Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's the Breakfast Club Morning everybody. It's DJ NV just
Hilarry is Chelamane God. We are the Breakfast Club Long
the Roses here today.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
We got some special guests.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
In the building from the documentary on Netflix, Songs from
the Whole. We have James Jacobs JJ eighty eight. We
have Contesta Gales and Richie Ricida.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome. How do you guys feeling just on Netflix right now?
Speaker 3 (00:23):
By the way, Yes, how.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Y'all feeling gray to be here?
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Now?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
For people that haven't seen the documentary, break down what
the documentary is about.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Well, it's a documentary visual album. We tell the story
of my life. When I was fifteen, I was incarcerated
or second degree murder and during that time I spent
eighteen years in prison. And during that time I wrote
an album. I met him, we produced and recorded that
album in prison, and I wrote the visuals We met
(00:53):
Contessa and the Good and Just film.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Essentially.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
I also I want to ask you, you know, have fifteen,
you committed a crime, it was murder, and then three
days later your brother was killed. Yeah, but how did
those two events so close together, I guess shape your
sense of identity and ultimately give you purpose, I guess.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Oh yeah, well, at first it took me down like
a really dark like mental place and after coming through
like you know, suicidal ideations, and just at first I
just felt like, at first I just felt kind of purposeless.
I took a life, which at fifteen it's kind of
(01:35):
hard to hold and really recognize the gravity of it.
But by the time I was eighteen and in prison,
I just kind of felt worthless and without hope. And
losing my brother within that span was kind of like
he was kind of who I was emulating and admiring
growing up.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So it really devastated me.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
And however, like through music, it's like it kind of
gave me a place to talk about it and talk
about what me and the homies was just experiencing what
me and my family went through. And so through I
guess through music is where I kind of found purpose
in my story and where I could use it.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
I want to talk about when you was fifteen, man,
because you said something that I often feel like with
these kids and all all of us with kids, at
once some point, you make a terrible choice, a temporary
decision that leads I mean, if temporary feeling leads to
a permanent decision. You know, do you really understand the
consequences of your actions at that time?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I mean, not in the way that I do now
when you're fifteen.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
You know. I mean, I think when I was a kid,
I knew if you shoot someone, they could die. Like
I know that I've seen people die. I've seen violence
in my community, but I don't think I knew what
it meant for real, like the finality of it at fifteen.
I don't think I knew truly at fifteen the impact
(03:05):
it was having not only on this person but their family.
When there's people that I've like got back in touch
with since I got home, who were you know, there
that night and had to witness that and that night
altered their life. And I didn't learn that until I
was in my thirties. So you don't at fifteen, you
(03:26):
don't understand the gravity of it, but you do understand
that it is serious. And the older I got, the
more mature I became, the more I understood how serious
it is, which is why we made this film.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
For real, you were charged as an adult, not a child.
Why was that?
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Because California is racist?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
To put it simple, fifteen serving eighteen years.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
It just seems like in any other state you would
have been charged as a child, giving a second chance,
another opportunity on own.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Nah.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
They doing it in other states too, They charged They
charged kids as adults because they want to take away
futures and they have a belief in this like punishment system.
We live in a culture where revenge is normal. We
value it as a culture. Revenge is something that we explore.
(04:21):
Me being a perpetrator of murder and having my brother murdered,
it's something that I had to face for myself, you know.
So the reason why they charge us as adults when
we're kids is because they believe in revenge. They believe
in retribution, They believe in eye for an eye.
Speaker 6 (04:38):
At fifteen years old, when you were sending it in
front of the judge, not really understanding what's happening in
your sentence. In the doc, you talk about looking over
to your attorney and being like, so when am I
going home?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (04:48):
Right, at that moment, as a kid, what did you
need outside of just being locked away behind bars? Like
what could they have given you that would have actually, like,
in that moment, helped you reform?
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Do you mean, like after I I've committed murder, Like
what to offer a kid?
Speaker 6 (05:04):
Yeah, Like, what what should be the you know, the
rehabilitation of a person that is fifteen years old that
murders a person.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
I don't know what it should be. I can tell
you what I did. What helped me was like just
having safe places to talk about it. So I didn't
to talk about what I had done. I don't think
I needed to necessarily be locked away. Once I committed murder,
I knew it was foul. I felt the seriousness of it.
(05:34):
It wasn't like I was. I wasn't celebrated by my homies,
So I knew that this was not the move to make.
But I needed to understand why, and I didn't get
that opportunity in court. They don't give you an opportunity
to understand why you are in this moment, How serious
it is that that you have taken a life and
(05:57):
there's no plan to help you mature through and process it.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
You know, you said you weren't celebrated.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
You also talk a lot about how you thought, like,
you know, this is kind of like a song, like
we talked about it in the songs the song is over. Yeah,
so you had an idea of what you thought committing
a crime would be like, and then you actually found
yourself committing.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Yeah, I mean that's true for a lot of my homies.
We listen to music and this is no, this is
no like condemnation on like hip hop and the music
we grow up on. I think it's just true that
when I listen to music as a kid, when I
watch films as a kid, and I saw violence, it
didn't seem you know, the film cuts off and then
(06:41):
I see on the red carpet. Excuse me, I see
you on the red carpet, like it's regular. You don't
really understand that that person in that story didn't come
back in real life. And so as a kid, I thought,
you know, in two thousand and three, two thousand and four,
I was listening to get rich of that trying and
like that was the epitome of being against And so
(07:06):
once I realized after, you know, as a kid, it's
not it ain't you know, just a song. It's like
when you go back to your homies, they gonna look
at you and they gonna be scaredy, they gonna look
at you and they gonna have real fear, Like what
did you just do the homies ask me what you
just do?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Food? What did you do? Like, why did you do that?
