From Gang Life to Gentle Fatherhood: Fredi Nwaka & a Varied Modern Manhood

16:32Fredi Nwaka:that I can relate to and that's really important because it's navigating the world right

16:35Joeli:me and you could go me and you could go to let's go to the pub today go to the pub get a pint and we could put on like our house in the middle of the street our house we could do that And then tomorrow we could go Brixton and listen to Mives Cartel. Yeah, yeah.

16:53Fredi Nwaka:100%. Do you know what? That is important to learn to navigate, you know. I'm telling you. To navigate the corporate world, to navigate friendships, family, class systems. It's important to be able to... It's a transferable skill.

17:04Joeli:It's a transferable skill. Once you can navigate, the biggest thing is not necessarily always navigating what's outside. It's navigating yourself. when you can understand that you are okay in wherever you are then you can be okay wherever you are do you know what i'm saying when you feel good within yourself and that's why i say it's important for young people to be the best version of themselves and be happy with who they are even if other people don't see them that way as long as you are happy with who you are then you can go into spaces anywhere because you're happy wherever you are and that's why for me i say to young people it's my sons are you okay if they're okay within themselves and they feel good the rest outside is i mean other people projecting what they're going through onto them but you're okay And that's the main thing.

17:42Fredi Nwaka:I want to touch on another part of the book, which is obviously sensitive. And, you know, we approach it with care. You spoke about your experience as a child being sexually abused. And you shared in some detail around the actual experiences, like what that was like. And yeah, reading it was emotional. It was very touching, very, very moving. And first of all, I just want to say, like, thank you for sharing that. I think it's going to have a big impact on people who have been through so many experiences. seeing you sharing it i think will give so much permission to other people i really wanted to ask you in terms of like how you you know men don't talk right and especially about things like sexually abused and being sexually abused lots of men especially black men like don't talk about that sort of stuff how did you like find the strength within yourself to share that publicly and also like what in sharing that what do you hope to inspire or to help with other kind of young on voices.

18:35Joeli:Do you know what? Okay, I'm a film writer, director, producer, right? And I was getting ready to make this movie called, well, actually, I did make this film called Some Things and it was about child abuse in the black community. We know that, especially in the black community, it's such a taboo subject and we don't speak about it, right? So I made this film called Some Things and my sister said to me, Freddie, you're a hypocrite. I'm like, what are you talking about? We had this little conversation and she was like, you cannot make a film about this type of thing and not talk about it. publicly.

19:05Joeli:So it's that kind of sat with me for a second. And I was like, you know what, you're right. So I screened this film, Some Things at BAFTA, to an audience of like, I think three, 400 people. And then people were crying and tears and all the rest of it. And I'm like, why are you not crying for what happened to me? What's going on? Why is everyone else in tears? Anyway, so I came off the stage and then loads of people, I mean, were coming up to me and were saying, frankly, it happened to me. It happened to me. Like my sister abused me. My brother abused me my dad my mum's friend i'm like what i could not believe the amount of other black people in the space that were coming to me and telling me it happened to them and they were like the fact that you've said this freddy is allowed me like we know your story we know you was involved in gangs we know you got in we know what he was about and the fact that you're you're doing it like wow so they all these people are sharing sharing sharing and i realized that sometimes when you share your pain and your trauma it gives other people permission to share theirs as well it's a weird space to be in in the sense that i don't see myself as a victim it's something that happened to me when i was a child and the strangest thing about it is that it's almost like you're being groomed as a child and you kind of i have no hatred for the for the person it's really odd you're supposed to hate the person that put you through that you're supposed to like look at them in a certain way and i don't even have that thing i have the same emotion of love despite what i went through which is a very strange thing to sit with and that was that was for me the most hardest part of sharing that the fact that the world would want me to hate the person for what they've done and my subconscious would want me to look at them like why did you do that to me and I just don't feel it and I can't and I'm not fake not to pretend I do I just don't I still feel the same love that I felt when I was a little kid I just know that I just know that it was wrong if that makes sense but i know it was wrong but i don't feel the hatred to the to the person and i'm hoping that in me sharing my story there's a lot of men out there i'm winning but predominantly the men out there we know we don't speak as a whole we suffer in silence we find it hard to speak out about these things i'm hoping i can give even if one person has the strength to say wow like freddie spoke about it man so i'm gonna tell somebody there's men out here boys out here that are sitting in their rooms and they're scared to say anything and they're just sitting in their rooms just suffering and shaking and going to school and people are bypassing the fact that they're in pain and they're just scared and I'm just hoping that my book and my conversation will reinforce that it's okay to talk it's okay do you know I mean no one ain't gonna look at you it's okay to speak your truth and let people um know did you feel better talking about it did you

