DJ EFN

In this episode we interview DJ EFN aka the mixtape king of Miami. EFN is also the founder and co-host of several radio shows and podcasts, such as “Drink Champs” and “Father Hoods”, as well as a filmmaker, clothing retailer, A&R, and marketing specialist of Crazy Hood Productions. EFN is married and has two children.

We chat about producing mixtapes & albums, founding the show Drink Champs with N.O.R.E., the challenges of parenting, producing the film series called Coming Home, managing the band Mayday, balancing health and entrepreneurship in the hip hop industry.

You can find EFN here: 
www.crazyhood.com 
www.drinkchamps.com 
www.instagram.com/whoscrazy 
www.instagram.com/drinkchamps 
www.instagram.com/fatherhoodspod 
www.twitter.com/djEFN
www.facebook.com/DJEFN

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

All good. I got, if you hear, for some reason there's a rooster that is outside right now you know it's Miami. It's just cockadoodle-doing like a motherfucker right now and then we got a storm coming through also, so hopefully the power stays on. Welcome to souls of hip hop, a podcast for hip hop heads that aims to bring inspiring people together to share their wisdom, passion, and unique stories. My name is candy. I'm DJ Razor Cut. And together we are Soulidarity- connecting souls organically. What's up fam thanks for tuning in. On today's show, we welcome DJ EFN. He is known as the mixtape king of Miami. EFN is also the founder and co host of many radio shows and podcasts, such as drink champs and father hoods, as well as a filmmaker, clothing retailer, A&R and marketing specialist. EFN is married and has two kids. Welcome to show. How would your parents describe what you do? Wow, no one's ever asked me a question. I guess you could say both my parents, I was raised by mainly my mother, a single parent, but my dad is still alive. And you know, from time to time, we might see each other or communicate. I don't know how they describe it. I guess if they were gonna describe it to somebody else. They just say that I was in the entertainment business. And you know, and then if they someone said, well explain more. Maybe before I started doing films, they might have just said, Oh, hip hop. Los rapperos. You know that that stuff. But uh, when I started doing films, it made it easier for them to say, Oh, he's like a documentarian now, you know, like he makes documentary films. Can you give us a little picture about how Miami was during the golden era, because many times with hip hop, people talk about the golden era hip hop. And I feel like Miami also had something going on at that time as well. Just to be fair, I think that golden era is all depending on your age and generation, because I feel like every generation has a golden era, but specific to mine. And what I consider like the Miami golden era, or like the era that raised me in Miami, and inspired me, it probably be like, early 90s, like late 80s, but like 90 to like 95. And there was just a lot of activity in the Miami hip hop scene in a time where Miami, you know, wasn't being looked at for hip hop, the mainstream hip hop scene at the time, which wasn't that mainstream yet. But for hip hop was basically made, you know, out in New York, and they kind of like look down on Miami and on the south. So Miami had like a little bit of an identity crisis, where a lot of people Miami rep New York, they even tried to emulate being from New York a lot. But there was a lot of people, including my crew and myself, that we're starting, but they were they're really before us that were starting to represent Miami. And one of the things that I was looking for as a young hip hop head was, you know, just like everything, all the elements I wanted to, for people to be lyrical, but like represent Miami for people to be turntablists and kill it and represent Miami for people to be it'll be boys and represent Miami and be girls graffiti artists and represent Miami but be like the top, you know, like I wanted us to kill it and go that much harder. Because Miami, people didn't really look towards us for hip hop. And in that era, I feel like we were breaking that shell. And we were doing that. And we had dope artists like mother's superior that people used at that time called her the female NAS. And she was like one of the first at that time to get a major record deal. We had world renowned B boys and B girls. We had DJ Craze, I'm saying Omer and then just you know, the list goes on and, and I just feel like that era was just special. Because also at that time to be a hip hop head wasn't just like a term you just threw out there. Like, I always tell people and I don't know if people get me when I say this, but in school to be a hip hop, it was almost to be a goth kid. There was the goth kids that you knew who they were, there was that group right there. And then the hip hop kids, those kids right there, and then the jocks and this and that. Yeah, and that's how it wasn't the city. Like, I could tell you, there was only a couple thousand of us that were legit hip hop heads in the city. And we would all kind of we may not have known each other personally, but we knew each other because we were always going to the same jams and events or whatever. And I thought that was super dope, because these are diehard, you know, authentically genuine hip hop heads at that time, and I think that's what makes it the golden era. And that sense because when hip hop went super mainstream, then you would say people be like, yeah, I'm a hip hop head, but they you know, they weren't necessarily a hip hop head, like so. So yeah, that's the error and that's kind of more or less how was Do you remember Hot Wheels? Of course, I mean, this is my part of town and Kendall. Yeah, wheels was part of my inspiration. Being a DJ was going as a kid to hot wheels and seeing the DJ in the DJ booth. That's where anybody that was done with hip hop would go. Yeah. And that's where we used to battle all the time out there. So Hot Wheels was super dope. I saw a lot of my first hip hop shows the Hot Wheels, heard a lot of my first hip hop songs, you know, like, like, like, just a lot of first time that I heard a song or an artist was in Hot Wheels itself. So yeah, though Hot Wheels is definitely a landmark and Kendall, South Miami, for sure. So talking about Kendall, there are a number of artists that have come from Kendall that have really made an impact. And there's like a certain vibe to kindle. Like what makes Kindle so special? That's a good question. And I couldn't tell you what makes it so special. Because probably if you ask most people in Miami, they'd be like, Kendall ain't shit, you know, like, it ain't nothing. My opinion. Kendall was like this. Suppose it's suburb that people that were escaping other other cities and areas of you know, the United States, when they were trying to like do have a better life for their families. They ended up like in Kendall. So kendal's, like lower to upper middle class had had a little bit lower than that in some places, but but for the most part, lower and upper middle class. And then you have people from all walks of life from all over the country, from all over the world, you know, a lot of Caribbean out here to Jamaicans and Haitians and Bahamians, and, and then you had Colombians and Cubans, and just so so many people in this one area, but like I said, a lot of their families were coming from other places. So there's a lot of influences. Like I have friends that are from Boston, I have friends from New York, from New Jersey, from the west coast, all over the place. And so I feel like that kind of like what inspired the musical landscape of hip hop and what made it I mean, you know, local hip hop and Kendall what made it special to me, you had all these different people from all walks of life, adding to the gumbo of the scene, and everybody was kind of like amped to to rep, not Kendall rep period, I want to put a stamp on my crew we were I think I think the first official people to really rep Kendall because people weren't sure about you know, representing this suburb in Miami at the time and I was like, Hey, this is where we live. Let's just rep it but uh, but you know, we had Craze from Kendall the last straws and plan beats and just so many crews and not just rappers but b boys and B girls and graffiti artists STVs and all these guys and and Kendall was just amazing to be a hip hop head and growing up here. So making it a bit more specific to you. What were your inspirations and like what was the first mixtape you heard that got you into wanting to create mixtapes? The first mixtape was probably hard to pinpoint. I could tell you I used to record a lot off the radio like the mix shows or any mixes that I heard and you know a lot of pirate radio or college radio or even Public Radio, but I remember getting my hands on this tape that I haven't been able to verify and I asked Craze one time and it was like a tape that I swore it was Craze practicing and I'm not gonna say is the first mixtape I heard but I just remember as well favorite tapes that I had it wasn't an official mixtape. It was just someone mixing that it was recording it That was one of my favorite ones but aside from that, like the average one was like a Tony Touch or SNS or a Ron G or even Kid Capri tapes, which were recorded from live parties, which are the original mixtapes live jams like Park jams, all of those things were my favorite but you know what inspired me to