Poured Over: Keith Corbin on California Soul

“But I had fun growing up, you know, kids Double Dutch and playing football in the front yard, trash can basketball, running around 40 deep into projects with extended family, cutting the lights off—we really have fun. Of course, you’ve seen the drug selling, you’ve seen the dice games. We found a way to become comfortable in an uncomfortable situation.” Keith Corbin’s story is unlike any we’ve heard for a James Beard Award nominated chef, and he holds nothing back in his candid memoir, California Soul. Keith joins us on the show to talk about representation, the realities of second chances (and why opportunity without support isn’t enough), fact-checking his memories with members of his community, the start of his friendship with fellow chef Daniel Patterson, unexpected loneliness and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer.

Featured Book:

California Soul by Keith Corbin

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript for this episode:

B&N I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and I’m so excited that Keith Corbin is able to join us from the patio, in fact ofAlta Adams, so if you hear car noise in the background, there’s a reason for that. Keith’s memoir, California Soul is just out. And for those of you who know him as the James Beard Award nominated chef, you might want to know the rest of the story too, Keith, thank you so much for joining us today. So, when you’re at the restaurant, when you’re at Alta Adams, I mean, you’re gonna get off this call with me — what does the rest of your day end up looking like?

KC So today, I have a friend named Ron Finley, who has a garden, things to garden, and he has a bunch of apples. So I’m gonna go by after this podcast, go by his house, pick some apples off the tree and come back to the restaurant and make some liquor. I am in the process of going for my 74 license to be a master distiller. So in the meantime, I just, you know, practice creating formulas and recipes. So when that happens, we can be ready to bottle some stuff and get it going.

B&N We have quite a lot of ground to cover. So I want to start, I want to go back in time for a second and talk about your family. Because your family has a very long experience with drugs, and gangs and violence. But you also have a very amazing grandmother, who was a huge piece of the community and made sure people who needed a meal, got one. So you’re already coming out of this situation that are polar opposites. And yet, that’s just your life.

KC Yeah, I grew up in gang culture, drug culture. My mother and my father was struggling with drugs early on. So thank God, my mother had enough sense to give us to my grandmother until she got her life together, which she did in ‘92. She got her life together and came back and got her kids. But, by then I was already who I was going to be. So it was more so for my younger siblings.

B&N Let’s talk about your first experience cooking because you were cooking with grandma, right?

KC No, so, that’s that’s the misconception. My grandmother passed when I was 16. When I was growing up, I was young, with my grandmother. I watched her cook, right? I enjoyed moments with her in the kitchen because that’s where she spent majority of her time. My grandmother would get up at 4 or 5 in the morning and start preparing dinner. So she would cook for 10, almost 10 hours, right? Cooking for dinner and cooking for the masses. And just watching her you know, in her preparation, you know of cooking, like, I seen her love for cooking. I witnessed her love for feeding people. And I think that’s where I get it from. But there was no moment of, you know, how you see on these portrayals on shows where you have the Italian grandmother rolling pasta over the table in the restaurant. And the kids or the grandkids are hiding under the table catching the pasta and you know this whole connection? No, I just really watched my granny pour love into cooking and feeding people. And I just think that comes from her upbringing and her Southern roots. Right, that she came over— that she brought with her.

B&N Your family was part of the Second Great Migration from the south into California. There were aerospace jobs, there were government jobs. There was a lot happening.

KC My great grandmother, which is my grandmother’s mother came over first to seek employment and left her two daughters back still in Alabama. She acquired a job and then she sent for my grandmother and her sister. And they came over around the age 10.

B&N You talk about the projects in a way that I had never heard someone describe them before but you talk about the musicality of life in the projects and how busy everything was. Can you bring listeners into that piece of your memory and your childhood where the bustle and life.

KC And the reason that was important is because it is stereotypes of Watts and the projects. They only portrayed violence, the drug use, the drug sales, the poverty, it’s always negative. But I had fun growing up, you know, kids Double Dutching and playing football in the front yard, I mean, trash can basketball, you know, running around 40 deep in projects with your extended family, cutting the lights off, you know, like, we really had fun. Of course, you’ve seen the drug selling, you’ve seen the dice games, we found a way to become comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. Right, we had the big gym field, we’re running around all night, we’re laying on the gym field, stare up at the sky, fall asleep, wake up with the bats next to us like, like we had a life. Like we have fun in the projects.