21:42Elliott:feel like you'd uh like did you feel it was cathartic yeah i felt light it was such a i felt

21:49Joeli:light do you know what um you know it was something i had i was holding for many many years and it's a really weird thing for me because it happened from the ages of i say well i want to say three four till i was about eight nine and so i don't i blocked it out it did not exist in my world i didn't even know it happened um and then when i got to my early teens and i started having relationships with women i'd done most of the stuff with women when i was like four i was like so it was that's what made me think what and i blocked it out from then again till i was 40 so from the ages of 9 10 um right the way up until 40 never happened and it's only when i when i had this conversation with my sister i had to check myself and go back and then in writing the book and stuff like that it really made me realize wow this is what's happened and as a result of the book i had a few people that were in the same town as me send me messages and get in contact with me and they explained some things to me that really made sense so for example the woman that was involved with my abuse i was told now that she was a prostitute i did not know that and so did it make me look at things like oh wow hurt people hurt people they say so was she being abused was she going through certain things that made her think it was all right to do it to me do you know i mean and it was things like this that made me as made me start looking at things completely different before i looked at a different space now i'm looking at it like well not that it's okay but and i'm not giving her permission but could this have been something that was happening to her in her childhood that's made her now think oh this is what you do do you know i mean this is such a weird space but i don't hold no negativity towards her and what she done more about i feel free i feel like do you know i mean i feel i feel i feel airy i feel good to i've released it and not yeah it feels good it feels good to be able to just share that and hopefully give someone else out there who's going through something that lightness yeah I feel like I'm

23:40Elliott:craving knowing more about you like I'd love you to tell tell me your story like what it was like growing up you were adopted by a white family is that and then lived in a obviously very white seaside town what was like tell me a bit more about that i i've read len cise's book which talks in depth about what that was like tell me what that was like for you growing up you know

24:06Joeli:what like my childhood believe it or not the book would have you think it was uh really bad but it was a beautiful time like i remember waking up in the mornings my best friend robert white lived directly opposite our house and those were the days when you could go into someone's house and just walk in there sit on the sofa and put a kettle on yourself make yourself a cup of tea I have to ask for a cup of tea. I go in and get my own cup of tea. You know what I mean? His mum was my mum. It was beautiful. We used to meet up and go down the back and go scrumping. For those that don't know, scrumping is when you climb into people's gardens and you steal their fruit.

24:38Joeli:You used to go in there. It was like Tomb Raiders. They're like a Tomb Raiders. You look over the wall. It's like, Rob, can we go? And we're looking, we're looking. And we climb over the wall. And we got the tree, grab the apples, all the pears. And then you hit, oi, oi. boy and then you gotta run and jump over the wall and escape we used to go in the cornfields and have big wars with the it just listen it was beautiful growing up in deal beautiful and again like i said the children we didn't see color like we were just a group of boys having fun you know i mean go slow worming going to the pond with a little fishing net trying to catch newts minnows and ficklebacks like it was really yeah it was a beautiful time man and i love deal even now when I go back to Dior now there's a sense of home that I go back there with my sister sometimes and my family I've still got I mean Robert White still lives there it's beautiful man the first person I ever met in my world that I remember was a white boy called Robert White that's my brother I love that guy that's my brother and now all these 54 55 years later we still talk and we're still best friends and I still go there and see it's just beautiful man yeah you know like like it makes me smile you can see the teeth yeah i can see the teeth yeah do you know what i mean when i think about i've got so many fond memories man of like just deal and what it means to me my foster parents and just you know like it's beautiful man i love going there i love yeah i

