KURT “BIG BOY” ALEXANDER INTERVIEW
PORTIONS USED IN: THE THREAD SEASON ONE

Kurt “Big Boy” Alexander, Radio Host
September 1, 2023
Interviewed by Ari Fishman
Total Running Time: 2 hours, 13 minutes and 53 seconds

START TC: 00:00:00:00

00:00:02:00
BIG BOY:
Hello. You want a big boy from Big Boy’s neighborhood. Some people say radio legend. So do I. But this right here, this is my life story.

ON SCREEN TEXT: 
Kurt “Big Boy” Alexander
Radio Host

ON SCREEN TEXT: 
Interview Archive
Life Stories
Kunhardt Film Foundation

Kurt “Big Boy” Alexander
Radio Host
00:00:12:00
ARI FISHMAN:
All right. So, yeah, we're going to start from the beginning. So basically talk about like where you grew up and kind of your relationship with your mother. 

00:00:18:00
BIG BOY:
I was born in Peoria, Illinois, but Peoria, Illinois, I was there not even two years. And from Peoria, we moved to Los Angeles. And once we got here, it was, you know, my mom, pretty much single parent, seven kids. You know, we definitely, definitely wasn't anywhere close to being rich, you know, But we was affluent when it came to love. You know, I heard I love you. I heard, you know, there was hugs and it was just one of those households where you didn't realize how bad things were until you kind of got a little bit of age and said, okay, you know, there were, you know, many evictions when we were growing up. You learn how to do without and you don't even realize you're doing without because some of your peers don't have it. Not having a father in the household wasn't strange to me. I never had my dad. And I also. So it wasn't like a dad walked out and I was able to miss something. So just growing up, I felt happy, you know? And it's crazy because when I wrote my book, I was I wrote that from that, that viewpoint where I was like, oh, you know, it was a happy childhood. And then I started doing some therapy and I was like, whoa, you know, maybe it. Wasn't as. Pleasant as what I thought. But just growing up, you know, my mom, I have four sisters, two brothers, you know, just acting in the house, putting on plays. We entertained ourselves. We didn't have mobile phones. Of course, you to have, you know, 5000 satellite channels and all these streams available to you. So you had a lot of conversation and you had a lot of time to to speak, which which appears about your family. But growing up, it was music in our household. You know, you could smell my mom's cooking, you know, from what I gather, it was the perfect place for her son Kurt to grow up in that the house that I built. 

00:02:21:00
ARI FISHMAN:
And if you could just talk a little bit about your father also, I know he was in your life and you kind of talk pretty definitively about him and like his passing. 

00:02:29:00
BIG BOY:
And yeah, when it came to my father, I didn't have a relationship with my dad at all. Like, I don't remember a voice. I don't remember a cent, you know, just wasn't around. Just wasn't around. And at one point I felt like, okay, well, I didn't have a connection with my dad at all. And my mom never spoke ill about my father. She never say, you know, if he was here, we would be in a better position. He ran out on, you know, those things. So I didn't have such a strong negativity on someone that wasn't there. And I felt that I wasn't affected by not having a dad. I didn't at the house. I never thought I had daddy issues. You know, you would hear certain things and, oh, he has daddy issues, he have daddy issues. And I didn't have daddy issues. Anyone who read my book understood that I didn't have daddy issues. And once I went just even up until last year, I went to a place and I did, you know, I was there for like seven, seven days and you do two days of integration. And I realize my relationship with my dad did have patterns that affected me. And I did have daddy issues that I never knew I had for like 50 years. But coming home one day, my mom was, you know, in the room. And I walked in and she said, you know, your dad died today. And not being cold, she your dad died. Was it dinner? It wasn't like I had this breakdown because, you know, I could probably cry over Iraq more than I could cry over my father. Now, the image once I got a little older and did a little bit more work, the image of what what a daddy is and how I parent, I realized that I do have and I've had patterns, as you know, for the absence of a father in my life. 

00:04:31:00
ARI FISHMAN:
If you just talk a little bit about you're kind of moving from motels to homelessness a bit. And I think you said you were acting like everything was fine because maybe your mind you thought it was, but you were using like, humor and food to like, you know, sort of like depressed. 

00:04:45:00
BIG BOY: 
And just kind of growing up, you know, it's it's eight of us in the household, seven kids. And my mom hit financial slippery slopes, you know. My mom was in you know, she didn't smoke. She didn't drink. She didn't have a drug problem. There was an I. What are you doing with the rain? Is just taking care of seven kids and yourself, you know. Do you buy your kid this sometimes or do you pay the rent? You know, and we got into a slippery slope where we had we got evicted and being evicted. There was a stint of over a year of living in motels, not hotels, I mean motels, all eight of us, you know, any motel that you see, that's probably between three, 350, probably 400ft², eight people in there, one bed. So you kind of you kind of sleep on the floor and you lay where you can. And it was just those things where, you know, you could stay a week here, probably a month here, a couple of days. But we were constantly going from motel to motel. And there's times when I do this thing called reality runs. In my reality run, I'll go by some of the old neighborhoods that we've stayed in or I go by, you know, some of the the motels that we stayed in. And I remember one time it was just a strip. And when I was pointing out to someone, they couldn't believe when I was like, Oh, we stayed here, we stayed there, we stayed there. We stayed. Literally moving your stuff from home, from motel to motel, either next door or across the street. Growing up, we never had like a a family car. So everything was kind of just just on the bus or you just with the motels, you just moved out. You could shopping card and you go to the next one, you know? But it's wow. Because in my mind, at the age of like ten is the first time we became homeless. And at the age of ten, you want a home. You know that other your friends and your peers are going to their homes. But as a ten year old, you're thinking, okay, I have a swimming pool. You know, as a parent, I couldn't imagine what that did to my mom because I couldn't imagine what it would do to me now that I'm a parent with two kids. But she shielded us as much as she could. But there were some things that, you know, you did know, you know, you would have to hide when the maid came so they would know how many people were in the motel. And you get kicked out once again. You know, I got accustomed to eating out of paper plates and plastic forks and putting, you know, your cold, you know, refrigerated items in a in a cooler. And some of those things I still do to this day, like to this day, I got every piece of fine, you know, kitchenware. And I got, you know, I got great spoons and forks in order. But I eat out of plastic with plastic forks and spoons and paper plates. To this day, you know, I'll go and literally buy them out. And that comes from growing up, you know, younger and experiencing things such as that. 

00:07:49:00
ARI FISHMAN:
One pretty talked about there a couple of times. We had to sleep on the street, maybe in Santa Monica, but you would still go to school the next day. Yeah. You kind of spend time on the street and you kind of just act like things were normal. So you were kind of living in these circumstances. 

00:08:01:00
BIG BOY:
You definitely learned that the the art of disguise, you know, the everything is okay. Even times when we stayed in, you know, the church, the sunlight mission times when we, you know, slippery slope and we had to sleep outside at the Santa Monica place. You know, you do learn how to you know, when you're walking home from school, your friends go one way. You walk a little bit with you, say goodbye. Then I'll cut back through the alley and go back to the church or go back to to a motel. So you did know. That you had these secrets that either your classmates or your peers or a lot of people didn't know unless they lived in the same motel that you lived in. You know. Did people know that the Alexander family stayed in a motel? Probably. But at the age of ten, I didn't hear a lot of you know, you guys, you know, are homeless or you don't have a place. But as a ten year old, all I wanted was an address. And in my head I could say, oh, we had a swimming pool. I didn't know how bad it was and I didn't. But you did yearn for an address. Yearn for a roof over your head. That. That. That was yours. You yearned for, you know, someone I'd been able to tell you. You know, you've got to pack up all your stuff and you have to leave. You know, those are. Those are the things that get deep rooted into you as well. And it follows you into your adulthood by how you live in what kind of patterns you have. You know how you make sure that they your either your bills or it's a lot when you learn so much at an early age is so much that. That a child would have to bear. And then as you start to get older, you start to see how it really affected you. 

00:09:50:00
ARI FISHMAN:
And at the same time, like hip hop is sort of in its infancy and you're kind of getting introduced to that as it's sort of becoming a thing. You talk about Rapper's Delight was kind of like your first step into hip hop, and you had experience with your friend Trevor. Like with it, maybe you can tell it. 

00:10:04:00
BIG BOY:
With hip hop. For one, music was always in my household, you know, growing up. Jackson five. Anything. Motown? We always heard music in the house, The Commodores. It was always something. And then comes this thing called hip hop. And hip hop was when I heard like, Rapper's Delight, Rapper's Delight, the full extended 15 minute version. It was like music I always had if I didn't have, you know, a bed, if I didn't have a pillow, I had a transistor radio. I had, you know, some headphones that I could possibly make in. But I always had something where I could listen to music, and music always took me away. So with Rapper's Delight, I had a buddy by the name of Trevor. And Trevor also lived in the same motel that we lived in in the Santa Monica area. And we would walk together to the Boys and Girls Club, and that's all we would do to pass time. We didn't take we didn't have money to take a bus. We didn't have bikes. You know, we would just walk and literally hip hop, the heavy duty habit and, you know, and we'd just trade and rap this to the boys club and rap in on the way back. But I fell in love with hip hop. And early on, I had hip hop. And then I realized I had a connection with food. You know, that those kind of things were always if I was saying, I listen to music while Assata ate, if I was happy, I listen to music, if I was if I was happy, I ate all those things together was always kind of there for me, you know? So that was kind of a thing that I always went back to was, you know, music was good for me and I enjoyed it. But food was as well. And I didn't realize what I was actually doing to myself as as a child growing up. 

00:12:00:00
ARI FISHMAN:
I think you said the most more things than you at the time. Or your mother. Hip hop and food. 

00:12:04:00
BIG BOY:
That was definitely the the most important things to me. You know, mom, you know, hip hop and getting that escape and and also food being there for me and and again, you know, anyone that kind of read my book also, I had this, you know, happy relationship. I thought that, you know, I was I was good with food. No way in the world you can get over 500 pounds and not have an addiction to food. And it was just recently that I realized how much of how much out of control I was and how that really was a go to place for me. You know, it was like a relationship that I had that was like, you know, I'm here, you're here. I'm sad you're here. I'm happy you're here. I'm celebrating. You're here. I've wrapped so much around this love affair that I also had with food and not knowing. You know, I mean, you know, as a as a child, it was comforting. And then once you got older, you realized that you really had, like, an addiction in and a serious love affair with food because it was always there. It was it was always something I could rely on and depend on. And. Even, you know, from from the best to something mediocre. It was always there. 

00:13:28:00
ARI FISHMAN:
And just go back to hip hop a little bit more. You got other influences at a time where it was like Ice Cube or Run-D.M.C. or. Can you talk a little bit about some of the movies and some of the other rappers of the time that were sort of. 

00:13:39:00
BIG BOY:
Definitely early on? You know, I was a child of hip hop. Like, I listen to everything. I, you know, I bought albums without ever hearing who the artist was. I just purchased it. I bought, you know, cassettes. B even before CD's I would just buy and I would listen to everything when it came to hip hop. And once I got into like my teens and I mean early teens, like, you know, 13 years of age, 12, 13, 14, I was able to, you know, get a turntable and really listen. But I always had headphones in. And I listen to music. I listened to hip hop different, you know, I listened to if the scratch went from one ear to the next year and listen, if they had like a little reverb on it, like there's some people that just listening kind of bobbed their head. I analyzed hip hop. I listened to the lyrics of hip hop in headphones. You could hear somebody took a just a slight breath before they went into, you know, their next their next rhyme. So I was always intrigued early on by, you know, when I got an introduction to to Run-D.M.C., you know, when I got an introduction to, you know, Treacherous three. And who's this guy Como d When I'm watching Beach Street and learning about all these people from from the East Coast, the East Coast was a world away from me. But I'm knowing like, Oh, man. Melly Male as in in Beach Street. And he got beat. Street breakdown I love merely male as it as an artist that's one of my favorite rappers, you know, and watching, you know cool mode and watching early Doug Fresh and watching this thing that I fell in love with on the big screen, like I'm getting dressed to go see Beach Street, they got Mr. Wave and they're pop blocking. It is graffiti. I lived that not knowing that we're going to many years down the line, celebrate 50 years of hip hop. I just love what I was feeling from this music and the genre at that timewhen you so-called didn't have anything else. I always had hip hop. I always had music, so I would listen and I will see how Run-D.M.C. would dress and I would look at, you know, how Kurtis Blow, you know how Kurtis Blow wore his hair or how Kurtis Blow hit our I was into everything when he came when he came to hip hop. And then when they when we started getting hip hop, even more so on the West Coast. I'm talking about early Ice-T, early Ice-T before breaking in and things like that, man, I just gravitated towards Ice-T as as a rapper, as an emcee. And then as Ice-T started to take this change of like the six in the mornings and, you know, kind of like real stories of, of life, like what it was in L.A., I could truly identify with it. Now, I didn't know about going to, you know, the Latin quarters, you know, in, in, in New York. But I knew about Crenshaw, you know, I knew about Compton, I knew about L.A., I knew about Skate Man. I knew about World on Wheels, I knew about Venice Beach. So when he came here, man, I didn't think I could love more. 

