Suave (3:20)

I mean, as you know, I grew up in the South Bronx. The birth of hip hop. 149th Street, Prospect Avenue. So I grew up right around the corner from Fat Joe, before he was Fat Joe.

Interviewer (3:34)

That's crazy.

Suave (3:35)

But I also grew up down the block from Kris1 and DJ Scott Larratt, which was like a. Oh, here down the block. So before the whole boogie down production thing came about, they was just regular dudes. They used to do parties right across the street from where I lived at Union Avenue. People still taking rapping for a joke.

Maria (3:55)

A passing hope.

Suave (3:57)

So hip hop always been part of my life. And I could memorize a lot of things. Even when I was illiterate, I could always memorize things, you know, especially a song nobody didn't know. I didn't know how to read or write. My family did, but nobody else did. So I used to rap about normal things that I saw in the neighborhood. Cause that was the hip thing to do. If I heard it, I could rap it. So when I go to prison, it was like 86. The only Latino artist that was out back then was this artist named Mellow Man Ace. Today you tell me something else. And then we have had I dope with the Rico Suave stuff. And I was like, man, I could do that because, you know, I grew up in a Spanish household. So I was just putting words together. Everything I heard in my mother, I used to rap about my mother, my sisters. That's how that album came about.

Interviewer (5:01)

So I want to talk a little bit about what it was like in prison before you made the album, right before you found that tape recorder. I always think about this moment where we were talking about what it was like to be in solitary confinement. You were in solitary for seven years. And I will never forget how you described your perception of sound or the lack of sound. Right. Like the loneliness of being in solitary. But I'm curious if being in solitary confinement impacted the way that you hear things or think about music.

Suave (5:34)

I mean, and being in solitary confinement for seven years definitely gave me a distinct sound because I would listen, like for the roaches, the mouths, the water leaks, the toilet. I trained my ear to hear a lot of things. I used to hear the leaks from the windows coming in. And to the normal person, it's just water drops Coming in. But to me, it was like melodies. And I would try. It was like a Metrodome. So every time I hear the leak, I try to rap to it. And I would just write to the leak. And I used to do beats in my head, and that's how I wrote most of my songs. And I used to bang on the metal. I had like this one beat, and everybody be like, hit that song again. Cause people couldn't believe, like, dang, you know how to rap. And there's no radios in solitary confinement. There's no TVs. It's just you and other human beings. So if you could provide some entertaining, then you was like the guy in the everybody call. Believe it or not, I only knew KRS1 songs and some rock can. I knew nobody else. And once in a while, I used to try to rap. I need Love from LL Cool J.

Interviewer (6:47)

You know what really impacted me about hearing you describe that is I think you and I have talked a lot about, like, the need and the desire for human connection. And how brutal, like, to be honest, like, how. How brutal it is to be in solitary and not be able to see another person touch another person, really communicate with someone else. So in a way, you were sort of creating community by making sound. That was music, that was art. That was the only access the other people around you had to music. As we know, there is a lot of music coming out of prison in 2025. You know, technology has advanced. People are recording whole albums over the phone, or they have a phone inside, or, you know, you might even have a whole sound system inside. But when you were in prison in the late 80s, the early 90s, technology was so different. First of all, no tablets, no mp3 players. So how did you guys listen to music if you listen to music? And how could you actually make music in prison in the early 90s?

Suave (7:58)

I mean, in the early, early 90s in prison, we listened to music by cassette tape. Illegal cassette tapes and commissary used to sell you a Walkman, and they still do to this day. To make music, you had to finesse the system a little bit. So what I did, we invited a reporter to come in and do a report, and somehow she left the recorder by mistake. I got the idea by a friend of mine that had a guitar, and he used to be like, yo, rap to this rhythm. And then I had another guy with a conga that used to make beats, and he used to be like, yo, rap to this. And I was like, oh, man, that sounds good on tape. Let's do a whole album. So when I recorded my music, we recorded one song at a time, piece by piece. It was like cut and paste. You do one piece. Now rewind the tape to that little piece and then go right there, stop, record again. And once we had all 13 songs together, we so called master the tape by running it, recorded it completely into another tape. Back then it was this company called Disc Maker and they give you like 500 tapes for $300. And then I had my family sell the takes in the street.

