Kobe would not talk. Shaq was amazing.
And I would say, like the book came out after
Kobe died, it was done before Kobe died, came out
after Kobe died, and the book is not it's not
incredibly kind to Kobe. And I remember sitting with Shaq,
and one thing I said to Shaq was, this is
(31:54):
before Kobe died. I said. One thing that always seemed
weird to me is like you always had nicknames for yourself, right,
Big Aristotle, Shack, Diesel, Superman. But it was always like
with like a wink, like Shack always seemed like he
was in on the joke. And Kobe nicknamed himself Black Mamba,
and actually thought of himself as like literally the black.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Mom gave hisself that nickname. Yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
And Shack goes to me in the deep voice. He goes, bro,
now you know what I was dealing with. And then
I went to Montana to see Phil Jackson. And the
only reason Phil talk to me is because Genie put
no word for me. And I show up and we
needed a cafe and I go, man, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
You have sandals on?
Speaker 2 (32:31):
He did have santos on. Holy cow, he did have
sand Yeah. He goes, I'm not doing this for you.
I'm doing this for Genie. And I'm like, fuck, this
isn't going to be good. I thought I get an hour.
He's like, why don't we take a tour around the lake.
He drives me around a lake for three hours. Let's
stop for lunch here. You want to come back to
my house hanging out up for you gave me eight hours?
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (32:50):
And he was awesome. It was like win. There's like
some like heads fun douchebag wins the like spend a
day with Phil Jackson trip. That's literally what I got.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Amazing sweetness, Walter Payton.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
I mean, I love Walter Payton. Yes, hard book to
write was very hard first off. So I interviewed Walter
Payton one time. I was a very young writer at
Sports Illustrated.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
He passed the what age early, like forty six.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Nineteen ninety nine. Man, yeah, a bioduct cancer. And I
was a writer at Sports Illustrated, young writer at Sports Illustration.
One day an editor said to me, do you have
any interest in going to meet Walter Payton and talking
to him? And he was dying at this point, but
he was trying to raise money for a charity. And
I said yeah, And I flew out to Illinois and
I'm in an office and this old man greets me,
(33:33):
old black man wearing like a taxi driver cap and
a windbreaker. And I was about to say, I'm looking
for Walter Payton. And it was Walter Payton and he
was that decimated. And I sat across from him and
his eyes were yellow and from jaundice. And it still
remains the saddest interview I've ever done in my life.
But it inspired me to write that book and crazy Life, Yeah,
(33:54):
fascinating life.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
And you did Bo Jackson too, right, Yeah, Well, he's
one of my he's my hero.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Have you met Bo Jackson?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Never got a chance to. I remember him from what Superstar?
What was the cartoon? He was a superstar? Michael Jordan's Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
None of them voice themselves in that yeah cartoon. He's
a tough guy, Bo Jacksley, he's he's he's an he's
a prickly guy. And you know he ran a four
to one three forty.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
He's incredibly the greatest athlete of all in my opinions,
I don't even think there's a question about it.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Runs a four one three forty at college, signs with
the Raiders. Tom Flores is a coach of the Raiders,
asked Bo Jackson to run a forty on grass. Doesn't
in a four one nine. They don't believe it's accurate.
They remeasure it, and he runs a four to one seven,
which is think about Tyree Hill doesn't run thirty two
twenty at that point, man.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
He could have been one of the greatest football players
of all time.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
The funny thing is, I'll tell you one thing interesting.
He You probably remember this from being a kid. He
let off the All Star Game and seven run. Okay,
crazy story about this. He leaves off the game with
the home run. Nike is planning this enormous rollout of
bo Knows for the All Star Game, and the stadium
was papered with bonos bonos, and they're going to have
this commercial air I think two innings after he leads off,
(35:09):
but they have no idea how this is going to go.
So all the Nike executives are sitting together and Mickey
Manto's restaurant in New York City watching the game. Bo
Jackson leads off with a homer, not just a home run,
like a perfect home run dead center field. The guy
runs on the black, he finds the ball, he builds
it up. Bo Jackson, he looks like a god running
around the basis, and the Nike executives are screaming and
cheering in Mickey Manos restaurant. Ever, one's like, what the
(35:31):
fuck is wrong with these people? And they're just going crazy.
