is the upliftment of all
Black people from being
Slave minded
NIGGERS to becoming a
Military minded N.I.G.G.A
“NEVER IGNORANT GETTING GOALS ACCOMPLISHED”
To say this is my life’s purpose would be cliche unless one has a direct line to GOD then how would we know what our true purpose is. My life has given me the opportunity to live the life of many different people, this rare opportunity has given me an empathic understanding of different cultures, ideologies, intentions, and most importantly mindsets. FYMM is my ideology. As with life, our perspectives change with age, some call it wisdom or common sense. The book has guided me through life, it has served as a reference and teacher when needed. My life has been a series, with many different seasons and an endless amount of episodes. The most advantageous way to introduce my ideology is to answer these questions; Who is Matthew Hardy, who is Erik Johnson, what is the origin of FYMM, and why does it matter?
Who is Matthew Leroy Hardy:
He was his mother’s second child and his father’s third. His older brother has the same mother and father but his older sister just shares his father. About 6 months before he was born his mother met a white woman, Ruth. Ruth already had two young girls but wanted a third but was unable, due to medical reasons. Matthew’s mom and Ruth with the help of Ruth’s husband Paul secretly began the process of adoption. It had to be kept a secret since Matthew’s mom was not going to tell her family about her adoption plans, she knew if any member of her or Matthew’s father’s family found out about the plans they would stop the plans immediately and take Matthew as their own. On Ruth’s side of the family, the adoption was frowned upon, as she came from an affluent white background adopting a little black baby was preposterous. If she decided to proceed with her plans she was threatened to be disowned by her family. Although the stakes were high and both women had a lot to lose, their vision for Matthew’s future was too strong to be stopped. On February 21, 1984, Matthew was born and on February 21 1984 Matthew died at birth. Mattew’s grandmother on his mother’s side explained the day from her perspective. “ I was at the hospital when you were born. I saw you and then I took the bus home, when I got home I got a phone call and I was told “you passed away”. My cousin who was the same age as my mother explained to me his perspective, “ we were all prepared for you, and when you died my mom and I paid for your service”. I was 16 years old when I discovered my biological name; Matthew Leroy Hardy. (my aunt was proud to say my middle name was pronounced (‘le roi’) like the french) If we research the meaning of my biological names it brings more light or confusion to my life.
- Matthew
- From the Hebrew name Matityahu, meaning “Gift from God.” Matthew was one of Jesus’s apostles and author of the first Gospel in the New Testament.
- Leroy
- In French Baby Names the meaning of the name Leroy is: The King (from ‘le roi’)
Who is Erik Gregory Johnson:
On February 21, 1984, when Matthew was pronounced dead, the baby in the basket was secretly passed to Ruth, like Moses. He remerged or resurrected as Erik Gregory Johnson. As promised this caused big issues with Ruth and her family, but Ruth was happy. My childhood was unique, to say the least, my mom needed help around the house so we had a “nanny” my sisters hate when I say that but Lola used to clean the house, babysit me, discipline me, later in life pick me up from school, and when my parents went away on vacation I used to stay at her house. Lola was a middle-aged black woman and like my second mom, as I am sure my mom would refer to Lola any time she needed help with me. As told to me by Lola “ it took a few years before your grandfather had to “come and see” what your mom had done, but once he came and saw you, he changed. You were no longer your mom’s baby, you were his”. The time I spent with my grandfather shaped my way of thinking, the easiest way of putting it is master and slave, I was raised to be a master, never a slave. I dealt with racism my entire life, but I had been trained by my grandfather to think differently. I was a master like he was. This is a concept that can be hard to understand, I grew up being the only black person in every country club I entered, there is a big difference having black parents in the country club and having prominent white family members who have been members for generations and where my extended family is also members. I was not raised “nouveau riche”, I was raised old American wealthy. We were at my mom’s childhood friend’s house having dinner, and I noticed a button on the floor and asked my mom what it was. She said it was for the servants. I asked why we did not have one and she said we were not rich. Which translated to me as if you don’t have servants you are not rich.
My dad’s family was nothing like my mom’s family, they were working-class from a very small town. So yes I was influenced by my grandfather but the combination of my mom and my dad is what shaped a much stronger part of me. My parents were human rights activists, I remember watching old footage of the civil rights movement at a very young age. Where black people were being sprayed with water hoses and attacked by dogs, my parents never wanted to lie to me about my past or history. My father was also an educator, in the summer we would travel to New York for a week so my dad could teach. As being activists my parents also helped create a “step group” so we would travel around the southeast of America and dance for peace. There was one dance where everyone was dancing blindfolded with chains, then halfway through there was a news break about a “mass racial cleansing” and machine guns rang killing all the dancers, then the dancers would get up without the chains and blindfolds and begin to dance again, heavy stuff for a kid.
Paradise only lasts for so long before the storm comes
Things were going great, I was accepted into my mom’s family, we were traveling promoting peace, my dad just became chief of staff at the hospital and he was being invited to more places during the summer to teach. During the Christmas break of 1994, we decided to go back to the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean to escape the cold. On December 23 my parents wanted to go on a dinner date, I thought it would be funny to lock my sisters out of the condo, well the last interaction I had with my dad was him yelling at me for locking my sisters out of the condo. My mom and dad were in a car accident and he was killed. January comes and my grandmother (mom’s mom) dies, I’m pretty sure my mom was still in a wheelchair from the car accident. After my dad died everything changed, most of my parents’ friends left my mom for dead. During the 10 months, I had with my mom before she died she taught me how to survive. She had to take a handful of pills every day just to stay alive so she knew she was going to die at any moment, the lessons I learned right before my mom died have been the most influential to my survival. In October 1995 she went to the hospital on Monday and was dead by Friday. They say things come in threes, well I lost my dad, my grandma and my mom in less than a year all before the age of 12.
