Speaker 1: Welcome to Drink Champs, the production of The Black Effect
Speaker 1: and I heart radio and his drinks motherfucking podcast makes
Speaker 1: He's a legendary queen's rapper. He's like Green is your
Speaker 1: boy in O R E. He's a Miami hip hop
Speaker 1: pioneer up his DJ E f N. Together they drinking
Speaker 1: up with some of the biggest players in the most professional,
Speaker 1: unprofessional podcast. And yet number one sorts for drunk drink
Speaker 1: is New year' z. That's time for Drink Champs. Trink
Speaker 1: up mother mother would it could be hopeully would be
Speaker 1: This your boy in O right? What up is dj
Speaker 1: E f N? And this is drink Champs makes an right.
Speaker 1: Now we have an author, we have a minister radio host,
Speaker 1: a professor, an intellect intellect. I love to hear his
Speaker 1: brother speak. I remember seeing him on Bill Moore just
Speaker 1: handling people like just I remember, you know this is
Speaker 1: one of and and I was naming all his titles.
Speaker 1: But besides all that, he's a brother hold it down,
Speaker 1: can talk. So it's like he's it's like he's spitting
Speaker 1: bars when he talks, his speeches, his the way he
Speaker 1: delivers the words. So he hit me the other day
Speaker 1: and I said, brother, and I need you. He showed
Speaker 1: up In case you I don't know who we're talking about,
Speaker 1: talking about the one, the only Michael. We don't get
Speaker 1: straight to the point. We're gonna food around, I said,
Speaker 1: drink Champs. You know we're we're not a political show,
Speaker 1: right this This is not why people come here. Um,
Speaker 1: and we don't. We don't really you know, prep our
Speaker 1: guests and say, yo, this is what we're gonna ask.
Speaker 1: So this is what we're gonna do. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like a free fall. You just come here and and
Speaker 1: things just happen. So well, this is for those who's
Speaker 1: tuning in. This is our first episode since the Kanye
Speaker 1: West episode. That might have seen other episodes that dropped,
Speaker 1: but this is not. This is the very first one
Speaker 1: recorded episodes since the Kanye West. So what did you
Speaker 1: think when you first heard also Kanye on this show? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I'm such a huge fan of this show.
Speaker 1: I watch every right and back when when we read
Speaker 1: Ditty's Christmas Party years ago, you got my numbers. Look,
Speaker 1: I want you to come on. So I'm finally I'm
Speaker 1: glad we're finally able to work it out for the
Speaker 1: people to know this. Hold on, I'm right. This has
Speaker 1: been on a show about two, two or three years
Speaker 1: ago something like that. I came with you. I was
Speaker 1: so excited you early dream shots because I truly understand
Speaker 1: that this is the balance that we need. You understand.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, if we cover our story that, um, that
Speaker 1: wasn't right. I want to I want to fix it.
Speaker 1: That's so. So so let's let's go back to that.
Speaker 1: So what did you what what was your getting phone calls?
Speaker 1: Was people calling you saying, man, Kanye West is on
Speaker 1: your show? Yeah, that's right, and say, man, you know
Speaker 1: that's the dude you love that cut the con and
Speaker 1: he got to the So the thing is, look, I've
Speaker 1: known Kanye for a while. So let me put my
Speaker 1: car straight on the table. Let me tell you how
Speaker 1: I came to know Kanye. So I'm texting j jay
Speaker 1: Z after I'm trying to flaws, but we're gonna get
Speaker 1: that stuff out your teeth. So the thing is is
Speaker 1: that this is right after the v m a's right
Speaker 1: when he does the Taylor Swift thing. I was in
Speaker 1: the audience when Kanye did what he did right, and
Speaker 1: we were it was like the Oscars is that a joke?
Speaker 1: Is that is that arrange? And then after we're when
Speaker 1: it went down and he was taking all the heat,
Speaker 1: I'm texting Jay going, I'm not feeling that I said,
Speaker 1: because what Kanye was trying to do in that moment
Speaker 1: is to say Black artists have always been appropriated, ex appropriated,
Speaker 1: denounced and then took all their content and then the
Speaker 1: gifts that they have have been abused, and then they
Speaker 1: don't get the recognition for they make the dump, the
Speaker 1: dope and bomb albums, but they don't get the recognition. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm imagining that night. Uh, little Richard was going like,
Speaker 1: go ahead, because because give me my Grammy. I bet
Speaker 1: Chuck Barry was like, yo, where was somebody when I
Speaker 1: deserved a Grammy that maybe was given to Elvis? So
Speaker 1: I saw it in the historical context. Yeah, he was drunk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he went up there and did something rude. I love
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift, but at that moment, he was representative of
Speaker 1: a culture that was tired of being abused. So I
Speaker 1: told Jay, I'm not down with all the hate that's
Speaker 1: coming to Kanye. He says, do me a favor, you know,
Speaker 1: send it to my email, and I'm gonna send it
Speaker 1: to you, Kanye. So I did the thing. He sent
Speaker 1: it to many. That's how me and Kanye first met
Speaker 1: years and years ago. So we've been talking back and forth.
Speaker 1: He don't posted some of my stuff, my tweets, text
Speaker 1: to him in public. That's why I don't feel bad
Speaker 1: about going public, not because God name you ain't. You
Speaker 1: ain't had asked me, because you post my stuff. So
Speaker 1: let's have a public conversation, you know. So I love
Speaker 1: Let me be clear, I love him. He's a genius.
Speaker 1: He's extraordinarily talented. But I think uh dealing with the
Speaker 1: mental health issues that he confronts, whether he wants to
Speaker 1: admit them or not, that's part of it. Another party
Speaker 1: is that the mental health may exacerbate tendencies that already
Speaker 1: pre exist, that the conditions that underlied. Just like when
Speaker 1: you talk about COVID, COVID brings out some of the
Speaker 1: other stuff that has been hampering you high blood pressure, diabetes,
Speaker 1: and so on. So in this sense, the mental health
Speaker 1: issues and struggles that he's been clear and quite transparent
Speaker 1: about may have also touched off our analysis of some
Speaker 1: of his politics and ideology that are problematic. He's a
Speaker 1: genius and a menace. He's a genius and a nuisance.
Speaker 1: He's a genius who does extraordinary things. But this ain't
Speaker 1: his strong suit. Talking about George Floyd is not your
Speaker 1: strong suit. And I know you've been deeply inspired and
Speaker 1: influenced by Candice owns Uh, the conservative right wing host
Speaker 1: who lives in in Nashville like I do. So the
Speaker 1: thing is who you listening to? Who's your diet? You know,
Speaker 1: this is not Whole Foods. This is not a grocer
Speaker 1: that is of reputable stuff. You you're getting it from
Speaker 1: a ghetto grocer, and you're pumping that stuff back into
Speaker 1: the consciousness of the people. And it's sounding deeply, profoundly ignorant,
Speaker 1: you know, saying that, Well, he wasn't calling his mama,
Speaker 1: it was just what his girlfriend was called. Regardless, that
Speaker 1: may have been true, But the point is he's calling
Speaker 1: to his mother who had recently died, and he's feeling
Speaker 1: a kinship in intimacy with her, and then talking about
Speaker 1: fentonel was what caused this death? Bro When they did
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Jr's autopsy at thirty nine years old,
Speaker 1: they discovered he had the art of a sixty three
Speaker 1: year old man. Now that's my age, So I hope
Speaker 1: that was pretty damn good. But they saying for thirty nine,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have a sixty three year old hard Is
Speaker 1: that what killed him? No, it was the bullet from
Speaker 1: James Earl ray So Mr West brother, the ya Kanye.
Speaker 1: It was the force apply by a white supremacist cop.
Speaker 1: Now whether he had intention to hate black people, the
Speaker 1: function of his knee on the neck of George Floyd,
Speaker 1: despite Floyd saying I can't breathe, please get up, he
Speaker 1: was being extremely nice. He wasn't belligerent, he wasn't nasty,
Speaker 1: he wasn't for tuperative, he wasn't Hayden, he wasn't cussing
Speaker 1: the man out. He was saying, I can't breathe, and
Speaker 1: this man didn't hear him. It was the pressure applied
Speaker 1: by the knee of Derek Chovin. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the black cop who was on his back, and the
Speaker 1: white cop who was on his knees and his torso,
Speaker 1: and the Asian cop who was lookout. That's multiculturalism for you.
Speaker 1: That's why diversity has to be toward a goal of equality,
Speaker 1: because you're gonna have diversity towards some messed up goals.
Speaker 1: Kanye West, to me, has an extraordinary platform. He says,
Speaker 1: he wants independent thought. How are you being independent in
Speaker 1: the circumference of MAGA, in the circumference of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Let me give you another story. I had just written
Speaker 1: a book, Tears We Cannot Stop, a sermon to White America.
Speaker 1: And so I was out in l A on book
Speaker 1: tour and I come out of this warehouse looking place
Speaker 1: where I had done a show, and a brother standing there,
Speaker 1: and I says that Kanye say, hey, man, what's going on?
Speaker 1: Oh man, what's happening? Blah blah blah. Right, it was
Speaker 1: that my book? It was that. It was It was
Speaker 1: at a recording of a show that was talking about
Speaker 1: my book. But he happened to be outside where I
Speaker 1: was was coming out. So he totaled his companion said
Speaker 1: you know what this is Michael guys and blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and then he, you know, we talked a bit. This
Speaker 1: is right after he had, you know, announced his support
Speaker 1: for Trump. So I went to my car, knock knock,
Speaker 1: knock on the window, and it's Jay saying, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk to you about what's going on.
Speaker 1: So for the next half hour we're chopping up. I'm saying,
Speaker 1: why is it that you a rhetorical genius, a verbal master,
Speaker 1: in complete control of an aesthetic expression of hip hop
Speaker 1: that we hadn't seen in ever. You brought together in
Speaker 1: the Midwest, the sole traditions, digging into the crates to
Speaker 1: give us a sonic texture that continues to thrive today.
Speaker 1: It's so dense with blues and with with R and
Speaker 1: B and the love ethic of black people. Why would
Speaker 1: you leverage all of the genius you've created as a
Speaker 1: result of your own gifts for a man who is mediocre,
Speaker 1: who is a bigot, who has no concern for any
Speaker 1: beyond him, who is a lethal narcissist. He says, so,
Speaker 1: what do you think God should do? I said, I
Speaker 1: think you should distance yourself from him. I don't think
Speaker 1: that that's something healthy for you. So when he says,
Speaker 1: you know, people can't think and they can't be independent,
Speaker 1: who are you independent from? White supremacy is a dominant
Speaker 1: stream in American society. The belief that black people uh
Speaker 1: should not say black lives matter. You're wearing a white
Speaker 1: Lives Matter T shirt. It might be que to you,
Speaker 1: It might be an aesthetic representation of your imagination gone crazy.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is we know white lives matter.
Speaker 1: That's why we say Black lives matter. You ain't got
Speaker 1: to say something that's apparent. When you come to the
Speaker 1: crib and you got your wife and kids there and
Speaker 1: you want to be daddy, you ain't got to say, hey,
Speaker 1: remember I'm daddy. They already know you daddy. If you
Speaker 1: in control, daddy is um is in your DNA. But
Speaker 1: when you announced that, that means it hasn't been made clear.
Speaker 1: So when we say black lives matter, we're saying that
Speaker 1: black lives have been disrespected, have been degraded, have been
Speaker 1: denied access, have been treated as if they were second
Speaker 1: class citizens. White folk already got the advantage. So you're
Speaker 1: wearing a White Lives Matter T shirt. May be cute
Speaker 1: to you, but it's destructive, it's harmful, and it hurts
Speaker 1: the core of Black American destination. And for Kanye to say, look,
Speaker 1: I want to be independent, I'm for independent thought. So
Speaker 1: let's hold you to account. Let's ask you what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Let's speak about the interests and intentions you
Speaker 1: have by going to Paris, appearing there radiating a toxic
Speaker 1: racial identity that has been destructive not only the black people,
Speaker 1: but the white people. To whiteness has been a destructive
Speaker 1: reality for white folks themselves. That's where they're trying to
Speaker 1: struggle with it as well. So those are some of
Speaker 1: the things I thought off the top of the dome
Speaker 1: when I saw that. You know what was what's crazy
Speaker 1: is when he first wore the White Lives Matter T shirt.
Speaker 1: He I think that this is how he had left
Speaker 1: Gap and he had went to fashion week, right, And
Speaker 1: I think that I think that's why I think I'm
Speaker 1: outside of looking in an inside of looking out. Um,
Speaker 1: I think he only wore the White Lives Matter to
Speaker 1: steal the attention away from fashion Week. I think he
Speaker 1: didn't actually think about the people that was hurt by it.
Speaker 1: I think I think he was just thinking, like, you
Speaker 1: know what, now our own fashion week and and and
Speaker 1: and it's crazy, but he actually got the goal done.
Speaker 1: If that was the goal, you understand, I'm saying for
Speaker 1: all attention to just go to him, like once that
Speaker 1: picture got up, you don't try. But apparently that why
Speaker 1: not say cracker is gonna crack? That would have gotten.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that for those listening, But I'm saying,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to get attention, why not say that?
Speaker 1: Why not say Angela Davis Rocks. Why not say black
Speaker 1: suffering needs to be talked about like pornography. Right, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff he could have said, because when
Speaker 1: you are that person, what you do comes out. So
Speaker 1: the choice he made he can't be he can't escape
Speaker 1: responsibility for because when you said that, if you're only
Speaker 1: thinking about yourself, that's part of the problem. You claim
Speaker 1: to be a leader in terms of thought, you claim
Speaker 1: to be independent, but you are supporting it to a
Speaker 1: kind of thinking and logic. This is what we mean
Speaker 1: by white supremacy. It don't mean that every white person
Speaker 1: hates black people. That's not what white supremacy is. White
Speaker 1: supremacy is the conscious or unconscious belief in the inherent
Speaker 1: superior priority of one group and the inherent inferiority of
Speaker 1: all others. So when you're performing that your own anti blackness, Kanye,
Speaker 1: you're a black man who's being anti black. Take for example,
Speaker 1: um Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. But Clarence Thomas
Speaker 1: is a dark skinned black man, anybody gonna miss that
Speaker 1: he a Negro. But at the same time, when he
Speaker 1: opens his mouth, white supremacist ideas, white supremacist thought, white
Speaker 1: supremacist rhetoric, white supremacist logic is coming out. And then
Speaker 1: his wife wiled and out on the January six tip
Speaker 1: writing letters and emails to figures within the Trump administration
Speaker 1: to amp up their resistance, uh to what's going on
Speaker 1: in this country by stealing the voting or saying the
Speaker 1: vote was stolen. All of this, Kanye, you were buying
Speaker 1: into that. If you're naive, you're still dangerous. If you're intentional,
Speaker 1: you're destructive. But regardless of what your intent was, the
Speaker 1: consequent was horrible. And if he didn't mean it, he
Speaker 1: could have said, by now you know what I was tripping.