25:59Elliott:love it and did you do you recall experiencing any racism from adults when you were growing up do you recall ever like being treated differently yeah i mean there were moments i got um i remember

26:12Joeli:I got tied to a tree once and left just in the woods, just tied to a tree. I just remember not thinking they were going to come back. That was like, yeah, that was a real scary moment. Yeah, just tied to a tree. They used to come up to me at points. But these are more adults than children, like teens. They tried to scratch off my skin to see if the skin would come off and see what was underneath. Put their hands in my hair, like, why is it different? I remember one time, which is quite funny, actually. I think I wrote about it in my book. me and my brothers were walking down the hill and we saw these nazi um skinheads and they were doing this i i thought they was waving so i started waving back i didn't i didn't know they were doing the the do you know we're not seeing yeah i just i know i thought i thought they were being friendly you know i mean it's just the ignorance of a child so yeah there were lots of moments of i got called every name under the sun do you know i mean i won't say it on the show because i'm not sure if i'm allowed to but i've got named called all kinds of names and looked at it's an odd thing now i look back on it again i got invited everywhere but was i invited because they like freddy or was i the black showpiece you get invited to a party you know we've got the black boy at the party hey look everybody he's here like no matter having a pet and you want to show off to everybody but again as a child i just looked at it like i was happy that people like me so i'm getting invited everywhere because oh it's that they like me but now i'm looking back on it did they really like me or was i the novelty piece do you know i mean was i the party trip was either oh look we've got the black boy at our party so I don't know it's it but like I said I wouldn't change nothing if you asked me about I changed my childhood I wouldn't change the abuse I wouldn't change nothing there's not one part of my childhood I would change and then how old were you when you moved to London I came back when I was I want to say first I came back when I was about I think seven or something like that um then those ages I came back and then I was going back every summer every Easter holidays while my foster parents were alive there was a way of they kind of integrated it why I was up here with my real family but I was able to go there and spend the summers and the easter so I kind of kept the best of both worlds and when you're in London did you you move where did you move to I came to Chelsea first I was in Chelsea Kings Road um for a while and then my dad had a place in Brixton

28:25Fredi Nwaka:today's podcast episode is sponsored by Coru Kids when my kids were younger I never considered

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30:08Fredi Nwaka:So when I first heard about you, obviously, Freddy Krueger, this must have been late 90s, early 2000s. Yeah, yeah. So Freddy was a big rapper back in the day. And you were involved in some of the street life, I could say. Yeah, yeah. And I was at the Power of a Man Awards a few weeks ago. Amazing event that Freddy hosted. and founded and on stage you mentioned you'd lost 45 friends to gang violence yeah i feel like now i've said this many times on a podcast i was scared to have a boy first because i know what it's like growing up black boy in and around london trouble's gonna find you some way or another and i think there's a massive conversation about peer pressure and i think so many young boys are going through adolescence they're finding themselves and the pressure to conform to certain groups and get involved in certain things maybe just out of safety first and foremost because you want to be in the group and that's a safer thing to be with others even if the thing they're doing isn't great and you know that but you want to be involved in what they're doing for safety I want to talk to you about pressure obviously you moved to London I was in Brixton you were you were involved in in that life as a young boy how did you feel about like pressure to to do certain things and what do you talk to your boys now about that yeah i think we see a lot of peer

31:25Joeli:pressure going on a lot of the stuff for me i believe starts off at home with parenting i've ever had a great relationship with my mom as i've said and my dad and so a lot of young people find other ways to fill that void hence why i joined one of south london's biggest gangs like i was we was outside doing a lot of stuff to a lot of people stuff that i'm not proud of and whatever um but a lot of it came from not feeling almost accepted or loved at home so where you've got a group of guys that are going to show you that love and and it wasn't this coin of gang it's not really always a gang a gang is something almost like the way the government have made it seem because it's easy to give it some kind of narrative but for us it was just a group of guys we were just hanging out doing stuff together um a lot of young people find that same kind of thing I go into schools, I go into prisons, I go into yachts and cruise and do lots of talks.