California sun
When I was 12 we moved from North Carolina to California, I repeated the 6th grade and went to boarding school. I was at school during the week and at home on the weekends. The boarding school was mostly for the ESL (English as a second language) students coming from Asia. This was a crazy experience coming from North Carolina. I had seen maybe 5 Asian people in my life, now living with them in a dorm. I was bombarded with different foods, music, clothes, and culture. I was first exposed to counterfeiting and international trade, during each holiday my friends would go back to Asia to buy bags of clothes and electronics. We would all play electronics and they would give me the clothes, they would always say how cheap the clothes were. Not all the FUBU I was wearing was real but this is before social media, people did not know the difference. Boarding school also took me to Japan for an exchange program, Yosemite national park for science, Space Camp in Alabama for science, and Washington DC for history and politics.
The fun years
It is hard to believe now since marijuana is legal in half of the states and it is ingrained in our culture as Americans, as recreational and for health benefits. When I was 15 I got caught smoking and was basically dis-communicated from my family and sent to different programs until I became an adult. I don’t have time to go in-depth with each program so I will just give highlights.
Aspen Achievement Academy
- You are immediately stripped searched and given different clothes
- They teach you how to pack your survival pack
- Then they wait until it is dark and drive you to your group
- The first night is hell
- You are freezing, don’t know where you are and not allowed to sit close to the fire
- All the kids start talking about how they have been there, “for years” (just to fuck with you, I did it too but your first night when you are scared wow that plays with your mind)
- The second day you are told you are a mouse
- Not allowed to talk to anyone you get a can of peaches and a bag of trail mix for three days. They say it is for detox
- But really you just starve for a couple of days
- All-day we would hike
- We got school credit because they would teach about the stars and geology
- You have to successfully complete a few solo’s to complete the program. A solo is just that you are in the middle of the desert alone with no human contact for three days.
- If you needed something you wrote it on a list and staff would get it for you
- You better be good at making a fire or you would freeze and starve
Sweet 16
- It was the last day of my first solo, it was raining so we had to eat cold and just go to sleep
- The staff found out it was my birthday so they got me a cake and made me a wooden spoon
- They also had to remind my family it was my birthday so a week later I got happy birthday letters
- For two weeks we had to push Mormon carts all day long. ( that was miserable bent over pushing a cart for 8 hours a day in and day out) three pushing and one person in the front guiding and keeping the cart level.
Water
- Where ever you could find water you drank it
- I have seen cow poop flowing down the same river that I was filling my water bottles
- There was one staff who refused to allow us to drink sulfur water so he called in water
- Thank god because having to drink water that smelled like sulfur would have been terrible
Key phrases
- Where are you = here. What time is it = now. LIVE IN THE HERE AND NOW
- Where are we going = that is “FI” (future information) anytime they did not want to answer something it was always “FI”
Health damage
- I do not do well in the cold my toes got a slight case of frostbite (they called it frostnip)
- It took a while for me to get the full feeling in my big toes (like years not months)
The cold
- It was so cold that we used to heat a metal bottle in the fire put it in a sock then place it between our legs while we slept to warm the main arteries in our legs
- We also learned that if you had to use the restroom you would be colder
- Your body spends a lot of energy keeping your pee and poop warm
- Sleeping would be the worst when you had to pee, it would be so cold but you had to go. So most times we would lift our bottom tarp and pee ( you did not care if it got on you it was too cold to care)
Cascade
- Cult style therapeutic boarding school
- Forums – Intense mental and verbal abuse ( would sit in a circle and yell at people until they would break)
- Bans – if you were on bans with someone that person did not exist you could not talk to them or acknowledge them
- Time limits – you were only allowed a certain amount per day with each person
- Workshops 24 hours intense “therapy”
- The truth – find your true self
- The youth – who were you when you were a kid
- Brothers/ sisters – finding true brotherhood
- Heros – finding your hero
- There were more but those are the ones I went through. It is very difficult to explain a workshop depending on what the theme of the workshop was. They were all the same. It was a combination of sleep deprivation, yelling, pillow pounding, and cuddling.
- sleep deprivation, they would only give us about 3 hours of sleep
- Yelling, using everything they knew about you and using it against you by yelling at you, then having you yell at your partner, all while them playing with the music levels to create different emotions with the music. If they wanted you to get angry they would play angry music loud if they wanted you to get sad they would play sad music.
- Pillow pounding, once they would get you enraged they would put socks on your hands and tell you to pound a pillow as hard as you could. At this point, the music would be blaring and everyone would be yelling bloody murder. If you were not pounding hard enough the staff would tag team you by yelling at you.
- Cuddling, once they drained every ounce of energy out of you where you are basically crying from yelling and pain from pounding a pillow, exhausted they start playing soft music and cuddle with you to “rebuild us”
- Work projects – all-day projects for punishment
- Dishes – three different types 15 min 30 min max times. That’s how long you had to stay after dinner.
