Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Malcolm Jamal Warner, Candace Kelley & Weusi Baraka On The N-Word, Vulnerability, New Podcast + More

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INTERVIEW: Malcolm Jamal Warner, Candace Kelley & Weusi Baraka On The N-Word, Vulnerability, New Podcast + More · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning, The Breakfast Club Morning.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Everybody is the j n V. Just Hilarie Charlamage the guy.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: We are the Breakfast Club. We got some special guests
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: in the building from the Not All Hood podcast. We
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: have Malcolm Jamore Warner where you see Baraka and Candice Kelly.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Welcome you, Hey, good.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: To see you.
• 0:21
  Speaker 4: How the brothers and sister feeling were good? Life's good?
• 0:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, good morning.
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's about here, y'all just.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: Moved into It was the first interview in our new studio.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 0:32
  Speaker 4: Wow, man, I love the name Not All Hood?
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: Nah?
• 0:36
  Speaker 4: Who came up with that?
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: That was what you'll see?
• 0:39
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't even remember for real, for real, Like
• 0:42
  Speaker 6: I was just like, uh nah, Like Malcolm and I
• 0:45
  Speaker 6: have been talking about just the concept of the podcast
• 0:48
  Speaker 6: and how the diversity and who we are and also
• 0:53
  Speaker 6: who we're not, right, So I was like, nah.
• 0:57
  Speaker 7: Nah, Yeah, it feels like that was might say all
• 1:01
  Speaker 7: black people from the hood?
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: Nah exactly?
• 1:05
  Speaker 7: Is it that where a lot of people come from
• 1:07
  Speaker 7: poor and disenfranchised environments, but we are not our environment?
• 1:11
  Speaker 6: Like it's just that we come from a bunch of
• 1:14
  Speaker 6: different environments, you know. And I feel like, you know,
• 1:17
  Speaker 6: a lot of media to portraying us either like your
• 1:20
  Speaker 6: hip hop, you're your hip hop or pop culture right,
• 1:25
  Speaker 6: you know, and now we're more than that.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: It's funny that you actually said that, Charlomagne, because I
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: grew up in I grew up in La in the jungle, wow.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: And my mother used to say to me, Malcolm, we
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: live in the jungle, We're not of the jungle. So
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: she was very clear on me having my sights further
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: than just my neighborhood, which is why she put me
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: in theater. And it was always trying to find things
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: for me to do to keep me, you know, from
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: just going to school and just hanging out, you know.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: But it was that it was a certain mindset that
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: you know, she instilled in me, like Okay, yeah, we're here,
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: but you know, this doesn't have to define us.
• 2:09
  Speaker 8: And you know what, we are often recognized before we
• 2:13
  Speaker 8: enter into any room and judge right, and sometimes you
• 2:16
  Speaker 8: get the question that you know means you really don't
• 2:19
  Speaker 8: belong here. So when that comes, can you yeah, yeah, right,
• 2:22
  Speaker 8: can I help you?
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 2:23
  Speaker 6: Right?
• 2:24
  Speaker 8: Can I help you? Or have I seen you be
• 2:26
  Speaker 8: here here before? Or what are you doing in this neighborhood. Yes,
• 2:29
  Speaker 8: that's right one, that's the why, right, what are you
• 2:31
  Speaker 8: doing this neighbor This is my neighborhood.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: Why are you here? Yeah?
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: Why are you jogging here?
• 2:35
  Speaker 8: Right?
• 2:36
  Speaker 5: That you know that you just happened to my father.
• 2:37
  Speaker 8: He would jog in the neighborhood and all the white
• 2:39
  Speaker 8: neighbors would stop him when we first moved in, and
• 2:42
  Speaker 8: they would keep on stopping him.
• 2:43
  Speaker 5: This back in the seventies.
• 2:44
  Speaker 8: So he finally just went to the police station and said,
• 2:47
  Speaker 8: I just need to introduce myself so that when you
• 2:49
  Speaker 8: guys stopped me, you know who you are, and it stopped.
• 2:52
  Speaker 8: But that's kind of an example of what it means
• 2:54
  Speaker 8: when people perceive you beforehand, and what you have to
• 2:57
  Speaker 8: do to go outside of the box to keep im
• 3:00
  Speaker 8: proving who you are over and over again. So this
• 3:02
  Speaker 8: really is just an ongoing conversation that we have Malcolm
• 3:05
  Speaker 8: Le's call a safe space, which it is just to
• 3:08
  Speaker 8: say really what we want about anything about our experiences
• 3:12
  Speaker 8: in America. And that's really kind of key to it too.
• 3:15
  Speaker 8: We have people that are from diverse backgrounds, whether they're
• 3:17
  Speaker 8: from the Caribbean or whether they're from all you know, Africa,
• 3:22
  Speaker 8: but you come to America and there's kind of a
• 3:24
  Speaker 8: thread and those are the types of stories that we're
• 3:26
  Speaker 8: sharing to really change this mass narrative that's already out
• 3:30
  Speaker 8: there about us creator shift.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: It's a term hood negative though when people say hood
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: sometimes it comes off as negative. I don't take it
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: as a negative term. Is it a negative term?
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: No? And I think, you know, part of the you know,
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: the idea of not all hood is hood is not
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: a negative term. Hood is part of the community. Like
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: when we speak of the black community, we always tend
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: to refer to it as if it's a monolist. That's right,
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: whether there are all these different lanes to the black community,
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: all these levels, all these different lanes, and oftentimes we
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: don't have a space where we can actually, you know, discuss,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: acknowledge and deal with with all of those levels, all
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: those lanes. So the hood is not a bad thing.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: We're not all you know, we're not Yes, we are hood,
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: but we're not all hood. And the media, and I
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: think part of it is the media tends to put
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: more focus on one aspect of the black community. Thus
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: we get all the stereotypes and preconceived ideas.
• 4:27
  Speaker 6: And hood comes from like neighborhood, neigh right, and day
• 4:31
  Speaker 6: Love said it. You know, they called the hood because
• 4:34
  Speaker 6: we're not neighbors anymore, you know what I mean, a
• 4:35
  Speaker 6: lot of times we're not communicating with each other, right,
• 4:38
  Speaker 6: but we we're trying to change that.
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: I did get that question a lot though, you have
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: a podcast. Isn't hood negative?
• 4:46
  Speaker 8: So I understand where you're coming from. But just like
• 4:48
  Speaker 8: they said, it's a neighborhood. I mean, I live in
• 4:50
  Speaker 8: a place where I'm next to a lot of Indian neighborhood,
• 4:54
  Speaker 8: Indian neighborhood, Jewish neighborhood.
