April 21, 2025 • 53 mins
In this episode of Stop, Look & Listen, we welcome Dr. Glenn Toby, aka Sweety G, a pioneer in hip hop, talent management, and philanthropy. He shares his incredible journey from experiencing youth homelessness to becoming a successful entrepreneur and community leader. He discusses his work with the Book Bank Foundation and how he empowers others through literacy and mentorship. Join us as we explore the intersection of music, sports, and social impact!
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Check us out on our website https://pushplaypods.com/stoplooklisten/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Pushplaypods dot Com. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning
into this week's edition to stop looking listen. I'm your host.
This week we got a special guest. He's coming to
us live from We'll let them tell you. We'll let
(00:21):
them tell you. But he's the founder of Glenn Toby
Enterprises in the Book Bank Foundation. I mean he's he's
a talent manager and entertainer, hip hop pioneer. I'm an author,
a film and music producer. He's Brooklyn born.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Queen's raised. We got doctor Glenn Toby aka Sweetie G.
Welcome to the show, Sweetie G.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Glad to be here, brother L.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
So where are you at?
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Specifically, I'm bouncing around the country, you know, the Winner
Circle of Sports Division, which I'm so happy to announce
that we're in negotiations with Rakim Vick, my partner. We're
getting ready talking to athletes across the country. Today, I
happened to be in a casino just meeting with people
because I'm doing not just the sports side of our business,
(01:14):
but also the entertainment side.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Some exciting things coming up.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Okay, all right, so yeah, we're going to get into
all of that as far as the sports and you
know your music, as far as the people you've managed
and helped catapult their careers. All right, So doctor Toby
take us on a fantastic voyage into the life and
times of a young Glenn Toby becoming Sweety G.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Absolutely so, I experienced youth homelessness at eight years old.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
I was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, became a rapper.
Sweety G went to many places in between. That's how
I compartmentalized my life. Became a machine. Troy, you know
exactly what I mean.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I was a light beam.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
I went business, music and sports, matter of fact, went
into different and styles of speaking and all sorts. So
what I did, I said, I need to increase because
life was kind of hard.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
I had to beat the beast. So my mother got
really sick.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
And we were battling trying to find home that was permanent.
We had relatives, We bounced around, We had social issues
that we overcame fortunately didn't. We weren't abused, we didn't
nobody died nothing, no drug you know, all of the
ills of poverty. And we were born into my brother
(02:30):
and Iranda. We were born into an amazing, loving household.
We had a stable and a thriving lifestyle up until
the eighth grade. From there, we bounced around with relatives
and friends, went through the social challenges that a young
kid would have, and ended up in Queen's Queen's Village
Place area where the birth of Queen's hip Hop The
Kings came. L Cool, Ja Run DMC, you know as
(02:53):
mister Sweet e G. I was ahead of those guys
and got involved in the hip hop game with Mike
and Dave, and I ended up going on tour in
the Five Burroughs, battling with everybody from Grandmaska Flash to.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Curtis Blow Run. DMC came after me, but this was
before the records were really made. These were the earlier stages,
and of course there's many the Machine for the Queens people, Disco.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Twins, Cyph, the sound bounced around from there. My first
record at the Place to Be I did on a
private label with Mike and Dave, who were the biggest
promoters of hip hop in the Five Boroughs. They'll see
me in many of the flyers, those school flyers, and
I won a lot of battles. I was number one
in the city for many years as sugar Hill records
(03:40):
came around. I didn't want to give up my publishing.
I didn't like the business. I was always a business
guy at heart. So I went and did some corporate
stuff and was working and from there bounced back into
the game managing El Cool J with Brian the tour
Charles Fisher. I was a part of that team and
went on to discover other artists such as Positive K
and many more.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Okay, all right, nice little rundown of the hip hop pedigree.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Do you feel like hip hop is the first love?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Hip hop is was the training ground for my communication skills,
which ended up me as a communicator, as a broker,
a manager, talent agent, and a spokesperson, you know, being
able to represent and talk to people. It became my gift.
It's also part of my personal ministry as a man
that speaks to the soul, the heart of mind. You know,
(04:33):
sometimes it's the heart, sometimes it's the soul, sometimes.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
It's the bank. You know. The gift of speaking is
one of my gifts.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Right, how did you develop your melodic style of rhyming?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Well, I think it was back in those days.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
We were battling, so I knew that I needed that
money and I needed to build a name coming from
Queens because hip hop was known the Bronx Harlem, so
Queens had to represent so in order to get to
where I had to get, I had to learn how
to spit. My rhymes were not written, matter of fact,
they were written. So a lot of MC's came across.
They'd be smitten with the.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Style that made the ladies smile and the boys go wild.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
And I was just one of them from the hood,
you know, So I just did what I had to do.
The gift of song was a way to express myself.
I was always passionate as.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
A speaker, Like even right now, you can say I'm
excited about it.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
These words just pop into my mind because my spirit,
my soul, my mind have continuity. They're all My conscious
and my subconscious mind have always been one. I've been
able to go into the wellness of my life experience,
and I think it channels all the way back to
the ancestors. I'm so full of life, I'm so full
of promise, and I live in the now, not in
(05:45):
the later.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Are you technically the first rapper out of Queens.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
I'm not technically the first, but I am one of
the pioneers and queens. Absolutely, brother, I think we had
DJ Woody Wood, we had seven different crews.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
But if you look historically, I.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Think I'm one of the most pre eminent guys from
raps inception up unto where they were recording.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Do you feel like your era, the forefathers are often
forgotten about when it comes to hip hop history and
what can we do more? I mean, I know the
Hip Hop fifty there were a lot of celebrations and
we had the Hip Hop Museum, but what else can
we do to make sure that you guys aren't forgotten?
Speaker 4 (06:30):
Well, I think everybody needs to stop, look and listen,
find out where they need to go to find out
the information. Guys that are on the cutting edge, like
you finding people, we find each other, brother Elle.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
You know, we have a story to tell.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
If we don't tell our own story, people will not
just mistell it, but they'll misspell it. So you know,
I had the honor of a few years but put
into the Hip Hop Museum Hall of Fame, and I
think the recognition comes as long as we have platforms
like this very platform that you're off and I know
your media company's developing, what's going into film, TV, you're
(07:05):
doing podcasts. I think having these conversations and us cross
promoting each other for the culture is the only way
to preserve it for the people that deserve it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Correct. Yeah, Like I've interviewed let's see, I've interviewed Daddy. Oh,
we've had I'm just talking about people that I know
that You've crossed paths with my brother Positive K. We've
had on a few times.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Discovered it my brother.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, he was talking about his South Carolina roots and
how he was having a pick sweet potato and all that.
We had a great time with Pause and you know,
just countless other hip hop luminaries, you know. And I
welcome these conversations because it's it's almost like you said,
it's it's like a hip hop history book is that
(07:53):
you have, especially with you know, your your contributions in
so many areas. It's like, nah, we need to talk
to you and hear these stories. So I love it.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Well, you know, it's funny, it's the spirit of conversation.
So you spoke to Positive K. I discovered Positive K
and I didn't know he was on the show. So
there's the continuity of community, right, It forever grows when
seeded right, the fruit comes to bear right. So I
go from discovering positive K to David Banner, who's a giant,
(08:26):
who's an amazing He's an amazing person.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
I had the honor of discovering him, taking him over
to Penalty Records, ends up going as one of the
best speakers, motivational speakers, leaders in the culture, actor, producer.
So I've been blessed how along the path.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
As we tell these stories, the stories that are told
and written, people pick it up.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
That's how David Banner found me through my work without
el cool J, through my work in the sports area
as well.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So yes, all right, so yeah, let's talk about that
light bulb moment when you decide to make it your
mission to you know, like guide and empower the careers
of others, you know, such as an ll A, Don
King of Bernard Hopkins, A Freeze, David Banner, Jason Weaver,
(09:12):
you know, Sante Samuel, just countless names you know across
various industries.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Well, I think again, it's just like this platform. The platform,
it wasn't as digit it wasn't digital, it wasn't electronic,
it wasn't as seamless.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
It was reputations. So I had to be like a
battle rapper, right.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
I had to come and bring my game. It had
to be effective, I had to win. I had to
be transparent and strong, and each person.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Tells someone else, like in the village.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
So it carried me from sports, from music into sports.
How I got involved in sports, I met an amazing
brother by the name of Alonzo Shavers.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
He saw my work with the stuff I doubled a
cool Jay, saw the stuff I.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Did with David Banner before David went to even Penalty Records,
had a conversation.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
I became an investor in the company.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
My concept was to take the speed and the creativity
of the sports business, I mean of the music business.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
And put it with the structure, the discipline, and the
execution of the sports business.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
And that's how I became a sports agent and was
able to sell that company.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
We did really well.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
We did a few hundred million dollarsands in gross business.
We've reached some of the most talented people and sports,
and that took us into film television. Because much of
this work is as hybrid work. Some of the rappers
became actors. Some of those actors became investors, which brought
me into what I'm doing now as a venture capitalist
(10:43):
at RCP. So I mean it's all part of communication,
just as being a rapper, as a communicator, as a leader,
thought leader, and an activist in our communities, to a
book bank foundation, it's just one mission with different pathways
in different roads that lead you to a you're supposed
to be.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Who is your blueprint?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
My blueprint was it was always an emerging blueprint.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
I would study from different leaders, historic leaders and dear
leaders to my heart, like my grandmother, my mother. My
experience is everybody from the Supreme Team and Zalvajamaica queens,
you know, call Y fat Cat, these guys that were enterprising.
I could have made choices and gone that route, but
I was well aware of it. And then I saw
other leaders who were business leaders, like Reggie Lewis, Reginald
(11:30):
Lewis what he did, leveraged buyouts, developing companies.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
So I took that same mindset with the.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
Speed that I had as a fast wrapper, with a tenacious,
pragmatic approach to being strategic. I put it all into
a framework of making a business that I harnessed right
only in our culture, only in our hood could it
be understood. But I watched the landscape of what was
emerging in general business, and I knew the world was bigger.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Than my block. That's how I tacked it.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
I remember, and I can't remember the exact documentary, but
LLL was mentioning how like Supreme Team and like Demy
and you know, all of the brothers was you know,
y'all were all tight knit, but they made sure that
ll didn't you know, do what they did. So just
like just just talk about like just living in that environment,
(12:25):
being around the cats and they taking you under their wing,
but in learning learning the game from them and applying
it in a different manner.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Just talk with it. So there wasn't a lot of transparency.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
And I wasn't involved in the drug trade, but everybody
in the eighties benefited from the drug trade. I mean
just on a macroeconomic level. You know, people talk about.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
GDP, hey, it's a part of the bird virging economy.