00:16:59:00
ARI FISHMAN:
And you talk about it being rebellious and sort of counterculture. And one thing I really like that you said was you knew you knew what somebody was into you just by the way they were dressed. 

00:17:10:00
BIG BOY:
Oh, yeah. 

00:17:11:00
ARI FISHMAN:
And I feel like that doesn't necessarily exist anymore. You know, everything is so minute, you know, through the Internet. But I think there was a time where people had a uniform and connect with people because of that. 

00:17:21:00
BIG BOY:
And hip hop had a look. You know, you look at it now for one hip hop was all you listening to that stuff, you know? It's a fad always. This is that. So you already had this stigma that came with you. Even just listening to hip hop, I remember being in high school and freestyling and rapping in the corner and getting called into the office, almost getting suspended because we're rapping in a corner as opposed to somebody else, is probably taking their lunch break and smoking. You're coming over here messing with us because we're rapping in a corner. But hip hop had a look, you know, and I could spot you from a mile away and, well, Miles crazy goes, who really sees a you? But I could spot you from a distance and know that you were into Hip-Hop by the way you looked. If I saw you with a Kangol, some gazelles. I knew that you were into hip hop. If I saw you with some Adidas, you know, with your shoestrings in or out. I knew you were in a hip hop if you had a bomber jacket on. I knew you were into hip hop. There was just this look that I knew. You're in the same club. Them that I'm in. Fast forward to where hip hop is now There's no look to it. You know, everybody does. And everybody level, which I love, where, you know, where hip hop is at now. But at one point, hip hop was like, oh, yeah. You, you, you. Oh, okay. Like, this is ours. This is ours. You identified with it and it made you want to either go up and battle rap somebody. I'll go up and say, Hey, man, have you heard the news? Such and such, you know, Or you get into these conversations or if you rhyme, you kick a freestyle. If you deejay, you ask a. Where did you get Your honor? Official It's time. And how do you cut? It was it was something that everybody didn't have. And for those that did have it, it was a very special club to be in, you know? And if you had a membership, you loved it and you loved the people that were involved with it as well. 

00:19:20:00
ARI FISHMAN:
And at this time, you you kind of knew in your head you wanted to be part of the hip hop game or the hip hop world, and you sort of started rapping about it, sort of the birth of Emcee Scratch. Yeah. At the time, maybe you could talk about like that. 

00:19:32:00
BIG BOY: 
So I always knew that I wanted to be around hip hop. I knew I wanted to, you know, everything. Hip hop. I wanted to rap. I was a deejay, You know, everything. You know, I would try to do graffiti. Everything that came with this culture. I wanted to be a part of it, you know? And so at one point, I started deejaying and I had, like, no equipment. You know, the my first piece of so called deejay equipment was like our home stereo that had the you know, it was like a piece of furniture, big wooden piece. Just the the record would. Drop down and it had no belt and. It would just hover. When I had another turntable on top of that. But that was my equipment. And I fell in love with. The art of of deejaying. And at one point, my sister was dating. My sister Sheila was dating a guy by the name of Roger Clayton. And Roger Clayton, they called a mr. Prince from a crew called Uncle James Army and Uncle James Army was huge. I mean, huge in L.A., there's people that can't sell out the sports arena. They sold out the sports arena numerous times on what they call jazz. There's a dance going on, an Uncle Jazz Army story. So I remember I asked Roger one day, I say, Roger, I said, Man, you know, I want a deejay. What kind of turntable should I get? I'm 13 years of age. He said, Well, if you're going to deejay, give you some technique. 1200s. And he might as well said, if you're going to, you know, get a car, get a Lamborghini. You know why? Because take me 1200s were the creme de la creme. It was you know, if you got them, you got them. But, you know, I'm a 13 year old kid with, you know, a paper out there knocking on people's doors asking do they want to subscribe to to even an Outlook newspaper? I'm thinking if I made 30 bucks, I was rich. But, man, it was always in my head. I got to get take me 1200. I got to get take me 1200. And once I got to that, I always just. I wanted to deejay. I wanted to rap, you know, And even my name before big boy, I used to call myself emcee, scratch and emcee Scratch. Oh, my God. To me, that was so clever. Like you hear Kanye West. Okay, nowadays, Kanye, J. Cole, Kendrick, those names. Salah Oh, man, those names sound empowering. When I came, when M.C. Scratch, you couldn't tell me shit. My emcee scratch was like, it was clever. It was like, do I rap? And I deejay. I can't believe nobody else is calling themselves Emcee Scratch. So Emcee was for the rapping. A scratch was for the deejaying. And I went and got an I.R.A. and Kit and put Emcee Scratch on my chest with the iron on letters. And you couldn't tell me anything until I went to a dance and I was sweating it out. And then later start falling off with. That's a part of the story that we won't get into. But yeah. I was, I was emcee Scratch and I lived it and I would stay on my turntables and I would just scratch you to my arms. Hurt you know. I love looking at DST and other deejays and, and, you know, Afrika Bambaataa and Zulu Nation and those kind of movements. Like I was just I would dive into this pool of hip hop all the time and I wanted to be a part of it. So would emcee Scratch That was like my way, like, okay, now I have a name. You know, no one knew it. You know, it was there, but I. Had a name and I was also identified with this thing called hip hop being emcee scratch. You know, thank God I shared that. Nakia You imagine. Radio right now, the emcee scratch in the morning, you know, scratch, scratch. You know. 

00:23:12:00
ARI FISHMAN:
I do love on your show. Now, when you ask people like, what do you think them to scratch? 

00:23:16:00
BIG BOY:
And they're like, Hey, man, Playboi Carti was like, who am I supposed to notice? Like, yeah, he's great. 

00:23:22:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Yeah, Yeah. He just went for a. 

00:23:24:00
BIG BOY:
Scratch and disrespectful piano, who's great. 

00:23:26:00
ARI FISHMAN:
You talk about kind of the hip hop clubs that, you know, during that era, people were there for the music or to kill. 

00:23:32:00
BIG BOY: 
Yeah. 

00:23:33:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Yeah, we just talk about that a little bit. And then around this time too, you met Will Smith for the first time. 

00:23:38:00
BIG BOY:
Right? I met Will Smith. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I met Will Smith early. Not when I got into radio, but I met Wil at a conference. But. But yeah, it was crazy because. I would go see these concerts like Run's House would Run DMC, and you know, it was Run DMC, Beastie Boys thing, Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. And I remember I would go to these concerts and I would have the most horrible seats, but I was in the building, in the building watching, you know, fresh face in the building and watching, you know, Dr. Dre and the Wrecking Crew and like just to be in the building and catching a bus to go to these hip hop concerts and hip hop clubs. And when you started to see that hip hop was a genre where you can go and we were having concerts, now we're having, you know, dances. There were clubs that was associated around it. I was able to kind of start going to these places a little bit, a little bit early. And now you can go to a casino. There probably is something that happens, you know, here and there. Somebody is probably drinking, things like that. But I remember early on hip hop shows, it was like there was a time when they didn't make it to the end. Sometimes, you know. There were countries that were extremely beautiful, but then there was concerts where you didn't see the headliner. You know, I remember in Long Beach at the Fresh Faced, it was like, you know, Run-D.M.C., Whodini, you know, And it was one of those nights where the headliners didn't make it on because, you know, it was either, you know, sometimes you go and it was a great night or sometimes you would go and it was a, you know, fist flying throughout the whole crowd, you know. But I and I enjoyed that, too. You know, if my son. Said, Dad, I want to go to a concert and I couldn't so-called guarantee his safety, I have an eye now, but I. I had to be there with someone. Talk about fresh face now. And like, oh, I remember fresh face. It happened in insurance policies with that hip hop back in to the arenas and all that. And I was like, Dude, I was there. You know what I'm saying? Like, I was there. So I enjoyed early concerts in, in in being a spectator in hip hop, you know, standing in line at, you know, one of the Bush and United Nations Iced Teas Club and, you know, Zulu and Rhyme syndicate and watching I download walking or watching Afrika Islam or, you know, seeing a Tribe Called Quest for first time. You know, those were the things that I was a spectator. And I waited in line and I paid to get in, you know. So because I loved I loved and I love hip hop. My I was I was there and I got there by any means necessary. I can't even recall being dropped off at the hip hop shows. You know, if it was a bus, I took the bus. I had to be there, had to be there, walk home from Hollywood because I had to be there. 

00:26:37:00
ARI FISHMAN:
And at the time, like it was sort of the rise of gangsta rap that became the colors came out of, I think, around then also. And like, I mean, it was a lifestyle for many, but also a sort of style in general. And you kind of got wrapped up in that, you know, a little bit in gang life, live in the style of it. Can you talk about that? 

00:26:53:00
BIG BOY: 
Well, I think early on when I'm. You know, there was a not that hip hop was a street element. It kind of depend on on where you were and where you were in your life. And with us, it was more when we were younger. You know, you just got to do things, you know. You know, you look. Back and say, why? Why did I do that? So was there affiliations? Yeah, definitely so, you know, definitely so. I remember when Colors came out, the movie colors. I remember we couldn't wait to get in there. It was a movie about. Los Angeles, Crips and Bloods. LAPD. And then you had colors, which was by Ice-T, one of the biggest songs, not that is celebrating gangbanging. But you took from colors whatever you took from if you were a Crip, that was your song. If you were blurred, that was your song. If you were just a spectator, that was your song. If you were a deejay, that was your song. If you're from L.A. in any surrounding areas, Colors was your song because you identified with it? You didn't. You know, it. Wasn't like the five boroughs of New York. This was like, Dude, this is right here what he's talking about. This dude is talking about LAPD, and I know what he's talking about. I've experienced what he's talking about. And I remember when the movie came out, I saw it at the Culver Theater in Culver City, and they literally had to have like, the crash force, LAPD, Culver City PD at a movie theater because they were anticipating, you know, fight. It's one of our first movies about L.A. gang bangin lifestyle. And everybody wanted to be there and everybody is. At some point, maybe you had an affiliation, maybe you was tripping over something. Maybe you were, you know, one foot in, you know, and you wanted to be there and you wanted to you wanted to celebrate this thing called, you know, gangsta rap. From from LA's point of view. And we were there. 

00:29:03:00
ARI FISHMAN:
There was a point where you kind of wearing the Dickies and the pants. 

00:29:06:00
BIG BOY:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. 

00:29:07:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Maybe just talk about it like. And your you talked about your name. 

00:29:12:00
BIG BOY:
You know. And even now you look at Ed, you know, hip hop or you look at the streets or whatever, and people say, oh, you know, I'm the son that, you know, blood used to look a certain way. Crips used to look a certain way, and they still do. But you see in hip hop, somebody say, oh, you know, you know, soon I'll be dog. And I'm like, Diana, such a such as a black. Because there. Was a look. That you had and there was a you know, there was a way that you dressed like I don't look now. And it could be some of the, you know, craziest B dogs, the craziest blooded. They were like skinny jeans and all kind of crazy shit, you know? And when you looked at the way it was back in the days, the same way that I could tell somebody. Was then hit into. Hip hop, the same way that I could tell what side of the tracks you were on where you're. You know, what could. You possibly were from, you know, even going to concerts if you wore certain things like we were literally sit there and say, okay, we got to be gangbang neutral and you had to know whose hood you was going to, not just red or blue. Maybe you couldn't wear gray. Maybe you couldn't wear green, maybe you couldn't. Wear light blue because what hood you were walking into. So you knew. Those things as well. But you could you could spotty. And I remember when I started getting intrigued by, you know, you go and you grab, you know, your Dickies, you're going grab your penalty. And there was a look that you had to have, you know. And I remember one time I was walking out the house and I was I was the king of iron. And my, my, my, my khakis in crease in them and hidden. I knew how to hit them with starch so they didn't look crazy. Excuse me. Shiny. And I was wearing some Dickies and I was wearing a penalty and some house shoes. And I went to walk out my house and I remember my wear as she looked at me. And then she just went like this. And even walking out, I felt a little light all day out. But it didn't stop me. But I knew that look wasn't like I was going to go play a varsity high school football game. It was a look of Nah, baby. You know what I'm saying? And that stayed in my head. Did it stop me immediately? No, but it gave me, like, a checkpoint and I got me a curve that damn you trippin a little bit. But, you know, you have, you know, one foot in your household where it's like, you know, I always respected my mom. But I also had this this thing on the street that I that I love to I love being outside. I love being a part individual. That's a part of something like I, I enjoyed that. I enjoyed, you know. Not the danger. Of it, but, you know. I enjoyed my partners and homies. I enjoyed this thing. You know, this this, this lifestyle. You know, I didn't glorify it into this day. I don't you know, when I wrote my book, I touched on it. When I'm on radio, I don't it's not that I'm running from it. I just don't want to be defined or that be my intro, you know, former whatever, whatever turned radio starred I FTA, you know, somebody. I was there and everybody was doing it. Everybody was doing everybody around me, you know. And it was crazy because even early on, like I see people now and here, you know, just getting in at 25 and 20 and they got millions of dollars in all. I do like why are you it you know but did it to each their own but I remember sixth grade. We graduated, that's when you would graduate from sixth grade. Then you went to junior high school. When you were in the seventh. And I remember in sixth grade that summer, from sixth grade to seventh grade, we all came back looking different. And that last for, you know, four years, you know. 