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: You can still call it the hood.
• 4:58
  Speaker 8: People also associate the word hood we're just us, which really, yeah,
• 5:03
  Speaker 8: we're black. So it's just one of those things. It's
• 5:06
  Speaker 8: kind of some damage that the media, the pop culture,
• 5:10
  Speaker 8: the news has done and really trying to define who
• 5:12
  Speaker 8: we are.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I never took it as negative. It was always
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: going back to the hood, to mean, I'm going back
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: home to my neighborhood, right exactly wherever it was. I'm
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: going to play basketball in the hood, which was my neighborhood.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, I never took it as oh
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: my gosh, it's a place. No, I never took it
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: at that. I know a lot of people do, but
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: that was always just like going home, you know.
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And you know, we were talking about this yesterday.
• 5:31
  Speaker 8: That also when we talk about being African American, we
• 5:34
  Speaker 8: talk about the trauma that's associated, like that's really all.
• 5:37
  Speaker 8: You know, we have diabetes and high blood pressure and
• 5:39
  Speaker 8: we're dying and the.
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: Infomortality rate. But we're happy people too.
• 5:46
  Speaker 8: But we make it to the news when it's bad.
• 5:48
  Speaker 8: You know, we may often make it to the news
• 5:51
  Speaker 8: when it's bad. And so that's another thing that I
• 5:53
  Speaker 8: think this podcast does. I think for the three of us,
• 5:55
  Speaker 8: it's just show the joy and what it's like being
• 5:59
  Speaker 8: black up and because of the things that are going
• 6:02
  Speaker 8: out there in this twenty twenty.
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: Four lord, but yeah, how did the three of you
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: all come together? How did y'all get together?
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: The left?
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: Yo? Everything right?
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: What you SA and I have been friends for she's
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: for a minute, a long minute, twenty plus years. We
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: used to both be at the National Back Theater Festival
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: in Winstern, Salem and where you and I met in
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: nineteen ninety nine, and we would put on the first
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: poetry jam there and that turned out to be one
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: of the biggest attractions at the theater. We used to
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: call them midnight poetry Jam. So after you know, all
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: day of theater, you know, in every imaginable performance space
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: in the city, then people would come back to the
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: to our venue and we would pack out at midnight
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: poetry Jam. It'll just be open mic starting at midnight
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: and we go to like two two thirty.
• 7:03
  Speaker 6: And it was a big attraction, yeah festival, and then
• 7:07
  Speaker 6: we just kept hanging out. Yeah yeah. And then I
• 7:11
  Speaker 6: know link with Cannis from I was doing sort of
• 7:15
  Speaker 6: community organizing and sort of it was a a event
• 7:22
  Speaker 6: with yea Yeah in Morris Town, New Jersey, and we
• 7:30
  Speaker 6: connected there just sort of yeah linked And when I
• 7:34
  Speaker 6: decided that we were going to do this podcast, we're like, yeah,
• 7:37
  Speaker 6: we need some different voices.
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: In yeah. Yeah.
• 7:41
  Speaker 8: So and I do a lot of work, a lot
• 7:42
  Speaker 8: of commentating on various mostly legal cases. I feel in
• 7:45
  Speaker 8: for rolland Martin to Roland Martin unfiltered and so I'm
• 7:49
  Speaker 8: always running my mouth and when I got on with them,
• 7:52
  Speaker 8: I think I ran my mouth for them to say,
• 7:54
  Speaker 8: you know what, you.
• 7:55
  Speaker 5: Want to keep talking with us.
• 7:56
  Speaker 8: I was like, I actually do right, So you know,
• 7:59
  Speaker 8: really and that first conversation we talked about anything from
• 8:02
  Speaker 8: and word to talking to music. I mean, we were
• 8:05
  Speaker 8: just on for a long time and it's just a
• 8:07
  Speaker 8: nice everybody was testifying, you know what I mean, it
• 8:10
  Speaker 8: really was. It was just a good way to connect
• 8:12
  Speaker 8: and get to know each other. And the conversation has
• 8:14
  Speaker 8: been going on ever since.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: But the dope things when Way and I first started
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: talking when we're both older fathers. So the initial idea
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: was to do a podcast from the perspective of older
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: black fathers. So when we first met with Candais, it
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: was as a producer.
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, to produce this show, that's right.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: And then we had that meeting, was like, you know,
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: ninety minutes, this is the show. Yeah, We're like, we
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: need to add candas as a host and expand the
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: concept from just you know, the black father perspective. And
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: it turned into yeah, and.
• 8:46
  Speaker 8: I think your wife because your wife is in the
• 8:48
  Speaker 8: background like that, Yeah, what.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Are some of the topics you guys will be discussing.
• 8:55
  Speaker 6: Black fatherhood?
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, black.
• 8:59
  Speaker 6: Older fathers with younger children.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: How you guys handling that?
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: Yo?
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: What did your older your youngest so youngest?
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: Only we only have one because I got a two.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Year old Sol, and then I got a twenty.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: Two year old. Fifty three, I got a nine year old.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: I got six, he got four.
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: I'll be forty six and a couple of weeks my
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: youngest two. I got a two year old, five year
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: old year old, and mold is fifteen.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:30
  Speaker 6: Yeah, so y'all started around when we started.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm fifty three and my daughter just turned seven.
• 9:36
  Speaker 6: Okay, okay, so you'll can have a conversation we're talking about,
• 9:41
  Speaker 6: you know what I mean, those those days where they
• 9:43
  Speaker 6: be on, on, go, go, you know what I mean,
• 9:46
  Speaker 6: and you gotta just wrap your energy up and and
• 9:49
  Speaker 6: make it happen, you know what I mean.
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: Crazy you say that.
• 9:51
  Speaker 7: My homeboy told me that a long time ago, because
• 9:53
  Speaker 7: you know, all my homeboys had kids way younger than
• 9:55
  Speaker 7: I did, right, And they was like, man, you gonna
• 9:56
  Speaker 7: wait till you thirty plus forty to have kids. You're
• 9:58
  Speaker 7: gonna be running around. He's gonna be hurting, Like, no,
• 10:01
  Speaker 7: he won't.
• 10:02
  Speaker 8: Yes, they are, exactly, but that doesn't some good come
• 10:05
  Speaker 8: with that, you being older. So yeah, you know, being
• 10:09
  Speaker 8: a father and not being twenty one, I've been having
• 10:12
  Speaker 8: growth yourself that you have to go through.