Cedu
- Bootcamp style – had to walk with a purpose which meant run everywhere
- Public humiliation-
- If you missed night staff you had to wait until after check in to use the bathroom, seen my friends pee themselves
- If you did not wake up fast enough you had to do bed drills all-day
- If you misbehaved you had to stand at the end of the perimeter hands behind your back faced looking at your feet for 12 hours
- Five minutes
- Get out of your sleeping bag
- Put your clothes on
- Pack your sleeping bag
- Roll your bed mat
- Organize all your belonging
- Clean teepee
- Run outside to check-in
- Check-in
- Stand in a circle
- Arms on each other’s shoulders with heads down inside the circle
- Proceed to yell “takonkas checking in ONE TWO THREE ……” while yelling your number you had to throw your head back and yell as loud as you could
- 3 strikes your out rule
- If we did not get the check-in 3 attempts there were punishments
- Eating
- 15 minutes start to finish (getting served to eating)
- If you checked in incorrectly, you had to eat outside (what if it was raining/snowing did not matter. I have had many meals with a little corn with my water or water mashed potatoes.
- 2 min clean up
- Scrape plates
- Wipe table
- Sweep under table
- Complete silence 6-8 people
- Physical Training (PT)
- All-day hauling logs to cut
- Using a tandem saw to cut wood
- Daily run
- Daily exercise ( I make it sound nice and pretty but on one occasion I was running the PT with a friend and a student could not do an exercise. The staff instructed us to make him do the exercise, now he was screaming and crying that he could not do it and my friend and I were doing what we were told and forcing him to do it. Well long story short he really could not do it, we broke both of his legs, so yes it was exercise but it was not what one would think when going to the gym.
- Shower time
- 2 minutes every other day
- After 2 minutes they would take the water hose and start spraying you with cold water
- I am black and it is freezing cold and dry in Northern Idaho but lotion was for girls, I still have scars on my face from when it was cracking from the cold weather
- censorship/ restraint
- All of our mail was screened before it was sent out, had to say positive things about the program any negative was a punishable offense
- One person on each side and in front and back of you, the person facing you is nose to nose yelling at you, if you flinch you would be forcefully taken to the ground and “restrained”. I have had many meals where all I could hear were kids screaming for help.
Positive impact
- In Mexico – the laws on handling kids were more relaxed
- Steps based program
- Became resident leader
- I was in charge of my house the pecking order was counselor, head Mexican staff, me, my room leaders, then students
- Solutions room
- Stripped of everything and have to sit in a room and think of what you did
- Breakfast
- For PT they would drop us off in the middle of the desert and say run to breakfast.
- Living on the beach
- Twice a day we would go swimming in the ocean
- PPC -Positive peer culture
- A culture which was supposed to be completely managed by peers
- Learned conflict resolution – no matter what it is you are at fault, figure how you could have prevented the problem.
- Seek first to understand then to be understood
- The letter
- Wrote a letter to a staff member, my best friend stole the letter and turned it into the staff to save himself since he had just broken the rules so he ratted me out.
- 20 min
- Had 20 minutes to pack my stuff and leave two weeks before I turned 18 so I was still a minor.
18 – 22 University of the Hard Knocks
What about your school? Well, when I was sent to Cedu I did not receive any school credits, and the amount of time I was gone from school would have put me behind so I would have had to go to summer school. Even going to summer school did not promise that I was going to move on to the next grade. However, when I got to Mexico, school and the process of learning changed for me. In Mexico, we would have school 4 hours a day 4 times a week. During this time you had to be in complete silence unless talking to a counselor. School was super easy since I could learn at my own speed, all I had to do was read a book (textbook) and fill out a workbook. I had 16 hours a week that I could do nothing else, and I was behind in school so I was motivated to say the least. By the time I left (got kicked out) I had already graduated high school and was taking extra classes on sociology and psychology, so in the end, I graduated high school in 2 ½ years. I got accepted to the University of Seton Hall in New Jersey, but life had other plans for me.
I first have to point this out, I had been in some type of camp or boarding school since I had moved to California. Basically, since my parents died, I never had the need or chance to have or hold money. When I turned 18 two things happened, I got a good amount of cash about 300,000$ and then I got a phone call from a bank and was told I had another 300,000$. I had no idea what that meant, when I got out of the program I was driving a car stopped at a gas station and realized I had no idea how to pump gas. I had been raised around nothing but wealthier people, I had no idea if what I had was a lot of money or a little, I thought everybody had the same. Oh yea, where was I? Well, when I got removed from Mexico I was escorted back to northern Idaho, my family had paid a family 20,000$ for them to watch me until I went to University. That brings up a good question, who paid for all of the programs? I did from my parents’ inheritance. So wait, how much? That number has never been told to me, but I would say an easy 150,000$ to go to hell.
Well in Northern Idaho with a bank account full of money I bought a couple of cars, but I wanted a business and I wanted to live in California. Everything was happening really fast, I had an entourage of people in Idaho (country white boys) then in California I had a different entourage of people (East Palo Alto). Two months before, I did not know any of these people, I was an 18-year-old easy mark. The saying “I cast you out a sheep amongst wolves’ ‘ was the best way for me to describe it, my family just gave me money and said have a nice life. I was easy prey for any and everyone. I was successful at opening the store (we sold clothes, vinyl, had mobile DJ’s, and a studio), I was on the news and everything, but it was in Washington state and I lived in California (Palo Alto). A month after we opened the money had run dry, in my mind, it was going to be a huge success and I was going to make millions. Well, the first day was our best day and we made 1000$. Here I just lost 100 thousand plus dollars and my business partners were complaining about the 1 or 2 thousand dollars they lost. So Washington ended in a huge loss and fight, California just the same, all of my “niggas” bled me dry. Whenever I have money I have friends, but whenever I am broke I have nobody. What made it worse, remember when I was younger I was around the wealthy, well when my family disowned me it seemed like the entire white community disowned me.