The homie?
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Everybody I know who had a murder in prison, like
they none of them got dapped up when the homies
found out. Everybody got what they might talk about it
and even like they tell they tell war stories. Sure,
but it's like not not after it happened. I don't
know nobody who got dapped up directly after, like, O,
(07:47):
we did that, Let's go. It is in that car, quiet, smoking,
drinking them.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
It's seriously quiet.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
It ain't no game like that's That's what I came
to realize that, you know, you you take a life.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It ain't it ain't. It ain't fun.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
It's not it's not honorable to me, especially in the
context of just regular streeting.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Like all right, we have more with James j j
Ady eight Jacobs when we come back as documentary. Songs
from the Whole is on Netflix.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Now we'll talk from some more's the Breakfast Club. Good morning.
(08:53):
It's so silly. Indeed, that got your back When all
I can think about.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
It, as I say, you, least I know I didn't have.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
To walk away. All I had to do was ask
for space.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
I'm telling you beyond you way when I.
Speaker 7 (09:16):
Told Judah Barbak, so can you compick.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Up your costzu.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Voting do.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
Open No bas get cold out, but not Susan, so
compack up.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Your coat that morning.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Everybody is d J n V just hilarious. Charlamagne the Guy,
we are the Breakfast Club. We're still kicking it with
James JJ eighty eight, Jacobs, Contesta, Giles and Richie Rissetta.
The new documentary Songs from the Whole is on Netflix
right now.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Charlamage contesting and Richie how y'all can make with James
help them?
Speaker 4 (10:04):
That was Coore.
Speaker 7 (10:06):
So what eighty eight didn't share was that he wrote
the music that's in the film in solitary confinement. After
he got out of solitary, he transferred to the Prism
where Richie was at and that's how they met. He
could talk about how they collaborated more on the music.
But I met the both of them when I was
filming a documentary for CNN. I used to work at CNN,
(10:28):
and the last project I did for them was a
feature called the Feminists on Cell Black WI and it
was about a group that Richie had co founded in
prison and was leading for his fellow incarcerated men. They're
reading feminist literature like Belle Hooks and you know, learning
about patriarchy and how it shows up in their lives
and unlearning it. So Richie was leading that group and
(10:50):
eighty eight was a participant and a co facilitator of
that group. And that was the first time that I
heard a little bit of eighty eight story. And it
was the last day of filming that documentary had nothing
to do with the group, but the two of them
were in the prison gym and it was Richie's last
day at the prison. He was about to be transferred
to to finish his sentence somewhere else, and they had
(11:11):
the prison rental keyboard, and Richie had the keyboard on
a trash can, and eighty eight was singing and rapping
some of those songs that he wrote in solitary, and
there was a group of the guys gathered around and
like they knew all the lyrics, so you could tell
like this is you know, something that they've been sharing.
And I was just struck by, like how powerful the
music was, how much storytelling there was in eighty eight's lyrics,
(11:35):
but I didn't know the context of you know, his
story and the relationship between that and the music and
how he came to the hole and writing that music
in the hole. Fast forward a year after that film
came out, they both approached me about, you know, would
you want to work on a visual album using eighty
eight's music.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You know you heard some of it. I was like,
some me what you got, and.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
I so I would like listen to the recordings and
really like, over the course of our development, got to
know more about how eighty eight came to the whole
and then writing the music there, and then what they
were able to do inside producing a whole album. I
knew that we had something really special that could really
be a testimony, Like eighty eight story is a testimony,
(12:20):
and the music is so impactful in being able to
like hold the narrative and tell his story. So we
started collaborating from there and really like evolved our relationship
from this like kind of more traditional space of like journalistic.
I was the filmmaker, they were the film participants to
like co collaborators on this project, and it was a
(12:40):
true collaboration like eighty eight was onside the whole time.
We were eight months into the edit when he was released,
and we managed to figure out how to collaborate across
the prison walls through phone calls, through letters, you know,
fifteen minute phone calls at a time.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
That's how we met.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I got a two paul question for you, eighty eight.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
We're gonna ask Richie Addie Mac because I know you
asked both from Richard.
Speaker 7 (13:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (13:03):
I had met eighty eight while I was in prison.
I had just released an album from prison, so everybody
at the prison kind of knew me as a producer.
So when eighty eight got to the yard, the people
who knew him from other prisons were like.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
You got to meet eighty eight. You got to meet
eighty eight.
Speaker 8 (13:17):
And you know, I wasn't a lot of everybody in
prison think they can rap, just like everybody on the streets.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8 (13:27):
I wasn't like in a rush to meet him necessarily.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I was like, okay, But when I did meet him.
Speaker 8 (13:35):
We have a homie named Talib who was trying to
put together a poetry book, so he was bringing all
these artists together, and we had met in the in
the law library and I heard him rap and sing,
and I was blown away. Honestly, he could both rap
and sing very well, which a lot of people can't do.
Usually they do one well and then the other they
(13:56):
kind of do for fun. And the story he was
telling and the position he had on it. It's not
an easy thing to make music that doesn't necessarily glorify
or judge the streets. And I was like, Yo, let's
let's let's make this album.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Had only equipment in jail. You were able to have
the equipment in jail.
Speaker 8 (14:17):
Nah, we broke the rules. The way that we made
the album was against the rules. Well, y'all out now,
but I can't tell you because it's people in who
still make music that way. But yeah, the way we
made this album in prison was completely against the rules.