32:15Joeli:And I find that over and over again, that a lot of young people are being pressured, but it's not a pressure necessarily from other people to join. It's an internal pressure on themselves to want to be accepted. And there's a difference. If I'm saying to you, look, I want you to come and do this for me. I want you to come and do that. You can say no in most cases and people will let you go on your way. But if it's you feeling like you need to do it to belong, it's a whole different mind thing. and a lot of young people where they're not feeling the love and the attention and the support at home from their parents or their siblings they feel the pressure within themselves to be able to join something so that they can feel accepted and then they will go out and search for these things i've seen it in my own children to a certain degree my 15 year old one and my 19 year old now they're not they they know my life they know my story they know what i've been through and i continuously tell them show them and i'm very open with them the things i've been through the things i've done the things that I've seen so that they don't have to be on that journey but I still hear them talk in conversations with their friends certain narratives that are like almost they want to be a part of it because it's the cool thing to do it's cool to be part of a gang in it it's cool to be out on the block with random and you're in McDonald's and you're sitting around and you've got your hoodies up and a lot of them it's not they want to join it because it's the violence part or we want to do stuff it's just belonging to a section of people that are cool it's the other bit that's added to it which is the problem because in this group of coolness there are a couple that will do things that are not cool and then you get tarnished with the same brush brush so i just say to parents all the time you just if you as a parent or as a sibling do not give your children some form of stimulation that allows them to feel that it's enough i'm not saying you've got to sit in that room every day and read books but if you don't provide them with something they will find it elsewhere that's what's going to happen they will find it elsewhere if you don't stimulate your child and it could be it could be like spending time talking to them man you don't have to like you know you don't have to take them out every night but sometimes it's like we're in this day and age where parents are happy with their kids in the bedroom playing playstation all day and they're downstairs doing what they're doing like and the society's got us where we're working so hard when we come home we're tired no one don't want to sit out talking to their children and spend time and taking them out because we as adults we've got our own life we're tired as well right but we have to make an extra effort to make sure that we we own we keep our children because if we don't keep them especially boys the street will come and take them the streets will come and grab them do you know i mean they will take them away and then we'll be sitting there looking at each other like what happened what happened is you didn't have your hands on your children talk to them go in their room sit down with them if someone's got something new where do you get that from i'd never give you money to buy that so where did you get it from do you know i'm saying you you don't have a job you don't you don't have a job and you've got new trainers well where did that come from do you know i'm saying you're supposed to ask these questions man because you i didn't give you the money to buy 180 pound pair trainers so where did it come from then so now we've got to have a dialogue now let's we've got to talk now and then let him explain you know what i'm saying show interest man you've got you've got to show interest man you know i always

35:18Fredi Nwaka:i'm always fascinated by certain friends i had that were able to go home with new trainers and new jackets and it's like are your parents not asking you where you got the avarics from that's a 200 pound jacket that's what i'm saying never come home with a new expensive garment no just look at me and think okay elliot like you just found that on the street that's what i'm saying

35:34Joeli:that's what i'm saying and these are important things these are important things like and we have a lot with i'm saying more of this culture where parents are almost scared of their children like what i don't understand like do you know i mean like these things there like you just said you you couldn't come home with like a jacket or a trainer or a new car outside they ain't got a license i'm saying like where did this come from are you not asking the question like okay i didn't give you 500 pounds son that montclair jacket is 400 and certain pounds all right where did you get it from and even if he's got to turn around and say oh okay here's what happened it's opened a dialogue now for you then to have that conversation you have to have this dialogue you have to it's

36:12Fredi Nwaka:important talk to us about okay so you came to london what was life like then i guess settling