I found my way to Los Angeles with some music producer, for the first two days or so he was showing me all around taking me to bars, I was underage so it was awesome to me. There was one funny thing, he stayed with me at my hotel. Well, we went broke and he somehow managed to fly us to San Jose, and an “investor” picked us up. For the next two months, I witnessed an amazing scam and was treated like a slave. We stayed at the investor’s house, now the music producer was from Kenya and had a very flamboyant personality and the investor was an older Asian man. All-day long I was on the computer researching, writing emails, anything he did not want to do, but what he also had me do was read and read, if I was not on the computer then I had to be reading a book. We would have review sessions to make sure I read each book. This went on for about two months, during this time the producer was milking the investor for everything he had. Towards the end of the stay, the producer told the investor he needed to sell his house they had an agreement and it was time to pay, during this time the producer tried to get a hold of my trusts but the bank shut him down fast so now I was expendable.
- The scam: the producer had a friend deal with the sale of the house, the producer created a huge fight with the investor I mean scared him to death, in duress the investor signed his house over to the producer’s friend once the producer’s friend had the house he disappeared and the producer kicked me to the curb and was headed to the airport back to Los Angeles. So they robbed this old man out of his house.
The day I got kicked out, I had reached the bank and told them the situation, they made a few phone calls and I was able to obtain a hotel for Christmas Eve and Christmas Night and given a couple of hundred dollars. The hotel I got was walking distance to my uncle’s house, the house a couple of years earlier I called home. I called my uncle but going home was out of the question. I was only given a couple of days so I had to think and move fast or I was homeless and the bank would refuse to help. A friend from Cascade heard about my situation and told his dad I was coming with them back to the North Bay (Sausalito ). (I am a huge Tupac fan and Marin City is walking distance from Sausalito so it was fun going to Marin City and talking to people who had known Tupac) I went from being overwhelmed with stress to living at my friend’s parents’ house waking up with a view of the San Francisco Bay. My friend’s father owned a bookstore and gave us one ultimatum, if we were not working then we were reading. One day I had to venture off to a bank in Palo Alto, I ran into a member of my “black entourage” we chatted for a bit and he offered me a job detailing cars.
AYO FO YAYO (Blackmex)
I left Sausalito and headed back to the wolves den, The grandmother of my black entourage told me “ I feel so bad what my family did to you, you can live here”. So during the week I would be working and weekends I would go back to Sausalito. I did this for a few months until one day I was asked if I wanted to go to North Carolina. I had not been back for years so I excitedly said yes. A few days later a new character entered my life, now he stood out, he had gold teeth, braids, and an accent that was almost impossible to understand. We started talking and found out he was from Louisville Kentucky, we did what any other hood nigga would do we started talking about the different prices of weed. This new character was friends with my boss so when we went back to the boss’s house he came along. Well, the next couple of days were different, we stopped detailing cars and got a new car, 4 door chevy cavalier. Now I was not completely oblivious to what was going on, by this time I was more my boss’s driver and we would stop at a few select Mexican restaurants, eat lunch and leave with a shoebox, then drive across town drop off the shoebox, and my boss would be counting thousands of dollars. Well, this time we were getting a new car and a new person from Kentucky was with us. Now instead of North Carolina, we were going to the Kentucky Derby.
That first trip across the country we encountered every kind of weather imaginable, we got detoured for hours, road closed due to weather. Now for about 80% of the time, I was driving, my friend from Kentucky was like “ you are Black but you work like a Mexican, I am going to call you the blexican” that got changed to Blackmex. When we finally got to Louisville we were greeted with open but anxious arms, my job was over. There was another kid from California so we clicked and became running mates. I made trips back and forth to Kentucky that entire summer successfully, after about the 5th trip we got pulled over in Nevada, the car was in my name and the package was in my car. The police officer asked me to step out of the car and proceeded to tell me the car smelled like marijuana (probable cause), now he has the legal right to search the car, he gave me a choice, let him search it here or they were going to tow the car. The boss had always told us to refuse and never let them search the car, well when the cop said it smelled like marijuana I lost all of my legal rights so I was not prepared for that situation. Nevada allows a lot of things but drugs are a no-nonsense type of offense, now we were averaging 10 – 20 kilos a trip so if I got caught I was never going to see the light of day again. I was 19 years old we a very big decision, let them look here on the side of the road or let them tow the car and give them 24 hours to search the car. I very calmly told them to search the car. There were three of us in the car so they told all of us to stand about 50 feet away while they began searching the car. I have no idea how long it was, but it felt like an eternity, they kept searching once they were done then another car would pull up and they would search it again they brought dogs and everything. They finally called us back and told us they found a pack of viagra, the older two that were with me were scared shitless and refused to take responsibility so I had to take it. He told them to go back to the car, the police wanted to talk to me.
He said the only reason it took so long was because; “they kept seeing the same car circling, he said if it was a normal car they would have stopped to see what the problem was or stopped at the next exit, but since they kept circling it raised suspicion”. The next morning everyone was questioned by the boss and of course, I was last to be questioned and the others blamed everything on me. I got yelled at for letting them search the car, (that never made sense. I passed the police test but was being yelled at by my boss). Needless to say, that was the last trip I made. When everything started to crumble we got hit for 300,000$ on the road and another 80,000$ at the airport, our motto was this never let them know when you were coming so if anything happened they would just get the money.