I mean, Miami was made.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
And built off of money that wasn't taxed, whether it
was drug money or whether it was the emergence of
the South American countries who were money laundering, or the
populace of creative people who came into a business that
was expanding into billions and billions and trillions of dollars.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
So obviously, you know, drug selling wasn't my pathway.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
But some of my brothers and sisters, spiritual brothers and
sisters who had fallen to drug abuse and some gun violence,
death permit incarceration. It was easy to know that if
I had this one music tool, I was able to
be popular enough to garner enough attention. But sometimes investment
went into it. Recording studios. I did business with the
(13:37):
Fatado brothers. We weren't involved in drugs. People think, you know,
it's okay when you look at some of the leaders
of our nation in terms of commerce and entrepreneurialism. Right
you look at the Kennedy's nobody mentions that they were
selling alcohol decades and that it went on and on
and on, Seagrooms, all these different companies. But people will
(13:57):
identify a lot of the drug dealers in the hood
as just complete drug dealers who only did that. So
I would come across it and I just made my choices.
You know, I had the gift of song. I was
a communicator. I just theod business. I put in work
I was an educated person and I just made those choices.
But I didn't disassociate myself with good human beings will
(14:19):
making bad choices which led them. My work at Book
Bank Foundation, where we represent the loss, the lonely, and
the forgotten. We don't look down on people that we
stand over. We're standing over so we can put them
on our shoulders or lift them up.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Do you feel like your upbringing channel is channeled in
the work that you do with Book Bank one percent.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
And LaTroy You know, when you think about it. Inside
my house, I mean we thought we were rich. I
mean I didn't miss a meal. I had a lot
of love, education, my mother's culture. She just became tired,
you know, she had an issue at work and it
led to a nervous breakdown. So I think God found
us to poverty so that we can understand how to
have respect, discipline.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
And how to execute at the lowest levels on.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
An economic level, to not have parity from people that
are lost, loneliness of God, to realize that God says
the poor will always be amongst us. And moving hundreds
of thousands of lives from book than feeding three thousand
people a week.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
We have a current program that's being funded, and.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
It was funded for years by myself, and now I
have partners coming on and we're in different cities.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
We've been around for over twenty eight years.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
So I'm responsible to make sure that those monies and
that mission is met properly with grace and respect.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
And you can still win at the highest levels, earning.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Money, being an entrepreneur and being somebody that's in popular culture.
Each of those things can be separate, but work together
for one common human goal.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Right, what does literacy mean to you beyond just ability
to read?
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Literacy to me is the key to unlock the medicine cabinet,
to destroy the disease of ignorance. You know, a lack
of education is generally, in my mind, the first step
into incarceration, mental illness, and the economic divide. People are
talking about what somebody did before they were born. With
a good education, with discipline, with economic teachings and high
(16:17):
principles and moral values and hard work, you can change
the future tomorrow. You can make tomorrow's today look better
than yesterday was. There's no excuses, man, We just got
to work together. Communities.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Everything you've had this innate ability of turning personal pain
into purpose. What advice would you give to someone that
is kind of down on their look, feeling like the
whole world is against them, Like, what words would you
have to uplift them?
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Well, I think the whole world might be against you
if you're not for yourself, if you're not.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
For something bigger than you, it's you against the world.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
But if you're not looking at it that way, the
world is for you, it'll be to your back.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
You've got to bring value. When you have value, people
seek you. When you have.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Value, people impersonate you. When you have value, people stand
with and for you. So we can change our conditions.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
We are.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
The masters of our destiny. We are responsible for our
own lives, and we can.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Write every chapter in the book that we want to
seal and send and sell. We can change the chartered
course that our our predetermined destiny that's based on statistics
or what our parents have gone through, experience, what they've
plan for, haven't planned for, our ancestors have gone through.
(17:48):
We can change the course of life, set our sale,
and go forward.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Did you first have to win the battle in your
own mind before you could take on the world.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
You know?
Speaker 4 (18:02):
The issue is we have to be careful with that
you said it. No one could say better than what
you just said. There's always a battle in the mind,
and that battle can sometimes lead you down to desperation
or confusion.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
You could be over.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Aggressive or super passive to we're not able to show up.
When you win the battle of your heart and you
connect your heart.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
With your mind and create systemic practices and systems.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
When you're encouraged with courage, people will find you and
follow you.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
It's about being a leader that will.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Lead yourself first up and out of your condition and
then lead yourself into the challenges.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Adding are we born leaders?
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Some of us are born, some of us are sworn.
Some of us are enemies of this world, and we
get torn. But we know it's true. It's all up
to you.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Matter of fact, you can walk by yourself or have
a dope crew. I don't know. I hope that I'm
talking to you. Guess what, matter of fact, the wind
just blew me to give you the these words.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Y'all know that they're so true. Matter fact, Stop and
kind of listen.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Maybe you will learn get it right. Get it might
be your turn. What are you trying to say? Work hard?
So you can earn. This is exactly what it is,
like a fern, potting it, planning it, given the seed.
A matter of fact, please don't heed to greed. If
you do or you don't, it's the same to me,
the other loving kid. They call me sweetie ge. I'm
having fun. I'm on a run and I'm dropping these bars.
(19:26):
As a matter of fact. Take it from Earth up
to Mars. If I've built this baby.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
And I love the fact that no matter where you go,
no matter the rooms that you're in, you still exude,
live and breathe and die for hip hop.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Listen, brother, your research is so crazy right now. You
see these faces. I'm like, if this guy following me,
I'm just happy, man, I'm free. I figured it out
and I'm still figuring it out. And I realized that
there's so many people smarter than me.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Every challenge that I get is met to be converted
to greatness. I mean, to be a champion, you.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
Have to master victories, and those that master their losses
become bosses.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
You know, that's a question I ask in pretty much
most of my interviews just to get you see if
there's ever going to be a different answer, because most
of the times it goes in one direction, And the
question is do you learn more from your wins or
your losses?
Speaker 4 (20:30):
All my losses most of the times you know, and
this is what I'd like to share today. So I
always talk about the losses more than the wins. And
the reason I say that is people will say, I'm
not going to make the same mistake twice, or they
learn from a lesson and they kind of repeats itself.
The greatest thing about your losses are if you are
(20:50):
losing the same way, in the same space with things
that are preventable, it's not the victory or the loss.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
It's you.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
When you show up prepared. Sometimes there are conditions that
you can't control. So if those conditions you have no
control over, environmental, wrong partners, health conditions, things that you
just can't control, it's not gonna matter. Just sustain those
losses and you'll get to the victory with a championship mindset.
And if you are learning and taking away from those losses,
(21:20):
you keep looking at it, it charts the course and
where you need to go. You start to build up
that scalable ability to be able to look with vision
and be able to be adaptable and be able to
map where you need to go right.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
So in essence, you don't really lose, You just master
the art of pivoting.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
I've never lost a day in my life. There's just
been days I didn't will.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
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Speaker 2 (22:19):
All right, so I want to go back to the
to the music.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Sweety G.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
How did you get into house music?
Speaker 3 (22:28):
So that's amazing, right.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
So at the time I was looking at a lot
of my contemporaries, I saw that I wasn't gonna have
the massive hit. I didn't want to go to the
route where most of my friends were there were rappers.
I was more interested in business. I was more interested
in enterprise. But I had still the love for music.
So I didn't want to play a guitar and V
in R and B or rock. So house music was there,
(22:53):
but most of the dance music was maybe an alternative state.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
It was a different kind of community maybe. So I
saw people like the New York City beach boys. I
saw people like Colonel Abrams d trained.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
So I saw a place where a guy it was
R and B oriented, still with an edge, you know,
And I thought I could fit in that space because
it was typically a different.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Type of audience, right, and I didn't fit in that audience.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
I didn't go to the type of clothes clubs that
that audience would be. My demographic was different. So I
brought this R and B swag soul. I was able
to play the music. So I was a musician, a producer,
a writer, a remixer, and I was singing as a rapper.
So it was an easy transition and it was the
closest thing I could do that was still thumbed out,
(23:41):
still cut the street, and that still kept my rep
and I didn't have to worry about going into cultures
that didn't match my ideology.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Okay, yeah, because that was my next question or follow
up question was going to be like, how how was
that perceived by your peers, by your stetso sonics and
run DMCs and Cold Crow and Boogie Boys and all
of them.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
Well, it wasn't a problem because it was no transition.
I was still always a brother, a black man that
came from urban community, heterosexual male, straight, coming from everything
from gangster background, drug dealing.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
What it was like, you know, I took my whole life.
It was just a different music form.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
My music was still very aggressive, very spirited, and completely
I was for the ladies.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
So it was a space for me, you know, it
was a space. So I would play Paradise Garage on
a Friday night. That was the night, which was straight night.
So I had homeboys, hip hopcats coming into evenings. So
I would change the landscape if I played on other nights,
and I was bringing in a straight audience to some
of the other clubs that were a mixed kind of audience.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
And then that didn't define me as a natural black
brother who is heterosexual that's doing this music for music.
I wasn't even thinking about white, black, gay, straight hispanic.
I just saw it was one way to tell a
different story, and it gave me more broad a more
broad scope to talk from strange keyboard playing. I could
(25:12):
play music that had a Latin or percussive kind of
vibe to it. I could do afro house.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Before it was that, I could sing, and I was
confident who I was, So it was a pure way
for me to do the same thing, still being rooted
in hip hop and still being rooted in urban culture.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And and you did remixes for the likes of Sibyl
and r Kelly and you know name them.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
It's quite a few, even some of the Supremes. So
it was always fun because it was musicianship. I taught
myself to be a musician easier.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Let's just go. It's okay to stop for this. Can
I pass?