• 10:13
  Speaker 7: Oh yeah, my last my two youngest get a version
• 10:17
  Speaker 7: of me that did not exist ten years ago.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: Ten years ago. You know, I spent more of my
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: adult life in long term relationship, more years of my
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: adult life in long term relationships than not. And my
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: wife and I have been together eight and a half
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: years and not more than two days go by that
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: I don't give thanks to the universe forgiving me the
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: wisdom and fortitude to have waited as long as they did.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: A lot of people are like, he's never gonna get married,
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: And I think at some point I probably thought.
• 10:48
  Speaker 6: Like we used to have these conversations like Yo, they're
• 10:51
  Speaker 6: looking at us like we you know, damnage goods, Like
• 10:53
  Speaker 6: you mean you thirty done and you don't got no kids?
• 10:56
  Speaker 6: Not married? He got a problem.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's the best thing, and for me,
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: it's the best thing I could have bene I would
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: not have I definitely would not have been as effective
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: a husband and father had I done this any earlier
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: with anybody else.
• 11:10
  Speaker 7: That is such a great conversation you never hear men have, Like,
• 11:12
  Speaker 7: that's a conversation you always hear. You know, women have
• 11:15
  Speaker 7: but so you actually waited like you were actually waiting
• 11:18
  Speaker 7: for the right.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: How many bullets since thirteen one TV?
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: Since thirteen.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: You know, I neoled my way out a lot.
• 11:38
  Speaker 7: Your circumstance was different, though, because you didn't know if
• 11:40
  Speaker 7: people wanted to be with you.
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: Are they wanted to be with you?
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: Know what I mean? There was that because I've been
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: doing it for so long, I've been really blessed with
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: a great sense of discerning, So that was never my
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: issue to be completely transparent. My thing about marriage was like, yo,
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: I'm not getting married and then given a chick half
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: of my stuff because I messed up. So I was
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: very clear that even though there were situations that you know,
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: we're really you know, pressuring if you will you know,
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: like that kind of marriage, I was like, nah, because
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: I knew me. I knew that I wasn't going to
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: because I wasn't I wasn't given half of my trap
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: because because I messed up about you.
• 12:23
  Speaker 6: It was about just being patient, like I know me,
• 12:28
  Speaker 6: and I know that, like everybody's gonna be able to
• 12:30
  Speaker 6: deal with me as a community organizer who like really
• 12:34
  Speaker 6: understands that the people around me that are close to
• 12:37
  Speaker 6: me are gonna be okay. My work in life is
• 12:40
  Speaker 6: to make sure that other people are gonna be okay.
• 12:42
  Speaker 6: So sometimes I'm I'm a little hard on them. People
• 12:45
  Speaker 6: that are close. Right, I'm gonna get out and like
• 12:46
  Speaker 6: they're gonna have to take a back seat sometimes. Right,
• 12:49
  Speaker 6: That was part of it. And the big part is
• 12:51
  Speaker 6: like raising my child, the idea of like me getting
• 12:54
  Speaker 6: married and having a child. You gotta be special, man,
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: you got to be special. So I love you, Shelley.
• 13:05
  Speaker 8: With one show where we have these two and Lamar
• 13:08
  Speaker 8: Rutcker and I just sit back and I listen. It's
• 13:10
  Speaker 8: like there could be some people that are taking notes,
• 13:12
  Speaker 8: some women that are taking notes because they really I
• 13:14
  Speaker 8: was like, this is some good.
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: Like you said, I don't hear that.
• 13:18
  Speaker 8: A lot, just talking about fatherhood and just the humility
• 13:23
  Speaker 8: and how proud they are and then all the rules
• 13:26
  Speaker 8: and lessons that they learned and the long way while
• 13:28
  Speaker 8: they were dating. Yeah, it really was a no taking moment.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: It was good.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: You guys have boys or girls?
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: Girls?
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, girl, I said that.
• 13:37
  Speaker 5: Was kind of suspect.
• 13:38
  Speaker 7: Girls different differ.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: It's way different. He has four girls.
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: I got four, you know, I love it. Yeah, yeah,
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: I love it and I deserve it, you.
• 13:49
  Speaker 6: Know, they say, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: All of it. How did that change you?
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Having girls?
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: I got four girls, Charlamagne's four girls, How does that change.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: You as a father?
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: I got to always suit off, but some girls changing.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: So I asked the universe for a girl first. So
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: even before, even before conception, we were very clear we
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: were having a girl. And I know that I needed
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: a girl first to kind of ease me into it
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: because I'm, you know, I'm I have a pretty good
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: idea of what kind of father I would be. So
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: I needed a girl to kind of you know, slow
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: me down and and and warm and softened me up,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: if you will. So for me raising my daughter, I
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: came into fatherhood already with a certain maturity and uh,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: you know, certain understanding of male female dynamics, you know,
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: and with a girl, all of that starts with the father.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: So I've always since she came, since I literally pulled
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: her out of my wife, I've been focused on, you know,
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: instilling in her the kind of love that she is
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: not going to have to go out in the world
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: and try to find, treating her with a level of
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: respect at nine months old, that she will that that
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: that kind of loves normalized. Right. That's always been my
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: biggest thing. Like we see these girls out here who
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: don't have a great relationships with the bothers, and you know,
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: throughout lifetimes we've been with a lot of them, right,
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: So I knew that the for me, the biggest gift
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: that I can give my daughter is a sense of self.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: So when she goes out into the world, she is
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: not easily influenced by her surroundings. So since she was
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: like two years old, you know, someone says to her, Oh,
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: you're so pretty, You're so cute, You're so beautiful, She'll say,
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: than when I'm smart too. That's how we run it.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: That's the normalization I want her to have in terms
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: of how she sees herself in characters.
• 16:07
  Speaker 6: Absolutely, what you see, Yeah, same thing, Like you know,
• 16:11
  Speaker 6: it's a it's a humbling space. Giving my daughter like
• 16:17
  Speaker 6: a different kind of vocabulary that's empowering to her so
• 16:21
  Speaker 6: that when she inter acts, she knows she's she walks
• 16:25
  Speaker 6: and talks from position to power.
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, you know, yet, hold on, can you speak to
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: that candid?
• 16:31
  Speaker 9: Yeah?
• 16:32
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I come from a family of three girls and
• 16:34
  Speaker 8: my father I mean, really just the king of all things.
