Xavier Lewis

Bucky Irving reveals his dad died when he was 2 and his 15 year old brother was killed when his childhood home was shot up, but says one of the hardest parts of escaping that environment was realizing success required separation from bad influences and that meant saying no to friends and family who weren’t making the same sacrifices he was, like getting up at 4:50am every morning to workout “What really motivates me every day… I lost my dad when I was two years old, so I never really got a chance to meet him. I always keep that in the back of my head, like, what if I had a dad? How would my life be?” “I lost my grandma… Then when I was in school my freshman year, I got a call and, my little brother had been killed at 15 years old. Just being there, the environment and the area that I grew up in… My house being shot up. It was just a whole bunch of things.” “I used to ask my mom, how did my dad die? She said from gun violence and being in the streets. I was always around that stuff, but I always tried to go a different route. The hardest thing is growing up with your close friends and then, it comes to a point where you got to separate yourself.” “Because they’re not on the same thing you’re on. And it hurt. It hurt bad. It ain’t easy, bro, saying no to your family members that been there for you. But at the end of the day, I'm the one getting up at 4:50 in the morning, going and working my ass off. At the end of the day, you gotta say no, and gotta lock in at some point.”