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Can you hear all that? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
But if it's fine, it's okay. I don't have a
problem with it.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Did I mess everything up stopping? Go ahead? We can okay,
we can edit. Okay, because this is yo, You're incredible.
This is crazy. Not just the research. These these are
different questions. It's like I sent you this, so hold
on for three two one? Damn, Look how you threw
me off? What was the last question? Wow, you're doing
(26:23):
your job. Bro.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Now we're talking about just you know, some of the
house remixes that you did, and yeah, being in that,
being in that world, which I love house music. Inner
City good Life is one of my favorite songs of
all time.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
So it's it's funny. I was cultural vibe, but foombak
my games power. So coming from the DJ.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Culture, which is a better answer to your question, now,
how I was able to bridge hip hop. I came
in it was DJ orienting, So here's the DJ piece,
here's the beats. And at this time, like late eighties, nineties, hip.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Hop and house kind of were there, you know, Jungle Brothers, Yeah,
Queen Queen Latifa, so coming to my house.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
So it was a perfect bridge for me to get
in the game.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
And it was so much money in it, and it
was so easy. And whereas some hip hop artists weren't
the producer, weren't the writer, were controlled by the bigger labels,
I was selling and leasing masters out globally. I'd run
around the world going to meet them, licensing masters that
I own, and my publishing right now is very valuable
(27:34):
on a cultural level and on a financial level. I
own it, you know, and I have it in many
different spaces that I control it seamlessly, that I have
for the last twenty thirty years.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah, so you you sort of mentioned cultural Vibe. You
you teamed up with Winston Jones Myfoon Bay, which you
you mentioned. Yes, yes, how did how did all that
come together?
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Now that it's crazy?
Speaker 4 (28:00):
My brother was managing me with a guy named Reggie
Smith and the friend of ours Oscar Fuller DJ, Legendary DJ,
and they took some of my demos. I'm sure you
remember the great Boy Jarvis, a musician and co producer I.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Got to write and work with.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
So my learning curve the Troy was so fast because
I was a freestyler, so I would just express for me.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
I was going through a spiritual transformation. As you know.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
Most of my music, even the New Civilization stuff is
very God based, is very spirit based, and I was
just pouring my soul out during a time where a
lot of people were on drugs or struggling with emotional
and mental challenges in their career. And I was able
to thrive because I had made money in corporate and
it was just a natural transition for me to go
(28:49):
in with musicianship learning, teaching, myself the keyboard, the baseline,
knowing drums and just doing what.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
I wanted to do. And globally there was a demand
for it because.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
We leveraged my hip hop status, says a pioneer with
a voice of a brother from New York City who
was just giving him the swag in New York with
melody and rhyme.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
All right, all right, So with Glenteby Enterprises the sports
side of it, I've spoken to other agents and agents
of color and they've they've talked about that barrier to entry.
How was it for you to break through? And then
(29:33):
just the the battle of getting you know, athletes from
you know, our communities to trust of a man of
color to represent them where they typically will go with
the big names like Drew Rosenhaus or David Folk people
(29:53):
like that. So yeah, just talk about that barrier to entry.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
So it's two sade, I have to say the good
as well as the.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
The bad was it was a predominantly ninety percent white
or Caucasian based or Caucasian controlled from mostly attorneys, fraternal
organizations or groups, accountants, lawyers, people that were athletic directors
(30:20):
that were guiding directly to the athletes so coming in
with Alonso who had all the certification, all of the licensing,
but didn't have the cultural connection, didn't have the systemic.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Strategy to be able to get into the universities, high
schools to recruit.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
It was a great challenge, but I had the culture calling,
so managing Cool Jay at the time, being associated with
other big artists, you know, Charles Fisher and my partners,
they were involved with managing r Kelly and I became
a part of all these different camps of these different artists,
so that became a magnet with some.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Of the biggest a police that ever lived. So on
that side, it was a lot easier because we were
able to speak their language.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Me not being a prominent athlete, not playing collegiate sports
made it easier for some of the athletes to allow
me to do the business part of it. Whereas my
partner Alonzo played for Ohio State and he would sometimes
go back and forth with them or.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Have different opinions. So he was on one side, I
was on the other side.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
It was a perfect marriage, I think the upside of
it as well as we had the streets, we had
the culture, music film, you know, could stories even going
into the South and neighborhoods that some people that didn't
understand our culture couldn't. And that's how I got some
of the greatest, you know, defensive backs of our times,
that were the greatest athletes of our time in football, NFL,
(31:43):
even boxing. My music allowed me to get close enough
to end up managing everybody, from O'Neill Bell became He's
wit champion of.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
The world, to Don King and other boxes as well.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
When it comes to I guess the partnership with these
athletes and entertainers, Like nine times out of ten, is
it them coming to you or you You've done your scouting,
your recruiting and getting an idea of where this person
is going their ceiling and then saying no, I wanted
(32:19):
this is the person I want to represent. Like, how
does that partnership come together?
Speaker 3 (32:25):
It's a it is a combination. The game has changed
so much, and you mentioned it so in the earlier years,
we would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars flying all
over the country. We couldn't go near high school athletes.
We couldn't technically go to college athletes except when they
had a pro day or a coach or someone you
knew through the channels of the system allowed us to
(32:46):
talk to them and their families.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
They've always been runners and people that broke the rules.
We never play paid a player in our life. We
never did kick that. Alonzo and I always played.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Within the lines.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Now things have changed with NIL, which means name, image
and likeness. That's allowed us to earn more money faster
because the game's changing more recently in the last few.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Weeks and going forward with Zoe Brooks, who we represent,
rakeem Vick and all of our team over it win
a circle. We're now able to help the athlete earn
money for the TV deal, sponsorship, and now the school's
a the kids direct So it's a lot more structured
and it's a lot more fair, and it gives us
(33:28):
more edge to be able to be created and outwork
the people that had all the money and had the locks.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
And you brought you brought up Zoe Brooks, who's, like
you said, just finished her sophomore season at NC State.
They made it to I think the Elite eight this
year in a tournament. There's been a lot of athletes
that would be drafted within the first three or four
(33:58):
picks of the W NBA Draft like the Olivia Miles
and the Tenaya Lats and that decided to transfer it.
And they're staying in college because the NIL money is
through the roof and it's it's way more profitable than
turning pro and having to play overseas and in the
w So just just talk about that landscape as far
(34:19):
as the kids wanting to stay in school, whereas in
the NBA, well with college a bat men's college basketball,
it was there's no way there's staying is They're going
to the pros as soon as possible.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
So how do you adapt to that.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Shift in mentality?
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Well, you know, it's about the relationship.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
So ratim Vic developed an amazing relationship with Zoe Brooks
from high school towards in the development of helping her
understanding of professional sports and the amateur sports. The culture
of Winner's Circle educates our players to understand the difference
(35:05):
between the academics, the economics, and the performance.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
So typically rakeem and i'd say some of our other
junior agents and some.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Of our support staff we get in early for a
core direct connection. A friend of ours, Marcus Leon, says, you.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Know, if you want to do a deal with the devil.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
You want to do a deal with the godly people
who care about your core, care about your soul. I mean,
you know, I have to say, I'm happy to say
LaTroy as many players as I've had, you know, me
for a lot of the superstar athletes, but a lot
of my kids that were injured, a lot of the
players in the NFL who didn't go, I've still had
relationships with them.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Many have passed, many passed on, and many have passed
in and some have passed into a different form or life,
whether it's just being a basic person.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
Working a nine to five waiting to get their retirement money,
which when you vest four or five years you have something.
But it's always been ethics, integrity and continuity.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
That's where it is. But now it's such a crazy world.
We're still learning and it changes day to day. Week
do weep applying to cloud.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
And yeah we're talking about nil but you also have
streaming for musicians, and you have social media and branding
and AI. How do you stay ahead?
Speaker 2 (36:27):
You know, this evolving.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
World. When it comes to you know, making a name
for yourself.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
It's a lot.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
I mean, high school's emerging like you could never believe now,
we get so many phone calls from high school parents
that Rakima and myself are almost turning them down. And
these are young superstars in their space, and many of
them will sign, but our goal is to never sign
as many as some agencies, Like I know three or
four big names that will sign two three hundred.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Athletes, say no, they can't serve them. We'd rather have
ten to twenty to thirty people that become rich partners
with us as they go on to earn.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
Millions of dollars or in some of the businesses that
we own that we're making millions of dollars, they'll become
co partners or we can co venture with them for
a long lasting relationships.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
That's kind of where our target is. It's a little
bit different because we're making live and lifelong and I'd
say life lasting decisions for our clients, because lifelong can
mean the client leads you and does well.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
Life lasting means it's all reciprocal and it never ends.
Damian Robinson that played everywhere from Tampa Bay, New York.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Jets, you know still with me.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
All of our athletes still have relationships to some degree,
even if they're not direct, whether they're tertiary relationships or
they're historical with a door that still opens. And that's
everything from music, films, sports, Jason Mitchell, you know who's
doing really good or I had the honor of representing
you know, straight out of Compton the Shy. He's not
the same mindset, the same ideology, and that ideology is
(37:59):
I'm a business person. So our clients know the difference
between the entertainment and the business and they're bridging it
or they're drilling a tunnel to get to where they
got to go.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
So you're pretty much molding your clients to think like CEOs.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
I mean, anybody I represent, I think on a spiritual level,
they're a reflection to me and I'm a reflection to them.
I can list off five names, makes me pretty pretty proud,
pretty strong names, pretty big names in every category.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
And when we don't show up like that, if we
don't blow up like that, we're out.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Okay. Yeah, Like just talk about like you have offices
all over the country, Like how do you maintain that
leadership and that culture across your org?
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Well, we found servant leaders. I keep talking about this guy,
rakeem Vick.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
All of my channel partners, all of my corporate partners
equity partners.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
We invest in another. It's reciprocal. So somebody could make
have an office or I have a location that's earning
seven point fifty to one point five million. We could
have verticals that have a value of almost one hundred
million dollars. Like URCPA, capital gets reciprocal.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
We're not just going in cashing out companies and cashing
out our enterprise. We're building culture and we're capitalizing for
sustainable game. These are companies that will be around our charity.