Speaker 1: It was a ploy to get some recognition, but what
Speaker 1: idea was destructive. I don't think he believes that. I
Speaker 1: think he actually meant what he said, and we have
Speaker 1: to take him at his word. Like I supoke to
Speaker 1: Todler quality this morning and we were chopping and told him,
Speaker 1: how had you come in? And um, he said that
Speaker 1: what what it was spreading was white supremacy. Like how
Speaker 1: you say how can how how can I How isn't
Speaker 1: that an oxymoron? A black man spreading white supremacy? How
Speaker 1: can that? How can those two exists? Right? That's a
Speaker 1: great point. Well, that's why I said, even with Clarence
Speaker 1: Thomas's ventriloquism, black mouth open white ideas coming forward. So
Speaker 1: you know how that works. You're the one talking, but
Speaker 1: somebody else's voice is being amplified, so you can take
Speaker 1: into your own. You know, we used to call the
Speaker 1: old days internalized white oppression. In other words, you become
Speaker 1: the most vehicle effective vehicle for the spread of white
Speaker 1: supremacy because you could have passed or he can't be
Speaker 1: white supremacis he's black. He can't be anti black, he's
Speaker 1: black himself. Well that's the thing with Clarence Thomas. How
Speaker 1: are you going to claim Clarence Thomas is anti black
Speaker 1: because he's a black man. Don't mean he can't be
Speaker 1: against black people. We see it every day, don't we
Speaker 1: call it black home black crime. I think that's a
Speaker 1: problematic moniker. I think that doesn't describe what's going on.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, when a black
Speaker 1: person takes the life of another black person, and not
Speaker 1: a white person. That is what we are doing. So
Speaker 1: we can see rhetorically, verbally, intellectually, ideologically, politically, anyway, academically, scholarly,
Speaker 1: anyway you want to put it, You as a black person,
Speaker 1: can talk about ideas that instructive to black people. What
Speaker 1: did what did Zora Neil Hurston say, all my kin folk,
Speaker 1: I mean all my skin folk, ame my kinfolk. And
Speaker 1: what she meant by that is that certain ideas hibernate
Speaker 1: in the unconscious of black people and come out at
Speaker 1: very interesting moments when they began to reinforce the very
Speaker 1: ideas that hurt and harm us. So that's the oxymaronic statement.
Speaker 1: New scholarship has talked about anti blackness and and trying
Speaker 1: to be an anti racist because black people themselves can
Speaker 1: harbor horrible beliefs that are destructive to our people. You
Speaker 1: want to see the perfect example of that, Look at
Speaker 1: Stephen and Django. Look at Samuel L. Jackson. Samuel Jackson's
Speaker 1: a friend of mine. When I saw my said negro,
Speaker 1: I wanted to knock your black office said the same
Speaker 1: thing though exactly. But Kanye, I'm just saying that right.
Speaker 1: So Stephen is up here, he is more effectively expressing
Speaker 1: the ideas of white dominance, white privileged, white superiority, and
Speaker 1: black subordination to them than any any white person ever could.
Speaker 1: So that's what we mean when we say black people
Speaker 1: ourselves can begin to express ideas that are harmful and
Speaker 1: destructive to our own communities. Because on one hand, it
Speaker 1: was it was confusing for me. And I've been doing
Speaker 1: this for six years. I'm not a journalist, I'm not
Speaker 1: a therapist, but I'm a realist. I'm hearing this and
Speaker 1: it was confusing to me at times because he'll say,
Speaker 1: you know, the white Lives Matter shirt, but then he'll
Speaker 1: didn't help peach black excellence. So I was confused to do,
Speaker 1: like you, I want our community to have this. I
Speaker 1: want our community, I want us to do this, and
Speaker 1: and and and it's like how does they how does
Speaker 1: that both exist? Like yeah, that's part of the fact
Speaker 1: is he is a genius. So it's like no question,
Speaker 1: it's like kind of like hard to like to distinguish,
Speaker 1: like which part do you Actually that's a great point,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Look, we can acknowledge his genius,
Speaker 1: but his genius is in certain areas. You know, when
Speaker 1: you're a genius. You're a genius did everything. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. You could be. Einstein was a mathematical genius,
Speaker 1: but he could hardly keep his clothes clean, so he
Speaker 1: wouldn't know clean genius. Like Ell told me yesterday. For
Speaker 1: Ell told me this was his analogy. He called me.
Speaker 1: He said, Oh, well, people don't go to ESPN to
Speaker 1: talk about stocks, right, so you gotta respect the genre.
Speaker 1: What genre? I'm against the rapper, so I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: a conscious rapper. I'm not common. I can't talk about
Speaker 1: elevated ideas of black identity because that ain't what I do. Right.
Speaker 1: I can't say that, Hey, I will. I can't buy
Speaker 1: you a new person, but I will match your work. Nah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what that's about. I got you a
Speaker 1: birkin open up. So you gotta understand what you're good at.
Speaker 1: And Kanye is great at music. Kanye is great at,
Speaker 1: you know, productivity within the concepts of aesthetics and fashion.
Speaker 1: Kanye is great at producing. Kanye is great at being
Speaker 1: Kanye as a provocative figure. What Kanye ain't great at
Speaker 1: is understanding the relationship between what he does and the
Speaker 1: political consequences. That that that result from that. Now, if
Speaker 1: he's conscious of it, if he goes, I dare you
Speaker 1: to say that I'm I'm conscious, I'm a genius. I
Speaker 1: know what I'm doing. Well, then we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: really hold you accountable. But your genius is not in
Speaker 1: this area. It's it's gobbledygook. It's confused. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: you talking about black excellence, and he's made some brilliant
Speaker 1: music with jay On Watch the Throne from Black Excellent,
Speaker 1: Black Murder, the Black excellence, beautiful, uplifting, powerful, Then you
Speaker 1: turn right around or you make you know, crack music,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about that black music and talking about
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan and destroying black communities. You're going like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's powerful. Or when his mother took him and his
Speaker 1: parents took him to march in civil rights marches, that's powerful,
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. George Bush doesn't care for black people, that's great.
Speaker 1: Then you flip so easily on this other side where
Speaker 1: you demonizing black people, where you're saying white lives matter.
Speaker 1: Where now George Bush doesn't care for black people. Now
Speaker 1: you're saying that white lives matter. You're proving to certain
Speaker 1: black people that Kanye doesn't care about black people. So
Speaker 1: there's no question that Kanye is confused. But his confusion
Speaker 1: has consequence because he has such a monumental platform. And
Speaker 1: the reason we respond to him is not because we
Speaker 1: don't love him. I suspect that he'll hear me. You
Speaker 1: you're you betrayed me. You're supposed to be my friend. No, sir,
Speaker 1: the old black people say, where you did it, where
Speaker 1: you messed up, is where you get it. Where you're
Speaker 1: gonna get your punishment, right, I'm not administering any punishment.
Speaker 1: All of us are frail and fragile and flawed. I've
Speaker 1: made many mistakes. I pray to God people forgive me.
Speaker 1: The women, the men, the children that I've heard inadvertently
Speaker 1: or in intention intentionally forgive me. So I believe. I
Speaker 1: don't believe in Cancil culture. I don't believe in disposable
Speaker 1: human beings. I believe people mess up, then they are
Speaker 1: should be allowed to come back into the fold. But
Speaker 1: you got to admit what you did was wrong. And
Speaker 1: Kanye brokers no acceptance. Brooks no acceptance, has no one
Speaker 1: understanding of responsibility. By saying I did this, I said
Speaker 1: this is jacked up. He thinks what he says is right,
Speaker 1: and at this very moment, he needs to be held
Speaker 1: to public account for the public distress and harm that
Speaker 1: he has caused and the trauma that he's imposed upon
Speaker 1: the blood the black people in America. I think I
Speaker 1: think you should make some but um, how so how
Speaker 1: do you how do because me, like I heard you
Speaker 1: say it, it's like I do. I do love Kane, right,
Speaker 1: I love And what's crazy about me and him is
Speaker 1: our relationship is never political. So I didn't understand like
Speaker 1: not to say because I'm guilty too for for not
Speaker 1: being aware of what happened on on my platform. But
Speaker 1: most of the time me and him speak is never
Speaker 1: never political, right, So how do how do I move forward? Like,
Speaker 1: still love my friend, but I'm absolutely against his political views,
Speaker 1: but I'm still my friend. Of course, you gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta tell him that, you gotta say, yeah, look, I
Speaker 1: love you. What you're doing is amazing. Now if he's
Speaker 1: mature enough to accept your critique in love, That's why
Speaker 1: I do it in love. I'm not coming on here
Speaker 1: to try to harangue him, to harass him, to demonize him.
Speaker 1: That's not what I'm trying to do however, or James
Speaker 1: Brown would say house and never. What we got to
Speaker 1: do is get into the thick of it. And bro,
Speaker 1: I love you, I respect your genius. You're a remarkable
Speaker 1: creative in this American society. But what you're doing is problematic.
Speaker 1: And when you say, look, I understand what you mean
Speaker 1: when you say it's not explicitly political. But you know,
Speaker 1: most of life is political. This water, this, this, this
Speaker 1: booze are sitting here in a neighborhood in Miami, right,
Speaker 1: this is all political because somebody had to make the
Speaker 1: decision about what zoning was available. Well, how could this
Speaker 1: bar or this club exists here? That's politics. Politics is
Speaker 1: about what school your kids go to and do they
Speaker 1: get a good education? So, in one sense, your show
Speaker 1: is extremely political because it broadcasts and amplifies the diversity
Speaker 1: of black identity and hip hop at its heart. That's
Speaker 1: a deeply and profoundly political statement in a culture that
Speaker 1: doubts the humanity and the intelligence of black people. Because um,
Speaker 1: and I believe you say, sixty five right, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so lets well, so have you in these sixty three
Speaker 1: years have you ever seen something like this Prior? I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, people have done horrible things, made mistakes, uh
Speaker 1: aft up, and so I mean we ain't that far
Speaker 1: past the oscars saying right now, I know Will too,
Speaker 1: He's a beautiful, beautiful man, and I know you and
Speaker 1: jaded stuff, but yeah, I mean take that attention off
Speaker 1: on man. Or you know, when Dreymond Green just punched
Speaker 1: you know, Jordan Pool, now, it didn't have the significance
Speaker 1: and the impact of this. And arguably obviously Will Smith's
Speaker 1: slap of Chris Rock And both of them are dear
Speaker 1: friends of mine and I love them. I'm in the
Speaker 1: same dilemma as you. I love both of these men,
Speaker 1: geniuses at what they do, extraordinary human beings. One of
Speaker 1: them made a horrible mistake in publicly humiliating another black man,
Speaker 1: and that black man is left to deal with the
Speaker 1: consequences of that, even though he says he's fine. The depression,
Speaker 1: the trauma, the internal sense of question self questioning should
Speaker 1: I have done this? And if I had done something differently,
Speaker 1: could I have been could it have led to a
Speaker 1: different consequence? But what Kanye has done is to amp
Speaker 1: the five the worst instincts of white folk against black
Speaker 1: folk and he's done done it as a as a
Speaker 1: sheep in one sense, as a wolf in sheep's clothing,
Speaker 1: because if you come as a friend defending us in
Speaker 1: your music, defending us in your culture and politics. Although
Speaker 1: a lot of black people would say it's been a
Speaker 1: long time since he's been defending us, he's been offending
Speaker 1: us a lot longer. But the point is that Kanye
Speaker 1: West has had moments where he has stood up high
Speaker 1: and powerful in the culture. George Bush making music, I
Speaker 1: mean when he's talking about blackness, going up on that
Speaker 1: stage with Taylor Swift saying, Beyonce deserved that. All my
Speaker 1: single ladies, all my single ladies. Oh even the Pope
Speaker 1: was singing that, if you really want me to be
Speaker 1: pumped up, put put a ring on it. So the
Speaker 1: point is that was deeply and profoundly consequential and influential.
Speaker 1: But another compatriot of his, I won't name his name,
Speaker 1: a famous musician, said, but when I was hanging with Kanye,
Speaker 1: we never talked politics like you were saying we talked
Speaker 1: about So Kanye was never really explicit political, even though
Speaker 1: his statements had political consequence, it wasn't his intent. It's
Speaker 1: just what happened. It is. My past used to tell
Speaker 1: me a mosquito don't more meaning no harm. It just
Speaker 1: wants some blood, but it can't give you malaria. So
Speaker 1: Kanye may have meant this to be exciting. He may
Speaker 1: have meant this to be controversial, although I suspect this
Speaker 1: deeper than that. But the consequence to us is that
Speaker 1: we've got a kind of psychological malaria. We've got racial
Speaker 1: harm and trauma being delivered to us. And Kanye must
Speaker 1: be made aware of that. Eiven, He's going to accept
Speaker 1: that responsibility and go, let me do something different. But
Speaker 1: I suspect the crowd he's hanging out with now is
Speaker 1: telling him your brave, You're courageous, You're doing a good thing.
Speaker 1: He's hanging out with Donald Trump. Donald Trump, this orange apparition,
Speaker 1: this guy, this guy who, when when Twitter was existing
Speaker 1: and he was on it, got up every morning to
Speaker 1: excrete the feces of his moral depravity into a nation.
Speaker 1: He turned into his psychic commode. He was doing horrible, devastating,
Speaker 1: nasty stuff to us, and for Kanye to amplify that,
Speaker 1: for Kanye to amen that, come on, bro, you are
Speaker 1: now contagious. You got the COVID of racial self hatred
Speaker 1: or at least hatred of black folks, and you got
Speaker 1: the quarantine for a minute, to get that ship straight.
Speaker 1: It is it? Could it be an extreme version of
Speaker 1: trying to reach greatness or on your way to greatness.
Speaker 1: You're going to have those failures in those potholes, sure,
Speaker 1: because you we see the genius in him. We see
Speaker 1: when he does really great things, but he's still trying
Speaker 1: to rise to this greatness that he hasn't achieved it
Speaker 1: in his mind. Is it full of those failures and
Speaker 1: potles that we're seeing. Of course. I mean, look, Kanye
Speaker 1: is a genius, rising even higher doing incredible things. But
Speaker 1: part of that genius has to be the ability to
Speaker 1: acknowledge a moral mishap, an ethical failure. I did something
Speaker 1: and it's wrong. You can't be just to not Nope,
Speaker 1: I don't care. I did it. I said it. That's cool.
Speaker 1: Let me keep moving on. We can't move on because
Speaker 1: you've left us with the consequences, right you the baby
Speaker 1: you don't craft in the diaper? You want to move on.
Speaker 1: We got to change that day. We got to deal
Speaker 1: with the consequences of it. So Kanye undeniably is rising
Speaker 1: to higher heights in terms of his fashion presence and
Speaker 1: being a bellion there. I know he keeps saying he's
Speaker 1: the richest black man in America. That would be Robert Smith, right,
Speaker 1: Robert Smith worth nearly seven billion dollars, Robert Smith who
Speaker 1: stood at more House College and said, let me forgive
Speaker 1: forty million dollars your loans. That's what a negro with
Speaker 1: money does. That's what a black man with bank does.
Speaker 1: That's what a black billionaire does. And I know there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people out here speaking about racial
Speaker 1: capitalism and trying to talk about the subversion of American
Speaker 1: economy for black people predicated upon being a billion there.
Speaker 1: I get that. That's a different argument for a different day.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, Kanye West is trying to do the
Speaker 1: best he can, but the best he can is hurting
Speaker 1: and harming us. And you're hanging out with people, you know,
Speaker 1: he's hanging out what Canda's owns, and God bless her.
Speaker 1: Candas Owns is a highly intelligent young lady doing her things.
Speaker 1: I deeply and profoundly disagree with her. If you want
Speaker 1: to hang out with some brilliant, beautiful black women, UH
Speaker 1: call up Treva Lindsay at Ohio State University, a brilliant
Speaker 1: woman wrote a book called America God Damn, a tremendous feminist.
Speaker 1: If you want to hang out with some young, brilliant,
Speaker 1: beautiful Black women, call Brittany Cooper, who wrote a book
Speaker 1: called Eloquent Rage about feminism in America and the way
Speaker 1: in which black feminism has to be assaulted has been
Speaker 1: assaulted both from within the culture and beyond. If you
Speaker 1: want to hang out with brilliant black women, talk to
Speaker 1: Salomisha Tillott, who just want to pull a surprise and
Speaker 1: writes for The New York Times and wrote a book
Speaker 1: on the making of the color purple. If you want
Speaker 1: to hang out with brilliant black women, talked to Stephanie
Speaker 1: Jones Rogers, who won National Book Award and wrote a
Speaker 1: book they were hurt property about white women owning Black
Speaker 1: women that you see l a. If you want to
Speaker 1: hang out with brilliant black women, there's so many others
Speaker 1: who are available to talk to you, and they love
Speaker 1: hip hop and they're dope and they got mad swag.
