Keepin' It A Hundo

Part 2 of my conversation with Mikkey Halsted includes our discussion about why he would never work with R Kelly again, race as a social construct, gun violence in Chicago, and the time Mikkey gave J Cole work on the basketball court. We also reveal the top 5 Mickey's of all time and have a hard time trying to decide who would win a steel cage match between Yeezy and Weezy.

We pick pick up our conversation where we left off last week. Mikkey was on a bus with his Cash Money Family and got into a fight with one of the top dogs. We mention a shark bus. There were two busses Cash Money artists rode on. There was the artist bus, which was the nice bus. Then there was the Shark Bus, which was full of ex cons and gangbangers. If you were on the shit list, that particular week, you had to ride the Shark Bus.

In 2008, Lil Wayne told XXL magazine that Mikkey Halsted was the man that inspired his music. Remember, at that point in time Weezy was on top of the music world. Before all that though, Mikkey came up rapping with a teenager named Kanye West. This was before Kanye was Yeesus. Mikkey was the best rapper in Chicago and everybody knew it. That’s why Kanye asked Mikkey to rap over his beats. Lil Wayne and Birdman couldn’t stop listening to Mikkey on their tour bus, so Birdman offered Mikkey and Kanye a deal with Cash Money Records. Birdman used some guerilla negotiating tactics to convince a young, cash-strapped Mikkey to sign. Kanye ended up leaving and going with Roc-A-Fella and the rest is music history. But that’s the short version. Today Mikkey sits down with me and tells the whole story. This is part 1 of that conversation.

In 2013, Bleacher Report listed him as one of the top 5 QB gurus in the country. Steve "Cutta" Calhoun is the mind and the arm behind "Armed & Dangerous Football", which is based in Southern California. He has worked with many of the NFL's elite QB's and receivers, including this years Super Bowl winning QB Nick Foles. Every summer, Steve works on the coaching staff at Peyton & Eli Manning's "Manning Passing Academy". The guy eats, breathes, and sleeps football. And he knows as much as anybody you'll ever meet about how to play arguably the most difficult and definitely the most polarizing position in all of sports. I met up wth my old friend Cutta last week at the NFL Draft Combine in Indianapolis. This is part of our conversation from our day in Indy.

Ticha Penicheiro left Figueira da Foz, Portugal in 1994 to play basketball at Old Dominion University in Virginia. She never dreamed that 18 years later she would retire from a 14 year WNBA career as the all time leader in assists and one of the greatest players of all time. Her career brought her all over the world and she still works in basketball as a player agent. My friendship with Ticha has always been rooted in 3 things: basketball, travel, and food. We discuss these things and more.

After a standout career at Florida St, EJ Manuel was taken in the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft. The Buffalo Bills made him the first QB taken in the draft. He went on to start as a rookie for the Bills. He spent 4 seasons in Buffalo, until last off season, when he signed as a free agent with the Oakland Raiders. He recently finished his first season with Oakland, where he is in a new role. He is the backup to franchise QB Derek Carr. But at 27 years old, EJ is just entering the prime of his NFL career. He has plenty of football left in him. Off the field, EJ is working on his MBA at University of Miami and he's also one of my closest friends. We recently sat down to talk about his life on and off the field and how he's the black AC Slater.

Terry Dehere developed a love for basketball growing up in Jersey City. He played for the famed Bob Hurley Sr. at St Anthony's, the #1 high school team in the country at the time. And by the time he left Seton Hall, he was the all time leading scorer in Big East history. He was then drafted in the first round by the Clippers and spent 7 years in the NBA. Jersey City has always been a big part of his Terry's life. He donated $75,000 to have Garfield Park, a court he grew up playing at, refurbished. He was also elected to the Jersey City Board of Education. I recently met up with Terry to talk about his basketball life and how watching him play when I was growing up led to me shoveling a lot of snow in the cold New England winters.

John "Shaky" Rains has been homeless and living on the streets of Miami for over 40 years. John discusses his rough upbringing in Wichita, Kansas as well as his time spent in a group home for troubled boys on a ranch in Texas and several years at a state mental hospital in Kansas. He also talks about his struggles with drug addiction which had him in and out of prison in Florida and how he survived living on the streets of Miami.