- On “Lucky Me,” released Oct. 10, Rich Paul admits that he “never had the chance to be a kid” growing up in crime-ridden Cleveland with a drug-addict mother.
- The sports agent who represents NBA star LeBron James and others revealed he started selling marijuana and cocaine as a teenager and got a girl pregnant at 14
- Paul, 41, is worth an estimated $120 million and lives with superstar singer Adele in a $58 million Beverly Hills mansion
Adele’s “husband” revealed that she knew her mother was addicted to drugs when she was 4, learned how to play dice when she was 6, started selling drugs as a teenager and got a girl pregnant at 14.
Even now, sports agent Rich Paul still cringes when he hears loud bangs because he heard a lot of gunshots growing up on the dirty streets of Cleveland.
But he escaped a life of poverty to become a multi-millionaire and now lives with one of the richest singers in the world.
Paul, 41, has opened up about his life in a new memoir, Lucky Me, due out next week.
“I never had the chance to be a kid,” he wrote.
“Crack was so powerful that it destroyed my mother’s love and accelerated my adolescence. “I had to grow from a cub to a young wolf at once. “
Paul grew up in the Glenville area of Cleveland’s East Side. His parents were never married, his father, Rich Paul Sr., provided a stabilizing effect, while his mother, whom he called “Peach,” was addicted to drugs.
His father even once threatened to shoot him “like Marvin Gaye’s father” if his GPA slipped to a 1.4 and if he continued to fail in school.
Paul Sr. said, “If you keep doing this, I’m going to take you out of this world, man.” I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. I won’t spend a day in jail for this. You have been disrespecting me and I will show you what disrespect will do to you. I’ll show you what disrespect is,” he revealed.
Paul said his father’s threats worked.
“That moment changed the course of my life,” he wrote.
His grade point average quickly climbed back up and never fell below 3.6 again.
Paul received another shock at age 14, when a girl told him in the middle of a basketball game that he had gotten her friend pregnant.
After the girl’s abortion, Paul begins to reflect on what he learned about sex while growing up.
He writes: “I learned many valuable things, but healthy sexual habits were not one of them.
“Almost everything my friends and I learned about sex was wrong. We thought the more girls you had sex with, the higher your status was… It was like a disease.
“We bought them everything, giving them five or six hundred dollars at a time. I spent so much money at McDonald’s that they’d probably finish the McNuggets.
“What we’ve done is set up a toxic dynamic that, for some of us, has lasted a lifetime – where we view sex as a transaction or a way to show off our status, rather than a Plant behaviors rooted in love and commitment.”
Paul, who is now worth an estimated $120 million, currently lives in a $58 million Beverly Hills mansion with Adele, whom he began dating in 2021.
The status of their marriage is unclear, although Adele has twice referred to herself as “wife” and him as “husband” in recent weeks, admitting she is “obsessed” with him and saying she is “happily ever after.”
Paul admits that his difficult upbringing left him “constantly doubtful and hypervigilant.”Even in his new super-rich life, he writes, he still Having grown up listening to gunshots, you flinch when loud noises are made.
He described getting into a shootout on the street, then lying down and watching the events unfold.
He wrote: “I was walking in Beverly Hills today and whenever I heard a loud noise or saw someone running, my fight or flight response kicked in.
“I don’t want to be stuck in no man’s land.”
In his memoir, Paul describes growing up in a one-bedroom apartment above his father’s candy store in the 1980s.
He candidly described how the potent pandemic affected his childhood, writing, “Unless you live through it, you really don’t know.”
“When she used to,” he wrote, referring to his mother, “we had to fend for ourselves.” That’s why I feel like I never had a chance as a child,” he wrote.
Paul wrote that he once found bags filled with drug paraphernalia at home and recalled “strange noises” coming from his mother’s room.
“I had no idea my life was completely screwed up,” he wrote.
Paul describes seeing his mother attack his father for sex with other women.
He recalled that his mother “wreaked havoc on the women, dragging them outside and beating them” before she would go in and tear down the convenience store.
In 1990, when Paul was eight years old, his grandmother, Ruth, moved him, his sister, Brandi, and his brother, Meco, back to St. Louis.
He started playing basketball in middle school and discovered that he had a natural talent for basketball.
Meanwhile, Meco began selling drugs, which set him on a path that would eventually lead to prison.
Peach moved out to live on her own, and Paul felt “unbearably sad” to see her home without furniture.
“I never knew what was going to happen to her next,” he wrote.