B&N You were also a kid who really liked math and you liked history when you were in middle school. And at one point in the book, you’re talking about how you were a baby nerd who also had a little bit of the gangster to you, and you in fact, call yourself a gangster nerd in middle school. And yet, somehow you slip out of school? Can we talk about what that experience was like for you? Because I mean, here you are, you’re a kid, you’re engaged in the community. But it’s complicated.

KC I enjoyed school. Well, both of these things happening at the same time, where my role models and the attention that I’m getting from the older gentleman in my neighborhood, are gangsters, by mimicking that, because I’m looking up to that. But then with the classroom being this place of sovereignty, this place of peace, right, I’m enjoying that. So it started to become a tug of war on my direction, and that tug of war broke down, when my brother was killed in 1994. And I let the nerd thing go, and just decided to be a gangster. That I was filled with this pain and I didn’t have no outlet. And that energy, I needed to release it. And so the world became my target, like, I just hated the world. You know, for what I was going through emotionally with the loss of my brother, who was my idol. But then he also was a gangster, you know. And that broke down and it set me on a path to where I still was going to school but by the time I got to 10th grade, I dropped out. This story belongs to a lot of people. And that’s why it was important for me to be accurate. Like during the process of writing this book, I used to send things back to my community and literally like, “take a look at this, am I getting the right? Am I going too far? Am I, like, not being honest enough? Like, talk to me?” Like, we put this story together. Yes, these are my personal experiences, but other people have shared these experiences with me, are similar experiences, right? This story is for those that’s in the struggle. It doesn’t have to be just drugs. It doesn’t have to be gangs. It doesn’t have to be poverty. It doesn’t have to be addiction. Like right, whatever your struggle is, it’s not for me to judge, I don’t know what you’re mentally able to equip. So what may be small to me may be monumental to you. This story is to encourage people, like, my experiences and my honesty, and this story is only to allow people to relate to me, because when I grew up, if someone tried to give me any advice, and I didn’t believe that they understood what I was going through— I didn’t want to hear that. My number one response was “you don’t know what I’m going through, I don’t want to hear that.” So reading this story, when I tell you that you can triumph because I did it, I first want to let you know that I understand where you’re coming from— I went through it for real, and I was a willing participant, I wasn’t a victim. I can’t claim to be a victim. Yes, how things were set up for me to go down this path, I was victimized by the system, right. That’s why I give a little history on Watts and how my journey became to be before I was even born. Right?

B&N Yeah, let’s talk about that for a second because this is really important. The initial investment in Compton was Compton as a white suburb, which I think lots of listeners do not know.

KC Watts as well though

B&N All of a sudden though we start to see white flight as we do, like the late 40s, early 50s, you start to see white flight, black families are moving in because they can afford it, it’s a great community and all of a sudden the investment stops. And you talk about this very specifically in the book where you’re like, storefronts go empty, people can’t maintain their houses because the banks won’t loan them money. Suddenly, it becomes this moment where the poverty becomes entrenched. And it’s not because the people in the community don’t care for their community or don’t want to show that they care for their community. It’s literally that the money stops.

KC The money stops, the investors stop, the opportunity stops. Right? You see that today. Where you have areas that have investment, you have areas that doesn’t. And then like areas like Watts, and West Adams, South Central? Like, LA is not investing in them so you get private people come in and invest and that’s when gentrification happened, right? Because they want to return on the money. So these communities that they let, that they choked and the poverty set in, now they’re coming in and and redeveloping it, and gentrifying it. Right. But all these years, they never thought about bringing money in for the people that was there.

B&N When we’re talking about systems too, we need to talk about the prison system, because you did a couple of stints in—

KC I did 10 out of 11 years. 3 stints.

B&N Okay. That’s a lot, it’s very harrowing, what you describe, but also—

KC I handled it though.

B&N Yes, you did, you did and I’m glad you made it out on the other side. But I do want to talk about a point that you bring up in the book too, where we’re talking about the purpose of prisons, because rehabilitation is not what they are designed for.

KC That don’t exist. That’s just narrative.

B&N And you talk about how when you’re cooking, in the kitchen, in prison, you just really want to be out of your cell, it has nothing to do with the job. Which also, you’re being paid 19 cents an hour, which is—

KC That, so, 19 cents an hour is the highest paid.