• 16:38
  Speaker 8: They know all about my father. I told the story
• 16:40
  Speaker 8: already today about my father, you know what I mean.
• 16:42
  Speaker 8: So that is very infused in me and my mother too,
• 16:45
  Speaker 8: don't get me wrong, but since we're talking about fathers,
• 16:48
  Speaker 8: all everything that he poured into me, and you know,
• 16:51
  Speaker 8: sometimes you're doing something you're like, oh, that's my dad,
• 16:53
  Speaker 8: what I did right there, that's my mom. Like you
• 16:56
  Speaker 8: can you know when they've poured into it, when you
• 16:58
  Speaker 8: see you doing things that are just like what they did,
• 17:01
  Speaker 8: and you don't even realize it. So you don't even
• 17:04
  Speaker 8: realize what the kids see and don't see. But really,
• 17:07
  Speaker 8: my parents really allowed me to see all of the
• 17:09
  Speaker 8: right things they really did, and parents generally are always right,
• 17:14
  Speaker 8: I mean really like it might be twenty years down.
• 17:16
  Speaker 6: The line, we try and my daughter reminds me that
• 17:22
  Speaker 6: bye bye.
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: Maybe not Yeah.
• 17:26
  Speaker 8: Yeah, it really is powerful to have a powerful father,
• 17:31
  Speaker 8: to have a presence all the time, even when they're gone.
• 17:34
  Speaker 5: Still there.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I think the funniest thing for girl dads is humbling, right,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: meaning I was never in the cheerleading or dance or
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: any of those sports.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: But now when I take my daughters today.
• 17:46
  Speaker 8: Better get out, I be doing a dance moved right.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: It takes you out of that that ego place where
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: it's like now I'm gonna talk that nah right, I'm safty.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: I think when my daughter was born, I found myself
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: like crying all the time over like just simple ship
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: be like I had that touches me.
• 18:13
  Speaker 6: Like baby feet and baby dimples.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: I was like, what is.
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: Oh, they're so cute?
• 18:23
  Speaker 6: Man opened up a whole other world.
• 18:26
  Speaker 7: It's probably a stupid question, way, but you hate poetry.
• 18:29
  Speaker 7: You laugh in Baracca? You related?
• 18:31
  Speaker 6: No relation?
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: No wow, no relation.
• 18:34
  Speaker 6: Okay, that's a loute to the barac. I mean all
• 18:39
  Speaker 6: the great things you know and to know the l dogma.
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: Absolutely know Mary.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Now Father's Day is around the corner, do you, guys?
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: As Father's Day important to you guys as much?
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: And for you?
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Is it important as you? Because for myself I just
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: just want.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: To chill father.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: That don't need too much. This is little barbecue the
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: kids around, That's all I care about for all this day?
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: What is it for you guys?
• 19:06
  Speaker 8: Well, so my father is passed a couple of years ago.
• 19:09
  Speaker 8: He died during COVID But you know, thank you so
• 19:13
  Speaker 8: much and so. But you know my husband, so you know,
• 19:17
  Speaker 8: I was, you know this morning, all right, we're doing dinner, right,
• 19:20
  Speaker 8: We're doing another house?
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: Are we doing that? We're going out?
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 19:22
  Speaker 8: It's one of those things where I just like, as
• 19:25
  Speaker 8: I tell my husband all the time, you know what,
• 19:27
  Speaker 8: it's not the it's not the birthdays or the Christmas
• 19:29
  Speaker 8: or there or the holidays that society. I said, just
• 19:33
  Speaker 8: be good to me on a regular Tuesday, will be good.
• 19:36
  Speaker 8: But I do remember as my father and he got older,
• 19:39
  Speaker 8: it was really important because everybody was all over the place.
• 19:42
  Speaker 8: Everybody goes in their own lives. So it was good
• 19:46
  Speaker 8: to come back and give him that gift of time
• 19:48
  Speaker 8: because at some point, you know, you don't need.
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: Socks or clothes or TV or car. You don't need that.
• 19:55
  Speaker 8: What you want is stuff that's really free time, respect, love,
• 20:01
  Speaker 8: your energy, your opinion, all of that. So it's good
• 20:04
  Speaker 8: to come together for all of those things that cost
• 20:07
  Speaker 8: no money, especially as people get older.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: But that wants to scratch off ticket, you know, there
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: you go.
• 20:13
  Speaker 8: You know what he wants to see you when you
• 20:16
  Speaker 8: give it to him, You know what I mean, it's
• 20:17
  Speaker 8: not the ticket.
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but if he wins. You know, you gotta work
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: that out.
• 20:23
  Speaker 7: I'm talking about you afraid of being too honest and
• 20:25
  Speaker 7: too vulnerable on these podcasts in this era, people get
• 20:29
  Speaker 7: very loose, as we've seen, and people have a certain
• 20:34
  Speaker 7: image of you.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: You even care about that, So it's interesting. So you know,
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: I've said that in interviews that this is, you know,
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: the most vulnerable and I've always been pretty transparent in
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: my art and my poetry and music. But I don't
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: I don't worry about it. I got a good taste
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: of it just this week because we had our first
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: episode on Monday and we were having conversation about the
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: N word and I had, you know, I made this's
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: really interesting, how many people we're not listening to what
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: I was saying and to my comments as I was,
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: you know, I was hating on J Cole. So it's
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: things like that. And then the way the Instagram, the
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: art of dialogue.
• 21:20
  Speaker 9: And other Yeah, the way they worded it, that's the
• 21:22
  Speaker 9: where were in right, Like, so it was like, oh, right,
• 21:25
  Speaker 9: this is the reason why I stopped commenting on I
• 21:28
  Speaker 9: g first thing in the morning.
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: Malcolm morning to say he stopped listening to J Cole.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's play thet's certain clip here. So people undertake, like,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: what are you talking about?
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: You playing it in context?
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: Context?
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Because I'm sure we don't have to clip off the
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: other clip. No, so we're in context, Okay.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: Dig dig it, dig it. So so many people, you know,
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: they just ignore the fact that I said, I love
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: J Cole and I said that most of my favorite
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: mcs you know, are guilty of the same thing we're
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: talking about, you know, perpetuating, perpetuating anti black messaging in
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: our black music. So that was really my point.
• 22:08
  Speaker 7: I don't understand. That's when they lose me. How is
• 22:11
  Speaker 7: that anti How is the N word saying you don't
• 22:14
  Speaker 7: like the N word anti black messaging? Isn't the N
• 22:16
  Speaker 7: word anti black?