Paul began selling marijuana for $20 a bag, and the money quickly began to accumulate, allowing him to purchase flashy designer gear.
He had a lot of money, and in seventh grade he spent $2,000 customizing his bike, spending $700 on a sweater and buying his first handgun.
But his father urged him to get a good education, so he went to Benedictine, a private Roman Catholic high school.
Paul’s mother became increasingly unstable, disappearing for days at a time.
In “Lucky Me,” Paul recounts a time when his mother pestered his father for money so she could buy drugs, so Paul gave her the cash.
“When you see your mother walk away clinging to some bills more tightly than she clings to you, it’s hard to trust anyone after that,” Paul wrote.
Dealing with Peach and addiction forced Paul to put on “emotional armor” around himself to “bury the pain it caused me.”
Because his neighbors were so harsh, “I couldn’t show any feelings because that would put me in danger. I even hid it from myself and it was eating me up from the inside,” he wrote.
When Paul entered the University of Akron in Ohio, he felt like he had “one foot on the street and one foot on the school.”
During the day he would study, but at night and on weekends he would play craps and deal marijuana.
Life on the streets became “addictive,” he wrote, but acknowledged that the “euphoria of victory” could easily turn into danger.
He said they included him and his father being hit in the face with an Uzi submachine gun by a friend after Paul Sr. took all his money.
The friend, whom Paul calls “Sleephead,” gave in after Paul Sr. told him to behave.
Everything changed quickly in 2000 when Paul Sr. died of cancer and his son “cryed like a baby.”
He grieved for ten days and then decided to start dealing cocaine because he felt he needed to be “more like a man.”
“Dad was the only thing keeping me from fully integrating into the streets,” Paul wrote.
“I never got any fairy tales from my father. He didn’t prepare me to be a loving, compassionate partner in an intimate relationship,” he says in the book.
‘I’m ready for war. Because that’s out of the gate. For f*cking war’.
Paul dropped out of college, but his street education reached “PhD level.”
As the money poured in, Paul bought flashy clothes and began traveling to Philadelphia and New York to attend basketball games, including the NBA All-Star Game.
He became “hood royalty,” spending tens of thousands of dollars on jewelry, platinum Rolex watches and expensive chains bearing his initials.
At 19, he bought his first house and began to feel like he knew how to “navigate culture” because he knew what was cool.
He spent tens of thousands of dollars on sportswear from designer brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Nike, and those companies are now asking him for advice on how to improve their business.
But life on the streets began to take its toll on Paul, and he was frightened when he was robbed of $300,000 in cash and an expensive watch.
Looking for new business, Paul met the owner of a store in Atlanta called Distant Replays, which sold rare sporting goods.
Sensing an opportunity, Paul worked there one weekend a month, buying sports jerseys at a 30 percent discount, which he then flew back to Cleveland to sell for a profit.
“Man, these jerseys are selling better than regular jerseys,” Paul wrote, admitting he makes $15,000 a month from his side business.
The book ends with Paul’s chance encounter with LeBron James at the Akron airport in 2001, the beginning of a friendship that would take both of them to the top of their careers.
Paul was heading to Atlanta to buy more jerseys, and James was impressed with his retro shirts.
From that point on, they became close, playing basketball together and talking about their lives: growing up in broken homes, losing neighborhood friends, and life on the streets.
In 2006, Paul began working for LeBron James’ agent, Leon Rose, and the following year, his company was acquired by major talent agency CAA.
It wasn’t until 2012 that Paul started his own talent agency, Klutch Sports Management, and two years later he made a breakthrough when he signed guard Eric Bledsoe with the Phoenix Suns.
The Basketball team initially offered $28 million over four years, but Paul held out and the Suns eventually offered $70 million over five years.
Paul’s biggest client remains James, who made $47 million from the Los Angeles Lakers last year.
His other clients include basketball stars such as Draymond Green, Anthony Davis and Zach LaVine.
One of Paul’s accomplishments was helping to repeal the NCAA’s so-called “Rich Paul” rule, which required agents to have a college degree, which he did not.
Reflecting on his life, Paul said he tried to take responsibility for the “moral cost” of his upbringing.
He described how his daughter’s upbringing was different from his, which made her more “vulnerable” because she wasn’t as constantly vigilant as he was.
He writes: “But I also envied her ability to engage with the world without constant doubt and excessive awareness.
“Not just the physical danger, but the emotional danger that my mother represented in my life at times.
“I protected myself from this danger by building a wall around my feelings. Even now, even with the people I care about most, it’s hard to knock down that wall.