#297 l Robert "Soulo" Dillard; Rap Producer talks about Race, Culture and Violence in Saint Louis

About this episode

Robert "Soulo" Dillard — a St. Louis security-company owner, recording-studio operator, record label co-founder, and former touring rap songwriter/performer — gives Vance an unusually candid tour of urban St. Louis culture, entrepreneurship, and race. Dillard traces his path from a childhood in Pagedale marked by witnessing a friend's shooting death at 15, through a brief record deal (his song "Bedrock" was later covered/disputed by Lil Wayne), touring behind Chingy, going broke at a young age, and rebuilding through his security firm and Unplugged Studios/record label. The conversation moves fluidly between lighter cultural-translation moments (haircut economics, durags, sock-and-trouser rules from a prior episode's echo, laser color physics via Vance's own tangent last episode) and much heavier material: being racially profiled and once called the police on in his own building, being pulled over and interrogated despite owning the business he was walking into, his account of the Ferguson unrest as "miscommunication," his views on Black Lives Matter ("all lives does matter, but we don't get looked at how you get looked at"), gun culture and prison rates, and a strong critique of "defund the police" as "stupid." Dillard repeatedly returns to a core thesis: that fatherlessness, not race, is the root driver of violence — in his community and in school shootings alike — and that his mission with his own children is to give them a fundamentally different, safer lifestyle than the one he survived. He closes with lighter material: family, art, his stage name's origin story, and a St. Louis restaurant recommendation.

“I think every image that I have of black people in the last five years is like, I have maybe three black friends that I see on any kind of regularity and everything else is what I see in the media... you get hit with enough images, in particular in St. Louis, it seems like it would be foolish not to be [nervous].”

“You have some people that just look at you and say, Hey man, what are you doing in this area?... So that just goes to show you that black lives doesn't matter to certain people... to that cop, I was still wrong because of my size and my skin complexion.”

“I'm not the, I'm not a super politician guy... I'm just the urban entertainment business in St. Louis, and I wanna make it home to my family and I'm not a threat to no one unless you're a threat to me.”

Key moments

• Guest's origin story — going broke as a touring singer/songwriter, taking a security job, and eventually acquiring his own building security contract.
• Childhood trauma — witnessing a close friend shot and killed at age 15 in Pagedale; being sent to live with an uncle in O'Fallon as a turning point.
• The economics of running a recording studio and podcast — hourly rates, "unplugged" pay-to-perform model, and monetizing nearly everything (including charging for smoking weed on premises).
• Extended riff on being racially profiled — a tenant calling police on him in his own building, being pulled over in a friend's expensive car and interrogated despite legally owning a firearm and a six-figure income.
• Ferguson reflections — Dillard lived in Jennings during the unrest, calls the shooting "all miscommunication," describes losing community members to violence during the riots, and says the movement will resurface with each new incident.
• Direct commentary on Black Lives Matter, "defund the police" (calls it "stupid" — "we need police"), and a proposal that police should be trained/assigned to work in the specific communities they know.
• Fatherlessness-as-root-cause thesis — ties single-parent households to both school shootings and urban violence; describes his own plan to raise his kids in a fundamentally safer environment.
• Lighter close — art/sculpture interests, his kids' fashion sense, the origin of the "Soulo" nickname, and a restaurant recommendation (Prime 55).

Notable quotes

“I know if I get pulled over, I got this hot gun on me... but to that cop, I was still wrong because of my size and my skin complexion.”

“I just feel like it was all miscommunication... we started losing a lot of people that really meant a lot to the city.”

“In my community, if you look cool, you gonna try to take the cool person out... social media made it way more dangerous.”

“It goes back to having a father in the house... you still gotta get out here and see your life.”