start doing mixtapes as much as I love those mixtapes none of those mixtapes represented Miami or spoke to us and I wanted to do that for Miami and kind of like give the same you know quality and consistency of these mixtapes that were coming from out of town but sprinkle in some Miami flavor in there so that we had you know have some pride well you became famous as the mixtape king of Miami, but then later on you also made your own album called another time. What was your blueprint to produce another time? And like how is that different for you than the process of creating a mixtape? I tried to approach it the same way I approached making a mixtape like I would tell people that making a mixtape was almost like putting together an album every time at least in my mind and releasing I took that much time and effort and making a mixtape Now the difference here is every song on this album is being produced in house and and I'm putting it together you know one by one and I think any mixtape DJ that's something that they all aspire to want to do is put together a compilation album like this, but it's difficult to do and so for me it was it wasn't any different. I always wanted to do it and I just was like I don't know this seemed like such an undertaking to try to do whether it be you know, I didn't know if how much it was going to cost to do it. Or if I could get all the people I wanted on it you know I didn't want to do it if I couldn't get the right people on the on the records. But luckily it you know, with time, I found myself in a place that I felt like okay, I feel like it's the time to do it. And whatever What had worked for me is that building the relationships I have built up to that point, set the stage for me to be able to not only afford to do it, because most of the tracks are with people that I'm friends with, that I have relationships with. And then, you know, I could actually put together records that I really curated and produce myself rather than just, you know, I'll get this guy because he's kind of known and I can get him or no, I put together really meticulously these records. The process was I picked out beats, I named the beats a song title to stand in for the moment, I envisioned who I wanted, that was possible that I knew that I could reach you know, either I knew them personally, or I knew someone that knew them. And I started to write down this tracklisting and put all these these names featuring this person featuring this person, and this is before, you know, we started tackling it. And I actually have it right outside this office. I have the board still because it's so amazing to me. Because I came, I would say I came maybe 90% to the original tracklisting that I put together before I started. Yeah, I ended up with I think 55 artists on that album. And it's it really is a pride and joy of mine and shout out to everybody, my team that was a part of it. And my boy kether who helped a&r it with me and my boys that are producers and everybody that was involved. You know, it was a team effort, for sure. It was crazy head effort as well. Where did the crazy hood name come from? Kid in high school thinking, Okay, I want to do a career in hip hop now, you know, all the way up into that point. I was like, I just want to be a fan of the music, the ultimate fan. Now graduating high school, I'm not really looking at college. Like nothing was calling me and I'm not a book, dude. I was like, I want to pursue music. I want to pursue, you know, lane in hip hop music, specifically, as a career. So then I'm like, Alright, let's let me put together you know, writing some names down and crazy hood is very, it's a dated name. Like it's from that time period in the 90s. You know, but uh, but it was it described everything perfectly because I personally felt a little bit psycho a little bit crazy, a little bit mentally unstable all throughout my young life. You know, for various reasons. My parents divorcing moving around from LA to Miami. Like, you know, just life you know, as a kid. I was a little nuts. So I was I you know, crazy. And then hood. A lot of people think means neighborhood. But I tell people it's no it means hoodie, because although it's hot in Miami, when you go to school early in the morning, the average hip hop kid at the time, their uniform was a hoodie, because it was cold in school. You know, when you go to school in the morning, you know, it's a big time AC in Miami, so it's cold enough to wear hoodies. And that was like the average uniform for any hip hop head was like a champion hoodie. So we will call ourselves hoods like hoodlum as well. So crazy hood. And then to sound professional came the productions crazy hood productions. I mean, you have this entrepreneurship spirit, since you're 17. Where did you get that? Yeah, I don't know what I mean, Well, okay, I'm not gonna, I always tend to like front on my dad, but my dad is an entrepreneur as well. And it was all his whole life. He just wasn't around as much. So I tend to like negate his influence. But as a little kid, even not growing up with my dad, I still loved and look to my dad, even in the distance that he was. And he was always like, opening businesses. And I mean, he was wild with it, because the era that he came from, and he was a Vietnam vet marine is a Vietnam vet Marine, and which is part of the issues that happened in my family. But he came back and went to school and became and got like an accounting degree. So he was able to manipulate, like, the banking systems, with that knowledge of the accounting, and he would open up businesses, and then he'd go bankrupt, and then lose it all. And then boom, he bounced back, and he opened up a bunch of other business, and I'd be like, yeah, this dude is wild. So it was kind of inspiring to see my dad do that. And even when he wasn't opening up businesses, he was running companies for other people, and climbing up the ladder to become presidents of these companies. And although he wasn't around and we didn't have a great relationship, it was still I guess from a distance inspiring and I guess that was the bug. I felt like it was a part of my you know, bloodline to be an entrepreneur in a sense. And then just hip hop also just reading about Ruthless Records and Luke records and and rap a lot records and all these these indie record labels and how they were doing it and, and selling out the trunk of their cars. So I kind of like that inspired me as well and masterpiece, and, you know, with with all these crazy like armies, that they would come out in the streets and street team stuff and sounds like alright, you know, and that was like the blueprint in hip hop to do certain things. And I just took all this knowledge from reading magazines, and just kind of seeing from a distance what my dad was doing, and I was like, I'll try to go in this like, entrepreneurial direction. And over the decades, you've had so many experiences, you know, from hustling your mixtapes, to selling clothing, to doing radio shows, managing record labels, having your own Film Academy, etc, etc. What piece of advice would you give your teenage self now looking back, I probably would Said stay in college like I started my two years in my community college Miami Dade. And I ended up not even finishing it. But I went back later and did it. But I would have told myself actually go to school, but go and seek the courses and the degree of I would have done more business, more finance, to learn all that stuff from an academic standpoint, and then apply it in the real world, I think that would have been real helpful for me to not have to go through certain, you know, pitfalls, even if it wasn't to go to college specifically, there's still you can take courses that are not, you know, you don't have to go to full on college to learn these things. And I would have done more of that. But you know, as a young dude, just want And another thing too, going back to the entrepreneurial stuff, I also just didn't want to work for anybody, I've never really worked for anybody. So it might also have been me being a jerk in that sense that I'm like, I don't work for nobody, I'm the boss here, you know, also being lazy, I don't want you to tell me when I have to come in and wake up and do this, I just want to work for myself and do whatever I want, which at first might have say seemed like just a teenage kid just not wanting to be responsible. But I took it serious to say, Well, if I'm going to go out on a limb, I better be able to, you know, eat off of this stuff that I'm doing and carve a living for myself. Something about that time in hip hop to at least when I started. And when you started, we each had like mentors, and which is something that we've noticing now with new technology, many kids are getting into the culture in different ways. And so was there a particular mentor? Did you have any mentors growing up? I did have kind of a mentor, there was this dude, Alfonso, that he had this record label, they had a group called moody dialect. And at the time, when I'm looking around, you know, locally, who's putting out records, just to put out a vinyl at that time was a big deal to people like whoa, you went through the whole process, you were just to get in the studio was a big deal, little less to take that record in the studio and press it up and then release it. That's mind blowing. So this dude, Alfonso in his group Monday dialect, they did that. And I was just amazed by it. And I remember, I don't think I