Talking Trash With Quavo and Reforming Probation Laws: Two Days With Sixers Partner Michael Rubin

playahaitian

playahaitian

Rising Star
Certified Pussy Poster
www.gq.com

Talking Trash With Quavo and Reforming Probation Laws: Two Days With Sixers Partner Michael Rubin

The billionaire has made himself a force in criminal justice reform by assembling a coalition of the 0.1% and MCs. The juxtaposition of his wealth and his cause can induce whiplash.
www.gq.com www.gq.com

Talking Trash With Quavo and Reforming Probation Laws: Two Days With Sixers Partner Michael Rubin
The billionaire has made himself a force in criminal justice reform by assembling a coalition of the 0.1% and MCs. The juxtaposition of his wealth and his cause can induce whiplash.
BY TYLER R. TYNES
June 28, 2021
Virginia governor Ralph Northam chats with Meek Mill and Michael Rubin at the signing of a bill setting state limits on the length of probation.Courtesy of Reform Alliance

“Lil Baby and 21 Savage have been talking shit,” the billionaire Michael Rubin tells me. “I’m gonna humiliate them.” It’s Game 1 in Philadelphia, as the Sixers prepare to clash with the Atlanta Hawks in the second round of the NBA playoffs, and Rubin and I are sitting in a private room underneath the arena. Rubin is one of the three main partners who own the 76ers; he also holds a minority stake in the New Jersey Devils and is the majority owner of the sports retailer Fanatics. He’s a proud Montgomery County boy, and he’s been taking bets with rappers and hustlers down south on the outcome of the series.
Rubin is unlike any other sports owner I’ve ever met. He’s young, wears Virgil Abloh’s Off-White sneakers and Supreme puffy pants, and frequently hangs out with titans of the sports and entertainment industry. Magic Johnson kicks it with him courtside at Sixers games. Shaq takes pictures with his mom on her birthday. Lil Baby sleeps at his house in the Hamptons; the Atlanta rapper says it looks like “the Google headquarters.”
Rubin brings me to a cordoned-off section of the arena near the floor for pregame drinks. We slam shots of Don Julio “1942” tequila before walking courtside. Josh Harris, the Sixers' primary owner, shakes hands. “Are you ready to do this shit?” Rubin asks, clapping loudly to no one in particular. Daryl Morey, the new general manager of the team and the avatar of NBA analytics, towers over Rubin’s right shoulder. The wrestler Triple H pounds cold ones in the corner. And then we meet Rubin’s guest of the night, Migos frontman Quavo, who guides us to the sidelines and posts up next to me for the game.
ADVERTISEMENT
Stunning New York Apartments For RetireesYou may be surprised by the luxury on senior apartments. Look for senior apartments in New York.SPONSORED BY SYSTEM1 | SEARCH ADSLearn More
Quavo rises up after another Trae Young bucket while a Sixers fan to his left looks on in dismay.
Jesse D. Garrabrant / Getty Images


Quavo is a Hawks superfan—something I didn’t know existed for a franchise that’s made the Eastern Conference Finals only twice in 50 years. I assumed Quavo would keep a low profile, until he boomed from his seat after a first-quarter jumper by the rising Hawks superstar point guard Trae Young: “I’m in here mane! I’m the only n-gga cheering for these n-ggas too!”

The Sixers are getting pummeled in the first half. “Fuuuuuck!” Rubin yells after another Young splash. He mocks Quavo every time the Sixers get a bucket. Quavo gives his friend a single compliment, admitting “Y’all got a steal in [rookie point guard Tyrese] Maxey.” But then all goodwill is destroyed as Quavo’s boys behind us yell at Sixers small forward Tobias Harris: “Yo! Fake ass J. Cole! You suck, bro!” Quavo Facetimes his Migos partner Offset to show him the antics. “I’m gonna destroy that phone,” Rubin says. “We gotta get security to escort you outta here.” Everyone giggles. Every few minutes, Rubin leans behind Quavo to tap me—“Hey, we’re coming back! It’s not over. I need you to cheer extra loud.” The Philadelphian blood in my body boils ready to believe him. “This place is special, we ain’t goin’ out like this.”
WATCH