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying. My perspective is so much of
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: our black music today, like you take the Dope beats
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: away and you just listen to the lyrics. Lyrically, it's
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: anti black message, you know what I'm saying. And we
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: talk about you know, so much of you know, hip
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: hop today that's trash and whatnot. But you know, as
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: I said before, they grew up listening to what we
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: were listening to, right, So we are complicit in, you know,
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: the parts of hip hop today that we don't like
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: because they grew up listening to us. Listening listening to
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: the content is the same. The scale set is just whack, right,
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: which is what makes it stand.
• 22:58
  Speaker 6: Out, as they didn't listen to what we were listening to,
• 23:01
  Speaker 6: you know what I'm saying. But I think that we
• 23:05
  Speaker 6: also had a broader We listened to music when there
• 23:09
  Speaker 6: was more than just hip hop. Hip Hop was not
• 23:12
  Speaker 6: the the juggernaut of music that it is now, right, okay,
• 23:19
  Speaker 6: Like like yeah, jazz, like like you would, you know,
• 23:23
  Speaker 6: like we was rocking the salt hall notes, you know
• 23:25
  Speaker 6: what I mean, and all these other things, right, you.
• 23:29
  Speaker 7: Know what I mean?
• 23:30
  Speaker 6: Yeah, Like we had these a lot of other influences
• 23:34
  Speaker 6: that I think the youth of today don't necessarily have
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: aren't necessarily being uh promoted in terms of yeah, in
• 23:43
  Speaker 6: terms of balance.
• 23:43
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I get exactly what you're saying, because even the
• 23:45
  Speaker 7: other genres now are hip.
• 23:46
  Speaker 6: Hop, right what I'm saying, Like, you know, it's countries,
• 23:49
  Speaker 6: a little bit of hip hop, you know what I mean.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: And so much of it, so much of the hip
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: hop that gets the shine, you know, it's it's the
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: anti black message, but that's very rarely. There are not
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: many hip hop songs that are speaking love to our people.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: Most of it is very threatening.
• 24:08
  Speaker 6: But is that the artists or is that the industry?
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Both okay, and the end the result is the same.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: The the the psyche on young black boys and girls,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: there's the same whether it's the wather.
• 24:25
  Speaker 6: But if it's young black boys and girl, that's on
• 24:26
  Speaker 6: the parents.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, but all parents don't. All parents. There's a
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: certain luxury that you and I have in terms of
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: the time that we and our wives can spend with
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: our daughters, right, but everybody everybody that all families don't
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: have that. So we're not talking about uh psyche of
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: young black kids who have their parents very involved in
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: their lives and showing them balance. We're talking about the
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: ones who were.
• 24:54
  Speaker 6: Let's hold them accountable to the messages. My fault.
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: This is the This is like I don't think would
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: you say J Cole had the anti black message?
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: No, so so for me because nigga has become you know,
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: it's become the staple in hip hop, like it's got
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: to be a nigga bitch. That's why I said in
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: that clip. I think there should be a moratorium on
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: both of those words in hip hop because it's it's
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: at this point, it's corny, it's lazy. Everybody is using it.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: So let's like, you know, you know, there are so
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: many brilliant writers and lyricists out there that it's like,
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: come on, let's let's let's stop our game. We don't
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: have to keep doing If everybody's doing it, then come
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: on do something different, you know. So my thing with
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: with with J Cole, it just I just got to
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: a point where I got tired of, you know, hearing
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: inward or being called inward in every hip hop song
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: I'm listening to. And I mentioned J Cole because I
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: love J Cole and he's such an and an incredible
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: lyrics that when I hear him just gratuitously use either
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: those words, I'm like, ah, I mean kind of you
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: know that I have to tune out. Yeah, doesn't mean
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: doesn't mean I like J Cole or respect his artistry,
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: his his pen game any less, I just go, all right,
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: I'm kind of I gotta tune out because it's not
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: it's not doing, it's not bringing, it's not feeding me.
• 26:24
  Speaker 7: So what about the album like because and this is
• 26:27
  Speaker 7: the album that I say in the future is gonna
• 26:29
  Speaker 7: be two of the most important albums of all time.
• 26:31
  Speaker 7: Miss Kendrick Lamar and mister Morale in the Big Steps
• 26:34
  Speaker 7: jay Z four for four. The things that they're discussing
• 26:36
  Speaker 7: on this album, black men going to therapy, black men
• 26:39
  Speaker 7: doing right by the women. You know, uh, issues with
• 26:43
  Speaker 7: our father daddy, issues that we fix. Like, to me,
• 26:46
  Speaker 7: those themes are bigger than the language that they use.
• 26:49
  Speaker 7: Even you look at somebody like Tupac. To me, Tupac's
• 26:52
  Speaker 7: themes were bigger than the language he was using.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: People keep saying that about Tupac, but like, and I
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: don't want to get too a whole thing about it
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: about but yeah, I listened to his I mean, listen
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: to There's There's Dear Mama, Brenda's got a baby, keep
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: your head up. And then everything else is not everything.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: This changes this you got got a bunch of but
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: you know, you know what this conversation sounds like. It
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: sounds like, you know where you're younger and your father said, oh,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: you listen to that hippie hoppity rap. There's a lot
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: of positivity. All the positive artists out there that.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: Are spitting right.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: But if we're listening to music, those same artists had
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: the same problem. If you think about tyleb Quality never
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: got on radio, Most Death never got on radio. Tribe
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: called Quest hardly got on radio. We talked about a
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: lot of those positive rappers. It was the same thing
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: back then.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Those artists might have a record or too.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Tell him didn't get on radio too. He did a
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: record to jay Z hopped on the single just to
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: get by the time record, but it took him a
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: long time to get on record. Most definim didn't get
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: really on radio. To what miss Fat Fat Bulty. So
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of the things that we're talking about with
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: the same thing coming rarely got on you know what
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I mean.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: But it's the same thing.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: It's the same thing as what we push Like back then,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: who's on radio, Biggie t.
• 28:15
  Speaker 7: I, you know, like they had social records with socially
• 28:19
  Speaker 7: redeeming value.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: But the records on radio.
• 28:22
  Speaker 7: Like my dad used to always try to get me
• 28:24
  Speaker 7: to listen to the Honorable Minutes to Lewis farra Coon
• 28:26
  Speaker 7: and I would sort of reluctantly when I heard Biggie
• 28:29
  Speaker 7: say deep like the mind of Farrakhn. I'm like, oh,
• 28:33
  Speaker 7: that's the brother my daddy's always trying to get me.