Speaker 1: Do that. Bro, just learned some different black women that
Speaker 1: would be helpful to again with because I guess that's
Speaker 1: I guess that's what he was trying to do and say,
Speaker 1: I believe Snoop critiqued him at one time and Snoop
Speaker 1: said that he didn't have black woman around him, and
Speaker 1: then and then and every down. Now people are teaking
Speaker 1: him because not only did he get a black woman,
Speaker 1: but he got somebody that believes in the total different.
Speaker 1: That's a great point, but she ain't his woman. That's
Speaker 1: different when when the woman at your crib like Negro,
Speaker 1: I know you a big time professor and everything, but
Speaker 1: you need to slow that down. Make you're killing him
Speaker 1: all right? You need that pillow talk right. The pillow
Speaker 1: may be white, but the black woman is radiating some
Speaker 1: intense blackness and that makes the difference. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to judge what he does because Kanye predicted it. He said,
Speaker 1: you the first thing you're gonna do when you get
Speaker 1: famous gonna get a white girl. Right. He said that
Speaker 1: in his own music, And I'm for look love who
Speaker 1: you will if you and this microphone can get together,
Speaker 1: y'all get down. Hey, I love you, I love you?
Speaker 1: Why do you love me? You amplify? So if y'all
Speaker 1: can have little baby, little microphone. So I'm I'm for
Speaker 1: that for sure. But the problem is is that, yes,
Speaker 1: having a black woman in your life and intelligent, informed, incisive,
Speaker 1: you know, incredibly caring black woman makes a difference in
Speaker 1: this country and in this world. But if you, as
Speaker 1: you said, if you talk to ones who don't necessarily
Speaker 1: curry the same kind of favor or carry the same
Speaker 1: kind of burden that their hearts wren because of what
Speaker 1: black people confront, then yeah, you're in trouble. Your has
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Speaker 1: is to help you find addiction care that meets your
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Speaker 1: section that helps you learn everything you need to know
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Speaker 1: help today by visiting shatterproof dot org. I'anged with the
Speaker 1: subjects a little bit and we'll get back to it. Um,
Speaker 1: the woman that's locked up in Russia, do you think
Speaker 1: that would be different if if she was any other race?
Speaker 1: Don't the basketball who just had her birthday? What yesterday? Right?
Speaker 1: There is no question that if she wasn't a woman
Speaker 1: who challenged the sexual norms. She's married to a woman's
Speaker 1: but she's a dominant ball player. She is a phenomenal
Speaker 1: cultural icon. There is no question. Even Lebron had admitted
Speaker 1: that was him over there. Why want you to remember
Speaker 1: your thoughts? But I admitted that I smoked weed and Russia.
Speaker 1: U was with me one time? You do? Right? Come
Speaker 1: out on submitted like this was this is like a
Speaker 1: normal thing for rappers to go to Russia and getting
Speaker 1: we like, so this is kind of crazy for for me.
Speaker 1: But no, no, you absolutely right. Well know it's arbitrary,
Speaker 1: but see that's the point. You're dealing with a strong man.
Speaker 1: You're dealing with a dictator, you're dealing with a fascist.
Speaker 1: You're dealing with a person who saw her um being
Speaker 1: arrested as a moment that he could leverage her body
Speaker 1: in Russia for his advantage in fighting America. Now, if
Speaker 1: it been Donald Trump. Look how Donald Trump was vicious
Speaker 1: by saying, you know, she shouldn't have been doing what
Speaker 1: she was doing. He didn't support her, he didn't stay
Speaker 1: with Oh my god, he doubled down on Russia's incarceration
Speaker 1: of her and harmed her. This is another reason just
Speaker 1: by tangential relationship. And that's what I'm saying, Kane, Look
Speaker 1: who you're supporting. Look at this kind of dude, right
Speaker 1: who is anti black at his heart. They held him
Speaker 1: and his daddy responsible for doing stuff with real estate
Speaker 1: back in the seventies and eighties, took out a full
Speaker 1: page page ad against the so called um you know,
Speaker 1: Central Park five and they're tolerated five now. But the
Speaker 1: point is that's who you're supporting. But yes, this black woman,
Speaker 1: had she been anybody else, even a straight black woman,
Speaker 1: would have received more support than a queer black woman
Speaker 1: with a black wife, both of them beautiful, intelligent women,
Speaker 1: but who are being used as a pawn and a
Speaker 1: patsy by a Russian government to get back at America.
Speaker 1: And he's a dictatorial fascist person appealing to a dictatorial
Speaker 1: fascist impulse within the country. That is Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: those who follow him for the most part. And this
Speaker 1: is why again Kanye West's support of him is so undignified.
Speaker 1: It's so harmful to black people and so destructive to
Speaker 1: the fundamental process of American democracy. But let me be
Speaker 1: Devil's advocate. Why are we not hearing Commona Commanda as
Speaker 1: a black woman doing more for her, Like you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, like this is kind of like the
Speaker 1: time because I'm gonna be honest, uh and i know
Speaker 1: what I'm about to say. It's not gonna be popular.
Speaker 1: But in the in the cities, people is kind of
Speaker 1: like they're done with the Joe Biden's like that's done
Speaker 1: with the with the Kmmona. It doesn't feel like there
Speaker 1: was any change, like you know, after a while, the
Speaker 1: first four years of Obama, we were the hood was happy,
Speaker 1: we were like and then the last four years the
Speaker 1: hood kind of comes like yo Obama where it's all black,
Speaker 1: where it's all black, you know, piece of something for
Speaker 1: something like it felt like Obama didn't do like like
Speaker 1: a black agenda that that was just for you know,
Speaker 1: black people to help us. Then now with k Commona
Speaker 1: coming in, were saying that and then we say, at
Speaker 1: least can we go get the girl from Russia. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: let me let me address that directly, because I know
Speaker 1: all the people you're talking about, I know Obama, no,
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, the president, I mean, and I know you know.
Speaker 1: Let me say because I'm about to say some critical
Speaker 1: stuff now. The thing is is that Kamala Harris, however,
Speaker 1: as a sitting vice president, doesn't want to do something
Speaker 1: by a public intervention that will count negatively against Brittney Griner.
Speaker 1: So in other words, if they behind the scenes trying
Speaker 1: to work it out, you gotta ask yourself a question.
Speaker 1: Do you want the commercial or do you want the product? Right?
Speaker 1: Because you can get the commercial, Yes, come here and
Speaker 1: your teeth will be cleaning tomorrow, right or do you
Speaker 1: just not announced that and just have Quentin teeth war
Speaker 1: going on? It's the war going on. They're using her
Speaker 1: body as a war zone, and they are criminalizing her blackness,
Speaker 1: her queerness, and her Americans at the same time. So
Speaker 1: to Kamla to Comma, in commla's defense, vice President Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: she can't say much right now because then the people
Speaker 1: over and rested get man, oh really up to the
Speaker 1: black woman saying crazy things? Now? We're gonna punish the
Speaker 1: black woman so that I give her a pass on. However,
Speaker 1: because the woman already got nine years, he's sentenced well
Speaker 1: ten years. At least she got ten years, but that
Speaker 1: she got ten years. And what they trying to do
Speaker 1: now is to negotiate a prisoner exchange so that they
Speaker 1: can release some real thug in America, some real criminal
Speaker 1: who did some horrible things in exchange for her. So
Speaker 1: they're trying to leverage her, and they're upping the anti
Speaker 1: The worst the war gets over there, the more critical
Speaker 1: America is of Russia in regard to keep and in
Speaker 1: regard to what's going on in the Ukraine, then her
Speaker 1: body becomes even more of a precious bounty to be
Speaker 1: used by Russia. But let me say this though, the
Speaker 1: same folk who mad now and I get it because
Speaker 1: I'd be telling black people to vote all the time. Well,
Speaker 1: it ain't working out, dude. A lot of stuff don't
Speaker 1: work out. A lot of stuff don't work out. You
Speaker 1: have to keep trying. I know you a first time person.
Speaker 1: The person I voted for didn't win, dude. That's the
Speaker 1: nature of the game, right. I made an album, it
Speaker 1: didn't sell five million Okay, making another one. All right,
Speaker 1: chiep working, go on the internet, up your profile. Where
Speaker 1: are white? Okay? So the point is right. So the
Speaker 1: point is that that the ain't black folk mad at
Speaker 1: Biden now, wasn't mad at Obama when Obama wasn't doing
Speaker 1: dead least for black people in this country. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: a person who was twice a surrogate for Barack Obama.
Speaker 1: That means I went out, I spoke for him. I
Speaker 1: told people to vote for him. I have no regrets
Speaker 1: about that. But the moment after each time he was elected,
Speaker 1: I was his critic. I was his critic because before
Speaker 1: you were president and after you president, I'm still on
Speaker 1: Michael Eric Dison, I'm still committed to black people. No
Speaker 1: one black journey is greater than the Black journey. Your
Speaker 1: individual life as a black person cannot outweigh outweigh the
Speaker 1: fortunes of black people. So I knew that Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: as important as he was, was not more important than
Speaker 1: the struggle of black people to become whole in this nation.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, here's the guy. They were putting them
Speaker 1: up on the posters with Martin Luther King Junior, Slow slow, slow,
Speaker 1: slow down with that slow down. As as Albert com
Speaker 1: You says, you got to go on the ground and
Speaker 1: rise up the third day before you get that kind
Speaker 1: of love. Bro, that's on some genius level, Jesus level. Love.
Speaker 1: It ain't really where you is now. There's a difference
Speaker 1: between Martin Luther King Jr. And Barack Obama. One of
Speaker 1: the civil rights leader standing outside the parameters of politics,
Speaker 1: challenging it from from without with his moral vision and
Speaker 1: his ethical courage. Another one is sent to be the
Speaker 1: black face of the white American empire. So the point
Speaker 1: is his job from the guinea that we knew was
Speaker 1: to represent America with all the good that that means
Speaker 1: and with all the self destructive nastiness that that brings us. Well,
Speaker 1: this man was in charge of the American empire, one
Speaker 1: of Nobel Peace Prize, while having two wars going on
Speaker 1: right like a motherfucker like you hustle. I'm a hustler
Speaker 1: when the rembers of the system ain't no telling what
Speaker 1: I drown him or I kill him, That's what they'd
Speaker 1: be asking. I'm a pimp blah blood. So that's a
Speaker 1: president uh imbut with moral principles. But anyway, but the
Speaker 1: point is. Barack Obama was a man who was given
Speaker 1: the responsibility and the reins of the American Empire at
Speaker 1: a very moment when it's fortunes were declining. That's when
Speaker 1: they always get negroes, the car keys. When the car
Speaker 1: ain't working, take it over to you know, Jiffy fix
Speaker 1: up and try to get the damn thing fixed, because
Speaker 1: oh it is a rose Roys, but it ain't got
Speaker 1: no engine that's working. Okay, So that's what they do
Speaker 1: to us. But Barack Obama was a genius. He figured
Speaker 1: out the American economy. He got people working again, He
Speaker 1: saved the automobile industry. He did amazing things, but for
Speaker 1: black folk, not so much. You know. I compare him
Speaker 1: to another different Shaquille O'Neil, whom I know y'all love
Speaker 1: and admire. Shaquille was one of the greatest ball players ever.
Speaker 1: Kobe said, had he had a certain kind of work ethic,
Speaker 1: he would have been the greatest of all time. So
Speaker 1: we know he was the most dominant big man of
Speaker 1: all time. But he wasn't a great foul shooter necessarily,
Speaker 1: So you can acclaim Shack as one of the greatest
Speaker 1: of all time. But don't put him on the category
Speaker 1: of greatest free throw shooters ever. Barack Obama might be
Speaker 1: top ten president for everybody else, but for us, not
Speaker 1: so much. He wasn't a top ten president for black
Speaker 1: folk because he would scold us. He would dog us
Speaker 1: in public. He would tell us stop feeding your kids chicken,
Speaker 1: and don't do this. Now. He's scolding us, but he
Speaker 1: ain't scolding white folks. The one time he tried and
Speaker 1: a tony fundraiser in San Francisco while he was running
Speaker 1: for president, he said, yeah, man, they get down I'm
Speaker 1: paraphrasing here, they get that juice on him when they
Speaker 1: get upset, and they get religion and neigg grab some guns.
Speaker 1: These white folks wore him out and never again did
Speaker 1: he ever attempt to be critical of white folks. But
Speaker 1: Negroes taken Negroes take abuse as a sign of love.
Speaker 1: Negroes take imposed trauma as a sign of respect. And
Speaker 1: so they felt that when Barack was doing at least
Speaker 1: he paying attention to me. Yeah, he beat me. It's
Speaker 1: like colored purple. He beat me because see, we like
Speaker 1: we like to We like the Oprah character. I ain
Speaker 1: Man's mess ceiling. I never thought in my own home.
Speaker 1: You're telling hard for to beat me. And so we
Speaker 1: have to say to black people, don't be like Donald
Speaker 1: Trump supporters. That's how we were with Barack. Now, I
Speaker 1: ain't saying Barack and Donald Trump are the same thing.
Speaker 1: Barack Obama is a genius, an incredible political figure, and
Speaker 1: a great mind. But he also was deeply and profoundly
Speaker 1: problematic for black people. Two things can be true at
Speaker 1: the same time, and so we got to hold him
Speaker 1: to a like what Kanye. Except you know, although now
Speaker 1: that you mentioned that, I hold Barack Obama at least
Speaker 1: a little responsble for Kanye. How do you say, because
Speaker 1: when when when Kanye did his thing with Taylor Swift,
Speaker 1: remember they called Barack Obama, he called him a jackass. Well,
Speaker 1: he had more courage than you, Barack. Maybe if you
Speaker 1: called out white supremacy from the bully pulpit of the
Speaker 1: most powerful platform in America and indeed in the world,
Speaker 1: the Kanye West of the world wouldn't have to call
Speaker 1: that kind of thing out. So calling him a jackass
Speaker 1: while you're sitting around being silent and complicit in the
Speaker 1: face of horrible transactions of anti blackness in America, wasn't
Speaker 1: a good luck either. But black people, we would Barack regardless,
Speaker 1: remember on Saturday Night Live. No matter what he did,
Speaker 1: we love him. And I understand that he was the
Speaker 1: first one white people that had forty four presidents. We
Speaker 1: had one. That's our baby daddy. We rolled in with him,
Speaker 1: and we love our apartment. Cutting you off. People said
Speaker 1: that he was the first black president. So he said,
Speaker 1: the Republicans always outvoted him, and so it was a
Speaker 1: little much that he can do. But then the very
Speaker 1: next president, even when he got outvoted by the Democrats,
Speaker 1: he did what the funk he wanted to do. Like,
Speaker 1: don't one before and after George. I'm gonna do what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do the one after him. But you don't
Speaker 1: one in between the sandwich. You you know it reverse Oreo.
Speaker 1: You're the reverse Oreo cookie. You got two whites in
Speaker 1: the black on the middle, you know, and you ain't
Speaker 1: got no ice cream to put it in and no
Speaker 1: milk to dip it in. The point is this that
Speaker 1: when you're the president, bro, you know. Now, he did
Speaker 1: do some stuff in terms of executive decisions and executive
Speaker 1: orders and the like. There's no doubt about that. And yes,
Speaker 1: Barack Obama was in a precarious position back against the wall,
Speaker 1: deeply and profoundly uh fighting the forces of white supremacy.
Speaker 1: And he did an ingenious job in many ways. But
Speaker 1: here's my point. If you can't do something special folk negroes,
Speaker 1: don't do nothing special against them. Though, this is the problem.