don't even know how I met them. I remember now, but I stepped to them. And I was like, Look, let me just like Shadow you guys, and basically like intern, and just learn, and I'll you know, I'll do whatever, you know, whatever you need me to do. And I did that. And I was around them for maybe a year, I would like intro them at shows when they were performing. And I would do it, you know, run some errands if they needed it. And I was just always with them. I was like just one of their dudes, they're learning from them, I met other producers and other people I ended up working with down the line. So I would say that's probably the closest thing to a mentor that I had. And outside of that it was just me reading as much as I could about all these other companies and labels and artists that I was inspired by and trying to find out their stories. How have you been able to find and keep the happy medium between hip hop culture and hip hop as a business. It's real tough. I'm not a fan of the industry, per se. But I'm heavily involved in it. To a degree, what I've just done is just try to stay true to myself, my music and industry morals that I have are my morals in general. And I just stick to my guns on that stuff. And if I don't feel something, I don't do it, it really has to come from the heart from the gut, you know, every so often you do find yourself compromising for business things. But as long as it is with a balance in that it makes sense. And that there's more positive than anything negative that can come out of it. I've just never been the type to make moves based on money, like jerk somebody else to get ahead of them early on, like, I might have been one of the people that would keep contacts and certain knowledge to myself. But then there was a time period where I don't know, I learned I just matured and said, you know, if I have information that could help the next man, like, I'm not going to keep it next woman, I'm gonna give it up. Because it's just no point and just just hoarding information or hoarding context. So if it makes sense, you know, I'll pass it on, or I'll make a connection and, and do that. And that's something that I originally I wasn't like that. But then eventually, you know, I opened up to that, because I just, you know, just karma I believe in karma. So I guess that that boils down to everything, I believe in karma. One of your great projects or your film series, right, coming home. And in your very first one, you can explore your roots in Cuba. And the film illustrates how hip hop is giving Cubans an avenue to express their pain, their struggles and their dreams. That the end of the film you state that you've had a very positive experience on that trip documenting that movie, in spite of people criticizing that you didn't see the full picture. Have you been back to Cuba since? And has your perception changed any In the meantime? doing that film allowed me to take a trip with my mom back to Cuba, where she hadn't been back there in 45, 50 plus years. And she would have never done that before. That wouldn't even been a thought for her. But doing the film, her meeting some people from the film that came over from Cuba to Miami, and then just convincing her that you know, everything was going to All right, and that the thing is, I try to be very respectful of, of the older Cuban community that feels very passionate about it, because I didn't live what they lived. Luckily, because of them, I was born in the States. And so I'm very careful what I say. But I'm also trying to explain to them that, you know, things have to change. And the people on the island are suffering, well, politics are being played, and we ourselves and them, including the old generation, you're being politicized and used as in that game as well. So I would just say like, I tell anybody, go and check it out for yourself, you can come back and have be like, no, yeah, this is crap. And I'm gonna fight it, and this communism, or whatever, you know, I mean, but I went specifically on like a cultural exchange vibe. I wasn't trying to look for political stuff. Um, and on that tip, it was a beautiful thing. And they made me just say, hey, from people to people, you know, if we're Cubans here, and there's Cubans there, if we want to make things even more free, the best thing to do is communicate, talk, exchange. And that's the way that will change things. But But closing things off, you know, so no, my, my perspective hasn't changed in that sense. But I'm always careful and sensitive to older people that have a different point of view. And I don't really want to fight them and engage them because I didn't live what they lived through. So it's not fair for me to fight and engage them. I'm just trying to just tell them what my experience was. And that's it. That's all I can do. Now, going back to the last time we saw you was at the Mayday show in Miami. And it was during that show that they announced that Fidel Castro passed away. And I went to Little Havana right after that, how did you experience that historic night and how did his death affect you and your family? I mean, my family's super emotional, it affected me because Cuban Americans are kids, you know, born here of Cuban parents, we are raised as if we were raised in Cuba with the same you know, ideology, like I was a young republican kid growing up, you know, thinking, you know, the same way that all the older people thought and until I got older, and I started to have my own thoughts and look at history a little bit differently. But nonetheless, it was still emotional for me, but not as emotional as it was for my family. But I'm really big into history. So I was like, this is a historic time I want to go to a Little Havana, I want to be there and celebrate with the people and for anybody that suffered, which people did suffer at the hands of Fidel Castro, you know, celebrating with you, for this have happened because I know it's making you feel better. It's making it's taking a load off of your back. And that's all I could take it as but no always do. I have the same feelings that my mom has, or my aunts or my uncles or any of the older people, they, they're overjoyed, but then they cry, thinking about what they've lost. And that's the thing at the end of the day, you know, when you have family, a whole group of people that felt that they needed to move in, they just left everything behind a whole language and culture and everything and had to relocate their families. You can't You can't put into words what, what they went through. And so for them, I was happy, but I couldn't relate to them in the sense of how they felt versus how I felt, you know, in one of the last drink champs episodes, Busta Rhymes called you to Steve Irwin, or the Crocodile Hunter of hip hop. I think he was or at least I hope he was trying to say Anthony Bourdain - that's what he was trying to say. I think he called you the Crocodile Hunter. He did. He said the guy that got stung with the Stingray. Yeah, but I'm like, I'm really thinking that you're confusing Anthony Bourdain. And that dude, but okay. I think his point was where you take on the risk in order to show a culture, right, that you're willing to put yourself out there. I think that's what Steve Irwin was trying to do, too, right. You know, wrestle with crocodiles, whatever for the entertainment value, but but also to show like, Hey, you don't have to be afraid of these animals. These are actually really beautiful creatures, right? He was he was a conservationist really is what he was. I think it's a good analogy for you, too, because I feel you're doing the same thing in the projects. You're not ever worried. Yeah. I mean, I try not to think of it in that way. Because then if I overthink it, then I might get more worried. And now I have children where in the first films, I didn't have children. So it's a little different. Something happens to me now, you know, I have to make sure my children are taken care of. But I don't I don't know. I don't want to look at the places I go as these dangerous places where I got to worry about these wild natives like no fucking humans and other people. And they're just like us. And if they love hip hop, then I don't know. I feel like I'm even more safe than any anywhere else. Because we're all this unifying culture that are, you know, united by the common language that is hip hop. And you know, we've been to some of the craziest places in the world, and I plan on going to more, and I've never really felt completely in danger. Now, I think I've been more nervous prior to it, the going to somewhere but once I'm there in the moment, I'm telling you like, it sounds corny but hip hop protects us. And I'm hoping that I never did someone ever places because it didn't. Like, oh, it didn't protect you that time, buddy. I mean, look, anything is possible. We're not naive. The world there's a bigger world than hip hop. You know, there's a lot of stuff going on in these places. But you know, we're, we're careful. But at the same time, I do believe that hip hop is taking care of us, is coming home a film project that you produce together with Garcia? Well, no, Garcia was a part he was a part of the first three films, but it was really because the films were like my idea and my passion and Garcia you know, he's definitely got a bunch of other things that he's into. So we kind of split ways on doing the films like I continued the films, he's doing music, video directing, and stuff like that. But