T.I. & Ryan Clark on Faith, Fear, Fame, Fatherhood & Why Success Still Can’t Protect Your Kids

this is expeditiously i am tip t i have uh-huh now the following experience is not a test the conversations and stories expressed on this podcast are meant to be an expression of purpose and truth this show properly entitled expeditiously is a free exchange of ideas and opinions no judgment no preconceived beliefs no fear you're encouraged to share your thoughts and ask any question as long as it's done with respect and that's through true love and respect for others that we will change the world and speak truth to power one show at a time now without further ado this is expeditiously i'm tip t i harris what's happening hey look this is expeditiously i'm your host tip harris today on expeditiously we have a super bowl champion longtime nfl safety podcast host and one of the most insightful voices in sports media today known for his physical high iq playing and leadership in the secondary you he built the 13-year nfl career with over 800 tackles and a super bowl title with the pittsburgh stillers but his impact extends far beyond the field he's a passionate advocate for sickle cell awareness founding cure league a non-profit initiative dedicated to increasing awareness and developing treatments for sickle cell disease he uses his platform and personal experience to push for better understanding for player safety and medical risk in sports through his charitable work he's helped shine a light on issues that are often overlooked especially within athletics and underserved communities he also connects with audiences through his podcast the pivot where he dives into football culture and real life conversations with honesty and depth showing the side of the game that doesn't always make the highlight reels from the locker room to the studio to his advocacy work he continues to use every platform he has to inform challenge and inspire please welcome to the end of today's show we'll be right back with a special segment where we look at how you can make a difference in the lives of the people that you care about thank you for joining us and we'll be right back with a special segment where we look at how you can make a difference in the lives of the people that you care about thank you for joining us and we'll be right back with a special segment where we look at how you can make a difference in the lives of the people that you care about thank you for joining us and we'll be right back with a special segment where we look at how you can make a difference in the lives of the people that you care about thank you for joining us and we'll be right back with a special segment where we look at how you can make a difference in the lives of the people that you care about thank you for listening yeah cuz no matter how dope that shit is it don't mean nothing if don't nobody here yeah no doubt so thank you for listening man um man first of all uh i know that you you have a passion for football like where did your passion for sports start oh shoot i mean it's the first thing i loved you know i'm saying like i i didn't i wasn't told what to do with the football right i went outside there was one on the ground i picked it up i knew exactly what to do with it for real right i knew the dude that had it i wanted to kill him what right and i knew when i had it in my hands i ain't supposed to get tackled my pops was coaching uh my pops and my godfather we call him parrain was coaching uh six and seven uh six and seven year old team at the park and at the time i was four and i was playing on the side and one of the coaches was like hey man we good like just put your son out here my dad's like he's too young yeah i was like pop i could do it and so uh they gave me these big old pads these big old pants my helmet was shaking yeah and he put me a defensive end i was small skinny and i was like well dad you know i'm saying like what i'm supposed to do yeah and he said don't let nobody get outside of you so i lined up far as hell on the outside and i knew they couldn't get out here yeah i was downhill and since then man i loved it um and i think it's like anything you do that you're passionate about though when something matters to you that much you are willing to give your entire life to it right you know i'm saying that's what it was it becomes purpose it becomes purpose but i think it's the same way it's it's different from what you're talking about with music though of course like you love music sure you see what i'm saying and you were gonna do music and you were great at it but you understood how good you were at it because we received it you see i'm saying like we received it we loved it you can't play football like that right right because sometimes you could put all the work in you could put all the effort in and it's so difficult to do and on the other side you never get loved back right you know i'm saying so like will you still do it like these dudes that go play dt d2 d3 ball dudes that go play arena in canada you see what i'm saying like you still gonna do this even though it's telling you i don't love you the way you love it such a sacrifice of your body physically yeah you know to play at a high level you sacrifice so much of yourself to actually get out there and play at a high level for you let's say well i guess we we stand a chance of getting shot you know what i'm saying that sucks yeah it's terrible hey you know like there's there are some rappers who don't have to cte you know but i think like for you if you if you're in the studio right and you pour into a project right and you feel like that project was everything it was supposed to be how much does it matter to you how your fans or how the people receive it it mattered a lot earlier earlier on it mattered a lot like my first album was like that uh and for real kind of told me initially because pharrell was a part of my first album he did two records uh he did uh my first single i'm serious and he also did a record called what's your name and when we were recording those records he was listening to my music he said you know you're so dope you might be too dope you're gonna go over people's heads so don't be surprised if your first album don't work or doesn't connect and i say nah man i should i'm out of here you know uh but because that was the the farthest that i had come in that moment so i couldn't see nothing else but you know the stars and the moon for myself and just as sure as what he said hit my ears that's exactly how it happened um but when that didn't go the way i expected it to uh it affected me far more simply because i just knew i was better than what i was showing commercially or what i was being given the opportunity to show commercially i knew i just knew i was better than you