Lil Dicky's $572,090 Shopping Spree




ADVERTISEMENT

As everyone now knows, The Sixers did in fact go out like that, losing game one and eventually game seven in embarrassing fashion in front of their home fans. The mood after game one was dreary, and I sat at the bar ahead of the buzzer, nursing an attitude. Quavo and Rubin came back to find me, in obvious glee and agony respectively. The pair insisted that we continue to drink, which I begin to think is a talent they’ve both acquired from being rich. Quavo starts jabbing at Rubin.

“Well, Mike,” he says. “We got a Maybach truck ready for ya when you come through Atlanta.”
“Fuck a Maybach truck,” Rubin responds. “We comin’ for ya heart. Just drink this. Oh, and congrats, I guess.”
“Thanks Mike for my first Philly basketball game!” Quavo chuckles.
We reach for the sky and down yet another portion of poison. Quavo jets off to Miami for the Floyd Mayweather fight, where he and the Migos will perform. Rubin is also leaving, but not before assuring me of something important. He grabs my hand, daps me up and issues a missive that can only come from a man who suffers from the psychosis of Philadelphia fandom.
“Hey! Look at me! Sixers in five, baby.”
Michael Rubin heads towards the court at Game 1 of Sixers-Hawks.
Courtesy of Darren Tolud
Rubin first came to public attention back in 2018, when he helped free the Philadelphia-born street poet Meek Mill from prison. Meek had been sent back to jail due to a violation of his 8-year probation stemming from a misdemeanor gun possession charge in 2007, when Meek was 19 years old. Rubin, who first met Meek when he sat next to the rapper at the 2015 NBA All-Star Game, came to the courthouse on the day Meek was taken away because Meek wanted him to see “what the courts do to Black people,” Rubin tells me. He had not known about this aspect of the American justice system, and he says he was moved to action, making public and private pushes to free Meek as soon as possible. He got Allen Iverson to persuade a family that had a poor experience with the judge who jailed Meek to testify; he organized rallies on Meek’s behalf, and corralled other Philadelphia athletes like Malcolm Jenkins and Joel Embiid to show up at them.
All of this culminated in one of the greatest moments in recent Philadelphia history: When Meek was freed from jail, Rubin picked him up in a helicopter and flew him to a Sixers game. It remains, to this day, one of the wildest moments I’ve ever witnessed. That moment also afforded Rubin a cultural stamp of approval that his money could never buy. Which other sports owner frees a damn rapper from jail and makes the backdrop of it feel like a Rick Ross music video?



Most Popular


ADVERTISEMENT

The flashy freeing of Meek Mill from jail wasn’t a one-time occasion. The way the rapper was treated awakened something in Rubin, he tells me a few days later in his private jet, as we fly with Meek and Lil Baby from the Hamptons to Richmond, Virginia. So Rubin created the Reform Alliance, an organization whose mission is to change probation and parole laws nationwide. It boasts founding partners like Clara Wu Tsai (wife of Nets owner Joe Tsai), and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, plus Black billionaires from Jay Z to Robert F. Smith, with Meek Mill as the face of the organization. Rubin’s aim is to entrust a gaggle of the smartest minds fighting for criminal justice reform (like former Sacramento activist Robert Rooks, who’s now the Reform Alliance’s CEO, to Jessica Jackson, a litigator who was the force behind 2018’s First Step Act) to push new laws over the hump in local statehouses and help defang the nation’s racist system of justice.

