Speaker 1: Calls media. Hey, Yo, Happy Friday. Hopefully you're listening to
Speaker 1: this on Friday, and this weekend is something special for me.
Speaker 1: I will be in Atlanta. No, I would have just
Speaker 1: finished the show in Atlanta at Emory University. So if
Speaker 1: you came to that shout out you, I would have
Speaker 1: came home and be heading to the La County Fair
Speaker 1: to rock with the Hommie Tycoon. If you're interested into
Speaker 1: hearing the rap version of me prepping for the album
Speaker 1: release party at Club real Ones on June first, so again, please,
Speaker 1: I would love for you to come through there. If
Speaker 1: you go to clubreal Ones dot com, you can get
Speaker 1: like a discount ticket fifty percent off clubrel Ones dot com.
Speaker 1: Use promo code props pr ops. Come chill with the
Speaker 1: Day Party crew. It's a lot of hip hop, so
Speaker 1: just be prepared for that, but a whole lot of
Speaker 1: R and B and good times and just come chill.
Speaker 1: It's fun and besides your home by nine, j'all oh last,
Speaker 1: all right, this tap in is about keeping that same
Speaker 1: energy that you need to keep and it also has
Speaker 1: to do with my rap world. I just got back
Speaker 1: from Joseph Harp Correctional Institution in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, at
Speaker 1: an event called music Fest in conjunction with Justice for Julius.
Speaker 1: Julius Jones was a man wrongfully convicted for murder who
Speaker 1: was scheduled to be on death row. Was in on
Speaker 1: death row for twenty years, and my homeboy JB fought
Speaker 1: alongside the Justice for Julius movement to get his wanting
Speaker 1: to get him out of jail, but first of all
Speaker 1: to get his death row sentence commuted. They succeeded with that,
Speaker 1: but he is still sitting in jail. At the prison
Speaker 1: he's at, there is an event called music Fest, which
Speaker 1: is a three day music festival that's been going on
Speaker 1: for the fast five years. I've had a chance to
Speaker 1: be a part of three of those five years, but
Speaker 1: this might be the end of it because of a
Speaker 1: new head of security. And there was this moment with
Speaker 1: one of these inmates. And this inmate is a man
Speaker 1: that you would absolutely expect to just be working at
Speaker 1: a church running sound like he's the most regular, regular
Speaker 1: looking white boy you'd ever meet. Ever, he said something
Speaker 1: that makes me want to tap in. What y'all about?
Speaker 1: He says, I just really hope that prison reform is
Speaker 1: still something you guys are talking about on the outside.
Speaker 1: That kind of shook me a little bit taping with me. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you have to go to prison, this is
Speaker 1: the prison you want to be at. A lot of
Speaker 1: these men are lifers. There's one young man who is
Speaker 1: serving two consecutive life sentences, but it was from a
Speaker 1: charge when he was seventeen. There was a young man
Speaker 1: that I was actually looking forward to seeing, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna change his name right now because it's none of
Speaker 1: y'all's business. I'm gonna call him Paul. Paul. And another
Speaker 1: one who I don't mind saying his name is Key Tech,
Speaker 1: who was a legendary like producer in okac's hip hop
Speaker 1: scene running a studio. And him Paul and that regular
Speaker 1: degular white boy I was talking about. They put together
Speaker 1: this thing called Music Fest. So it's completely put together
Speaker 1: by the inmates in conjunction with Live Free OKC, Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter OKC, and the Justice for Julius program Org.
Speaker 1: These are people who work not only for justice for inmates,
Speaker 1: to see community organizing inside of OKC, but all so
Speaker 1: specifically for Julius. So in conjunction with that, they work
Speaker 1: to reach out to artists. It's a three day thing.
Speaker 1: They have an amazing sound system. It's like a festival.
Speaker 1: It's like it feels like coming to a festival. You
Speaker 1: get emailed, you know with the team. They ask for
Speaker 1: your tech writer. There are certain things that you can't
Speaker 1: bring in because it is in fact a prison. But
Speaker 1: like I said, if you have to be in prison,
Speaker 1: you want to be in prison. Here there is the
Speaker 1: closest to the just valuing of these brothers humanity. They're
Speaker 1: not overly surveiled. It is still in fact jail, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong. But the yard is of course a yard.
Speaker 1: It's also but it's also you know, it's chapel. It's
Speaker 1: gym where the brothers got a TV. You know, they
Speaker 1: could play basketball. We go in there and this when
Speaker 1: I tell you, it's nothing like this. It's like going
Speaker 1: to a twenty four hour fitness except for all the
Speaker 1: security you had to go through to get in there.
Speaker 1: We're just chilling. We watched Game seven for the OKC
Speaker 1: and Denver series. They all get these tablets which was
Speaker 1: loaded with of course, again you're still in prison, so
Speaker 1: it's loaded with some like pre selected channels and some
Speaker 1: musical selections that like, obviously are not going to spark
Speaker 1: crippin blood wars. But these guys have, relatively speaking, a
Speaker 1: lot of privileges. Now, granted, there were other men that
Speaker 1: are there that are don't have those privileges, that are
Speaker 1: in a little more you know, kind of lockdown situation.
Speaker 1: Some of that's for their own good or whatever, but
Speaker 1: or their own safety, you know. And of course they
Speaker 1: still have is the white supremacist world that has to
Speaker 1: get segregated because they choose to believe a thing. There
Speaker 1: are brothers that I am excited to see every year.
Speaker 1: It feels like a reunion, one of which is the
Speaker 1: name I changed to Homie Paul. I was informed that
Speaker 1: he got moved, and he got moved to a another
Speaker 1: prison institution that did not have these types of freedoms.