Korea (international trade)
Now remember from my earlier years at boarding school I had lived with a lot of Koreans, so when the boss asked if I would go to Korea I jumped at the opportunity. The mission was to find Mitchel & Ness throwback jerseys, the price in America at the time was 2-400$ a jersey. I was tasked to find them at a healthy price. Without even knowing how to say hello I was on my way to Korea. I was in Seoul with a population of about 6 million people, looking for jerseys. I was looking for a needle in a haystack. After going to every mall and shopping center I went back to the hotel to email the boss. I told him my findings that everything was the same price and to ask his connection if I was in the right place. A couple of hours later I was informed I was in the wrong city and I needed to catch a 3-hour taxi to the correct city. Well 3 hours later and there I was in counterfeit paradise. There was an Air Force base nearby so more people spoke English. Everything imaginable was there all for pennies on the dollar. Literally everything you can imagine ranging from Jordans to Rolexes, video games to car parts, from Louis Vuitton to Mitchel & Ness. Just like my friends from middle school had described to me 7 years earlier. I bought as many jerseys as I could fit in a couple of boxes, the plan was to go back to my hotel and ship the boxes back to the United States in the morning. When back at the hotel I was freezing cold so I decided to celebrate a little and grab a drink. I found a bar and started having a couple of drinks, well they have girls who come and sit with you. The next thing I remember I was waking up with just enough money to pay my bill, I had been drugged and robbed. I was smart enough not to bring all my money and my passport but I did lose the money to send the packages the next morning. Now the next morning I had to explain to the boss what happened and he was not the happiest person since all the money I had left was just enough to get to the airport. There was another person from America that was also sending packages but I never knew who they were. It was more or less a race to see who could get them into America faster. Well, they shipped their package as I had no money. I had to bring them with me. Customs is a funny agency their package was seized by customs while ours made it through. Did they open the box and ask me a thousand questions, yes they did but just like Nevada I passed. God works in funny ways if I had not been robbed at the bar then customs would have robbed us at the border. I made a total of three trips.
One Bedroom
After Korea and Kentucky, my missions stopped and life was somewhat normal. We were remodeling the house so my new family and I moved into one of the uncle’s one-bedroom apartment. Living in this one-bedroom apartment was Moms, me, 5 cousins, unk, and unk’s friend. During the day there were nieces and nephews, other aunts and uncles. The family was huge, Moms had 7 or 8 kids and about 40 grandkids and great-grandkids. I was still working with the boss, so I still had a place to sleep. Since I had traveled on different missions above anyone else’s comprehension and was sworn to secrecy I did not really relate to any of the cousins my age, or anyone in the city. One of my comrades who took missions explained it to me “Erik I don’t like you because I worked my whole life to be on this level and here you are I don’t even know you” he did things for glory and prestige I did things out of necessity. One of the uncles who knew and understood what I had been doing became my mentor. We both worked for the boss detailing cars so we were around each other every day, I would often stay at his house if we had a car to wash early. It was fun escaping into his stories and learning his perspective on life. During this time I found a girlfriend and we moved north to Tacoma Washington to be close to one of my sisters. Long story short things did not work and I found myself once again in Northern Idaho.
5,000 loan
Remember my entourage from Northern Idaho? Well one of them was starting a new venture and could use some help. I had just lost my girlfriend and was more than willing to help. The grand idea my friend had was to start selling cocaine, now we were not talking about any large size just 8 ounces at a time. Now Northern Idaho the Coeur d’Alene area was a perfect spot and in less than 3 weeks we had over 20,000 profit saved even after the re-up and obviously buying more than the original 8 ounces. Here I am one of maybe 5 black people in the entire city having a 24hr candy shop our motto was “catch every sale if it was not our money then it was someone else’s’ ”. There was a stabbing in the area and one of the suspects was black, at first I was arrogant about it but then I got stopped by the police just walking to the store to buy cigarettes he searched me and ran my identification I came up clean but I got the message loud and clear, IT WAS TIME TO LEAVE. I told my friend but greed was on his mind and his attitude was I am not going to stop until they catch me. Now, to me that logic was flawed. We had already made a good amount of money, let’s stop and let things die down, but he insisted we push even harder. Without knowing what to do I made a couple of phone calls after deciding Kentucky was not a good place to go. I went to Seattle to visit one of my (black) aunts. Before going I needed some spending money so I took what I figured was my portion and an extra 5,000 $ and left a note telling him I would pay him back later but he was headed down the path of destruction and I did not want any parts.
Seattle was only a temporary fix so I ended right back at Moms house, they finished the remodeling so I went back to the house, not the apartment, I was 21 at the time. 10,000 is a lot of money but not to live off of, and the boss found out I had money and convinced me to give him a loan so we could get Kentucky going again. Well, we did nothing. He took my money and made more but now I was basically broke again at
Mom’s house. Unk had just been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and he was in his last few months. We tried to keep him in the hospital but in the nightgown, with his ass hanging out he escaped the hospital and was walking home. So we arranged for him to live at home. His health was slipping fast, one night Moms yelled for us, unk was not doing very well he motioned for my hand and started to rub it a few minutes later he was pronounced dead. That night was horrible. Every time I closed my eyes, the faces of all the people I had lost kept flashing in my eyes like a slideshow.
After unk died things at the house got worse, the boss was now having financial and family issues, so I was left at Mom’s house and the work started to dry up. At the house, the cousins were tired of me being there and never let a moment go by without reminding me how stupid I was with money and how pitiful I was. This is also the longest amount of time I lived at the house, one cousin attempted to bring me along to sell rocks but that is most definitely not the life for me. I went to work, went home, talked to Moms, I could not buy anything nice or keep anything for myself as it was always getting stolen, I did not have a bed so I shared a couch with one of the younger cousins he would have his side and I would have mine. On my 22nd birthday, I was going to start receiving more of my inheritance so I just had to survive like another 6 months. During these last 6 months my mentality on people really started to change and I realized that I was alone, the last place I knew I had a friend was in Kentucky so I waited for the time I was able to leave. During this alone time, I read a lot of books and began to formulate my own way of thinking, my ideology. It started like this “ if you are not trying to make money with me then fuck you” that was way to long to put on my phone so I shortened it to “Fuck You Make Money” I finally turned 22 and was on my way to Kentucky to create Fuck You Make Money.