Book Bak Foundation has been around twenty seven twenty eight years,
still serving people and it's all been you know, built
and promoted from within.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
Give one hundred percent of every dime, every dollar, all
donations go directly to them.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
It's the same reciprocal thought. All of the allotment and
allocation and all of the earnings are i'd say equitably
and fairly distributed to our partners. Everybody eats or nobody
eats it.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Okay, how did the pandemic play a role in, you know,
kind of uniting the culture at Gleneby Enterprises.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Well, it's funny.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
The pandemic was more of a spiritual thing for me
because I lived pretty much on my investments.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I was really heavy.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
I was wondering if God was calling us to the
final moment. I wasn't as aggressive. A lot of people
were creative online in the digital space. They made millions
of millions and millions of dollars. I made less money
online and I made money in my traditional investments. Sustainability
still supporting the community. That's where these last three years,
it's feeding program we have called Groceries to Grow. We
(40:33):
actually started that during the pandemic. We were delivering food
directly to people's front door. We would set up in.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Parking lots and churches.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
So that part was the emergence of what happened with
Bookmankings now sustainable offering in several different cities across the country.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
These other businesses you talk about, whether.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
It's film and entertainment, television, music, whether it's sports, whether
it's the venture capital, each of them are separate intoities
that are thriving at the highest level because the partnerships
are open.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Each person drives it because what we put in, we
all get out.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
So like what are you looking for in a VC space,
Like what catches your attention and it says like I want,
I want to push this project.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Well. At RCP Venture Capital, Christina and Michael, we're always
looking for creative people who are coming up with.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Pathologies, protocols, inventions, creating commercialization in the medicinal space, biotech space.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
We're looking for innovation and fearlessness. People who are respectful
and who can follow the guidelines of what either the FBI,
FDA requires, what science requires, and what's good for society.
And we're winning strong and harms.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
I'm I'm in the tech space. And like I mentioned earlier,
AI is is like the roach that you can't kill.
It's unstoppable. How do you how do you utilize AI?
Speaker 3 (42:09):
And like.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Do you like it or do you especially as a
creator with your background as a rapper and a producer, Like,
how do you feel about AI?
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Well, it's never bothered me. I don't think anything can
disrupt me. I think it can channel. It can challenge,
challenge how I channel what I'm doing. So the inspiration,
the vision, the talent, the gifts.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Can't do that.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
Learning language model cannot modify or make what I make
internally and intrinsically. So the same way that we have
all these new systems that are replicating the real world.
We just have to be able to go side by
side and don't pour everything into it. Like a lot
of people are having books made or or movies, or
(43:01):
they're writing even letters without having a pure input, and
they'll lose themselves in it.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
So I like to stay organic. I feed the monster
what I want the monster to eat, so it doesn't
attack me.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
M hyah, I like so, I love it. I like that.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
What's something about you that people will find most surprising?
Speaker 3 (43:20):
I think the most surprising thing is how free I am.
You know, I laugh, I have fun. I like the rap.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
I like to play because I work so hard, you know.
I think like a master and I work like a slave.
And I never wanted anybody to.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Tell me how to behave It's my own road that
I laid down.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
As I pay this to me, the concrete things that
I see, I mean, I guess that's the same pathway
for missus, sweety G. I'm always being what I'm supposed
to be. A lot of people know that I'm moving
it kind of slow, but I'd rather chart out the
pathway to get to where I gotta go.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
See how I flow I just keep doing it, yo,
because I'm so happy.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
No matter what, I can still go do hundreds of
millions of dollars in transactional business. I can still connect
with companies and have no emotion or no cognitive connection
to humanity. And I can still be at the core
of humanity from my philosophical and spiritual and philanthropic work.
So I'm having fun. Man, I'm living every day every day.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
A young sweety G. Did you envision your journey looking
like this?
Speaker 3 (44:29):
No idea. I feel like I've lived so many lives,
you know, it's just amazing. I mean, I was here
before the digital explosion. I was alive before vhest machines,
with the subway tokens and no cell phones. So I'm
in heaven on earth. So I never expected any of this.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
I just followed my dreams, my creativity, and what kept
me inside the lines most of the time was integrity
and honesty with myself.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
You know, we all fall short with our tellings, our truths, or.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
Our travels, but the core of me has always resonated
from my consciousness to my subconsciousness, which brings my spirit.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
What do you see when you look in the mirror?
Speaker 3 (45:14):
I see how much work I need to do.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
I see how much other pieces of missing in this
puzzling life that God has given me to put together
to shape that He crafted me. God crafted me like
a sculpture that's half broken. So I got to keep
on stroking whether I'm going for New York or Hoboken.
Don't want to end up broken.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
Ah. So I'm having fun, man, I'm having fun.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Yeah. We just like I told you before the interview,
We're just gonna hit record and talk, and I mean
there's really no structure to it. It's just wherever whatever
we feel like addressing. So doctor King had a dream,
what's yours?
Speaker 3 (45:55):
My dream is that I lived, I died greater than
I lived.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
That what I do from my first to my last
breath exceed before my first and after legacy, learning.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Leading.
Speaker 4 (46:10):
And leaving some on the table for somebody else. You know,
in the victor, you can't destroy the enemy, and you
can't destroy who you're competing against all the time because
some of them will come back in a different forms.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
You got to have dignity and humanity in it and
learn how to be a good winner.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
So with all of the accomplishments, what do you feel
is your magnum opus.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
I'd say giving, I'm a master. Given. You know what
I've done in the charity space, what we're doing with
this priceless podcast.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
Look who the guests that have come on your show.
I know some of the stuff you getting ready to
do with media. You know Wall Street's talking about you
a little bit. There are people whispering and knew I'm
coming on this show that your capitalists might be looking.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
I'm talking to competition. Get your game together. So you know,
this is a space community and culture meet man. And
I think without having.
Speaker 4 (47:03):
A voice, without being able to have a native, organic
way to communicate, we'll go back to AI. People could
really start programming communication thought and systems and a bias
that we can't control, whether it's economic.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Cultural, or racial or racial. You know.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
So I think communications everything, and that's what keeps me excited.
So I try to pour into it as much as
I can.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Right, I like that.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
What's next for you?
Speaker 1 (47:28):
I mean, any other books, documentaries on the horizon, What
are you cooking up?
Speaker 4 (47:34):
I'm working on a documentary. But what I do new
is I'm taking it kind of easy. Working on another book.
We just launched the Winner Circle, our sports company, and
always the Book Bank Foundation is thriving. But I'm enjoying
Djaying doing the Global Dance Party on Fresh and Step
Of every Saturday at eight.
Speaker 3 (47:50):
O'clock Saturday nights. I'm enjoying that.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
And continue to do business, investing and amazing new sound
and startups and just having fun traveling and adding to culture.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
So like with the podcast space, like than where do
you see that going?
Speaker 1 (48:13):
As far as VC just a personal question.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
It's priceless. I think it's going to go into something else.
Speaker 4 (48:24):
I think it's going to Actually the way music is
funneled into retail stores on the airplane, into movies and
films podcasts and is going to be the same way.
I think the next thing that's coming is an iteration
of sales. People are going to be selling products, even
you Detroit, because I know I've always wanted to do
a podcast where.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
They have to be right.
Speaker 4 (48:43):
If I'm not doing it at your level, I would wait.
And I know there's other media spaces that are calling
for you right now. But guys like you can kind
of move around. You'd be able to do your podcast
the traditional one. You'd be able to do your TV show,
you'd be able to develop films, Broadway plays.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
I get the inner part of you're offering. I like
having my music show because on the global dance part,
I'm able.
Speaker 4 (49:06):
To express my heart and soul through music. But I
think all of these mediums are going to be going
into new things that we haven't heard about, that are
going to be developed. I haven't seen somebody taking pieces of.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
What we're doing and putting in other learning modules that
are still organic and originating from us. With our thoughts,
I can see it happening.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Okay, all right, so plug plug everything. Okay, take your time.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
Well, well, please check me out doctor Glenntoby dot com.
That's two ends d R g l e n n
dot com all things on social media, Doctor Glenn Toby
or just Glen Toby g l e n N t
O b y the Book Bank Foundation, which is a
(49:58):
not for profit it's been around for twenty eight years.
I challenge you to challenge yourselves. If you're in the
spirit of lack.
Speaker 4 (50:03):
If there's something you're trying to attract, if it's emotional
or spiritual, and it's holding you back, We've got what
it takes to get you on track. It's called THEBBF
dot org or the Book Bank Foundation. We have the
book Bank Foundation Institute, which is a learning institute that
gives you a lot of the script, the blueprint and
(50:26):
some of the secrets to what you need to have
a nice career in business, critical thinking, personal development. And
of course the Global Dance Party dot com. That's where
the music is playing. And check out the window circle.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Yeah, I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Leave us on a partner shot.
Speaker 4 (50:49):
Ladies and gentlemen, express yourself, cry, laugh, dance, praise God.
Talk about your failures like you do your successes, because
if you don't, you'll end up in a whole bunch
of message. And this is what I'm going to say.
God always blesses the man that goes out and he
does address this the things he needs to do. Stay
true to yourself. I mean, I'm an innocent young boy
(51:10):
to kind of get to the money, and I ended
up with the wealth.
Speaker 3 (51:13):
But more than the wealth is the health. And it's
never about self. Reach out and touch and tell somebody. Oh,
Global Dance Party, eight o'clock Saturday nights.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
Thanks Detroit, doctor Glen Toby, you know, thank you, thank you,
for you know, all of the work that you put
in brick by brick, cementing hip hop culture and then
pivoting and you know, learning the sports management arena, pivoting, writing,
(51:46):
writing books, producing documentaries, pivoting, being a philanthropist, using.
Speaker 2 (51:54):
Your upbringing, your your story as a youth, and.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Just making the world a better place with book bang pivoting,
and you know, getting into the venture capital world and
providing funds that in our community is severely lacking to.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Birth these creators. Hopefully myself too.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
Uh yeah, we're watching you, We're watching, We see you
in the media space.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
Yeah. So, I mean you've you've just delivered. You've you've
major Mama, proud, major community proud.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (52:33):
So so yeah, work, it's still working, don't forget. April
twenty six, Ted Talk X, Wilmington, Delaware.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
I'll be on the big stage.
Speaker 1 (52:45):
All right, if you're around.