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: So now I really like he was speaking to you.
• 28:38
  Speaker 7: Yeah, d Baron CON's a prophet. I think you ought
• 28:41
  Speaker 7: to listen to it, like, oh, let me pay attention.
• 28:44
  Speaker 7: So even with the language of a biggie or whoever,
• 28:47
  Speaker 7: they can still deliver messaging that makes you get in
• 28:50
  Speaker 7: the right direction.
• 28:51
  Speaker 6: Lauren says, what's the line, right, So.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: You're ignorant trying to say, but also what what What
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: I have to be mindful of as well? Is politics,
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: not even not not even that, because that's a whole
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: nother relation, right, But it's more I realized that it's
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: way more productive across the board and for my my
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: own energy in space is instead of spending time talking
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: about the trash, talking about the things that I don't
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: like and I think we're all guilty of, we talked
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: about the negative. But I'm trying to be more mindful,
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: like even in my in my conversations with hip hop,
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: be mindful of well, instead of talking about the same thing,
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: which is the negative, let me spend time highlighting what
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: I like or like what I love about hip hop?
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: That right, you know, I write hard for Mumbo Fresh
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: all day, but even just that, like yeah, thinking about
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: you know, Norman SONISTCTED. I finally reposted on on Instagram
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: like seeing these cats I believe really need to have shine?
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: What stuff complaining that they don't have shine? I got
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: social media, Like now I can actually, you know, give
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: shine to those And I've got I got a following,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: I've got a voice, you know, I've got integrity, uh,
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: a reputation for integrity going for me, so like why
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: not just use that and spend more time, you know,
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: speaking about the giving love to the things that make
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: me feel good.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: But I also think I have evolution to right, you know,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: because I went to Hampton. When I used to drive
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: to Hampton, I'm listening to noise because it's keeping me up.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: What what what?
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: And I'm thinking I'm the biggest what.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: But then when you get a little older.
• 30:46
  Speaker 7: You'd be like, that's a little noise, right, let me
• 30:49
  Speaker 7: talk about something like listening to it when I'm working
• 30:52
  Speaker 7: up from the south workout.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: But I also grew up on Goodie mob, you know.
• 30:58
  Speaker 6: And I think, you know, it's we've got more of
• 31:01
  Speaker 6: a balance right as we get older than one. We've
• 31:03
  Speaker 6: got we've been exposed to more music, right, So it's
• 31:07
  Speaker 6: it's a little different now, you know. I mean like
• 31:08
  Speaker 6: they still in the throes of what's hot, you know
• 31:11
  Speaker 6: what I mean. The how we access music is different now, correct,
• 31:14
  Speaker 6: because they're just like yo, you know, point click, right,
• 31:17
  Speaker 6: and it's not necessarily about what's on the radio. It's
• 31:20
  Speaker 6: about what they want to listen to.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Which is they've got direct access to that.
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: You know, can don't want to ask from a woman's perspective,
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: you know what I find interesting?
• 31:28
  Speaker 7: Right, you know, we have these conversations, but I will
• 31:30
  Speaker 7: never forget Snoop Dogg and DMX's versus right when they
• 31:34
  Speaker 7: did their verses, I think it was during COVID and
• 31:36
  Speaker 7: I remember thinking, oh, this is going tonight, that boy
• 31:40
  Speaker 7: they finally listened to Snoop and DMX and it's gonna
• 31:42
  Speaker 7: be a woke cancel fest on Twitter. But there was
• 31:45
  Speaker 7: people in the comments, the same people I usually see
• 31:48
  Speaker 7: trying to cancel people loving it. Right, Yeah, but how
• 31:51
  Speaker 7: does that make you feel knowing you came up in
• 31:53
  Speaker 7: that era of the nineties, Is it conflicting that you know?
• 31:57
  Speaker 5: Not at all?
• 31:57
  Speaker 8: And I'm right in the middle with them in terms
• 31:59
  Speaker 8: of won, the N word and just this whole idea
• 32:02
  Speaker 8: of music and what it represents, because I know so
• 32:06
  Speaker 8: I love Wu Tang, and when I listen to them,
• 32:09
  Speaker 8: I get like a good energy out, not just work out,
• 32:11
  Speaker 8: but when something goes wrong sometimes that music allows you
• 32:14
  Speaker 8: to let stuff out, you know that you just couldn't
• 32:17
  Speaker 8: get out in the day when you're with your peers
• 32:19
  Speaker 8: or when you're on the streets, you just in the
• 32:21
  Speaker 8: car loud with it. And then I also think it's
• 32:25
  Speaker 8: how were we brought up and what do we bring
• 32:27
  Speaker 8: to the table. So the N word, for example, I mean,
• 32:30
  Speaker 8: I don't know how you were introduced to it, ever,
• 32:32
  Speaker 8: but that's shaped probably what the word means to you,
• 32:35
  Speaker 8: and same with me probably saying to you. And we
• 32:37
  Speaker 8: all have different things that we bring to the table,
• 32:40
  Speaker 8: just culturally, and I think that just shifts. And I'm
• 32:43
  Speaker 8: a firm believer in the First Amendment, like all the way,
• 32:45
  Speaker 8: because once you start saying no here and no here,
• 32:49
  Speaker 8: then I'm giving somebody else the authority to say no
• 32:51
  Speaker 8: to me one day too, And I don't want that precedent.
• 32:53
  Speaker 8: I don't want them saying, well, you can't say this,
• 32:56
  Speaker 8: and you can't say that just because of the content
• 32:59
  Speaker 8: of it or the context of it. We don't like
• 33:01
  Speaker 8: it at all. It's like when they try to bring
• 33:03
  Speaker 8: up rack lyrics when they go to jail in court. Right,
• 33:06
  Speaker 8: I mean, that doesn't make any sense. We all have
• 33:08
  Speaker 8: the same equal First Amendment rights and you should fight
• 33:11
  Speaker 8: for them and use them equally.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question. Yeah, TikToker, yesterday I
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: seen it online. She said the N word, right, she
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: got fired from her regular job.
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: Oh, this was the girl who was cooking that young lady.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, and in her comments she was also white by
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: the way, yes, right, critical.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: But this is where I'm gonna close it.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: She said on her TikTok that she didn't apologize because
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: it was her first right amendment to say what she
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: wanted to say, and she shouldn't have got fired. What's
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: your thoughts on somebody like that it is her first
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: right amendment?