Interviewer (9:17)

So you are basically doing what a rapper is when they're recording. You're listening to your take and you're just punching in wherever you need to retake it. And then the process of actually mastering was really just taking this tape and copying it to a clean cassette. I guess we'll say, and if you.

Suave (9:33)

Make a mistake, you got to record that part again and then tape it again.

Interviewer (9:37)

Wow. So how long did it take you to. To make this project because you made a whole album?

Suave (9:41)

30 days. 30 days. Because the way we made that album was we were all block workers. So we were pay to go like, yo, we need to hang out in the cell altogether doing count time. So we got one hour a day.

Interviewer (9:54)

Wow.

Suave (9:54)

To record. So we all go in there, we record somebody's looking out with a piece of mirror out the door, making sure the guards don't come. And for a microphone, what we did, we took the end of a headphone, plug it into the mic and just start talking to it.

Interviewer (10:10)

Wow.

Suave (10:10)

That's how we recorded. We ain't had no microphone and that's what we came up with.

Interviewer (10:15)

So tell me a little bit about this album. You mentioned being a big fan of El General. I know that about you very well. But a lot of this album is actually in Spanish. And so I'm curious why you decided to make music in Spanish. I think it's a good opportunity to talk about something that, that we've discussed a bit in the past, which is like race relations in prison, and particularly, I think, a little different back in the 90s. But why was it that you chose to, quote, unquote, market yourself with Spanish music if you grew up listening to hip hop in English?

Suave (10:47)

Because I really didn't know a lot of English words.

Interviewer (10:51)

That's one interesting. I didn't know that about you.

Suave (10:54)

So I knew a lot of Spanish words because I grew up in a Spanish household. And plus we was in a jail where it was half blacks, half Spanish. I knew I couldn't beat the brothers that was rapping in there. I couldn't compete with them, but I knew I could feature with them because they always wanted a Spanish verse. So I was the guy that came for the Spanish verse. And like I said, this was like 33 years ago. So what you're hearing today we was doing back then, but we was doing it from the muscle. Not knowing that, fast forward 33 years later, this music was going to be what it is today. I truly believe that if I was recording today in that time, I probably would have been one of the premier Latino hip hop artists coming out of prison.

Interviewer (11:42)

So, Danny Yankee, you better be grateful.

Suave (11:45)

I mean, listen, listen, we talking about 86, 87, before anybody thought about reggaeton or Latino hip hop.

Interviewer (12:04)

Let's talk a little bit about that because I do think it's really interesting, like the sound that you had at that time and also, you know, the topics of the things that you were writing about. The first thing you said to me when you sent me the digitized version of the music was, hey, just a heads up, some of it is pretty explicit. Let's talk a little bit about the kind of things that you explored in your music, because I do think you had a pretty wide range.

Suave (12:34)

I mean, my range was crazy because again, I drew inspiration from KRS1 and his whole album, Criminal Minded. So if you listen to that tape, there's a song in there, it's called Criminal Minded. We didn't have a mixer, so for that part, Suave is criminal minded. We had to just actually sing it. Right. So I was trying to duplicate Criminal Minded, but in Spanish, Crack Baby was about my sister being on crack and my nephew being born a crackhead Puta Barata, which was one of the songs that everybody in the jail, like, a lot of people don't know. That was about my mom. It may sound crazy, but that was about my mom. That was about a woman not waiting for her dude while he was locked up. It was my story and music before the Suave podcast came out that was about me going in front of the judge, getting life. So I try to use my life as the backdrop for all them songs.

Interviewer (13:51)

Yeah, that's one of the things that I noticed. There's always something a little deeper in the songs, right? Like some of them, you might hear them and you might think, whoa, wait, what is this about? But as you start listening to the song, you realize that you're using, like, a bit of humor, a bit of sarcasm to really, like, deliver a much deeper message about a what a lot of people I'm sure could. Could relate to what landed you in prison, but also what life was like for you in the Bronx and then in the badlands of Philly at that time.

Suave (14:20)

Yeah, it was a portrait of my life, what you hear in that song. And the sad part is, right, that every time I hear that album, I'm like, damn, this was good. Because I hear something different. Soy Latino was my political message, like after government. That's like my favorite song because a lot of people talking about, what are you really talking about? I was talking about A's, because back then AIDS was the big thing, you know, I was talking about how the government don't really care about our people in the community. How politicians come in when it's voting time, ask for your vote, but then when you vote, they forget about you. I was talking about what's going on today, but I was talking about it back then.