Before writing the book I had already lived a very testing life. Now like my birth name let’s take a deeper look at what my adopted parents named me.
- Erik
- Popular name derived from the Old Norse Eirìkr (eternal ruler), a compounding of the elements ei (ever, always) and ríkr (ruler, king).
- Gregory
- derives from the Latin name “Gregorius”, which came from the late Greek name “Γρηγόριος” (Grēgórios) meaning “watchful, alert” (derived from Greek “γρηγoρεῖν” “grēgorein” meaning “to watch”).
So coincidence or not? Both sets of parents named me king. However, my biological mom named me a gift from God to be king and my affluent white family named me king to be watchful and alert. This next part of my life is no longer just my story. It is the story of FYMM and so it is now our story. My entire life I had been alone and the only people who could tell me where I came from were dead. All I could go on is what both sets of parents named me. Maybe that was the grand path both of my moms envisioned when they risked so much to keep my birth and adoption a secret. Armed with my names and my new ideology I set off to Kentucky to build my empire.
THE ORIGIN OF FYMM
I had been in Kentucky for less than 24 hours before I was tested, passed the test, and started building a team of people who were about one thing, MONEY. At 22 I didn’t much care how I was going to make it, any way possible really. My attitude attracted three other like minds, I told them my new phrase “Fuck You Make Money” and explained what it meant, if you are not trying to make money with me then fuck you. My first plan of action was to figure out a way to make money. I renamed the three of them. I had Fredrick Douglass because I could always have intellectual conversations with him and he had the most business sense. Nat Turner, because he was crazy enough to actually be Nat Turner, then Amistad, I gave him this name because he was always watching, like my intelligence. During one of our first meetings I thought of this phrase “Fuck you make money is the upliftment of all black people from being Slave minded Niggers to becoming a military-minded nigga: never ignorant getting goals accomplished. I read it to my crew and they loved it since that phrase was really easy for me to write. I decided the easiest way to make money was to write a quote book. On 4/20/06 I began writing little quotes and poems of our everyday lives. In less than a week I had about 140 quotes enough for a book. We were armed with an idea and a book. We got popular fast, people liked the book, we spent some money, made some tee shirts and were well on our way to success.
We figured having a car detail business was the fastest easiest way to make everyday money. At first, Nat Turner’s family was supportive, his grandmother allowed us to use the water and his uncle allowed us to use his pressure washer. Well when we started making money his uncle would shortstop us and take the money from the clients with the argument it was his pressure washer. Needless to say that business did not last long. That caused problems between me and my crew, that was the only legal idea we had, besides selling the book. Well my original investment money ran out and I went broke, this time I could not go back to Mom’s house, but I knew in five weeks I was going to get distribution so all I had to do was survive for 5 weeks.
Homeless
While homeless the people around me began to change the original family I had flown out to stay with, no longer wanted anything to do with a “loser”. They were just like the people who earlier in life treated me like the plague when I went broke. The new people in my life showed me how to survive in California Park Louisville, all I had was the book I wrote and one more book “The 48 laws of power” for five weeks. Louisville was full of abandoned houses so I found one in the neighborhood and took shelter. That lasted for about a week or so then I had to move. I don’t remember why but sleeping inside was no longer an option. I started sleeping on the front porch until a friend told me I could sleep in his garage. He said it was not safe to sleep outside. It is funny that was a horrible time in my life but also one of the best learning experiences I have ever had. When I finished “48 laws of power” it had been about 5 weeks, I made a few phone calls and was on my way back to California.
Biological
I was staying at one of my cousin’s apartments, I knew it was temporary but sleeping on the floor was much better than being homeless. With money in my pocket and having to endure 5 weeks of starving and surviving I was ready to relax a little. We decided to go to Las Vegas for a few days, so my cousin and his wife were on our way to “sin” city. While there I met a girl from Arizona living in Prague, we chatted all night and made a plan that I would go and visit her in a few weeks, a European vacation. One of my sisters had been living in Israel and was going to be in Asheville, North Carolina for a couple of weeks. I had not seen my sister for a few years so I jumped on the opportunity to see her. I called Lola and told her I was going to be visiting soon. While planning my trip back to Asheville with Lola I asked her if she had ever heard of the name of my biological mother. She told me the name sounded familiar, well she did not mention it again so I stopped asking. When I arrived at the Asheville airport Lola had a surprise for me. I grabbed my bags and started to wait outside for Lola, a couple of black people approached me and started asking me questions:
Them: I hear you know sister Lola
Me: Yea why what’s it to you
Them: I hear you are out here looking for someone
Me: No, not anyone that you would know
Them: (full of excitement) I am her and this is your brother, I am your Mom
Lola showed up shortly after we took pictures and I was on my way to my biological mother’s house. See, meeting someone’s biological family could be great, but remember a little lie 22 years before? I was welcomed but I also got the feeling like people were looking at a ghost. I was only in Asheville for two weeks before I was going on my European vacation so I did not have much time to process everything. My two weeks were up and I was on my way to Prague, I remember thinking “I hope I remember what she looks like” We talked all night long but it was in dim light and I was half drunk. Well, when I saw her we both had to do a double-take and then we recognized each other. The first thing she asked was how I felt about driving, I said sure where are we going? Paris, she answered. We rented a car and drove through the night to Paris, we stopped in Strasbourg, she had read about the city and wanted to stop so we did. Strasbourg is a great city full of culture and food, big but not too big.
