Spanian on A Current Affair

what do you got come on welcome back

anthony lee's was the sort of blade

across the street to avoid by 30 he'd

spent most of his life behind bars

now he's turned his life around and he's

helping others oh nice

if sydney's underbelly needed an icon

it's got one now

hey who just thinks

except i don't dump people in

hey

anthony lee's more commonly known as

spanian has come a long way in four

short years the fast rising social media

star has his own music videos podcasts

and youtube channel and hundreds of

thousands of honors

i'm a quite intriguing person

so i'm like we're excited about making

the most of it it's a far cry from where

he sat behind bars for almost a third of

his life and as recently as 2017

petty crimes of stealing high speed

pursuits

drug runs

stabbings a couple times

he counts himself lucky for being saved

from a downward spiral

in jail to turn his back on drugs

hate my guts because i speak openly

about

the putridness and how stupid how gronky

being on drugs is and what a waste of

life and what a bunch of gronks that

would sit in prison for 10 years of

their life and i say that on the

internet and

no one has my experience you just get

off your head either way you choose you

know that's not a way to live like

we have to learn to appreciate these

little things you know what i mean like

juvenile detention since 15 and a half

by 16.

grip of his life after growing up with

the wrong crowd

i've lost my uncle who was the only man

in my life he was like my older brother

lost three or five of my best friends

to heroin

everyone i know still on heroin everyone

i grew up with

and most of them are in jail

my drug dependence i'm talking when i

was 16 17 years old my heroin addiction

then

you're talking over a thousand dollars a

day

he says his turnaround wasn't quick but

there were moments of clarity

a life of crimes all i knew one day in

2016 looked at myself saying the truth

that's it sucking it that's crazy it's

unheard of where i come from i don't

know any other stories like that

his content isn't a sunday school picnic

and even spanion admits he's not

everyone's cup of tea

it's a mixture between

loving me or hating my guts i'm a very

very divisive person in australia but i

would wait in a tree with a kitchen

knife some parts of his story are

downright frightening and i would

jump out the tree like batman with a

knife and land in front of him and bomb

and i'll say let's go like give me

everything

but he says honesty is the reason behind

his growing audience

those people are raw and rough

you only connect with them by being raw

and rough

welcome to sydney land

cities

[Music]

thousands of thousands anywhere from

youth workers who spend their days at

your centers playing my videos for the

kids because they know that no one can

reach them as good as i can

to the kids themselves to adults who

saying i'm the reason they got off drugs

i'm the reason they see the truth about

the criminal lifestyle

whatever effort that the police and

they're doing good

in this place i didn't pay him succeeded

very well i didn't know the 35 year old

knows sydney well

some of its grittier parts close to his

heart

it was the straightest version of what

you'd see in the movies at queens where

between the projects they're just

dealing blatantly and cars would pull up

guess what it was this was bloomberg was

the hood

after leaving jail his wrapping became

popular and the rest followed including

a fashion label

nothing's off limits

the positive energy i put out into the

world for the first time

and the world's loving me

there's a big misconception about me

that i don't talk about my crimes in a

way where i'm begging the nation for

forgiveness and

i cop a lot of hate for that and i think

it's a lot of misunderstanding like i

did lose my life to jail i did lose my

life so

unfortunately that's the life i led and

but i feel like i owe no apologies and

no sadness for anything that i've done

despite his recent social media fame the

impacts of a hard beginning still linger

never been to a wedding i've never been

to someone's birthday party i've never

had a job until recently i've never had

id

i'm still on my green page i'm 35 years

old i just got my license for the first

time

i i'm a full disconnect from the world

is your life of crime done it is done

i've been there almost five years now i

refer to myself as a civilian now

first time in my life i'm full of

civilian i don't even know what jail

smells like anymore but it's done and

what i'm on is um great successes like i

love

it hey

spanian's book unfiltered hood life is

available in completely taylor's butt a

word of warning it is definitely not for

young

to get readers ambulance for her mum