And that was the most serendipitous advertising moment ever.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
I want to say, both are Wade bogs bat a secondly?
And what did Wade Box do you at home run?
Speaker 2 (35:42):
He sure did.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Back wait, Tony.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
LaRussa came up to them, he was the manager. He
comes up to them the day before the game because
Bogs would usually lead off in that sense, and he goes, wait,
I'm going to have bo lead off just for the effect.
And it's the icon. Who is pitching? Do you remember?
Speaker 1 (35:55):
I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
There's Rick Rushall who's forty years old and built like
a beanbag, and he threw this like the allience.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah it was eighty seven. Yeah, your baseball was seven
years old.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah, wow, you remember it.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
But I remember the back to back because we went
outside and played baseball after.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
And Vin Scully and Ronald Reagan were in the booth
calling it.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Ronald Reagan, yeah, hostly yeah yeah, yeahah yeah. Uh tell
us about your YouTube page.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
So I have a thing called press Box Chronicles. It's
a show. I do it every week. It's just a
dive back into obscure, random like sports topics in the past.
I didn't think anyone would care. Somehow people want to
do I know, I don't even know what is it? Sports?
Just people like sports stories.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Would you say, well, I mean, I just think from
your I mean, you know, we interviewed everyone under the Sun,
and one of my favorite interviews is Jim Gray, and
I think because you guys have been entrenched in it
for so long, and you have the good, the bad,
the in between. You just have so much information that
just hearing you speak is like, oh shit, like you
feel like you learned something. So that's probably why people
are interested.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well, if you think about it, we're like paid not
just to be there, but to record it and observe it.
So I would probably remember some of your games better
than you would because I literally am keeping it, rotating it.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been cool. It's been great.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Real quick, before we get out of here. Pot you
interviewed the EMT at the Quad City shooting and they
said Poc shot hisself. Was he trying to pull his
gun out? I was guessing.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
So basically.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Nobody had interviewed this guy ever ever. Literally I called
him and he's like, nobody's it's weird you're calling me.
Nobody's ever called me, and I've always had this thing
in my head. Basically, two had the gun in the
waistband and I interviewed his his manager Watani, who said
the gun he out the glockiad was easily dischargeable if
not him correctly when the guy got up. So basically
Tupac went upstairs and the EMT goes up to see
him and Tubacs there. He said, I got shot in
(37:39):
the box. He didn'ty shot himself. He never had, and
the MT remembered that there was no entrance to the
there's no entrance tear through the jeans or.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Through the under deals underneath his waistband.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
So he had in his waistband went in. The ball
then embedded in his leg.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
So he was getting shot at trying to pull the
gun out and excellently shot itself correct. He also was
shot once in the head and a crowd is how
many time to get shot was three and.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
One in the hand. The other thing I'll tell you
that was crazy. Tupac's mom is from Lumberton, North Carolina,
and I went there because I want to see where
she was from. And she bought a house years later,
like maybe twenty tenish in Lumberton, her hometown, and she
built this. She built a house on this property. And
(38:22):
I found the guy who takes care of it, and
he said, do you want to the estate owns it now?
The way he's ever bought this house. Do you want
to take a tour of the house now? If you're
working on a Tupac book, and someone says, do you
want to take a tour of a Feniship Court's house?
You always say yes.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
He goes, do you want to see you where Tupac's
grave is. I'm like, I'm literally I don't even know
what that means, because he was his ashes Malibu. He goes, no,
she buried some of his ashes here. I'm like, what
he's like? Come with me. Literally, on an abandoned lot
in Lumberton, North Carolina, is Twupox the Court's grave. There's
(38:58):
a tombstone, a thing over it. I don't know what
you call that, and there it is. So I was
literally standing above incredible.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Because I want to say, one of the Hughes brothers
told us the story about how some of it was
let go in Malibu in the ocean. Yeah, and so
that wasn't all of it though, Yeah, some of the ashes.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
And also some of the outlaws have said they smoked
his ashes, but nobody believes that. So would you really
want to you know, is that really? I don't know?
Speaker 1 (39:19):
I smoking the.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Whole Would you smoke ashes?
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Would you smell?