Speaker 3 (52:46):
Love to have you in the audience.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
Brother, Okay, and you know where to how do you
get on this show?
Speaker 2 (52:51):
Then you know where to find.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
Them, doctor Glenoby dot com. And for stop looking listen,
I'm your host Latroit Garden. See you next week. Peace
and blessings,
Pushplaypods dot Com. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning
into this week's edition to stop looking listen. I'm your host.
This week we got a special guest. He's coming to
us live from We'll let them tell you. We'll let
(00:21):
them tell you. But he's the founder of Glenn Toby
Enterprises in the Book Bank Foundation. I mean he's he's
a talent manager and entertainer, hip hop pioneer. I'm an author,
a film and music producer. He's Brooklyn born.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Queen's raised. We got doctor Glenn Toby aka Sweetie G.
Welcome to the show, Sweetie G.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Glad to be here, brother L.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
So where are you at?
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Specifically, I'm bouncing around the country, you know, the Winner
Circle of Sports Division, which I'm so happy to announce
that we're in negotiations with Rakim Vick, my partner. We're
getting ready talking to athletes across the country. Today, I
happened to be in a casino just meeting with people
because I'm doing not just the sports side of our business,
(01:14):
but also the entertainment side.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Some exciting things coming up.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Okay, all right, so yeah, we're going to get into
all of that as far as the sports and you
know your music, as far as the people you've managed
and helped catapult their careers. All right, So doctor Toby
take us on a fantastic voyage into the life and
times of a young Glenn Toby becoming Sweety G.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Absolutely so, I experienced youth homelessness at eight years old.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
I was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, became a rapper.
Sweety G went to many places in between. That's how
I compartmentalized my life. Became a machine. Troy, you know
exactly what I mean.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I was a light beam.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
I went business, music and sports, matter of fact, went
into different and styles of speaking and all sorts. So
what I did, I said, I need to increase because
life was kind of hard.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
I had to beat the beast. So my mother got
really sick.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
And we were battling trying to find home that was permanent.
We had relatives, We bounced around, We had social issues
that we overcame fortunately didn't. We weren't abused, we didn't
nobody died nothing, no drug you know, all of the
ills of poverty. And we were born into my brother
(02:30):
and Iranda. We were born into an amazing, loving household.
We had a stable and a thriving lifestyle up until
the eighth grade. From there, we bounced around with relatives
and friends, went through the social challenges that a young
kid would have, and ended up in Queen's Queen's Village
Place area where the birth of Queen's hip Hop The
Kings came. L Cool, Ja Run DMC, you know as
(02:53):
mister Sweet e G. I was ahead of those guys
and got involved in the hip hop game with Mike
and Dave, and I ended up going on tour in
the Five Burroughs, battling with everybody from Grandmaska Flash to.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Curtis Blow Run. DMC came after me, but this was
before the records were really made. These were the earlier stages,
and of course there's many the Machine for the Queens people, Disco.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Twins, Cyph, the sound bounced around from there. My first
record at the Place to Be I did on a
private label with Mike and Dave, who were the biggest
promoters of hip hop in the Five Boroughs. They'll see
me in many of the flyers, those school flyers, and
I won a lot of battles. I was number one
in the city for many years as sugar Hill records
(03:40):
came around. I didn't want to give up my publishing.
I didn't like the business. I was always a business
guy at heart. So I went and did some corporate
stuff and was working and from there bounced back into
the game managing El Cool J with Brian the tour
Charles Fisher. I was a part of that team and
went on to discover other artists such as Positive K
and many more.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Okay, all right, nice little rundown of the hip hop pedigree.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Do you feel like hip hop is the first love?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Hip hop is was the training ground for my communication skills,
which ended up me as a communicator, as a broker,
a manager, talent agent, and a spokesperson, you know, being
able to represent and talk to people. It became my gift.
It's also part of my personal ministry as a man
that speaks to the soul, the heart of mind. You know,
(04:33):
sometimes it's the heart, sometimes it's the soul, sometimes.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
It's the bank. You know. The gift of speaking is
one of my gifts.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Right, how did you develop your melodic style of rhyming?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Well, I think it was back in those days.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
We were battling, so I knew that I needed that
money and I needed to build a name coming from
Queens because hip hop was known the Bronx Harlem, so
Queens had to represent so in order to get to
where I had to get, I had to learn how
to spit. My rhymes were not written, matter of fact,
they were written. So a lot of MC's came across.
They'd be smitten with the.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Style that made the ladies smile and the boys go wild.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
And I was just one of them from the hood,
you know, So I just did what I had to do.
The gift of song was a way to express myself.
I was always passionate as.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
A speaker, Like even right now, you can say I'm
excited about it.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
These words just pop into my mind because my spirit,
my soul, my mind have continuity. They're all My conscious
and my subconscious mind have always been one. I've been
able to go into the wellness of my life experience,
and I think it channels all the way back to
the ancestors. I'm so full of life, I'm so full
of promise, and I live in the now, not in
(05:45):
the later.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Are you technically the first rapper out of Queens.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
I'm not technically the first, but I am one of
the pioneers and queens. Absolutely, brother, I think we had
DJ Woody Wood, we had seven different crews.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
But if you look historically, I.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Think I'm one of the most pre eminent guys from
raps inception up unto where they were recording.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Do you feel like your era, the forefathers are often
forgotten about when it comes to hip hop history and
what can we do more? I mean, I know the
Hip Hop fifty there were a lot of celebrations and
we had the Hip Hop Museum, but what else can
we do to make sure that you guys aren't forgotten?
Speaker 4 (06:30):
Well, I think everybody needs to stop, look and listen,
find out where they need to go to find out
the information. Guys that are on the cutting edge, like
you finding people, we find each other, brother Elle.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
You know, we have a story to tell.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
If we don't tell our own story, people will not
just mistell it, but they'll misspell it. So you know,
I had the honor of a few years but put
into the Hip Hop Museum Hall of Fame, and I
think the recognition comes as long as we have platforms
like this very platform that you're off and I know
your media company's developing, what's going into film, TV, you're
(07:05):
doing podcasts. I think having these conversations and us cross
promoting each other for the culture is the only way
to preserve it for the people that deserve it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Correct. Yeah, Like I've interviewed let's see, I've interviewed Daddy. Oh,
we've had I'm just talking about people that I know
that You've crossed paths with my brother Positive K. We've
had on a few times.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Discovered it my brother.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, he was talking about his South Carolina roots and
how he was having a pick sweet potato and all that.
We had a great time with Pause and you know,
just countless other hip hop luminaries, you know. And I
welcome these conversations because it's it's almost like you said,
it's it's like a hip hop history book is that
(07:53):
you have, especially with you know, your your contributions in
so many areas. It's like, nah, we need to talk
to you and hear these stories. So I love it.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Well, you know, it's funny, it's the spirit of conversation.
So you spoke to Positive K. I discovered Positive K
and I didn't know he was on the show. So
there's the continuity of community, right, It forever grows when
seeded right, the fruit comes to bear right. So I
go from discovering positive K to David Banner, who's a giant,
(08:26):
who's an amazing He's an amazing person.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
I had the honor of discovering him, taking him over
to Penalty Records, ends up going as one of the
best speakers, motivational speakers, leaders in the culture, actor, producer.
So I've been blessed how along the path.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
As we tell these stories, the stories that are told
and written, people pick it up.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
That's how David Banner found me through my work without
el cool J, through my work in the sports area
as well.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So yes, all right, so yeah, let's talk about that
light bulb moment when you decide to make it your
mission to you know, like guide and empower the careers
of others, you know, such as an ll A, Don
King of Bernard Hopkins, A Freeze, David Banner, Jason Weaver,
(09:12):
you know, Sante Samuel, just countless names you know across
various industries.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Well, I think again, it's just like this platform. The platform,
it wasn't as digit it wasn't digital, it wasn't electronic,
it wasn't as seamless.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
It was reputations. So I had to be like a
battle rapper, right.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
I had to come and bring my game. It had
to be effective, I had to win. I had to
be transparent and strong, and each person.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Tells someone else, like in the village.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
So it carried me from sports, from music into sports.
How I got involved in sports, I met an amazing
brother by the name of Alonzo Shavers.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
He saw my work with the stuff I doubled a
cool Jay, saw the stuff I.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Did with David Banner before David went to even Penalty Records,
had a conversation.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
I became an investor in the company.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
My concept was to take the speed and the creativity
of the sports business, I mean of the music business.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
And put it with the structure, the discipline, and the
execution of the sports business.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
And that's how I became a sports agent and was
able to sell that company.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
We did really well.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
We did a few hundred million dollarsands in gross business.
We've reached some of the most talented people and sports,
and that took us into film television. Because much of
this work is as hybrid work. Some of the rappers
became actors. Some of those actors became investors, which brought
me into what I'm doing now as a venture capitalist
(10:43):
at RCP. So I mean it's all part of communication,
just as being a rapper, as a communicator, as a leader,
thought leader, and an activist in our communities, to a
book bank foundation, it's just one mission with different pathways
in different roads that lead you to a you're supposed
to be.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Who is your blueprint?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
My blueprint was it was always an emerging blueprint.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
I would study from different leaders, historic leaders and dear
leaders to my heart, like my grandmother, my mother. My
experience is everybody from the Supreme Team and Zalvajamaica queens,
you know, call Y fat Cat, these guys that were enterprising.
I could have made choices and gone that route, but
I was well aware of it. And then I saw
other leaders who were business leaders, like Reggie Lewis, Reginald
(11:30):
Lewis what he did, leveraged buyouts, developing companies.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
So I took that same mindset with the.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
Speed that I had as a fast wrapper, with a tenacious,
pragmatic approach to being strategic. I put it all into
a framework of making a business that I harnessed right
only in our culture, only in our hood could it
be understood. But I watched the landscape of what was
emerging in general business, and I knew the world was bigger.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Than my block. That's how I tacked it.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
I remember, and I can't remember the exact documentary, but
LLL was mentioning how like Supreme Team and like Demy
and you know, all of the brothers was you know,
y'all were all tight knit, but they made sure that
ll didn't you know, do what they did. So just
like just just talk about like just living in that environment,
(12:25):
being around the cats and they taking you under their wing,
but in learning learning the game from them and applying
it in a different manner.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Just talk with it. So there wasn't a lot of transparency.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
And I wasn't involved in the drug trade, but everybody
in the eighties benefited from the drug trade. I mean
just on a macroeconomic level. You know, people talk about.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
GDP, hey, it's a part of the bird virging economy.