00:33:15:00
ARI FISHMAN:
And sort of a theme in your life is kind of being at the crossroads, narrowly avoiding the wrong path. Right. And, you know, whether it comes from a higher power or however you interpret it, there is a moment where your friends ask you to come along with you to, like steal a car or something like that, and somebody's getting killed. Yeah. That was a moment where you realized, like, you had this, you know, some something was watching you. 

00:33:36:00
BIG BOY:
Yeah. It was always something. And it's crazy because it is day. I think back to how sometimes it was just like something divine that kept me away from a lot. At one point, when we were homeless, we were living in a place in a place called the Sunlight Mission in Santa Monica. And you went to church like 3 or 4 times a week. And one day I was at church. I went to go up to to the front to pray. As I'm walking back up the aisle. I'm literally looking. At the path that I'm walking. I couldn't drop my hair for what felt like a millisecond, just probably looking at my footing. Boom. There was a lady in front of me and I didn't see this lady walk from, you know, the other direction. She didn't come from another pew section. So you just boom in front of me. And she looked at me and she said, Don't let the devil get you. And I'm ten years of age, but I felt. I felt something could have been church. Whatever I'm got, I got this feeling it wasn't a Holy Ghost, but I felt. The impact of those words. And as I started to get older. Anything that I did, you know, Gray bad making a decision I thought back to. Don't let the devil get you. I still think about that to this day. I think about honoring my mom. I think about when my mom, you know, shook her head when I walked out the house trying to trying to dress a certain way. So I've always had. You know, I've had enough close calls that. I felt, Why did God give me out of that? You know, whatever it is, you know, why didn't get in a car? Why did I escape the bullets? Why? You know, everybody around me is doing 20, 25 years. You know, I got buddies. You know, a lot of my buddies just started getting out at the same time for doing it 25 and 38, 20 to 30 year beads. Right. And I always say, man, it felt like. Someone else was could pay my tuition in to the school of experience my. I wasn't. And not that I wasn't a knucklehead. I wasn't stupid because they weren't I just knew. Like, I don't think I'm going to go do that. You know, I had the wherewithal and I would hear my mom and I knew my mom wasn't on board for how much I was tripping or how much I could have tripped in my life off. So just so many, like close calls. I remember one time it was some buddies of my and they were like a, you know, just general conversation man, which again, internally embargoed vehicle. Get this car. We've got to go come up. Do you want to go with us now? You know what I'm saying? Do I want to come up? Yeah. Do I want to do something wrong to make some money? Now I'm straight, you know, And then it's these two guys and I'm like, No, I'm good. So the next morning I'm taking my nephew to school and I see those two guys. And I asked him, I say, Hey, man. I say, Did you guys come up last night? And they were like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We came up here. Okay. I left it there. Take my nephew. Didn't say what you all get. Didn't do an interview. Just. Okay, cool. You know, not knowing that they went and killed somebody for the car and ended up getting arrested and doing over 25 years in prison, you know, and changing their whole life. One of my buddies, man, he came to see me when I was in radio. I love him, bud. They said that when the police found him, they took the baby. He was at the hospital. They took the baby out of his arms to arrest him and send him to prison. And I get those. I've had those close calls where I was like, Damn, that could have been me. You know, I was almost in the car so many times, you know. Situation that could have been worse than what they turned out. You know, I was involved with things where I was like, Man, you you got to stop, you know? And I knew that I was destined to do and be more. And there was always something in the back of my head was, I do don't mess this up. Don't mess this up. Don't mess this up. And I remember talking with my mom. And my mom was a believer. She believed in her kids, you know. And I remember speaking with my mom. And literally, we were homeless. And I told my mom, I said, mom. I said, one day I want to buy your house and no one evict you ever again. And my mom looked at me. She said, I know you will, baby. We're in a motel. You know. She's thinking of how does she pay this rent? And I still go to work on the bus overnight like real things. She could have said, Come on, baby. I don't. I don't feel like hearing that right now. You know, but when she said, I know you will, that empowered me. You know, Mom, I want to do this. I want to be an actor. She went and got me all these acting books. Now you got to think. She still has six more kids that she got to do this for as well. She got to invest in their dream. She got to talk to them. And there is not a brother or sister of mine that can say, mom loved you more. I can't say that to them. And they can't say that to me, you know. And any time that I felt like I was, you know, off of my path or, you know, stepping out of the square, I remember those days. I remember her saying, I know you will, you know. And when you fast forward and make some right decisions, you know, but you also got to crash the car. I've crashed the car many times. You know what I'm saying? I just didn't crash the car for. Life altering moments, you know? Yeah. Knock you off your square a little bit. But I always knew I was like, Man, I'm on a mission. You know, I got I got to take care I to the same way. I just been taking care of us. You know, my mom grew up hard. My mom grew up, lost her mom at birth, you know, giving birth to my mom. So that was something that the family put on her. Her father was murdered when she was four. You know, they would relative they didn't really take care of her working since she was 15 years of age. My mom had a hard life, so it wasn't up to me or her kids to make her life harder. Did we add some points? Yes, we did. We're kids. You know, we're kids. And she had a lot of them. But it was my. Job. My responsibility to make sure that. You don't have to worry anymore. And by my mom's house and giving her the keys to her house and telling her, then again, you'll never be evicted again. My mom owned that house till my mom died. My family owns that house to this day. And that was because I had a dream. You know? I stayed focused. You know, sometimes it got blurry, sometimes in my head when I do. This, you know.  You know, and get right back into it. You know, I just knew that that that I felt like I had a I had a different purpose. 

00:41:09:00
ARI FISHMAN:
So just going back a little bit around this time to you came up with the name Big Boy friend of yours. This is maybe suggests that scratch was. A good way.  To maybe just talk about that story. 

00:41:19:00
BIG BOY:
Oh, yeah. The retirement of of emcee Scratch. Which emcee Scratch could have been a legacy as well. You know what I'm saying? I believe in emcee Scratch, but there was a gentleman by the name of Augie Johnson. And Augie Johnson was in a group. He was a leader of a group called Side of Fate. And Augie lived in the same condominium complex that we lived in. And my family knew of Augie. I knew of Augie. And there was Augie Johnson as Augie Johnson in August 8th and one of the buildings where we were living at. So I would see.  Them and, you. Know, and then I was cool with their son, Damon. And one day, Damon was like, you know, telling his dad or, you know, Curt raps, you know, emcee scratch raps, you know. And so one day, Augie being Augie say, man, you know, Hey, bro, let me hear something. So I'm, you know, I'm spit in my little thing, my emcee scratch thing, and, you know, good job. I'm not thinking anything other than damn Augie hearing me rap. And so fast forward, he would believe, like, he's the first one that put me in a limousine. He's the first one that I got, you know, a promo pictures from. He saw these this kid at 15 years of age and all. You would tell me, April, you're going to be a star. You're going to be a star. And I'm hearing from my mom, you know, do what you're going to do, your special, those kind of things. And then somebody from I didn't have to go outside of my household to find, you know, role model inspiration. I saw my mom put Polish on her shoes to make her shoes look more white. I saw her get on the bus and ride a bus to work, you know, three hours before she had to be there. So I saw inspiration in my mom. Now I have a guy outside that's telling me, man, you're going to be a star. You're going to be a star. And so. I'm. Scratch. You know, soon to be this legend and all. He calls me one day, Are we talking? He was like, Yeah, man, I think we need to change your name. And I'm thinking like, how dare you from scratch. You know, saying like, how do you do? I do. I have a couple of letters on my on my, my, my sweatshirt still, you know, I still got the. R and D or something that didn't fall off. And so he was like, Yeah, man. I'm just gonna start calling you big boy. And I'm like, Big boy, what the fuck? You know, and every. Time, you know, and it wasn't long, it was just big boy, a big boy. We go, we don't go over here, big boy, Big boy. And I remember he told me, he said. You got to have a name that people would recognize you as soon as they walked into the room. And to this day, I still use that same thing where it's like, what separates you from the room? I wasn't thinking about all people Don't call you fat Boy. He's calling you babe because you're you're you're obese. You're overweight. It was a term of endearment that I took. And I'm seen where it came from. And it was the birth of Big Boy, you know, Emcee Scratch took me as far as I could. And then Big Boy at 15, 16 years of age from Augie was just one of them things where I lived it. I love being big Boy. And at the time, Augie was working with records and records for those that know, you know, locally. Radio legend, syndicated legend, disco Doug TV shows like Records is and was, you know, one of the biggest names in radio. And Augie had a project with the word records. And records wanted to do that. Good love and good love and song over, but he wanted to rap in it as well. So Augie was like, Man, I need you to come to the studio. You got to write something for records. And I'm like, Oh, man, Rick, please. So I going to write this thing up, you know, And then I give them a learner tape because Augie was going to do the rap. So I give them a learner tape. And Augie was like, I thought Augie was going to do the rap. And he was like, double. You got. To do it. I'm like, I'm about to be on a record. Like, you can't. I can't tell you what that felt like to be on a record. And so I go to the studio, one of my this is my first time in studio, but I felt like I was so prepared that I was just ready. I knew that there was an opportunity there. And I remember Augie asked me, he said, man, he said, you know, rap form right now. And I remember I was like, Oh, man, I'm not going to rap. And I remember Augie took me to a sign he's there. And he said, You probably get one chance, one opportunity to do it and always be ready. So I was always ready. So when he told me to pop up over at Radio Studio and cut that track. I was like, All right, I'm ready. I did it. And the craziest thing to this day. I'll still look at that album cover because the album is called Records The White Album. And on the back it says Rap by Kurt, Big Boy Alexander. And I would stare at this thing like Kurt, Big Boy Alexander. And that's why when I got my Hollywood star, my Hollywood star is Kurt Big Boy Alexander because I am Kurt Alexander. I am big boy. And looking back at that first album, I was like, This is it. That was that brought me so much entertainment, Joy, that I had to live with it. 

00:46:44:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Maybe you could kind of just talk about at this point in life are gaining a little bit more. 

00:46:48:00
BIG BOY:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. The name. 

00:46:50:00
ARI FISHMAN:
And you didn't really you didn't really know. It didn't mean anything to you because it was kind of accepted in your community and like, it didn't seem like an issue. 