Speaker 1: This was supposed to be disciplinary action because apparently he
Speaker 1: had peanut butter in his cell. Now he's one of
Speaker 1: the people that greet us that organized this event. And
Speaker 1: then I come to find out that this was because
Speaker 1: the new head of security apparently had an issue with
Speaker 1: him from twenty years ago when he got written up.
Speaker 1: He asked the guy like what, like, where do you
Speaker 1: where's this coming from? Like, what do you know me
Speaker 1: from He goes, man, you were a troublemaker back in
Speaker 1: twenty years ago at you know whatever whatever he and
Speaker 1: he goes. My friend Paul was like, I was in
Speaker 1: Florida then, so like and then the security guy was
Speaker 1: like you talking back to me shipped him out. He
Speaker 1: has been working tirestly to end a lot of these freedoms.
Speaker 1: He feels as though security, safety and control needs to
Speaker 1: be done through power by an iron fist. Some of
Speaker 1: the other things the Brothers was telling us is that
Speaker 1: they do these mind game these just manipulation type stuff
Speaker 1: that just completely unnecessary and intentionally designed to remind them
Speaker 1: that they are not free. And I even noticed it
Speaker 1: from the day or from the first moment walking in
Speaker 1: to get through the metal detectors into security, I used
Speaker 1: to be greeted very warmly, like there were professionals. There
Speaker 1: were still like prison guards, but it was warm. Hey, dude,
Speaker 1: glad you're doing this for the guys. Just put your
Speaker 1: laptop right there, blah blah blah blah your name man,
Speaker 1: Like it was great. This dude was like signing right here,
Speaker 1: won't even look at us in our eyes. Just a
Speaker 1: whole other like old school lapd just bully. You guys
Speaker 1: are like just bullies, like all of us are beneath you.
Speaker 1: The whole tone. I just saw, like after going their
Speaker 1: two years, I just saw how their demeanor was so different.
Speaker 1: One thing you gotta know about when you when you
Speaker 1: when you're talking to inmates is they don't really be
Speaker 1: having a lot of people to talk to. So you
Speaker 1: got to, like, you gotta be prepared for a lot
Speaker 1: of stories because they just don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: time to do small talk often because they only see
Speaker 1: each other all the time. So whenever there has a
Speaker 1: new face, these brothers with Takyo year off, so you
Speaker 1: gotta make sure you get your rest before you before
Speaker 1: you go to be very present for him. The stories
Speaker 1: they were expressing of just really petty, unnecessary, like we're
Speaker 1: already in prison creating problems and creating problems with guys
Speaker 1: that are the good ones, if we're gonna use those terms,
Speaker 1: and even the men that like apparently Key Tech is
Speaker 1: about to get transferred to another institution too, and I
Speaker 1: think that is in for the purpose of removing this festival,
Speaker 1: which is a sense of joy, like a moment for
Speaker 1: these guys to just remember that they're humans again, that
Speaker 1: there is such thing as joy. They're serving their time.
Speaker 1: You don't have to dehumanize them. I haven't even gotten
Speaker 1: too the concept of abolition. I'm saying, they already locked up.
Speaker 1: And the way that they were explaining this thing just
Speaker 1: it grieved me so much because they would They kept saying, man,
Speaker 1: they're not even he's not even treating us like we're
Speaker 1: a human. Man. Hopefully he'll leave. And that guy that
Speaker 1: I told you that just seems like a regular, regular
Speaker 1: dude that you'd meet it at the parent teacher conference.
Speaker 1: That's just like that guy's kid is in your fourth
Speaker 1: grade class, just the most regular. He was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we've been, you know, doing our homework, doing
Speaker 1: our research, really trying to understand like what's going on.
Speaker 1: And he goes, the message we're getting is like those
Speaker 1: guys are dinosaurs, like they are on their way out.
Speaker 1: But what he said at the end of that was, Man,
Speaker 1: I just hope and pray that people are still talking
Speaker 1: about this on the outside. You know a lot of times,
Speaker 1: especially if you move in justice circles or just pay
Speaker 1: attention on social media, it's about the news coming so
Speaker 1: fast that you can't keep up. We all know about
Speaker 1: like Instagram activists that are moving on to the next
Speaker 1: to borrow Jamie's language, the next Internet main character. But
Speaker 1: of justice. You know, you're only caring about it because
Speaker 1: we talking about it right now, all the black squares
Speaker 1: that were on twenty twenty when everybody cared about Black
Speaker 1: Lives matter. Eventually something else happens and it takes over
Speaker 1: our zeigeist. But then there's the reality of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Flint still doesn't have clean water. There's so many things
Speaker 1: we have to care about. But that moment reminded me
Speaker 1: of something that I want to remind you of is
Speaker 1: that these people are not just Internet topics or what's
Speaker 1: going on in the news cycle. They are in fact
Speaker 1: people of people that are hoping and praying that we
Speaker 1: can keep the same energy. And I know i'm speaking
Speaker 1: to peace people, especially if you subscribe to anything that
Speaker 1: Cool Zone does, y'all care. I also know that it's
Speaker 1: impossible to care about everything, But I just want to
Speaker 1: remind you that your advocacy, the things that you do
Speaker 1: speak up about and push the line on, there are
Speaker 1: people counting on us and it do work. Just man,
Speaker 1: when you're posting your watermelons in support for the children
Speaker 1: of Gaza. Remember, I mean literally, this is somebody's baby
Speaker 1: and they're kind of counting on us to not lose focus.
Speaker 1: I don't know, man. It was such a reminder to
Speaker 1: me that these ain't just pods. This is somebody's lives.
Speaker 1: Tap being with