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Probably? Would? That's what these That's what these whys are
talking about. But I'm cool I'm a little too old.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
I'm gonna put in my will.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Matt Barn, what's your message to young authors writing these
type of books, from athletes to historical figures. What is
your one message to them?
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Call everybody, Call absolutely everybody. Like if I were doing
a book about you, right let's star, I was writing
a Matt Barn. There are obvious teammates to talk to,
but every ball boy was there, every team official was there,
The Laker girls were there. When you're with Lakers, you
know like everyone, and you just cat. This is why
I always say I'm being serious about this. You may
not remember the guy who is in training camp with you,
(40:00):
who played basketball old Dominion and he was in camp
for three weeks. You may not remember that guy, but
he's gonna remember being in camp because that was the
greatest moment of his life. So he's gonna have memories
that you wouldn't have.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yes, that's it, man, Jeff. We appreciate you. Only guy
can judge me. Many Lives of Tupac comes out October
twenty first. You can pre order it now. Jeff. It
was wunder Man. Yeah, thank you for coming out.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Jeff Prowlman. The NBA season starts next week, and the
producers came up with five big topics heading into this season. Obviously,
wouldn't be right if we didn't start with Lebron. First off,
it was announced recently that he has a sciatica issue
and he will be out the first four weeks of
the season. This is your twenty three King. James will
(40:45):
be forty one in December, and I think the question
everyone is asking, is this the last season? Very interesting?
I think Lebron is gonna want to go out on
his own terms. But what's made him great obviously is
(41:05):
his ability to stay healthy, and there's no running away
from father time. All the greats have eventually broke down,
and hopefully this is just a situation they get control.
But will this be his last year? The Lakers kind
of handed the keys to Luca this offseason while he
(41:26):
got hisself in shape, and now Brown will start the
season on the sideline. I don't know if it will
be his last season. I think it's safer to say
that it's most like his last season with the Lakers.
I don't know if it's his last season in basketball. Obviously,
he has bryce over in Arizona, and I would think
that he probably wanted to play, you know, play with
(41:48):
him as well. So we'll see if that comes to fruition.
Last year with Luca, the Lakers are eighteen or eighteen
and ten. Luca averaged thirty four almost thirty five a game,
eight and eight fifty wins last year for JJ in
his first season. It's gonna be interesting seeing this is
a very young Western conference. We all know that year
(42:08):
twenty three for Bron, so you know, hopefully he gets
healthy and we can see what the Lakers can do.
I think they're more of a bottom of the playoffs
slash play in. I think they're around the six seven
to eight range, and that's no knock on the image.
I just think it's more of a tribute of how
strong the Western conferences and how young and youthful the
(42:31):
Western conferences. So will it be Lebron's last year. I
can't say anything wild like that because I don't know,
But we'll have to see. Producer Nate Good good question.
Lebron starts off on the side, and the Lakers get
off to a hot start, and Luca's playing Luca ball
and the team's gelling. I wonder what that transition is like.
I've always wanted to kind of ask a superstar what
it's like to kind of hand the keys to someone
(42:52):
else later in his career, whether it be willingly or
or or kind of just happens, you know. That's what
they wanted to do. With Ad it didn't really happen,
but I feel like with Luca, this is something that
can happen. So it'll be interesting to see if Laser's
experience some success out the gate and have great chemistry
without Braun, how that will affect his mental and how
(43:13):
it will affect him when he comes back to the team.
Next up, Cooper flags expectations. He got a chance to
start at point guard the other night. At six' ten
is That i'll. Tall he is six' nine six Ten
and i've been a huge Fan Of cooper flag since
we've been talking. ABOUT him i got a chance to
see him PLAY in au and, to me the one
thing that impressed me the most about him And aj
(43:35):
debansa who's at byu wiould most likely be a top
two pick, next year is His MOTOR and, i, think obviously,
you know being, so young there's a lot of game to.
Work ON but i think on the, DEFENSIVE end i
think he's going to be AN all nba. Defensive performer
on the, OFFENSIVE end i think his game is definitely.
Coming along and if you could put a kid six'
nine six' ten at the point and him being able
(43:56):
to distribute the ball, and run a team that is.