Speaker 1: It's one thing for you to say I can't I
Speaker 1: can't acknowledge what I'm doing in a certain way. Look,
Speaker 1: I've been in the White House at a table that
Speaker 1: was about twice this size with Barack Obama and nine
Speaker 1: other so called negro leaders, and I shared with him
Speaker 1: my vision that was problematic. Now, I had a radio
Speaker 1: host say, Michael, you're writing a book on the presidents
Speaker 1: about two thousand and eleven and twelve. You're writing a
Speaker 1: book on the president. You're a very You're a famous
Speaker 1: black person with influence. You could really harm his chances
Speaker 1: for re election. Now he's said, right, I like, dude,
Speaker 1: I said, are you Nostra Thomas wrote the damn book here? So?
Speaker 1: And since I got kids, tell me how many books
Speaker 1: I myself? So I don't know how much money I
Speaker 1: can right, And Obama laughed him. He said, yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's sitting here eating my eating my food. Well, you
Speaker 1: might be the president, but you ain't as mean with
Speaker 1: this Mike is me homes So, without missing a beat,
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I paid for about my tax money.
Speaker 1: And I said, based on what I'm paid, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be here next week. Give me the menute. That's what
Speaker 1: I do, right. But but he said, look, I respect
Speaker 1: Michael because I said I disagree with you, Mr President.
Speaker 1: And I said to his face, I wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: backstab him to be nasty. I said, you believe a
Speaker 1: rising tide lifts all boats. He said, I wouldn't quite
Speaker 1: put it that way, but I understand your point. I said,
Speaker 1: when you go when you're sick and you go to
Speaker 1: the hospital, you don't get medicine. That's universal. That's something
Speaker 1: that's non that's non specific. I said, if you got
Speaker 1: a hangnail, you get asked him, if you've got diabetes,
Speaker 1: you get into it, if you've got if you've got cancer,
Speaker 1: you get hemotherapy. I said, medicines, like public policies, should
Speaker 1: be aimed at the ills they're meant to relieve. So
Speaker 1: you know, one size fits all. You got to we
Speaker 1: still black and citizens, if you're taking care of everybody
Speaker 1: else but afraid that if you hook us up. It
Speaker 1: looked like you're giving us a hook up in the
Speaker 1: White House right there? What is the advantage of us
Speaker 1: supporting you? And I said in the book, I wrote
Speaker 1: a three hundred semi page book, so I write books
Speaker 1: like Nigga's right hooks Right. So I put that down
Speaker 1: in the book. And I laid that down right in
Speaker 1: book number I don't know twenty six. I mean I
Speaker 1: lost count, but I'm still doing what I do. So
Speaker 1: the thing is is that I put it there careful analysis. Again,
Speaker 1: like what Kanye, I love Barack Obama. I respect Barack
Speaker 1: Obama right, but as in the guard Father, but I
Speaker 1: never trusting Okay, never trust right. So the point is
Speaker 1: I love Obama, I respect him, I supported him. I
Speaker 1: went out and asked people to vote for him. But
Speaker 1: we've also got a whole black leaders to account. We
Speaker 1: got to hold the Michael Eric Dyson's to account. We
Speaker 1: gotta hold every black public figure to account, not cancel him,
Speaker 1: not be nasty, not destroy them. And where I do
Speaker 1: agree with Kanye uh is in this cancel culture which
Speaker 1: is so destructive, Like you don't make no mistakes, like
Speaker 1: if somebody messes up and does something a white person.
Speaker 1: And Obama said this the other day, let me give
Speaker 1: him some kudos. He said, people don't want to think
Speaker 1: they're walking on eggshells. If they say one wrong thing,
Speaker 1: then they're done. You know that's this younger generation, y'all.
Speaker 1: I mean that ain't what I'm a Baptist preacher. Jesus
Speaker 1: have done. That the world would be dead right now. Right.
Speaker 1: People got to be forgiven for the mistakes they've made. Now,
Speaker 1: they got to know they made a mistake. Kanye gotta
Speaker 1: ADMITTI made it. And if he don't admit it, then
Speaker 1: we got to keep hammering him, hollering at him and
Speaker 1: trying to talk to him to get him to see
Speaker 1: a different way. So, for me, Barack Obama was an
Speaker 1: extraordinary president. But all the black people who blindly followed him,
Speaker 1: who didn't criticize him, not want to criticize Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't criticize your own You had a black man
Speaker 1: in there, who could I do the fact with you?
Speaker 1: What did Joe Biden do? He put a black woman
Speaker 1: on the ticket and gave her the vice presidency or
Speaker 1: allowed her to be elected, and he put a black
Speaker 1: woman on the Supreme Court. Barack Obama had three bites
Speaker 1: at the apple. He couldn't put one sister on the court.
Speaker 1: And you man at the old white man. That old
Speaker 1: white man has done more for neg roles in total,
Speaker 1: in terms of what he's trying to do, not perfectly,
Speaker 1: not without flaws, than a whole lot of black politicals
Speaker 1: who have not taken up the mantle of a black
Speaker 1: agenda or the interests of black people. So that's why
Speaker 1: we can be about no cancel culture and trying to
Speaker 1: get rid of people who we feel have done a
Speaker 1: wrong thing. I I don't want to be canceled. I'm
Speaker 1: a black man who's made mistakes. I try to be
Speaker 1: a feminist in identification with black women and white women
Speaker 1: and women of coloring throughout the world. But I mess up.
Speaker 1: Hold me to account, tell me where I did wrong,
Speaker 1: but allow me to step back into the arena and
Speaker 1: participate again. That's what we gotta do when it comes
Speaker 1: to race and class and gender and culture in this country.
Speaker 1: So I don't I don't have the numbers, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is I'm going to fulfilling right
Speaker 1: when Barack was back was in office, it felt like
Speaker 1: a lot more police killing of innocent black men happen,
Speaker 1: And it felt like a lot more a police killing
Speaker 1: innocent black men getting freed happened, getting getting of course,
Speaker 1: is that is that true? Well? Yeah, I feel that
Speaker 1: I share the same feeling. I wrote a book called
Speaker 1: Long Time Coming where I addressed the martyrs of this
Speaker 1: this movement, fallen martyrs, not intentional martyrs, martyrs because of
Speaker 1: their circumstance look or on the under Barack Obama. And
Speaker 1: here's the point. Let's let's put it this way. Given
Speaker 1: the rising tide of white supremacy, because you know, Barack
Speaker 1: Obama sent the meter of white supremacy off off the
Speaker 1: chart right here. It just went with Anita, went off
Speaker 1: the recording mechanism itself. It just went haywire. Because they
Speaker 1: needed him. That's why Black people still defending him. And
Speaker 1: I understand why because no matter what he did that
Speaker 1: was failed and flawed, the white supremacists out here are
Speaker 1: trying to kill him every day. The death threats against
Speaker 1: him were more than any other president, the harm and
Speaker 1: hate that he received, and he was so cool with it, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing we love about him. He's like
Speaker 1: jay Z president. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. But
Speaker 1: we saw the effect when he came out office, how
Speaker 1: he looked, no doubt, I mean, there's no doubt. But
Speaker 1: you know, he was cool, he was calm, he's collected,
Speaker 1: he's doing this thing. But beneath there was a fire raging,
Speaker 1: and it was it was burning us. So they wanted
Speaker 1: to get Barack. Couldn't get him. Who can you get
Speaker 1: vulnerable black people? So he was Barack Obama was in
Speaker 1: one sense our iconic representative and we were his uh proxies.
Speaker 1: Can't shoot him, shoot us, can't kill him, kill us.
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting there was some broad conspiracy that was
Speaker 1: conscious on the parts of white people. But that's the
Speaker 1: genius of white supremacy. It's an institution that operates on
Speaker 1: its own. But is the data show that there was
Speaker 1: more of it or was it always there and just
Speaker 1: social media and the access to film these things and
Speaker 1: bring it out more to las. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: partly true that it was. It was focused on in
Speaker 1: a way because you got a black man in the
Speaker 1: White House. You never had that before, you got a
Speaker 1: black man having to respond to black people dying and
Speaker 1: what will he say in Obama was tentative on some
Speaker 1: of that stuff. Right after Trayvon Martin. You know that's
Speaker 1: not a police killing, but it is a vigilante killing.
Speaker 1: After Trayvon Martin's death, after the jury, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: did what it did and let George Zimmerman off, Barack
Speaker 1: Obama says, the people have spoken. The jury is to
Speaker 1: be trusted. And that's what women, women bro with slow down.
Speaker 1: So he got to go to the crib. His kids
Speaker 1: are there, his wife's there. Then he comes up and
Speaker 1: makes one of the greatest statements about race. Because you
Speaker 1: gotta push PSI. Presidents ain't gonna never do what you
Speaker 1: don't make them do. Right. That famous story that Harry
Speaker 1: Belafonte likes to tell and others of f Dr. Fred
Speaker 1: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president having his black kitchen and
Speaker 1: cabinet with Mary McLeod Bethune and A Philip Brandolph. They
Speaker 1: were great leaders. Uh. She was the National Council of
Speaker 1: Negro Woman. He was the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters, tremendous.
Speaker 1: They were part of his informal cabinet meeting women the
Speaker 1: White House and and he and he listened to what
Speaker 1: they said, and he said, look, I believe everything he's saying.
Speaker 1: I go out in the streets and make me do it.
Speaker 1: In other words, create a social movement where I go,
Speaker 1: what was I gonna do? I mean, look at what
Speaker 1: the tidest turns. So presidents rarely do unless you make
Speaker 1: them do so. Yeah, Barack Obama exposed what was underlying there,
Speaker 1: and the technology caught up with the truth. The empirical.
Speaker 1: Empirical is just a big word to say that which
Speaker 1: can be falsified, to verify through the census, the cameras
Speaker 1: picked up. They no, no, no, that can't be true.
Speaker 1: There's just no way. Imagine if there was no camera
Speaker 1: for George Floyd, Dad another dad, nigga, We don't care.
Speaker 1: He was belligerent and he was nasty. The reason white
Speaker 1: people poured into the streets. I think that the numbers
Speaker 1: they did, they saw that video. First of all, it
Speaker 1: was COVID. That meant we were all at home used
Speaker 1: to watching stuff on our screen. Right five weeks before
Speaker 1: old men like me telling people get off that damn fault.
Speaker 1: Don't you talk to me face to face now with COVID, Hey,
Speaker 1: thank god, you didn't listen to me, and we're talking
Speaker 1: right now. So the thing is is that we were
Speaker 1: used to seeing things on screen and they were more
Speaker 1: alive and more colorful for us. Number one, number two,
Speaker 1: there were no more. But white people said, women, Hey,
Speaker 1: have we seen this film before? Didn't this happen like
Speaker 1: six years ago. We're a guy named Eric Garner out
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, New York, and he said, I
Speaker 1: can't breathe. Jiminy cricket. They were right. They keep saying
Speaker 1: us that what we don't believe that it still exists.
Speaker 1: And then thirdly, what they saw, there was no more excuse.
Speaker 1: He was running, he was trying to resist the rest,
Speaker 1: No he won, he was CUsing up, No he wan
Speaker 1: he was. He was being hateful and growing for a gun.
Speaker 1: No he wasn't. And they saw no more excuses, and
Speaker 1: they fled the streets. So yes, I think the cameras
Speaker 1: exposed it. I think the fact that a black president
Speaker 1: was there magnetized the biggots in this country. And Howard Thurman,
Speaker 1: the great mystic, said, the biggot is the person who
Speaker 1: makes an idol of his commitments. So they were committed
Speaker 1: to their vicious understanding of whiteness is dominant, and black
Speaker 1: people were messing it up and Obama was seen as
Speaker 1: a person taking their rights. Can you imagine white people
Speaker 1: who were upset with Obama and Obama was hooking y'all
Speaker 1: up in the way he ain't never hooked us up.
Speaker 1: He was giving y'all the keys to the kingdom, and
Speaker 1: you still hated him because the person handing you the
Speaker 1: keys was a black man. So in that sense, yes,
Speaker 1: it exposed what was already there. So it may have
Speaker 1: seemed to be more dense than happening more. But the
Speaker 1: reality is black life being lost is a constant in America.
Speaker 1: The hatred of black people, anti blackness is a constant.
Speaker 1: Which is why again not to keep harping on Kanye,
Speaker 1: why what you're doing is more than a ploy, it's destructive.
Speaker 1: How do you get produced by a people who, out
Speaker 1: of their loins delivered you into the world like Moses,
Speaker 1: protecting you so that you could one day rise up
Speaker 1: to lead your people through sonic you know, expression and
Speaker 1: asthetic expression and fashion and music for you to turn
Speaker 1: around and be Faro when you're supposed to be Moses.
Speaker 1: And what you do when you say white lives matter
Speaker 1: is that you turn into the very destructive enemy of
Speaker 1: the very interests that produced you. Now when you tell us, oh,
Speaker 1: I mean for black excellent stuff, that's a sideshow. The
Speaker 1: main theme is your destructive addiction to white supremacy and
Speaker 1: to anti blackness in your own mind. Let me let
Speaker 1: me ask you something. As a president, right, you're seeing
Speaker 1: these people are as multiple shootings of unarmed and innocent
Speaker 1: killings of black men, black people, period, because this woman
Speaker 1: in there, anyone not just say men. Isn't it How
Speaker 1: hard is it to just change the law that if
Speaker 1: you get caught killing somebody that's out of goddamn pisso
Speaker 1: that you automatically going going to jail, because then then
Speaker 1: I'm sure, I mean, I'm seeing people getting convicted now,
Speaker 1: seeing people. Uh. But he can't do that though, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to change the No, he can't do
Speaker 1: that because most of all dictator now he's Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: he would think he could. But Barack Obama was a
Speaker 1: constitutional lawyer. He was a scholar of the constitution. He
Speaker 1: knew that way we can't go. So he can't know.
Speaker 1: He can't. He's a state laws, federal laws and law
Speaker 1: federal law and the people that you want to change
Speaker 1: it are invested in the very white supremacy that you
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about. Look at the police department,
Speaker 1: how was exposed. All these white bigots are in law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Some of them are in state legislatures, Republican state legislators
Speaker 1: maybe thirty eight to forty. Some of them are Republican controlled,
Speaker 1: which means that the local law will always mitigate against,
Speaker 1: militate against, go against trying to create laws that hold
Speaker 1: them accountable. Look at the notion of you know, you know, impunity,
Speaker 1: immunity that police people are granted. So now when you
Speaker 1: talk about the immunity that they are granted, that means
Speaker 1: even if they mess up and it proves that you
Speaker 1: proved that they kill somebody, well they're granted immunity because
Speaker 1: they were representing the state in this case, your cop.
Speaker 1: So Obama couldn't change that. But what he could change
Speaker 1: he didn't necessarily do, which has changed the rhetoric, which
Speaker 1: has opened your mouth. Yes, he convened the Police Committee
Speaker 1: and all that, but you got the bully pool pit,
Speaker 1: you got influenced. Kanye has shown you that you can talk,
Speaker 1: and by talk alone, you can change the atmosphere, you
Speaker 1: can change people's perception, you can influence them in deep ways.
Speaker 1: That's what the darn social media is about. Social media influencers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: got no power. You might be making money off of that,
Speaker 1: but you've got influence in the world to change people's perception.
Speaker 1: Obama had the biggest bullet pulpit in the world and
Speaker 1: often had to be pushed into saying something because of
Speaker 1: his own reticence to deal with race in America. And
Speaker 1: Trump took advantage of it and did use it like
Speaker 1: a But couldn't he have at least threatened and said
Speaker 1: you're listening from now on any law enforcement that it's
Speaker 1: called killing the innocent person. And maybe not just black people.
Speaker 1: Maybe obviously black people is the biggest part. But could he,
Speaker 1: like at least have threatened them. So so some people
Speaker 1: were feel feel scared, like the president said, they're gonna
Speaker 1: get me, because the first of all, they didn't respect
Speaker 1: him as president. He was already the most Look, it's
Speaker 1: like being the baddest man in the world when you're
Speaker 1: the headweight champion of the world. Right, whoever has that
Speaker 1: title is the baddest man in the world. Mike Tyson
Speaker 1: Lennox Lewis. You know, Tyson Fear, You're the baddest man
Speaker 1: on the planet, the heavyweight champion. You're the most powerful
Speaker 1: person in the world when you're the American President, the
Speaker 1: most powerful. And yet what they showed is that Obama
Speaker 1: had a lot of limitations on him. You might have
Speaker 1: been the most powerful in terms of theory. Right now,
Speaker 1: there are two theories. That's what you're saying in terms
Speaker 1: of theory, because it was crazy about that. You're saying that.