When we got to Paris we found parking and started to see the city, when it started getting late we discussed getting a hotel but then realized there was no point to spend hundreds of dollars just to sleep, since we were going to go to a nightclub, so we just slept in the car. We woke up, went to the Eiffel tower, and then headed back to Prague. For two people who just met we worked very well together for the few weeks I was with her. When it was time to head home I did not have anywhere to go, Kentucky was not an option, California was not an option, so I was like I guess it is time to meet my biological family, so I was on my way back to North Carolina.
Back in Asheville, I showed my book to a few of my cousins but one particular cousin understood my vision and was ready to help in every way. We took the original book and put it on the computer with pictures, matching pictures with quotes. With my cousin’s help, FYMM became real. We explored every possibility FYMM could be, and the results were mind-blowing. FYMM is everything and every one no matter the color of the skin. So the book changed from being the upliftment of all black people to the upliftment of all people, and we edited all the quotes, which just pertained to black people to all people. In essence he showed me how to take the “street” out of FYMM. During this time I filmed everything, we would have filming sessions and just discuss the book and what it meant to each person in the car. The most memorable session I had was a week before a trip to Israel and my sister joined us. that session proved the book was really for everyone. If my white sister living in Israel can have an intellectual conversation with my black family in North Carolina about a book, then the book really has power.
The next week I was in Israel, and wrote another book, this time it was more of a short story of my week in Israel, titled “One Week In Israel.”
One day a friend approached me about putting music behind the quotes, I have never once in my life desired to be a rapper so I found some aspiring artists and played a little bit, I read them a quote and they thought about the quote as the topic of the song then they rapped about it. It worked, I was again really impressed how versatile the quotes were, this was before youtube.
My cousin and I hit a roadblock when it came to the Internet and how to get the message out to the world, with zero funding and a still immature mind I failed again. My cousin and I’s relationship started to deteriorate and then one day after a fight he told me to not come back to him until I “grow up and become Mr. Johnson.”
The Dead Years
After losing my cousin, FYMM ended, I turned in the gloves and decided he was right. It was time for me to grow up, I was 27 with nothing but failed attempts. My sister had left Israel by that time and was living in Cambridge. She persuaded me to move north and start school. My brother-in-law and I made a deal that he would show me how to go to Harvard and I would go to school. Come summer I was taking classes at Harvard. The first couple of years at Harvard saw me eradicate all of my past and grow fully away from FYMM. I fully indulged in my new FYMM free life. At the time I could not imagine education and FYMM were one in the same thing, I believed they had no business in the same sentence together.
Then I started to take history classes, the first class I took was Africa and Africans. This was a doozy of a class; my professor was relentless with the number of books she required us to read. Although it was an excruciating process I learned an unbelievable amount. The things which stood out to me the most was the treatment of the Congolese people at the hands of King Leopold, and the fact that the British Empire had concentration camps in Kenya after WW2. Both these pieces of history seemed to be forgotten or never even mentioned in school. Then I took an American Colonization class. Most of this class was boring until we started to discuss the south. I learned that at one point in time South Carolina was predominantly black on a 2 -1 basis. It amazed me how little I actually knew about my heritage and the history of Black Americans. Throughout school we are taught the importance of the statue of liberty and the immigration process on Ellis Island, we however are not taught that Sullivan Island off the coast of Charleston was the port that received 80% of Black Americans. Education is funny, at first you realize how much you don’t know then it becomes a drug and we can become obsessed with acquiring more information on any particular subject. This is what was beginning to happen to me, I wanted to understand more about my heritage and the importance of South Carolina to the black community.
FYMM was slowly coming back into my life and I began to read the quotes, after 4 years. I realized that FYMM was not just a quote book, but a life manual on how to stay focused and not succumb to all the pressures of life. My girlfriend at the time really helped me dust off the book, she was interested in my past and started to ask a lot of questions and wanted to watch all of the videos. While partaking in this I started to enjoy the conversations we had, the conversations once again proved to me that FYMM was special. Being a schoolteacher in the inner city of Boston her words carried weight.
Then Africa came, a class about slaving and slavery, perfect. Going to Africa and seeing the slave castles and all the other sites were life-changing. I am not an emotional person but being at one of the castles and looking at the route map and then looking at the ocean it hit me, tears started to run down my cheeks. It was almost as if I could hear the souls and see the castle in its prime, it made everything very real. I did not go to Africa just to learn about slavery, the first night in Ghana I went to a local bar and met Joe, a street kid. I wanted Joe to show me the Ghana foreigners don’t typically see, The Ghettos. I got two educations during that trip, one through books and the other through the streets. Although I had slept outside and been through my programs my body and mind were not mentally prepared to fully explore Africa how I wanted to. My Immune system and school hindered Joe and me from any extended research trips so we mostly just talked and strategized. Every night talking with someone for a couple of months we grew an amazing bond. I told him that I owned some land but there was an opportunity to buy more. The plan was this; I buy the land we get him into America and he helps me with the garden and the animals. It was an 8-acre plot. We had many nights to plan so we planned every detail. He would be the first of many to come work on our farms in America and then after a few years on our American farms, we send them to our farms in Africa or to a different division of the company. Before African studies I was in school for; economics and computer science. The farm was just as much to learn about the commodities market as it was the cultivation of food. The property I owned was in South Carolina so it had a special meaning to have FYMM reborn in South Carolina because of the rich black history in the state.