GOING to be scary i Don't know What made god
bless patrick dumont in that ownership after the Bullshit, They
pulled with LUCA but somehow them nba lottery balls work
their magic again to be able to have one of
THE craziest trades in nba history and get rid of
A franchise player like luca and then get the number
(44:19):
one pick in the lottery and be Able to. Grab
A cooper flag the lord is Definitely watching. Over that
mavericks ownership their whole job is just not. To fuck
it up kyrie's Timetable To, return Somewhere. January february possibly
march he's recovering From A. Torn acl anthony davis he
is going to be the. Key to this team he
only played. Nine games last year he was at. Twenty
(44:39):
ten and four he's coming. Back with, the, cream look now.
Right he's wearing goggles he announce he's wearing goggles. Rest
Of his, Career anthony davis alsander so we'll see how.
He LOOKS this season but i REALLY like this team,
i Thought initially obviously, trading LUCA is crazy but I
felt like the dallas was the most ready to. Capitalize, on,
(44:59):
that trade obvious see you know, they were injury ridden
but if they can come back healthy this, year With You,
Know The, cooper flags klay thompson he had, A Hot,
Boys Summer, pj washington, derek lively the guy A Big.
Fan OF jason kidds So i really like dallas to
be a top Three Team in the. Western Conference This
year if anthony davis can. Stay on the court so
(45:21):
this is the team. To Watch. OUT for cooper flag
i think the sky's. A liver for him look for
Him To. Be an all star i'll probably say within.
The FIRST Three Years definitely nba all defense in the,
same amount of time and really excited to see how
talented and where this. Kid can, take it Another storyline
can the warriors be Favorites In? A stacked western conference
(45:41):
they can, definitely NOT be favorites But i definitely think they're.
Still in the mix the One THING about the warriors
i feel like is they just have a lot of,
miles on their body particularly their their Their core Guys.
And steph and draymond steph, Is entering your seventeen draymond,
Is Entering your fourteen jimmy. Butler's Entering your fifteen the
west is a very Young conference With the okc's WITH,
(46:05):
houston obviously adding kd but it's still. A Very. YOUNG
team The minnesota's i think denver had. A Really good
year is kawhi going to be healthy enough? To Contribute
This year but golden state was twenty two And five
With both jimmy and, steph on the court they won
eighteen out of. NINETEEN at one point i think a
big key to this team is going To Be whatever
(46:28):
issue Steve. Kerr has with kaminga he's gotta let that
shit go because They're definitely. GONNA need kaminga scoring i
think he averaged what fifteen last. Year in minimum minutes,
On the flip side kaminga's gonna have. TO lock in
mentally i REMEMBER going To who i think draymond's wedding and,
THEY were telling us i don't. REMEMBER who it was i.
DON'T even want to i WILL tell, you IF i remember.
But i don't remember we were smoking a lot of.
(46:48):
Weed at that wedding someone was Telling Me how, good
jonathan kaminga is but he's just it's not he has.
Issues between, his ears super talented but between his ears.
Was THE biggest issue and i think you See Probably
that's what steve kerr has. Such AN issue with But
i think with steph being as, old as he is
let's not forget he pulled the hammy. And in the
(47:09):
playoffs it's gonna take An incredible year from steph to
get this team where, they need to go A big Year,
from JIMMY and Dre but i think kaminga and some
of these younger guys are gonna have to be able
to have the freedom to step up this year to
be competitive And hopefully stay save steph legs if they
are able, to make the playoffs to be able to
make a. Move in the playoffs so very interesting season
(47:32):
in a Very top heavy young western Conference where this older.
Warrior team fits in but you never want, to count
out champions so we will. See Where They land the eastern.
Conference is. Some shit this year i'm not even. Gonna,
lie to You Obviously, the Devastated Boston, celtics Losing Jason,
tatum Losing, al Horford. Losing porzingis losing holiday it'll be
(47:55):
interesting Season To see what jaylen brown is able to.