B&N Okay? So what were you making

KC I was making like nine cents an hour and the guy over me was making 11. And you know, the funny thing about it is they even tax that money. So I’m making 9 cents an hour and you’re gonna take taxes out of it. But as far as the opportunity for rehabilitation, it doesn’t exist. If you don’t, if you’re not where you need to be emotionally and mentally to seek that out yourself. Not to say that some people do not go to prison and become rehabilitated, it’s just not because of the system, the way it’s set up. It’s their own efforts themselves. Right? Everything in prison is set up to run and operate this underground economy. That was going on there, right? And that set up for the inmates. We set that up for, for our livelihood.

B&N At one point, you talked about making moonshine in your cell and you were selling really well

KC I’m taking a trade and I’m monetizing it, right. The underground economy has many trades, right— from prison and in the street. What makes it underground is the fact that it’s not taxable. You know, so when my granny selling burritos, or Miss Irma selling food, or the mechanic fixing on the car to get paid, the jailhouse lawyers who literally will get paid to do your legal work for you. Someone sitting in there with life, they went through the process on their own because they couldn’t afford an appellate attorney and they learn through trial and error, doing their own things. And they go through exhausting all the remedies. And they probably did screw their own case up because they didn’t know, but now they know the process and procedure. And literally, a lot of people that’s coming home are because of the jailhouse lawyers. People in jail, don’t have the resources to pay for a lawyer, so jailhouse lawyers are the ones that’s getting you back in court.

B&N So part of why I’m speaking to your experience in prison is not just that it’s a piece of your story, of the community’s story. But also, when you get out, you have a very hard time finding a job you do end up working at Chevron but then a background check reveals that you are a convicted felon and they fire you.

KC After they promoted me. So that’s important, right? The fact that I worked so well, that I was recognized and offered a promotion. But they couldn’t look past my background, even though they acknowledged and recognized my work ethic and my ability. So imagine for someone who’s coming home from prison with a background, that they didn’t even have a shot to prove themselves yet. So imagine those that didn’t have a chance to prove themselves, right. It’s hard.

B&N Here’s the thing. So you come out of prison, and part of your story is a story of second chances, you come out of prison, you’ve been promoted, then you’ve been fired because of a background check. And now you discover that someone has come to town to hire, they’re opening a restaurant, a fast food restaurant. Hello. And it’s Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson, and you’ve gone on to have quite a long working relationship with Daniel, and we’re going to come back to him in a second. But can we set up we’re in 2016, we’re in Watts, this restaurant is coming to town, you get hired on the spot, you’re having to manage people in a way that is different from managing people when you’re on the street and doing what you were doing before.

KC So 2016, I just got fired from Chevron. So for about two or three weeks I’m just floating around, you know, really questioning like, is drugs in the streets, the only path, right, is the hustle and the underground economy is my only path. But then I got a call from my mother, it was like she was excited. “Well, you gotta get over here, they are hiring at this restaurant they building in Watts blah, blah, blah.” So I go over there, I just got off the freeway, I drive over there, fill out the application, and do an interview on the spot and get hired. The next day, they called me, he’s like, I got hired for line cook. He called me the next day, like, “you know what, we have a kitchen manager position open. So he was wondering if you were interested in that?” Sure. More money, you know, but I didn’t have any professional skills at all. Like, I didn’t know anything about operating or running a kitchen. I knew how to cook, but not on the restaurant chef level stuff. So for me, in my mind, it was just a check. You know, to kind of keep me to work, than going back to the streets, I found myself managing the same people I was managing in the projects. I was able to just still be who I was because these group of people not to say that, you know, I ran anyone or not to say that, you know, I told people what to do. These are my people from my community and from my projects. They were trusting me before LocoL, they grew up with me, they watched me grow up, you know, so I was able to lead them in a restaurant but lead them to do what? I didn’t know anything. So I was working closely with Daniel and, you know, we’re making a lot of mistakes. And what I couldn’t take was Daniel, constantly correcting me or managing me. Because I’m coming from a situation where I’m the manager in the street. I decided to quit, like, for one it was too much for me to handle for my peers to see me get chastised. You know, I was tying in my reputation from the streets to my work. I didn’t I wasn’t able to separate it, you know? So I decided to quit. But Daniel refused to let me quit. Right? He pulled me out to the back and we had a conversation, just like, stick with it, it’ll get better. You know, and I just understand now that I was uncomfortable, right? And I had to give it time to get comfortable. Just like a new chair, you got to break it in right? New pair of shoes, you got to break it in, you know, I was ready to try on something else. But Daniel wouldn’t let me quit. And I’m thankful for that. And I think what broke the ice— Roy and Daniel had knew that they were coming into a community that had a lot of trauma and so they brought in a counselor and Daniel and I amongst other staff members, we sat in a session and we were all going around sharing, and Daniel shared and I shared and we realized that despite our color, despite him growing up in Boston, you know, me growing up in Watts, we had a lot of similar experience around trauma and abandonment and our childhood caused both of us similar damage. And that blew my mind because from the beginning, I just pegged him as some rich white guy, you know, that wasn’t the case. And that right there begin to change how I view people.