00:46:57:00
BIG BOY:
Yeah. And even with the name Big Boy, the name Big Boy didn't feel like, Oh, they're teasing you, They're making fun of you, you know? And it's crazy because. A big boy, I. I could see the weight gain. It wasn't by 2 pounds, you know. When you got to the the size that I was, I would count my size by Xs. Like you could probably look and say, anyone out there can say, oh man, I put on 7 pounds, I put on 10 pounds. I wouldn't know if I put on 7 or 10 pounds. The way that I would know that I gained weight is by the Xs in my shirt. And so with me, if someone an extra large, you say, Oh, we're an exhale. And my biggest moment I was in eight X. So you don't. Say extra, extra, extra. But I was in eight x in eight. X means extra! Extra, extra, extra, extra, extra, extra, extra large. But at that time, when I'm big, boy at 15 is 16. I'm gaining weight and I'm comfortable in my skin because this person is probably big. You know, I'm the I'm. The cool. Guy. I'm the guy that can still get a girl. And I'm also the guy that will punch you in your mouth. So, dude, I wasn't the guy that was teased. I wasn't the butt of your. Jokes because people knew that I would fly your head off your shoulders. You know, even when. I would talk me. Out. Could be always someone by 100, 200 pounds. And I'm calling them fat. And I'm like, you know, when you start to think about it like, Oh, bro, you're much bigger. But it wouldn't come out of their mouths because I always kind of held my own. Then you think like. Hmm. You know, you get older and you're like, Man, were. You really that comfortable? I wasn't, you know. But at the time, while we're speaking on it, I enjoyed being big boy, You know, if I needed to, you know, get a t shirt, I went up in extra X And you got to think when I'm talking about being a big guy, being a big kid, the first time I heard somebody say. Do you gain in weight? Oh, you got big. You're fat. I was five years old. My sisters, they went up to the Bay Area. Well, I guess some relatives that we had up there and they were gone for like three months for the summer. And when my sister Sheila came back, she like, oh, her. She said, Oh, you got a little fat. That was the first time I heard something about fat. First time I heard you gained weight, all that. So from there on, whatever I weighed then up until, you know, I'm over 500 pounds, I just got bigger and got bigger and got bigger. And you look at people now and there's a lot of big kids and big, you know, younger adults and really teens, preteens. There's some big kids out there. When I was in the fourth grade, I weighed 133 pounds. That probably sounds crazy to some people now because some kids weigh that now. But. Kids can weigh 133 pounds. When I was nine, when I was in the seventh grade, my P.E. outfit was an exhale. These kids that were exhales now because, you know, the food is different and lifestyles are different. But when I was in Exhale, I bought the only exhale that was at the school. You know. If there was others. I know I got the last one. I don't know if you ever had the other ones, but I got the last Exhale gym outfit, top and bottom. So I always was the big guy. I was always gaining, gaining weight. And then there are things where. You know, you. Did at that age notice that what everybody else was wearing, you probably couldn't wear because it didn't come in your size. And either naivete or being ignorant or not even knowing or just, you know, not being comfortable enough, just kind of shrugging it off. You know, I was also the king are laughing now. I would shrug it off. I was shrug it off, not knowing that with gaining a weight, I was gaining also this baggage. And and I was gaining the these patterns as I was gaining weight and I was learning how to. Not really let it affect me until I got older and realized like, you have a lot of patterns from even your childhood of your your weight gain obesity. 

00:51:40:00
ARI FISHMAN:
So this time you got you got some big like some medium breaks with like Rick D's. And that's where some things are happening for you. But you still need to make some money. So you decide to turn to selling drugs a bit. One thing that really struck me was that you were selling drugs, that you were doing it with, like a conscience. Like that? Something in your head that was there? Can you just talk about that kind of area? 

00:51:59:00
BIG BOY:
I definitely was the. The conscious hustler. You know what I'm saying? The one that they knew was wrong. But how do I find the right in it? You know, probably even just lying to myself, you know? But there were times when, yeah, I did hustle and buy Hudson, and I mean, I did. I did everything, you know, I sold. I sold dope. I sold drugs. I did the credit card fraud. I did the phone the phone game with hooking up the phones, you know, But I always would do like, man, I've dealt with this, you know, Then I come back to it, you know, I never and it's crazy because even when you so-called hustling, there's this other thing was like, oh, man, you know, I'm not strong arming nobody. I'm not, you know, taking something from someone. But you are, you know, and I knew that what I was doing, I knew it was wrong, you know, and saying you need it doesn't make it right. You know, like if I couldn't go to my mom and say, mom, you know, I sell drugs, then I knew that I was doing something totally behind her back. So I would have my, you know, deejay equipment. And, oh, man, I got to go to a party tonight just to justify these tools, infuse this little money that I was that I was making without having without having a job. And I'm the type of person that I could throw. I try to throw everything up against a wall and whatever I do, I'm like, Man, I won't be successful in it. I try and I knew I could have been a very successful drug dealer, you know? And what does that lead you to? You know, would I lead me to, you know, being able to lead me to jail? Definitely. But I knew that I could do it. The only thing that held me back from being that top dog, the so-called kingpin, was my mom. My mom, mom, you know. My sister Charlene. They were just some things that I knew wasn't going to fly, no matter how broke we were, no matter if there was a struggle going on. My mom didn't want her money or her son to do that, you know, So I hustled with a conscious, you know. I hustled with. With the level of I'm not I'm not going to. You know. Go past this, you know, And even with that, you know, just the close calls of knowing like the either the ride and dirty or something that, you know, that's on your person that shouldn't be on you or even, you know, somebody getting a hint of what you're doing. You know, I still live with my mom. I still had a, you know, lived in a community, you know, and. I had a you know, I had enough close calls, Dad. Not scared me straight, but it is a straight me up like I, you know. You know, I knew I was doing wrong. And even to this day, my when I talk to people, you know, I was a bodyguard for the far side. You know, that's that's what I tell people. That's what I was when I got into radio. I don't paint a picture. I don't run from it. But I don't glorify a past like that. You know, there's some people that say, oh, you know, I was cussing, I did this, Then I fell into music and I fell into that. And I control the narrative. You know, my family's a lot of my family members, they know that I sold drugs. They read it in my book. They didn't know because I didn't want to dishonor, which I was already, but I didn't want my mom and my sisters to know that their brother, you know, her son or their baby brother was doing this. So with me, I always tried to change the narrative. I'm not lying to anyone because I did it and I did it well and I did it for a while. And when I was stop, I would go back to it. I knew how to do it. I knew that if things got slow or rough, I knew how to make money. But I also knew that it was it was in me, you know, But I did it. And I, like I say, I did it well. And if you look at anything with my bio, my bio says former bodyguard for the far side. If I would have tried to do this whole keeping it real and for the for the public and said, you know, this is what I used to do it for, so you can look at me like I'm just, oh, man, I used to do this and I used to do that. I would have never that would have been my full intro. My intro would have been as opposed to Far side bodyguard turned, you know, radio guy my for intro any time somebody brought me out on stage or brought me on a program, it would have been former drug dealer turned radio star. And I didn't want that. You know, I knew what I was. I knew what I was doing. But that's not who I am for you to define me at that time, not knowing it was going to be 30 years later, I still we do a radio, but even at that time, my first contract when I was hustling, we hit the hustle. There's some people, you know, like saying we I was talking about you can see hip hop. You know what I'm saying? You could see gangbanging. You could see that. You could see the. Hustle, too. But we hear the hustle as opposed to what you see now. You know, rapping about is singing about it. You doing interviews, talking about it, bro. That was that was that would have been goofy stuff to us. We didn't we didn't do that. So I tried to control the narrative as much as I could. And I still get uncomfortable with talking about it. And like I said, it's not about running from, it is just that. It's a lot to continue to talk about. When you knew they used or some other stuff back there, you know, but it's a part of my my past. It made me who are you know, is a piece of who I am today, you know, And I can't sit here and tell you that I didn't enjoy it like I enjoy. Cooking up crack. I enjoyed it, you know. But I also enjoyed life to where I was like, Man, you got to stop this. And I'm literally seeing people I know, you know, getting ten years and 15 years. And then, you know, it was looked at totally different. So, you know, if you had a certain amount of powder cocaine, you walked out. If you had crack, it was it was a different thing. So I knew that I couldn't do this forever, you know, And I saw people that was with me. I saw them go from sugar to shit. I saw them go from the big dog until I damn I what we hustling for. If you could only enjoy it for a year and then get 30 years, you know. 

00:58:53:00
ARI FISHMAN:
One more example of just like being on your side is the story about how the cops pulled you over and you had a crack in the rim of your hat. Can you tell that story? 

00:59:02:00
BIG BOY:
When I was talking about like the close calls, right, and being nervous because you had something on you. I remember one time I. I was walking, literally walking to go serve someone, Right. And I had I had a cap on. And in the cap, the little rim of the hat, the little sweating room. I had some toe pieces stuck in there, like probably 3 or 4 of them. And I'm walking to go sell this in Culver City PD pull up on me. And I mean, they just like a movie kind of on a curb. And, you know, I'm scared they jump out. And I got it on me. In your head. Instantly, you're already thinking I'm going to jail. You know, Sam, I. This. This. God damn, this is it. And so when one of the officers and. I know her by name and I don't call her by name, she was I. Guess she said a Kirk. Guess what I heard. And I'm like, What? She said, I heard that you sell drugs and I'm doing my mouth now. You know, And I'm sitting here with cocaine in my head. Drug a dude. I remember they took my hat in when they was about to search me. They took my hair and she they smashed it off my hair. And when they smashed off my head, the top of my head and they just thoroughly start a search of me, thoroughly searches, searches, searching, you know, and. After they search me, they found nothing. But it's in my heart. Then when I went to go get my hat, she pulled my hat up. And when I saw her stick her hand in. To that rim, this waiting room.  She ran. And I'm like, Damn, this is it. And I'm calculating time and how much I had. And I see her take her hand if she's rubbing it through like this. And she makes a complete circle. Then she goes back in again. Then she flips it down and she Patsey. Then she puts it back together. Hands you my hand. I'll take my hat. I put it on. Good. Get out of here. I just started walking, like, slow, though. And what happened was when they snatched my hat off the force of them snatching my head off and scaring of me. The cocaine flew out the head. And they didn't even. Think like, Oh, let's go over here and let's check. They didn't do any of that. They just when she leaned down and picked it up and that. Right. The I was like, there it is. Don't let the devil get you there. It is that there's somebody putting a ring of protection around you because you supposed to do better. You supposed to be different, You supposed to be everything. The pillar in your community, the person in your family. Like you're not supposed to be this guy. I felt that, but it wasn't immediate. Like all my things with me, there's no light switch. Light switch. You know, like, I got it. I'm. Stop it. Everything with me is more of a dimmer. You know, it's like. Okay, I'm. All right. It's getting bright. Then I come to arrive at I've got to stop. But that wasn't a thing that immediately made me stop. Would have in that that close call, you know. And and I've had others. 

01:02:21:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Talk about, I guess Paul Stewart is kind of how you just talk about him and how how you met a lot of rappers through him and then that kind of like. 

01:02:28:00
BIG BOY:
Yeah, Paul Stewart man. Paul Stewart is the white boy from Crenshaw. Paul Stewart is responsible for so many careers, you know, Coolio, Warren G, Cypress Hill, the Far side, you know, House of Pain and the list goes on. And I'm talking about responsible for these people. And so Paul Stewart went to school with my sisters, my sister Sheila and Sheryl. But I didn't know Paul. I didn't know Paul from there. I just knew Paul as DGP. He was a DJ on the scene and I was a deejay, so I would rent equipment from Paul, and Paul started working, you know, with power move, you know, promotions. So he had powerful promotions, last powered power move production. He started promoting records. And he's finding these, you know, these new artists that you never that you never heard of before you started working with, you know, Ice Cube over a lynch mob like Paul was in the business, further in the business that we wanted to be. And so he was like our connection to to being on the other side of the Hip-Hop Barricade. He was in there. He was in the office, he was in the meetings. You know, he knew people. And so with Paul Steward, he was just always a guy that shared with you and he shared his knowledge and everything, even my career, you know, my career with Paul, it was like Paul, you know, the Baker boys, the Baker boys. He didn't he didn't discover the Baker boys. But so many people from the history. You were either a branch of Paul in this that. So Paul was one of those guys, man, that just showed me. The laminate. He showed me the backstage, you know, he showed me. You know. What an office look like when you're in this thing called hip hop. And so, Paul, just one of those guys that kind of put me here. And there was a rap group that, you know, went to the East Coast and they had a problem with, you know, some people in, I think, New New York and they got jumped, you know. And Paul knew me and he knew that, you know, I was a big guy. He knew I took martial arts. He knew I was good with my hands. And I also had a level head. I wasn't a bully. I didn't grab people. And I never used my size to hurt someone. You know, I wasn't offensive. My defense was immaculate, but I wasn't offensive. And he said, hey, you know, I got this group. They just got, you know, into an altercation in New York. I was like, yes, I know he's a major. Do you think that you can go out with them and do security? Of course, within two hours. Some guys call it the far side, like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So at the time, the far side was just kind of bubbling in L.A. And we had like a bubble of like, far side freestyle fellowship, you know, guys from the good life. And so the far side started to, you know, go on the road a little bit. They dropped a record call your mama and I'm experiencing hip hop now from the other side. And I'm watching this thing grow. That's the first time I'm on the tour bus. The first time I'm really on a plane. I'm at a soundcheck. Growing up, I never had my own room. Now I'm on the road and I have a key to a hotel room. I experience so much from being on the road with the far side, and it was the greatest guys to be with because they were so happy to be a group. They were so happy to be from Los Angeles. They weren't, you know, so-called knuckleheads. They were they were, you know, just happy on life dance on stage. And, you know, and at this time, it's like, you know, it's gangster rap over here. But you look over here and it's just this different vibe of West Coast that's going on. And I was able to be a part of that from the ground up. And once they got to, you know, bizarre Ride to the Far side, the full album and passing me by far sides, it became this phenomenon. And we were out on the road for two years, two years with me. But they they didn't stop. And I saw so much from this group because of a guy by the name of Paul Steward. I just happen to say, Hey, man, do you want to go out with this guy? Say, well, my guy, fuzzy, fuzzy. To this day, you know, I was with Fozzy last night. He was the sound man. You know, and. Us sitting on a tour bus, driving. Through the. Country and seeing how big America is, is seeing this thing called hip hop. And I think that's what made me want it even more, because I was able to witness what other people had and not in an envious way or jealousy. I was just like, Dude, they're on. And I wanted to be on. I knew I didn't want to be a bodyguard for the rest of my life. There was. There was this. They gave me this. I was I was too much of an entertainer to be not just the bodyguard, because there's people that know that that's what they do and they do it well. I just knew that I you know, I wanted to be an entertainer. I wanted to be when I would look at them on the mic, I'd be like, Damn, I want to be on my music. So it was it was in like I say, I wasn't envious. There wasn't jealousy. It was more like looking at like, Damn, I want that too. And I had this different urge and is different, this different fire. And they were so inclusive with freestyle. And then you see something, they never talk to you like, Oh, you're just security, you know, we laugh. We joked we were together was a brotherhood. We had each other's backs. A lot of times when you go somewhere, it was us against the world. Not in a bad way, but we knew that we had a responsibility to get these guys home and that we all made it home safe, you know? 

