Rico Sharp spent 22 years in prison after becoming a cocaine kingpin, listening to negative music and surrounding himself with gang members. He earned his GED inside and now tells young people that Black men ages 18-35 are disproportionately incarcerated. Sharp and Speaker A urge listeners to reject negative influences and choose school over the streets.
Chapters
Let me stand back here because—
So I got your respect, right?
Especially you and you, right?
Just, just, just dig me for the next 10 minutes and you can talk till your lips fall off.
But for right now, just show me that respect, all right? I got up at 5 o'clock in the morning to come here this morning to talk to y'all. The least you can do is show me some respect. And I'm not making a dime to come here to talk to you. This isn't a paid job for me. I'm doing this on my own time. I got kids, I got grandkids. I could be with them right now if I wanted to. I got things I could do that pay me money right now. I'm not here to make money. I'm here to inspire you. I don't want to see you make those bad choices that I made in my life. I've been doing this for years. I've gone to schools and I talked to kids just like you, and they wouldn't listen. And 3 months, 3 years down the lane, their parents call and saying, can you preach my child's funeral? Can you go to my child and visit my child in prison? They got life in prison. This thing is real.
Mm-hmm.
I usually preach about 5 or 6 funerals a year for teenagers that did not receive instructions and did not take life seriously.
That's me.
See, see, see, when you sitting here and you talk while I'm talking, You, you are representing the person I had become when I started hanging out with negative people and listening to negative music and opening my mind up to negative things. And that's ended me up with a negative life. I live this thing now. I'm not just talking.
I'm not telling you something I read in a book.
I didn't read this in a book. I got a DC number, 139251.
That's my DC number. That's the number I had to say 3 times when the officer came into my cell and made me sit up on my bunk and said, MA Sharp, what's your DC number? 3 times a day for years. I had to call that number out because when I was 13 and 14, I thought I was grown. When I was 15 and 16, I thought I knew it all. I thought I had what it takes. I wouldn't listen to nobody. I wouldn't listen to my mom. I didn't want to have nothing to do with my dad because he ran away and left me, and I wasn't able to be a part of his life when I was a kid. And I didn't listen to people who cared for me and loved me. I listened to street thugs. I listened to gangsters and players, and I became one of them, and it cost them their life and also nearly cost me mine.
I'm here because I care about you. I'm here because I don't want you to make the mistakes that Rico Sharp made.
I'm here because I want to bring about a change, and especially with my race of people, because we suffered the most from stereotypes, from negativity, from street images, from negative rap music, from the thug life. We suffered the most. You know what I discovered when I went to prison? When I didn't see my homeboys on the street, that's because they were already in prison doing time. You know what else I discovered when I went to prison? I discovered that there are more young Black men in prison than there are any other race in prison. And you know what else I discovered? That the greatest percentage of Black men in prison is between the age of 18 and 35. That's where your big brothers are. That's where your uncles are. That's where your fathers are. That's where people that you love and that you knew and you grew up at— that's, that's where they are. They're in prison if they're not dead or on the street and on drugs. I've been there. I survived that life. I made it out by the grace of God and through changing my mindset. And so I come to tell you, don't do what Rico Sharp did. Don't throw your life away. Don't Don't throw your education away. Don't throw school away. Don't throw your future away.
And here I am in prison, and I'm facing 22 years for trafficking cocaine. See, I had became a kingpin drug dealer and was bringing drugs into Florida, Central Florida, from out of Miami by the kilos, and I was deeply involved in that lifestyle. And I had people working for me, and I became a big drug man.
They called me Nino Brown, and I was messing up a lot of people's life. And most of all, I was messing up my life. And then one day while I was sitting in prison, I said, I can't keep living like this. I gotta change.
I gotta turn my life around.
I don't wanna go out and come back. I don't wanna die in a hotel room and nobody's there with me. I got kids out in the street. They're being raised without their father. My son was born while I was in prison. My first son. My daughter had to grow up while I was in prison. People died in my family that I love that I couldn't go to their funeral because I was in prison. But I said, while in prison this last time, I'm not going back out the way I came in.
I started changing the way I think.
You're in school. You're going to graduate soon. I had to get my GED in prison.
I got my GED in prison.
I'm not ashamed of it anymore. At one point I was, because I'm looking at how I was this straight-A student, how I love school, I love math, I love science, I love art. I wanted to go to school. I was smart, I was brilliant, I was intelligent. And then I went from being somebody who was going to graduate and go to college on a scholarship to somebody now who is in prison having to take a GED in prison. And the first time I took it, my mind was so convoluted. The first time I took it, I failed. And I was going to give up. And my instructor said, don't give up, you're a smart young man, just take it again. And then I took it again, and when I took it again, I scored the highest score in the state of Florida on that test. And when they brought me my GED certificate, it literally changed my life because it meant to me I was getting back on course. I was getting my mind right.