B&N We’re always having a conversation on parallel tracks, there’s always the system of privilege. And then there is also individual story. And I think for some people that gets complicated, and it gets sort of well, mixed together, pardon the pun, but it gets complicated in a way where, in fact, you can be talking about a system and as you said, when you use the example of the banker, redlining, black families, well, the system is designed to do something and that person needs to execute their job in order to put food on the table for their own families and put a roof over their head and things, so I do want to keep those tracks sort of separate. I mean, I love the idea that you went back to the community and said, “Hey, did I get this detail right? Do you remember this?” I mean, there are some harrowing moments in here, Keith, and I kept saying, “how are you not dead yet?” You have been burned. You have been shot at. You have shot guns? I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of violence in here. And I’m not making light of the situation. I’m really not. I’m just saying it’s a piece of your experience. It’s a piece of your community’s experience. And yet here you are now, in this massive shift, you become essentially a restaurant executive. I mean, you end up working in more than one location with Daniel and now you’re a partner in your own restaurant. I mean, it is a story of second chances, but you’re just not pretending that the other stuff didn’t happen. This isn’t Cinderella. This isn’t Disney. This is you.

KC When I was in prison, I read a lot of books. That was one of my past times. I mean, I had nothing else to do. And I was always drawn to the urban stories, the Teri Woods, the Dutchesand things like that— I was drawn to them. And what I found out reading them, after reading so many, I was able to pick up a book and just tell you exactly how this is gonna play out. Because the storylines on all of them was always pretty much the same. You have four people. One goes to jail for life, one turns into a snitch, one is killed, and one makes it out. But it always stopped at the out, no one ever told the story what happens when that person makes it out. And it was like, that was always the dream. We didn’t have no representation or no example of someone who made it out to finish the damn story. I live this urban tale. What they’re writing fiction about was my life. I was reading my story. So when I had an opportunity to write the book, I’m like, I’m going to tell the story. But I’m also going to tell people what the out is like, there’s no magic door. You can’t be thankful, just because you made it out. Right? There’s no— you don’t walk through this door, and the door closes and everything you went through magically disappears. Now you are emotionally grown. Your abandonment issues have went away. Your trauma don’t exist, right like your lack of boundaries, you now have proper boundaries, your communication skills are superb, like, all that comes through the door with you. And every day, there’s a gravitational pull, to pull you back on the other side of that door, you have to fight every moment to maintain every level of success. Or every step further through that door you take, you have to fight every day to maintain that, right? And it’s going to bubble up. It’s going to bubble up, and you have to fight to keep it down. You’re going to want to hate the world again. And this is why it was important to let people know. You make it through this door, you’re going to have more challenges than you did growing up in the ghetto. Right? You might be in rooms with opportunities, where you don’t know how to communicate, right, where your ideas aren’t accepted and you feel attacked, or less thereof. You’re gonna make deals and then get beat on them. Like you’re gonna go through things. Like this is a vicious side too. So don’t think that everything is hunky dory over here. And those skills that you acquired along the way, bring them with you. That door don’t close, it never closes, and never does.

B&N So your community keeps you grounded, because I was just watching your face as you did that riff and the joy on your face is absolutely, it’s amazing and wonderful to see. It’s great.

KC Look at me as a tree. Trees grow various heights. Lean to various directions, right? No matter how high my tree grows, no matter how far the top of my tree is separated from the base, I’m gonna always be rooted in the same place. And my roots stem from Watts.

B&N I think ultimately, what you’re asking us to do, Keith, is invest in our communities.

KC That’s it.