01:08:26:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Right. And just going back to like how you whatever job you're doing, you commit to that job you talked about just like knowing tic words and different like cities. 

01:08:33:00
BIG BOY:
Oh yeah. 

01:08:34:00
ARI FISHMAN:
And can you talk about, like, kind of. 

01:08:36:00
BIG BOY:
Oh, yeah. And I think that I was savvy enough, you know, my I was early on with knowing if you go somewhere like. What's your what's your tic word here? What's the word? And you stay away from you know, you can go to the Bay Area, Bay Area, they say Bloods but then you go to L.A. maybe, you know, st, maybe you go somewhere else, you know, St Louis or whatever. But there's different words, you know, you don't say King here, you don't say, folks, you don't say So not out of paranoia. But I was st enough to say, okay, you know what's going down here? I was street enough to count the exit exits and know how we're going to get out of here. I knew how to make sure that the that the car was turned. You know, back there. So we if something went down, we could. We could drive out. This is my first bodyguard in G. This not the bodyguard. This is the streets that I was able to say, let me bring this to here. So we knew. Don't take pictures in the room. Don't give autographs on hotel stationery. It was small things like that that kept us safe. And you will see other people get caught up in like I see somebody else sometimes if you're not paying your own, someone else can pay your tuition into the school of experience. And you look at that and you say, okay, so you see how they messed up. And I was good enough to have some guys that did that did listen. You know, we were all the same age. We were all peers, but everybody kind of brought the same thing. You know, if I did my gig, they trusted me enough, you know, the way I trusted that they would get on the mike and do an amazing show, you know, And we were just family and and family kind of we kind of rode together. But yeah, I always made sure that I knew exactly where the hell we were at, you know? And it wasn't about cell phones, you know, as far as videos back then. And you could just go on the Internet and just Google something, but you had to really be on turf and you had to talk to people to understand exactly where you were at. You know, I remember one time we were in D.C. and I went to go walk and I'm thinking I'd never been to Washington, D.C. I just know the White House is here, you know, oh, man, I go to the front of the hotel and I'm like, man, I said, you know, I want to walk to get something to eat. My mom was like, Oh, I don't think you should walk out here. I'm like, What? He said, Well, if you're going to go walk and get something, he said, Turn left, don't turn right. And I'm thinking, I what? D.C. has hoods. Which is such naivete for a do for California that I'm thinking we bang it.  But then I realized the more we travel, the more a lot of places we just like L.A. And not that you're nervous, but you also had to you know, you had to be on your swivel and you had to be able to look around and understand that these people are just like where you're coming from. And there's you know, there's one of these areas in every city and state for. 

01:11:22:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Can you tell the Danny story. 

01:11:24:00
BIG BOY:
Being from L.A., you know, Los Angeles in which is L.A. is a melting pot. You know, I had never went anywhere where we are. I was like really racially challenged. Like, really there's some people that grew up and they just heard certain things because that's just the way it was. That's the law of the land. That's where you're from. South, whatever it is. You just heard different things that I didn't hear in L.A. not that I didn't know that that was going down. You know what I'm saying? It's just that sometimes people weren't as stupid or as bold enough to say it here, you know, or you just wasn't around it because they weren't comfortable enough to say here. And I'm not talking about how people use the N-word as a term of endearment. I don't use the N-word at all. I'm talking about using words that was really cut from the cloth of hate. So we were in Dayton, Ohio, and we were at a Denny's and we were in such a small area as far as like location that when you call from the the hotel or the motel. Room service, a Denny's. That's how small this place where they had a share of. You know, we're. uys from L.A. not knowing how small. And if we're not in Dayton, we're not outside some little small town. And so I'm. We're walking into a Denny's and my whole team is in there. I'm walking up. The far side is in there. Our guy, Rick, who does merchandizing, he's in there. And I notice that Rick, I look and he's I can tell that he's having like a confrontation, like altercation with someone. I could tell about a mannerisms on his face. I know what I do, what's going on with Rick. And so now with me is me and the other bodyguard by the name of Seal. So Rick comes over and he is like. I'm like, See? I say, Rick, what's happening, man? He hit a call me man. He's white boys on some prejudiced stuff, you know, saying the real word's escalating, you know? And I'm like, What? So I'm from L.A., I'm 400 pounds. You know what I'm saying? Like what? So I. We walk over there and it was one dude. And I'm like, six one, you know, And I'm big as a house. And we walk over and I'm L.A. and these guys, you know, like a manager. I have a problem. With my homeboy over here. And my man looked at me. A he stood up. I'm six one, probably wearing some shoes. They got another. And Johnny, you know, my man looked at me when he stood up. He was probably five seven if that. My man stood up and said. What you say, boy? And I'm looking. Down at this dude. I'm like, Man, what the fuck? This dude up. And usually where first he's, you know, first. He. Said. If any of you guys got a. Problem, we'll be right over there. So now I'm like, Man, I go and I stand up and I expand my body. And I look over. And I'm over. It is do. I'm 6162. He's five, six, five, seven. On a good day. My man looked up at me. He said. I said. If any of you fucking boys. Have a. Problem, will be the fuck over there. And this dude got his girl and his. Buddies and walked right between us. Escorting his girls. Right between us and my boys. So we call C.O. Time Bomb. Oh, I see. Hold on for a second, because our tour manager, Suave. Suave was at the hotel. So I say let's go talk to Suave real quick, bro. Go to Suave. I'm like, suave. I say, bro, I say to some white dudes over there doing some racy shit, man. He's like, What's up? I mean, we've got to go fuck them up. He goes like, Let's go. So I literally go and I put on some steel toed boots, put my shit together. We're walking back and as we're walking back up to the Denny's. We see those same guys walking back in, right? Man in my hair thinking, I don't know, Ohio. I don't know if it's open carry or if they have a gun or if they went to the car to get knives. I'm from L.A. and we don't give a shit. So the ladies walk into the restaurant. And the guys are kind of trailing behind him and I'm thinking, it's me. Suave. So we just go, you know, get him in a certain way. Seal who we call a time bomb. He didn't wait for nothing. He just walked up. And I remember he took both his hands and it was two guys and he just pushed him in a face hard bow. And I just thought his. Blood shoot on the window. So now it's on me and we just start taxing, beating the shit out. These motherfuckers I'm talking about. We beaten the fuck out of them. I had never experienced no racism. I had never heard as I'm walking somebody say the N-word. You know, like that challenging. We and I remember one. Guy, big guy on the ground, and he was on his hands and knees. And I and I'm big and I. Knew my. Punch back then. I'm trying to hit this. Motherfucker. In in his face. And as I'm hitting him, he's doing this and I'm trying to, like, get these choice shots. But he every time he's ducking. So I'm hitting him in his head, hitting him in his face. And then when he was on his hands and knees, he had all this open. It's hard. I mean, I took my boot and I just kicked him right in his ribs and I thought, oh. And I kick them again about third kick. I felt like his whole size just went to mush. We beat the shit out of them and left them there. And I remember the girls who they walked through us. I remember they were crying in the window trying to get out. And I hate telling this story because it sounds so fucking crazy. But Suave was holding the door. Laughing at them like you thought these dudes was going to protect you on this racist shit. And look at these motherfuckers on the ground out here. And so I remember we ran back to the hotel. And we had to go wake up our bus drivers. Like, you know, this just happened, This just happened. And our bus driver, you know, they could drive by time. He could have just said, nah, I'm going to leave. No, I can't. Man, we snuck out of that little town. I'm talking about you, Tom. I was spooked. We're you know, we were bad in Denny's. But when it was time to get out of there, do we sleep in our stuff? On the bus? Got on the bus. And I remember our bus driver said, close the curtains. So we had the curtains closed. We got a Caucasian driver. They don't know that we're a rap group. None of that. Right. And I remember looking out the window, and it was just, you know, how if you would. LAPD's you see, the sheriffs is all the. Cars that look the same. It was like a Burgundy car. Like they called all these it must have. Been all these other areas to come and get us. And, man, we were on that bus. I'm talking about. If we were breathing. We were breathing nice. Like, scared. I'm looking at all these lights. I got the curtain opened, just the piece. And I'm looking at how chaotic this area look because it's just a big parking lot hotel in a Denny's motel in a Denny's. So I'm looking at all the lights and everybody standing outside and we're so quiet, is so scared. And we're driving off. And I'm telling you, we're literally not looking at each other. Not talking. Get out the parking lot. Driving down just a little bit, hit the highway. We feel that the bus is, you know, picking up speed, picking up his miles per hour when we felt like we got far enough. We. Yeah, that's what the fuck we talk about. That's what we do. The fucking scared black motherfucker is in the parking lot. But now, when we knew that we were good and we got out, man, the that ignorance celebration was. Was was amazing worldwide. Yeah, that was one of those. Things where I was like, Dude, that was my first time not knowing that it didn't exist. My mom grew up in the South. My mom's from, you know, Jackson, Mississippi. She heard everything. Two, four, six, eight. We don't want to integrate inwards. Go home. I know, I know my history. But I had never experienced that light right here in my chest. You know what I'm saying? And. And we dealt with it. I don't. He would deal with it the same way. But sometimes you can't turn the other cheek. Sometime you got to turn the other cheek. And that's what we did. 

01:20:21:00
ARI FISHMAN: 
You said there was this moment that was like the final moment for you. Yeah. I guess this is around this time that this happened. 