know the way i was being presented now once i went on in my career uh second third fourth fifth however many albums in let's say uh after that albums like um paperwork that you know might not have done as well as previous albums i knew then that you know there's a disconnect in the way music is being received right now because that was a definitely a shift at the time from uh from physical albums going in the store buying out to to stream it right and a lot of physical artists who were who were known for selling physical albums had to accept the transition period to adjust because it's a difference to get people to come and stream you for free like the attention that it takes to attract people to come stream you for free that is a different application of skill than to attract the people who go in the stores and actually buy physical albums so it it kind of changed over the years and i think that right now i'm just now getting to a place where it's kind of you know it's leveling out you know the big thing is too though from the standpoint of music right you look at your last single and the way that we received it right it started with us and then now it went to the generation under us and now when we're playing it when people are hearing it it's cats that's 20 21 years old that listen to rappers we can't understand like legitimately i listen to some of these little dudes i don't know what they saying uh yeah right like like my son get in my car and when he had an ox that made me feel old we is old like it ain't it ain't it ain't it ain't no we can't we are not of this world you ain't old till you cold you know real talk real thing a real talk old is the is the better alternative yeah and so like i think everything is cyclical right the the difficult part is what do you do when the arc's not sitting on you see like you think about when you started it off the question shouldn't have been were you were you better than being received the question should have been were you better than the output right like i never like for me it wasn't like i was undrafted right undrafted played 13 years right so when you're undrafted that means so you walked on basically okay so that means seven rounds went by and 32 teams said no said no for seven rounds and listen a lot of them got more picks than seven it's just seven rounds right okay and so all of those people said you know what you can't play right and so for but you'd already proven yourself at lsu right at least that's what i thought okay right but now you got to go assess it and you got to say okay did i do everything i was supposed to do and i was able to say you know what nah that was there was that workout you were supposed to do sunday morning but after the florida game you went out you got drunk what about the combine did you perform well in the car wasn't invited you wasn't i wasn't invited so at that time we had so you got pro days right i did well at pro day but the other piece of it for me was that pro day i wanted to graduate so while everybody else is off and they're training and they're at these special places and they're only focused on that like i'm focused on school too, right? I got the keys to the indoor facility. I'm training myself. I'm running by myself. I'm lifting by myself. And so when I'm walking in to the rookie minicamp, I say, okay, you didn't do what you should have done your senior year, right? That's why you were in this position. So I made the decision, you know what? I was better than my output, right? I wasn't better than their subjective opinions, but I was better than my output. So how do you in this next phase or this next opportunity be better than that? And that's all I could control. You can't control whether or not we buy it. Right. Because the worst thing for you to do would be this. Well, I wasn't worried about controlling whether or not you buy it. I just had to have it hit your ears. Right. I knew that every time my music hit somebody's ears that it would make an impact. I knew that you would want to hear it again. You'd want to rewind and say, what did he say right there? I knew that I had that level of impact. I just had to make sure that my music hit their ears. And when it didn't, you know, it didn't hit the way I thought it should, I took matters into my own hands and I started traveling, you know, for South Carolina, North Carolina, parts of Florida, parts of Alabama, parts of Tennessee myself. And going to the malls, going to the project, going everywhere I could, going to the clubs and handing out the things that the label wasn't willing to do. They were focused on other more sure shot artists like Outkast and Tony Braxton, Usher, so on and so forth. And I'm not willing to just wait on somebody to see value in me. I'm going to see value in myself first. So I grabbed all the promotional items I had and I went out and I hand to hand, my, you know, mine came from word of mouth. You know what I'm saying? Traveling around from Tallahassee, you know, New Orleans, different places that I knew if I get it, I'm going to get it. I'm going to get in front of people, no matter how big the crowd is, when this crowd walk away, they're going to know who I am and they're going to tell somebody else about it. And we did that probably about six months. And then L.A. Reid called me. Yeah. And said, hey man, I hear you got this. What's going on? You know what I mean? I'm like, man, we just down here working. And now he talking about working on the second album. I'm like, man, I don't know if I want to do this again like this, you know what I mean? But he did the greatest thing that I think anybody could have ever done. For me, was he gave me the opportunity to step away from that deal. He let me go. Let me be a free agent. Because I asked him for so much money that he said he wasn't going for it. Because I knew the only thing that could secure my independence was to be financially free enough to do the things I was expecting the label to do on my own. And if I were acting independently, I should be treated independently. And he said, you know what? He said, well, you know what? I'm going to just let you go be independent. And that's what he did. And that was the greatest gift that I had received in this game. What was it about that process that you now consider the greatest gift, though? Because I had already used, for one, okay, I had already used their money to develop my name, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Their money got me up there to work with Pharrell. Their money got me all these studio sessions to work with, you know, Jazz and Fade, DJ Tune, Short. Their money and their resources got my art designed and all of my promotional items, my marketing tools, you know, those boxes of CDs that they used to have with the holes in it saying