I had a very dear friend of mine, ton of potential, and he fell ill with bipolar disorder. And he was put in the penal system. And that was just adding fuel to the fire. He got worse. He came out and he's never been the same since. He can't seem to get his life back. And this is a man who could have had Hollywood in the palm of his hand. A lot of my inspiration and aspirations for wanting to be an actor, I owe to him. Between the disorder and him being put in jail, it just snuffed all of that away from him.

My main goal, starting out as a young actor, was to carry the reins that Pac left off and to reach the depths as an actor that I know he would have reached had he still been here with us.

You know, my childhood was pretty colorful; I like to use the word turbulent.

I'm more liable to hurt myself than someone else.

I grew in a community where I saw the process of how one becomes a drug dealer or a gang banger or a stick-up kid. There's a series of events that happen. People don't just wake up and decide they wanna be that.

I am the epitome of the underdog. By societies standards I should have been dead a long time ago, and I was nobody's gangster, I wasn't a thug, I wasn't selling drugs on the corner - I was scared of that.

Addiction is a health issue, not a social issue, not a crime, not a legal issue.