yeah, we're I'm still doing them. We're in post production for our sixth one, which is in South Africa that we took recognize with us. And that one's amazing and the reason it's being held up is the whole COVID messed everything up and slow down production, but I plan on doing these as long as I can do them and I'm looking I'm currently in conversations with a lot of interesting people to make them bigger and better because we do them very independently. And to answer your question No, it wasn't passion of mine originally was to do film but hip hop is my passion and experiencing places is my passion. So filming is a part of the entertainment and industry side of it that I know that I can utilize to monetize and continue to do these. So I made it my passion. How did you know you come up with drink champs? I'll try to give you a condensed story of a very long story. So there's two parallel stories that create drink champs first is well you know me and Nore made long time ago I'll fast forward that story. We stay friends we and he ends up moving to Miami ends up moving to Kendall ends up working out of my studio here and Kendall for that whole time he's here and he was like in my studio every day. He's working out of the studio in and around that time period at crazy hood. We were just always big drinkers. Bunch of you know, Caribbean Latinos, you know, rum and vodka, whatever, we're just big drinkers. So there would be this if you couldn't handle your liquor, we'd be like you're not a drink champ. And it became a term in our offices in our in our studios. And I always thought that was a cool term like drink champs. We would you know say it all the time and then I just said let me see if anybody has the the.com of drink champs calm and nobody had Oh, cool. Well grab that. Grab the Instagram, grab the Twitter, hold on to it. Don't know what it's gonna be. Love the name. Maybe it'll be a website. Maybe it'll be a bar one day who knows? parallel to that, while noise at the studio. We start doing a show on Sirius XM one XM before they merged. And then Sirius XM after they merged. And that show was called millet tainment crazy raw radio, which is a name that Nore gave the show. He wanted to put everybody's name in the title. That show is the precursor to drink chance because there's some old clips on YouTube. It looks and sounds like drink champs. We're drinking the antics. We're joking. We're drinking Tiger bone. We introduce ourselves the same way we just had less guests at the time. Because who's coming to Kendall not nobody's coming to Kendall to see us at the time. And we did that show for like three years. We didn't make a penny of that show. We just did it for fun. And it was on several different network like channels on Sirius XM was on hip hop nation on backspin on 66 raw on a different bunch of different stations. We stopped doing the show Nore went on tour and went to Europe with CNN with Capone. I was getting busy with Mayday. We went on tour with Tech N9ne. We stopped doing the show. I wanted to do something like it but we just didn't have the time. We couldn't deliver a show every week for Sirius XM. So my boy Godfrey, he was local and Kendall at the time. He had a podcast called gamertag radio. He had been podcasting and doing internet radio for years. He's in the podcast Hall of Fame. He was always advocating to me and to everybody to podcast. He's like, oh, that thing used to do it. No, you should do it as a podcast. So long story short, kind of I ended up trying to convince Nore about doing a podcast. He didn't know what a podcast was. Not many people in hip hop at the time knew what a podcast was. There was maybe a couple of podcasts that were hip hop related at the time, but it wasn't popular. wasn't cool. So that took a couple years to get Nore on board at least three years before Nore finally decided and kind of saw the light on Okay, let's try this podcasting. Luckily my boy Godfrey had just got his podcast signed to CBS Radio, he made a meeting for us and we did a deal with them. I tell Nore, I got drink champs ready to go this name is perfect. Because like I whatever drink champs it is and Drink Champs is born as awesome you have a gut feeling that the concept would work and you just secure the handle like what would you tell somebody that they think they have a good idea. Think of it like this for every one good idea that I might have that might be seen. I have 1000 ideas that didn't go anywhere. And that's the way I operate. I feel that I feel that all of them are good, the thousand that didn't go anywhere, they still have a chance somewhere in life. So that's just the way I operate and especially when it comes to like digital stuff. It's so much easier to be an entrepreneur in this digital age, utilizing all these tools. Grabbing a .com doesn't cost you anything. It's like It's like cheap real estate, you know, it's like, what do you what can you think of, you know, ketchup calm or I love ketchup, like whatever you want, just go buy it if you think it's cool, and you think it's amazing and figure out what you want to do with that later. And that's, that's what I do, you know, at least when it comes to this kind of stuff. I was doing that all the time. I mean, I have so many.com so many handles so many podcasts ideas, I even do podcast just to like kind of like go through the motions of a concept and kind of have like a demo of it or like a pilot episode, just to have it there as a placeholder and say, Okay, this is what this is, this is what this is. And yeah, I've always done that I do have a lot of things. My brain doesn't stop thinking, sometimes I can't sleep because I'm thinking of ideas. I used to wake up and just write things down. Don't forget this because I have also terrible memory. I'm like, add and I'm dyslexic, and all this stuff. It's the part of being an artist, I think that you're always constantly creating and you just got to make sure you sometimes you organize these thoughts and put them somewhere so you can utilize them. Drink champs definitely took off and you have a bunch of fun on every episode. Like you can really tell it's a fun vibe, with the show growing like that. Do you ever feel like there's more pressure added on to you in terms of like selecting guests or keeping it a certain format? Yeah, there's been pressured applied to us from our different partners that we've had wanting us to maybe have like, you know, younger artist or you know, what they deem to be more relevant artists. The thing is, is that so me and Nore are two different, we're Ying and Yang. So Nore early on, he had said on the show, that we're only for legends, and we're 10 years or you know more. That's it, I would have never put that out there. Because although my feeling is we're the home to who you consider legends to pioneers were the home to them. It would be I think, ignorant to negate any newer artists because the way I look at it is if we have whatever the newest youngest artists is, although the conversation is going to be different because we don't know much about them. But let's just say we bring some new artists in that's really popular. And he brings all this new fans, you know, new eyeballs on the show. And then the next week we have Kool Herc, who benefits from that cool work benefits from that. And that's what I consider to be you know, the balance, where sometimes we'll have people who people want is not a legend, or that's not a pioneer. That's not even a hip hop artist. My thing is bring more people into the fray and then when you bring a cool work when you bring a Grandmaster Flash when you bring a Crazy Legs, then that there's gonna be new eyeballs and new people discovering them. And that's where we're I think what we're good at what we need to be doing what I think the the mission statement of drink champs really is. Well, congratulations on making history with drink champs and thank you three different platforms is pretty awesome. I always wanted to if you have ever had, you know, guests on your show that you were sort of like starstruck about Yeah, a lot. I mean, one of the rappers at least or MCs that I really loved growing up was why look, NWA and then Ice Cube out of NWA is my favorite. So when we had ice cube on the show, which wasn't the most ideal situation, he was on a promo run, we were in Atlanta, and we did like a, it wasn't like a full on to me a full on drink champs, but that I was starstruck that was the only time I've ever like, because that was my favorite rapper of all time. And next to him, and he just tweeted was Chuck D, and Public Enemy and he just tweeted about us which I had to post this tweet because I got so amped and hyped, you know, and I've been trying to get Chuck to do the show, and Chuck and flavor would be amazing together. But I'll take Chuck by himself as well. So if he comes on the show, I'll be starstruck again. But anytime we have, honestly the keris ones or the DJ Premier's, or the Pete Rock's, that's when I'm the happiest and more into and, and not to, I don't want to diss anybody because there's been artists that I thought I wasn't going to be into that I wasn't into like regularly. And they sat down and their demeanor and their personality. And their humility made me a fan instantly on the show, we had probably the most fun on some of those shows as well. So it really boils down to how the person is when you sit down with them. Well, you made a good point. Also with like the difference in drink champs you're not part