and Too $hort

00:00:13
Speaker 1: Hello, my loves It is Lala Kent with Randal and if you guys have forgotten, this is the Give Them La La with Randall podcast. We've taken a couple of weeks off.

00:00:25
Speaker 2: Yes, and we are glad to be back. I can tell you that the thing is, you know we were going to come back last week, and we didn't really know. I actually think we were ready. We just didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know how.

00:00:40
Speaker 1: I couldn't start. I couldn't like sit in this room with a microphone in front of me and just fucking speak when I knew that there were things going on outside of this room that I could be a part of.

00:00:54
Speaker 2: Well, you went. You went to a lot of protests. I went to a couple, but you were at a lot of them. I mean, uh, And I just think it would have just been irresponsible of us to come back in here when we were still processing, when we were still having conversations. I definitely was having a lot, and I know you were. We've been doing a lot of listening and a lot of reflection, and we think the best thing for us to do is to continue listening.

00:01:21
Speaker 1: I agree.

00:01:22
Speaker 2: So having said that we are back, today, and I am very excited about our guests because our guest is the amazing, insightful, incredibly talented and friend of ours. I always say that long I would say everybody is a fucking friend of ours.

00:01:40
Speaker 1: But Too Short, Too Short, Too Short, someone who I've been a fan of since I was a young kid living in Utah turning up to his music.

00:01:51
Speaker 2: And you've been asking have you been you been actually actually since I introduced you to Too Short? What about I don't know, a year ago or something. Yeah, you were asked when we get our podcast going, you got to get him on the air, And I was like, of course, I'll come on. So it's just really cool that you know, he has become a friend. But at the same time, I think Too Short is like in my age demographic, and I think, you know, with what is happening right now in the Black Lives Matter movement, I just think he's going to have a lot to share with us and for a lot for us to learn from. And you know one thing I'm going to say, Lala say it is that I talk a lot.

00:02:35
Speaker 1: I know I've done nothing but listen since I just introduced the reintroduced.

00:02:40
Speaker 2: The podcast, Lala, I'm still talking.

00:02:44
Speaker 1: I know, Okay, keep going. So what I want to say, we wrap it up, keep going, say what you know.

00:02:50
Speaker 2: What I'm going to say is that today I really want to do a lot of listening. And I think it's important, even in my age, even at forty nine years old, I think that this movement of Black Lives Matter is it's just time for everybody to listen, no matter how you're raised or how diverse you are. You know, I consider myself really, and I mean this very diverse, and and you know, and a lot of the work that I've produced represents that, But that doesn't mean that that's I think.

00:03:24
Speaker 1: There's always room for more education. I've throughout these past couple of weeks, you know, I've gone to protests, I've purchased a lot of books. I've listened to my black friends and how they feel about this, and I just feel like what we have been doing is not enough. It's not enough to just have the conversation once. It's not enough to just go to a protest, like we have to do better. Period.

00:03:52
Speaker 2: We are seeing a lot of people being held accountable now, which I am so proud to see. I think It's the first time for me that I've seen an uprising in such a unified way. I mean, it moves me when I'm watching these protests here in Los Angeles.

00:04:09
Speaker 1: And they've been amazing.

00:04:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just I mean seeing people from ten years old with their parents up to you know, ninety something years old. Tim, Did you see that There's a guy that couldn't make it to a protest and I think they went to his house and they they brought him to the streets to because he wanted to be part of it. I mean, to see amazing. I mean, it just shows you that, you know, I have no excuse. Nobody has an excuse to not participate time.

00:04:36
Speaker 1: Sorry, if Jennifer Lopez is getting her ass out there and protesting, you have no excuse, all right.

00:04:44
Speaker 3: The cool thing is it's not just happening in the big cities. That's that's kind of what amazes me. There's like towns of you know, a couple thousand people, yeah, holding protests like on their main street, just holding signs, and they're still out there showing their support and I think are showing up.

00:05:00
Speaker 2: I agree. But even in even in the Valley of Los Angeles, which we call the Valley shertman Oaks. I was driving with my daughter and we came to the Sepulvida Ventura corner and there's like ten people on that corner, even though the larger protests were happening in downtown all that. And my daughter said, oh, Daddy, that's the Black Lives Matters protests, Like she knew. I've had the conversation and she's watched TV and we've talked about it, but I mean for her to just recognize, and she said, roll down the window. And I rolled down the window and they're saying honk, and she's, dad, honk, let them know. And it was just It's just one of those moments that you're just so proud to be part of something that has so overdue, and I'm just so glad so many millions of people are being involved and not letting this just be a weekend thing or a weekday conversation.

00:05:52
Speaker 1: This is every single day. I'm getting a message from one of my friends saying, this is the meeting spot tonight. We're protesting it this time, and it's like it just gives me chills. I feel like I've supported this movement since it started. Even before it started. I love the black community so so much. And to see every single I mean we down or Hollywood had twenty thousand protesters over the weekend, and to think that this is this is going to be a part of history, like when I have children or my grandbabies, I'm going to remember this time, be like we did something. We did something, yep, and.

00:06:33
Speaker 2: I think that you know, now I'm ready to you know, put a smile on people's faces. But also you don't happen.

00:06:39
Speaker 1: Well, how should you not put a smile on someone's face when you tell him that too Short is going to be on the podcast? And so today, like I really just want to hone in on like where he started, how he got his name too Short? Like where did that come from? I want to know it all he's worked with, I mean, he worked with the mac dre king of Like, let's get Hyphi, come on, everybody, let's all get down. You know, the Bay Area.

00:07:06
Speaker 2: Myself very educated in hip hop, I do not know who Mactra is.

00:07:13
Speaker 4: I can't.

00:07:14
Speaker 2: I think that's bad. I'm gonna have to ask.

00:07:16
Speaker 1: I do like this, put a look on your face like he's Miles some piece, you know, the Thiszle dance. You just gotta break it down, break it down, Okay, I'm sorry. I saw you know he he has had a very amazing career and worked with artists that I grew up listening to, and I just want to pick his brain. I want him to mention it all. So please try to not talk a lot, because I just want to hear Too Short through my headphones the entire time. I shouldn't see the look on his face. He's eyeballing me hard. Look at him. He's like, I don't know if I can do this. He can't even respond special baby for the first time ever?