36:18Joeli:in from deal to london that's what i mean yeah that was nuts like i said people didn't like because i was into all the music and the white people didn't like me because i was black i went for a long a big transition then i started to um almost become liked because of the things that i was doing music i started rapping for example i mean a bit later but i started rapping at the garden it's been a long journey it wasn't like i came to london all of a sudden i was cool do you know i mean i came back big lips i used to get teased i used to get teased bro they gave my they gave me names like liplodocus because my lips were big then i got called them used to make songs lippity do da lippity day then my my face grew into my lips in it so it was not too bad but i used to have dry afro dry skin big lips i was african so i got teased by all the other culture it was just a lot of work to try and become cool do you know i mean and then as time went on i started to rap and got involved in bodyguard and looked after some greats um yeah and it i i became cool over a long period of time if that makes sense and then yeah that's kind of my journey but i didn't see it as a i didn't see it as a trying to be i just it just happened over as time went on i saw other people that's how i got into music to be fair i saw somebody performing and everyone was cheering him and i was like wow he's got friends like people like him so i was if I could do that as well, people would like me, right?

37:41Joeli:So then I taught myself to do that. And people started to like me. And it kind of, like I said in the book, when you find the boy, it makes sense. Because now all the things that I've done growing as an adult, I've always, for the most part, been so that people can see me because I wasn't seen as a child. So I look at all the things I've done and I'm like, oh, that's why I've written a book. That's why I've made 11 movies. That's why I rapped. Do you know what I mean? They're all things that have made me be seen. because that wasn't seen.

38:10Fredi Nwaka:That's so interesting. You know, I've been thinking quite a lot about my motivation as well recently. I think part of my motivation, so I had a big incident when I finished school, went to uni and then a group of boys who, it was a bit of a mad altercation. I wrote about it in the dad book, but it was quite violent and whatever. Part of, I think why I worked so hard in my twenties and thirties was I wanted to kind of get my revenge, but it wasn't revenge in regards to I'm going to like, do what you did to me but I'm going to be successful successful and you're going to see me be successful and that's going to be my kind of revenge and it's only recently where I've come I've kind of resolved that and I'm no longer doing things because those people that did that thing to me 20 years ago hurt me and they're going to see that you what you did to me isn't going to define me and I'm bigger than that and it's it's been crazy like having to work through that okay what what's inside of me what do i need to kind of let go a little bit of and what do i kind of need to

39:11Joeli:get a new motivation but that's but that's exactly like why if you think about it look at boy when you find a boy you discover the man now you see what you just said there a lot of people would not know your motivation over the years to why you've been so successful but you see like now if you look back at the boy and the things you went through now it makes sense i'm like that's why elliot's killing him out here no because he went through certain things and man tried to have him up when this happened and now in his head he's like i'm not going to come back at you guys physically but i'm going to make you lot see my success do you know what i'm saying and these are the kind of things that for a lot of us when you find the child you discover the adult you know i mean i know i know there's something in your story there i know i know she's sitting there i know there's something yeah there's something in your past that's made you so successful we just wait

40:01Elliott:to hear it i'm waiting to hear it i've just been listening to davina mccall talking to jamelia on the on davina mccall's podcast and they both said that the reason why they're both being successful was because they were performing for a parent like davina just desperately wanted their mum to love her and jamelia desperately wanted her mum to love her and see her because they just felt completely ignored and it was all about performing for the parent to try and get them to love them like if i do this and achieve this that my mum will finally love me and um that's and they've both acknowledged that now and realized that it gave them a lot actually like they've they've managed to achieve an enormous amount but really at the heart of it was all about wanting to be loved and obviously I built Pregnant Then Screwed I think trauma has a lot to play sometimes in motivations isn't it and I built Pregnant Then Screwed as a result of being pushed out of my job when I was pregnant and being really traumatized by that and in a right mess and then having these really difficult decisions to make about whether I access just this which could potentially have killed my baby that i was brewing and all of that i found really traumatic and so the success i've had since then partly was about me going fuck you you made a mistake bitch like wow i'm like i didn't even know i could i don't even know i could swear i don't actually yeah Yeah, you swear.

41:25Elliott:I don't feel like that anymore. I actually think if I saw the woman who did it to me, I'd be like, thanks. Do you know what? Thank you.