• 33:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but then there are three different rules.
• 33:44
  Speaker 8: There's First Amendment rules on TikTok, there's First Amendment rules
• 33:47
  Speaker 8: at her work, and then that's her own rules of
• 33:49
  Speaker 8: what she believes about the N word, and all of
• 33:51
  Speaker 8: them conflicted, and she.
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: Got exactly what she deserves.
• 33:54
  Speaker 8: She did, but then that's what happened. That's why you
• 33:56
  Speaker 8: do have to be careful with it, right. You can't
• 33:59
  Speaker 8: be on TikTok it. I mean, this is a good example.
• 34:02
  Speaker 8: Person person, No, no, you can't. So you just have
• 34:05
  Speaker 8: to really understand how to use the First Amendment to
• 34:08
  Speaker 8: So for example, if you're the KKK, you can walk
• 34:10
  Speaker 8: march anywhere in America, you just have to get the permit.
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: You can't walk on your own. You have to follow
• 34:17
  Speaker 5: the rules. She didn't follow the rules.
• 34:19
  Speaker 8: She she she didn't follow her own hr rules at work,
• 34:23
  Speaker 8: and that.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: Was her problem. She did.
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: That's right, like you said.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: It's also where you came from, right, because the N
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: word was a sign of endearment, sure something. It was
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: that you know, you really didn't hear the extremes of
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: it until I went to Hampton in the South, and
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: you'll be like, oh no, they're not saying it as
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: right right right, And that's right.
• 34:47
  Speaker 6: Right different ways, And that's sort of been part, you know,
• 34:50
  Speaker 6: part of my argument. For a lot of people, it's
• 34:52
  Speaker 6: a term of endearment like it's love. There are more
• 34:55
  Speaker 6: interactions that are using the word that are about love
• 34:58
  Speaker 6: and that are about disrespect. So you know, and yes
• 35:01
  Speaker 6: we know the history of it. We also know that
• 35:04
  Speaker 6: that's mine.
• 35:07
  Speaker 7: But I also grew up reading stuff I grew up,
• 35:09
  Speaker 7: you know, Message to the Black Man by Elijah Muhammad
• 35:11
  Speaker 7: Bier of Malcolm Back, you know, a great book called
• 35:14
  Speaker 7: From Niggas to God.
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: I think every black man in America should read that.
• 35:18
  Speaker 7: It's always been I've always been conflicted about using the
• 35:21
  Speaker 7: work because I don't use it as a term.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: If it did, right, I use it using when Chris
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: Rock showed me the difference. I use it for that, right.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: Right, there's a I think last time I was here,
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: I quoted doctor Daniel Black, and I'm going to quote
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: him again. He says, why should I borrow a word
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: from people who hate me when I'm trying to speak
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: love to my brothers and sisters? Right, So I go
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: back to uh to comrade, you know the term black
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: panther Party used Reggie Mason, you know, brought it back
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: up to me. So I've been on this this comrade campaign. Know,
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: if I'm trying to speak love to my brother, will comrade,
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: I get the idea of you know, the N word
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: is a term of endearment, but it's a colonizers word, so.
• 36:08
  Speaker 6: Whole language is colonized, so that like like, it's not
• 36:11
  Speaker 6: our language. English is not our language.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: Sure, but I'm not, but I'm not going to use it.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: I I'm at the point of my life where I question,
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: what's the what's the sense in using a colonizer's word
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: which was a uh, intentionally derogatory word to describe us?
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: Why do I want to borrow that particular word and
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: go through the the hoops of Oh it's it's positive
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: so for me and this so just for me personally,
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: I'm I'm comrade, you know, and and I use it
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: in both scenarios. That's my comrade to them. Anytime.
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: You also said, we showed our co drout.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: Hip hop, and.
• 37:06
  Speaker 6: It's uh industry wise, it's sort of the bigger picture,
• 37:10
  Speaker 6: right because they did it the jazz like they co
• 37:13
  Speaker 6: opted it and used it for their own purposes.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: But there wasn't messages and jazz that were going to
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: have an effect. I mean, black people see them.
• 37:23
  Speaker 6: I mean yeah, I mean we sort ourself out. But
• 37:25
  Speaker 6: I also feel like from a macro perspective, this is
• 37:33
  Speaker 6: going to be the civil rights movement created a lot
• 37:37
  Speaker 6: of opportunities, and it shifted the mentality that made many
• 37:43
  Speaker 6: of us very passive.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: Though, Yeah, I feel like I integrated my people into
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: a burning.
• 37:52
  Speaker 6: House, into a burning house, right, Yeah.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: We had it.
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: It was more of a sent of independence. Yeah, I
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: get what you're saying. Go people's.
• 38:06
  Speaker 6: Argument, man, my godfather, don't call me and be like
• 38:09
  Speaker 6: young man. I like, you know, yeah, like it's.
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: It's heavy. It's a lot.
• 38:18
  Speaker 6: And I'm like, ah, you got me a pinch right now.
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: I didn't what you said. You said that sold ourselves out, okay.
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: In terms of music on the podcast, yeah, yeah.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: I mean even I mean, you know, there was a
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: term and hip hop artists talk about it when the
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: record labels say to them, this is what you have
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: to rap about, and this is what we're paying for
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: you to wrap.
• 38:39
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: So it's you know, and again I say, in a
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: lot of ways, we are generation. You know, we are
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: complicit in what we see, you know, the state of
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: hip hop. Uh in the younger generation, that's you know,
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: we allowed that. And for the dollars tu, I'm gonna
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: get a T shirt that says, you know.
• 39:05
  Speaker 7: We had when Snoop was here, This was a few
• 39:07
  Speaker 7: years ago. We had a conversation about that because that's
• 39:10
  Speaker 7: always been on my mind as I got noted like
• 39:13
  Speaker 7: damn see the Lord stuck. It was actually right, and
• 39:16
  Speaker 7: Snoop said she was, but it was the way she
• 39:19
  Speaker 7: was coming at us.
• 39:21
  Speaker 6: And again it's back to that First Amendment thing too,
• 39:24
  Speaker 6: you know what I mean, Like it's a layered conversation,
• 39:28
  Speaker 6: like you can't tell me. I can say, like, where
• 39:30
  Speaker 6: are you going to control my tongue like that? You know,
• 39:33
  Speaker 6: I'm an artist, Yeah, let me do what I do.