for promotional use only. I took them and sold those. You hear me? Right, right. Because when they just said it there, I got access to the storage room and I seen it was a room half the size of this one with all my shit in there. I'm like, why ain't this? It's out in the world. Man, I got me, we got us a truck and put all that stuff on the truck, put it in our apartment and every time we move, we'll pack a trunk in a van, a trunk in a van full and we'll move it around. And if it was, you know, man, let's say Grambling versus FAMU or something like that, big games and stuff like that, man, we'll go to old places, man, and we'll put our stuff up and we'll pay, pass it around, just walk through big crowds and we were never scared of interacting with the people because we come from the people, you know what I'm saying? And that's the way I feel like, you know, my success was born. Now, once I had done that for so long, usually a company say, no, you wouldn't have got this far without my resources. I'm going to hold on to you and I don't care if you don't never do nothing. I'm going to keep you until I get my, you know, resources back, my ROI. He said, you know what? I'm going to let you go right now from here. That is a gift. Yeah, that was one of the greatest gifts I've ever received. But see, like, I think there are moments like that, you know what I mean? Which is why I love the name of our show, right? The Pivot. Because that's a pivot for you. Right? That's a moment where you was like, I'm not betting on myself because of what I think I'm willing to do. I'm betting on myself because of what I've already done. Right. Right, and I think so many people don't understand that or they don't have the wherewithal and the confidence that they can go accomplish what they want to accomplish on their own. Like, it's hard by yourself. Right, it is. It's tough. Right? It's dark out there. Exactly. Like, when the phone ain't. The light's shining everywhere else. Right, when the phone ain't ringing. And also, too, though, it's like, when people who have a path and have already made a path aren't there anymore, now you got to figure that out by yourself. That's real. Right, and so, like, that's always what I'm having to do. That's what I'm having to do. I'm having conversations with people about. Now, we were. I was here early, so I was eating brunch. Mm-hmm. Dude stopped over. He's like, I box. Mm-hmm. Right? And he was like, you know, I'm 11-0 right now. He's like, what do you think. Did you ask him who he fought? No, I didn't ask him who he fought. I didn't ask him who he fought. The milkman don't count, man. Hey, listen, your 11-0 is your 11-0, dog. Shoot. Hey, listen, I got a couple of wins in middle school. I know I ain't supposed to count, but I still count. I still count. They gonna count the losses? But I told him, man, listen, everybody in some way sacrifices, right? There's level of sacrifice for each person. Everybody sacrifices in some way. Life is about execution and adjustments. That's right. Right? Like, we all got a plan. Mm-hmm. So when you go in with that plan, can you execute the plan? And when it doesn't work or when something is off or when something needs to change, are you going to are you willing to adjust it? Right. People aren't willing to adjust their plans because we have all these grand ideas of this linear life we're going to live. Yeah. Right? Like, you didn't live a linear life. Nah, I wouldn't afford it, that. You see what I'm saying? And so because your life isn't linear, there's something that you learned, right? If we're on this path, there's something you learned on this side of the path that once you got back here helped you continue to go forward on this path you wanted to go on. That's real. And kids, in my opinion, losing that. You said, man, when it wasn't working for me, we packed a truck and a van and we handed stuff out. We went to games. Right. Now, if they Instagram don't get 15 likes, they in a depression. Yes. Now, I'm going to give them a little more credit because they also have other things that, how can I say this? They will go to other things to subsidize. And to fund their movement. Yes. Yes. They will do that. Sometimes them doing that stunts the growth of the goal, you know, but they do, they have to have, and also they have other things sort of like hustles like, let's just say flipping sneakers. Yeah. Some kid, you know what I'm saying? They'll get in that sneaker raffle, get a whole bunch of sneakers and flip them. And, you know, before you know it, they made more money selling sneakers than they did rapping. Some people, like for instance, Country Wayne, just sat here with Country Wayne. He started out as a rapper. Mm-hmm. And he was rapping. He was hustling too. But he said that when he saw what he could do making, you know, two, three minute skits on his phone, he wouldn't worry about the rapping no more. Yeah. But so all of these things are examples of what this generation have access to. An ability to do that we didn't have the same opportunities. But we didn't have the mobility that they have. This is true. Right? I don't, like, I didn't have that mobility. It was, I'm gonna play this sport. I'm gonna be a straight-A student and we gonna figure one of those things out. You was a straight-A student? Yeah. For real? Yeah, I don't think I made a B until I was like 10th grade. That's hard. Yeah. But, you know what I'm saying? So, like, that's the, so that was my path. Like, I was the kid, like, my friend used to. I think I stopped making Bs until. My friends used to laugh at me, man. Like, I, my parents, like, I remember when I tell the story. But you had a mom and a father in your household. Exactly. So you, it wasn't no bullshit. No, we wasn't playing, but my parents sent me to Catholic school. I wasn't scholarship or nothing like that, but I would walk in the kitchen and hear my mom talking to the secretary at the school and be like, hey, look, my husband gets paid next week on Friday. We can give y'all this much money on Friday. Then I get paid the next week. We get paid the rest of the money for the month. So if I'm hearing that, I'm not finna F over to get my people money. No way. That's real. That's real. Right? Like, I gotta show up. That's real. Like, I know what you're sacrificing, so my kid, have a different life than what i did the same way you doing that for me absolutely right but it's not the mobility of i do think the kids this this generation have this they have the ability to fail and regroup to me they also have way too much opinion in their life yeah right you can go you can tell me i'm great you can tell me i'm terrible right and based on my ability to digest it and comprehend it i rise and fall with the boos and the applause yeah that wasn't that wasn't my life