41:33Joeli:Exactly that. And that's the beautiful thing. And this is why it's so, it's so like, even having this conversation, it's such a beautiful thing to know that the one thing that we all have in common is childhood, right? We all have childhood in common. And the things you go through as a child, into your teens, into you, we all have these journeys. And it's very interesting when you look back at people that have been through some kind of trauma because it shapes the person they've become for all of us. But people make choices and go different ways. And so again, talking to both of you and seeing the success you've both had and where you're at, it makes sense.

42:06Joeli:Do you know what I mean? It's almost like, of course, of course. Yeah, do you know what I mean?

42:10Fredi Nwaka:My wife says your mess is your message. And for me, like you, Freddie, like, you know, I haven't been through half the things that you've been through, but I wouldn't change some of the traumatic events in my life. I wouldn't change them. Because I wouldn't be who I am now. I wouldn't have the motivation, the drive, the perspective in life, you know, the ability to put myself in uncomfortable situations. I don't think I would have that if I hadn't been through a certain amount of pain. So, you know, we use that pain, isn't it? I want to talk to you about the 45. When you're on stage at the Power of Man Awards, you said 45, you've lost 45 people.

42:45Fredi Nwaka:And throughout the book, you do name some people and whatnot. how have you processed that have you come to the point where you you're you're okay with that I think you know we started this podcast talking about so many men walking around with trauma that's unresolved and so many men that have been through stuff you know in our sessions all the time in our dad circles men are being devastating experiences to the table and they haven't unpacked it they haven't resolved it so I just want to know for you how have you got to the point where you're okay you know those are people aren't okay after that those people lose their minds those are people aren't doing what you're doing how have you got to the point where you're still you after

43:25Joeli:all that stuff you've been it's very odd you know like so when my mum passed away I mean it's about the same thing yeah I went to counselling more so from what was a work thing they sent me to go and do this counselling stuff and I was talking to the counsellor and the therapist and explaining my past right and things that had been happening in my life and then he said to me um wow I know soldiers that have not experienced as much death as you and it made me think like the ptsd thing like what do you mean he's like soldiers go to war and they expect to come across death but here you are living in brixton and you've witnessed i mean i've had to hold in people's stomachs because it's come out i've had people die in my arms i've seen a lot and done a lot um but it just became normal for me like it's really like i can't i don't even know how i process it and they say that when you go through these kind of traumas it finds its way elsewhere so I would I don't know if I've dealt with it if I'm honest if I've actually dealt with it I still believe it's I live in part of who I am today I've just learned how to channel it into other things I don't know I wouldn't say yeah I've dealt with it and I'm okay with it I've just learned how to navigate the space of what was violence and death and crime and I mean I've carried loads of coffins yeah I've seen a lot of stuff and done a lot of stuff and I feel like it's something that you can never really deal with because every time someone dies around you or someone's close to you that gets killed or you do something or hurt somebody it's a different experience and whereas one day you might see it as a you're devastated the next one might not be so as so painful I think it's just become part of who I am and I've learned to navigate that space but have I dealt with it honestly I'm not going to sit in and say yeah I've dealt with it I'm cool no I don't think I'm cool I just think I've dealt I've managed to let it become part of who I am and I've accepted that when I was in that space of gangs and violence and bodyguard and crime it went pie and parcel it's like working in the kitchen if you're a baker and you get flour in your face do you know I mean you expect it because you're in that space you just wipe it off and carry on it's a it became a bit like that I'm walking around with a gun or a knife and I'm going to doing certain things it became part and parcel of what happens when you're in that and it just became part of who I was so have I dealt with it nah I still have demons every now and then I still have flashbacks I still get triggered by little things that happen every now and then but I just let it become part

45:46Fredi Nwaka:of who I am and I just sit with it and pray let's talk about masculinity we've had big conversations about what it means to be a man online influences a lot of pressure that men face to be strong but also be vulnerable and I think a lot of men are trying to figure out who they are in this world now and what their value is what's your take on the conversation about like modern masculinity