Speaker 1: But when it came time to kill Osama, he was
Speaker 1: in that room. He had that power. He said, I'm
Speaker 1: a Merkhan falling back on that A what a hell
Speaker 1: of fight. So no, no doubt. But he can control
Speaker 1: He can control that con that's the deep thing. You
Speaker 1: can control the killing of Osama. But you can't get Yokol,
Speaker 1: you can't get you can't get Obama boy over here.
Speaker 1: And they got he can again because that would be criminal, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some people already thought the killing of a so called
Speaker 1: terrorists was problematic enough, but can you imagine Obama turning
Speaker 1: that power against American citizens. That was his greatness, the
Speaker 1: refusal to to be seduced by the temptation to use
Speaker 1: and abuse your power in ways that are destructive of
Speaker 1: the American democracy. But on the other hand, uh, you
Speaker 1: could use your bully pullup it in ways that you didn't.
Speaker 1: I was about to say. They're two big theories of power. One,
Speaker 1: a guy named Max Weber, sociologist, talked about it as
Speaker 1: inherent in institutions, as hierarchies. You above me, this person
Speaker 1: is above you. They got there the big dog. Another
Speaker 1: guy named Michelle forhu co talking about power breaking out everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's lateral. So if you try to get up into
Speaker 1: the club and the bouncer won't let you in, he
Speaker 1: might not be president, but he got damn power over
Speaker 1: your life that night. And you ain't. You ain't going nowhere, son,
Speaker 1: and you with your girl, maybe I'll say I could
Speaker 1: get in, I could get in. I'm gonna show you
Speaker 1: the dude going like now take your b a and
Speaker 1: you ain't going nowhere. So that's power of who Coo said.
Speaker 1: And people exercise power against each other and laterally not
Speaker 1: just top down. So Obama had enormous forms of micro
Speaker 1: politics of Obama had enormous forms of power that he
Speaker 1: could have used to try to get America to think
Speaker 1: a different way. And when he was when he was,
Speaker 1: when he was inclined to do so, he did the
Speaker 1: famous race speech he gave in Philadelphia, the speech he
Speaker 1: gave it the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Selma
Speaker 1: when John Lewis got his brains nearly beat out of
Speaker 1: his cranium. So when Obama was willing to do so,
Speaker 1: he could do it, but he was loath to do so.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to do it. He didn't want to
Speaker 1: use his political capital that way. He didn't want to
Speaker 1: be ghetto wise and seen as a president only for
Speaker 1: black people. But dude, and the second term, especially black
Speaker 1: people gave him pass in the first one. See dude,
Speaker 1: you could paint the White House black, red, black, and gray.
Speaker 1: Another rumor, they were saying that he didn't want to
Speaker 1: legalize marijuana because he didn't want to be the black president.
Speaker 1: I'm sure well he didn't. They tried to get him
Speaker 1: to part Marcus Garvey, the great Marcus Garvey. Right. Guess
Speaker 1: who did I think Donald Trump? What right? Am I wrong?
Speaker 1: I think I said to be corrected, but I think
Speaker 1: Donald Trump partners considering partner. I think he did was
Speaker 1: considering partner. I think he did partner Marcus Guy, but
Speaker 1: he couldn't get Barack Obama to do it. And how
Speaker 1: is that gonna hurt the political Black Trump got colda blackout,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. I'd rather be under the ground,
Speaker 1: put the flowers and people got out. Wow. Man. So
Speaker 1: the thing is is that And and Donald Trump met
Speaker 1: with the Congressional Black Caucus sixty days after he was
Speaker 1: in office. It took Obama nearly three years. So black
Speaker 1: people who are mad at white folks who uncritically and
Speaker 1: blindly expressed loyalty to Donald Trump don't see it closer
Speaker 1: to home. And they were doing the same thing for
Speaker 1: Barack Obama. Now again, we know Barack ain't Donald. We
Speaker 1: know Barack Obama is smart. He actually reads books, you
Speaker 1: know Constitution. He knows the Constitution. He reads things that
Speaker 1: he didn't write, and he interprets them with brilliance. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, the truth is that Barack Obama
Speaker 1: did not exercise the full range of his authority while
Speaker 1: in the office. And Black people loved him regardless, or
Speaker 1: the brothers on the street say, he're regardless. Do you
Speaker 1: think we're gonna have like and listen, I don't want
Speaker 1: to say this word. I don't want to say this word. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna say you did whatever have like
Speaker 1: a legal president Richard Richard remember he was, he was,
Speaker 1: he was. He was doing there like, oh yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: I got a press converence because I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: away too. They were trying to kill me like Trump was,
Speaker 1: like he had like he would do. So I would
Speaker 1: say Trump was niggard to leave, let's just sh something. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and he's still calling, you know, according to something,
Speaker 1: he's calling black people nigger. He wasn't saying nigger, right,
Speaker 1: so he wasn't identifying with that. Now, first of all,
Speaker 1: that's off limits to you, Donald, That's not something you
Speaker 1: can be saying. Even you know, the great Marshall Mathers
Speaker 1: understood that. Even though I want to rephrase that, we
Speaker 1: we have a president that's black and that's hood. That's
Speaker 1: that's not to say that Barack can not from the
Speaker 1: hood or not from the hood. What I'm saying, whether
Speaker 1: or not, you know, you know, what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: say is like what the hood tendencies like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if people remember as a Dave Chappelle's
Speaker 1: ski and Dave Chappelle was like, he was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, what what you like that from my wife?
Speaker 1: You ever, No, they could never get elected. I mean
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean, look, Obama wasn't the first black
Speaker 1: man to be capable of being president who was black.
Speaker 1: He's the first black man they allowed to be elected, right,
Speaker 1: Jesse Jacks Jackson, I mean the rhetorical genius of a
Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson uh receiving the baton symbolically from Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King Jr. And carrying it through the wilderness of white backlash,
Speaker 1: of anti affirmative action, of the culture of narcissism, of
Speaker 1: the hatred of black people, of white supremacist resurgence and recredescence,
Speaker 1: and still being out there doing this thing. He could
Speaker 1: have been president by far in the eighties. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: right in the eighties. Surely chishoen running even before then.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there are other black people who were taking
Speaker 1: as the president by a boarded with Chisholm, right like that,
Speaker 1: like that, like that. But here's the point that to
Speaker 1: get a black person like that, it's got to be
Speaker 1: by stealth. You gotta be Whitney Houston and will always
Speaker 1: love you. Right, and then beneath you know, all y'all
Speaker 1: trying to cancel Whitney she ain't black enough. Oh she
Speaker 1: was really black in ways she couldn't even afford to
Speaker 1: say in public. She couldn't tell the truth about that blackness. Right,
Speaker 1: So you never know what people are doing, and we
Speaker 1: see black people have to signify, you know, on the surface,
Speaker 1: we had to be cool and come, hi, how are
Speaker 1: you fine? How are you? Yes, let's have dinner at
Speaker 1: the soonest, thanks so very much, bye bye now, And
Speaker 1: then underneath, like you know what's up? But to get
Speaker 1: to the stints, right, So, yeah, there's gonna be some
Speaker 1: great deal of signifying. But there are levels, as the
Speaker 1: great philosopher Meek Mills said, their levels to this. And
Speaker 1: the thing is is that, yes, I think. Look, Jackie
Speaker 1: Robinson was the first black ball player for the net
Speaker 1: you know, National, the major leagues. Jackie Robinson was a
Speaker 1: great ball player. He wasn't the greatest, but he was great, right.
Speaker 1: He was chosen not because he was the greatest Larry
Speaker 1: Doobie right behind him, uh Newcombe, Roy Nucombe. But he
Speaker 1: was chosen because his temperament was even when they stepped
Speaker 1: on his fingers, even though he wanted to break them off,
Speaker 1: he was kind enough, he was disciplined enough to stand
Speaker 1: back up. So he was chosen as much for his
Speaker 1: pr skills and as much for his ability to defer
Speaker 1: his anger, asked for his skills. But coming behind him
Speaker 1: was William Mays, arguably the greatest player ever and some
Speaker 1: would say Barry Bonds. So while Barack Obama was Jackie Robinson, yeah,
Speaker 1: pri steroids, he was the coldest. He was already, so
Speaker 1: that so let him in the hall, dude, because the
Speaker 1: stuff he did after he just had a bigger neck
Speaker 1: and he could hit longer, but he was still killing
Speaker 1: the ball before then. But my point is that Barack
Speaker 1: Obama is Jackie Robinson. Who were waiting for is Willie Mays.
Speaker 1: And Willie Mays will be a dominant, brilliant, capable president
Speaker 1: who's committed to Black people in a certain way, but
Speaker 1: he's still gonna have to disguise it. Let's be real,
Speaker 1: That's what I mean by Whitney Houston. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: to signify. But yes, I think there will come a
Speaker 1: point where a person who has historically been identified with us,
Speaker 1: who's not afraid because the culture allows him not to
Speaker 1: be afraid. Although that's that's that's a long way off
Speaker 1: to embrace his blackness. I mean, don't you think with
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris there's some of that going on, whom I
Speaker 1: knowing love, but you know, not wanting to appear to
Speaker 1: be too black on the one hand, and trying to
Speaker 1: appeal to a broader audience. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you got to be who you is, as the old
Speaker 1: lady said, be who you is and not who you ain't,
Speaker 1: because if you is, what you ain't you and what
Speaker 1: you're not. That was all that was. So I've been
Speaker 1: critical of this regime. I've been critical cap Kamaa, and
Speaker 1: I've been critical of a Biden. I think Biden it
Speaker 1: looks weak. I think he almost acts the crepit um.
Speaker 1: But besides all that, I feel like they don't come outside.
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like, like like me, I'm
Speaker 1: used to see and presidents, I'm just seeing presidents going
Speaker 1: And I get COVID, I get all that, but it
Speaker 1: felt like it felt like even Bryan's a COVID. After COVID,
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing them, for lack of a better turn,
Speaker 1: seeing them in these streets. Yeah. See, this is what
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna speak for. Biden's gonna say to you,
Speaker 1: young man, I love your show, watch it all the
Speaker 1: time for my name. But at the same time, he goes,
Speaker 1: it's it's a bit up there. I'm trying to run
Speaker 1: the world from America and it's hard. I'd love to
Speaker 1: take off time and watch reruns of MTV raps, but
Speaker 1: damn it's rough out here. Now. Your point is, though
Speaker 1: about the pr side of it. Though, Hell fella, well,
Speaker 1: met Obama wasn't that real social? Bill Clinton was social? Hello,
Speaker 1: how are you? How are you? What? They said this,
Speaker 1: They said Obama was like a cat and and and
Speaker 1: Clinton was like a dog, no pun intended, So a dog.
Speaker 1: It would be a hundred people in the room. People
Speaker 1: love you. But the one person that don't the dog
Speaker 1: were like, don't the cat be like, you can take
Speaker 1: me to leave me home? I don't really give it
Speaker 1: an amp right, And Obama was like, look, it's good,
Speaker 1: I know what I'm doing. I'm gonna take care of business.
Speaker 1: If you like me, that's cool. If you know, check
Speaker 1: you later. So I think that Joe Biden is an
Speaker 1: older American trying to preserve his health, trying to in
Speaker 1: the midst of COVID, trying to get the job done.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you something about Joe Biden. I went
Speaker 1: to the White House. I was invited along with a
Speaker 1: few other scholars and historians to talk to him. So
Speaker 1: we did our presentation. I thought it was gonna be
Speaker 1: like eight of us, we're gonna present our give our presentations,
Speaker 1: and then he goes, Okay, great, thanks a lot, it
Speaker 1: was great, take a photo op and leave. After every presentation,
Speaker 1: this dude is giving fifteen minutes response. Do you think this?
Speaker 1: Uh when you set this uh Dr Dyson about you know,
Speaker 1: what was going on with civil rights in regard to
Speaker 1: LBJ and so. And he's asking serious questions and Michael,
Speaker 1: do you think this all of that? I'm going like, damn,
Speaker 1: we were only supposed to be to the hour and
Speaker 1: a half we met for damn there four hours. The
Speaker 1: man's energy was crazy. So I think that, Look, there's
Speaker 1: a there's room to be critical of all presidents. That's
Speaker 1: our job as American citizens. And you said you weren't political.
Speaker 1: Your job as an American citizen is to hold the
Speaker 1: people who represent you to account. You don't work for them.
Speaker 1: They work for you. That's why the police got it twisted.
Speaker 1: They think we're supposed to obey him. You work for us,
Speaker 1: and yet you're out here killing us. So I think
Speaker 1: I think Joe Biden is doing a hell of a job.
Speaker 1: He had a lot of stuff to clean up. Yes,
Speaker 1: he should be criticized like any other president, but I'll
Speaker 1: tell you, in terms of the strides he's made and
Speaker 1: the efforts he's made and what he's tried to do
Speaker 1: is pretty darn remarkable. And if you compare him to
Speaker 1: his black president who was he who for whom he
Speaker 1: was vice president, he hasn't done some stuff, man, In
Speaker 1: terms of substance that again may not look the same
Speaker 1: part cosmetically, but in terms of infrastructure, in terms of
Speaker 1: internal dialogue, in terms of politics, in terms of distribution resources, uh,
Speaker 1: it's far more powerful in many ways and advantageous to
Speaker 1: us than in previous Amabe. You got to think about
Speaker 1: it in comparison to Trump. That's what he doesn't look
Speaker 1: like he's outside, but politically he's outside. Trump was outside
Speaker 1: tweeting a but that's why he wasn't doing no damn job.
Speaker 1: He was tweeting all the time trying to get us
Speaker 1: and likes. You know, there was Again, I'm not big
Speaker 1: en up Trump because I have no room to pick
Speaker 1: up anybody on that side right now. But what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is I do not like Donald Trump. Like what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say is I can go two weeks
Speaker 1: without hearing something about Biden or Camala. When Trump was
Speaker 1: in office, I couldn't go half an hour. Do you
Speaker 1: want the commercial or the product? And it's where looking too?
Speaker 1: Are you looking? Are you looking at like Twitter? Helon
Speaker 1: Elon Musk Twice I could go this week they were
Speaker 1: killing me. Yes, there now you can edit on Twitter now.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. He said, I got your back.
Speaker 1: Yeah you got a knighte of it. Right. But but
Speaker 1: here's the thing. If they're in the house, the people's house,
Speaker 1: doing they work, although he's traveling and doing his thing,
Speaker 1: if he's trying to take care of business, that's what
Speaker 1: we want. We don't want the performative presidency. That's what
Speaker 1: Trump was doing, going around hell fella mail with a
Speaker 1: well met, shaking people's hands, kissing babies, grabbing. Okay, So
Speaker 1: the thing is is that is that this is what
Speaker 1: he was doing, but he wasn't doing the work of
Speaker 1: the people. First of all, he didn't know what the
Speaker 1: hell he was doing. His level of incompetence was amazing,
Speaker 1: his mendacity was astonishing. And at least what Joe Biden
Speaker 1: is doing is showing you one old white man can
Speaker 1: undo what another old white man did, and so let
Speaker 1: him do what he's got to do within and inside.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean you can't hold him to account. But
Speaker 1: it's the flashy, conspicuous elements of political theater, uh that
Speaker 1: may be lacking in Biden, but the underneath it's like
Speaker 1: Jay said, now, I might not be saying like a
Speaker 1: bust of rhymes, but when you break down my lines,
Speaker 1: you see what I'm doing. And in that sense, when
Speaker 1: you break down what Biden is really about, it's been
Speaker 1: far more substantive in terms of policy. Barack Obama gave
Speaker 1: us my brother's keeper. You could have done that when
Speaker 1: you were out of office. Man, God dang, what were
Speaker 1: you you had power inside? Don't be giving us no
Speaker 1: damn Sunday School approximation of feel good black male ism
Speaker 1: give us a serious, systemic alter alternative to the productive
Speaker 1: forces of evil, hurt, and pain that are out there,
Speaker 1: and I think he missed the boat in many ways
Speaker 1: in that regard. Do you think Obama had to do
Speaker 1: raging in a white house? Yeah, man, this is what
Speaker 1: I want to see. I wanted to see Obama come
Speaker 1: out one day down you know, down the stairs and
Speaker 1: they come with a do rag on with a grill,
Speaker 1: with his terry cloth road and it's Magic Johnson's sucks
Speaker 1: and his slippers and go, yeah, I'm living in public house.