yeah we weren't we weren't uh our efforts weren't being documented like theirs are right now you know what i mean i've been like my son just now got you know he got he got uh pulled over and arrested uh for making a terrible decision but he's in that outfit he said nah man he that was his decision and he was telling me he didn't want to get out the car i think he didn't want to get out the car because he didn't want them to see him in there he didn't now i can't get out the car not like this you can't not take no pic of me in this yeah not in the pokemon yeah man had a pikachu one zone man but he but but to to to you know to to in his defense though he was like bro he the the the police were like they thought man he said that they were treating him like they thought he stole the car and he knew he didn't steal the car and that i'm like bro you trying to be right or you trying to go home but i say that to say either way i say that to say i've been pulled over with a positive outcome and a negative outcome several several several times in my life but when i was his age none of these things were documented if i had to have these things documented my psyche whenever i'm in these positions would probably cause me to posture myself in such a way because i know it's going to be reviewed later and however i want to be viewed and received by the world is how i'm going to carry myself which may not be the best application for the situation it may not be it may not be the best application for the situation but more importantly it may not be the best application for you absolutely which is the same one in the same which i'm saying because but the society we live in has people in many cases thinking about what the perception of me is going to be over who i truly am who i really am yeah right and and it's like i know people are going to see this right so i have to behave in this way i can't i can't cry i can't i can't feel i can't appear soft or whatever it is and in some of those situations you appearing soft yeah it's just being smart exactly you see that's what i told him it's just being aware sometimes you can't say your ass and your face at the same time you can't do both and they don't pick one they're on different sides yeah you know what i'm saying hey they ain't close for a reason you know what i mean and so like and then that's what in looking at what they're dealing with i do think i empathize i think it's too much pressure to put on people who aren't fully developed in in in their you know adult skills yet you know i'm saying you can't test adult skills before you develop them you know what i mean and that's going to cause a lot of i don't know i guess public public mishaps also two think about this craig melvin was on our show a couple of weeks ago right and i asked him because he grew up in south carolina his pops was an addict his pop was an alcoholic you know i'm saying his parents worked extremely hard and i said look at your kids life compared to yours okay how do we teach our kids things that we learned in our lives that we didn't learn in our lives that we learned in our experiences that we've worked so hard for them through traumatic experiences right but you worked to put your kids in a different place true than you are true right but there are those lessons you learn through that tip that have made you the man you are today absolutely and some of those lessons i want my kids to get i want them to understand how do you i don't want them exactly i don't want to get it though how you give them that without the trauma you can't and that's the problem so you you legitimately you so we have to instill trauma into the children and you shouldn't know that's right yeah because you know what that is and and no disrespect to anybody like that's some black right like we are we are a culture that that praises trauma and struggle right like if you were well frederick douglas said with no struggle there's no progress right and be and and that is a part of our history that we have to outrun at some point right because it wasn't it wasn't us that made the struggle right it was outside forces yeah right we weren't deciding to struggle right we weren't choosing to struggle right slavery wasn't our decision right the civil rights movement was our decision based on the historic and institutional racism that we were facing it was it was the means to an end yeah we weren't like we want to go get shit done right we weren't like we want to go get shit done right we weren't like sprayed by these mother effing hoses yeah right and so and so now that institutionalization that we have it now bleeds into our home think about southern baptist people bro right you know what like i remember i would go i would hate going to church one because my mama had me in there all day right like that was the first i was like mama ain't no way god need four and a half hours of my time for me to understand what he's saying in these two verses if we really believe in what we say yeah why do we have to stay in here all this time no way but think about this right when you would go to those churches tip they would always preach fire and brimstone and they preach eternal gifts right eternal blessings why eternal damnation right but the reason was this side of it the life that african americans were living on this side there was no glory right right so you had to make people think that even though your life is bad here and you're dealing with these things there is glory on the other side of this so you need to live by these rules and these regulations and if you do that when you get to heaven on judgment day he will say good and faithful servant job well done right and you receive all of these gifts and so i think to tell i'm not going to tell my kids that i want them to deal with figuring out how you're going to eat this next meal right college i'm not going to tell them i need you to figure out or you got to deal with how you're going to get from point a to point b how you're going to pay a bill right right because i don't want you to learn to learn to learn to learn to learn to learn to learn that way now i'm also not going to handicap you though right right you got to do something and so i think that's the hard part but no way do you want to have and i can ask you this with all the work that you've done right and you understand the situation that your son was in how much does it hurt you that he's actually in it when you've worked for him to not be i mean to be honest bro it doesn't hurt me as much as it hurts him because i see him go through it okay to be honest with you the charges are really trumped up charges that will be reduced and he's gonna be fine yes he's still you know going to come out come out of it on the other end without a felony on his record and with