The prison was against it in every way they ran
up in my cell. They brandon sent me to the
(14:38):
whole for making music, and.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
But it was like they denied me at board for
making music.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Really, I was able to be a part of a
collaboration that Richie was EPN and it featured incarcerated artists
and free artists. And when I got to board, they
named that as like a reason why I was in
dangerous society is that you make music.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Wow.
Speaker 8 (15:02):
Yeah, it's important to point out he had life. He
wasn't sentenced to eighteen years. He was sentenced to forty
years to double life. So you know, we didn't know
when eighty eight was coming home. We knew spiritually he
was coming home, but we didn't know when he was
coming home. So when we finished the album, we were like,
you know, typically you finish, you do an album, then
you tore it, and we didn't have that opportunity with him.
So we're like, let's do a visual album, and that's
(15:25):
kind of how the idea began. Then we approach contestant.
She built it out to an actual film. One other question, is.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It true that you can't profit off of a crime
that was done?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Is that true?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (15:36):
So in California, the way that the law is written
is that basically you can't take if you're incarcerated in California,
you can't talk about your crime in a way that
makes you money. So you can't write a book about
it and make money. You can't make music about it
or a film or anything and make money. All of
that typically has to go to the people who are
impacted by about the Crime and eighty eight case is
(15:59):
unique in that he didn't the album in the film
is not about the fact that he harmed somebody, but
rather that that he had committed harm and he had
been harmed, that his brother was murdered. So, but we
also didn't release it until you got out.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
During your time in solitaking, finding idiot like you turned
music into a lifeline, right, Like, what was the moment
you realized music was an escape for you?
Speaker 3 (16:23):
But I know that probably what kept you saying in
the whole.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Yeah, as soon as I got in and when I
as soon as I got locked up, I knew I
grew up with music. I grew up in the church.
I grew up singing, I grew up rapping. I started
like writing in about the seventh grade. So when I
got locked up, you don't know what the hell to do.
When you're a kid just in a box kind of
He's just sitting there thinking, you're listening to different sounds,
(16:47):
and suddenly next to me, the sale next to me
is the hommy we call hi, Johnny West, Jonathan Marquez.
He beating on a bed and he rapping, but he
rapping radio songs. Some of his you know, he was
rapping some of his stuff, but mostly he was just
rapping songs that we all knew. And so I was like, hey, yo,
I yelled through the vent, like yo, I could I
(17:08):
could rap too, Like when we come out, we're gonna rap.
We get to the day room, he beat on the table,
and when I perform like these little chicken excuse my language,
these little like you know raps I wrote in this cell.
The the you know, the kids is kind of like yo,
you are, and it's it's like changing the environment. So
when I when I realized, like, oh, I could impact
(17:30):
people around me just by you know, occupying our time.
They're not like annoyed trying to get away from me.
They like spit that song. I started to do it more,
and then I shared it with my father, who is
an elder in the church and doesn't listen to hip hop,
and he's just like, well, you know, son, music brings
people joy. So if you share your gift with them
(17:53):
and become their joy, they will protect their joy. And
so share your gift with people and you'll see that.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Is that the moment you realize that music can also
be your voice.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Yeah, I mean I've always known music was a medium
to like express myself and use my voice. It was
gonna come in some oratory fashion for me, my dad
being a pastor, of my mom being a singer. I
knew like the power of my voice. I just didn't
know the significance of it. Sometimes I still don't. But
(18:26):
I didn't know that it could be meaningful to write
what's happening in my life, to be meaningful that people
would actually value it and care about it until I
started to see the impact I was having on the yard.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
All right, we got more with James, JJ, idiot JA
because when we come back, it's the breakfast club, good morning.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Huh every day.
Speaker 9 (19:06):
Some new people with my right now. But life still lick,
trying down the tread, half a million dollars, whip five
ams for the kid'd ice like this everything I want
to hit, I've cut them off. The list asks about
me wearing around the town.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
I'm a pillow.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I won't get my heart. I'm playing that. I'm not
a simple big o.
Speaker 9 (19:25):
G I'm hill parked the back the lamb and then
go g l E. I'm tripped catching lamb brick gameween
and like the most you know that Rep comes to
the rack no taputly got no racks back, man, My
party stacked with lick all blue like slap tax.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
That's a toughle on my nutsack warning everybody's d j
n V.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Just hilarious.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Charlamagne the guy, we are the Breakfast Club. We're still
kicking it with James JJ eighty eight, Jacobs, Contessa Gales,
and Richie Rissetta. The new documentary Songs from the Whole
is on Netflix right now.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
Charlamagne contested this footage in the dock that shows the
time when eighty his family was still fighting for him
to get out of prison. What made you see the
value in his story before knowing he'd be freezing in?
Speaker 7 (20:07):
The value to me was the music itself. And you know,
I think we can we can share a little bit.
I hope folks go watch the film on Netflix. But
the whole story is leading up to the moment where
eighty eight realizes that he's incarcerated with the person who
killed his brother. Knowing that and what happened after that,
(20:28):
maybe that's the part I won't say, well, but that
there was like so much power for healing and transformation.
If people heard this story to understand that, you know,
what we were talking about in terms of like our
culture's obsession and reliance on retribution and punishment and revenge,
like we can choose something else, and our interpersonal relationships
(20:50):
and systemically, so that's what drew me to it. But no,
we had no idea that eighty eight would have the
opportunities that he had to come home. Like Richie said,
he had forty years to life plus life, and we
kind of structured the whole narrative arc of the story
around spiritual freedom and like internal healing and freedom, and
(21:14):
that's you know, each music video treatment kind of builds
on that healing the younger self. We didn't know that
we would have the ending that we would have in
the film when we started and once those opportunities started
picking up, so we're following, you know, his family going
to court. What's condensed down in the film was two
and a half years of going to court and then
(21:37):
commutation from the governor. We had to follow it in
real time because it was so it was relevant to
the story. But it really was never a film about
because I think there's a lot of films about incarceration
where it's centered on does the person get to come home,
and do we all get to celebrate at the end
if they come home. We wanted to resist that because
(21:57):
we really wanted it to feel like everyone and watching
this how to entry point into their own healing. So
to make it about the spiritual journey was more satisfying
for me creatively and I think for all of us spiritually.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
But then you know, yeah, the legal reason why I
got home is irrelevant because it's not legality that's gonna
get us free.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
For the incarcerated, in for us as a people.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I like, who you're going with this?