of this press run. We're just trying to promote an album. And at one point you mentioned the show love and hip hop should really be called Love and rap music. Yeah. Why do you think that out of all the elements MC and gets so much attention? Why is there like such a big gap not to have B boys or writers or DJs on these kind of platforms? You know, I don't know why because if anything has been proven to be boy community, the graph community have created their own community, their own lanes of revenue. They're hugely popular around the world. And so I don't know why but it just I think it boils down to at the end of the day how the MC even came to be in the first place because it was the DJ wasn't the MC the MC was just big enough to DJ and then the MC is like, hold up. I got the mic and I'm in front of the stage. That's it, bro. I'm taking over and That's what ever since then, that hasn't stopped, you know, and since they have the power of being on the radio, and they have the power to be the music video, that's all people have been programmed to think is hip hop, because they're the ones saying, and the more as the years keep going, and newer and newer, MCs, you know, are aspiring to be really they want to be, you know, entertainers, not necessarily MCs, the further away from the beginning of what the culture is in the knowledge of the culture is they get, so it's like not even their fault at a point, you know, that they don't know what really hip hop culture is, like, I don't even blame some of the younger I actually say on the show, I blame my generation, not me, but my generation, because our generation was the first one to make a lot of money in hip hop. So what happened is, once we started making a lot of money, at least the rappers did, they were like, hold up, we want this to continue forever. So we're not going to do what the other guys did before us, just passing down the knowledge of the history of the hip of the culture. It's just about us, me, me, me, me, me, me, for the most part, not everybody, but for the most part. And so so I think that's where the disconnect came. And now hip hop, you know, there was like, I used to tell people all the time in the radio in Miami, they used to play hip hop. But you know, being down south, the station's the new understanding, you know, what hip hop was, again, they thought it was like this New York thing. So they would just play like, you know, in their mind, they're playing rap music in the mix. And mind you, the regular person doesn't know all these details in like the industry side. But when these radio stations were being bought up, and put under one umbrella, like a national umbrella, then they all started to adopt the same call signs that they would see like in New York, or hip hop lives. So it wasn't till that started going on all the radio stations around the country, that people started saying, Oh, this is hip hop, because the radio station said where hip hop lives. So obviously, the music they're playing is hip hop. So now they're associating just the music with hip hop. And nobody's telling them anything further than that. That's just that's where it ends. And that's where the disconnect starts to happen. And it keeps going and going and I mean, you've always been well connected with all the elements going. Miami, I remember you crazy hood sponsoring the Pro Am back in the day. Mm hmm. And is there any projects or things that you're thinking about of being able because you're you're very much culturalist, and wanting to preserve anything in the works, where you want to kind of incorporate those aspects of other elements within a bigger platform. So you have, I do, but I find it difficult to be honest with you, because the elements have taken, like I said, they're their own thing now. And they have their own leaders, and the people who have dedicated their lives to, so I feel it's unfair for someone like me to say, well, just because I'm a coach for this, right, and I believe in this, I'm gonna put together this event, I'd have to really include all these leaders, I'd have to you know, I don't, I don't feel like I'm that embedded in every part of the you know, every one of those elements, to be able to really do something responsibly and properly, you know, all I could do is maybe continue to speak on it and teach on it. So that if you don't know, at least you know, these things, you know, and then if you leave, maybe your young kid that's like, oh, hip hop is all these, you know, all these elements. And then they see a B boy or B girl that I liked, then maybe they go in that direction, because they heard someone like me talk about or they go to the graffiti direction. But I would like to do stuff. And I'm always going to include the elements like anything that I do, I just want it to be known that when I say hip hop, it means all of hip hop. One thing that I think is amazing, which you do is really being a connector between different people, between the elements between different platforms. How important do you think it is, knowing a skill versus knowing the right people, I don't think you necessarily need to know people. To accomplish that. You just need to expose yourself to the people, expose yourself to the different works that are inspiring to what you want to do. And then as you do it, you will create relationships within that. And you know, obviously, you nurture those relationships, you create a network, and you know, each one teach one type thing. But you really don't as an artist, I believe you can be you know, you don't need anybody, you just create, you know, if you're a creator, you create from within you do your own thing. But there's nothing wrong with learning and looking at other people being inspired by other people. Taking a little bit from everybody and creating your own. That's a part of the creation process. I'm going to go back to Miami,Mayday, Jazid days and kind of working with Mayday and signing them with Strange Music. Can you tell me a bit about that whole relationship? there's a cool story that goes back with Mayday to the first thing that I ever did as crazy hood in like 1994. The first thing that I could possibly do as crazy hood productions was to do a jam, which in those days, jams were important because there wasn't like clubs you could go to hip hop wasn't a thing you'd go to every week or every day of the week. So these parties and jams that were happening. Local spots in Miami were huge to connecting the scene and for people to be able to hear and experience hip hop. So I threw a jam was the first thing we did. It was a in a warehouse not too far from where I'm at right now. And it was important to me at that point, you know, to put on for the scene. And at this jam, I wanted to have a local group perform as part of you know, the night and there was a friend of mine that went to junior high with me to our Vita junior high, his name is Tori. And he, he went to Killeen at the time, another high school, and he had a group called all the king's men, when that group was Plex and Bernie, na that I had not met yet. And they perform that night. And it was dope. And I remember that night I taped the you know, the DJ, my boy spinning and then performing and that tape, I remember used to get goosebumps hearing that tape from that night it was you know, nothing was better than like a, like a beat up, you know, sounding tape from a live event that happened in that area, you know? And fast forward you know, and then Mady becomes a group and, and then Rick separately is doing his solo thing and I'm making mixtapes and so I'm connecting with them at this point in the underground Miami hip hop scene, and they're getting on my mixtapes little, I didn't know they were the same guys. At first, I forget how we figured it out. But eventually, we figured out that they were the same guys. And I thought that was crazy, you know that they were the same guys from 1994. Bernie and play, you know, Rick was too young at the time. So then, fast forward, they end up getting a deal with South beat records. And I ended up getting a gig working the marketing, I was the marketing director or VP of marketing or something. And I'm working with Mayday and I'm working with Rick, I already know them from the scene, we're already close at that point, me in the label part ways, because I didn't like the way the label was operating. It was like some dudes that had money. And they just weren't, the culture wasn't the thing for them, you know, they just wanted to do music. So I left there, and they ended up bringing wreck into Mayday. And then Mayday, which was a two man group, rap group, hip hop group turns into a band. at this same time, I'm being disillusioned by the hip hop scene. This is when hip hop music and industry is in a place where I'm just not that pleased. At the time. I'm not that inspired. I'm working. I have a marketing company that I'm I'm working. And I'm just like, uh, you know, that things inspire me anymore. And I remember the guys telling me, hey, look, Rick joined Mayday. We're a band now come check us out. And when I went, I was so hyped, you know, it was so different. It was so dope. You know, it was like, before that, you know, the only hip hop band had ever experienced was the roots, and the brand new heavies kind of in a sense. So I was just like, Yo, this is so dope, so refreshing. It was like, I was thinking I want to be a part of it, which I already was, but then now you know, fast for a little bit. And so I