01:20:26:00
BIG BOY:
Yeah, this is, yeah. Running around the far side. So I'm with the far side. And the far side was they had a show in the Bay Area. And I had flights booked for us to go to the bay. We're looking at TV and it's like, yeah. O.J. Simpson is on A405 and O.J. Simpson got a gun to his head and he's way, you know, Cowlings in it. And now we're watching this O.J. unfold on the 4 or 5 fellows. We got to go get on the plane. Hold on. I'll be glad we got to watch this. Because. There is no getting in the car. You know, looking at it on your phone now. That didn't exist. There is no you know, are we just going to TMZ? I know they got a live feed or there's something, Ed, with DirecTV satellite. We know if you walked away. From the TV, you were going to miss however this O.J. thing was going to play out. All right. We'll get the next one. Still watching and still watching. And at this time, I need to get them to the airport. Because we. Need to fly out. It's not about missing flights. You know, the next hour or the next hours, like do we got to go to L.A.X. already know we got to push back one. I do. We got to go to L.A.. We got to I booked us on another flight. And this is back. In the days. It was easier to kind of move around like that. So now we're getting to a point where they're watching this and everybody's talking about it. And now people come by the house and. We can't get the flight out. So we go, let's run a van and we'll drive up, get situated that night. And then the next morning you can go to the studio. Then we do the show the night because we're going to go in the day before. So we drive to the Bay Area and being that we were driving to the Bay Area, I was like, What if we're going to drive? I'm going to bring my gun. So I take my gun with me. And I had two warrants for my arrest, right? Nothing too crazy. But I always told my brother, I say that's if they ever pick me up on these warrants, I'm just going to do the time. I don't want to spend the money. So if I just come up missing for a few days, I'm on the road or tell mom so she don't, you know, worry about her son being, you know, in jail. So we're driving up to the Bay Area. We get there, check in the next day. They do what they have to do. We do the show. So so the miss, you know, the hip hop group from the Bay Area to those wanted to the far side to stay. I didn't want to stay. So they were with the souls in mischief. I say, hey, you know, I'm going to fly home. I said, But take my gun and drive my gun back home for me. I call up there two, three days, whenever. But when they were up there, I had another gun at the house. Now, mind you, I'm like 400 pounds. 450 at this time. Right? And so they drive back, they call me. They're like, you know, Abby, we're home. We got your gun. All right, cool. I'm going to come and get you. So I'm from L.A., I'm on a swivel. Whatever. Nothing dangerous. But I carried a gun all the time. So I had my gun on me to go pick up my other gun. So I go drive, lollygag, whatever. Pick up the other gun. And I'm driving back. So now I got two guns on me. Soon as I get to Culver City jurisdiction. We're living in Culver City. They let me up and I'm like, I. They pull me over. I'm in a white Astro van. License and registration. License. I just bought a van and I give them the registration that I have. So they're looking so into software. All right, then my man tells me, Step out the car. So I step out the car. Now, literally.  I'm going to just go pick up and do this quick ride. So I'm wearing a T-shirt, some sweat shorts and some courthouse shoes. Nothing else. He gets me out of the car. He starts to search me. Surgery. Surgery. Go my pockets, you know. Does a thorough. Search have a seat. So I sit down and he wants for yours, not his partner comes in, see his partner, say something to him. Then he comes back over to him. He said, Where's the gun at? I don't have a gun. Where's the guy? They go back now, both of them in my van looking for my gun. They come back. Stand up. I stand up. My man starts searching me again. Pat, Pat, Pat, Pat. Search me. Search me. Sit back down. Where's the gun? I don't have a gun. So now. I'm looking as. I'm sitting on the curb and I'm looking at my van, and now I'm seeing shit just. Flying out of. Whatever door they could throw something out of. And I'm looking in there, in the headliner there. I look in the window and I can see that he's going to the back. He's in my van. Comes back out. Now, this one cop that that really had a hard on. Where's the gun? I like. I don't have a guy so stands me up and this time he takes out he's behind me and he takes his hand. But he was slapping me. Wow. Wow. Wow. Like, I mean, slap for me to wear. Out of frustration and anger. Searching. Search me. Sit down. So now I hear. Oh, Kurt Alexander once. Said Kurt Alexander said just weren't so. Now they're more fucking. Just look at me like you have two warrants. Say we're going to take you in. And we're going to empower Nirvana and put it on a detective hold. We're finding you're going back. So I'm literally seated. Vanke the flat bed coming because they had to wait until the van got hooked up. I see the flat bed and now I'm like, Oh, my God, you're about to take me to jail on these warrants. I get to Culver City. They do a quick processing and they allow me a phone call. So I called my brother and I said, Miles. I said, Hey. I said, Are they arresting me on those warrants? You got to come out and pick me up. You got to bail me out. He was like, know You said if you get arrested. Don't come bail you out. Ally Miles, I see this coming. Bail me out. I don't want to. I can't be in here. What's going on, Curt? Something's going on. I'm. Mouse. Come bail me out. They arrested me on the warrant. They're going to take me to the county jail. What's going on? Come bail me out. So now it's almost like a movie. It wasn't a long time, probably an hour, because we lived in Culver City. But it's like a movie where you hear like, Alexander, you made bail, like. Cheesy like that. So I'm walking out. And there's just a door with a little window and I can see my brother Mouse, and he's trying to make eye. Contact with me like. And I'm just. Looking. I walk in the escort me out. Give me my stuff. Walk me to the door when my brother's still trying to make this eye contact. What's wrong? We walk out, walk down the few steps at the Culver City jail. Start walking down the street where he's parked and I go under my stomach and I pull out both guns. I had two guns under my stomach in the Culver City jail. Right. The bus came at 6:00 that morning to take you to the county, and the county does a different search, strip search, pull up your stomach. You know, I knew how to hide compartments under my feet. You know, put stuff on the. My fat compartments. So I made it out of that. Right. Would have had to do to warrant time if I didn't do the bail, if they would have found the guns. That's a that's a long run because none of my guns were registered, all that kind of stuff. Right? So I get home and I get to sleep at about 5 or 6:00 in the morning. Around 1030, my mom walks into the room and she said. Kirk, she said, You have a phone call from somebody named Rick Cummins. Cummins. You say he sits on power when you say, Oh, okay, that's what a baker boys work. So I get the phone call. Hello, Rick. Hey. Hey. How you doing? Big boy. I saw you once, briefly. But I don't think you remember who I am. And like I said, I was. I recall I didn't know who he was. And he was like, Hey, you know, I'm sitting here with Nick. And Eric, the Baker boys, and, you know, we're talking about you. And, you know, I wanted to ask you about you ever thought about doing radio? And I'm like, no, I never thought about doing radio. He was like, well, I have a crazy idea. He said, Would you like to come in for one night? We give you $35 an hour and try for like four hours. I'm thinking I'm a hustler. Yeah, I'm on a roll with the far side. We're home for, you know, from a Lollapalooza Day tour. All right. Yeah. Come here. So I'm going. I don't know nothing about radio, but I know about love and hip hop and loving, you know, and I know timing and so on and so forth. So I do the four hours. He called me back the next day and he was like, hey, you know, would you would you like to try it out again? And I'm thinking, okay, well, I just multiply that by two. Yeah, I'll be there. Go in. I do the next, you know, four hours. He calls me back another day and he said, you know, I want to try something crazy with you. So he said, I would like for you to do our night show Empire. 106. Oh, my. What?  And again, you know, he said. I could meet him. He said, you know, I could teach you radio, but I can't teach you personality. He said, you have personality, and I would like to sign you to a contract. That's how my radio career started. So if I still being in jail all wants guns out of my stomach. I would have missed that call. Would you call me back a month later to. Or what if he would have found out where I was? It took me probably two years to tell him where I was a few hours before. But I would have missed that opportunity. And that's the one thing that made me say all this shit got to stop. It's all got to stop. And at that moment, I knew that I had an opportunity that I could mess up. I couldn't let my gift be the curse. And. From four hours on one night. It's 30 years now. And that's what I do. I do radio. I know how to go home. I know how to keep myself out of situations. I know how to respect my wife. I know how to raise my kids. And I know that the world is watching me and I have a responsibility. And it all came from that one phone call that changed my life, not knowing that this is how I was going to buy my mom a house. This is how I was going to buy my real first car. This was how I was going to put my sister to college. This is how I was. Want to take care of my brothers and sisters when they in their time of need. I couldn't do so. So I took that from day one. Not knowing that a year was going to pass that fast. Three years, five years, 30 years of, you know, 29 years have passed fast. But I knew what I had. And he heard something and he just retired. We talked yesterday. He retired yesterday, two days. And. It changed my life and I was able to change so many other lives, too. 

01:32:16:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Getting into. Just like your early run on the radio, you naturally had this sense of humor that people gravitated towards and you started doing bits like whispers and stuff like that. Can you talk about some of some of those early bits and maybe the ones that hold up like the Dreidel Dreidel Song? Yeah. 

01:32:30:00
BIG BOY:
So when I first got into radio, I remember I told my buddy Fuzzy. Fuzzy was the sound man for the far side at the time. Right? I told first I said, Man, what am I going to do every day? So we literally had a notepad and I was writing down all this stuff, you know, instead of shouts, Man, I tell the people I got a headache and we're going to whisper scenes where people will call and be like, Hey, I want to give a whispering to Jonathan. You know, back then it was genius. You know, you do this, you know, it's corny. But back then, genius. And then I had this. It was like. They started to kind of click for me. You know, when I was in fourth grade, I had a teacher by the name of Mitch Troup, and we used to sing this song in Hebrew. And when I was singing that song in Hebrew on air, but I was singing it in. My whole life, this song. People wait to hear this song, this Dreidel song, and in Hebrew, from a song that I learned, I started off. You know, I learned this song. And in fourth grade, fourth grade shout out to me is true, Miss True. Yeah. She taught us this song in Hebrew. Hebrew. And it goes a little something like this. Boom, Hop in my title. And I was singing the song over. Hip hop beat. Blew up. Then I had another Miami bass record that I used to do called Shake My Ass. Is Shaking My Ass was just.  I can never get away with saying shake my ass. Swinging my nuts, you know? But I was working for the first two weeks of my radio career. I was working with a guy named Richard Hunt Division. And Richard Vision. He knew radio. And I remember one day he just put on his Miami bass record and we were just talking. I say, Man, he saw me can feel like shaking my ass. And then I just start saying, I feel like shaking my head. Shaking my ass. Shake, shake, shake, shake. And it became. It blew up. It became a phenomenon. And from there.  On. I had these radio beats. And you got to think I never did radio. But what Rick Cummings heard that day when he called me, I had a hip hop line called What up w udd hyphen yuppie. What up? And what up was is the thing that you would call and if it was a Thursday night I would give you the rundown on, you know Thursday night concert, you know a club in Saturday night, you know, such and such as coming to town and such and such, you know, date or whatever. But it was just my way to get my voice out there and put a club one and I could get in the club for free. You know, that's what what I was not knowing. Every commies was calling his line, listening in here in personality because I had to do everything in one take. So if I did, if I messed up. It was literally me with a phone. With a turntable and a speaker. And if I messed up, I wasn't going to start from the beginning. If I messed up, I would just rewind the record. So I'd be like, Yeah, don't forget, you know, I. Don't look at this nomination or run, you know, and I see who's going to be. I would literally rewind records, start speaking backwards and then let it go. He heard he. Must have heard that kind of stuff with, like this guy, a personality. And I got in and shake my ass. The Hebrew song, everything was just I was throwing everything up against the wall and L.A. hadn't heard. A lot like that. You know, I grew up wheat with the original 1580. So I knew Russ Parr and I knew Bobby Jimmy. His character and the parody song. So I knew what entertainment was. And I was the family entertainer. So now I'm on radio. And I remember Rick told me, he said, Go in there, do what you want to do. Just remember, this station is called Power 106. He gave me such a big yard to play here, and when I went a little bit past the yard. He knew how to call me back. And he put me in. The, you. Know, back in the yard. I remember doing it. We talk about this all the time. You know, I'm a lackey. So we had this, you know, this one thing where we had like, this record and was like, hold out, wait a minute. Let us put some boom in. And then it was me, my boy, Shawn, D.J. Ray. We're screaming to the mike. Look here. Look here now. And then you would name. Something because the. Record. Go get on up. Get on up. Get on up. Get on up. So all we did was. One night we'd put names in it, you know? You know, Disney. They say that name. So when I was like, Man, we're going to all gang hoods. All gang who going to Crips Bloods and say, like Mexican hoods. So we thought we were doing. Something so clever. Roll is 60 sickos. Get on up naming all the Crips, you know, bless, don't fail and get on up. So we do all the Crips. They shout, I want to be like Bambi. They take it to the blood. May I take to the blood? So I name all these bloods. I did a deejay, Ray, my Latino, on a no. We got to hear some of the Mexican gangs got in. So I do what we did. All the. Mexican gangs. A lot of them. Next morning. Rick with like, hey, the the thing that you did last night with the. Gangs and I'm like. Yes. They don't do that shit again. Never heard of again. You don't say. That was in. That was in the graveyard. Wasn't quite a phone tap or a little new face of that. Rest in peace, Rashid. 

01:37:43:00
ARI FISHMAN:
That was good. That's a good bit, though. 

01:37:44:00
BIG BOY:
Yeah. Ignorant as you. 

01:37:49:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Also, around the time you started interviewing, like some of your friends, like the Far Side and Run-D.M.C. and Ice Cube. And those people came to show you and say that it was like a great moment for you where you're kind of like kind of giving back to these people that you were fans of before. 