Interviewer (15:49)

We've never talked about this. So I'm actually really glad that you brought that up because you were incarcerated at a maximum security prison, one of the toughest maximum security prisons in the country in the 80s. So I wonder if. If you had any experience with. With witnessing the AIDS epidemic at the time.

Suave (16:05)

I did. When I went to prison in the 80s, anybody that was HIV positive was separated from. From the general population, they had to sue the DOC to be integrated back into population. They used to keep them in their infirmity by themselves. And then if you was gay, transgender, anything else, they kept you separated in a separate block. And I always consider that discrimination. Like, man, that's discrimination, you know, And I talked about it in the songs like. But in my way, in my way. Remember, there was 6,000 people in Gratisville and at least 2,500 of them were Latino. So I had a nice fan base that, hey, I want to get a copy of your tape. So I used to get the guards to bring me blank tapes and I used to make copies and sell them for 20, $30 inside the jail. And then you could walk around the yard when your own Walkman and listening to Suave all day long. It's like a little superstar in the jail. But. But I try to get messages that used to make people think like, damn, that was deep. Like, if you listen to la policia, you know, I mentioned about historic events that happened in Puerto Rico. That was my interpretation of NWA the Police, but in Spanish, Desperate under. I had a nice flow back then.

Interviewer (17:44)

Yeah, I'm seeing. It's so interesting and I think it's such a beautiful thing when it comes to that connection, because as you said, like, you're a lot of. Your initial inspiration was sort of trying to recreate the message of hip hop and bringing it to the Latino culture, which at the time didn't have as much representation. I'm glad that we're having this conversation for a few reasons, but particularly because in the podcast we talk so much about the positive impact that art education had on you. All these art programs that when they started in prison, brought so much joy, so much meaning, so much passion, so much purpose to so many people. But I'm curious, what if the prison had a music program or how was it that people had access to the congas or to the guitars?

Suave (18:29)

I mean, they had a music program, but it was for the elite, for the people who'd been there 20, 25 years before I got there. I'm from the Bronx and I don't know if a lot of people probably know this. When we used to go to the carnivals, they had guys playing in trash cans upside down. They used to make dents and they used to be they bells. So I learned how to make congas out of plastic trash cans and leather jackets.

Interviewer (18:56)

In prison?

Suave (18:57)

In prison. So all we really had to do was take a mop bucket, flip it upside down, tight the leather around it real tight. And now you start getting sounds right. And to get that conga sound, you put as much cardboard as you can underneath and you have that sound.

Interviewer (19:15)

Oh, that's fascinating.

Suave (19:16)

Like I said, some of the instruments that you hear in the album are not real instruments, are instruments that we made ourselves.

Interviewer (19:23)

Can you describe visually for the audience so they can imagine what a production studio looked like? At Greater for Prison, it was an.

Suave (19:33)

8 by 12 cell that you could touch with both of your hands. One bed, a little table, a toilet and a desk. And there used to be like 10, 12 people in there trying to record one song. It's funny now, but it shows you that in times of hardship you could come through because some of these guys vocals was tight, that we practiced this all day long. It was tight. And we only had like one or two takes. We couldn't just say, run that again. We either get it right the first time, the second time, or we out to the next one. We come back to that.

Interviewer (20:11)

You're in the small cell. You have one hour before the guards come. You have 12 people watching you and you're going to mess up the tape if you don't get it right.

Suave (20:18)

You had to get it right. That instrument had to Be tested before we even put recall. Because we only had one tape. You had the 30 minute tapes and you had the 60 minute tapes. We don't have enough room for mess up. Take one and go. And we had a riggedy dinky keyboard. I opened it up and attached the system where we could hit the keys playing through the speaker that we had.

Interviewer (20:43)

Wow.

Suave (20:44)

Because we needed that sound. I ain't never seen the studio until I got out of prison.

Interviewer (20:48)

But you know what I think is so cool about that? I think what I like about music in 2025 is that it's become really accessible. So like I've been in a tiny, tiny little studio with a bunch of people and makeshift mic situations and everybody's recording into it. And so I think it's really cool to have that visual of like how you made it happen and how 30 something years later, artists who maybe don't have access to studio money to buy studio time or don't have access to the best equipment are making music today that is successful in the same way that you were in a prison cel 35 years ago.