Do With His, guys the cleveland cavaliers they're always. A,
mystery to Me Obviously. They added lonzo ball i'm hoping
he can put a Healthy season together because i've always
loved his. Ability in his game my dark horse who
could possibly Come. Out of the east and this is
(48:17):
gonna take a lot of praying and a lot of
treatment and just a lot of stars to align. The
Seventy Six ers if joel, embiid can stay healthy which
he hasn't been able to do. HIS whole entire career
i think he's missed over four hundred games and played
just over four hundred and fifty games in, his career
including playoffs probably five so he's played about five hundred
(48:38):
games including playoffs and missed, almost four hundred games. Which
is fucking unbelievable but what bothers Me about him is
i'm such a huge fan of his but when you
hear people say. He's not a, leader he's, always late
he's lazy he doesn't put the work. In to stay
healthy this is, the product you see and there they're
making him. A TON of money so i think this
is Really to me, if i'm in management this is
(48:58):
the make or BREAK. Season for drawl inmbiid if he
can't get his, SHIT together this year i think you
got to cut your. Ties at some point and then,
On The flip side. PAUL george knee injuries i think
he had. Two Procedures this summer, if i'm not mistaken
can he find? Some sort OF glory and then i
REALLY Like. THEIR core vja edgecom i REALLY like young
athletic i think average about twelve To Fourteen. In the
(49:20):
Summer league McCain a sacramento boy coming back. Off of
acl meniscus excuse me for. McCain was A MENISCUS and
then tyrese maxi. A great young cores but if you CAN,
GET a healthy embiid i would probably say you need
about sixty to SIXTY, five Games from embiid and i'd
(49:44):
probably Say The same for paul george and then for
them both to be. ABLE to Be healthy i know.
I'm talking. CRAZY shit with now i, haven't Even smoked,
today but i'm saying if that can Happen With The,
DEPLETED west eastern conference i think they could. Possibly Be
a representative but i'm probably Going, to pick the knicks
to be, be honest with You First. Year coach mike
brown mike has always had a great track record of
(50:04):
being great. In his first year after the first year
is where shit. Normally HITS the fan but i, think,
this first year obviously with his new, fresh energy and
style and obviously the vets they, HAVE on That Team
i think new york will probably Come Out. Of THE
eastern conference but i also. LIKE the Young, TEAMS i Like,
(50:25):
ORLANDO i like detroit I. Kind of like atlanta on,
THE back of that i look for all three of
those teams to definitely be, in The playoff hunt with orlando.
TAKING a big jump i Think That trade for bain bain.
WASN'T the second option i think he was forced to
be A. SECOND option in memphis i think he's a
Great third Option Behind. Polo and ronz wagner i'm a
(50:47):
big Fan Of both the polo paulo SHOULD be in the.
MVP conversation this SEASON i, feel like i mean this
guy's a career thirty pointy game. Score in, the playoffs,
he's bigger he's stronger he, works His ass off so
i'm definitely looking forward a big season From. Him and
then detroit detroit came out of nowhere and have done,
(51:07):
it the right. Way putting. Pieces together i'm? Glad what's
his name did he? Ever get? His money the beasy really,
no one signed him some weird shit man messed. The
man's career up. If he didn't bet, if you Did
bet but the, feds are off you so normally When,
you beat the fed it means you. Did a good
job there's a couple of very Few. People beat the
feds very Few. People beat the fes but, Again, to
(51:29):
my point, detroit good young. Core good young team interested
to see what they do in Any Year that the.
Eastern conference is down so my pick to Come out of.
The EAST this year And i don't think i've Ever
been alive when i've been able to say this or
at least, paid attention To basketball but the knicks will
most likely Come Out of the. Eastern Conference this year
so i'm excited For The city Of New york and jayden. Brunton,
(51:52):
and those guys, last But Not least will russell, westbrook
find a team And Right now the houston rockets may
be a Suitor Finding out the van fleet has. A
season ending, injury fred get, better bro, rest up, but
again you. Know injuries open doors they do. Need. A
(52:14):
point guard now Obviously We know The Kevin durant and
russell westbrook history hasn't been as pretty as. It NEEDS
to be but i think they're both older in both
past that and understand they're both, playing not borrow time
but you know it's coming towards an end for Both
of Their great. Hall of fame careers so it'd be
(52:34):
Interesting to see if westbrook does come in. How THAT
will Work but i mean westbrook had a. SOLID year
last year i think he was at thirteen Six. And
five for denver don't know why, he didn't go back
but that's probably some teams are questioning why. He didn't
go back but, kd IS coming over and i think
this was The consistent score that houston. WAS missing Last
(52:54):
year i think kadi was at what at twenty, seven
game year eighteen still shooting fifty three from the field
and over from, the three point line the most efficient
score this. Game Has Ever seen the, Thompson twins over there.