come in as part of management, a boy kether that I'd mentioned to you guys, as a part of my album, we meet at Selby records. And so he comes into management and then Dre she's a part of management already, we become the trifecta management team, we start working and long story short, my boy kether actually had a connect a neighbor that was connected to tech nine and then to the label to strange music past basically the demo over, they liked it and they wanted to see if tech would be interested. So they were like Yo, he's gonna be touring in order to actually protect to see them live. Tech was blown away. And a couple other things happen behind the scenes, but just based off of that they got the deal and it was just an amazing ride and it was so dope for me because I had an opportunity to again start something fresh and like go to people who were like not used to seeing like a hip hop band, like made it It looked and sounded like maybe which if you guys then they probably won't even want to be called a hip hop bank and it just felt so creative but I would tell people this is the doesn't get more hip hop than this these two MCs right here could out MC you're better you know some of the the mainstream guys that are killing it right now. Like these dudes are ill and the production was fucking crazy. So it was it was a pleasure to me every day to like make people believers which ended up being an album in a song put make people believers of Mayday and it was such a dope ride to you know, go through all that with them. Yeah, that song is dope to By the way, last that believe or song? Yeah, I think I'm a big fan of Mayday and I seen them early. These guys, you should just sit in their MC cipher in the parking lot. And so it was really dope to see that the evolution. I just felt the sound was so Miami. It was everything was just so dope about them. So different. And another little fun fact, the dude that was managing wreck when he won the cipher on MTV, and he got signed to sell the records was the dude that I told you that I kind of like intern and was kinda like my mentor, which is all Alfonso. He also wasn't manager. Love. People can't live the manager for smiles in South star out of Orlando. Oh, yeah. And anonymous is also just incredibly Oh my God, he's out of control. also as a dancer, too. Yeah, no. Yeah. I mean, everything. super creative and talented dude. Well, the next big topic that I personally am a huge fan. Make sure you check it out the fatherhood podcast, candy, put me on to the podcast. We're like two years ago, right before we were having a baby. Yeah, yeah. And I've been one of your avid listeners, and what I really love about father hoods. For one, obviously, that you talk about the importance of fatherhood with different artists, listening to your show really makes you feel like you're sitting at the table kicking it with you guys. So I just kind of wanted to dig a little deeper and find out like, how did you get to know KGB and Manny? And how did you guys come up with the idea for father hoods? So KGB is kether that I've been talking about? The guy who helped me with my album who I met at Saudi records with Mayday and went on to manage matey with me. So that's kether is that's the king KGB. That's actually his initials for real KGB. And then Manny, I met through kether. They were in um, almost a Yama man fraternity. Is it a fraternity guys? Any Yeah. So that's how they knew each other because man, he's a little bit younger than us. So I was in, you know, I instantly hit it off with Manny. So we got cool. He has, you know, he has three kids together had a kid before me. So they had kids already. So when I was about to have my daughter, I was always calling them. Plus my friends and crazy hood. They've had kids were teenagers, there's like, like, 20 Kids amongst a group of 10 of us, which is crazy. And two of them have five each. So imagine. So yeah, it's out of control. But, but I would find myself calling all my friends with kids just to get different perspectives and advice. And I was doing it often with Kay and with and with Manny. And again, we're always putting on like, you know, just our entrepreneurial hats on how could we it's always about doing something, you know, creating a lane, but something that's that we feel is like positive and that speaks to who we are actually. And fatherhood, to me was that next evolution. For myself, it was always important for me to be a good father based on the relationship I have with my father. And that's why I actually took so long to become a father. I was being careful. And so I remember us talking we're like, what, you know, what can we we all Me and my friends were always talking about what things can we do together collaborations together, not just them, but my all the mother friends and crazy as well. And that was one of the things that came up was, hey, let's do this fatherhood podcast. And we feel that this is a topic in hip hop that isn't spoken about enough. And hip hop heads, you know, fathers at least get a bad rap and hip hop, you know, and so let's try to, you know, do our little bit to change that. And that's where fatherhood was born. Well, you guys are always extremely open on the show, you know, you talk about your decision of circumcising your son or not. We get pretty personal. For the jealousy of your daughter. Has that openness ever backfired? on any of you like in the relationship with your wives? Ah, no. Has it? Not too much? No. What is funny about us and maybe me and K, and you might not think this about me is we're actually very personal people. Like I don't like talking much about my family and anything. I'm very personal. Like, I don't post much about my family and Kay, that's why he likes a kgv. And if you if you ever watch if we ever put clips, because it's just audio, but we put clips of the video, he's always hiding behind the mic like, so he doesn't even have any social media himself. So for us personally, it's it's tough to be that open. But that's the thing. The cool thing about doing stuff with people you're close with it just you forget that you're being recorded, and you're just talking very frankly with each other. And that's what we do, but hasn't backfired with I'm sure there's something that they're not happy about. They just haven't told us I think my girl This is every Tuesday she listens because she's waiting to hear something that be pissed about and I'm pretty sure she's told me in the past like Why did you say that? Or you know what you know, because I'm always complaining about you know, her getting not wanting letting me do some work or whatever. So she gets a little bit pissed about it hasn't been too bad yet hasn't been too bad. How has becoming a father changed you as a person and influenced your philosophy on life. I don't think it's changed my philosophy much just how I operate in life in general. They are the priority in my life, they are everything they are the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about when I go to sleep and probably dream about them. And so everything I'm doing I always think about legacy and how it affects them and how it helps them and in positive ways so you know the only thing it does is like for example like a coming home series now I'm and I don't want to think like this because I feel like when you second guess yourself you could get yourself in trouble. But now going to some places. I might you know second guess it because all What if something happens to me and then my kids suffer For that, you know, so. So those are the type of things you think Well, I think that's normal. And you know, and really, that's, there's the, and I'm struggling with it, and you'll hear it out and you hear it on fatherhood, I struggle, I haven't learned to deal with the balance of work and family life. And I give my all to my kids as much as I can. And I'm with them as much as Can I loading them, but it's it's a struggle to get things done nowadays, for sure. Yes. On fatherhood, sometimes my daughter will barge into the room. It's, it's mad funny. Like, right now I'm in a separate coming office. It's not at home. But even coming here is difficult, because, you know, I tried to do it where it's like, you do it in little like you could run off and do some stuff and then go back to and they're at the age now, you know, they're at an age and because of COVID, because of quarantining, you're more hands on and then they get used to the hands on also. So it's difficult to like, you know, change that. One less thing too. Was that because of the hoods. You mentioned this book, one of the I know you mentioned the books, we talked about it. Maybe Yeah, yeah. He mentioned he's like on there, and he literally the same day, ordered it on Amazon had this book, hadn't he read the book, and worked. I mean, a month into the baby being born and she was like four weeks old. I'm like she's making this sort of sound is like at sound. And I'm like, I think she needs to go because she she went to sleep. She woke up dry, which is what I said in the book. So we put her over the sink and she does her thing. And we were freaking out or I was crazy. So okay, let's, let's do it. And now she's 16 months, and she still goes now to the party. Well, kgv saved you man. Like because I give him crap, because I don't believe it. I'm like, I don't know, man. You must have a super kid. Try with your son. I should I think I'm too late already. I think we screwed that up already. No, there's too