00:08:06
Speaker 2: Should I just go home now?

00:08:08
Speaker 1: No? No, no? I love I love you next to me. Okay, I love it all right you guys. When we come back, we're gonna have Too Short. I'm gonna have to show my baby some love. I think I might have hurt his feelings.

00:08:18
Speaker 2: You mean this time or all the time.

00:08:20
Speaker 1: I have a lot of making up to do. We will be right back. Hey, babes, we are back and we have my boy Too Short. What's up Short? How you doing life?

00:08:33
Speaker 5: I'm good, I'm good. Good to see you guys. What's up?

00:08:35
Speaker 1: We're glad you're here, Grateful that you're here. Man.

00:08:37
Speaker 5: Last time I saw you were in the club turning up.

00:08:42
Speaker 2: Wait, how crazy is it in life? Short that that we went from having a club party to being locked down for three months so far, the first time we've had a guest here post COVID, you know, even though COVID still exists, but first time so that we're excited to have you here live with us. Yeah.

00:08:59
Speaker 5: Yeah, So the world has changed. Twenty twenty is is going to be memorable.

00:09:04
Speaker 2: It's going to go down in history. So I just want to start for people that don't know as much as we know. Obviously, you're one of the biggest recording artists in the world, one of the greatest tell us. I always like to start, like from the beginning, So how does it happen? How do you get into music? Why do you get into music? And what was the evolution to get you kind of to your spot when you had your first song released and started the blow up.

00:09:26
Speaker 5: Well, it starts in elementary school as a music student and just always wanted to We always had like instruments around our house, even though neither one of my parents were musicians, but we just had like it would be a guitar there and some drums and some boungos and some just stuff to like, I don't know, tambourine, just laying around out fun and I would beat on those drums and I was, I was in my mind, I was a drummer.

00:09:54
Speaker 2: I love it.

00:09:55
Speaker 5: So the first chance I got, I enrolled in music classes and I started learning how to play drums. I ended up being in the marching band for a couple of years. And when I got to high school, tenth grade, Oakland, California, I was in the band. And that's when I first probably like you know, eighth, ninth grade, I was. I cut school a couple of times. Tenth grade is when I bravely ventured out and I said, I'm just gonna take some time off and I might go to school for a couple of classes, and I'm out of here.

00:10:26
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:10:27
Speaker 5: I was jumping the fence and in your guard and running the streets and just wanted to run with the bad kids for a while now. And I remember this very distinctively. The band teacher came over to me and he had already you know, praised my skills, and you know, I was, I was talented, and he said that his class was a privilege and that if I was gonna be cutting school that after a certain amount of days, you get dropped from a class. He said, if you get dropped from my class, you can never take my class again. I'm the only band teacher in the school. You can never do it again. Wow, And I got dropped, will I will admit it. I tried to play cool because when you know, high school is like the band is kind of funny, you know, like you could be a cool guy in the band, but it takes a lot.

00:11:09
Speaker 2: So well, I gotta tell you one thing. So I was a theater kid, so I understand, like I wasn't cool like you. I was like what they call I mean, they called me like a theater gig. But you know, at the end of the day, I totally understand. I was like, I tried to fit in the normal.

00:11:22
Speaker 5: I'm already in with the crowd. But then you're cool, You're what they find out. I love band, You're out, You're right, like it'd be the butt of a lot of jokes. So the band guy told me I can I can never play play in the band again. And I remember eleventh grade twelfth grade, just always seeing him going like really like in my inside, like really like going ship. I wanted to be in the band.

00:11:44
Speaker 1: That's really cute.

00:11:46
Speaker 5: But rap music came along and right at the same right around the same time, that love for music was replaced with me trying to trying to be like the hip hop record.

00:11:57
Speaker 1: You know. Wait, so so hip hop didn't into play until you were about starting junior. Okay.

00:12:05
Speaker 5: I first heard rap music in ninth grade.

00:12:07
Speaker 2: Wait what year? What year was?

00:12:08
Speaker 5: Nineteen seventy nine was ninth grade?

00:12:10
Speaker 2: Okay?

00:12:10
Speaker 1: And what did you hear for the first time?

00:12:12
Speaker 5: Rappers Delight was the first really rap song that I heard that was on the radio. There were other songs.

00:12:17
Speaker 4: Before that, but rappers Delight was the one that was the banger.

00:12:21
Speaker 5: It was like, you know, rotation on the radio. Just wherever you went you heard rappers Delight. So I just knew I could do it. In nineteen eighty, I went to tenth grade and I just tried it. One day. I just tried to put I put this instrumental record on, like you know, twelve inch records used to have yeah, yea yeah on the flip side. I put the record on and I did it.

00:12:43
Speaker 2: That's it, And I just rapped, and I just you.

00:12:45
Speaker 5: Know, from that point on, I would make little homemade raps. But I think that was that filled in that void of not being in the band, because I still get that satisfation.

00:12:54
Speaker 2: So you start, you start doing your own like basically raps, your own records, and then you graduate. I mean, do you graduate high school?

00:13:02
Speaker 5: I didn't graduate by choice?

00:13:04
Speaker 2: Explain that. What does that mean?

00:13:07
Speaker 5: I had a dream, Like I knew things were you know, I was making money, I was doing stuff. Yeah, and okay, the high school graduation thing is has a lot to do with me growing up in private school. So I went to Catholic school most of my years and you know, pretty smart. Yeah, And I get to high school and I go to public school, and they're guys, this is you know, it's kind of like what we were talking about before we got on the air, about just all the ills of the world, and one of them is the public school system in the inner cities. And it's really something that I couldn't grasp at first. So I get to tenth grade and I'm fourteen fifteen, and there are guys fourteen fifteen who can't read. Wow, but they go to school every day and they have special classes to help, you know, they call them remedio classes. And you can go to English math and you don't have to learn shit. You go to math class and they give you a calculator and all your work is plus minus and subtraction division.