Speaker 1: That's what I do. Yeah, that's the best public house.
Speaker 1: But I feel living in public I mean. And then
Speaker 1: when he comes down, Air Force one, you know, was playing.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you heard about, but the right
Speaker 1: got a dollar right. I mean, look, let me let
Speaker 1: me be the anger translator if I can. Baptist preacher cussing.
Speaker 1: I'm giving you a warning. So if you want to
Speaker 1: turn your ears away, don't listen to this. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be Obama's anger translator. So Obama was given a speech,
Speaker 1: his penultimate, that is, his next to last speech as
Speaker 1: the in the State of Union, and he goes, well,
Speaker 1: I have no more racist to run, and then of
Speaker 1: course the Republicans got yeah, thank god, and Obama have
Speaker 1: more racist to run because he was eight years he
Speaker 1: had to come out racists are as okay, racist run
Speaker 1: and then and then the promosas clapping. He says, well,
Speaker 1: that's because I beat you. Well, that's not not asking
Speaker 1: for the Niggarais presidency or at least the blackened catfish presidency.
Speaker 1: You know what Obama wanted to say, and allow me
Speaker 1: that privilege to say, look bit twice and if we
Speaker 1: had another election, we have that ass again. That's what obma. Holy, So,
Speaker 1: what happens in this crazy world? Right, because we've seen
Speaker 1: things crazier? Right? What happens if Kanye was I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I didn't really Damn, I didn't know whatever, thinking I'm
Speaker 1: a ship, She's more like Florida. No, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you what I'd be like. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: answer your question. I was at the crib one day
Speaker 1: after having appeared on the Today's Show after the fourth
Speaker 1: fifth year anniversary of the killing of the folk involved
Speaker 1: Nicole and Ron Goldman. Right, uh so, I said, ain't
Speaker 1: nothing black on o J but the bottom of his shoes? WHOA?
Speaker 1: And I said, when when O J took that long,
Speaker 1: slow ride down the l A freeway in A. C.
Speaker 1: Collin's Bronco. It wasn't the first time he used a
Speaker 1: white vehicle to escape of black reality. Boom right. So
Speaker 1: I go home at data phone, rang phone, handed to me.
Speaker 1: Wife gives me the phone. She said, it's a call
Speaker 1: for you. I said hello. He said, do I call
Speaker 1: you Professor Reverend or Dr Dyson. I'm saying myself whole day.
Speaker 1: I said, you could call me Mike. Mike is fine.
Speaker 1: Most people who know me called me that, and it's
Speaker 1: all good. I was. I was a straight you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, because now I'm talking trash on today's show, right,
Speaker 1: I'm chilling them with the rhetoric. I'm giving them vicious
Speaker 1: vicissitudes in the midst of vituperation. I'm just smoking them
Speaker 1: right with big words. And then I came home and
Speaker 1: this food called me. I was like, huh yeah, he said,
Speaker 1: I want to come to your class. Okay, any time
Speaker 1: you want to, You're you could come. It's amazing. And
Speaker 1: I'm saying and I called Johnny Cock. I said, how
Speaker 1: do you get this? They grown my prone number. I said,
Speaker 1: you know that's oh, Jane, you know what he'd be doing.
Speaker 1: I'm just people are vulnerable. Right. So same with Kanye.
Speaker 1: I go, oh my god, I've had no idea. No,
Speaker 1: I'd have to stand against. I'd have to say, Kanye,
Speaker 1: if you're president and you do great things, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: support you and stand by you and show you love.
Speaker 1: And if you don't, I'm gonna be your worst enemy,
Speaker 1: your most convicted uh, you know, critic, and to say
Speaker 1: to you that now that you have political power, that
Speaker 1: you must exercise it prudently. See, here's the problem. A
Speaker 1: lot of hip hoppers who love Donald Trump loved him
Speaker 1: as an iconic figure in the cultural space. You got
Speaker 1: a bunch of money, he floss and he's our kind
Speaker 1: of dude, even as he hated Negroes at the same time.
Speaker 1: Just just keep that clear. So they're already got a
Speaker 1: problematic relationship with him, but now that he switches over
Speaker 1: to president, they have a hard time, some of them
Speaker 1: trying to make that transition. He is now the president
Speaker 1: of the United States of America. He is wilding power
Speaker 1: against the masses of black people. He's using his bully
Speaker 1: pulpit to demonize Mexicans, Muslims, queer people, and the like.
Speaker 1: We canna, we can have no truck with a guy
Speaker 1: like that. Kanye West, should he win, has to be
Speaker 1: opposed if he puts fourth policies rhetoric um that is
Speaker 1: destructive to American If he's doing what he's doing, now,
Speaker 1: we got to organize vigorously against his presidency. But what
Speaker 1: if he changes his ideologies and he calls you and says,
Speaker 1: I want you to be my running me. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna run from him, but I'm gonna run from him.
Speaker 1: I got to see proof. I got to see. I
Speaker 1: got to see thirty days. I got to see thirty
Speaker 1: straight days. Are you just going I can't, no, dog, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I got no. I got to know. First of all,
Speaker 1: it ain't gonna happen. And if it did, I'd say, Oh,
Speaker 1: they are far better people than me, sir. I am
Speaker 1: just a little minion out here doing my thing. But no,
Speaker 1: I mean, my job as a public intellectual and the
Speaker 1: cultural critic is to stand outside the amateurs of power,
Speaker 1: relatively speaking, and to offer a prudential insight and judgment
Speaker 1: about the forces of American white supremacy, social injustice, economic inequality.
Speaker 1: I stand for the masses of people who are vulnerable,
Speaker 1: whose backs are against the wall. So at that level,
Speaker 1: I can never go inside. So many people approached me,
Speaker 1: Dr Dyson, can you come in and run for the office. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that. I want to maintain
Speaker 1: my what Kanye says, independence of thought that allows me
Speaker 1: to support who I think needs supporting, but to be
Speaker 1: critical at the same time. And do we speak about
Speaker 1: the Bill More after Bill More used the in word
Speaker 1: and you came no, no, no, we didn't talk about
Speaker 1: speak about that too, because I thought, what you what
Speaker 1: you spoke with the Bill after that? Because we all
Speaker 1: see the joke that Bill made right, Um it was
Speaker 1: a white guy, white guy on the show and said, man, Bill,
Speaker 1: you gotta come on the field with me and build more,
Speaker 1: which was I really liked this man prior to this
Speaker 1: and I saw I saw it live. This is this
Speaker 1: wasn't a feed. I was Friday night watching Bill More
Speaker 1: Become on Friday tm PM on the East Coast and
Speaker 1: I got to hear him make this joke and he
Speaker 1: was like, um, he was like, uh, said you gotta
Speaker 1: come out here on the field with me and Bill
Speaker 1: Moore goals he goes, hey, man, I'm a house nigger,
Speaker 1: and it was like Honestly, I kind of got it,
Speaker 1: but I was like, oh, they're gonna fry him. I said,
Speaker 1: I knew it. I knew, I knew that was gonna
Speaker 1: fry Bill More. One of his guests coming up afterwards
Speaker 1: were that was black. Were you and were ice cu
Speaker 1: right right? Simone Sanders? Three of us? So yeah, three
Speaker 1: for the price of one. Yeah. Well, you know, Al
Speaker 1: Frankin was supposed to be the lead guest, because I
Speaker 1: was the lead guest on the show. Al Frankin said,
Speaker 1: let Michael Rick Dyson do that. I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: really be involved with that right now. Thanks to Al,
Speaker 1: that's very white of you. So I went, look, Bill
Speaker 1: Mars a friend of mine. We we we argue like
Speaker 1: cats and dogs. We agree about a lot, we disagree
Speaker 1: about a lot. But I knew that he made a mistake.
Speaker 1: He owned up to that mistake, He took a serious
Speaker 1: cognizant of that, cognizance of that mistake, and he wanted
Speaker 1: to address it. So as a friend of his, yes,
Speaker 1: I felt compelled to go there, uh, to hold him
Speaker 1: to account. First of all, that what you did is wrong.
Speaker 1: You can't white people can never use that term. Period.
Speaker 1: Let me give white people listening a rule of thumb
Speaker 1: when you can use the N word. Never Right now,
Speaker 1: I'll make one exception. If white people want to use
Speaker 1: that word, I'll give you a twenty four hour pass.
Speaker 1: If you transfer all wealth from white America to Black
Speaker 1: America every dime for twenty four hours, you can go
Speaker 1: right after that. It's done. It ain't gonna happen, right
Speaker 1: So the point is that I knew Bill Maher had
Speaker 1: made a mistake. I believe he had often pummeled the
Speaker 1: forces of white supremacy, jammed up the very forces that
Speaker 1: were hurting in arming black people. So I didn't think
Speaker 1: that we should cast away an ally again, cancel culture.
Speaker 1: I didn't believe we should cancel him, hold him to account, absolutely,
Speaker 1: tell him what he did is wrong. Absolutely, tell him
Speaker 1: that what he did was destructive and harmful in certain ways,
Speaker 1: and make that plain, as Ice Cube did, as Simone
Speaker 1: Sanders did, as I tried to then allow him to
Speaker 1: return chastened by his uh if you will, conspicuous, uh,
Speaker 1: if you will, punishment. But more than that, it wasn't
Speaker 1: in punishment. It was really instruction and trying to share
Speaker 1: a podium with a person who had made a mistake,
Speaker 1: but who was willing to try to confront it. And
Speaker 1: that's why I looked when Farrell, speaking of Farrell called
Speaker 1: me up one day and he said, hey, Doc, I
Speaker 1: got some some black lawmakers over here in Virginia because
Speaker 1: he's from Virginia. I want to know what to do
Speaker 1: about the Governor Northam who had done the black face.
Speaker 1: Should we stand against him, should we oppose him, should
Speaker 1: be staying him? And so I said, I'll meet with him.
Speaker 1: I met with him, and they said, Doc, what do
Speaker 1: you think. I said, don't get rid of the dude.
Speaker 1: Nothing better than a white guy who can be forgiven
Speaker 1: into his greatness. Nothing better than a white guy who
Speaker 1: has made a mistake, who's conscious of that mistake and
Speaker 1: is willing to try to right what is wrong. So
Speaker 1: I said, if you do the right thing with Northam,
Speaker 1: he is the governor right now. And look, let's be real.
Speaker 1: He first admitted, yeah, I was trying to do with
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson, you know, invitation, and he says, you want
Speaker 1: me to do the dance? Now? His wife said, seriously,
Speaker 1: you nut right, No, that is not the move. But
Speaker 1: he was going to admit it first. But there's no
Speaker 1: room in this culture to admit you made him six.
Speaker 1: So we had to lie and say no, I didn't,
Speaker 1: I didn't. That wasn't me. You know. It was the
Speaker 1: shaggy defense. Right. But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: he was a twenty years ago? Was twenty years ago?
Speaker 1: Has he changed? Has he evolved? Does he have new understandings?
Speaker 1: Does he have a new standard? Has he admitted that
Speaker 1: what he did was wrong and if he couldn't admit
Speaker 1: it in public, has he made stri nights toward transformation?
Speaker 1: So when he said right that that wasn't me. But
Speaker 1: but at the same time, he was trying to make
Speaker 1: good on what was going on in that state. I
Speaker 1: told the black lawmakers, if you forgive him and stand
Speaker 1: with him, this man might turn into Abraham Lincoln. And
Speaker 1: what did he do first? One of the first things
Speaker 1: he did was forgive uh ten thousand felons, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: so that allowed them to vote again. He restored their rights,
Speaker 1: He worked with black maternal healthcare. He pulled down the
Speaker 1: Robert E. Lee statue. This man went on a tear
Speaker 1: all because he wasn't canceled, but he was forgiven. He
Speaker 1: was integrated back into the community as a whole figure,
Speaker 1: and he was allowed to exercise his gifts because now
Speaker 1: he understood that what had happened then was wrong. So
Speaker 1: that's why I believe in forgiveness. I'm sorry, I'm a
Speaker 1: Baptist preacher. I believe if you mess up, you fess up,
Speaker 1: your dress us up, and then you go into the
Speaker 1: world doing the best you can. I mean, what's what's
Speaker 1: that saying in the Bible? Who cast the first one? With?
Speaker 1: What is that? What's that? What he who was without
Speaker 1: saying cast the first? Done right? And then a lot
Speaker 1: of people have throwing stones living in glass houses. It
Speaker 1: ain't a good look. So let me ask you, as
Speaker 1: being a minister, how can you be a minister but
Speaker 1: still love hip hop so much? Man? Yeah, it's just look,
Speaker 1: it's rough. I don't know he's bros. Look, I'm afraid
Speaker 1: of hip hop. I was a teen father they start
Speaker 1: before hip hop. How could I be a preacher and
Speaker 1: get a woman pregnant? I was eighteen, she was six. Yes,
Speaker 1: those hidden skills are amazing, So so got a pregnant.
Speaker 1: I ain't said it was a shotgun wedding, but a
Speaker 1: revolver was in the room. So we got married and
Speaker 1: then wars. Right. So I had a son, and I'm
Speaker 1: eighteen years old with a baby. I got to teach him.
Speaker 1: I gotta listen to the music he's listening to. After police,
Speaker 1: coming straight from the underground. A young nigger got it bad,
Speaker 1: cousin brown and not the other color. So police think
Speaker 1: they have the authority to kill a minority. I got
Speaker 1: a little I was blasting out. I was a seminary
Speaker 1: professor in Hartford, blasting after police. So you can tell
Speaker 1: I'm Irreverend Michael Eric Dyson. Right. I've never been on um,
Speaker 1: the side of black religion that is so observant to
Speaker 1: protocol that it undercuts the ability to be redemptive or transformative.
Speaker 1: I believe black people who believe in God know the
Speaker 1: frailty of our humanity, are and more intimately acquainted with
Speaker 1: our own sin, which is why we should forgive others
Speaker 1: their sins. An old preacher told me once. He said,
Speaker 1: young man, Uh, it's easy for a young preacher to
Speaker 1: damn the you know, humanity on the heat pile of sin,
Speaker 1: he said. But the older I get, the more I
Speaker 1: learned that you gotta offer forgiveness, he said, and give east.
Speaker 1: And maybe because I need more of it myself. So
Speaker 1: as I've evolved, I've learned that we need grace. But
Speaker 1: hip hop has been an extraordinary extension of some of
Speaker 1: the prophetic traditions of the Black Church that the Black
Speaker 1: Church used to talk about social injustice, racial inequality. When
Speaker 1: Jay says, you know, Ben Laden been happening in Manhattan
Speaker 1: back when, back then police was alkina the black men, right,
Speaker 1: I felt that I heard that right when nas it's
Speaker 1: only right that I was born to use mikes and
Speaker 1: the stuff that I write, it's even tough of the dice.
Speaker 1: I'm taking rap into a new plateau through rap slow.
Speaker 1: I felt that right, Um, I felt KRS one, you know,
Speaker 1: and and how many seconds of philosopher will begin to speak? Right?