I mean, Miami was made.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
And built off of money that wasn't taxed, whether it
was drug money or whether it was the emergence of
the South American countries who were money laundering, or the
populace of creative people who came into a business that
was expanding into billions and billions and trillions of dollars.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
So obviously, you know, drug selling wasn't my pathway.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
But some of my brothers and sisters, spiritual brothers and
sisters who had fallen to drug abuse and some gun violence,
death permit incarceration. It was easy to know that if
I had this one music tool, I was able to
be popular enough to garner enough attention. But sometimes investment
went into it. Recording studios. I did business with the
(13:37):
Fatado brothers. We weren't involved in drugs. People think, you know,
it's okay when you look at some of the leaders
of our nation in terms of commerce and entrepreneurialism. Right
you look at the Kennedy's nobody mentions that they were
selling alcohol decades and that it went on and on
and on, Seagrooms, all these different companies. But people will
(13:57):
identify a lot of the drug dealers in the hood
as just complete drug dealers who only did that. So
I would come across it and I just made my choices.
You know, I had the gift of song. I was
a communicator. I just theod business. I put in work
I was an educated person and I just made those choices.
But I didn't disassociate myself with good human beings will
(14:19):
making bad choices which led them. My work at Book
Bank Foundation, where we represent the loss, the lonely, and
the forgotten. We don't look down on people that we
stand over. We're standing over so we can put them
on our shoulders or lift them up.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Do you feel like your upbringing channel is channeled in
the work that you do with Book Bank one percent.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
And LaTroy You know, when you think about it. Inside
my house, I mean we thought we were rich. I
mean I didn't miss a meal. I had a lot
of love, education, my mother's culture. She just became tired,
you know, she had an issue at work and it
led to a nervous breakdown. So I think God found
us to poverty so that we can understand how to
have respect, discipline.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
And how to execute at the lowest levels on.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
An economic level, to not have parity from people that
are lost, loneliness of God, to realize that God says
the poor will always be amongst us. And moving hundreds
of thousands of lives from book than feeding three thousand
people a week.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
We have a current program that's being funded, and.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
It was funded for years by myself, and now I
have partners coming on and we're in different cities.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
We've been around for over twenty eight years.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
So I'm responsible to make sure that those monies and
that mission is met properly with grace and respect.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
And you can still win at the highest levels, earning.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Money, being an entrepreneur and being somebody that's in popular culture.
Each of those things can be separate, but work together
for one common human goal.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Right, what does literacy mean to you beyond just ability
to read?
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Literacy to me is the key to unlock the medicine cabinet,
to destroy the disease of ignorance. You know, a lack
of education is generally, in my mind, the first step
into incarceration, mental illness, and the economic divide. People are
talking about what somebody did before they were born. With
a good education, with discipline, with economic teachings and high
(16:17):
principles and moral values and hard work, you can change
the future tomorrow. You can make tomorrow's today look better
than yesterday was. There's no excuses, man, We just got
to work together. Communities.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Everything you've had this innate ability of turning personal pain
into purpose. What advice would you give to someone that
is kind of down on their look, feeling like the
whole world is against them, Like, what words would you
have to uplift them?
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Well, I think the whole world might be against you
if you're not for yourself, if you're not.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
For something bigger than you, it's you against the world.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
But if you're not looking at it that way, the
world is for you, it'll be to your back.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
You've got to bring value. When you have value, people
seek you. When you have.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Value, people impersonate you. When you have value, people stand
with and for you. So we can change our conditions.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
We are.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
The masters of our destiny. We are responsible for our
own lives, and we can.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Write every chapter in the book that we want to
seal and send and sell. We can change the chartered
course that our our predetermined destiny that's based on statistics
or what our parents have gone through, experience, what they've
plan for, haven't planned for, our ancestors have gone through.
(17:48):
We can change the course of life, set our sale,
and go forward.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Did you first have to win the battle in your
own mind before you could take on the world.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
You know?
Speaker 4 (18:02):
The issue is we have to be careful with that
you said it. No one could say better than what
you just said. There's always a battle in the mind,
and that battle can sometimes lead you down to desperation
or confusion.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
You could be over.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Aggressive or super passive to we're not able to show up.
When you win the battle of your heart and you
connect your heart.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
With your mind and create systemic practices and systems.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
When you're encouraged with courage, people will find you and
follow you.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
It's about being a leader that will.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Lead yourself first up and out of your condition and
then lead yourself into the challenges.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Adding are we born leaders?
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Some of us are born, some of us are sworn.
Some of us are enemies of this world, and we
get torn. But we know it's true. It's all up
to you.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Matter of fact, you can walk by yourself or have
a dope crew. I don't know. I hope that I'm
talking to you. Guess what, matter of fact, the wind
just blew me to give you the these words.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Y'all know that they're so true. Matter fact, Stop and
kind of listen.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Maybe you will learn get it right. Get it might
be your turn. What are you trying to say? Work hard?
So you can earn. This is exactly what it is,
like a fern, potting it, planning it, given the seed.
A matter of fact, please don't heed to greed. If
you do or you don't, it's the same to me,
the other loving kid. They call me sweetie ge. I'm
having fun. I'm on a run and I'm dropping these bars.
(19:26):
As a matter of fact. Take it from Earth up
to Mars. If I've built this baby.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
And I love the fact that no matter where you go,
no matter the rooms that you're in, you still exude,
live and breathe and die for hip hop.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Listen, brother, your research is so crazy right now. You
see these faces. I'm like, if this guy following me,
I'm just happy, man, I'm free. I figured it out
and I'm still figuring it out. And I realized that
there's so many people smarter than me.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Every challenge that I get is met to be converted
to greatness. I mean, to be a champion, you.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
Have to master victories, and those that master their losses
become bosses.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
You know, that's a question I ask in pretty much
most of my interviews just to get you see if
there's ever going to be a different answer, because most
of the times it goes in one direction, And the
question is do you learn more from your wins or
your losses?
Speaker 4 (20:30):
All my losses most of the times you know, and
this is what I'd like to share today. So I
always talk about the losses more than the wins. And
the reason I say that is people will say, I'm
not going to make the same mistake twice, or they
learn from a lesson and they kind of repeats itself.
The greatest thing about your losses are if you are
(20:50):
losing the same way, in the same space with things
that are preventable, it's not the victory or the loss.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
It's you.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
When you show up prepared. Sometimes there are conditions that
you can't control. So if those conditions you have no
control over, environmental, wrong partners, health conditions, things that you
just can't control, it's not gonna matter. Just sustain those
losses and you'll get to the victory with a championship mindset.
And if you are learning and taking away from those losses,
(21:20):
you keep looking at it, it charts the course and
where you need to go. You start to build up
that scalable ability to be able to look with vision
and be able to be adaptable and be able to
map where you need to go right.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
So in essence, you don't really lose, You just master
the art of pivoting.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
I've never lost a day in my life. There's just
been days I didn't will.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
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Speaker 2 (22:19):
All right, so I want to go back to the
to the music.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Sweety G.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
How did you get into house music?
Speaker 3 (22:28):
So that's amazing, right.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
So at the time I was looking at a lot
of my contemporaries, I saw that I wasn't gonna have
the massive hit. I didn't want to go to the
route where most of my friends were there were rappers.
I was more interested in business. I was more interested
in enterprise. But I had still the love for music.
So I didn't want to play a guitar and V
in R and B or rock. So house music was there,
(22:53):
but most of the dance music was maybe an alternative state.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
It was a different kind of community maybe. So I
saw people like the New York City beach boys. I
saw people like Colonel Abrams d trained.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
So I saw a place where a guy it was
R and B oriented, still with an edge, you know,
And I thought I could fit in that space because
it was typically a different.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Type of audience, right, and I didn't fit in that audience.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
I didn't go to the type of clothes clubs that
that audience would be. My demographic was different. So I
brought this R and B swag soul. I was able
to play the music. So I was a musician, a producer,
a writer, a remixer, and I was singing as a rapper.
So it was an easy transition and it was the
closest thing I could do that was still thumbed out,
(23:41):
still cut the street, and that still kept my rep
and I didn't have to worry about going into cultures
that didn't match my ideology.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Okay, yeah, because that was my next question or follow
up question was going to be like, how how was
that perceived by your peers, by your stetso sonics and
run DMCs and Cold Crow and Boogie Boys and all
of them.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
Well, it wasn't a problem because it was no transition.
I was still always a brother, a black man that
came from urban community, heterosexual male, straight, coming from everything
from gangster background, drug dealing.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
What it was like, you know, I took my whole life.
It was just a different music form.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
My music was still very aggressive, very spirited, and completely
I was for the ladies.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
So it was a space for me, you know, it
was a space. So I would play Paradise Garage on
a Friday night. That was the night, which was straight night.
So I had homeboys, hip hopcats coming into evenings. So
I would change the landscape if I played on other nights,
and I was bringing in a straight audience to some
of the other clubs that were a mixed kind of audience.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
And then that didn't define me as a natural black
brother who is heterosexual that's doing this music for music.
I wasn't even thinking about white, black, gay, straight hispanic.
I just saw it was one way to tell a
different story, and it gave me more broad a more
broad scope to talk from strange keyboard playing. I could
(25:12):
play music that had a Latin or percussive kind of
vibe to it. I could do afro house.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Before it was that, I could sing, and I was
confident who I was, So it was a pure way
for me to do the same thing, still being rooted
in hip hop and still being rooted in urban culture.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And and you did remixes for the likes of Sibyl
and r Kelly and you know name them.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
It's quite a few, even some of the Supremes. So
it was always fun because it was musicianship. I taught
myself to be a musician easier.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Let's just go. It's okay to stop for this. Can
I pass?
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Can you hear all that? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
But if it's fine, it's okay. I don't have a
problem with it.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Did I mess everything up stopping? Go ahead? We can okay,
we can edit. Okay, because this is yo, You're incredible.