This morning, that means appearing in front of constituents in Richmond, where Rubin’s team lobbied to help pass a new law introducing significant probation reform. Virginia had been one of only seven U.S. states that allowed open-ended probation sentences, and the average length of probation there increased 56% between 2000 and 2018. The state’s. incarceration rate is higher than the U.S. overall, and according to 2014 data, Black people were five times more likely than whites to be imprisoned there. The bill limits the amount of jail time a court can impose for probation violations to five years for felony offenders and one year for misdemeanor charges. After July 1st, small mishaps during probation can no longer be a wrecking ball to the lives of the powerless. “This is a big win for us,” Saj Cherian, Rubin’s chief of staff, tells me during the flight. “You know how tough state politics can be.”
Meanwhile, Lil Baby is talking on and on—perhaps in jest, perhaps not—about how he wants to run for mayor of Atlanta, while Rubin works on memorizing the names of politicians he needs to shake hands with. On the ground, we’re greeted by a fleet of black Chevy Suburbans to escort us to the capitol. Rubin keeps going over those names. The billionaire can be very self-deprecating in conversation, often making fun of his physique while he snacks on junk food, or lamenting his lack of reading skills. He reminds me of a character from Succession who actually went to therapy. “It’s North-am...right?” he asks someone in the car, trying to remember the Virginia governor’s surname. “My single worst skill set is remembering.”
The 20 minute cruise to the capitol building feels odd at times: here’s a billionaire trying to make a difference, while being coached by people who’ve worked in the movement for a while about the difference his money is making. Meek informs Rubin how the prison game goes and Rubin stares, wide-eyed, as if hearing a secret Wu Tang album for the first time. “So it’s really about showing them love and celebrating them…?” Rubin asks, sheepishly, waiting for someone to tell him if he’s right. “Forty percent of the people in jails are in for technical violations in this state?”
Rubin made his billions by buying and selling a series of apparel companies. Now he occasionally makes bids for ownership of American sports franchises—most recently, an attempt to buy the Carolina Panthers with Steph Curry and Sean “Diddy” Combs. He tells me, jokingly, that because he’s been so singularly focused on his businesses for most of his life, he doesn’t know too much about anything outside of them. His tunnel vision was only money and success. The attempt to widen it, at the age of 48, is not an easy one. The question is how much it matters whether a rich, white man who’s become popular for freeing powerless Black ones knows anything much about the system he’s trying to defeat?



Most Popular


ADVERTISEMENT

“People always tell me how lucky [Meek] is to have me as his friend. I look at it the opposite way, how lucky am I that I get to be his friend,” Rubin tells me. “Because I was locked in on work. It was just work, work, work. And going through that experience with him, watching him go to prison for not committing a crime, watching one of your closest friends go to jail for two to four years, it’s [crazy]. People give me too much credit. My only thought was how do I get him out of prison. I wasn’t focused on fixing the system. I just wasn’t trying to let [his imprisonment] stand. It was fucking bullshit.”
“He had no power,” Rubin continues. “And I’m so used to being able to control my business outcomes. Once I learned through the experience of getting him out of prison, I realized the system is so fucked up. And so broken. As an entrepreneur, I believe things happen for a reason. You gotta turn negative into positive...and as soon as he got out, we had to do something about this. Probation stalked him his entire adult life, and it felt like nobody was really working on probation, so my entrepreneur’s instinct hit and it felt like such a huge responsibility to do this.”
At this moment, Meek starts to explain a bit about technical violations of probations and the jail time many Black folks face because of that. “See,” Rubin says, looking at the rapper with an unassuming smile. “I might not know this stuff as well as Meek.”
Rubin and Meek Mill at the Reform Alliance launch in 2019.
Nicholas Hunt / Getty Images
We pull up at the statehouse and the usual politicking begins. Black Democrats joke with Meek, while governor Ralph Northam tries to arrange some autographs with a goofy smile. Delegate Don Scott, the main supporter of the bill from the statehouse, is surprised to see Rubin here. “Guys like me would have never understood this,” Rubin says. He credits Meek bringing him to court the day he was jailed for the spark: “Things happened for a reason.”

People watch from the side streets, snapping pictures and going live on Instagram. Rubin and Meek are given the pens used to sign the bill as a sign of appreciation. After a few mandatory photo ops, Rubin is pulled from a small sea of people asking Sixers questions and offering fist bumps, and we jump back in the car. “Man, it’s hot as shit,” Rubin says. “That was insane.” As we drive away, neighborhood kids yell greetings to Meek and he tells the driver to slow down so the kids can snag some flicks. Rooks, the Reform CEO, turns to Rubin and says, “you helped a lot of people today. Authenticity is what matters.”