that so i is really it was really an act of futility on the on the officer's behalf in my opinion because i understand the officer must maintain authority but you have a kid is driving by himself and you see he said he's concerned for his safety i mean and he's going through the trouble of calling attorneys and trying to fit that tells me this kid's trying to figure out the right thing to do and if i'm if i'm an officer of the law i'm an authority of the community i'm like okay this kid's trying to figure out the right thing to do at the right thing to do and i can't absolve myself as an officer of all the other actions that have taken place against people who look like him so i can't make him pretend that he shouldn't be concerned it's dark he's by himself in a parking lot there's no other witnesses or nothing else out here i can't pretend like this kid don't have a reason to be concerned so i at that point have to meet we have to find a way to meet communicate hey you're not just gonna tell me what you're gonna do but i i understand where you're coming from however if you don't make the right decision like we're going to have bigger problems than we already have and when i say this now because when i got there the officer said well he has a firearm in the dashboard i had to separate him from the firearm i was like well did you tell him that like no i don't have to tell him i'm like well why didn't you say that why did you not reason with the young man you you obviously have more knowledge of what's going on and what's not going on and what's not going on and what's not going on under circumstances why not give the man something where he could say okay i can understand that let me step on that and let me figure it out because he thinking they finna step up step in my treatment like somebody who stole a car and i mean to me my thing hey man when the officer asked you to step out the car go and step out the car you're like yeah but they was already talking to me like i stole the car i didn't know what they were gonna do to me i was like man i mean i don't know what though. That's the hurt. you are a world famous human we can't protect our babies from that like we we can't like like that's the part that hurts me the part that hurts me is when and this was something my wife would go through like i'm not a worrier like that's just not my thing no i mean neither i'm just not like i'm not a worrier and so people who've seen the worst case scenario they they probably they don't worry as much yeah i don't worry and so my son first got his license right he ran through he drove through a stop sign on campus at lsu right he got a ticket my wife you need to go talk to him i'll go talk to him hey man you need to you know need to pay attention you need to be careful right what if someone else was driving and they you know try to give him all and she's like what you tell him so i go in there i'm proud right i go in there i tell i didn't talk about the what you tell him is like yeah yeah you know i didn't taught him all the rules and right you know told him why it was unsafe and she was like i ain't i didn't hear the most important thing that every time you do something that allows a cop to stop you that's a chance that's a step closer to you never making it home yeah right and i do live fortunately and unfortunately sometimes i live in a world at some point where i've separated from that right like when when i get pulled over i do feel like hey i'm gonna abide by all the rules i'm gonna behave in a manner that is non-threatening right right i don't have you know all of my my registration is right all of my papers are good i'll carry so i feel good about right where i stand but there is the off chance or a chance that i might not make it home and for my wife she was like this is a 16 year old young black boy in a new car i'm scared for his life and so she's informing him about ways to obey obey the law not so he doesn't break the law but so her baby gets to the house i understand that however i think that we all must come to the realization of we can do everything right and still lose you feel me and also that fear isn't gonna make anything better uh and and if we are really truly god fearing uh we understand that fear and faith can't exist in the same place so if you're gonna have faith in god then that faith should take up all the room where fear could possibly exist so here's my i agree with that yeah right i had that conversation with my wife about a different subject yeah that involved the children but you know i just i ain't gonna get into it yeah i agree and so the in order to do that right you also truly have to submit yourself to god's will that's real that's real see that you gotta believe you gotta believe in that and you have to believe that what god has ordained you have to believe that you have to believe that you have to believe that what god has ordained for you is truly what you're comfortable with right right and not necessarily comfortable with in the sense that i enjoy it i love it i like it this is what i want comfortable with that god's plan for you supersedes any plan that you have for yourself right on and i think that's difficult for people you know from the moment especially women especially women you're not gonna give me any trouble let's just go buy the book the first woman couldn't go by the plan that god had set forth the first one said well why not the apple why not why everything but the apple why everything but this tree so it's not as easy for women to fall under whatever rules or guidelines have been or whatever purpose has been set forth by god for instance i've already i've said this before i might get in trouble the bible said that women are opposed to preach that's what the bible says it's not me saying i think women shouldn't preach i like to hear women preach i love to hear women perspective on all things the bible said if we're going by the bible said that women are opposed to preach i don't it didn't even well it said that women are supposed to have leadership over men for whatever reason i don't know why i don't know why i didn't make the rules i just read the bible it also it also says if a man still have cut his hand off it does right you know i mean it's so like so that's the it does which is it does it's a conversation i had recently when you know but was that a parable no it's it's in the bible i know but i'm saying it's like it's not a parable it wasn't it wasn't part of the ten commandments okay right it wasn't part it's an old testament it's an old testament so it's in the torah yeah it's a lot of stuff that's in the old testament that is if you read it literally okay right those things are things that based on nuance context humanity and decency will not happen okay now check this out right