Suave (21:24)

Right. You can't really duplicate that sound because it's a sound that comes straight outta gratitude. And Gratitude four is close. It's an album that came out the struggle. This is what make that tape so good today.

Interviewer (21:40)

Suave. You're absolutely a hustler. And nowadays, you know the correct term, an entrepreneur. And I do think that's one thing that has always been so consistent about you. Because another thing we don't talk a lot about on dc but you were a published author in prison and you lived off of your books for a long time.

Suave (21:59)

Five books.

Interviewer (22:00)

But I didn't know that before you lived off of your books, you were living off selling these tapes inside the prison.

Suave (22:06)

I started writing when the Irving Craig came out. Everybody was writing urban fiction. So I was like, shit, I got a ton of material. So I published like five books from inside the prison. And they all did well. That was. That was how I live. Because I didn't have nobody sending me money. My mother had passed away, like. So I said, you know what, I can live off this. But before the books, it was the music. I used to sell mixtapes.

Interviewer (22:29)

So the importance of music then is kind of twofold. Right. It's like an artistic, you know, a passion, a sense of purpose, something to create, something to spend your time doing that is healthy, that is positive. But it was also a way for you to take care of yourself without having to sell drugs, without having to do things in prison because you didn't have outside support monetarily, particularly like someone that could put money in your books to help you inside.

Suave (22:57)

It goes a little deeper than that. I didn't want my boys to die in prison. And I used to always think that if I record or write, no matter what happened, that's my legacy. I always believe that if you write, sing, record, somewhere down the line, somebody gonna stumble up on that literature, and they probably gonna rediscover. My mom was the biggest fan. She used to blast that in her house. I was like, mommy, you sure you wanna blast that? She's like, yeah, that's my son rapping. You couldn't tell I wasn't Daddy Yankee back then.

Interviewer (23:34)

Obviously, I've never met Sato, but I always think about her as, like, the epitome of someone who really loved and supported her children. I think what you said is really important, right? Like, there is great value in being able to express yourself, mark your place in the world. And I think it. It elevates so much when you are locked away, when you are in a prison, and when your access to the outside world is so limited in terms of, like, suave. The podcast is your story. It tells your story, but in a sense, it's still told by someone else. Right? Like, I'm narrating your story. So I want to talk about Mr. Pulitzer, the song that you created with your friend intern Joey Deville. It's a song that we play a little bit of in this season of the podcast, but I think it deserves, like, a little bit more of a conversation. So can you introduce Mr. Pulitzer to us and tell us a little bit about that song and how it came about?

Suave (24:33)

It's by Joey Deville, a student, one of the guys that I mentor. And I came across Joey's music when I was speaking in Alabama, and somebody sent me a tape talking about, yo, you heard this guy, he's from your city. And I was like, I don't want to hear another Latino rapper. He can't rap better than me. And I was like, let me hear him. Let me check him out. So I checked his music out, and as soon as I flew back to the city, I contacted him, like, 12 midnight. Like, who does that, right? Like 12:03. He contacted me back, like, yo, what's up? And I'm like, yo, I need you to come down Community college. That was the relationship, how it started. And I used to tell him, bro, you need to rap in Spanish. And he was like, oh, but nobody want to hear that. So then I told him, yo, hear this. I let him hear my tape. He was like, oh, my God, this is dope. Oh, I gotta do something. We gotta do something. And the plan was to re release the whole album, but with updated beats. And I was like, no, I don't want to do that. It would kill it. So when he heard the podcast, he went home and said, I want to do something for you. And I was like, what? I said, joey, we got to do a song together. And the name of the song was going to be Mr. Pulitzer. But then he went and recorded his part, and that's what you hear in the song, Mr. Pulitzer. And I was like, nah, I'm not going to mess this up. This is the song right here. This is the song. And it's my story from Joey deville perspective. But I think he was just such on point. And believe me, I never told him my story. Everything he got was from hearing the podcast and hearing me speak. So it's the same song that you're going to get for free when you buy the book. Open the first page. QR Code is the song. Mr. Pulitzer. And I'm so excited, man, that we doing this, man, because Joey is a good dude. Joey is a student. He is an individual that suffered a whole lot of trauma in life and yet never, never done time in the penal system. On the right track, ready to graduate, taking nursing school now. And he would tell you like, you did that. I told him, no, I ain't do that. You did that. I just provided an opportunity for him, right? And to me, I see myself in his music because if I was 25 again, that's what I'll be rapping about. So, ladies and gentlemen, right now, we're gonna debut this song. It was tailored, made by Joey Deville. My story is called Mr. Pulitzer. Check it out, y'. All.