late. No, okay. I'm gonna get I'm gonna give it a shot. Because of COVID we were around her all the time. And so we could take her like we were noticing the sounds and I think what I mean yeah, it's a plus they were saving money on diapers. But I think the coolest thing was, was that we were actually bonding with her like knowing her different sounds and instead of months went by the sound would change or something. It was like a different motion. And we're like, oh, she's doing something different now she's letting us know in a different way. And I don't know we've just made us feel really connected to her outside of the fact that yet super cool that she's go and everyone all our family things were freaks. Okay, on the podcast, my mom is like Duncan sets out the echo. bp. Mom, zoom, calm birthday calls. Like, let me let me ask you those. So when you saying you see motions are here, that's how you know she has to go to bathroom. But what are you staring at the baby? 24 seven to wait for those things? Or do you know a time period that you should be paying attention? There's definitely a time period and obviously changes over time. So it's kind of tricky, and it's not 100% like, we still have dirty diapers. Yeah, but like now she'll come and she'll like grab a diaper and walked us with the diaper literally with the diapers like hello. Like, I'm going like, come on. The thing is I have a background in early childhood education. So back in the day, that's what I used to do. I used to teach it the kindercare and Kendall I was cool. I love kids and they're like a science to me. I'm like, just checking them out. The covid actually helped in that sense a lot where we were both at home you know, almost all the time. I couldn't imagine if we had both been working regularly full time. There's no chance Yeah, yeah, well we have friends and I have friends and Russia and like different countries like in China and they have their babies and baby natives leave them without diapers like all day. Yeah my baby girl and she was battling at the rebel bc one and you see the baby in the background naked laying down and she's like doing the online battles and shit and she's like battling with the baby back there. Just doing his thing. That's life right now. You know? Well that we're actually doing that with my daughter now where sometimes we just leave her without a diaper because she's she she regressed she started to do really well with potty training and then she like regressed? Like she's regressed a lot with the the new babies being born like she's jealous. So she's like, regressing and crying for no reason because she sees that baby cries we go to baby. So so she regressed and we just leave her without diapers. And that makes she knows like, I'm not gonna, you know, piss myself, you know? And so she goes to the potty. I think when they walk around, they're free and they figure it out that they don't want to do it or they'll just do like a little dog and you'll see it. When she's playing. Sometimes she's having too much fun. Oh, and I We're having a tough time figuring out if it's terrible twos. I mean, I'm sure it's a combination of both. But it's like making it horrible twos. Yes. Like, she, she's wild. She went from like this nice little girl. And then baby born and she became like Chucky. Gosh, yeah, there's a book called 123 magic. And Sasha was like, two, three years old actually tell she went to like, terrible threes. And I thought I was gonna throw Sasha out the window, like, cry like, No, she can talk pretty well. So it was people thought I was beating her I would never, I never. I never beat my child. So lock like everything, okay. 123 magic. And I read and it was a really good book. And I basically helps you help your child to understand their emotions at a young age. And it stops up not just behavior. That's really when that time comes up. And I still do it to this day where I just say, Sasha, that's one. And then she's like, okay, mom, fine. Still work. So this day, and mainly is just, you don't explain anything while they're having their tantrums. Because they don't hear don't do that. They just hear the don't climb, climb. They don't hear the don't part. I think the first chapter was, as a parent, you cannot take anything personal. I was like, What? I had to read this chapter. Again, I didn't read it like three, four times before I passed it, because I was like, let me get this, right. I can't take anything personal about anything that this baby's gonna do. And you just say their name. So I say, Sasha, that's one and the baby's like, Sasha, that's two. And then they're like, Sasha, that's three. And it's sort of like a timeout, but you don't say timeout, you say, take a break, and you put them in the same spot. And you say, take a break. And then you get a timer, it has to be kind of big. I got a big clock for them to see, depending on how old they are. So she's to be two minutes, and you show her two minutes to see this. And they're like, What's going on here? And they look at the timer. And so the timer does not start until they stop crying. So it's gonna take some work the first time like Sasha, get up and run. Yeah, I was about to say free, it's already three. We don't say at whatever you're doing this bad. Nothing. You just pick them up, sit them down, pick them up. And, and it's the first of them some work. But once they're there, they know they're okay. Put the timer. They watch the timer. I took a while, but I never get past one or two. Until next now. There's session talking about we're talking about the the numbers. One, when I wash it, that's one. It still works. And they think I'm doing Voodoo on them. It's called on to the magic. They think you put a spell on your kids. You think I need the book or you think well, you just told me it seems easy enough? Or do I need to read the entire book. You can give me a call. I can tell you the whole book. But you can try like that. The main thing is that you can't take things for someone when it comes to when they're like right. And then after the two minutes it's done. It's a clean slate. Come here. I love you if you can see if they understand that you shouldn't have thrown that this is you we picked this out we put it away. Whatever. Let me find out we did an episode of this one's called parenthood's I'll send you the soundbite I love talking about this stuff. Because I have a lot of experience with it. though. Yeah, well, anyway, let's get back to you really appreciate father hoods. Big ups for you doing that. Thank you, man. And you've been you know, doing radio and podcasting, the majority of your career and our real veteran. What advice would you give someone like us that is starting out a new podcast, I would say just give yourself enough time to get the results that you're looking for to continue doing it. And everybody has a different measure of success. It doesn't look the same for everybody, maybe for you guys is just getting the type of guests that you want to get or getting a certain amount of listeners, maybe it's not a hundreds of thousands, maybe you just want 10,000 maybe you just want 5000 whatever, whatever success means to you. Just so I would say as always give yourself the time to get to that point and evaluate. Okay, you know, we've done it for six months, a year, two years, whatever. Do we still enjoy doing it? Are we getting what we want out of it? Is it successful to us in that aspect? And that's what I would tell anybody because oftentimes people look to the biggest, you know, Let's just say in podcasts, they'll look at the biggest podcast or they'll look at Joe Rogan, oh man, I gotta get to Joe Rogan status, you know, and and then if I didn't I'm not successful that's that's not the way to do it you know just whatever success means to you and it could mean different things. Yeah, I also think people don't recognize, you know, Joe Rogan has been doing it for 11 years, you know, it's your overnight successes, he said, Right, right. And nobody and you never know anybody's True story. Like Joe Rogan could have been doing it for 11 years, and that it was 11 years, five of those years was just him doing as a hobby and didn't make a dime doing it. And nobody knows, you know, you don't know any better than that. But then he had his other jobs and you know, TV gigs, and MMA or whatever, that were paying the bills, so, but he loved doing the podcast. So he did it consistently. And he did it for as long as he felt he wanted to do it for him to the point where it became his main thing. So it's, that whole thing is being consistent and being persistent, and enjoying the journey of doing whatever you're doing. Good. I think we have that Check, check, check, check. I'm like, you're saying that I'm like, we got that check. That sounds like that sounds like us. So you run multiple podcasts and marketing firm, you produce films or raising two babies, managing a marriage, and you find the time to jump on our show. How do you balance it all? Ah, I mean, it's not easy to balance it. All. Right, now I have this weird schedule that I've created for myself. So you see, the timeframe that we're doing it in, my daughter is asleep right now. And I have a few hours and my girls with the baby. And I try to schedule things within those two hours, and I cram it with as much stuff as I can. Usually on the weekends, I don't cram it. So we're good today. But I usually cram it with a lot of stuff. So that's what I've been doing and hasn't fixed, you know, all