00:14:04
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you get a wow.

00:14:07
Speaker 5: So when I got to twelfth grade, I was doing my fair share of fucking up.

00:14:12
Speaker 6: I love that I was doing my fair share the fucking up escalator basically from I was keeping a chart of how to graduate the right credits, and you know, oh, you're working.

00:14:22
Speaker 5: I was on my fair share of fucking up. I wasn't fucking all the way.

00:14:25
Speaker 2: Right, but you knew enough of how to get out of high school.

00:14:28
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was. I was maintaining a D average on purpose.

00:14:31
Speaker 2: It was pretty pretty easy. I was a D student without with trying. So so that shows you a stupid eye. Om but okay, go ahead.

00:14:39
Speaker 5: So I got the twelfth grade and everybody's getting all excited about being seniors and the events you get to be participating in and not just I didn't have any school spirit by twelfth grade. I was like, I don't give a fuck if we win the next game. I don't care about what's going on after school, you know, I just didn't care anymore.

00:14:55
Speaker 2: And I had a dream, but at this point, your dream is to be a rapper position or a pimp or a pim. So it's one of the threat musician.

00:15:04
Speaker 5: They were all. They were all very lucid, very bright, and very lucrative.

00:15:10
Speaker 2: So this is amazing.

00:15:12
Speaker 5: I was just I was so affected by my friends who we would you know, the newspapers a big deal and you like something would happened. He was like, let me read it, and I let a lot of buddies who couldn't read. And my one buddy, I remember him staying to me, he was kind of like like rubbing it in and I didn't have the right credits to and he was gonna he was like, yeah, yeah, you ain't even gonna be a graduation. And I'm like, dude, you can't even say the word. You keep saying gratulation and you can't even read it. You can't even read, and it wasn't it's funny, but it's not.

00:15:47
Speaker 2: It's not funny.

00:15:48
Speaker 5: And if the guys walked, they got their cap and gown, they got their diplomas.

00:15:51
Speaker 2: But they can't read. But they can't read a book.

00:15:53
Speaker 5: I was like, I don't even want that ship.

00:15:55
Speaker 2: That ship.

00:15:56
Speaker 5: I was like two credits short of a diploma and want that ship even like it counts is like, go, do you get your ged? Fuck all this right, I'm about to get money, dude, I love it.

00:16:08
Speaker 2: Now what happens? So? Yeah?

00:16:09
Speaker 5: So, I mean I had a plan. It never once in my mind, like your parents put that fear in you, and it never once affected me.

00:16:16
Speaker 2: You weren't ever worried you.

00:16:18
Speaker 5: This was not going to work. I'm like, this shit sounds good. This didn't. I just knew it. Like you, a lot of us in life say this when you ask us, when you look back and go, well, what was the part where there was no curve? I just knew.

00:16:30
Speaker 1: You just knew, and you knew that you would do whatever it took to get to that place.

00:16:33
Speaker 5: Because everywhere I went, every time I got on the mic at a party, they loved it. Every time Wow all may tape, they loved it. I'm like, everybody loves this shit.

00:16:39
Speaker 2: So what's the first moment now between eighteen and twenty one that it happens for you? I had a professional on a financial level. When does it happen?

00:16:49
Speaker 5: And how I got an opening slot on a big show that came through Oakland and it was probably like somewhere in the neighborhood, about seven thousands, and the.

00:16:59
Speaker 1: Crowd, Wow, that's a big crowd that's.

00:17:01
Speaker 5: Never had a song on the radio. I never had a record deal. I never had a record I never had anything.

00:17:06
Speaker 1: Did you have to like audition for this spot or had someone heard you?

00:17:10
Speaker 5: Promoter? The guy who his name was Lionel B. And he worked for Bill Grand Bill Graham was a big promoter and Lionel B did the urban stuff for Bill Graham Bayry Productions, and h he put me on the spot. He knew about me in the streets. He knew. And I got up there with no radio, no nothing, no contract, no nothing, and I started rapping these songs that I would sell in the streets. And the entire crowd knew all the words shut up and it shocked.

00:17:33
Speaker 2: They knew the word oh oh, so you were big under ground kind of.

00:17:38
Speaker 5: Everybody was in shocked. They're like, I got off stage and people were going, who the fuck are you?

00:17:42
Speaker 1: Did you have any idea that you were so big in like the underground world, or was.

00:17:47
Speaker 5: Like, what was that moment I got the bus to the show that day?

00:17:50
Speaker 2: Wow? You know what I mean?

00:17:52
Speaker 5: Bo Wait, So I borrowed the clothes that I was wearing. I wanted to look fly. I had to go borrow some clothes from Oh my god, this is so cousin.

00:17:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, what happens after that moment?

00:18:01
Speaker 5: So after that moment I had already I had to dream the dream was real. Right, And a friend of mine who he was a drug dealer's little brother, a big time drug dealer's little brother, and he played football, not the drug dealers, the little right, right, and the little brother a little come around hours. He was the guy who'd come around and he'd have like the best, best weed and he'd be drunk.

00:18:26
Speaker 1: You always want to be friends with that guy.