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Like, so, what what I'm saying is like, we we
participate in this system, we vote, we pay our taxes,
we do the thing, and it's not working. It's not
working for nobody. So it's it's it's working for the
people who set it up.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
It's working for for you know some, but it's for
for us. Is working for people it was designed to
work for right for us, it's a different story. And
so it my logic tell me it ain't gonna be
that that get me free.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
No, I agree with that.
Speaker 5 (23:02):
I've been I've been running that thought in my mind lately,
Like I think that we're just past the point of
any political solutions.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
No, you know, we need freedom, freedom now.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I was going to ask, you know, about to say.
Speaker 8 (23:15):
I was just gonna quickly say, it's it's if you
think about it, like, it's kind of silly to even
believe that a system that was also set up by
other flawed human beings is perfect and that just by
following the rules or voting or just like following the
system that someone else set up, that that's all that's needed.
And when our problems are so great, actually, I think
(23:37):
it calls upon us to say, Okay, we can look
at how this system is an improvement from you know,
the feudal system and kings and queens and surfs, and okay,
we've improved from there, and there is much more improvement
that needs to be done if we're going to live
in integrity with each other and the earth.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
I wanted to ask, you know, it's hard not to
talk about this because you really want people to see it, right,
you want people to see the inn out to this documentary.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
But I do want to ask about forgiveness, right.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
I was talking to Lauren earlier and she was like,
certain things I just can't forgive, right, She was like,
I can't, Like you know, my family can and I can't.
And I think Charlamagne knows me. There's certain things I
ain't forgiven. It's like, it just is what it is.
It's just how did you find I would say, I
don't even want to say the courage, But how did
you break down and be able to forgive somebody, especially
(24:26):
the person that you know killed your brother? How like
when did that happen? Was it immediately? Did it take
some time? Was it talk to me your dad? It
was a pastor when when I met him, I had
to make a decision. It is not a superpower.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
It is not an impossibility to to you know, all
due respect to the things you say, you can't forgive it.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
I'm just not there yet. I just get there one day.
It's not there yet.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
But truly it's a matter of choosing it. It's a
matter of saying, to me, this is how defined forgiveness
for myself in that moment.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
You kill my brother? Right? How you get that back?
How be gone? Can't gone? Do? What do you owe
me now?
Speaker 4 (25:16):
Because that's what we're talking about in retribution and in
a retaliatory like system. It's like, now you owe me.
So this man Jay killed my brother, Now you owe me?
What do you owe me? You owe me my brother?
What's the value of my brother's life. It ain't even yours,
It ain't even your life. For real, your life is
(25:37):
value differently than my brother. So I can't just take
your life. So now I know you can't pay me back.
So what I'm gonna do be mad my whole life.
I know you can't give it back. I know you can't.
That's first for forgiveness. I know you can't pay that debt.
So forgiveness to me is releasing within myself what I
think you owe me because you hurt me. It's just
(25:57):
letting go this idea that you gonna say somehow give
it back or you're gonna somehow.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Realize that you owe it. It has nothing to do
with you.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
It has everything to do with me letting go of
what it is I think you owe me because you
did me sour right now, add to that, I did
somebody file. I did a number of somebody's file throughout
my life, and I am not like, that's not my
legacy that I want to leave. It's not something that
(26:27):
I want to be like, I want to be known
for hurting people.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Nobody wants to be known for hurting people.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
And when you hurt someone as seriously as I have,
and you you want to be accountable for it, then
you got to look at all the parts of your life.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
But you were accountable. If that individual wasn't accountable.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
No, no, no, if he wasn't accountable, it don't make
no difference.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Are you accountable? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (26:54):
Question, don't you got to give? You would have to
give the person who killed your brother grace. You would
want the people, the family that you know you give
you right.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
That's true and and and I think that was clear
for me. But I do not think that that is
a requirement for forgiveness, that you have to do an
equal harm in order to forgive somebody who has harmed
to you. Because the truth is we all commit harmed
daily in some form or another. And I think when
(27:28):
for me to forgive, I knew I wanted it in
my life.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
I was.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
I was trying to be as accountable as I could
be growing up in prison, but I knew I wanted
forgiveness more than I wanted anything. Because forgiveness symbolized being
restored back to my community. It symbolized me being restored
back to my value that my grandmother sees when she
looked at me.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
You know.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
But I know, the more and more I become accountable,
it's not Forgiveness isn't something I can ask for. It's
not even I just took everything, or I took a
lot from you and now I'm gonna ask you to
give me something else, like give me grace. That's not
something I feel willing to ask for. However, what I
can do is plant the seed in the universe. I
can plant the seed in my daily walk and in
(28:16):
the way I live, and maybe it'll come back, maybe
it'll come to somebody who needs it in my life.