46:07Joeli:what do you think it means to be a man right now yeah well it's definitely changed because i remember being a man meant being strong not showing no vulnerability not crying i remember getting into clubs and you go into a club in a bar and your face is scrubbed and like a girl would say hi i'm like how you say baby you're good i'll kiss it then when she goes like do you know what i mean so you you wasn't angry bro you wasn't angry you wasn't vex but you that was your line of armor we come into a place the screw face the big chest was your line of armor but that wasn't really how you felt and we were taught to be that was that's what men look like visually on tv you see the men like that and in the society you see men like that now we're in a time where we kind of understand more that to be vulnerable gives you more strength it's just that we're trying to teach our young people that um for me masculine and masculine that word's always odd for me say it for me masculinity that one that there looks to me like somebody who can be strong when they need to be strong and weak when they need to be weak let's look at bamboo you see bamboo now bamboo is one of the strongest things we have out here it bends when it needs to right it's flexible and don't snap but it can also hold up some of the big things that you see you know i'm saying it's like elastic as well look how flimsy it is it knows how to be strong when it needs to be strong but it also knows how to be bendy and flexible weak and that's what i think masculinity looks like i've done it masculinity i got it masculinity you got it yeah you're not thinking about it it just flows yeah it just came off i'm gonna keep saying that's what i think masculinity looks like now it's it's knowing when to be strong but also knowing when to be weak knowing when to be transparent and knowing when to not say something knowing when to be firm but also

47:59Elliott:knowing when to be soft do you think change for you to go from doing the screwy face hard man look like that being your version of masculinity to understanding the importance of vulnerability and emotion what was the the trigger for that that sea change in the way you viewed yourself

48:18Joeli:I think it was a couple things I think one was my young my oldest son Malachi young Kruger when he I tell him all the time how much I love him and how much he saved my life because at that point when he was born but prior to that I was doing way too much involved in the gang gang scene and I think having a child softens you it makes you feel and I think because of my past all the things that I didn't have I wanted to be alive to give him what I think he deserved and be there for him as a good dad the things that i didn't really have as a father for my father my dad was a good dad but i just didn't see i didn't get the things that i think i needed the hugs like me and malachi it's hugs it's kisses it's dad i love you it's i love you more we do all that stuff you know i mean that we we try we try not love each other you know i mean it's the same with all my kids i love you i love you more and i love you more we fight we fight for love here we do it we do that and i think that was part of the thing that kind of growing up from then that point on to where i am to now today is kind of the change and the softening and the do you know i mean like it's a when you really as a parent when you really love on your children you get so much more back do you know i mean like a lot of a lot of parents look at raising children like a chore do you know i mean because you it's one of those things that you have no choice technically like you can go to a job and you can leave but you can't or you can some parents leave their kids but I'm saying for the most part, it's not a chore.

49:39Joeli:You know what I mean? And if you look at it for what it is and you put time and energy into loving your children and loving them, the rewards are so much better and different. The energy you get back is different. And that's, I think for me, what my change was. And that made me, when I started seeing, you know what I mean? Is that when you go fishing? When you go fishing for the first time, you don't catch a fish. No, man. I don't know if I want to do this again, man. It's cold. I didn't catch nothing. But if you go fishing and you catch a fish for the first time, you're hooked. Now you want to catch a bigger fish and fish in bigger lakes.

50:06Joeli:because it is a bit like parenting when you know you love your kids and then they come one day and give you a hug and say thanks dad you're like oh wow you know i mean you want to do more because you're getting that love back you want to do more for them it's like and that's kind of like what happened for me i think when i was giving and seeing that if i behave a certain way with my children you actually get that appreciation back it made me want to do more and was that so was

50:27Elliott:because it must have been really hard to have left your previous life behind if that was your family before you had a family walking away from that must have must have been really difficult you