00:18:27
Speaker 5: He'd be driving one of his brother's brand new cars. He was always and he'd just pull up on us and he'd be you know, I'm talking like we're right out of high school, we're eighteen, and he's like, yeah, you want to smoke some of this week? He's got the best fucking weed. And then he's like sprinkling a little cocaine across and we're like, oh, this dude ship. So he was the moment we knew he was a little brother. He wasn't giving him credit for that. He was on our level, but he was the little brother who could do things right. And he was doing the big Willie. I mean, he's like, yeah, you know, my brother owned a label, man, and blah blah blah. His brother's the kind of guy would ride by the brand new Mercedes. It's like nineteen eighty five. He might wave at you, you like, you know, you got an image, you got a certain perception of him. So he said, I'm gonna take you induce to my brother. He got a label, and he takes me up there, and you know, after a while, it didn't happen like right off the back of his brother to just kind of shitty at first, a little bitty. He wouldn't let us in the door, like come first couple of times he's like, yeah, just come back, come back twenty minutes. So finally he let us in. Yeah, and you know, he showed me all this shit. He had all this equipment, and you know, all these fabulous people would come by, and musicians and professional sports players, and all this stuff, and he took me to the studio and the shit it just hit from day one, It just it just worked. And I did three albums with They had a label called seventy five Girls. And this was the best experience. If I looked at it like my internship to the music industry, it was the best. It was the best. I mean literally, like I think I could have been a drug addict if it wasn't or that experience, because there were seasoned musicians and people who are around who were really addicted to like crack, some of them did heroin. It was like like big musicians, like they were like I would never drop names because it was literally people that played for all three sports teams Oakland A's, the Warriors, oh and the Raiders would stop by and it was just you know, it was it was nuts. It was that lifestyle. So so I got to see people just sit there and smoke coke and snorted and I was snorting a lot of coke myself, and we put the cocaine and the cigarettes and it was just it was all free and ship. The studio sessions used to be drug laced and it was, you know, just everybody was just but it was also like like I'm eighteen, and when you're eighteen, just getting out of high school. In high school, a lot of times you know the girls at your school date older guys, right, and it was a lot of like the super fine ones, they I'll mess with little boys.

00:21:01
Speaker 1: They want the grown metal.

00:21:02
Speaker 5: So here I am. I instantly end up in this crew with these guys, these musicians, and this big dreg dealer and we like he like takes me under his wing, and all these chicks who, like I know, who are like grown ass finance chicks are coming over his house and like taking their pants off and just hanging out in their panties and because they want to, they want to get high and they want to kick it.

00:21:21
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:21:21
Speaker 5: And I'm just over there like a fly on the wall, you know, just kind of like just seeing how it all goes and player lifestyle and you know, the girls in there dancing in their underwear and I'm like, you know, guys like one of my heroes.

00:21:33
Speaker 1: And right, like you were more of an observer at.

00:21:36
Speaker 5: This It's almost like I was trained to find the things and that I liked, like what to do and what.

00:21:42
Speaker 1: Not to do.

00:21:43
Speaker 2: It was like it was like, it was basically like your graduation, your graduations. I got to see all that shit without actually touching it, right, you didn't go down that rabbit hole, because you saw it all happening in front.

00:21:53
Speaker 5: I saw that the guy who got all the money with the boss man. I saw the guy who did all the work and just wanted to get high, was, you know, riding around the fucked up car and just coming over even if drugs are free. But I'm like, I don't want that life, you know, right right? And it just it really prepared me for the next thing I did, which is wild start my own company.

00:22:12
Speaker 2: Okay, so now what happens with that?

00:22:14
Speaker 5: How the seventy five Girls was nineteen eighty five. I got at high school eighty four. In eighty five and eighty six, I was in that environment. I was just describing eight ten, nineteen years. I look back on it as a treasure because at the same time all this stuff is going on, the guy the boss band was running an independent label, and literally he would go to the studio, pay for the sessions. He would pay the musicians, he would pay the engineers. He would take it somewhere and get it all mixed down. He would take it somewhere else and have it all manufactured and cassettes and records, and then he would drive over to San rafael A, cross the bridge and drop it off to a distributor. Then he would take it to certain mom and pop stores that took product direct, and then he would wait a while and he'd go making rounds and he just pick up money and pick up checks.

00:22:59
Speaker 1: So he was it's like a one man show.

00:23:01
Speaker 5: But the whole way, he's telling me, I'm going over here, We're gonna go over here and talk to George, we're gonna stop by here, we're gonna pick up today, and you' dropping on he takes. I'm just I'm just learning everything.

00:23:10
Speaker 2: So you're basically getting an education of how to run a company, distribute your own product, go to the studio, release it.

00:23:19
Speaker 5: The whole thing, and the most important because a lot of people didn't know that part. Go get your fucking money.

00:23:25
Speaker 2: It's just because you put out a song or put out an album doesn't mean you're paid.

00:23:28
Speaker 5: And a lot of artists when they're young, they don't even want the money. They're like, you know, that's my guy, My guy, he's got everything.

00:23:34
Speaker 2: You know, I'm on the radio.

00:23:36
Speaker 5: Find out seven years later your guy is you know he took off your body. Yeah, so I got that was another lovely thing that everything I ever did in business since that little experience was I don't care who we're partners, what we're doing. I'm on the bank accounts. I'm the money does not come to anybody. It comes to either us or me, doesn't go it doesn't go three other parties. You're not gonna tell me the account and show me a piece of pain.

00:24:02
Speaker 2: By the way, my dad taught me as a kid when I was starting my production company twenty four years ago. He said, always be the signer. Don't let anybody else sign, no matter what. And I took that to heart, and I even told you that lot like you always want to be signing your own stuff. It doesn't even matter if it's a.

00:24:20
Speaker 1: So no one's signing or doing anything on my behalf. I freak out if I lose the dollar.

00:24:24
Speaker 5: I pick up any to this day. By the way, I don't really collect anything. If I drop it, I'm picking.

00:24:32
Speaker 2: By the way, I respect I respect that. By the way, if you want to talk about the cheapest person on the planet is my fiance.

00:24:38
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, people said I keep stying for his money. No, I'm as a.

00:24:44
Speaker 2: Lot of money. She just keeps it all.

00:24:45
Speaker 1: No, I like it all myself.

00:24:47
Speaker 5: Short.

00:24:47
Speaker 1: I gotta know real quick, when did you get the name too short? Was that something you chose for yourself?