Speaker 1: So I felt that they at their best represented the
Speaker 1: powerful expression of Black struggle for social justice. And in
Speaker 1: the beginning, I know, Fat Joe took a lot of
Speaker 1: heat on this. Black and Latino culture produced hip hop
Speaker 1: at its very roots and beginnings. Right, All kind of
Speaker 1: scholarship has done about this. This is why I think
Speaker 1: it's important again for Kanye and other people talk to scholars.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of scholars out here who love
Speaker 1: hip hop There are a lot of intelligent Black people
Speaker 1: with pH d s. And I'm not saying that all
Speaker 1: intelligent people have to have PhDs because jay Z is
Speaker 1: one of the greatest geniuses I've ever met and didn't
Speaker 1: graduate high school nas went to eighth grade. Uh, Little Wayne,
Speaker 1: and I can go on and on and on, but
Speaker 1: those are outliers. The rest of y'all outlying, and what
Speaker 1: y'all need to do? Okay, come on, respecting jokes, respecting joke,
Speaker 1: Respect these jokes. So so, the thing is, though, is
Speaker 1: that less not undervalue education, not schooling. Schooling is the
Speaker 1: institutional matrix that receives the impulse to learn. Education means
Speaker 1: I'm curious about the world in which I live, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read and dig deep and think and I
Speaker 1: think again. For Kanye, there are so many brilliant Black
Speaker 1: people out here. Why is it that black people have
Speaker 1: our entertainers as our spokespeople because of white supremacy, because
Speaker 1: they only allowed entertainers and athletes to represent us. Hey,
Speaker 1: we like them. We like the Jackie Robinson's, we like
Speaker 1: the well not so much Jack Johnson's. We like the
Speaker 1: Joe Lewis has, we like the you know Louis armstrongs,
Speaker 1: we liked the Pearl Bailey's, we like the Ella Fitzgerald.
Speaker 1: So they were allowed into spaces that we couldn't get into. So,
Speaker 1: as a result of that, white supremacy mandated our spokesmen
Speaker 1: and women be celebrities who had received the kind of
Speaker 1: impromoter of acceptance by white folk. So ain't nobody looking
Speaker 1: toward Miley Cyrus to be a spokespeople for young white
Speaker 1: folks Britney spears for surely not. But the point is
Speaker 1: we got young people who don't know a damn thing
Speaker 1: about history. And look, you know, I love hipp and
Speaker 1: I might answer that, but if you don't know what
Speaker 1: in the hell you talking about, be quiet. The great
Speaker 1: philosopher vic Innstein said, where every one cannot speak, there
Speaker 1: if one must be silent. In other words, shut your
Speaker 1: damn mouth. If you don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: And when they come to ask you what's going on,
Speaker 1: say let me get back to you, because I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go call somebody who I know on speed dial and
Speaker 1: get they insight so they can help us out. So
Speaker 1: I think that's necessary. Look, I ain't know, I ain't
Speaker 1: no rapper or even though I got bars, I write
Speaker 1: I got bars and alcoholics six But I do what
Speaker 1: I do. But I'm saying I don't. I don't rap
Speaker 1: out on sing out on dance, but god dang it,
Speaker 1: I do think this is what I do, and black
Speaker 1: people should take advantage of that. That doesn't mean everythinking
Speaker 1: black person is gonna agree with every other thinking black person.
Speaker 1: That's what it means. No, we're independent, we're critical. We're
Speaker 1: self critical, uh sometimes too much. So that's why some
Speaker 1: intellectuals can't get into the room, because all they do
Speaker 1: is tearing down as opposed to reconstituting and building. So
Speaker 1: I take that responsibility seriously. However, the reason I can
Speaker 1: be a preacher in love hip hop is because Jesus
Speaker 1: was ostracized as a figure in the community. First of all,
Speaker 1: the Bible says Herod was trying to kill him when
Speaker 1: the announcement made that he was born. The powers that
Speaker 1: be are always trying to kill color kids of color,
Speaker 1: always trying to destroy them, sending them to school and
Speaker 1: kicking them out of school at ten, at seven and
Speaker 1: eight and nine years old. Herods of the world are
Speaker 1: always trying to undermine our children. Kick him out incarcerat them,
Speaker 1: send them from school to detention to prison. And so
Speaker 1: Jesus was born in the main here. That ain't just
Speaker 1: no pretty picture on Christmas. That means he's outside the
Speaker 1: political order. He has no money, his back is against
Speaker 1: the wall. And when he's spitting lyrics by saying two people,
Speaker 1: I give you now a parable, he might as well
Speaker 1: be Kendrick Lamar. He might as well be j He
Speaker 1: might as well be you know Megan the Stallion. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know the woman at the well. She's speaking back.
Speaker 1: That's Megan the Stallion. Remember you know that when no system,
Speaker 1: when Jesus went to the well says where is thou husband? Now,
Speaker 1: you know a siste would have said, you Jesus, you
Speaker 1: tell me I've been waiting year. But anyway, respect the
Speaker 1: second joke there. So the thing is is that as
Speaker 1: a preacher, I understand intimately the transactions and transgressions of
Speaker 1: human beings who fail. Right when you lead the league
Speaker 1: in hitting as a batter, that means you strike out
Speaker 1: seven out of ten times. Because you're bat in three thirty,
Speaker 1: that means you strike out seven out of ten times
Speaker 1: you go to the plate. That's what it means to
Speaker 1: be a Christian is to understand that we are frail,
Speaker 1: we are fragile, we are flawed, we mess up, So
Speaker 1: stop judging other people, accept them into the fold. And
Speaker 1: I learned something valuable about hearing hip hop. And now
Speaker 1: I don't mean this drill music. This out here now
Speaker 1: because on the one hand, I hate that the American
Speaker 1: legal system is trying to hold people accountable for some lyrics.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, I mean, do you go to
Speaker 1: the Godfather? Why don't you come to me first? Why? Why?
Speaker 1: I understand? You know, look how them massaking my boy?
Speaker 1: I mean, are you going? I mean, I'm killing the
Speaker 1: Marlin Brandon. I mean I can go for you, you know,
Speaker 1: verbs now for down on. You know Michael sitting in
Speaker 1: the chair. If you put a gun there, I'll kill
Speaker 1: him both and Sunny goes they're laughing at him, but no,
Speaker 1: he says, why why can't we do it? So my
Speaker 1: point is this that if we are talking about a
Speaker 1: culture that is sensitive to its limitations, and as a Christian,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be judging nobody and beating up on nobody.
Speaker 1: You should be loving and transforming people. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we don't hold each other accountable. That only means when
Speaker 1: we mess up big, we say we messed up big.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean we don't suffer the consequences of our failures,
Speaker 1: but it also means we are invested in reconstituting society
Speaker 1: restorative justice, not vengeance. And so much of what's going
Speaker 1: now on now is about vengeance. And when I hear
Speaker 1: this drill rap, that's different. I believe people have the
Speaker 1: right to say what they want to say. I've defended it.
Speaker 1: I've testified before Congress several times, the Senate and the U. S.
Speaker 1: House to defend hip hop right. I was there with
Speaker 1: with Dion Warwick and see the Lord's Tucker when they
Speaker 1: were trying when they were trying to get new filling
Speaker 1: back on that ask where the hell of gangster you?
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask you about that? It's crazy. Let
Speaker 1: me let me say this and then so, so the
Speaker 1: thing is, I've defended them, but the drill, I'm tired
Speaker 1: of black people dying in the hands of black people,
Speaker 1: and I'm tired of people writing songs about it that
Speaker 1: are about literal human beings that either they have killed,
Speaker 1: want to kill, or in celebrating that drill wrap. Then
Speaker 1: going out trying to live the life they sing about
Speaker 1: in their song. That was beautiful. When was the gospel music? Right?
Speaker 1: I want to live the life I sing about in
Speaker 1: my song. That was a great gospel song. BB King
Speaker 1: even saying about it. But that's beautiful when you're dreaming
Speaker 1: about love and community. It's not good when you're talking
Speaker 1: about killing, mayhem and murder. And so going out here,
Speaker 1: you know pop smoke or or PNB, you know you're
Speaker 1: at roscoals and it's a father and son tag team
Speaker 1: of toxic masculinity and murderous masculinity. And you kill that kid.
Speaker 1: You couldn't have just taken his chain, You got to
Speaker 1: shoot him in his back, in his head. This is
Speaker 1: a cultural addiction to death that we must announce for
Speaker 1: what it is and denounce it and figure out other
Speaker 1: constructive ways to embrace and love and edify each other.
Speaker 1: And I think we need to be clear of of
Speaker 1: the trajectory of of of hip hop rotting where it
Speaker 1: was a cautionary tale and now we're just telling you
Speaker 1: what's happening in real time and we're doing it. That's
Speaker 1: a difference, and that's dangerous, right, or the third one
Speaker 1: desiring to do it no snary tale reporting as journalism
Speaker 1: and end up here. Now that's what I want to do, right,
Speaker 1: It's one thing. I mean, listen to Regrets by Jay Z. Listen,
Speaker 1: you know I'm from the place where you know, uh what,
Speaker 1: as they said, the churches are the flick of this.
Speaker 1: People been praying to God so long that they're atheists.
Speaker 1: Or I was here the other day, and then you
Speaker 1: know he talks about time traveling so on in his
Speaker 1: own mind. Look about think about Nas talking about you're
Speaker 1: talking to the young kid, uh speaking to him on
Speaker 1: the stoop. They made belly out of a verse from
Speaker 1: from from from Nas is one love. So there were
Speaker 1: ways in which poetry or biggie niggas bleed like imagine me,
Speaker 1: you know, being scared of a nigga breathe the same
Speaker 1: air I breth right and he's he said, you know,
Speaker 1: the old dude with care seemed mostly rock to Isleys,
Speaker 1: giving us novelistic details about the lives that these people live.
Speaker 1: Now it's about murder, murder, kill, kill, do you again?
Speaker 1: Kill kill? And the mumble rap. I don't want to
Speaker 1: sound like some old negro, but I'm saying, like you
Speaker 1: know that you said that, you know what I'm saying. No, no, Negro, no, no, no. Actually,
Speaker 1: actually I've been black for sixty three years and don't
Speaker 1: know what the hell you said. Now, what I love
Speaker 1: about so called mumble rap, And we don't get Beyonce
Speaker 1: her credit for stouting it. In one sense, I mean,
Speaker 1: Beyonce was alighting syllables and slurring them deliberately as an
Speaker 1: a laconic and sonically interesting and vocally vibrant way. She
Speaker 1: should get credit for that. In terms of this music,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you she was mumbling and and she was
Speaker 1: alighting and distorting. Go listen to go listen to Beyonce
Speaker 1: that all right, listen to what she was doing, the
Speaker 1: interesting ways in which she was playing with syllables and
Speaker 1: alighting them and distorting them for musical purposes. They took
Speaker 1: it literally and started doing it like now we went
Speaker 1: to hear what you're talking about now, and then what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Look, I believe in the blues, so
Speaker 1: I believe the beautiful melodies that come out of so
Speaker 1: called mumble rap. I'm being an old, uh kind of
Speaker 1: consternating man here, but on that hand, I love a
Speaker 1: lot of that music because it's so melodically rich, it's
Speaker 1: so powerful, and it's so beautiful in terms of the blues.
Speaker 1: But the lyricism right standing by the speaker, suddenly I
Speaker 1: had a fever. Wasn't me or even summer madness? We
Speaker 1: got to we got to pick back up on the
Speaker 1: lyrical integrity. Not a lot of the young people do.
Speaker 1: We know Jake Cole is lyrical. We know Kendrick is
Speaker 1: lyrical and and and I think Drake combines both of them. Drake,
Speaker 1: you know when Drake first came out, when when Kanye
Speaker 1: talks about being independent, I was an independent thinker because
Speaker 1: I was riding for Drake. What people like what I said,
Speaker 1: Drake is a monster, It's gonna be a it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a juggernaut, and was bigger than any of us thoughts.
Speaker 1: But he he had the beautiful melodies and singing. Men
Speaker 1: didn't think, oh that's not manly. You're singing on a song.
Speaker 1: You're an R and B artist in the in the
Speaker 1: middle of rapping. But what was he doing? You know,
Speaker 1: jealousy is just loving hate At the same time, he's
Speaker 1: dropping bars and he's doing it with Little Wayne, one
Speaker 1: of the hardest out there. And he's integrating it into
Speaker 1: his own ethic of masculinity that doesn't have to kill
Speaker 1: and murder and create, ma'am in order to be a
Speaker 1: real man. How about elevating that? How about loving that? Now,
Speaker 1: part of it is it's yellow upon yellow love. And
Speaker 1: I do recognize that, right his birthday is October is October.
Speaker 1: So there is some sepatico because I'm trying to help
Speaker 1: Drake and Steff Orry bring yellow people back because we've
Speaker 1: been on the margins. We have been on the margins
Speaker 1: where you, Drake, Steph Curry and dj Envy all go
Speaker 1: to the same karate class, karate class. And here's the thing,
Speaker 1: and here's the thing that's so funny. Let's chop it up.
Speaker 1: But here's the funny thing about it. Because when we
Speaker 1: we were we've been in exile now for so long, right, oh,
Speaker 1: you pretty chocolate boys had been dominant. You know, Denzel
Speaker 1: Andres Wesley killed us. Wesley killed us, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: Midnight and Magic Chocolate charmed he just murdered us. Right.
Speaker 1: But here's the point. So we've been in exile because
Speaker 1: we realized when we had the whip the first time,
Speaker 1: we were wrong, Like bright almost white. We believe we
Speaker 1: were superior. We believe we were cut or at least
Speaker 1: people told us that. I'll be sure who dropped the balls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the second album didn't hit like I mean, we got
Speaker 1: pushed out. We were trying to get We just got
Speaker 1: elbow because the chocolate Boy said, oh no, we got
Speaker 1: heart and think nig so so so we got marginalized.
Speaker 1: So we're trying to come back now, but with a
Speaker 1: redeemed consciousness. Right because light skinned people don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about light privilege anymore than white people want to
Speaker 1: talk about white privilege. What I'm saying, we're loath to
Speaker 1: do that. We don't want to be honest about it.
Speaker 1: So this time around, we got to admit that we
Speaker 1: were giving privileges that we didn't learn a scene in
Speaker 1: ways that we can't control. And I'm not dissing you know,
Speaker 1: I look how I look, So I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: demonize yellow people. But I am saying at the same time,
Speaker 1: there are ways in which we have to be uh
Speaker 1: cognizant of and conscious of and responsible for the consequences
Speaker 1: of such worship. You know, they would have a paper
Speaker 1: bag down in New Orleans if you were darkening that
Speaker 1: you wasn't getting in the club, certain sororities and fraternities
Speaker 1: keeping them light, bleaching them. So we got to be
Speaker 1: honest and open up about that. We didn't invent that
Speaker 1: as light skinned people, but we took advantage of it.
Speaker 1: It's like white people saying, I wasn't here when slavery started. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but when you but when you get out here, you
Speaker 1: damn sure did not take advantage of what the opportunities were.
Speaker 1: So we didn't create the love of light skin, but
Speaker 1: we took advantage of it. We were benefited from it.
Speaker 1: So I want to do that at the same time. So, yes,
Speaker 1: the new light skin is socially conscious. I just want
Speaker 1: to announce that that that's a lot of Jamaicans that's
Speaker 1: doing bleaching right now. That's that's that's I mean, Sammy,
Speaker 1: Sammy was Jae he was he was hitting balls in
Speaker 1: the bleachers, but he wasn't, you know. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's painful. That's self that's self hatred, man, that's
Speaker 1: self hatred. Why why are you trying to darken? I mean,
Speaker 1: to lighten your skin. Sammy Sosa had a beautiful brown skin.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, some of our rappers and people
Speaker 1: I don't want to name, no name, you know who
Speaker 1: it bleached their skins. It is so painful to me
Speaker 1: to see the beautiful, my beautiful black skin. My daddy
Speaker 1: was blue black from all Benny Georgia. I saw how
Speaker 1: black people treated him. I saw how the white society
Speaker 1: treated him. They looked down on him like he was
Speaker 1: a simi in an ape and a range of team.
