#2353 - Shaka Senghor

Joe Rogan (0:03)

The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. What's up? Pleasure to meet you.

Shaka Senghor (0:15)

It's such a pleasure to be here.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

Yeah, I heard your story. Why don't you tell everybody your story? Because the story is pretty wild.

Shaka Senghor (0:24)

Yeah, so I grew up in Detroit, working-class neighborhood. Dad was in the Air Force and worked for the state. Mom was a homemaker. So when I was sat looking in, it really looked like a household where the kids should make it. But unfortunately, it's a very abusive household. I ran away when I was about 13 years old. At the time prior to that, I was an honor roll scholarship student, dreams of being a doctor, artist. I wanted to be a doctor because I felt like that was an occupation where I felt like you can help people. And unfortunately, you know, when I ran away, I thought that I would basically just kind of get welcomed into the home of someone who would see this kid and be like, oh, you know, this kid just deserves love or whatever. But I found myself on the east side of Detroit in an apartment with a gun to my head.

And it was my introduction to the street culture. I was being robbed. And I was being robbed by this guy who later we would learn his name was Tiny, even though he was like big fat, probably about six feet tall. And him and his partner, Lily, robbed me at gunpoint, took my drugs, took the money. And I think that was like one of those moments where the innocence of being a kid just was shattered. It was like now I'm in this world where my life is in danger. But I stayed in that culture. My childhood friend was murdered. I was beat nearly to death. And despite that, I just continue to sell drugs. It's one of the things when I think back to even that part of my life, there's the glorification of the hustler. It's like we're out here making money, we're doing things. But the reality is, it's a kid navigating a very dangerous adult world at the time that crack is just penetrating the community. And one of the things that always go back to this image of the first time I made a lot of money, I just had this wad of cash, like it's like all singles, $5 bills, $10 bills. And I went to the store on the corner and I bought all the cereal that I can think of, like all the cereal that I could not. You know, my parents, even though my dad made decent money, like we couldn't always get all the cereal, because it was like all these kids. And then I bought like chocolate milk and strawberry milk. And then I went back to the crack house. Wow.

Joe Rogan (2:52)

And you were like, what, 13?

Shaka Senghor (2:53)

Literally like 13 years old. And so, you know, I stayed in that culture. And then when I was like 17 years old, I was standing March 8th, I'll never forget that day. I was standing on the corner and I got into like a minor conflict. And then I got shot multiple times. And that was probably the most serious turning point in my life. After I got shot, they caught amulans and the amulans never came. At this time, I'm on the west side of Detroit. And I'm just sitting on the porch bleeding. And my friend, he was like, look, I'm going to have to take you to the hospital because the amulans are just not going to come. And I remember getting in the car and he's just like, you know, breathe like you got to take these deep breaths to, you know, just how you're going to navigate the pain. And the reason he was able to do that, he had got shot the year prior, you know. So it's just like, he got shot, his friend got killed. So the gun violence was just, you know, it was so much a part of like the culture and that I grew up in, that I didn't think about what was happening inside of me after I got shot. And so I get to the hospital, they take two of the bullets out of my leg and they leave one bullet in. And basically, they patch me up and, you know, I remember my dad coming to the hospital and at this point, I was the third of my brothers to be shot. And I'll never forget this look on my dad's face of like, it was almost a look of like defeat, you know, of like, how do I, how do I save my boys, you know? And so when I left the hospital, like, nobody, like the doctor, the nurse, nobody just was like, hey, you're gonna have all these feelings. And so I get back and I'm in the neighborhood and, you know, I'm angry because I really want to get revenge on this guy who shot me. Like that's the number one priority for me. It's like, you know, I gotta get, I gotta retaliate. And then I'm standing outside, this is probably like day two, I had crutches, so I'm like literally in the neighborhood, crutches, patched up bullet, wounds. I'm standing on the corner. And I remember a car coming down the street. And like my body almost seized up. And I was like, why am I feeling this kind of like anxiety? Now it's anxiety back then, there was no name for it. But I couldn't tell my friends that I really was afraid of standing outside and being exposed. Wow. So that was 17 years old. And so what happened after that was I began to tell myself this story, that if I found myself in conflict again, I would shoot first. And I began to literally carry a gun every day. It wasn't the first time I had carried a gun, but like I began to carry a gun like every day. Like it didn't matter what I was doing. Using the bathroom, gun is on the sink. I'm going to sleep at night, gun is up under the pillow. Probably wasn't the smartest place to sleep with a gun. But that was the nature of how I felt, you know, what I was dealing with. And so I started to tell myself this narrative. And about 16 months or so later, maybe 14 months, I was DJing a party. And, you know, I love music, you know, I come from Detroit. It's one of the greatest music cities, you know, in the world. And so I'm DJing this party and shots ring out. People are running, scrambling, you know, getting away. And, you know, the people whose party I was DJing, they come to the back, they're like, somebody got shot in the front. So we got to shut everything down. So we shut the party down.