00:24:53
Speaker 5: My room name is Todd. And when I got to high school, I didn't have a nickname, and my brothers was My brother was two grades ahead of me. So I get to tenth grade. He's in twelfth grade, and they're like the seniors of the school, and he and I kind of the first thing I did when I got to school was kind of clicked up with them a little bit because they're already established crew and I'm going to a high school. I didn't really know anybody, and they I remember, I remember clear as day. We was sitting around and they go, well, shit, we damn sure're not gonna call you Todd. So and they started these are older guys, right, They started throwing all these names out, like they're gonna call men that ain't working, that ain't working, that ain't working. And then this dude came up who everybody knew. His name was Shorty and he walks up to the group of people while the joke is on, and he's a little bit taller than me, and they're like, damn you, he can't name you. He's shorter than Shorty, Like somebody said, you're just fucking short. So my name was never too short. My name was always short because there was a dude name Shorty that was taller than me. So my name was short got it. And I hated that ship is stuff well for you though, yeah, and it just and it was just it was a joke, like short was always a fucking joke with him, and then I flipped it on him. One day, we went to see this movie called Penitentiary and the league character his name was too Sweet, and he was in jail and he was boxing in jail, but they would let him out of jail to go get pussy and everybody he fought, he beat their ass. He was the hero of the movie. So one day I was talking to this bum, a homeless guy and I always hung out with my brother and them, and they left me. They went in the party. I was I was too little to go in the party. So it's probably like a Friday night and I'm hanging out of this party for two three hours talking to this homeless guy. Yeah, because my brother didn't will let me go in the party. But I'm my mother. My mother probably like, well, if you want to go, you gotta take him. So it was that type of thing. Oh, I didn't mind. So I'm hanging outside. I'm asking us. I used to always ask homeless people questions. I still do. Really, just how was life? You know, that's nice, but you get a lot of information.

00:27:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been through some ship.

00:27:04
Speaker 2: Well. I went to school, prit Art High School in Miami, in downtown, and it was filled with all those people, and I used to have conversations. I used to you know, wh I hear things. Maybe not as a death, but I definitely always was opened mind.

00:27:15
Speaker 1: So I can see it in Short's eyes. He gives it. Damn about it.

00:27:18
Speaker 5: I was gonna say, it's cool to give a fuck.

00:27:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know you give a lot of fus. I can tell by his eyes.

00:27:22
Speaker 5: Okay, So I told them. The homeless guy asked me what my name was, and I didn't want to say Todd, so and I didn't want to stay short. I didn't have ship to say, so I thought of the movie you're too sweet, and I thought the joke was short, and I said, yeah, my name is too short, and that's how yeah, and so he kind of, uh when my brother name came out the party, he kind of was like saying, all right, all right, you know, like we like we homies and were saying goodbye, yeah, and he yelled out my name and then it just it.

00:27:53
Speaker 2: Just took off.

00:27:54
Speaker 5: It just took off, like he called me too short in front of him and they were like that that's it, and he said it kind of cool, like too so it put a little swag on.

00:28:03
Speaker 1: It, and I really got some swag.

00:28:05
Speaker 5: And then I started rapping. I started rapping. I'm like, I'm too short. Was it was initially sir too short?

00:28:10
Speaker 2: Oh. I.

00:28:11
Speaker 5: I went to the mall one day. I got me a hat. It was a black hat with gold letters. It said sir too short. And when he got the jacket, the match with the too short, it's an international on this sleeve and player on that sleeve, and I was instantly too short.

00:28:29
Speaker 2: At the end.

00:28:29
Speaker 1: That homeless man single handedly put you in the direction of being too We.

00:28:38
Speaker 5: Killed the joke that day.

00:28:39
Speaker 2: It was no, it was never the joke was over from that day on International Superstar. All Right, we're gonna we're gonna take quick break because we have a lot more to talk about, uh, and we'll be right back with too Short, Too Short.

00:28:54
Speaker 1: All Right, y'all, we are back, and we have too Short. He is talking to us about the good old day. Is I like, I feel like I'm sitting here cheesing because like you're a great storyteller.

00:29:04
Speaker 2: Short, Yeah, really good.

00:29:06
Speaker 1: Listen to you for hours. It's life, a great life I can tell.

00:29:10
Speaker 2: I just want to ask a questions. So, and I don't know if this is factual, but people say that you're likely the only rappers who have recorded with both Tupac, b I G and jay Z. I mean, I just want to have a story to the greatness of your ability mixing with their ability. Just something.

00:29:27
Speaker 5: Well, I know there's there's a combination of artists. There's a lot of artists who have a combination of you know, two of the three or whatever. But no, I've been on I was on two Biggie albums and two jay Z albums, so oh, I don't think anybody's done that. And then also, you know, during the during the so called East Coast West Coast Beef and all that stuff. I was neutral. I was kind of like I lived in Atlanta at the time, and you couldn't bring that to me, Like it just it wasn't I was not a part of that thing because had a lot of friends in Atlanta, a lot of friends in New York, a lot of friends in la and a lot of friends at Death Row and a lot of friends at Bad Boys.

00:30:07
Speaker 2: So you were in every you were part of everything, Like relationships.

00:30:11
Speaker 5: I was really cool with Tupac, Snoop Dogg and Shig Night. I was really really cool with uh Notoris Big and Puff Daddy and BIG's crew. And it was just a thing like if you were positioned properly at the time, that thing was between them and other people started going back. Ride with Tupac man, I ride with Big. I'm the East Coast on West Coast. But if you were positioned properly, like I was with the bosses and you know, as well as with the artists, and like, right, I don't think I'm not in your politics. I'm from I'm I'm from Oakland. We have it right, and we byry We're not East or West Bay. That's how we played it.

00:30:51
Speaker 2: How was what What's I mean? Do you have a story from two backed Share that was like special or I mean these are legends obviously to all of us sitting here listening.

00:31:00
Speaker 5: I'm older than all these guys. I'm the big homie. Like I'm like platinum millions of records. So before any of these guys get in.

00:31:07
Speaker 2: The game, oh shit, So you know I didn't know that before.

00:31:11
Speaker 5: Jay Z, before Big, before Snoop and Park, I'm platinum out there already. These guys literally grew up listening to two Short like literally, so you were.

00:31:21
Speaker 2: Like the godfather to them. As they were coming up. They looked up to you and me as an artist, I can't.