But either way, a friend of mine, Chris Watchnick, used
to always say, so is seed from your greatest need,
what you need the most, go give it to somebody.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Songs from the Whole of Documentary Net on Netflix right now.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Definitely check it out and we appreciate you guys for
Speaker 1 (28:39):
James jj A, Jacob's Contested Gales and Richie small R
Receive
It's the Breakfast Club Morning everybody. It's DJ NV just
Hilarry is Chelamane God. We are the Breakfast Club Long
the Roses here today.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
We got some special guests.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
In the building from the documentary on Netflix, Songs from
the Whole. We have James Jacobs JJ eighty eight. We
have Contesta Gales and Richie Ricida.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome. How do you guys feeling just on Netflix right now?
Speaker 3 (00:23):
By the way, Yes, how.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Y'all feeling gray to be here?
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Now?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
For people that haven't seen the documentary, break down what
the documentary is about.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Well, it's a documentary visual album. We tell the story
of my life. When I was fifteen, I was incarcerated
or second degree murder and during that time I spent
eighteen years in prison. And during that time I wrote
an album. I met him, we produced and recorded that
album in prison, and I wrote the visuals We met
(00:53):
Contessa and the Good and Just film.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Essentially.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
I also I want to ask you, you know, have fifteen,
you committed a crime, it was murder, and then three
days later your brother was killed. Yeah, but how did
those two events so close together, I guess shape your
sense of identity and ultimately give you purpose, I guess.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Oh yeah, well, at first it took me down like
a really dark like mental place and after coming through
like you know, suicidal ideations, and just at first I
just felt like, at first I just felt kind of purposeless.
I took a life, which at fifteen it's kind of
(01:35):
hard to hold and really recognize the gravity of it.
But by the time I was eighteen and in prison,
I just kind of felt worthless and without hope. And
losing my brother within that span was kind of like
he was kind of who I was emulating and admiring
growing up.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So it really devastated me.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
And however, like through music, it's like it kind of
gave me a place to talk about it and talk
about what me and the homies was just experiencing what
me and my family went through. And so through I
guess through music is where I kind of found purpose
in my story and where I could use it.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
I want to talk about when you was fifteen, man,
because you said something that I often feel like with
these kids and all all of us with kids, at
once some point, you make a terrible choice, a temporary
decision that leads I mean, if temporary feeling leads to
a permanent decision. You know, do you really understand the
consequences of your actions at that time?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I mean, not in the way that I do now
when you're fifteen.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
You know. I mean, I think when I was a kid,
I knew if you shoot someone, they could die. Like
I know that I've seen people die. I've seen violence
in my community, but I don't think I knew what
it meant for real, like the finality of it at fifteen.
I don't think I knew truly at fifteen the impact
(03:05):
it was having not only on this person but their family.
When there's people that I've like got back in touch
with since I got home, who were you know, there
that night and had to witness that and that night
altered their life. And I didn't learn that until I
was in my thirties. So you don't at fifteen, you
(03:26):
don't understand the gravity of it, but you do understand
that it is serious. And the older I got, the
more mature I became, the more I understood how serious
it is, which is why we made this film.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
For real, you were charged as an adult, not a child.
Why was that?
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Because California is racist?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
To put it simple, fifteen serving eighteen years.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
It just seems like in any other state you would
have been charged as a child, giving a second chance,
another opportunity on own.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Nah.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
They doing it in other states too, They charged They
charged kids as adults because they want to take away
futures and they have a belief in this like punishment system.
We live in a culture where revenge is normal. We
value it as a culture. Revenge is something that we explore.
(04:21):
Me being a perpetrator of murder and having my brother murdered,
it's something that I had to face for myself, you know.
So the reason why they charge us as adults when
we're kids is because they believe in revenge. They believe
in retribution, They believe in eye for an eye.
Speaker 6 (04:38):
At fifteen years old, when you were sending it in
front of the judge, not really understanding what's happening in
your sentence. In the doc, you talk about looking over
to your attorney and being like, so when am I
going home?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (04:48):
Right, at that moment, as a kid, what did you
need outside of just being locked away behind bars? Like
what could they have given you that would have actually, like,
in that moment, helped you reform?
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Do you mean, like after I I've committed murder, Like
what to offer a kid?
Speaker 6 (05:04):
Yeah, Like, what what should be the you know, the
rehabilitation of a person that is fifteen years old that
murders a person.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
I don't know what it should be. I can tell
you what I did. What helped me was like just
having safe places to talk about it. So I didn't
to talk about what I had done. I don't think
I needed to necessarily be locked away. Once I committed murder,
I knew it was foul. I felt the seriousness of it.
(05:34):
It wasn't like I was. I wasn't celebrated by my homies,
So I knew that this was not the move to make.
But I needed to understand why, and I didn't get
that opportunity in court. They don't give you an opportunity
to understand why you are in this moment, How serious
it is that that you have taken a life and
(05:57):
there's no plan to help you mature through and process it.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
You know, you said you weren't celebrated.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
You also talk a lot about how you thought, like,
you know, this is kind of like a song, like
we talked about it in the songs the song is over. Yeah,
so you had an idea of what you thought committing
a crime would be like, and then you actually found
yourself committing.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Yeah, I mean that's true for a lot of my homies.
We listen to music and this is no, this is
no like condemnation on like hip hop and the music
we grow up on. I think it's just true that
when I listen to music as a kid, when I
watch films as a kid, and I saw violence, it
didn't seem you know, the film cuts off and then
(06:41):
I see on the red carpet. Excuse me, I see
you on the red carpet, like it's regular. You don't
really understand that that person in that story didn't come
back in real life. And so as a kid, I thought,
you know, in two thousand and three, two thousand and four,
I was listening to get rich of that trying and
like that was the epitome of being against And so
(07:06):
once I realized after, you know, as a kid, it's
not it ain't you know, just a song. It's like
when you go back to your homies, they gonna look
at you and they gonna be scaredy, they gonna look
at you and they gonna have real fear, Like what
did you just do the homies ask me what you
just do?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Food? What did you do? Like, why did you do that?