This is crazy. Not just the research. These these are
different questions. It's like I sent you this, so hold
on for three two one? Damn, Look how you threw
me off? What was the last question? Wow, you're doing
(26:23):
your job. Bro.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Now we're talking about just you know, some of the
house remixes that you did, and yeah, being in that,
being in that world, which I love house music. Inner
City good Life is one of my favorite songs of
all time.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
So it's it's funny. I was cultural vibe, but foombak
my games power. So coming from the DJ.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Culture, which is a better answer to your question, now,
how I was able to bridge hip hop. I came
in it was DJ orienting, So here's the DJ piece,
here's the beats. And at this time, like late eighties, nineties, hip.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Hop and house kind of were there, you know, Jungle Brothers, Yeah,
Queen Queen Latifa, so coming to my house.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
So it was a perfect bridge for me to get
in the game.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
And it was so much money in it, and it
was so easy. And whereas some hip hop artists weren't
the producer, weren't the writer, were controlled by the bigger labels,
I was selling and leasing masters out globally. I'd run
around the world going to meet them, licensing masters that
I own, and my publishing right now is very valuable
(27:34):
on a cultural level and on a financial level. I
own it, you know, and I have it in many
different spaces that I control it seamlessly, that I have
for the last twenty thirty years.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah, so you you sort of mentioned cultural Vibe. You
you teamed up with Winston Jones Myfoon Bay, which you
you mentioned. Yes, yes, how did how did all that
come together?
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Now that it's crazy?
Speaker 4 (28:00):
My brother was managing me with a guy named Reggie
Smith and the friend of ours Oscar Fuller DJ, Legendary DJ,
and they took some of my demos. I'm sure you
remember the great Boy Jarvis, a musician and co producer I.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Got to write and work with.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
So my learning curve the Troy was so fast because
I was a freestyler, so I would just express for me.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
I was going through a spiritual transformation. As you know.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
Most of my music, even the New Civilization stuff is
very God based, is very spirit based, and I was
just pouring my soul out during a time where a
lot of people were on drugs or struggling with emotional
and mental challenges in their career. And I was able
to thrive because I had made money in corporate and
it was just a natural transition for me to go
(28:49):
in with musicianship learning, teaching, myself the keyboard, the baseline,
knowing drums and just doing what.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
I wanted to do. And globally there was a demand
for it because.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
We leveraged my hip hop status, says a pioneer with
a voice of a brother from New York City who
was just giving him the swag in New York with
melody and rhyme.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
All right, all right, So with Glenteby Enterprises the sports
side of it, I've spoken to other agents and agents
of color and they've they've talked about that barrier to entry.
How was it for you to break through? And then
(29:33):
just the the battle of getting you know, athletes from
you know, our communities to trust of a man of
color to represent them where they typically will go with
the big names like Drew Rosenhaus or David Folk people
(29:53):
like that. So yeah, just talk about that barrier to entry.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
So it's two sade, I have to say the good
as well as the.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
The bad was it was a predominantly ninety percent white
or Caucasian based or Caucasian controlled from mostly attorneys, fraternal
organizations or groups, accountants, lawyers, people that were athletic directors
(30:20):
that were guiding directly to the athletes so coming in
with Alonso who had all the certification, all of the licensing,
but didn't have the cultural connection, didn't have the systemic.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Strategy to be able to get into the universities, high
schools to recruit.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
It was a great challenge, but I had the culture calling,
so managing Cool Jay at the time, being associated with
other big artists, you know, Charles Fisher and my partners,
they were involved with managing r Kelly and I became
a part of all these different camps of these different artists,
so that became a magnet with some.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Of the biggest a police that ever lived. So on
that side, it was a lot easier because we were
able to speak their language.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Me not being a prominent athlete, not playing collegiate sports
made it easier for some of the athletes to allow
me to do the business part of it. Whereas my
partner Alonzo played for Ohio State and he would sometimes
go back and forth with them or.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Have different opinions. So he was on one side, I
was on the other side.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
It was a perfect marriage, I think the upside of
it as well as we had the streets, we had
the culture, music film, you know, could stories even going
into the South and neighborhoods that some people that didn't
understand our culture couldn't. And that's how I got some
of the greatest, you know, defensive backs of our times,
that were the greatest athletes of our time in football, NFL,
(31:43):
even boxing. My music allowed me to get close enough
to end up managing everybody, from O'Neill Bell became He's
wit champion of.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
The world, to Don King and other boxes as well.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
When it comes to I guess the partnership with these
athletes and entertainers, Like nine times out of ten, is
it them coming to you or you You've done your scouting,
your recruiting and getting an idea of where this person
is going their ceiling and then saying no, I wanted
(32:19):
this is the person I want to represent. Like, how
does that partnership come together?
Speaker 3 (32:25):
It's a it is a combination. The game has changed
so much, and you mentioned it so in the earlier years,
we would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars flying all
over the country. We couldn't go near high school athletes.
We couldn't technically go to college athletes except when they
had a pro day or a coach or someone you
knew through the channels of the system allowed us to
(32:46):
talk to them and their families.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
They've always been runners and people that broke the rules.
We never play paid a player in our life. We
never did kick that. Alonzo and I always played.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Within the lines.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Now things have changed with NIL, which means name, image
and likeness. That's allowed us to earn more money faster
because the game's changing more recently in the last few.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Weeks and going forward with Zoe Brooks, who we represent,
rakeem Vick and all of our team over it win
a circle. We're now able to help the athlete earn
money for the TV deal, sponsorship, and now the school's
a the kids direct So it's a lot more structured
and it's a lot more fair, and it gives us
(33:28):
more edge to be able to be created and outwork
the people that had all the money and had the locks.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
And you brought you brought up Zoe Brooks, who's, like
you said, just finished her sophomore season at NC State.
They made it to I think the Elite eight this
year in a tournament. There's been a lot of athletes
that would be drafted within the first three or four
(33:58):
picks of the W NBA Draft like the Olivia Miles
and the Tenaya Lats and that decided to transfer it.
And they're staying in college because the NIL money is
through the roof and it's it's way more profitable than
turning pro and having to play overseas and in the
w So just just talk about that landscape as far
(34:19):
as the kids wanting to stay in school, whereas in
the NBA, well with college a bat men's college basketball,
it was there's no way there's staying is They're going
to the pros as soon as possible.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
So how do you adapt to that.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Shift in mentality?
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Well, you know, it's about the relationship.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
So ratim Vic developed an amazing relationship with Zoe Brooks
from high school towards in the development of helping her
understanding of professional sports and the amateur sports. The culture
of Winner's Circle educates our players to understand the difference
(35:05):
between the academics, the economics, and the performance.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
So typically rakeem and i'd say some of our other
junior agents and some.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Of our support staff we get in early for a
core direct connection. A friend of ours, Marcus Leon, says, you.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Know, if you want to do a deal with the devil.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
You want to do a deal with the godly people
who care about your core, care about your soul. I mean,
you know, I have to say, I'm happy to say
LaTroy as many players as I've had, you know, me
for a lot of the superstar athletes, but a lot
of my kids that were injured, a lot of the
players in the NFL who didn't go, I've still had
relationships with them.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Many have passed, many passed on, and many have passed
in and some have passed into a different form or life,
whether it's just being a basic person.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
Working a nine to five waiting to get their retirement money,
which when you vest four or five years you have something.
But it's always been ethics, integrity and continuity.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
That's where it is. But now it's such a crazy world.
We're still learning and it changes day to day. Week
do weep applying to cloud.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
And yeah we're talking about nil but you also have
streaming for musicians, and you have social media and branding
and AI. How do you stay ahead?
Speaker 2 (36:27):
You know, this evolving.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
World. When it comes to you know, making a name
for yourself.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
It's a lot.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
I mean, high school's emerging like you could never believe now,
we get so many phone calls from high school parents
that Rakima and myself are almost turning them down. And
these are young superstars in their space, and many of
them will sign, but our goal is to never sign
as many as some agencies, Like I know three or
four big names that will sign two three hundred.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Athletes, say no, they can't serve them. We'd rather have
ten to twenty to thirty people that become rich partners
with us as they go on to earn.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
Millions of dollars or in some of the businesses that
we own that we're making millions of dollars, they'll become
co partners or we can co venture with them for
a long lasting relationships.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
That's kind of where our target is. It's a little
bit different because we're making live and lifelong and I'd
say life lasting decisions for our clients, because lifelong can
mean the client leads you and does well.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
Life lasting means it's all reciprocal and it never ends.
Damian Robinson that played everywhere from Tampa Bay, New York.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Jets, you know still with me.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
All of our athletes still have relationships to some degree,
even if they're not direct, whether they're tertiary relationships or
they're historical with a door that still opens. And that's
everything from music, films, sports, Jason Mitchell, you know who's
doing really good or I had the honor of representing
you know, straight out of Compton the Shy. He's not
the same mindset, the same ideology, and that ideology is
(37:59):
I'm a business person. So our clients know the difference
between the entertainment and the business and they're bridging it
or they're drilling a tunnel to get to where they
got to go.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
So you're pretty much molding your clients to think like CEOs.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
I mean, anybody I represent, I think on a spiritual level,
they're a reflection to me and I'm a reflection to them.
I can list off five names, makes me pretty pretty proud,
pretty strong names, pretty big names in every category.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
And when we don't show up like that, if we
don't blow up like that, we're out.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Okay. Yeah, Like just talk about like you have offices
all over the country, Like how do you maintain that
leadership and that culture across your org?
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Well, we found servant leaders. I keep talking about this guy,
rakeem Vick.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
All of my channel partners, all of my corporate partners
equity partners.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
We invest in another. It's reciprocal. So somebody could make
have an office or I have a location that's earning
seven point fifty to one point five million. We could
have verticals that have a value of almost one hundred
million dollars. Like URCPA, capital gets reciprocal.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
We're not just going in cashing out companies and cashing
out our enterprise. We're building culture and we're capitalizing for
sustainable game. These are companies that will be around our charity.