B&N I mean, you do it every day, you invest in your community, whether it’s people you’re hiring directly at the restaurant, or what you’re trying to say and who you’re trying to say it to. Keith, you invest in the community. And when we invest in our communities, we see the rewards and its pretty amazing. It’s really amazing to see when we invest in our communities,

KC I never waited for nobody. So this idea of waiting for someone to come in. And do something that I can probably do myself, not waiting, you know, if my cooks don’t show up, I’m gonna get the job done. Right now I got people down there that need opportunity and I’m in a position to provide that. And I know what opportunity and support means. Because I had an opportunity and support, not just opportunity, opportunity without support means nothing, especially for where I come from. If you give me a job, like I said, In the beginning, the job didn’t mean nothing to me, I didn’t care. I didn’t treasure it, I had no representation, or no understanding of what getting the job at LocoL can do for me, I never knew it can take me here. So I didn’t care. I didn’t treasure the job. Right? Somebody stuck by me and said, stick it out. Because they knew what can come from it, had I put in the work. So they just kept encouraging me to put in the work a little bit at a time. And then over time, I started to see what can develop, then I got comfortable. But now I’m representation, people can see. The only representation I had was the people I idolized to be a gangster. You know, so my purpose is to be representation. See me for who I am, know me for who I am. Right? That’s it, I can’t lie. If I hold back my truth. I can’t be that representation to inspire people. Yeah, I was on drugs. But I got here, you can do it.

B&N So Keith, you showed up and you stayed, you showed up and you stayed though it’s a classic story. It’s there’s, you know, a guy walks into a bar and stays only for the right reason. What’s next for you? I mean, you’re running this restaurant, you’ve got the wine store next door. I mean, you’ve got this book coming out into the world. Obviously, you are very passionate about what you’re here to be on the planet for, but what’s next? Do we get more books later on? Are you sort of thinking, well, here’s this and we’ll see.

KC I don’t know. I don’t know what’s next. Like I say, I’m just a servant, to the people and to the community. So this is not something that I mapped out. Like, this is not a position I dreamed of. This wasn’t a goal of mine. I take each step and opportunity as they come with my purpose in mind. Right? With my purpose in mind, and if opportunities line up with my purpose, then that’s what’s next. So I have no idea. I don’t know if the buck stops here or if there’s more down the line. But whatever position and platform I have, at whatever moment in time, I’m gonna maximize it for the people. That’s it. You know, that’s it. That’s all I can say. There’s lives that needs to be saved. And this misconception or idea that I’m one in a million, naw, if you go to these communities, and give someone an opportunity, I’m quite sure there’s millions of people in underserved communities who will surpass my talents and surpass what I’ve been able to accomplish.

B&N You just want to be a guy in the world, in the community, supporting folks and making sure they get their shot and they get their support.

KC And I want people to understand that there’s talent.

B&N Yeah, there’s a lot of talent. Yes, yes.

KC Passion.

B&N Yes. Well, all of it, all of it.

KC There are people that can be great contributors to society. And at times, I just feel that society doesn’t value black. That doesn’t value black contributions, black people, black lives, right? If you did, you would be seeking these contributions, right, you would find people and give them an opportunity instead you stay on an opposite side of the spectrum. And it’s not about black or white. It could just be affluent, or the west side. I grew up in Watts. My fiance and I were able to build a house in Westwood Hills, you would think that aw man, life is great. You know, just had a son, build a house. You know, have one of the hottest restaurants as they put it, wrote a book, doing interviews. This is the most loneliest time of my life.

B&N Yeah, I get that. You want to explain that to listeners though?

KC I’m in this suspended area of my life. Where I don’t fit in nowhere. I don’t fit in nowhere. I’m uncomfortable. I’m uncomfortable in Westwood. I’m uncomfortable in West LA. Didn’t grow up there or have friends there yet. They may come. You know, I have friends socially that I’ve met. But not that you grew up with. You know, I’m a chef. I’m not in a position like Daniel where I walk into a restaurant, and I’m recognized and they pull out the table and, you know, just feed me on the house and they come out and get all excited. I don’t get that experience. But also, because I’ve acquired what I’ve been able to acquire. When I go back down to my community. I’m uncomfortable there. Not from the people. Right? Just the fact that I can be arrested. I’m black down there. I’ve been arrested just for being black, like and you know. So I’m just in this uncomfortable— I’m just in this lonely space where I don’t fit in nowhere. So I’m trying to navigate that right now. That’s my struggle right now is and whatnot. Where do I fit in? And maybe, maybe I’m not to fit in nowhere.,

B&N Oh, I think you just did someone a solid by talking about being uncomfortable and being lonely. And in a position that you’re in? I think already that helps someone— we don’t know who exactly or where they are exactly. But the fact that you, as Keith Corbin, can sit down and say, well, no, this is how I’m feeling. I mean, there are still plenty of people, men and women who cannot have that kind of open and honest conversation with people who are in their daily lives and have been for quite some time. You and I met, you know, not long ago and yet you can still say what you need to say, that’s great. I think that’s really important.