we are going to talk about this in a minute but i want to talk about this in the same sense and in the same sense i love this discussion yeah but in the same sense right there's so much biblically biblically that people leave for interpretation and do not they follow what they want and see that's why black and white and that's my issue that's what we can't do and i'll tell you why simply by christian principles heard this term all the time and i ask all preachers when they you know preachers when they you know preachers when they you know talk to me about how i feel about religion i say is god's word everlasting is the word of god everlasting if the word of god is everlasting how could you fit any interpretation into anything how could you just round it off to the nearest ten hundredth a thousandth and make it be your own if the word of god is everlasting and if you are able to change the word of god that means it's not everlasting then why can't we change other things which means that we can't change the word of god we can't change the word of god we can't change it means that i'm just gonna go by this little voice in my heart and i'm gonna i'm gonna read this book and see what it means to me and use the things in it that i feel are important to my life and i'm not gonna hold myself to your standards because your standards change according to how you feel about these words okay understandable but that means you also can't hold other people to those standards that's true right that it's it's not it's not the way people perceive humanity that becomes the the problem it's the judgment and condemnation in which they pass on others because they don't perceive it the same okay i can go right because everyone wants to talk about grace and giving people grace but you you only have grace for the people who share the same demons you share that's right right and because because we're human right right that that's humanity that's right like that's the weakness of the flesh the weakness of the flesh but it's the same thing though it's like when when people grew up like you did you grew up like you did right which so i always say this i don't necessarily love hustlers why not because you i don't feel like you can always trust them based on their priorities well depending on what depending on what your true i like gangsters i don't like hustlers i think they're two different things well i believe okay let's let's let's let's let's differentiate here right dudes that hustle right because because hustlers to me hustlers to me money money money money money money is your priority i can't trust a person if money is your priority because you'll put money over humans if you make every decision based on what it will do to your money flow then you're never making a decision based on what it'll do to our relationship i think that hustlers move to me i think that hustlers move with more morality first of all i think that if you have a gangster and or a gangster you're not going to be a gangster you're not going to be a gangster a hustler moving with moral standards and principles then they're both like eye with me i think either of them absent of moral standards and principles agree are a danger to society great you a man a man and men without rules puts you in a lawless society right right and no order there's chaos with no order there's chaos and so my big thing is it's like i want to know that you stand on something right like say you come to me and we disagree tip right like there there's something in your life that doesn't match up with my life right something very simple is like respect right and you like rc man like if you do that that's disrespectful to me maybe that's not something that i take as disrespect but now i know anytime i'm in your presence if i do that thing i'm purposely and intentionally disrespecting you so now you know something about my character right right you know that there is something in me that doesn't have a level of loyalty to you or our word and all we have to do at that time is put as much distance between us as possible exactly we don't have to share space we don't have to share space and so it's it's those things it's those things to me that i think i like that's what's important it's not important to me that we are like or that we see things the same way it's important to me that what you communicate to me is who you really are i want consistency bro yeah like you can ticity you could be a if you're a human that i don't fool with please be that person every day don't confuse me that's right don't don't don't walk by me one day and i'm like i really f with this dude yeah and the next day you flip the script on me i go for that because now i don't know that's right right that's fair and like you said the distance yeah if i could put distance between us because i know it we don't ever have a problem that's real but going back to the the the differentiation between gangsters and hustlers now me i've never been no like to me i get i see gangsters prioritizing consequence and hustlers prioritizing profits. Yes. Okay. Now, I feel like a hustler chooses you have to choose a hustle. A hustler who will hustle anything then they haven't dedicated themselves to a specific hustle. That's the person I'm talking about. Yeah, okay. I feel like that's out of desperation. I accept that. I accept that explanation because that actually puts it in a box for me. Like there are dudes who have a certain hustle and outside of that they choose not to live that way. I know a person and I mean for lack of a better word we'll call him a hustler. His hustle is he still calls. That's all he do though. He don't try to sell no dope. He don't got no weed. He don't flip no cards. He ain't trying to run in no banks. All he do is steal cars and he know how to steal a car from the oldest to the newest. Right. And he'll steal a car, get it to a play, bust it down and sell all the parts out of it if you need you. If you messed up and you need you a new passenger seat. You need you a new passenger seat for a brand new Escalade. He got one. That's what he does. You hear me? He steals cars and sells parts. That's his hustle. Now, he's not waiting on you to come outside of your house at night, jump out in no bush and say, hey, give me all your jewelry. Take me to your safe. He's a hustler. He's not a robber. See, to me, a gangster is somebody who gonna rob you, who gonna do everything, extort you, who gonna do everything they can. But even then, that is a personal decision on the gangster's behalf and on the hustler's behalf that falls under their moral status. Standards and principles. So your biggest thing is, and I do agree with you, there's bad apples in every batch. I can't even call them bad just because they making different decisions than me. They