00:00I would not agree to anyone to say, hey, you know, let's you know,
00:04let's tell the Diddy story and I'll tell you about how I was victimized.
00:08I wanted to tell the Shine story. I wanted to tell the story of triumph,
00:12the story of overcoming adversity and being the victor, not the victim.
00:19Shine has a lot on his mind when it comes to Diddy and politics.
00:23The rapper-turned-politician who goes by Moses Shine Barrow Levi
00:27sat down with a Hollywood reporter for an in-depth conversation about his life and career,
00:32his fall from grace during the infamous nightclub shooting involving now-disgraced music mogul Diddy
00:37and his rise within politics, all timed to the release of his new Hulu documentary,
00:42The Honorable Shine.
00:43I didn't want to do the Diddy documentary. Obviously, there's a history there. You know,
00:49he did things to me, to my family that devastated my family, but I didn't want to tell that story.
00:58It's ironic that that story is telling itself right now as this story is coming out.
01:04Everybody that heard me
01:08wanted to sign me.
01:10Shine's journey began as an immigrant child who moved to Brooklyn from Belize at just eight years
01:14old.
01:15Started in Belize. You know, started watching LL Cool J and Michael Jackson in Belize as a young
01:23kid. Came to Brooklyn when I was about eight years old. And we continued in poverty, but the poverty
01:29that we continued in, you know, was better than Belize. This ties into my political life of what
01:36I'm trying to create in Belize, where you can go from abject poverty, but based on your work ethic,
01:44based on your talent, based on your ability, you can become a multimillionaire at the age of 18.
01:52The aspiring rapper quickly rose through the ranks after releasing his self-titled
01:56debut album under Sean Diddy Combs' Bad Boy Records in 2000, which reached gold status.
02:02Def Jam wasn't really, no one was even close to Bad Boy Records at that time.
02:10Diddy then took the young rapper under his wing.
02:13However, Shine's promising career was quickly cut short when he was charged in a high-profile
02:18New York nightclub shooting in 1999, along with Diddy. During the subsequent trial, Shine was
02:24convicted in 2001 and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Meanwhile, Diddy was acquitted.
02:30I was, I was a fall guy. I was the sacrificial lamb. You know, you have a multimillion dollar
02:38corporation, a hundred million dollars generating hundreds of millions of dollars for BMG.
02:44And so it was either I go to jail or Diddy, who was the CEO and, you know, the revenue generator
02:55for the corporation. It wasn't as if we were in the club and we were acting bad or
03:02we were looking for trouble. You know, people were aggressing. People said that, you know,
03:07I'm gonna kill you. Someone drew a weapon and I was defending myself. So if Diddy did
03:12fire a weapon, you know, it would have been in that context. So I'm not here
03:17to be, you know, the person trying to crucify anyone. As I explained that to you,
03:25Diddy didn't do that for me at trial. He was like, oh, it was Shine.
03:30Shine also notes that the victim of that shooting also has a different stance than the verdict.
03:35Interestingly enough, the victim says today that Diddy shot her, but back then she said,
03:42you know, it was ambiguous. It was, well, you know, they both started firing. But as I said,
03:49you know, what went wrong is that it was a trial of self-defense and we could have all stuck
03:55together and the witnesses could have told the truth. The rapper ended up serving close to a
04:00decade in prison, but Shine did not give up on his music career. The artist dropped a sophomore
04:06album, Godfather Buried Alive, in 2004 while serving time. I put out another number one album
04:13while I was incarcerated. I think Tupac is the only one that did that. Shine also credits his
04:18spirituality and Judaism as his source of peace and liberation during a dark time. My mental
04:25supremacy and mental liberation is what got me through. And so Judaism had a lot to do with that,
04:34you know, and I'm not the first person that subscribes to Judaism that had gone through that.
04:43And what Judaism did for me was give me a blueprint of direct access to God. Shine was
04:50released in 2009, went back to Belize with time spent in Israel and Paris as well. But it was in
04:56Belize that he dove into politics, currently serving as a member of the House of Representatives
05:00in his native country, all of which is covered in his upcoming doc. Everything that I worked so hard
05:06for has been taken away from me. But then you would talk to someone whose problem is what
05:11they're going to eat today. You talk to someone whose problem is their children can't go to school
05:17because they can't afford to pay the school bill. How could I bring the opportunities that
05:23I had in the United States and I see in other developed nations to my people in Belize?
05:29He notes that it was eventually a friend that convinced him to think about politics.
05:33I think you'd be a great leader, not like a leader as what I am now. I didn't even imagine
05:39that at this time. But just a great political figure, a great representative. Yeah. And I said,
05:48you know what? You're right. And now there's so much more to tell. In the next year, Belize
05:53will hold its election and Shine could very well become the next prime minister.
05:58Now, as a legislator, now as hopefully the next prime minister of Belize,
06:03I can create that system that I rapped about. And I asked for the change. Now, I am the change
06:11agent is even when I was rapping as an 18 year old kid, I wasn't rapping for me. I was rapping
06:17for all the other 18 year old kids that had a voice that wanted to be heard, but their voices
06:24weren't being heard. And the system was brutal to them. So that's what inspires me today.
06:30The politician says he hopes his story serves as an inspiration for those overcoming difficult
06:35obstacles to serve a better life. I want to do is tell a story of
06:40indomitable soul of human beings. That no matter what we face, no matter how difficult life
06:50could be, that we all have within us the ability to persevere, the ability to thrive.
06:59I wanted to tell the Shine story. I wanted to tell the story of triumph,
07:03the story of overcoming adversity and being the victor, not the victim.
07:09The Honorable Shine will debut on Hulu November 18th. For more on this interview, head to THR.com.
07:15And for the latest entertainment news and updates, keep watching The Hollywood Reporter News.
Comments