The homie?
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Everybody I know who had a murder in prison, like
they none of them got dapped up when the homies
found out. Everybody got what they might talk about it
and even like they tell they tell war stories. Sure,
but it's like not not after it happened. I don't
know nobody who got dapped up directly after, like, O,
(07:47):
we did that, Let's go. It is in that car, quiet, smoking,
drinking them.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
It's seriously quiet.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
It ain't no game like that's That's what I came
to realize that, you know, you you take a life.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It ain't it ain't. It ain't fun.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
It's not it's not honorable to me, especially in the
context of just regular streeting.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Like all right, we have more with James j j
Ady eight Jacobs when we come back as documentary. Songs
from the Whole is on Netflix.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Now we'll talk from some more's the Breakfast Club. Good morning.
(08:53):
It's so silly. Indeed, that got your back When all
I can think about.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
It, as I say, you, least I know I didn't have.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
To walk away. All I had to do was ask
for space.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
I'm telling you beyond you way when I.
Speaker 7 (09:16):
Told Judah Barbak, so can you compick.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Up your costzu.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Voting do.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
Open No bas get cold out, but not Susan, so
compack up.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Your coat that morning.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Everybody is d J n V just hilarious. Charlamagne the Guy,
we are the Breakfast Club. We're still kicking it with
James JJ eighty eight, Jacobs, Contesta, Giles and Richie Rissetta.
The new documentary Songs from the Whole is on Netflix
right now.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Charlamage contesting and Richie how y'all can make with James
help them?
Speaker 4 (10:04):
That was Coore.
Speaker 7 (10:06):
So what eighty eight didn't share was that he wrote
the music that's in the film in solitary confinement. After
he got out of solitary, he transferred to the Prism
where Richie was at and that's how they met. He
could talk about how they collaborated more on the music.
But I met the both of them when I was
filming a documentary for CNN. I used to work at CNN,
(10:28):
and the last project I did for them was a
feature called the Feminists on Cell Black WI and it
was about a group that Richie had co founded in
prison and was leading for his fellow incarcerated men. They're
reading feminist literature like Belle Hooks and you know, learning
about patriarchy and how it shows up in their lives
and unlearning it. So Richie was leading that group and
(10:50):
eighty eight was a participant and a co facilitator of
that group. And that was the first time that I
heard a little bit of eighty eight story. And it
was the last day of filming that documentary had nothing
to do with the group, but the two of them
were in the prison gym and it was Richie's last
day at the prison. He was about to be transferred
to to finish his sentence somewhere else, and they had
(11:11):
the prison rental keyboard, and Richie had the keyboard on
a trash can, and eighty eight was singing and rapping
some of those songs that he wrote in solitary, and
there was a group of the guys gathered around and
like they knew all the lyrics, so you could tell
like this is you know, something that they've been sharing.
And I was just struck by, like how powerful the
music was, how much storytelling there was in eighty eight's lyrics,
(11:35):
but I didn't know the context of you know, his
story and the relationship between that and the music and
how he came to the hole and writing that music
in the hole. Fast forward a year after that film
came out, they both approached me about, you know, would
you want to work on a visual album using eighty
eight's music.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You know you heard some of it. I was like,
some me what you got, and.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
I so I would like listen to the recordings and
really like, over the course of our development, got to
know more about how eighty eight came to the whole
and then writing the music there, and then what they
were able to do inside producing a whole album. I
knew that we had something really special that could really
be a testimony, Like eighty eight story is a testimony,
(12:20):
and the music is so impactful in being able to
like hold the narrative and tell his story. So we
started collaborating from there and really like evolved our relationship
from this like kind of more traditional space of like journalistic.
I was the filmmaker, they were the film participants to
like co collaborators on this project, and it was a
(12:40):
true collaboration like eighty eight was onside the whole time.
We were eight months into the edit when he was released,
and we managed to figure out how to collaborate across
the prison walls through phone calls, through letters, you know,
fifteen minute phone calls at a time.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
That's how we met.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I got a two paul question for you, eighty eight.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
We're gonna ask Richie Addie Mac because I know you
asked both from Richard.
Speaker 7 (13:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (13:03):
I had met eighty eight while I was in prison.
I had just released an album from prison, so everybody
at the prison kind of knew me as a producer.
So when eighty eight got to the yard, the people
who knew him from other prisons were like.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
You got to meet eighty eight. You got to meet
eighty eight.
Speaker 8 (13:17):
And you know, I wasn't a lot of everybody in
prison think they can rap, just like everybody on the streets.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8 (13:27):
I wasn't like in a rush to meet him necessarily.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I was like, okay, But when I did meet him.
Speaker 8 (13:35):
We have a homie named Talib who was trying to
put together a poetry book, so he was bringing all
these artists together, and we had met in the in
the law library and I heard him rap and sing,
and I was blown away. Honestly, he could both rap
and sing very well, which a lot of people can't do.
Usually they do one well and then the other they
(13:56):
kind of do for fun. And the story he was
telling and the position he had on it. It's not
an easy thing to make music that doesn't necessarily glorify
or judge the streets. And I was like, Yo, let's
let's let's make this album.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Had only equipment in jail. You were able to have
the equipment in jail.
Speaker 8 (14:17):
Nah, we broke the rules. The way that we made
the album was against the rules. Well, y'all out now,
but I can't tell you because it's people in who
still make music that way. But yeah, the way we
made this album in prison was completely against the rules.