Joe and I tried every method to get him into the states, from his end. Ebola in West Africa put an end to all our efforts to get him into the states. As frustrating as it was for me it was devastating to Joe. Once again I built a crew and started cutting trees, Joe and I had this grand vision but the crew I had just built had a paycheck on their mind, and nothing more so laziness prevailed and I went broke again. Just like each time before when I went broke I not only lost money but I also lost the people around me. Now in my early thirties, I had failed numerous times so I changed the way I approached things. I wanted to see and truly understand what my worst-case scenario would be and build from there. I bought a Tax Property house for 3,800$, the house was in horrible condition but it was a place to live for free for at least two years. For the first year, it was new and exciting learning a new way of life and trying new things. I learned how to make liquor and was mentored on many different logical ways of thinking. In the book there is a quote “ watch out nigga don’t get stuck, wake up three years later like what the fuck”. Although I was settled in my very simple life, living my worst-case scenario was not living to my full potential.
Erik Johnson Leader of FYMM
When I was in Africa I also learned about other prominent slave ports, Cartagena in Colombia was one of them. I first went to Cartagena when I was thirty, the same year I was in Africa and the same year I bought land in South Carolina. Cartagena is a city like I had never seen. Everyone (not everyone obviously) has the same skin complexion and bone structure as I do. I was stuck in Pacolet with nowhere to go, I met a Colombian girl online and instantly was hooked. Not in the way most people think this next part of the story can be confusing. Early on in our relationship, I did a couple of things that most people would have run from me, but she stayed. She has never been my girlfriend but more of a family member. If you were to ask her she would say she hates me and never loved me. Erik, why are you telling us your love story? Because I would not be writing this if it was not for her. The longest consistent relationship I have ever had was with her, for the entire time four years we never have gone two consecutive months without talking. I am 36 now and I am talking about the fact that she has been the most consistent thing in my life since my parents, what she provided to me was stability. It did not matter she was in Colombia, had a boyfriend, hated me, whatever the case she was always there. She got me out of my worst-case scenario life, she was never satisfied with anything I did. So what, I worked harder. We all need motivation, I would have never just moved to Cartagena but I wanted to be close to her ( she lives in Medellin) at least in the same country. During my time in Cartagena, I have met great people who listened to and understood the book. I also see Cartagena as being a pivotal location for FYMM. The most important thing I have to give my girlfriend credit for is she never let me settle, over the last 4 years every time I felt accomplished she would always remind me that it was not good enough and then point out another one of my faults. To most that would have been belittling and problem-causing, but I looked at it as new missions to conquer. One of the lessons my mom taught me after my father died was this “be careful when you are using someone that person could be using you”. In her eyes and in the eyes of my peers they all figured she was using me and did not understand my perspective, in the end, the small amount of money I gave her was minuscule at best to the amount she helped me acquire. With her emotional attachment and consistency, I was able to focus and develop as a man, and by creating the illusion in my mind that one day we would be married it allowed me to start collecting everything a girl would want from her husband; stability, jewelry, savings, 0 debt, and having a profitable business. So as we come to a close of the origin I would have to say the most influential person to FYMM without her even knowing was her. The first time we met in person I joked and told her I was king of the niggas, with her help we have been able to transform me into a much more disciplined respectable leader, and a much better man to follow.
Why does it matter?
When I was younger I was in a rush to be successful, have a huge estate with servants, a private jet, just being rich and famous has never been enough for me, I always wanted the lifestyle of royalty. Time and time again no matter how much time and energy I put into something it always yielded the same result, failure. When I prayed to my Parents and to God, all I would ask for was guidance. One quote from the book is “lead your people and the money will come”, this particular quote is different from the others. I did not write this quote, it came to me, I woke up one morning and it must have been divine interaction because it was being told to me, a voice in my head told me to “lead my people and the money will come”. For 14 years I have been trying to make sense of what that meant. I have always looked at myself as a leader, or have been put in leadership roles, but who are my people? The best way to lead is by example, I cannot say every decision I have made has been a followable action, but I have lived my life with one main goal which is, always progress no matter what.
When I was at Aspen Achievement Academy I worked as hard as I could to achieve the highest level (eagle), I accomplished all of the requirements, my group looked to me as their leader, but the staff refused to promote me. They told me “ I was going through the motions but I wasn’t ready”, at first I was irate, I used my influence so my entire group was uniformly frustrated. After I calmed down a couple of days later, I stopped caring about the title of “eagle” and just led my group with no goal or purpose other than to just lead, because my people looked to me for guidance. I was no longer force-feeding my leadership, I was leading by example only. A few days later I was taken outside and given my eagle ceremony, after the ceremony the staff explained to me their reasoning. “ Erik when you were focused on just obtaining “eagle” that was your only focus, you were leading only for a title not leading to lead, when you stopped caring about a title and became genuine that’s when you became leader”.
A King alone is nothing, what makes leaders and kings are the people not the individual, One common theme through history with the greats, the people we still remember today, is they all had an eventful story and life. 5 key aspects create great kings and leaders; How they were raised, Perseverance, Knowledge of self, Hardships, and Education. I often think about what type of global leader I would have been at age 22, the answer is scary, I was not mentally mature enough to understand the long term consequences of each action and every action made. Over the years people have told me “you came and visited me in my dream last night” or “I prayed and prayed and now you are here” after reading my struggle and ideology it would not be shocking if in a time of need I also come and visit you, pray and I will be there. Through my life and my writings I hope to inspire, motivate, offer guidance, and much needed support those of us who have no one. How I was raised, my ability to persevere, my knowledge of self, the many struggles I have overcome, and my many different forms of education I have endured. Has prepared me to look at any problem and only see solutions. So allow me to uplift you from a slave minded mentality and transform you into becoming a “N.I.G.G.A” Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished.