making decisions that they gonna have to stand before God and deal with. Yeah. Just like I made decisions that I have to stand before God and deal with. I think that's the problem with humanity is we place judgment on people just because they chose to sin differently than we did. That's the conversation we've been having though. Yeah. Like that is, that's what I'm saying. And there's this level of grandstanding now that comes along with people feeling like they live life a certain way where they feel like they could condemn others because my sin is different slash better than yours. My decision making hurt less people. I'm more focused on this thing or my reasoning or excuses for doing a certain thing make me better than you. And it doesn't make you better. It just makes you different. It makes you different. Yeah. Accepting, accepting people's, people's differences, I believe is difficult when our difference is decency. If our difference is that you can't be decent to other humans, then not that I'm judging you, but I can't fool with you. Yeah. Right. Like we get that. We're in a world that if you say you don't fool with somebody, then you're wrong. Or if you say and not necessarily not that you don't agree with them. If you point out a difference in your character in your fundamentals, then you're judging a person. I'm not judging you. I'm saying you're not my type of person. You might be for somebody else. And more power to both of y'all. Y'all enjoy that. But I don't have to be a part of it. And I think when you look at, when you look at media now, right, like there's been this this real shift of let's talk about each other, not necessarily the thing that's happening. Right. Right. Because that's what people want to see. It's why reality TV is big. Everybody want to see themselves. Everybody want to see what's on TV and compare it to themselves and their lives instead of just looking at it for whatever it is. We want to feel better about ourselves. Yeah. A lot of people want to feel better about their shitty lives by looking at others thinking they're okay. Well, at least my life is not like that. And we do that. I think we do that with our decision making too. Right. If you run in if you run in a circle with a lack of accountability per se. Right. Right. Where there isn't anybody in that circle that'll call you on your BS. That'll say hey man, like you know you deciding to do that on your wife man, like I'm not with that. Right. Right. You not showing up for your kids when you're supposed to show up. I'm not with that. You not keeping your word when you told this person you would do that. I'm not with that. So it's like if you don't have that lack of, if you don't have that accountability in your circle now you start looking at other people and you compare who you are to them. Right. If you out and you living and you see, you be like, shit, yeah, like I mean, I texted one of them, but he got six. Well, to be honest with you. When it comes to that kind of stuff, there are insecurities that rest within everybody that pop up at the ugliest moments. Explain that. I feel like those are insecurities. There's something in a man that makes him feel less than a man that he has to remind himself how much of a man he is by comparing himself to another man. Comparison is the thief of joy. Exactly. And I'm so caught up and wrapped up in me and what I'm doing, man. I ain't got time, bro. Like if it ain't, if you ain't putting it in, in, in, in my, bringing it to my attention, bro, I don't really got time. I don't got time to consume myself with other people's endeavors. You know, not that I, you know, that I don't celebrate others endeavors. If you do it, man, I celebrate anything they're doing to keeping them from breaking in my house. Anything you doing, keep even breaking in my house, man, please keep doing it and be good at it. Uh, back to the other thing that we were saying, I think that the number one rule, regardless of what level of life you walk on, is to treat others the way you would like to be treated. Yeah, I agree. If you can speak to people the way you want to be spoken to, if you do, like, for instance, if you a robber, you robbing people, but you don't mind if somebody come rob you. You feel me? I don't think it work like that. But I'm just saying, but see, that's the problem. It ain't the robbery that's the problem. It's the fact that you out there doing something to others. It's hypocrisy. Exactly. It's hypocrisy. That you don't want done to you. You don't do that, and that's the reason I never rob, because I'm like, man, I wouldn't want nobody, you know what I'm saying? Putting my baby in the microwave, I wouldn't want nobody kicking my dough down, so what the hell? I'm gonna go do that to them for. Because the energy in Earth is circular. It's gonna come back to you. Eventually. I don't give a damn who you is and how long you may get away from it. Whatever you do to other people will come back to you. That's why I try to just stay away from it. I hustle. I give people things that they want to receive. That they're willing to pay for. And I don't mind if somebody, offer me the opportunity to pay for things that I'd like to receive. But when you talk about life being circular, the thing is, we see it as circular. Some people will use the word karma, right? It's not karma. It's that you continuously doing a thing puts you in position for that thing to happen to you. It's energy. Life is energy. When we talk about God, God is consciousness. Consciousness is energy, okay? Energy is whatever you, whatever energy you put out, it's going to bring that energy back to you, whatever that is. So the more you do a thing, that's the more you're producing that energy. That energy is going to cause a resounding effect for the same thing to come back and happen to you. But that's why you have to think before you act. Think before you speak. Think before you make a decision. Because I'm always looking at different things like, if this person did this thing to me, what would be my reaction? Right. And whenever I do a thing or if I say something in media and if my impact doesn't match my intention, I'm always assessing how I could be better. Right. Because I don't want to set out to say something insightful about Tip and the way that he receives it or comprehends it or the way that people spin it makes me feel or him feel like I said that out to offend him. Right. Right. And so I can assess that and be like, nah, man, I either try to clarify it. Sure. Right. Or you can sometimes you can say, no, I was wrong. Right. I mean, I listen to that and the way that I communicated that can be taken in this way. I apologize. But we live in a world where that makes sense. But now we're in a world, bro, where apologizing is seen as a weakness. That's