yeah so you you were talking briefly about uh how you started doing the photography and then it got to motion pictures and film and all that so your home almost really became like a creative lab you know doing music and editing and all that um at what point did you realize that you were building corex before corex actually because i don't know if you realize that while you were in that creative process that you were building that or did did you know as we're going along like you know what i'm building something intentionally

yeah yeah no that's a good question i you know um when I look back at my journey and I, and I see how the, the, the dots kind of aligned, um, you know, in my younger days, I, I was more of a leader of a gang.

Like, you know, I had, we used to roll with 50 deep and like do all craziness.

Uh, and then after I transitioned into, um, into into creating like a clothing line like a a organization called a community organization called high class where we had like a hundred people come out to photo shoots and wear our shirts and and this is a back in like 2009 you know so i was super young i was probably like 21 doing this right but um the one thing that i i started to realize that i had was influence And no matter which way it turned, it could have been on the bad side, it could have been on the good side.

And I realized the power of influence and people believed in me.

and believed what i wanted to do and then i took that because we were shipping t-shirts at 21 years old around around the world you know and we were linking up and at that time i was shooting videos i had other photographers and creatives in one space because it was about unity always and and i was able to create that sort of momentum where it started to lead in so many different ways where i started just randomly shooting videos for so many people and at first i was doing this thing for free This was a school project for me at one point, you know, and I started to understand a little bit about business and understand how you can make some money from it.

So I remember shooting my first music video for $100.

Kind of talk about that, how that came about, and how you were able to execute on that.

[laughs]

You know, you learn certain things, how to stretch, like small things, you know.

And that became, like, that became gold to me.

It's like, yo, like, we're tough.

We can, we can get knocked down, we can get back up again, and get knocked down, and get back, and smile throughout the whole process.

You know? So J.N.

Finch was literally like that breeding ground for the, the tough skin behind a soft heart, you know? And being able to use all of that, creating in- ingredients that, like, became who I am today, that became someone who now is just like, like nothing really phases me.

... and he kinda introduced you into this, into this world, right?