- Well, I'm kicking it with Kaley Cuoco and Mackenzie Foy,
give it up!
Woo-hoo!
From Venus and Serena to Kevin Costner to Dr. Dre,
some really big names have come out of Compton here in LA,
but it's not just athletes and artists who come from there,
the community also has a growing band of cowboys.
That's right, cowboys.
And you can read all about them in the new book,
"The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys
in America's Urban Heartland."
Let's welcome the leader of the Compton Cowboys,
give it up for Randy Savvy.
(Clarkson claps loudly)
How beautiful.
Aww.
- Oh, it's got some blaze on it's face.
Aww.
Hello.
Okay, you look kinda very cool right now, Randy.
- Thank you, Kelly.
- Yeah. (Kelly giggles)
- Am not just from my Noble Steve.
- Oh my God, how tall, like how many inches,
- 32, probably there.
- Okay, that's big enough is what I say.
- He is a good boy, he is a stallion.
- Oh my God, a stallion. - His name is Goble Bullock.
- Well, first of all, tell us what
Compton and Cowboys is all about.
- Yeah, so thanks for having me.
Compton Cowboys is where a collective
or a small group of friends
from Richland Farms, Compton California.
- Yeah.
- We started riding horses together as kids
in a program that my aunt founded
in 1988 called the Compton Junior Posse,
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- Which was a nonprofit community organization
that used horseback riding that keeps kids off the streets.
- Yeah.
- And so myself and my friends kinda came together
and was like riding.
I was born into it, my friends kinda came around.
And these horses really saved our life,
they really gave us a, a good rooted,
just good energy and kept us distracted
and kept us focused on something other than the streets,
so, our motto is streets raised us, horses saved us.
That's our real life.
- Oh, wow.
- And so now as adults,
we're like how do we pay forward to the next generation,
because it's important.
The community kids in the community need
these kinds of resources,
these kind of outlets. - [Kelly] Yes really.
- And so that's what we do now.
Compton Cowboys, we in our community,
giving back to the kids
to give introducing them to this lifestyle.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- They bring so much peace to your life,
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And they're, recently we just led
a Black Lives Matter peace ride in Compton,
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And a lot of those, a lot of the,
well, at least the media tried to spend a lot
of those protests and rides just like,
looting and anger and anarchy
and just that kind of negative energy.
But the horses,
we felt it was important to have them out there
because they bring the peace.
So, all the calm that we need and just,
somewhere that way people could focus on our message,
- Mm-hmm.
- And what we're tryna do,
the horses were just on the front lines for us.
So that way we just, everybody was so happy,
the horses were there, they were calm,
and we got a great peace ride in our city.
And it was a great experience.
- That's amazing.
- Very inspirational.
- Yeah.
- I, and you, I know you ride your such--
- Oh my God, I'm like, I'm literally about to ball.
'Cause I horses have changed my life too,
and it's just so sweet to hear you.
I just heard about you guys actually
through that peace ride that you did,
and I started following you.
And I think it's so sweet, I know how wonderful they are
and how helpful they are to people
in getting their life together and kids,
and there's nothing like it.
So what you guys are doing is amazing.
- Do you get the same thing Mackenzie,
it's a pretty incredible thing that they're doing.
Do you think it's just,
do you get that kind of freedom when you ride?
- Absolutely.
It does so much for you,
horses and your soul.
Absolutely a 100% they do,
and then heal in ways that you don't even know.
Like, I don't know what I would do
at this point without horses.
- Well, tell us about this new book,
on Compton Cowboys.
- Yeah, well, it's just, it's important to,
now that we're out here telling our story,
we haven't been super detailed
and like, get painted the whole world for everybody to see
because we really want people to take it serious
and go dig deep and look.
And so what our book does, it kinda gives you that insight
into the background, the stories, the faces, the people.
The writer is the author, he was a,
a New York Times reporter at the time.
This is like three years ago
and he did a big story on us for the Times.
And that got a lot of attention,
and then us, a book deal came through through that.
So he just spent like three years with us,
just talking to us,
talking about how we feel about stuff, what our views are,
what our goals and dreams,
history, swag, all these different elements of it
and kinda just put it all
in one piece that people could go read.
So it kinda Chronicles our different stories,
- [Kelly] Cool.
- lifestyles, dreams, goals, frustrations,
sadness, emotions, traumas.
- How you got there.
- All of it.
And it's something that,
once you unpack it really blows your mind
because it's something that you've never imagined like,
running from a shootout,
jumping the gate so you could go hide in your horses stall,
because that's your safe space.
That kinda thing is something
that people would never imagine.
Like you will see that in a Western Film,
but you don't think you will see
that in the city of Compton, like,
in the area where it's,
you grew up rough.
Now, I want people to know though,
Compton is a beautiful place.
It's not just this like super thuggish
like whatever the media has painted it to be,
over the decades after the whole NWA thing.
Like people spun that into like making Compton
like it's just some war zone of like,
cocaine gang and crimes and drugs.
That exists there
which you could find that in any big--
- Yeah, it's 'cause you find it there.
- It was hyper concentrated due to a lot of factors but,
so we did grow up with a lot of that
fighting and running from,
and just dealing with those issues there.
But it's a beautiful place and these kind of outlets
help heal and work towards fixing that.
So, yeah, it kinda, it just gives you,
it gives you a good perspective, I would say overall.
- Yeah, oh my gosh,
I love that this horse, it hasn't like moved.
- It is so happy.
- I want this horse, you get on it and it just like walks.
- Most of this is 'cause of how we are raising.
(Kelly giggles happily)