The prison was against it in every way they ran
up in my cell. They brandon sent me to the
(14:38):
whole for making music, and.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
But it was like they denied me at board for
making music.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Really, I was able to be a part of a
collaboration that Richie was EPN and it featured incarcerated artists
and free artists. And when I got to board, they
named that as like a reason why I was in
dangerous society is that you make music.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Wow.
Speaker 8 (15:02):
Yeah, it's important to point out he had life. He
wasn't sentenced to eighteen years. He was sentenced to forty
years to double life. So you know, we didn't know
when eighty eight was coming home. We knew spiritually he
was coming home, but we didn't know when he was
coming home. So when we finished the album, we were like,
you know, typically you finish, you do an album, then
you tore it, and we didn't have that opportunity with him.
So we're like, let's do a visual album, and that's
(15:25):
kind of how the idea began. Then we approach contestant.
She built it out to an actual film. One other question, is.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It true that you can't profit off of a crime
that was done?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Is that true?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (15:36):
So in California, the way that the law is written
is that basically you can't take if you're incarcerated in California,
you can't talk about your crime in a way that
makes you money. So you can't write a book about
it and make money. You can't make music about it
or a film or anything and make money. All of
that typically has to go to the people who are
impacted by about the Crime and eighty eight case is
(15:59):
unique in that he didn't the album in the film
is not about the fact that he harmed somebody, but
rather that that he had committed harm and he had
been harmed, that his brother was murdered. So, but we
also didn't release it until you got out.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
During your time in solitaking, finding idiot like you turned
music into a lifeline, right, Like, what was the moment
you realized music was an escape for you?
Speaker 3 (16:23):
But I know that probably what kept you saying in
the whole.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Yeah, as soon as I got in and when I
as soon as I got locked up, I knew I
grew up with music. I grew up in the church.
I grew up singing, I grew up rapping. I started
like writing in about the seventh grade. So when I
got locked up, you don't know what the hell to do.
When you're a kid just in a box kind of
He's just sitting there thinking, you're listening to different sounds,
(16:47):
and suddenly next to me, the sale next to me
is the hommy we call hi, Johnny West, Jonathan Marquez.
He beating on a bed and he rapping, but he
rapping radio songs. Some of his you know, he was
rapping some of his stuff, but mostly he was just
rapping songs that we all knew. And so I was like, hey, yo,
I yelled through the vent, like yo, I could I
(17:08):
could rap too, Like when we come out, we're gonna rap.
We get to the day room, he beat on the table,
and when I perform like these little chicken excuse my language,
these little like you know raps I wrote in this cell.
The the you know, the kids is kind of like yo,
you are, and it's it's like changing the environment. So
when I when I realized, like, oh, I could impact
(17:30):
people around me just by you know, occupying our time.
They're not like annoyed trying to get away from me.
They like spit that song. I started to do it more,
and then I shared it with my father, who is
an elder in the church and doesn't listen to hip hop,
and he's just like, well, you know, son, music brings
people joy. So if you share your gift with them
(17:53):
and become their joy, they will protect their joy. And
so share your gift with people and you'll see that.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Is that the moment you realize that music can also
be your voice.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Yeah, I mean I've always known music was a medium
to like express myself and use my voice. It was
gonna come in some oratory fashion for me, my dad
being a pastor, of my mom being a singer. I
knew like the power of my voice. I just didn't
know the significance of it. Sometimes I still don't. But
(18:26):
I didn't know that it could be meaningful to write
what's happening in my life, to be meaningful that people
would actually value it and care about it until I
started to see the impact I was having on the yard.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
All right, we got more with James, JJ, idiot JA
because when we come back, it's the breakfast club, good morning.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Huh every day.
Speaker 9 (19:06):
Some new people with my right now. But life still lick,
trying down the tread, half a million dollars, whip five
ams for the kid'd ice like this everything I want
to hit, I've cut them off. The list asks about
me wearing around the town.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
I'm a pillow.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I won't get my heart. I'm playing that. I'm not
a simple big o.
Speaker 9 (19:25):
G I'm hill parked the back the lamb and then
go g l E. I'm tripped catching lamb brick gameween
and like the most you know that Rep comes to
the rack no taputly got no racks back, man, My
party stacked with lick all blue like slap tax.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
That's a toughle on my nutsack warning everybody's d j
n V.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Just hilarious.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Charlamagne the guy, we are the Breakfast Club. We're still
kicking it with James JJ eighty eight, Jacobs, Contessa Gales,
and Richie Rissetta. The new documentary Songs from the Whole
is on Netflix right now.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
Charlamagne contested this footage in the dock that shows the
time when eighty his family was still fighting for him
to get out of prison. What made you see the
value in his story before knowing he'd be freezing in?
Speaker 7 (20:07):
The value to me was the music itself. And you know,
I think we can we can share a little bit.
I hope folks go watch the film on Netflix. But
the whole story is leading up to the moment where
eighty eight realizes that he's incarcerated with the person who
killed his brother. Knowing that and what happened after that,
(20:28):
maybe that's the part I won't say, well, but that
there was like so much power for healing and transformation.
If people heard this story to understand that, you know,
what we were talking about in terms of like our
culture's obsession and reliance on retribution and punishment and revenge,
like we can choose something else, and our interpersonal relationships
(20:50):
and systemically, so that's what drew me to it. But no,
we had no idea that eighty eight would have the
opportunities that he had to come home. Like Richie said,
he had forty years to life plus life, and we
kind of structured the whole narrative arc of the story
around spiritual freedom and like internal healing and freedom, and
(21:14):
that's you know, each music video treatment kind of builds
on that healing the younger self. We didn't know that
we would have the ending that we would have in
the film when we started and once those opportunities started
picking up, so we're following, you know, his family going
to court. What's condensed down in the film was two
and a half years of going to court and then
(21:37):
commutation from the governor. We had to follow it in
real time because it was so it was relevant to
the story. But it really was never a film about
because I think there's a lot of films about incarceration
where it's centered on does the person get to come home,
and do we all get to celebrate at the end
if they come home. We wanted to resist that because
(21:57):
we really wanted it to feel like everyone and watching
this how to entry point into their own healing. So
to make it about the spiritual journey was more satisfying
for me creatively and I think for all of us spiritually.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
But then you know, yeah, the legal reason why I
got home is irrelevant because it's not legality that's gonna
get us free.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
For the incarcerated, in for us as a people.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I like, who you're going with this?