KC My whole message is to spark something in somebody, right, and have them relate to me. Like, damn, I’m feeling that same way, but if he’s able to manage life, then maybe I need to reevaluate, figure out how I can pick myself back up. You know, I’m managing my life and I’m pushing forward, but I do feel lonely. I do feel out of place everywhere. Right now. I don’t know what that’s like tomorrow. I don’t know what that’s like next year. But right now in my life with all this quote unquote, success and light. I’m lonely. And a lot of that has to come to do with the fact that my success came before the actual work was put in. Let’s be honest about that, too. You know, like I’m trying to catch up to the horse because the carriage is in the front. You know, we’re trying to catch like, you know, the carriage before the horse right now. So I’m in the kitchen all day. I’m still learning. I just got my drug addiction. I’m over two years clean. You know, I’ve had counseling about how to communicate, how to set proper boundaries, you know, where, between me and my family, my friends, and, you know, been talking and having conversations about my trauma and, you know, trying to get this emotional growth, you know, so I’m fixing a lot of things that should have been in order before the success.

B&N At least you get a chance to do it. Not everyone, not everyone goes back to you know, fix the stuff. So I mean, I’m, I’m excited for you that you get to fix the stuff because you also get to change the story for your kids. I mean, you have little kids. They’re tiny. Well, you have some big kids too, but you also have some little kids. And, you know, right there, the fact that you can start to change that piece of the story. I think it’s pretty cool.

KC I think the biggest moment for me right now was Monday night, I had my book launch party. When I came home from prison the second time in about 2012, my daughter was about 11 years old, 10-11 years old. She was at the swap meet, the Del Amo Swap Meet with a group of friends and her cousin, god sister. And there was a young man that came home from prison, that seen my daughter, and recognized her, because he was my celly and he watched her grow up on the pictures with me, and he came home, he seen her and he had a conversation with her. And in order to convince her that he knew me, he told her all these stories about me. And my daughter came home and was like, the first thing she asked me, Daddy, are you a gangster? I never, she never knew what went on in my life outside of the door. Right? She knew I went to prison, didn’t know why. You know, and then whenever I was out, I wore different hat in the house. But everything I did in the streets that I thought made me macho, that I felt I was proud of, you know, yeah, I did that. Yea I did that, you know, when my daughter brought it to me and let me know that I wasn’t really proud. Because when you proud of something, you own it to any and everybody. Right? Don’t deny it. Oh, yeah. You know, I lied to her. Because I was a gangster, I was living the gangster lifestyle. I did commit those things that the stories that he told her. But the fact that in that moment, I realized I wasn’t proud of it. And I was no longer proud of the conversations people were having in my absence about me, and the narrative around my life. I sought to change that LocoL played a part in that. That was the first thing I talked to Daniel Roy about this change in my legacy, and changing the conversations and the narrative around me, about me. And so fast forward— I’m on this journey. So this journey takes me through a lot of suffering. Relationship with my mother, estranged. Relationship with brothers estranged. Friends fall off, right? And I didn’t realize that that’s what happened. When change begins to happen, right. I thought I was doing something wrong. I thought I was being fake, because that’s what they were calling me. You know. And these conversations was getting to my daughter about me, you know, about my relationships changing about me changing and that she getting older. And now we’re having conversations. And I’m like, you know, I don’t want you talking like that. You ain’t, you didn’t have a problem with it before. Now all of a sudden you got a problem, you changing. They already say you weird this, that and the other. So our relationship splintered. Right. But I kept pushing on. And always just believe that in time, our relationship will be repaired. But, I can’t stop this movement and August 8, 2020 I had my book release right here at Alta. And my daughter came and she’s seen the fruits of my labor. She’s seen the people who came to support me. She’s seen the crowd. She’s seen the love that people have for me. And she told me, this is one of her most proudest moment. You know, and for me, it was the best thing in the world. Yes, the books coming out. Yes, it was about the book but having that conversation with her was the best moment in the world. Because she was able to see with her own eyes what the sacrifices was for. And the fact that Daddy wasn’t weird, and Daddy didn’t— yes, daddy changed, but for this. You know, she was able to enjoy the restaurant. She went around signing books. You know. That was the biggest moment so far. That was a great moment for her to be able to witness with her own eyes. You know, what’s been, what I’ve been able to accomplish so far.

B&N Yeah, there have been a lot of great moments. A lot of them are in California Soul which is out now. Keith Corbin, thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over and thank you for doing everything you do.

KC Thank you.