50:40Joeli:know what it was the gang thing didn't really this is what i'm saying it didn't okay so the gang was a big gang but it didn't feel like a gang like the word gang back then we weren't a gang we would became it became a gang when the government and the society turned into that word but back then we were just a big group of guys that hung out went clubs together if you cover one of us now you're covering all of us but we were friends and there's no difference how it is today for the most part except for now if you see a bunch of kids together they're a gang whereas back then it was just about a group of friends and for me i think what helped me more than anything was i was doing other things as well i was rapping i was chatting on the sound systems so as much as i was involved in it i was also doing other things here and there and also a lot of the people that i was hanging around with rest in peace a lot of the rivals we had were getting killed people were dying some were going to prison so as a natural progression it kind of faded out do you know i mean people started getting older when they got jobs when they had family some were dying some ended up in hospital on drugs it just faded itself out until it just wasn't no more and then it's yeah yeah i see it's different today for a lot of young people because now that that term gang has made them into gangs and so the peer pressure is different to what we had back in the day so now it is they see themselves as gangs and again a lot of these things are mindset based right so when we were younger we didn't see ourselves as a gang but these young kids now see themselves belonging to a gang and they will talk about i'm part of this gang or i'm in this gang they've seen themselves as a gang so that makes it a lot harder if they want to leave because they joined whereas we didn't join we're just a group of friends yeah yeah freddie this has been incredible you know

52:21Fredi Nwaka:seriously I've enjoyed this so much Will you rap, Flores? Will you do it?

52:27Joeli:When was the last time someone asked you to rap? Ready? Look I came up on Soul Train Soul Plane I was a skinny guy with no frame and no name Back in those days most braids came up on mob knives and ghost face My beard's a ghost face I had a couple of clothes shaves To be fair I was certain most raves Most days I got away with murder OJ Running around sleeping OJ Listening to Cool J and Coldplay I was about paper When you saw my self face in a no face. I used to roll with a gun and roll with a coarse face. Brace watch my movements to inspect a more sweat but beef and leave your face the same shade as strawberry sorbet.

52:59Joeli:I'm in the hallway by the doorway with guys who put other guys up against the wall like a family portrait. Guys who move weight I call them Kellogg's because they make mad corn from flakes. There you go. Ba-ba-ba-ba!

53:13Fredi Nwaka:The first rap on To Be A Boy ever. It only took us about a year but we got there.

53:20Elliott:I love that. I asked you to rap and Elliot looked to me like I was the embarrassing mum. Like, oh God, here you go.

53:27Fredi Nwaka:Can you rap for me? Well, that was a good choice because that was good, man. That was, I enjoyed that.

53:32Joeli:I'm like, do I have to? This is going to be, but for you guys, no, you know what? Real talk, I love you guys' podcasts, man. Like, it's so crazy because once I, when the book came out, it's been doing crazy numbers and someone said to me, oh, have you seen that podcast? They'd be a boy. You need to get on that. You need to get on that. And I was like, yeah. and yeah the podcast is amazing it's wicked I watched it and here I am and it's like it's just beautiful to be and the conversation like I get invited on podcasts all the time and for the most part I do it this has been being honest brutally honest I do podcast for the most part and don't always feel like I'm getting anything out of it like I'm just doing it because it's what you do right but this is the conversation has been beautiful and thank you so I want to thank you guys for not only inviting me but also it feels beautiful the conversation feels real do you know me it doesn't feel like i'm on someone's podcast it feels like we're just having a conversation so i'm taking i'm taking stuff out of this as well so thank you man thank you freddie so much

54:28Elliott:feeling's mutual freddie thank you it is and you know we i think it's so important that we

54:33Fredi Nwaka:that we have you here because we talk about role models so much there's a lack of role models there's no good men blah blah and you're one of those role models thank you man i think if you work in a school if you work in a college anywhere with young people book freddie to go in and talk to them because if you came into my school when I was 15 I'm pretty sure the things you said would have changed my life that way you know so the way you speak about being a father the way you speak about all your experiences that you're so honest you connect with people so easily you're funny you're articulate like I love the way you deliver your messages and it's been a real privilege for me it's a real privilege for our audience so thank you so much go and get Freddie's book boy it's incredible go get the book go get the book go get the book the link's gonna be in the show notes we'll probably all over our socials as well but freddie thank you so much thank you guys thank you so much