01:37:59:00
BIG BOY:
What's so crazy about it? Even to this day, I still trip off of, you know, someone coming into the neighborhood and I'm on their schedule. That means that they had to go to sleep the night before and say, Oh, we got to do Big Boi in the morning. That still trips me out. I still trip out driving and I hear a commercial. I'm like, Oh, then that's me. You know, after close to 30 years, there's moments. I just have one last week where I'm talking and then I got to tell people over over the air and I dude, I'm trippin because I'm on radio and I pray to God that that never goes away. But early on, you know, I pay to see Ice Cube in concert. I was at a store one time. Ice Cube was in a store. I followed Ice Cube around the store. It just so. Happened I owe you a bread. Oh, shoot. I'm going to bring it all. You know what? Oh, my God. Do you eat Twinkies? I eat Twinkies everywhere. Does do. Was it? And now that I know and I know people will do the same to me. You're hip to it. He'd rather die. Man is fat motherfucker. For real, you know? But anyway, he was. I was there. And now you're coming to do my show. Like I tell people, man, I'm a fan first. You know, Snoop Dogg came to do my show. You know, I was on a roll with the far side. Now I'm interviewing the far side. I was on the roll with the far side and Tupac. To park bus in the door. First thing he said, Word in word, man. What the fuck you doing in here? And we just laughed. You know, I'm in my career, this new career. And I got so much support, but it was so crazy to be the guy that people came to visit. I'm a fan of Run-D.M.C. to this day. I got pictures of my first Run DMC interview. You know. Those kind of thing. A fan of Kurtis Blow. I'm working in the same building with Kurtis Blow. You know any new rapper that's coming, I'm looking at West Side Connection. I'm looking at Mag ten. I broke for life for Mack ten. I'm breaking records now. My first plaque that I put on my wall was the 69 Boyz, because I broke that record in L.A. and I remember you. I grew up. I never had my own room. Until I moved out because I had a radio job. I never had my own room. I remember I had a two bedroom apartment. And in Burbank. Let alone I never had my own room. Now I have two rooms. Can't tell me. Nothing. I will literally walk into. My bedroom and then I would literally. Look back. Like this and look at my 32 inch TV. In my living room. With my platinum plan with this other bedroom that I don't know what to do with because now I'm rich. I remember my first contract. I called my mom and they pay me. I remember I'm singing with the Baker boys, right? And they say, We want to give you a contract. Emmis wants to give you a contract. And I'm like, Dude, I don't know what what a contract is. So I go sit down with the Baker boys. And like a you know, they want to give me a contract. How much should I ask for? And I remember Nick took his phone and he typed some numbers in and he handed it to me. I look at the phone and I'm like. I can't ask for that. He was like, Be just ask for it. You may get it. If not, you get something close to it. Bro. I can't ask for that. Just ask for it. Why do you think they really pay me $35,000? Do they ask for it? I'm like, So now I'm sitting down with the bosses, the powers that be. And they have the one sheet, the term sheet, and they're like, you know, we want to sign you to. You know, a year and this is what we want to give you. A year and a slate. The term sheet over. And I looked at it. And is there a $50,000? Do I. Just. If they were looking, I was. Probably trembling our life. $50,000. I remember I called my mom and I said, Mom. I'm making $50,000 a year. She was so excited. I call my boyfriend as far as do how do you spend $50,000 in one year? I and I'm going to tell you straight up. In my head. I was rich. I remember I went to work. I went to this furniture store. And, you know, the furniture store that you see, like in a. Newspaper to be like a five piece set. And dresser and all this stuff that's included. So I walked in and the guy was on the phone. And when I walked in, he he did like this, like, not rule the like, like, hold on. And I remember in my head, I was like. Hold on. I do, though, know that I'm rich. You know. Don't let this sale get out of here. So while he's on the phone, I go to this area. It is like a living room. And he walks over to me. He's like, May I help you? And I'm looking and I'm rich. So I look at him. And I said. I want all this. All this right here. So for no seat and I bought everything, right? If you see this shit, it was a black and gold couch. A black and gold love seat with black and gold throw pillows. It was a. Classy table with a coffee table with a black. Panther and a creep in position. And the Black Panther. The table. The glass table sat on on the Panthers bag. Then because I was spending so much money. He gave me two little black. Panthers with diamonds in their eyes. And it was one of those lamps where it's like the multi bulb lamp. Like five bulbs over the lamp. And I wanted the whole bedroom set that I saw over there. So I had aqua green and black bedroom set. And I banged into it one. Time and it was particleboard. So the lacquer, not lacquer, it was a sheet that I was able to peel off. But you couldn't, like I said, you could. Tell me nothing. And I was like, Do that. Oh, for heaven's sake, man. I went in and bought everything in a furnished unfurnished. And I remember I went bought silverware. And I never purchased silverware before in my life. I never had my own place. Is I thought I got a good deal like, oh sit where that's that's cool. You know, set a floor. I remember the first time I ate.  Out the silverware. My mouth was like metal. I burnt like I bought the cheapest fucking silverware you can get. And I was like, oh, you got to update. Like you're rich. And when I said, How do you spend $50,000? You got. You know, I came from a hustlers background. I never paid taxes in my life. I remember looking at my first. Check and I was like. Who's Vika? You. Why is this motherfucker making all this money? I never. Paid. And I figure it out with the help of my family. And I figured out how to spend $50,000 in one year. I figured that out very quickly. You know, with taxes. 

01:45:46:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Talk about the worst interview you had with the bone thugs. 

01:45:49:00
BIG BOY:
You know, sometimes people get like, I get this all the time. Who's your best interview? Who's your best interview? I really don't have a best interview. Like, I love Snoop in the neighborhood. It doesn't have to be about an album. He's just Snoop Will Smith, where I love talking to people in the neighborhood. So I don't have a best interview, but I know my worst interview, which is crazy. My worst interview. Is was born thugs in army. Those are my guys. They know that they were my worst interview. We talked. 
About it. It was when I was first into radio. They were just doing, like their first interviews. And you got to think, it's me. My buddy Sean. Sean was like, you know, when it came to selling dope, Shawn was the guy. And then my partner, Ray. So with me, Shawn, D.J., Ray. When I got the job at Power one of six, I told him, Just come and hang out with me. So I have a familiar face to just be in the room with. So they came and then they stay and they became part of the show. So now we got Bone Thugs in Harmony Eazy-e's group started and we're live. We start the interview off and it's like, man, 1000 harmony, you know, power 1 to 6, whatever it is, man. How long you've been together? Forever. Hmm. Man. All right. How old are you guys? Old enough. Hmm. Son. I see that John took a bus out here from Cleveland. And, you know, y'all went to Tony's Tony Lo's house. You know what would have happened if he wasn't home? Where he was home? I turned to myself, and I mean, fuck this. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not a radio guy to this day. You can't. You can't do that to me. I'm even more green because I'm off the streets. So this is disrespectful to me. So I turned the mics off. They start. You know, walk out the. Label, you know, the label and they they not like May Effingham. Effingham, you know. We're not we're on an. Energy but I'm telling I'm like a man you know whatever the words were as it wasn't called on and so forth. And I'm really letting them know that I felt like that was fucked up, you know? And you got to think this is a young bone thugs in harmony and they homies and then this is a young big boy. I want to d j Ray, these are my homies, you know what I'm saying? So it didn't get to where we stood up and made it. I don't want to rewrite history, but I remember dude, when it calmed down, I don't know how to calm down. I walk back in, it was say something else, walk back out, walk back in. And I remember Bizzy bone and youknow, busy. The lights came on, brother. Which is my guy. I remember Bizzy had like a 40 ounce. He was laying kind of knee and back on the couch at busy had this look like, all right, we understand. If you say another motherfucking word, I'll bust you in your face with his bottle. He looks like I'm done with Getty. Worst interview ever. And now Bone has been some of my best interviews. You know, And we. See each other. And that was a moment in time. That was a moment in an hour. Hip hop. That was a moment of, you know, people being new. You know. They didn't know how to do interviews. I didn't know. How to you know, I thought. I was doing. I mean, I'm asking questions, but it was just, you know, just just young people. You know what I'm saying? And now, you know, we have age and it's been beautiful. But, yeah, I don't know my best, but I know my worst. 

01:49:24:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Your career kind of skyrocketed to the point of where we're putting billboards up of you to promote the show. There's one wave of billboards that you did for us, which was you dressed in like. Like Calvin Klein commercial or something like that. 

01:49:35:00
BIG BOY:
Yeah. 

01:49:35:00
ARI FISHMAN:
And then and then there's the whole. The whole split. 

01:49:39:00
BIG BOY:
Yeah, man.

01:49:39:00
ARI FISHMAN:
You could just tell the story of those two billboards.

01:49:41:00
BIG BOY:
Let me tell you, though, the Baker boys, I remember when the Baker boys got their billboards. And I remember driving around with the Baker boys because the Baker boys are doing mornings at the time. And I remember people like, oh, man, there's one on such and such. We drive over there, look at the billboard. And then when I got to the mornings, it became a morning show campaign. It was like, Oh, you got to do billboards. And. At that time, it was like this Calvin Klein ad and a lady by the name of Diana Obermayer. Diana Jason. She was like, Have you seen because we're pitching ideas. And she was like, have you seen the. The billboard. With with the Calvin Klein people? She was like, yeah, we did something, you know, close to that because they just wanted me to lay down and do the billboard. I'm 400 something pounds. So we go do the. Shoot and I'm in.  There. You know, they do your tap. On your makeup. The, you know, the cameras are set. They had no idea that I was going to walk out in my boxers a shoot the billboard. No shirt. Boxers. That's it. When I came out. I could tell by the reaction in the room, I was like, That's the reaction he's going to get. And I didn't feel like, Oh, they're going to laugh at me because I was so comfortable in my skin. I celebrated being this size. I celebrated being big boy. And when that billboard went up. Bro. The phone calls were the deal for the numbers because radio back then. Now everything is recorded. Radio back there was kind of. When people say, Oh. You got a face for radio, that's because they didn't see, you know what I'm saying? You had a voice. Radio was sight unseen. Voices that's heard. You just heard the voices. I was the most recognizable, one of the most recognizable people in radio in Los Angeles because of that billboard. The billboard campaign of me in my boxers and then the Billboard campaign. And I had some in between but won with me doing the splits. You know, those were billboards that were iconic people still bringing those billboards up to this day. I remember Dr. Dre. He was talking to me one day and he said, AB. You know that billboard? How did they. How did they do that? How did they do that with the, with the billboard, which you do on a split. And I was like, Dre, I said, this. Is years ago now, and this is when a billboard was up. As it Dre, I say, That's me doing the splits. He was like, Now, man, like. How did they do it? They put your head on somebody else's body. I'm like, Dre, that's me. That's not you. Make it the fuck out of here. So then my boys. Fuzzy, we've done this before. My boy Fuzz was like, Nah, man, that's not how fuzzy. No, that is me. Fuzzy was at the damn shoot. So I'm telling Dre, man, it's me. Do it right now. Now, man, you got to pay my homework. Now it's not in fuzzy working on. It's not him. Is not him. So Dre was like, Man, I give you $5,000, you do it right now. I like ice him a feel of at will. I like. All right, come over here. And so I'm looking at the $5,000 on the table. I just start going down slow. Boom. Hit the ground. Oh, I pick up the $5,000. Right. And then on that day. We were with Dre, and they had to go do a thing called the Farm Club with Jimmy Levine at the time. Right. So literally, we go from the. Video shoot for exhibit and we go to the farm Club. And so same day. Snoop is on stage, right. And they're sound checking. And Snoop was like a good a B.  Good how they do that billboard. And I'm. Like. What do you mean? They had your hand in a split? I say, Snoop, that's me doing the splits. Oh, good. That's not you, not Snoop. That's me doing the splits. He come fuzzy. That's not who I like. First, you know That's me. I'll do that as soon as I'm like, we've run in the routine run in our scheme. Want to? I'm like, Man, that's me. Then I hear a snoop. Don't bet that motherfucker in words got me for $5,000 a day. Dre must be somewhere. We're like hot ears and heard us about to hustle. Snoop, it's not that 5000, you know, but that was me all day. 500 pound boom to the ground. 

01:54:07:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Where did you learn to do this play. 

01:54:08:00
BIG BOY:
As a kid? You just, you know, you're fluid and that and. You know, the little bit of martial arts. And I was always a guy to stretch. Like I never stopped doing the splits. And then I think once you get to like 3 or 4 or 500 pounds. Probably as soon as I opened my legs, I was gonna go down anyway. I was. 

01:54:28:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Gravity. 

01:54:28:00
BIG BOY:
Yeah. Gravity was going to pull me down anyway, you know, just make sure you didn't go down too hard, you know, so you can keep your package and have some kids down the line. 

01:54:38:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Talk about when your mother died, you had this, like, kind of nice moment with her with the hometown buffet. 

01:54:44:00
BIG BOY:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's around. It's crazy because my whole my billboards went up, right? I told you the the so called phenomenon with the billboards. And I remember my mom was in the hospital. And she was like, not doing well. And somehow my mom, you know, got well, my mom, I sent her a limousine to pick her up from the hospital and they brought my mom home. And I remember I told as your mom, I said, my billboards are up. And this is the Calvin Klein. This is you know, me and my boxers issue is I baby, she said, I want to see your billboards and I want you I want to go to Hometown Buffet. My mom didn't ask for a lot. I can do that. You know what I'm saying? And so. 

01:55:49:00
ARI FISHMAN:
You're doing. You want to talk about it or. 