Jabbari Is over there sing. GOON is a goon i.
Like Him a lot this houston team can definitely make
(53:15):
some noise if they're able to stay healthy and solve.
That point guard issue. I'm excited To See, BUT for,
russell westbrook i Mean it's Been a. Hall of fame
career obviously towards the end he's bounced. Around a little,
bit but you. Know, YOU always hear unfortunately i think
there's a tale of two stories when You Hear, a
rus russell westbrook, because there's a media a story, that
the media paints and then there's a story that teammates
(53:36):
tell and their night and day they couldn't be. Further
from each other you always hear he's such a dope
dude and cool with a locker room. And a super
vet but the media will paint him as the worst.
Guy on the planet So we'll see if houston bias
into that and if he's. Able To join Them If,
i'm a RUSSELL westbrook if THE, nba IS an Nba and.
I think, I'M done i mean i don't think. HE'S
(53:58):
hurting for money i think he's still doing right off.
THE court business wise i know for a fact he's
doing great off, The COURT business wise so i don't
even really think. IT'S about the money i think it's
still about the love and the passion and wanting to
finish his. Career ON his terms. The nba is crazy
professional sports is crazy because rarely do you find guys
that get to end their career the way they want
to or walk away. On their own, Accord And to
(54:19):
me russell westbrook should be a guy that's. Able to
Do that First BOUT. Hall of famer mvp when you
think of leaving it, All On the court russell westbrook
is one of the first guys. That comes to mind
so we will See. What happens with, russe best, OF
luck but regardless I really like this Houston. Team in
the west not sure Who's. COMING out the west i think,
(54:41):
my top three teams just kind of guessing going into
THE Season would be Okayc houston and Probably dallas with the.
Denver right behind them those two teams can flip flop if.
Doubts IS not healthy BUT i really Like I think
this Kevin durant signing and houston puts them at the top,
of the excuse me The Top, of the western conference and.
(55:02):
It's gonna be, fun, we all know okay see paid,
their top three guys so it to be interesting to see
these next few years how that team is able to
stay together because they they paid the whole bank For their.
For their big three so that's a young team. Coming
off a championship see how. They respawn this season but
it's gonna BE a. Really fun nba season. I'm excited
(55:22):
as normal and you gotta have a little bit of
MONEY to watch, the nba this season and shit's going
to be, all over the place so make sure you.
Check your local listings but WE kick off The, nba
SEASON next monday and i think we're Live streaming What
the Warriors. And lakers on tuesday catch Our Live, Stream Me,
stack burn rasheed wallace and a few other special guests
(55:47):
you already know, we're gonna be doing so make sure
you guys tap in All New season of unplugged season
two is here with a bunch of. New twists and
turns we kicked it off within an amazing story today
by The Best, selling author jeff pearl dropping his, New
Two Box Book Only God can judge. Me october twenty
first you can pre order that now or catch. It
On The, Date and, davon hodge brenda's baby got a
(56:11):
chance to. Sit down with him he did a great
job of just letting us know about his. Journey and
his life so make sure you guys tap in. And
check this out we'll have special segments, all throughout, the
seasons special guests and we. ALSO have a hotline i
want to, talk to you guys so you can leave
us a voicemail at two seventy nine call ats or
email Questions At all The. Smoke productions dot com tell,
(56:33):
us what you're thinking whether you like me. Or, Don't like,
me no i'm. PLAYING but tap in i want to
really get interactive with. Our fans this year we want
you guys to be. A part of it we may
be live streaming at some point this year where you,
guys can tap in so we want to make sure
we give the fans their voice and their. Opportunity to
tap in so you got the line two seventy nine
call ats And Emails questions at. Alldosmoke productions dot Com that's,
(56:57):
A wrap week. One season two unplugged you Can catch
Us On all the smoke Productions YouTube And. The draft
kings network we'll. See y'all next week
Hosts And Creators
Stephen Jackson
Matt Barnes
Popular Podcasts
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.