00:31:28
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, I had the success, but Tupac was really good friends with people that I worked with. I worked with a guitar player named Shorty B. He also worked with Digital Underground. Okay, I worked with a keyboard player named pee Wee and he also worked with Digital Underground. So Digital Underground is a very funky band that made the Humpty Dance and songs like that, and the leader of the band was a musician, he was a keyboard player, and we did a lot of stuff together. Are clicks were really close. I knew the management. Excuse me, I knew the DJ knew you know, we were close. You can go back and look at a DVD. It sounds funny to save it.

00:32:11
Speaker 2: I know, I know.

00:32:12
Speaker 5: It's like I did a thing called short Dogs in the House, named after one of my albums. We used to always have like a little video thing to go concert or whatever to go with the album. And I didn't notice it two years later. But Tupac's like a little guy in the background, just like dancing and kicking, and he's you know, shot g is the leader of digit Underground. He was hosting my party. So he's going around a microphone interviewing people. And Tupac was like, you know, he's a little homie and we were always close.

00:32:38
Speaker 1: Like that, So wait, how can we see this?

00:32:40
Speaker 4: How can I see this called short Dogs in the House? Probably you or something like that.

00:32:44
Speaker 1: I have to see this.

00:32:45
Speaker 5: So Tupac would come around. He'd be around at times before he was really really famous. He'd be around because he used to hang out with Richie rich which is another one of my homies, and Richie rich was like his kind of Oakland mentor so to speak. Like his big homie from Oakland that took him around and you know, and got him accepted. Because if you go back and look at those videos, Brenda's got a baby and when my homies called, Like the video when my Homies, that's probably Tupac's first video before. That's he's in the car. That's Richie Rich. That's Richie Rich's car. That's you know, that's the that's the hommy. So Richie Rich is my hommy homie, and Tupac will come around. He'd be like the little hommy. You know, I'm Raisy. I'm like short dog. So I can't. I can't really Tupacs every time he ever appeared on the song it was the ship. So I'm a fan from day one. Brenda's got a baby.

00:33:37
Speaker 2: He's very prolific.

00:33:38
Speaker 5: He's a young cat, and he's saying these things that are big, big things to say, you know, I'm talking about teenage pregnancy. And then he does interviews, and in his interviews he's a voice. He's like really speaking on unjust thinks. Like from the start. So I'm admirer and admirer of his from the start, but when he comes around, I can't tell him.

00:33:56
Speaker 2: That he's like one of the greatest poets. Sound like we're knocking out.

00:34:01
Speaker 5: I'm like, what's up, homie?

00:34:02
Speaker 2: You know.

00:34:02
Speaker 5: So we had that kind of relationship where we ended up on a few songs together because we hung out in the same circles and we get around each other. We would never He's one of those guys that I I do it with Snoop too. When I hang around those kind of guys, I kind of fade away because they're so fucking popular and so famous and so magnetic that they get all the attention, and I love it because I'm I never wanted to be famous, So when I get around those real famous guys, I kind of like, just.

00:34:32
Speaker 2: You're pretty famous. So I have all the hard time with this, I know, but.

00:34:35
Speaker 5: I didn't want to be meaning I don't want to be face recognized.

00:34:39
Speaker 2: You just focus, you just kind of pull back.

00:34:43
Speaker 5: So I get around guys like that and I just take it off. I'm cool with that. So it was it was that kind of thing. We'd all get around each other, and I wouldn't I wouldn't try to be the loud guy in the room right or the or the you know, the one with all the glow So and those guys, those guys like Tupac would take over a room. If he came in the room, he'd take over big, same thing with big.

00:35:03
Speaker 2: They just right. Yeah, I didn't know either of them.

00:35:07
Speaker 5: And jay Z's on the quiet side. He doesn't. He doesn't really do a lot of loud ship talking.

00:35:10
Speaker 2: I met him and he seemed really really quiet and mellow. He's very calculated, very calculated.

00:35:18
Speaker 1: He's observing the room.

00:35:19
Speaker 5: But when they when they depict Tupac in movies, it kind of bothers me because I saw him quite often in my life, and he never was the same person twice. Like, he never was. He wasn't like I probably sounding like that once or twice maybe a lot of times he'd come up and he'd be very introspective or in an intelligent mood, or he'd be militant, or he'd be you know, gangster, or he'd just be quiet. He'd be smoking a cigarette, drinks and here, and like, he was never this person because.

00:35:48
Speaker 4: Oh I know how Tupac is, like you can, I don't, because it was just always different.

00:35:52
Speaker 5: He was a very multi faceted person. Yeah, listen to his music. One minute, he's saying, oh, you know, it's keep my sisters up, hold your head up next to me and saying, bitch stuck my dick.

00:36:05
Speaker 1: The next minute he's saying, I fucked your bitch, you fat motherfucker.

00:36:11
Speaker 5: I saw Tupac the night he got shot in Vegas, and uh, I mean, we're always at the fire he went to the fight.

00:36:18
Speaker 2: Okay. Uh.

00:36:19
Speaker 5: We stayed at that same hotel, the Luxor, and they were they had probably gotten to the altercation at the thing and went back to the hotel and we bumped into them on their way to the club. They said they had to they weren't wearing the clothes that they got shot, and they were wearing different clothes, and they said, we're gonna go about Sugarhouse changed and then go to the party. Come to come up to the clubs. You know, he's like, it's gonna be open, like everybody getting on the mic tonight. So you know, he figured me one of those nights where DJ spending different people's tracks and we all rock at the crowd and it's not the club wasn't that big and it was just probably it would have been the ship. Oh my god, it never happened.

00:36:55
Speaker 2: Wow, that's fucking epic. God, yeah, you were there. I mean you were there are hours before this last time been probably about them.

00:37:06
Speaker 5: Not two hours later we heard.

00:37:07
Speaker 2: About the shooting. Oh my god. And and not to you know, harp, but I mean, I know that moment changed the world for everybody. And obviously what's going on today we'll get into, but that that moment when you heard where were you when you heard it? Were you in the club?