because of the insecurities coming from the people who feel that way. People who feel that way feel that apologizing, it makes you less of, lesser than because they already felt lesser than to begin with. That's the issue. We have to get into how we feel. Like, for instance, let's just take someone who doesn't even leave the house. They spend all their days inside critiquing others, talking about what other people doing, you know, passing judgment on what other people doing. nine times out of ten, Those are people who, within their household, within their community, within their cities, within their social circle, aren't being listened to. Nobody else is listening to them. So they come the only place that they can get an ear. Strangers. People who don't know them, who can't compare their good deeds with their bad deeds. They can't compare their real life to what they're saying on a microphone. Absolutely. You know what that's called? YouTubers. I don't want to place that on all of them, but some people ain't even fit for YouTube. They just throw shit in the atmosphere and see where it sticks. Right, but it's sticking, though. And I live in a house that YouTube is on a ton. And sometimes I walk past the TV and I'm like, man, I actually am ashamed that I have a podcast that's broadcast on YouTube. Because. These are not the things that I'm trying to portray. Well, you're in the market. These are not the conversations I want to have. But your energy is pushed out to be attracted by similar energy. Exactly. And those people are doing the same thing. Because it's probably more people that feel like them than it is that feel like us. So here's my question to you, then. And with numbers comes success. How do you weigh the things that you will respond to? Man, to be honest, I just I'm a Libra. And so I'm 925 September 25th. I'm leaving October 12th. OK, right on. So we see things in similar through a similar vision. But I am either all the way in or all the way out. So when I was on Instagram, I would respond in the damn near everything. I was on a month. Wait a minute. That's not right. You shouldn't say that because it's not true. And. I, I, I, I really became ashamed of myself for that. And I had to, you know, I had to self-reflect. I had to acknowledge what I was doing, you know, to allow this to take place. And then I had to say I had to make a conscious decision. You know what? The only way this shit gonna stop is if I just cut all this shit out of my life. Just get it out. It's not on my phone. I don't. My, my pages ran by my assistant management. You know, I tell them, you know, I type a caption. If they need to post something specific, I review some stuff they post. But I don't. That way I don't see what's being said. You, someone would have to send me something and say such and such said this about you. That has to be sent to me. I'm not there looking, waiting to observe a comment from someone I don't even know. I'm more concerned. With how my life is, with my interactions with the people that are around me, the people that actually know me, the people that have experienced, uh, my life as I put energy out into the world. And that's so to answer your question at first, I responded to everything. Now I respond to absolutely nothing. And so the, the, you have been your type of famous much longer than I've been my type of little famous. Well, there's no little or big man, the glory for one gold to God. We're just vessels and people admire us or pay attention to us because we do something that they appreciate. I agree with that. Football, wearing a helmet all those years, I didn't have the visibility that I do now. Right. I also played a sport and was around people that if we have an issue, I'll come talk to you. That's right. Right. I'll look you square in the eyes. And I'm also comfortable that if during that conversation, we find out there's a different way we need to handle this. Like there's a next step to this conversation. Right. I'm comfortable with that. Right. Right. Which is why I'm coming to you to have the conversation. That's not the real world we live in. Right. Right. So once I got to, so once I got to the point where people would say things about what I say or what I do, I was the same way. No, that's a lie. Or when they would miss, misquote me, misconnect me. No, I mean, I'm trying to contextualize what I say. I wanted to defend everything. I want to say, no, that's not who I am. That's a natural response for a man. That's not what I meant. Well, for a conscious human being. So you know what I had to learn though? People who were in our business, right, people who had played my game, and I'd be like, say, bro, like, you're talking about me a lot. Real talk. Like, I am never speaking about you, but for some reason, everything I say, you have something to say to me. We must have a personal issue. I'll DM them. I'll DM them. I'll DM them. Shoot them my number. Hey, man, let's hop on the phone, right? Tell me where you want to meet up. Let's have a conversation. And people would, and they would be like, nah, man, I ain't talking. I verbally spar or I do this. Yeah, I do this for the, I do this for the media, for entertainment. And I try to tell people I don't live that way. If I have an issue with you, it's a real life issue. And so it took me reaching out to people who were talking about me constantly to finally learn that this is not a real thing. This is some action. This is an abstract thing that you are making up in order to be able to drum up some sort of life. This is for people who can't exist in the real world. But I had to, but I had to learn that from actual humans to be able to ignore the humans you were talking about that you didn't even know. Right. Like, I had to, I had to put myself out there to be like, nah, I want to solve this to realize there is no solving it with people who don't want a solution. That's right. You know, and that was, that was tough for me because. I didn't come from that world. Man, you know what? We've gotten into a philosophical discussion and gotten completely off track. Okay, my bad. With what we were posed to talk about. I mean, I didn't mean to get into a philosophical conversation. No, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. No, this is, this is what this platform is for. It's what this platform is for. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I just don't want to get out of here without introducing the people who may not be as familiar with your experience to, you know, the things that you impacted the NFL by doing. But in the NFL, you. You, you, you, you said that you're, the name of your podcast is Pivot. So tell me what the biggest adjustment is that you had to make entering the NFL. It's a good question. The biggest adjustment I had to make was.