Metta World Peace: I Learned How to Cook Crack at 13

Metta World Peace learned how to cook crack when he was just 13 years old.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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ESPN's Highly Questionable is having a solid week so far, squeezing out sports-related interviews that are not filled with clichés and don't totally suck.

On Monday, Fat Joe made an appearance on the show and revealed that Anthony Mason was the Knicks player The Notorious B.I.G. was rapping about on his classic song "I Got a Story to Tell." On Tuesday, HQ came right back with another very candid and insightful interview with Metta World Peace that featured him talking about the craziness of his life, starting with his childhood in the projects of Queens, New York.

At one point during the interview, World Peace talked about learning to cook crack almost immediately after hitting his teenage years. "That was something I'm not proud of, obviously," he told HQ's Dan Le Batard, Bomani Jones, and Papi. "But it was something that was introduced to me at an early age."

He went on to say that, although he eventually stopped manufacturing drugs, one of his brothers didn't and ended up doing a 10-year stint in prison because of it.

World Peace then admitted that the reason he sold drugs was the reason almost everyone does it—to make money. "At that time, you see the money transaction, it was like, 'Oh, wow! I can make 10 dollars real quick,'" he said. "'I can make 100 dollars today.' At that time, it was like, 'Oh, wow, if I can get that money I can buy some sneakers.'"

Later, when asked about the scariest part of his upbringing, World Peace relayed a story about almost flushing a large amount of drugs down the toilet when cops came knocking on his cousins' door one day. "My cousins [were] cutting up the crack and everything and the police started knocking on the door," he said, while adding that his cousins lived near Mobb Deep's Prodigy and Havoc. "I was about to flush the drugs in the toilet and my cousin was like, 'Don't flush the drugs. That's a lot of money!'"

Elsewhere in the interview, World Peace also talked about how unprepared he was for the NBA, a breakdown he had with the Bulls, talking to a psychologist, drinking Hennessy at halftime of games, regretting his actions with the Pacers, and using former Chicago GM Jerry Krause as a reference when he applied for a job at Circuit City once.

The greatest thing about World Peace is his honesty throughout the interview. There's no pausing. No ducking. No thinking about how a PR person would phrase something. He is, as always, straightforward, which is why his interviews are always must-see TV.

You can check out World Peace's entire interview above.

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