01:56:14:00
BIG BOY:
My mom, you know, like she didn't ask for a lot. And so. She told me, she said, I just want to go. I want to go see your billboards and I want to go to a hometown buffet. So I'm like, all right, cool. I pick her up and I put her at this time, you know, she had just came out of the hospital. I put her in my car in my Suburban and I'm driving around to. The billboard. Right? And I go and it's this one humongous billboard. And the lights are shining up at the billboard. It was the perfect billboard to take her to. It was all I've been tour and something in the Valley. And I remember there was a parking lot right, for a liquor store. And I parked and I remember I rolled her window down and I saw my mom look up from the backseat. And she looked up at the billboard. And I'm out there and this is her son. This is her baby. And big boy Power. 106. I'm in my boxers and it's lit up in this humongous and I remember. She just looked it. She just giggled. And she said, That's my baby. And she looked at the billboard and I was like, Man, we got to take her. I got to take her to Hometown Buffet. We drive to Hometown Buffet. And when I get to hometown Buffet, it's extremely crowded, extremely crowded. So it's getting late. I know my mom, you know, at this time she's kind of like in a wheelchair, sister. So I was like, Mom, I said, Do you still want to go? And she I knew she wanted to go. Why should I not? And she said, We can go another day. So I was like, okay. So I took her from hometown. I took her to Sizzler, and I was like, Man, Mom, I'll pick you up and I'll take you to Hometown Buffet on another day. And this was a Saturday, so I was going to take her to next week. So Tuesday my mom went back to the hospital and her health started to deteriorate, to deteriorate, and she ended up dying on that stint in the hospital. She never came back home. So to this day. I purposely have never been to a hometown buffet. Even when times when Hometown buffet was really going, they wanted me to do a ribbon cutting ceremony. They wanted to pay me an appearance fee. And I was like, I would not go to Hometown Buffet because the one time I was supposed to go was with my mom. And if I didn't go with my mom, I would never go. And to this day, my mom died March 31st, 1999, and to this day, I would never go to a hometown buffet. And I will use the word never. I mean, literally, I could be starving. And that's the only place for 3 or 4 or five hours. I would not I wouldn't even tell you to bring me a plate out. I won't go. 

01:59:08:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Just getting to I guess we can't talk about this without talking about the Will Smith weight loss challenge. So just talk about that and then the surgery and then, you know, you met your wife around the time, too. 

01:59:19:00
BIG BOY:
It's crazy because some years ago, you know, at 500 pounds, 500 plus pounds, I have Will Smith in and Will Smith, you know, is Will Smith. We're having a good time. We're clowning. This wasn't Will Smith's first time in the in the neighborhood. And so at one point when the interview was over, while we were between something, but it was a quiet enough room and we'll said, you know, a big you know, how old are you? And I tell my age around that time and I'm in the happiest place, I'm thinking. And he said, man, he said, you know, be he said, how much you how much you know now? Not bad. But, you know, how much do you weigh? And I'm guesstimating for something, something like that. And he said, man, he's a big he said, you know me. He said, what about your heart? And I never really. You know, you know, every doctor growing up. You know, you need to lose weight. You know that there is no healthy, severe, more morbid obesity that I had speaking for me. And so he said to me, he said, you know, why don't we do like a weight loss challenge and I'll pay you $1,000 for every pound that you lose. And I'm thinking I you know what? I would do that I would do that 1,000 pound, $1,000 per pound for charity. He's like, we wrap it around charity. You pick a charity, I pick a charity, and we do a huge donation. After six months, I'll check in with you from the road. And, you know, I'll come in and we talk. So in my head, I want to do this challenge, but I want to do this challenge not for my health. I want to do this challenge for radio. Dude. I got Will Smith. $1,000 per pound for charity. He's going to check you from the road and come in and check on me. This is this is Radio Gold. It wasn't about my health. It was about radio and how I would have Will Smith. It wasn't about getting healthier or getting healthy, losing weight. None of that. So the first week I lost 26 pounds. That's $26,000. And that's off of a 500 pound frame. Right? I could lose weight like that. After that frame, anybody else you think? 26 pounds, you know you're not losing it because, you know, I could take that off. Just that water. $26,000. Oh, man. Big down. It's crazy. 26. We can. We can. You know. I will. When you go. Catch it with me again. I'm doing radio. I'm not doing health. Oh, you know. All right. I'm out here checking, which he said. He says, All right, cool. Big boy. Losing weight. Will Smith challenge Will Smith, weight challenged. You know, I'm living a. Life with this radio thing that's going to last for ratings, period, and everything, Right? Fast forward, it's the final weigh in. We got the news there. Will Smith is there. We got the presentation. Big check that we're going to put the number in soon as I get on the scale. So now it's weight loss day. We're live on two news and Will Smith is here. And big. Boy to the Challenge come to an end 1000 oh. $1,000. For each pound of loss. So now I'm getting on the scale, right? And I'm literally like in my boxers in a t shirt. And as I'm walking upon this step on scale because, you know, I had to get weighed by special scales. So I walk onto the scale and literally while I'm on the scale looking down at the number, I'm thinking. Soon as I get out of here, I'm going to go to love. Forgot this and give me some chicken nachos. Soon as I get out of here, I weigh in. I lost 111 pounds of Will Smith. He cut that check for $111,000. Right. I on the way home, not thinking of health. The radio beats over. I drive straight to LA. Forgot this. I get the nachos, right? Next thing I know, I know I'm putting this weight back home because I'm doing nothing to keep it off. Nothing. The radio beat is over. You know, people. Hey, you know how you. How's your weight loss going? How's your weight loss going? You couldn't tell I was gaining weight because I was. I was still be you know. But I remember I just was walking to the Burbank airport and I, I had a trainer. I could do 35, you know, 18 steps. I could do 35 of those. Like I wasn't the big guy that had to park at the the closest spot and breathe in heavy. I was I was the guy that got to it. Got to it. I'm walking into the Burbank Airport one day and I start getting this pain in my back. I never had that pain before. And I had to stop and I was like, oh, I was getting out of breath. I was losing my wind. That's never happened because my weight loss was always gradual. Now I felt what my body felt like losing 100 pounds and gaining it like that. So I'm putting it back on. So I go one day I'm at this movie premiere and this guy comes over to me and he's like, Big boy. And I go, What's up, man? I'm looking. And I'm like, Who is this? He was like, Is Ron? Ron Lester? And I'm like, Ron let in Ron, a big guy from Varsity Blues. And I'm looking out. I'm like, Man, what did you do? So he's telling. Me that he had gastric bypass surgery, so on and so forth. I wasn't interested in gastric bypass surgery, but I'm at the movie premiere and I'm looking at him, sit in his seat and I'm lying down as crazy dude lost a lot of weight. Now with me, every time I flew, either bought two seats or had to fly first class, I can accommodate being 4 or 500 pounds. If I needed a suit and get a suit made because I can take I can tailor make a suit and I can accommodate being 500 pounds. If I need the car, I'll get a suburban bigger car. I could accommodate, you know, 500 pounds so I could accommodate this 500 pounds. I was comfortable in my skin. But for some reason that night and then for a while, it just kept coming back to me like you're gaining weight. What are you going to do? You've tried diets, you know. And I just started looking into gastric bypass, and I was looking. And it wasn't the end all. It was for me. It wasn't the. You don't have willpower. I've done that. I've done it. I've done so much in my life. Will Will. That did take willpower. But I felt like I needed something to help me with this weight. And I remember I was 32, and I said to myself, I said, Big, you know, you're you got to be 500 pounds, you know. And I said, you're 32. Do you have more life behind you than you have in front of you? And out of all the celebration of being big boy and billboards and, you know, I can I could I could be 500 pounds. I know how to live like this. I can accommodate it. When I say, do you have more life behind you? Then in front of you, I was like. Yeah. You have more life behind you. There's I've never seen a 500 pound, 64 year old man. And if I did see it, was he without, you know, walk in or something or, you know, some kind of oxygen, was he living a four life, even if he was 64? So I started looking into gastric bypass, and there was one called the Duodenal Switch, which was the same one that Ron Lester got. So I started talking to the doctor with his work for me, you know, talking to my family. Of course my family, the only thing they hear is, you know, you could die, but I could die with my heart exploding in my chest. And, you know, whatever weight I was, I didn't even know my weight. And so. I was like, I'm going to do it. But I went through everything I went through, you know, Am I still going to be funny? Am I still going to be big boy? Are people still going to rock with me and love me the way that they did? Am I change in who I am? And I say to myself, I say, you know what? It's not going to matter because you're going to be dead in a year anyway. I felt that I was going to be dead and I'm not dead. Or I guess I'm not going to go to the doctor. Oh, I don't. I didn't. I wasn't going to the extreme. I knew that I was going to be dead in a year. So I went and I got the gastric bypass. And when I did the Will Smith challenge, I was 511 pounds when we first started. And when I went to go get the gastric bypass, when I stepped on the scale, I was 511 pounds. And that was after going to the doctor and I didn't even get my weight before I went. He said, We have an opening. We got to You got two weeks. Lose as much weight as you can. Now, I already lost 26 pounds, which Will Smith and now was still kind of like, oh, you know, well let me do a little something. How much weight did I lose? Focused in two weeks. So if I was 511, I had to be 550 pounds before I lost that weight to be 511 to get the surgery and that gastric bypass, it it changed my life. And like I say, I live by the dimmer. My mom died at 57. I didn't think, oh, my mom died. I got to I got to get my stuff together. You know. Other people dying. It was at one point when my mom died, you know, watching, you know, her with congestive heart failure, watching other people. It was like this dimmer. And then I looked up, and now the room was bright, and I was like, You got to do something or else you're going to die. You know, and I tell people to this day, gastric bypass is the last day for me that you will want to get. If you got a 52 car deck, that's the 52nd car that you pick up. And then the procedure that I had is called the duodenal switch. Death surgery is so extreme, they don't even do that. I mean, you. Probably find someone if you severe, morbid, obese, but that's not even an option that a doctor throw at you right now. To this day, I'm still on supplements. I'm on proteins. I get blood work every month. Like there's a way that I had to live with this gastric bypass and paying attention to my body, making sure I put energy, food there. You know, it took me ten years to just learn nutrition. It took me ten years. And I say, Oh, I can eat this because I'm gastric bypass. I felt what the effects of eating fried foods eaten this going off to much, so I just had to learn. But it took me like a decade to get, you know, because I had a love affair. You know, food was always there for me. Anything I wanted to eat. And once I got into radio and had some money, I can get it at any capacity. So now you're teaching yourself how not to kill yourself. You're teaching yourself how to eat and stay alive. And that was before I had kids. Now it's a whole different purpose. I did that for me. I did That big boy and Kurt Alexander alive. You know, when I was 500 pounds, I met my wife at 500 pounds, you know. So my survival was for me and for me to be able to take care of everything that's around me. When you get on a plane, the first thing they tell you, secure your mask. I was secure in everyone mask. But my my friend was fi. This person was my friends were fine, but I was going to be dead. So when I got on the scale, I was ranked as severe, severe, severe, morbid, obese, and I changed my life. 

02:11:18:00
ARI FISHMAN:
Do you still feel like big Boy after an a healthy weight? 

02:11:22:00
BIG BOY:
I do, because I am big boy and I've heard it all. You know, every time I see Floyd Mayweather, I don't think if he remembers. But I got like 50. Man, we can't call you big boy anymore. And I and I got to play it off of Floyd. Like, I never heard that before, especially from you. But now. I feel. I feel like big boy. What's crazy about it? I've been gastric bypass for 20 years, right? Even when I leaned over to look in his mirror, I still trip over that. Every day I walk past a reflection every day and I look and I'm like, Oh shit. Like, that's me. I'm not used to this. I still go by clothes thinking I can't fit into it. I don't. Know what for the 20 years. Of being. Gastric bypass. And being this size with the 30 years of obesity that has. Taken over my brain and my psyche more than this. I'll see something. I can't fit it. Then I put it on like, Oh, shit. You know, So I still kind of see that big guy. And it also flipped me to where. I see. How I must have looked to other people. And I see how people had a prejudice. That I wasn't in the club for. You know, maybe they thought I was being greedy and sloppy and everything because I hear certain things now. I see the you know, when I would walk down on the plane, I could see in people eyes on Southwest like, oh, my God, you know, sit next to me. You know? And now I see that from other people. And I'm like, Oh, I know what they're doing. I know what they're doing. I was I was there, you know, I was there. So and I look at people now and I'll see a big guy and I'm like, Damn, he's big. And then I was like, Do you probably weight 150 pounds more than any of my friends that I speak with my wife? Anyone I ask them and I have for many years, was I the biggest person you knew? It was like, yes, you were the biggest person you knew. We knew. And I remember at one time I was saying, I mean, you know, I weighed 510 pounds. Five, ten. You know what? I was 511. But I remember. When I lived at work. Let me see what I said. That didn't even sound like weight. That sound like a flight. Never heard it. Fuck you lose. 

END TC: 02:13:53:00