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Like, so, what what I'm saying is like, we we
participate in this system, we vote, we pay our taxes,
we do the thing, and it's not working. It's not
working for nobody. So it's it's it's working for the
people who set it up.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
It's working for for you know some, but it's for
for us. Is working for people it was designed to
work for right for us, it's a different story. And
so it my logic tell me it ain't gonna be
that that get me free.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
No, I agree with that.
Speaker 5 (23:02):
I've been I've been running that thought in my mind lately,
Like I think that we're just past the point of
any political solutions.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
No, you know, we need freedom, freedom now.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I was going to ask, you know, about to say.
Speaker 8 (23:15):
I was just gonna quickly say, it's it's if you
think about it, like, it's kind of silly to even
believe that a system that was also set up by
other flawed human beings is perfect and that just by
following the rules or voting or just like following the
system that someone else set up, that that's all that's needed.
And when our problems are so great, actually, I think
(23:37):
it calls upon us to say, Okay, we can look
at how this system is an improvement from you know,
the feudal system and kings and queens and surfs, and okay,
we've improved from there, and there is much more improvement
that needs to be done if we're going to live
in integrity with each other and the earth.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
I wanted to ask, you know, it's hard not to
talk about this because you really want people to see it, right,
you want people to see the inn out to this documentary.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
But I do want to ask about forgiveness, right.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
I was talking to Lauren earlier and she was like,
certain things I just can't forgive, right, She was like,
I can't, Like you know, my family can and I can't.
And I think Charlamagne knows me. There's certain things I
ain't forgiven. It's like, it just is what it is.
It's just how did you find I would say, I
don't even want to say the courage, But how did
you break down and be able to forgive somebody, especially
(24:26):
the person that you know killed your brother? How like
when did that happen? Was it immediately? Did it take
some time? Was it talk to me your dad? It
was a pastor when when I met him, I had
to make a decision. It is not a superpower.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
It is not an impossibility to to you know, all
due respect to the things you say, you can't forgive it.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
I'm just not there yet. I just get there one day.
It's not there yet.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
But truly it's a matter of choosing it. It's a
matter of saying, to me, this is how defined forgiveness
for myself in that moment.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
You kill my brother? Right? How you get that back?
How be gone? Can't gone? Do? What do you owe
me now?
Speaker 4 (25:16):
Because that's what we're talking about in retribution and in
a retaliatory like system. It's like, now you owe me.
So this man Jay killed my brother, Now you owe me?
What do you owe me? You owe me my brother?
What's the value of my brother's life. It ain't even yours,
It ain't even your life. For real, your life is
(25:37):
value differently than my brother. So I can't just take
your life. So now I know you can't pay me back.
So what I'm gonna do be mad my whole life.
I know you can't give it back. I know you can't.
That's first for forgiveness. I know you can't pay that debt.
So forgiveness to me is releasing within myself what I
think you owe me because you hurt me. It's just
(25:57):
letting go this idea that you gonna say somehow give
it back or you're gonna somehow.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Realize that you owe it. It has nothing to do
with you.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
It has everything to do with me letting go of
what it is I think you owe me because you
did me sour right now, add to that, I did
somebody file. I did a number of somebody's file throughout
my life, and I am not like, that's not my
legacy that I want to leave. It's not something that
(26:27):
I want to be like, I want to be known
for hurting people.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Nobody wants to be known for hurting people.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
And when you hurt someone as seriously as I have,
and you you want to be accountable for it, then
you got to look at all the parts of your life.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
But you were accountable. If that individual wasn't accountable.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
No, no, no, if he wasn't accountable, it don't make
no difference.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Are you accountable? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (26:54):
Question, don't you got to give? You would have to
give the person who killed your brother grace. You would
want the people, the family that you know you give
you right.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
That's true and and and I think that was clear
for me. But I do not think that that is
a requirement for forgiveness, that you have to do an
equal harm in order to forgive somebody who has harmed
to you. Because the truth is we all commit harmed
daily in some form or another. And I think when
(27:28):
for me to forgive, I knew I wanted it in
my life.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
I was.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
I was trying to be as accountable as I could
be growing up in prison, but I knew I wanted
forgiveness more than I wanted anything. Because forgiveness symbolized being
restored back to my community. It symbolized me being restored
back to my value that my grandmother sees when she
looked at me.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
You know.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
But I know, the more and more I become accountable,
it's not Forgiveness isn't something I can ask for. It's
not even I just took everything, or I took a
lot from you and now I'm gonna ask you to
give me something else, like give me grace. That's not
something I feel willing to ask for. However, what I
can do is plant the seed in the universe. I
can plant the seed in my daily walk and in
(28:16):
the way I live, and maybe it'll come back, maybe
it'll come to somebody who needs it in my life.
But either way, a friend of mine, Chris Watchnick, used
to always say, so is seed from your greatest need,
what you need the most, go give it to somebody.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Songs from the Whole of Documentary Net on Netflix right now.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Definitely check it out and we appreciate you guys for
Speaker 1 (28:39):
James jj A, Jacob's Contested Gales and Richie small R
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