Most Popular


ADVERTISEMENT

At that moment, Meek Facetimes Jay Z, who he has in his phone as “Jigga,” giddy to tell Hov of his good deeds. “We just changed the laws in VA!,” Meek bleats excitably. “That’s crazy, right?!” Hov nods at Meek like a delinquent son who finally brought home good grades. The Reform Alliance got involved in the Virginia bill after Meek saw Don Scott talking about trying to get the law passed on Twitter and used his millions of followers to help push it. “If I don’t do dumb shit on Twitter, I can modify voices and help,” he says happily. Rubin jokes: “He finally did something right on Twitter.” Rubin asks Meek what familiarity Jay-Z had with Virginia. “He was doin’ business here,” Meek says. Rubin looks confused. “He was trappin’!” Rubin seems to understand that business concept.
We pull into the hangar and prepare to board the plane when Meek turns to me, saying “this must be a crazy day to you, huh?” I tell him I’ve seen bill signings before, to which he takes some umbrage: “Changing laws for Black people, ain’t nothin’ regular about it. This ain’t no regular day.” Who was I to argue with such sound logic? As we take off, Rubin reflects on the day, saying he had no clue what he was getting into, but that it’s unreal to see the fruits of his labor.
“I know if we don’t do this, nobody will,” he tells me. “It doesn’t matter how much money I make. To be able to really make a difference is a special feeling I get that I’ve never felt before.”
I tell him he hasn’t finished answering my question about the criticism he takes as a white billionaire who had never, at least this publicly, cared about Black people until Meek was put behind bars. (“There’s chatter in some circles that the bond between the rich white guy and the ascending rap star is really little more than a branding opportunity,” Philadelphia Magazine wrote in 2018.) It’s easy to believe from the outside that he’s just another wealthy autocrat who takes no account of others' opinions. Just this month, Meek posted a video on Instagram of Rubin giving Robert Kraft a rare, custom Bentley sports car paid for by Meek, Hov and a bevy of others. It drew the ire of plenty of people who don’t live the fanciful life of the rich and famous. How seriously can Rubin’s Reform Alliance efforts be taken when he’s doing things like that? He sits back as the jet jumps into the air and ponders my question.
“I don’t take anything away from anyone wanting to critique me, and saying why did it take one of his best friends, a famous rapper, to wake him up,” he says. “Guess what? I was locked in, working, doing what I love to do. I didn’t think it was my responsibility to do this. I wasn’t trying to give back. I wasn’t trying to be a better person. I was just living my life. This happened to him and I was so offended by what I saw, I asked what I can do to make a difference. That to me is, like, destiny. You can’t do something that’s unnatural to you. Like, I’m not gonna try and be somebody I’m not. And when I saw it happen to him and saw how many hopeless people there are, we have no choice. We have to fix this. So, maybe I should feel bad, but I don’t feel bad at all. I’m already self-critical, it took that to open my eyes. Who woulda thought.”
After a few lobster rolls, we hover toward the ground. Rubin invites me to a Sixers game in the future and looks me in the eyes as we land. He slaps my hand and says, “hey, let’s fuck them up the next few games.” Then, as I prepare to call a car home from the New Jersey airport, Rubin stops me. He wants me to ride in his helicopter to Manhattan—after all, it’s much quicker than an Uber.
I’m hesitant about the idea. I’m not really one for heights unless it’s mandatory. He pleads that I trust him and get in the ‘copter. We sat down as I nervously shake, while Meek laughs at me from across the seats. Rubin, in a jokey, reassuring voice—the same one he uses with the rappers he now calls friends and the lawmakers he’s forcing to change this country— wonders what was keeping me.

“Scared of helicopters?” he asks. “Don’t worry dude, I’ll hold your hand.”
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top