• 39:36
  Speaker 8: And so and telling yourself out means such a different
• 39:40
  Speaker 8: thing years ago than to you know, a lot of
• 39:44
  Speaker 8: it had to do with people not even being informed,
• 39:47
  Speaker 8: right educated on what they could could not do, their rights,
• 39:50
  Speaker 8: whether it was publishing, whether there was First Amendment rights,
• 39:53
  Speaker 8: whether it was their right to own a certain right.
• 39:58
  Speaker 8: You know that they should have owned advances. Now these
• 40:00
  Speaker 8: days people are smarter. So when we say that people
• 40:04
  Speaker 8: sell themselves out, I mean it's negative. But along the way,
• 40:07
  Speaker 8: you should be selling something right. You should be you know,
• 40:10
  Speaker 8: in the marketplace, you should be the monopoly that.
• 40:14
  Speaker 5: You want to be in the process.
• 40:15
  Speaker 8: So I'm glad the times are changed, right, but it's
• 40:18
  Speaker 8: definitely different when we talk about who we are today.
• 40:22
  Speaker 8: We are more informed in terms of and so we're
• 40:25
  Speaker 8: making more decisions, which is which is a good takeaway
• 40:27
  Speaker 8: when we're looking back at what was happening in the nineties.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: But some of the times, have you understand, Like we
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: had an artist a pitty other day. His name was
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Rob four nineties from Louisiana, and he said he signed
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: a deal so he.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: Could get out of the hood.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: He knew that if he was still there.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: It would be problems for him, his family's mother and
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: all that.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: So he had to do the deal to get out
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: of it. And I know even with hip hop back then,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of artists that's the same, right, that was their.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Only way out, right. Their music was great and they
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: didn't know anything out.
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: Of it, that's right.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: So people consider that selling selling me a soul, selling.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Themselves out for them, they look like, look, I'm just
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: trying to get out the hoods one, that's.
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: Right, And if they had more information that would have
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: been better off.
• 41:03
  Speaker 8: That's all access, Yeah, accessing opportunities.
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: I got a couple of questions.
• 41:08
  Speaker 7: I want people debscribe to the podcast, but when it
• 41:10
  Speaker 7: comes to TV and movies. Do you have the same
• 41:12
  Speaker 7: discretion with the N word and the bware?
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I feel like if it's if it's
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: I mean in terms of using it, in terms of
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: my use of it, or the industry's use of it both.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: So I think I am I'm against the gratuitous use
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: of the words. So like, I understand all of the
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: arguments and all of the defending, but I think what's
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: getting lost is I'm referring to the gratuitous use of it. Sure,
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: we can talk all day about there are some circumstances
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: where that word is the only thing that really you know,
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: So I'm aware of all of that. But my my
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: issue was, I said, it's the gratuitous use.
• 41:57
  Speaker 8: Of it because I would imagine right that if you
• 42:00
  Speaker 8: get a tight script that takes place in the nineteen sixties,
• 42:04
  Speaker 8: what else scripts don't have the words?
• 42:06
  Speaker 7: Right?
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: So right, that's that's different.
• 42:08
  Speaker 8: And that's what we talk about a lot amongst the
• 42:11
  Speaker 8: three of us is that it does have a place.
• 42:14
  Speaker 8: We can't just erase that of history, right, It has
• 42:17
  Speaker 8: a place. You cannot do certain things without the word
• 42:20
  Speaker 8: coming up. It's just where you place it in your
• 42:23
  Speaker 8: own life.
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: And that's where you play.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: But I can't go do an August Wilson play period,
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying. So I get all of that.
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: I think my issue is along with the I go
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: back to anti black messaging and our music, the gratuitous
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: use of the N word. It's just, you know, it's
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: just for me. I'm just like, you know, enough already.
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: And again I said enough already. But then I also
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: go back to, you know, there's so many incredible lyricists
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: who have proven their pin game is top notch, and
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: I go, well, just like, elevate the shit if all
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: these corny motherfuckers are using nigg and bitch in all
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: of their lyrics and then don't elevate the shit, like
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: show them. And also when we're in our forties and
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: fifties still rapping the same shit we were wrapping in
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: our twenties, it's like that's not even you know, like
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: like show me some growth, right, like if you're not
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: even giving me any integrity in your art an evolution evolution, yeah,
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: and growth, And I like I just can't and it's
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: not feeding my soul. Can't do it.
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: I get you.
• 43:29
  Speaker 7: I want to ask you one question about respectability politics
• 43:31
  Speaker 7: because you brought it up. The thing about respectability politics,
• 43:35
  Speaker 7: what if the person you're respecting is just truly yourself.
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: You're just policing yourself.
• 43:41
  Speaker 7: You're saying about respecting the white man and the system,
• 43:44
  Speaker 7: but trying to make the system comfortable.
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: I'm just respecting myself. Is that still respectability politics?
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: So I bring it up all the time because whenever
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: we're talking about that, people go to, well, it doesn't
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: matter what people think about us, Like I'm even talking
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: about white people. I'm talking about our own level of
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: self respect. So that's all. Always that's always the take
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: that I bring up, But then it goes it always
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: the conversation always leads back to claiming respectability.
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: No agreed.
• 44:10
  Speaker 8: You know, we have this conversation often where you know,
• 44:12
  Speaker 8: you go out, you're not even worrying about any other
• 44:16
  Speaker 8: race until somebody reminds you. So most of the things
• 44:18
  Speaker 8: you're doing, I'm just doing inside of myself.
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: I'm not really concerned about that echo what he says.
• 44:25
  Speaker 6: I mean, those are very specific and nuanced situations. Each
• 44:30
  Speaker 6: it's situational, right. I think that we've gotta center ourselves first.
• 44:39
  Speaker 6: I think it's time that you know, we put black
• 44:43
  Speaker 6: folks at the front and really center how we move
• 44:47
  Speaker 6: and making our movements based around the greater good, the
• 44:55
  Speaker 6: respectability politics. It happens. It's a it's a reality of
• 44:58
  Speaker 6: American culture, and some people choose to engage and some
• 45:04
  Speaker 6: people don't.
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: You don't seem like the type that's gonna have to
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: engage with.
• 45:13
  Speaker 6: I love my people, I love my people.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: And well, the podcast Not All Hood is streaming everywhere
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: and I appreciate you guys for joining us. Malcolm, Jamal Warner,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: where you see Baraka and Kandas Kelly. Thank you guys
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: so much. It's Breakfast, Good morning, Wake.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: That ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club