00:37:21
Speaker 5: Were you We were on our way to the club, and there were run around pretty quick, and and even the crime scenees, you know, like it was all that whole intersection.

00:37:31
Speaker 2: It was a big deal.

00:37:32
Speaker 5: But but it was you know, there was there was a buzz in the air that night that that it was going to be some friction, because really, I would I'm wondering, like, was it from the time of the fight until the time of shooting. It could have been like two three hours or something somewhere in there, and it was in the air. It was like death row got into it with some cribs and blah blah blah. So it was people who were saying, it's probably gonna be a thing at the club.

00:37:57
Speaker 2: Oh, so you you knew there was something going to have it, but nobody back to this right. It was just like and I mean we're still going to the club. Wow. You know.

00:38:09
Speaker 5: My old theory back then was like you go to a place where you think it might be some violence. I'm like, shit, it's gonna be bound people. The bullet ain't gonna hit me.

00:38:18
Speaker 2: Wow. That was my theory. Oh well, let me let me pivot here for a second. Uh. You know, I you know, you've been a friend, You've showed up for us, and you've uh performed for us when you didn't have to, you know, and and we're very generous, you know. And I think that now the last week, what we've all been through with you know, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, you know, obviously has changed the world. You know, I hope for the better. And uh and I hope a lot of people uh open their eyes you know to things that you know, we're artists, we were talking about it before. You know, as artists, you know, you grow up and you don't see the things that maybe other people, how other people treat each other. Because we work with everybody. You know, whether you're black, white, purple, green, female, male, gay, straight, it doesn't matter. It's at least the way I was raised and grew up in the arts. But today, you know, but that's not the world everywhere else you were telling me, you know, you were just saying, how that's one percent, you know, of LA is.

00:39:25
Speaker 5: A different a different thing when you specifically, specifically talking about Hollywood and being on video sets and TV sets and movie sets and in the offices that running production companies, and it's it's very, very diverse in Hollywood and all aspects of from the highest to the lows, as far as directors and producers and all the casting directors.

00:39:49
Speaker 2: You never know, right, it doesn't. But but then you go outside the rest of the country and the world and that doesn't exist. And so now here we are today, you know, with the protests going on, and I think, you know, I don't even know, if not how the numbers compare it to other big but to me, it feels like the world is gonna have to wake up, right, I mean, they're gonna have to wake up and and it make change.

00:40:13
Speaker 5: We're gonna keep doing the same thing, and if we don't do something different, it's gonna be the same thing. And the same thing is it always comes to a point where we go, oh my god, let's discuss this, right, and we come with all these solutions, and it just seems yeah, it just you know, because this has been serious for about this has been a serious, Okay, we'll fix it for about ten plus years, like seriously, Like cops are unjustly choking people out. That's been a thing. Yeah, and it doesn't seem to go away, like it's just and to me, it's like a cycle. Yeah to me, you know, I'm I'm fifty four, and I came up at a time where in Oakland, California, where as young black man, we got harassed, Like harassment was not unjust. It was the norm, you know what I mean. It was like it's not it's not like oh man, I just got handcuffed on the way over hears and somebody be like, man, I got a handcuff yesterday, like you know, like it was normal.

00:41:16
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:41:17
Speaker 5: And then you know in recent years when in New York with the stopping frisk it's it didn't have to have a name. It was always stopping frisk. It was always a fear of when you get when you're in your car and you get pulled over, you have to get out the car to get searched, and it's always that fear while they're searching your car, like I there's nothing in my car. But I've heard from so many people that they come out with this bag and go, hey, what's this and you're like, it's not mine. Yeah, this shit happens. It's just you have this fear of You don't have fear of white people, you don't have fear of society, you have fear of police, right, And it's like, this guy could fuck my day up.

00:41:54
Speaker 2: Well, I want to tell you something. It's you know, growing up in the arts like you and and being in such a diverse universe my whole life. You know, it exists. You know that the world, some of the world is stuck in a time warp. And I'm glad that that we're gonna wake up the world that is still sleeping. What I think that shocked me, even somebody who's forty nine years old and has been around for a long time, When that police officer sat on his neck for eight plus minutes, I don't I can't even comprehend that. Mentally, I can't even get my I still think about it. I listened to the words that he was saying, Wow, how the fuck could this happen?

00:42:40
Speaker 5: He got it out pretty clear. I can't breathe right right, I can't breathe.

00:42:43
Speaker 1: Along with a bunch of other people that were standing in a position telling him that something is happening and to stop and it's the video is horrific. And I want to know that when when you were a child, did your mom ever have to have those conversations with you?

00:42:59
Speaker 2: Well?

00:42:59
Speaker 5: Is it thing that's sort of like in the context of the Willie Lynch letter, whatever the you know, the Willy Lynch the thing is where you don't have to be the slave. You don't have to discipline them. You just have to convince his mother that if you don't control him, I'm going to kill him. So if my mother didn't have to say, these are the rules of you as a little black kid going out in the world.

00:43:29
Speaker 2: This is what you do.

00:43:30
Speaker 5: Like the fear is instilled from day one. It's like, if you know it's this this fear like like from I can remember from the seventies, been a little kid like you. The fucking police like you. They come down to block and you don't go hot miss to officer. You yeah, you like, that's almost like that's definite enemy, that's the enemy.

00:43:50
Speaker 2: But that that and that and that's that's disgusting to me, that that's how it is. That one and I and I think that this, you know, with what's going on, I think even somebody like myself, who has been isolated in a very open world, uh now is starting to see things that I didn't even see the conversation. Even for me, hearing things like this, it's just it's just disgusting on every level and out. And I'm happy the world is standing up so.

00:44:21
Speaker 5: That the argument about the police and their authority and abusing it has a lot of layers. And I think that's something very important, is that a lot of the reason why the police are needed in high crime areas and inner cities is because of conditions that were created, not things that just happen, Like you take away opportunities or you don't even give opportunities, and this is what you.

00:44:50
Speaker 2: Get, zero opportunity, Like this is what is there's no opportunity.