my, you know, task of finishing type deal. But, uh, but you know, it's, it's how I'm balancing it right now. And, and I know that at the end of the day, you know, with the kids are gonna grow up, you know, the schedules are gonna change, they're gonna eventually have, you know, preschool and kindergarten and all that stuff. And the schedules will change around and I'm really just taking it day by day. How do you take care of your health physically and mentally, that's been tough for two as well. I do work out actually, I wouldn't call myself a crossfitter. Because that's not fair to crossfitters. But I go to a CrossFit gym. And what it's really allowed me to do is a release a lot of stress, and just get my body moving, and I try to go at least four or five times a week, it's proven a lot more difficult because of what I just said, you know, with the schedule with the kids and all that, and also it um, it digs into my work little time. But it's really important for me, I feel in terms of stress and, and just health, I'm always trying to do better with health because even with like, you know, doing like a show, like drink champs, I'm very conscious of what that does to my health, because we really do drink, we really get wasted. And some of these episodes lately have been going five hours long, four and a half, five hours long. And that's four and a four and a five hours long of drinking. And as you start to age, you know, your body takes liquor differently. You know, I was in my 20s and early 30s is different, you know, now I'm in my early to mid 40s. So it's like, yeah, it's not it's not the same, but uh, as long as I'm conscious of it, and I'm trying, you know, like to navigate that. I'm all right, but I'm always I'm always working at it. Like I said, working out is important for me. Even though I know I'm not a peak athlete. I just go in there and, and sweat and then trying to eat decent. I'm not 100% the best, healthiest eater for lack of better words, but I try to not eat the worst things in the world. I'm pescatarian so I don't know sounds healthy. And yeah, so that's all I tried to do and meant it to me actually. Mental health is probably one of the most important things and that's why I think the gym helps me with stress release on releasing those endorphins and when I come out of there, my mental health feels like it got to work out so that to me is keenly important and getting regular checkups at the doctor to make sure that I'm good my liver is good and overall health is good. It's like a regiment like after drink champs I do drink because we had a rest and peace with Ray he had like a mantra that he would have like a water water like a water thing at all I've done it all over the years. I've changed it constantly what happens is that you have a regiment until you're too drunk to have a regiment you know? Yeah, so the regimen only lasts the first hour of drink champs and but I drink a lot of water regularly. I drink try to drink water Drink Drink champs, and then in the morning I have like this whole like ginger shot and tumeric shots and all this other stuff. I don't know if it's working. But it's good though. No, no, it's all good, but it's all mental. To I don't know if my whole thing, it's all mental at the end of the day, as long as my brain thinks it's working, then it's working. Earlier this year talking about health, you had COVID, right? Yeah, I did. And candy is just getting over COVID. She just two weeks ago, it was terrible. The symptoms were terrible for two weeks, I think I went through three days where I could barely breathe. The other things I was feeling like, in my joints, I kind of nagging headache, basically every symptom that was, like three out of, I don't know, it was like five or six symptoms. Yeah, the one that I knew I didn't get checked until I couldn't smell the dirty diapers. Oh, yeah, I couldn't smell because I would just hold up the baby. And so we got to change the baby, you know, when I couldn't smell that anymore. And it says, you lose your smell and taste. That's when I went and checked, and then I came up positive. Yeah, I didn't have any taste for a few days. Yeah, it was terrible. Luckily, it didn't hit me too crazy. Um, it was more of a stress because of the family. And you know, people were like, Oh, so are you quarantining from the family? Like, no, I have a newborn at the time. And yeah, there's no in a toddler. And then we also take care of my girls, grandma at the crib, who has like the first beginning onset of dementia. So there's no mean not being around in that environment. So my worries, you know, were the math around most of the time, we had the hand sanitizer all day long. And I was just hoping that nobody else caught especially the grandma, that that would be, you know, terrible and deadly for her if she got it. But uh, we checked, everybody checked out, nobody caught it, I was the only one, I had maybe three or four days of feeling kind of crappy. And then, you know, quickly got out of that. Yeah, but I'll tell you this. And this is what's starting to worry me. I've been reading a lot about the lingering effects, and the after effects of people who were even asymptomatic. And they're saying there's stuff with the lungs, with the liver with the brain, that people should be worried about. And I don't know if it's my brain playing tricks on me, but I'm feeling things that I didn't feel before COVID. And I'm wondering if it's because of COVID. So just stuff for us to think about, especially when we go to the doctor, like I'm planning on goes for my regular annual checkup, and I'm gonna, you know, really ask all those questions, what gives you hope during these times, I mean, I would say the only thing that gives me hope is, it's like forcing myself to have hope, because of the kids. And just, you know, being a creative person, or, you know, everybody's a creative person, just so you tap into it, that always gives me hope to be able to create things and do things and, and express myself in different ways like that. And so that always keeps me hopeful, no matter what's going on, you know, the creative process, but easy to get down in these times. But I'm also a big student of history, and history is full of crap. So it's like, you know, you could look at it as the, you know, the glass half full glass half empty, it's really throughout history, things have been worse, you know, so. So that also gives me a glimmer of hope. And at the end of the day, I try try to look at the positive and, and humanity versus the negative. And the traveling helps me because I've seen so much positive and, and traveling to different countries and and meeting different people and just in being welcomed by people and, and seeing joy where you would work. Most people would be like, how can you be happy in this situation and people are happy. So that gives me hope. So we want to roll out the red carpet for you too. Can you let people know how they can support you and where they can find what you're doing? Sure. I mean, the best place to go is to crazyhood.com as well as drinkchamps.com and then my socials is @whoscrazy on Instagram, @DJEFN on Twitter and Facebook. And yeah, that's pretty much everything, and@crazyhood as well on both. What is hip hop to you? hip hop to me, is a way of life and a way of expressing yourself. Thank you so much to our guest DJ EFN for taking the time and being so open while sharing your perspective with us some of the gems we took away from this interview were In order to avoid going through pitfalls, you can seek knowledge through specific courses and apply it to your real world situations. It is never too late to educate yourself. When investing in your ideas. You may not see a return on investment right away. First, it is important to prove your concept through a prototype or pilot. Then a consistent and persistent work ethic will enable your success but most importantly, you must enjoy the journey. Be someone who nurtures and builds. Each relationship tends to a strength and weakness within you. Our theme music was beatbox by Denis the Menace and produced by Zede. A big shout out to the brothers from Switzerland. The background music was produced by Taki Brano. A big thank you to our broski from Providence. Also a big shout out to the Father Hoods podcast. Thanks for the mention on last week's show and providing a space for hip hop dads. Our podcast basically runs on coffee to keep our show running you can support by buying us a coffee through the link in our show notes. Much love to Vernessa: Thank you for listening and for all your great feedback. We would love to get your feedback questions and any suggestions you might have. You can reach out to us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook@SoulidarityLLC or via email s ulidarityllc@gmail.com if you like today's show, please tell a friend about our podcast.

Or as Phife Dawg would say: 1:10:59

tell your mother, tell your father, send a telegram. In our next episode, we welcome Natalia Pitti, better known as y Verse. She is a rapper, songwriter, poet, MC and humanitarian best known for being a battle rapper in the Smack / URL circuit, a member of the Rock Steady Cr w and for being a contestant in So you want to wild out" on MTV and VH Don't forget to subscribe to the show and leave a rating and review. See you on our next episode. Thank you for listening to our podcast. No seriously though. Thank you. I am candy. I'm DJ Razor Cut. And this is souls of hip hop.