Interviewer (27:15)

I will never forget the day that we heard it for the first time. I knew that the song existed. I hadn't heard it yet.

Suave (27:21)

Yeah, I know what it.

Interviewer (27:23)

But you hadn't told Maria. And we were in Puerto Rico. I was driving. Maria was sitting in the back seat. You were in the passenger, and you were like, I have something to show you.

Maria (27:40)

It was a pull, a surprise I was given. What are the odds that I'm winning the lottery? I come from poverty.

Suave (27:46)

Oh, my God.

Interviewer (27:58)

How did you feel?

Suave (27:59)

I. I was a little nervous because it was like the first time I ever let somebody hear that song.

Interviewer (28:04)

I personally will never forget that moment. Like, we were in the car, we had A really good sound system in that rental, and we were just banging in that car. I mean, it was. It was really beautiful.

Suave (28:15)

I felt good having my mentor listen to it, and I wanted to see her reaction. Like, he's rapping about you. Because really, the whole song is you and me.

Maria (28:29)

I promise my mama I'm never gonna stop. They thought they killed me and left me for dead they wanna hold me back but I'm like a warrior inside.

Suave (28:40)

It's like the podcast in two minutes.

Interviewer (28:42)

That's such a perfect way to describe it. It really is.

Suave (28:44)

The.

Interviewer (28:45)

The 30 years that. Of your life that we tell in the podcast, condensed to. I think it's two verses and a hook.

Suave (28:51)

Yes.

Interviewer (28:55)

Beautiful production. The production, the sound, the design. Joey is someone who has had his own challenges in life, and because of that, he was able to step into your shoes and rap this really beautiful song that tells your story.

Suave (29:08)

And I always tell Maria that I recorded the podcast because I wanted to save other young people from ending up in prison. We doing that with Joey. This is what we supposed to be doing, you know, opening doors for other people. We said it from the very beginning when we dropped season one people, that if we could save one person from ending up in prison, we'd done our job. If we could save one person from getting murdered, we done our job. If we could save a mother from have to bury her child, we. We done our job. And I think we done pretty good. Every time I walk down the street and I see some of these young people that tell me, bro, your podcast saved my life. We done our job to put Joy under the wing and see him graduate college. He only got two classes left. As a matter of fact, he's working at the Children's hospital now.

Interviewer (30:11)

Oh, wow. Congrats to Joey.

Suave (30:13)

Yeah, that to me is like, the job is done. Yeah, the job is done. And then to be talking about his music because I always tell him, joey, I'll bust your ass if it comes to a rap battle in Spanish.

Interviewer (30:27)

Oh, I'm still waiting for. For that. I just want to say thank you. Suave. I'm so excited that we got to have this conversation. Thank you for being honest for talking about music with me, for, like, educating us on the process of making music in prison and how it was in the 90s. And, yeah, thank you to our audience for tuning in all our futuristas who took the step, who subscribed to our supporting us and allowing us to keep making work that we're really passionate about.

Suave (30:58)

Futurista. Thank you peace.

Maria (31:05)

I am a legend I keep it real Never been a pretender I come from the bottom of the silent with the people forgotten me Animosity it bother me to live in anomaly no equality A bunch of cops rob with hypocrisy Locking me inside a box Constantly mocking me on the prophecy it got to be a God that been watching me Even possibly a little bit of faith that'll follow me no apologies I'm taking everything that I'm about to be with ferocity it's not a problem ever because why don't you wanna hold me back? I'm climbing this knot right up to the top they wanna hold me back I promise my mama I'm never gonna stop they wanna hold me back they thought they killed me and left me for dead they wanna hold me back But I'm like a warrior inside of my head they wanna hold me back I'm climbing this mountain right up to the top they want to hold me back I promise my mama I'm never going to stop they want to hold me back they thought they killed me and left me for dead they want to hold me back But I'm like a warrior inside of my head.