00:44:54
Speaker 5: If you go to send if you're going to send a kid the kindergarten and not teach him, shit, what do you think he's going to be in fifteen. You know, I'm just saying, what then are you gonna give? You're gonna get nothing in return. So it's not it's not the people by a whole, it's it's definitely the system. It's definitely that you're not giving a certain a certain group of people a chance, and then you don't want to give them a chance because you're biased against him because of race or color or religion or something. And then you this goes. This is not just black white in America. This is every religion dispute, every race or neighboring country dispute, all over the world. It's the same fucking idiots it everywhere when you get to the root of it, like why do you hate your next door neighborhood? Like it's no fucking.

00:45:41
Speaker 1: Reason, right, there is no reason.

00:45:43
Speaker 2: Well, I I really, you know, having watched you know, I'm an optimist. I've always been. Some people are pessimist, but I'm an optimist. And I feel like this is something that was long overdue and and and I do pray and hope and will fight for you know that change. So and I don't mean it just in some politically correct bullshit, because you know me and you know my work and what I've done, and I just I just think that other people have to, you know, change. I mean the world has to change. And there are people who you know, you know, have changed for decades, but there are too many people that are stuck in their ways. And I really hope the Black Lives Matter movement, the protesting, the standing up, the blocking off streets, the education that I think people that were so uneducated because they lived in a bubble maybe and I pray that this will move the thinking forward and change.

00:46:46
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean real change, not just well short, you're you're a mentor at Youth Uprising.

00:46:52
Speaker 2: I was for a while.

00:46:54
Speaker 1: And what did that entail when you were doing that?

00:46:57
Speaker 5: There was there is a place Oakland call Youth Uprising that was built in the neighborhood in the you know, right next to a high school. And it was just so that kids, I think it was the ages were like twelve to eighteen nineteen somewhere like that. Yeah, I can't remember the age group now, but they were allowed to come there and participate in a lot of things. You know a lot of cities have this, but of course, but I like that place because it focused on a lot of things artistic. It was had a lot to do with music and dance, and so you felt like you.

00:47:32
Speaker 1: Were a part of something instead of after school, you know, you're going and getting into trouble. You had a place where you could go and focus on music or I was just.

00:47:40
Speaker 5: You know, I just wanted to be a part of the solution. And not so much as I looked into.

00:47:48
Speaker 2: What they do.

00:47:49
Speaker 5: Like a lot of people people go get these grants and all this stuff and they do it in the name of the kids, and we're gonna have these programs and stuff. But they to me, I looked at a lot of stuff and I'm like, you're not really impacting the kids firsthand. So I wanted to be a part of something where I interacted with them. I literally made music with them. I literally, you know, they put on shows and I even you know, took some of them out to do shows to perform on stage with me.

00:48:14
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:48:15
Speaker 5: And if you look and eat for these videos, most of those kids that do the dance and I'm from youth up rising, like wow, like we you know a lot of them, you know, grew up into society to do stuff with their talents that they learned at Youth up Rising so it continues to this day, and I applaud all places like that that, you know, just give inner city kids opportunity to play sports, to make music, to do something other than just go home and do nothing, like you know. And I had the one thing that touched me at Youth Theft Riising that I never forget is a kid, A little kid asked me did I know where he could buy a gun? And you know, I didn't want to go tell on him or scold him, so I asked him why, Like, we't need a gun. He was like, well, I live on such and such street, and he said the guys that I got to walk past on my way home are enemies with the guys that I live by. And he's like, the guys that I live by don't like me because I don't want to be a part of what they're doing. He's like, so it's dangerous to go home, like just from school to home. He's uh, is playing with his life. Wow, And he's like, I just need a gun to get home.

00:49:28
Speaker 4: And what what did?

00:49:29
Speaker 1: What do you even say to something like that?

00:49:32
Speaker 5: So what you thought Uprising would do is Youth Uprising had guys that worked there who were you know, X street guys, and these guys would find out about situations like that and they would go talk to all parties involved. They will talk to the guys who are both the enemy side, and they say, look, you guys are enemies. I ain't trying to get in your business. It's done what you're doing. Because a little guy who's got to walk home from school every day, he don't want to be your enemy. Can you guys not fuck with him?

00:49:59
Speaker 4: And it weren' sometimes sometimes and it works and they go, okay, we.

00:50:02
Speaker 5: Seen a little honey, you thought he was with them, and you get it all clarified and just leave alone. And he wants to be a good kid. And a lot of times bad kids will allow the good kid to be good. They'll allow you to play sports, they will allow you to be excelling academics, the like, he's not one of us. Take care of him. He might make it out of here. They understand.

00:50:19
Speaker 2: Okay, I just want to say, because we're basically out of time, I want to I want to know anything that you have coming up that I need to know about, because I know you do.

00:50:28
Speaker 5: Do you ever want to hear some good music.

00:50:30
Speaker 1: Always always too short, drop it, go to Spotify.

00:50:34
Speaker 5: I do a weekly playlist. It's called Trunk Tuesdays Drunk Tuesday like this, and I keep it like one hundred songs in rotation. A lot of it is new, too short stuff, a lot of it's just stuff. It's the stuff, you know, the trunck is. You know, I got woofers in the trunk of my car and it's all that stuff. It's the ship that I ride too. So I've been introducing a lot of my new music on There's something I just started probably like a month ago, so just now growing it. Trunk Tuesday is on Spotify, and it's about new artists. I'm working with new artists that I'm supporting, and I'm just trying to help, just help the industry, you know.

00:51:04
Speaker 2: So so everybody listening on this podcast, all hundred thousand of you, go to Trunk Tuesdays at Spotify. I'm not playing because this is one of the greatest.

00:51:13
Speaker 1: Artists and I'm gonna hustle my way into two shorts Trunk Tuesday playlists. All right, dude, sure, it was truly a pleasure to have you on. We're so grateful.

00:51:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for everything.

00:51:26
Speaker 5: Thanks Davie.

00:51:29
Speaker 2: Always takes coming through all right, Thanks guys,