Book Bak Foundation has been around twenty seven twenty eight years,
still serving people and it's all been you know, built
and promoted from within.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
Give one hundred percent of every dime, every dollar, all
donations go directly to them.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
It's the same reciprocal thought. All of the allotment and
allocation and all of the earnings are i'd say equitably
and fairly distributed to our partners. Everybody eats or nobody
eats it.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Okay, how did the pandemic play a role in, you know,
kind of uniting the culture at Gleneby Enterprises.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Well, it's funny.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
The pandemic was more of a spiritual thing for me
because I lived pretty much on my investments.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I was really heavy.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
I was wondering if God was calling us to the
final moment. I wasn't as aggressive. A lot of people
were creative online in the digital space. They made millions
of millions and millions of dollars. I made less money
online and I made money in my traditional investments. Sustainability
still supporting the community. That's where these last three years,
it's feeding program we have called Groceries to Grow. We
(40:33):
actually started that during the pandemic. We were delivering food
directly to people's front door. We would set up in.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Parking lots and churches.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
So that part was the emergence of what happened with
Bookmankings now sustainable offering in several different cities across the country.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
These other businesses you talk about, whether.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
It's film and entertainment, television, music, whether it's sports, whether
it's the venture capital, each of them are separate intoities
that are thriving at the highest level because the partnerships
are open.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Each person drives it because what we put in, we
all get out.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
So like what are you looking for in a VC space,
Like what catches your attention and it says like I want,
I want to push this project.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Well. At RCP Venture Capital, Christina and Michael, we're always
looking for creative people who are coming up with.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Pathologies, protocols, inventions, creating commercialization in the medicinal space, biotech space.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
We're looking for innovation and fearlessness. People who are respectful
and who can follow the guidelines of what either the FBI,
FDA requires, what science requires, and what's good for society.
And we're winning strong and harms.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
I'm I'm in the tech space. And like I mentioned earlier,
AI is is like the roach that you can't kill.
It's unstoppable. How do you how do you utilize AI?
Speaker 3 (42:09):
And like.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Do you like it or do you especially as a
creator with your background as a rapper and a producer, Like,
how do you feel about AI?
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Well, it's never bothered me. I don't think anything can
disrupt me. I think it can channel. It can challenge,
challenge how I channel what I'm doing. So the inspiration,
the vision, the talent, the gifts.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Can't do that.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
Learning language model cannot modify or make what I make
internally and intrinsically. So the same way that we have
all these new systems that are replicating the real world.
We just have to be able to go side by
side and don't pour everything into it. Like a lot
of people are having books made or or movies, or
(43:01):
they're writing even letters without having a pure input, and
they'll lose themselves in it.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
So I like to stay organic. I feed the monster
what I want the monster to eat, so it doesn't
attack me.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
M hyah, I like so, I love it. I like that.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
What's something about you that people will find most surprising?
Speaker 3 (43:20):
I think the most surprising thing is how free I am.
You know, I laugh, I have fun. I like the rap.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
I like to play because I work so hard, you know.
I think like a master and I work like a slave.
And I never wanted anybody to.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Tell me how to behave It's my own road that
I laid down.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
As I pay this to me, the concrete things that
I see, I mean, I guess that's the same pathway
for missus, sweety G. I'm always being what I'm supposed
to be. A lot of people know that I'm moving
it kind of slow, but I'd rather chart out the
pathway to get to where I gotta go.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
See how I flow I just keep doing it, yo,
because I'm so happy.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
No matter what, I can still go do hundreds of
millions of dollars in transactional business. I can still connect
with companies and have no emotion or no cognitive connection
to humanity. And I can still be at the core
of humanity from my philosophical and spiritual and philanthropic work.
So I'm having fun. Man, I'm living every day every day.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
A young sweety G. Did you envision your journey looking
like this?
Speaker 3 (44:29):
No idea. I feel like I've lived so many lives,
you know, it's just amazing. I mean, I was here
before the digital explosion. I was alive before vhest machines,
with the subway tokens and no cell phones. So I'm
in heaven on earth. So I never expected any of this.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
I just followed my dreams, my creativity, and what kept
me inside the lines most of the time was integrity
and honesty with myself.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
You know, we all fall short with our tellings, our truths, or.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
Our travels, but the core of me has always resonated
from my consciousness to my subconsciousness, which brings my spirit.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
What do you see when you look in the mirror?
Speaker 3 (45:14):
I see how much work I need to do.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
I see how much other pieces of missing in this
puzzling life that God has given me to put together
to shape that He crafted me. God crafted me like
a sculpture that's half broken. So I got to keep
on stroking whether I'm going for New York or Hoboken.
Don't want to end up broken.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
Ah. So I'm having fun, man, I'm having fun.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Yeah. We just like I told you before the interview,
We're just gonna hit record and talk, and I mean
there's really no structure to it. It's just wherever whatever
we feel like addressing. So doctor King had a dream,
what's yours?
Speaker 3 (45:55):
My dream is that I lived, I died greater than
I lived.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
That what I do from my first to my last
breath exceed before my first and after legacy, learning.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Leading.
Speaker 4 (46:10):
And leaving some on the table for somebody else. You know,
in the victor, you can't destroy the enemy, and you
can't destroy who you're competing against all the time because
some of them will come back in a different forms.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
You got to have dignity and humanity in it and
learn how to be a good winner.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
So with all of the accomplishments, what do you feel
is your magnum opus.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
I'd say giving, I'm a master. Given. You know what
I've done in the charity space, what we're doing with
this priceless podcast.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
Look who the guests that have come on your show.
I know some of the stuff you getting ready to
do with media. You know Wall Street's talking about you
a little bit. There are people whispering and knew I'm
coming on this show that your capitalists might be looking.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
I'm talking to competition. Get your game together. So you know,
this is a space community and culture meet man. And
I think without having.
Speaker 4 (47:03):
A voice, without being able to have a native, organic
way to communicate, we'll go back to AI. People could
really start programming communication thought and systems and a bias
that we can't control, whether it's economic.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Cultural, or racial or racial. You know.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
So I think communications everything, and that's what keeps me excited.
So I try to pour into it as much as
I can.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Right, I like that.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
What's next for you?
Speaker 1 (47:28):
I mean, any other books, documentaries on the horizon, What
are you cooking up?
Speaker 4 (47:34):
I'm working on a documentary. But what I do new
is I'm taking it kind of easy. Working on another book.
We just launched the Winner Circle, our sports company, and
always the Book Bank Foundation is thriving. But I'm enjoying
Djaying doing the Global Dance Party on Fresh and Step
Of every Saturday at eight.
Speaker 3 (47:50):
O'clock Saturday nights. I'm enjoying that.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
And continue to do business, investing and amazing new sound
and startups and just having fun traveling and adding to culture.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
So like with the podcast space, like than where do
you see that going?
Speaker 1 (48:13):
As far as VC just a personal question.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
It's priceless. I think it's going to go into something else.
Speaker 4 (48:24):
I think it's going to Actually the way music is
funneled into retail stores on the airplane, into movies and
films podcasts and is going to be the same way.
I think the next thing that's coming is an iteration
of sales. People are going to be selling products, even
you Detroit, because I know I've always wanted to do
a podcast where.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
They have to be right.
Speaker 4 (48:43):
If I'm not doing it at your level, I would wait.
And I know there's other media spaces that are calling
for you right now. But guys like you can kind
of move around. You'd be able to do your podcast
the traditional one. You'd be able to do your TV show,
you'd be able to develop films, Broadway plays.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
I get the inner part of you're offering. I like
having my music show because on the global dance part,
I'm able.
Speaker 4 (49:06):
To express my heart and soul through music. But I
think all of these mediums are going to be going
into new things that we haven't heard about, that are
going to be developed. I haven't seen somebody taking pieces of.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
What we're doing and putting in other learning modules that
are still organic and originating from us. With our thoughts,
I can see it happening.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Okay, all right, so plug plug everything. Okay, take your time.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
Well, well, please check me out doctor Glenntoby dot com.
That's two ends d R g l e n n
dot com all things on social media, Doctor Glenn Toby
or just Glen Toby g l e n N t
O b y the Book Bank Foundation, which is a
(49:58):
not for profit it's been around for twenty eight years.
I challenge you to challenge yourselves. If you're in the
spirit of lack.
Speaker 4 (50:03):
If there's something you're trying to attract, if it's emotional
or spiritual, and it's holding you back, We've got what
it takes to get you on track. It's called THEBBF
dot org or the Book Bank Foundation. We have the
book Bank Foundation Institute, which is a learning institute that
gives you a lot of the script, the blueprint and
(50:26):
some of the secrets to what you need to have
a nice career in business, critical thinking, personal development. And
of course the Global Dance Party dot com. That's where
the music is playing. And check out the window circle.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Yeah, I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Leave us on a partner shot.
Speaker 4 (50:49):
Ladies and gentlemen, express yourself, cry, laugh, dance, praise God.
Talk about your failures like you do your successes, because
if you don't, you'll end up in a whole bunch
of message. And this is what I'm going to say.
God always blesses the man that goes out and he
does address this the things he needs to do. Stay
true to yourself. I mean, I'm an innocent young boy
(51:10):
to kind of get to the money, and I ended
up with the wealth.
Speaker 3 (51:13):
But more than the wealth is the health. And it's
never about self. Reach out and touch and tell somebody. Oh,
Global Dance Party, eight o'clock Saturday nights.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
Thanks Detroit, doctor Glen Toby, you know, thank you, thank you,
for you know, all of the work that you put
in brick by brick, cementing hip hop culture and then
pivoting and you know, learning the sports management arena, pivoting, writing,
(51:46):
writing books, producing documentaries, pivoting, being a philanthropist, using.
Speaker 2 (51:54):
Your upbringing, your your story as a youth, and.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Just making the world a better place with book bang pivoting,
and you know, getting into the venture capital world and
providing funds that in our community is severely lacking to.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Birth these creators. Hopefully myself too.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
Uh yeah, we're watching you, We're watching, We see you
in the media space.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
Yeah. So, I mean you've you've just delivered. You've you've
major Mama, proud, major community proud.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (52:33):
So so yeah, work, it's still working, don't forget. April
twenty six, Ted Talk X, Wilmington, Delaware.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
I'll be on the big stage.
Speaker 1 (52:45):
All right, if you're around.
Speaker 3 (52:46):
Love to have you in the audience.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
Brother, Okay, and you know where to how do you
get on this show?
Speaker 2 (52:51):
Then you know where to find.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
Them, doctor Glenoby dot com. And for stop looking listen,
I'm your host Latroit Garden. See you next week. Peace
and blessings,
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