Speaker 1: They saw him as an animal and and and they
Speaker 1: saw me as a light skinned, curly haired kid wearing
Speaker 1: glasses or he must be smart. I had brothers who
Speaker 1: equally smart. The brother went to prison, I went to Princeton,
Speaker 1: one brother in the pen. I taught at University of
Speaker 1: Penn right, but because of I'm not saying it's all
Speaker 1: based on skin and colorism, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: was driven by that. And the failure to recognize my
Speaker 1: brother's talent was driven by colorism as well. We gotta
Speaker 1: fight that with everything in us. I've been trying to
Speaker 1: get down. I've been trying to get dark. I've been
Speaker 1: trying to get a calm, been trying to get a
Speaker 1: calm black. You gotta start with a kind's hair tramplan
Speaker 1: I can't wait to tell him he's horrible. Oh my god. Listen,
Speaker 1: all of that is product of colonialism still affect there
Speaker 1: is no question. But see now we bring a coming
Speaker 1: full circle because what we're talking about, what Kanye or
Speaker 1: the ideas he's promoting, is the colonial mindset in your
Speaker 1: own mind, unconsciously using your tongue as a freeway to
Speaker 1: deliver the vehicle of its white supremacy. That's what's going on.
Speaker 1: And until we recognize that colonialism, neo colonialism, the internalized
Speaker 1: self hatred, the oppression of the dominant culture UH projected
Speaker 1: onto us, all of that is happening. And until we
Speaker 1: confront that, we won't be healthy. I'm not saying every
Speaker 1: person who was a conservative of self hating. That's not
Speaker 1: what I'm saying at all, Because if you're going to
Speaker 1: study conservative people, then there's Thomas Soul, There's Walter Williams,
Speaker 1: there's Robert Woodson. I mean, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: conservatives I disagree with and fight against UH, but have
Speaker 1: respect for at least trying to make an intelligent argument
Speaker 1: about what they see going on. But for some people
Speaker 1: who take advantage of white supremacy, dollars to fund their
Speaker 1: own anti black campaign. I ain't got no love or
Speaker 1: compassion for that at all. Let me let me ask you,
Speaker 1: thinking the news lately, which they just said that student
Speaker 1: loans being forgiven, is that something our community it should
Speaker 1: be happy for? Absolutely? Okay, But look, the white supremacists
Speaker 1: tell you that's true because they're going they got laws
Speaker 1: out here. There's a I think a state senator trying
Speaker 1: to sue the Biden administration now because he says, really,
Speaker 1: what that is about is forgiving black people what their
Speaker 1: loans are, and therefore, as a result of that, we
Speaker 1: need to stand against it. So the white supremacists understand
Speaker 1: better than some of us that that helps us in
Speaker 1: a disproportion of fashion, because a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who make an under a hundred thousand dollars can be
Speaker 1: forgiven that twenty dollars. And the Biden administration said that
Speaker 1: in part, this would help those who are economically disadvantaged
Speaker 1: and historically underrepresented minoritized and racialized communities. And no doubt,
Speaker 1: no question about that. So moving forward, why why we
Speaker 1: don't have in America free college? Like why you have
Speaker 1: to pay for education? But but but like I go
Speaker 1: to people like my friends in Europe, they go to
Speaker 1: hospitals for free, they go to the school. Canada elect
Speaker 1: the searches dogs along as a monster country. Oh you
Speaker 1: want to know that, No, you're gonna have that's that's
Speaker 1: ten years in seven days. Okay, see you then. So,
Speaker 1: But having said that, I agree with you wholeheartedly. We
Speaker 1: should have universal health care. We should have the ability
Speaker 1: to go into any hospital in this country and darn
Speaker 1: be able to get help. We should go to any
Speaker 1: college that our minds take us to that we're able
Speaker 1: to go to. For that matter, why is it that
Speaker 1: we don't have a free holiday holiday for voting? Why?
Speaker 1: Why don't you get registered the moment you're born. Every
Speaker 1: citizen in America should be able to vote. Why we
Speaker 1: gotta go through you can look, you can have UH
Speaker 1: card a registration for a gun and be able to vote,
Speaker 1: but have one for college and not be able to vote.
Speaker 1: This is the twisted mentality. They think the Second Amendment
Speaker 1: is the Second Commandment right, And the problem is they
Speaker 1: worship guns, They idolize and fetishize all forms of ignorance
Speaker 1: and dominance and control, and at the same time, the
Speaker 1: masses of people, including white folk, would be advantaged by
Speaker 1: free college, by voting universally, and by universal health care.
Speaker 1: How better, how much happier would this nation be were
Speaker 1: we to be afforded those opportunities. And we're the richest
Speaker 1: nations in the world you ain't talking about. I mean,
Speaker 1: the nations you're talking about ain't the richest. We are
Speaker 1: the richest per capita, and yet we have some of
Speaker 1: the greatest chasms between the have gods and the have nots.
Speaker 1: The inequality is atrocious in this country, and we are
Speaker 1: continually creating economic policies that reinforce the poverty of the
Speaker 1: poor and the wealth of the wealthy. And we're exporting
Speaker 1: money currently right now in proxy wars, when just a
Speaker 1: fraction of that money could help that here, that disparity
Speaker 1: right here, right here at the crib, could be helping out. So,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, no, I'm agree with you. Holy The other day, right,
Speaker 1: I couldn't sleep. So when I can't sleep, sometimes I
Speaker 1: don't watch Netflix. I don't watch Hulu. I like to
Speaker 1: do is go watch old school cable. Right. I want
Speaker 1: to watch Jerry Springer, I want to watch ship like that.
Speaker 1: So I'm watching Cheetahs the other day, right, And Cheetah's
Speaker 1: Cheeta chee cheeters. You know this is get caught cheating.
Speaker 1: But this white couple come on, I could I couldn't
Speaker 1: watch it. The Chinese couple come on, I couldn't Chinese.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. I couldn't. I couldn't watch it.
Speaker 1: But as soon as black pain came on, identified with it,
Speaker 1: I was like, I was as soon as I've seen
Speaker 1: a black couple come, I was like, oh, ship, now
Speaker 1: be rocking. And then I seen the Latino a couple
Speaker 1: come on, and me being half of Latino, I did,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, I said, You'll wait a minute.
Speaker 1: Am I addicted to back trauma not even know it?
Speaker 1: It could be the case or representation matters, or you
Speaker 1: identified with what you are. Look, it relates relates to
Speaker 1: you can see you right you You can't identify with
Speaker 1: a white person or an Asian person necessarily although most
Speaker 1: of us, you know black people, we go to movies
Speaker 1: all the time and got no black people and we'll
Speaker 1: be a girl, get out the way. The man is
Speaker 1: behind you throwing stuff at the theater. Right, ain't no
Speaker 1: black people involved? Right? So we have an ability to
Speaker 1: transcend our ethnic boundaries and tribalism in many ways. But
Speaker 1: having said that, I grew up in an era where
Speaker 1: they had Jet Magazine, which is a physical magazine's not
Speaker 1: gonna line and every week and Jet Magazine when Beauty
Speaker 1: of the Week, well, I mean that's why, that's why
Speaker 1: I looked at that man that was number one. But
Speaker 1: I'm a baptistreacher, so I have to say number two.
Speaker 1: So the Jet Beauty Week, which was cold. But then
Speaker 1: at the end of the book, always this week in television,
Speaker 1: all the black people and shows that were involved were
Speaker 1: lifted in Jet. Oh, Diane Carroll is going to be
Speaker 1: a guest star on but and so Sammy Davis Jr.
Speaker 1: Will have a guest starring role on mann X and
Speaker 1: so on. Now, first of all, it was tragic because
Speaker 1: all the blackness could be listed at the end of
Speaker 1: a magazine right that that that black people are on.
Speaker 1: But that's how hungry we were to see ourselves represented
Speaker 1: the Real Housewives of right, We're so desperate to see
Speaker 1: ourselves represented. Now we have over representation and over indexing
Speaker 1: in some negative situations, but we are still desperate to
Speaker 1: see representation, to be counted, to be seen and part
Speaker 1: of that is you wanted to be saying even if
Speaker 1: it's night and I was like, wait a minute, man,
Speaker 1: I don't just used to see him. That can be
Speaker 1: at the same time. But the thing is is that
Speaker 1: representation does matter. We perk up when we see those
Speaker 1: who look like us. And the problem with white supremacy
Speaker 1: is not that white people identify with white people, is
Speaker 1: that that they only identify with white people, and that
Speaker 1: they identify with people in a way to exclude opportunity
Speaker 1: for others. Remember that Saturday Night Live skilled with Eddie
Speaker 1: Murphy when they go into the bank and he dresses
Speaker 1: up like a white man. Yeah, they were like, right,
Speaker 1: and then then you know he goes every bank. You know,
Speaker 1: black people can't get no money. He go to get
Speaker 1: it along, just take all the money. Right. So that's
Speaker 1: what it right, That's that's what it is. Right. When
Speaker 1: you're in a dominant position, you don't understand. Uh. David
Speaker 1: Foster Wallace, a late great, uh incredible um novelists, had
Speaker 1: a little story, a little parable. He said. It was
Speaker 1: these two fish in the war, right, and they're floating along,
Speaker 1: they're doing their thing, and they see this older fish,
Speaker 1: you know, coming in the opposite direction, and the older
Speaker 1: fish says to them, afternoon, how's the water boys, and
Speaker 1: then goes on about his business. And then they turned
Speaker 1: to each other, what's water? Because when you're in it,
Speaker 1: you don't recognize where you are. So white of premises
Speaker 1: the same way whiteness is the same way you're born
Speaker 1: on third base, think you hit a triple. You think
Speaker 1: the world operates and has the same advantage as you do.
Speaker 1: You think the world operates according to your viewpoints. Even
Speaker 1: if you're a poor white person, you think you have
Speaker 1: the ability to work hard and therefore make a difference,
Speaker 1: not knowing that millions upon millions of black and brown
Speaker 1: and Latino and queer and other people have worked hard,
Speaker 1: and Asian folks work hard and never got the rewards
Speaker 1: they deserve. So they're in water, and you never know
Speaker 1: you're in water unto somebody calls attention to it, and
Speaker 1: then you pay attention to what that is. And that's
Speaker 1: what whiteness is in this country. Even white folks rapport
Speaker 1: who go, look, I'm poor, I ain't got no advantages. Uh,
Speaker 1: people are mistreat me and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: I say to them, if you can meet a police
Speaker 1: person and live to tell about it. You ain't got
Speaker 1: to be rich to take advantage of white privilege, the
Speaker 1: privilege to be taken seriously. I've seen white folks chasing
Speaker 1: police car is down with machetes, right, and the police
Speaker 1: are running from them with a gun in their hoster
Speaker 1: because their mentality is I'm not going to harm this
Speaker 1: fellow citizen. If only they could apply that to us.
Speaker 1: And so this is why black people are so deeply
Speaker 1: entrenched in abolishing the police, reconstructing the police, trying to
Speaker 1: grapple with police powers because they have been unleashed two
Speaker 1: on us in a way, because white people don't understand
Speaker 1: they have an advantage and a privilege and an opportunity
Speaker 1: and an experience that the masses of non white people
Speaker 1: will never know. Well that was, that was, But let's
Speaker 1: say something to you. I know us about giving people flowers.
Speaker 1: You know, that's why we are That's why we are
Speaker 1: pulled that we received this black last because we know
Speaker 1: if people pre dominantly watch our show. We did check
Speaker 1: Kanye We did check him on his anti semites, and
Speaker 1: we did check him on the George Floyd thing, did
Speaker 1: check him on Black Lives Matter, But most people just
Speaker 1: watched the first fifteen minutes or eighteen minutes. But our
Speaker 1: show is pre dominant about giving people flowers, and we
Speaker 1: would be remissed if we didn't give you your flowers.
Speaker 1: So we wanted to give your flowers face to face. Man,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Let's you get the flowers? Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: my god, marijuana, no no, no, but I got I
Speaker 1: got some beautiful thank you. But I got one more
Speaker 1: question because I know you gotta go. So I know
Speaker 1: you gotta let's let's hang out, and let's hang out
Speaker 1: and did not now look an older serious? Then then
Speaker 1: I'll take a little champagne. But I wanted I wanted
Speaker 1: to be so do this, motherfucker. I was scared that
Speaker 1: I'll see you over there. I ain't want to say
Speaker 1: now that he had one bit. You know we're serious
Speaker 1: over but but I didn't. You didn't do a quick
Speaker 1: time and then we can end it there um reparations.
Speaker 1: First off, we're we stand as a people on on
Speaker 1: getting or receiving reprobations, and to where do you stay?
Speaker 1: Do you think this is something that we we deserved,
Speaker 1: It is something that that that we should get moving forward? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Martin usin King Jr. Nine three in his book Why
Speaker 1: We Can't Wait, said that a nation had, excuse me,
Speaker 1: a nation that has done something special against the Negro
Speaker 1: for two hundred and fifty years must now do something
Speaker 1: special for the Negro. And he talked about a g
Speaker 1: I bill, Remember the g I bill. World War two
Speaker 1: soldiers returned home. What did they get? They got extra
Speaker 1: points on a test to get into school. That was cool.
Speaker 1: You got to hook up right, you got money for
Speaker 1: a house, and you got the ability to get a job.
Speaker 1: That's the holy trinity of affirmative action. There's a scholar
Speaker 1: named Iraq Hats Nelson, Professor of sociology in history at Columbia,
Speaker 1: who wrote a book when affirmative action was wait, see
Speaker 1: a lot of white folks. I'm you know, the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court is gonna, as soume uh, you know, vote again
Speaker 1: on affirmative action and probably will undercut it. The point
Speaker 1: is that affirmative action was a white thing from the
Speaker 1: getty up. So reparations are due. I think it's Tupaca
Speaker 1: somebody saying the The truth is that we are deserving
Speaker 1: of reparations, having worked for free to build this nation.
Speaker 1: Literally the institutions, the buildings, the infrastructure. Everything that we
Speaker 1: see in this nation was created and constructed by black labor,
Speaker 1: indigenous labor, Asian labor, black free labor forced against our will,
Speaker 1: being brought here in sixteen nineteen symbolically, as the record says,
Speaker 1: twenty and some negroes brought here to America, and from
Speaker 1: then the proliferation of black bodies to support this nation.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't we pay reparations? Yes, and reparations come, by
Speaker 1: the way, in many forms. It could be educated sational subsidies, land.
Speaker 1: How about not not not having negroes pay taxes for
Speaker 1: the next fifttle next we not pay taxes right there?
Speaker 1: And look, if you can't give us forty acres in
Speaker 1: the mule, give us an acre on Wall Street. And
Speaker 1: if you ain't got a mule, give us a jackbar
Speaker 1: and call it today. But the point is that, yes,
Speaker 1: reparations are necessary, They are critical, they are vital, They
Speaker 1: have been critical in Europe. What happened to Jewish brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters who were demonized by Hitler in Germany? What
Speaker 1: happened to Japanese brothers and sisters in this country were
Speaker 1: demonizing interment camps so yes we are, and there are
Speaker 1: some state legislatures that are talking about reparations for black people,
Speaker 1: at least under Joe Biden. Right, we are now speaking
Speaker 1: about the possibility of studying reparations because the black president,
Speaker 1: Barack Obama was against them, right, against reparations. Absolutely, they
Speaker 1: put up a vote with Now he talked about it
Speaker 1: in his discussions that he didn't think it was gonna win,
Speaker 1: he didn't think it was feasible, and let's not do it.
Speaker 1: So so again, the old white man, Joe Biden, the
Speaker 1: night he was elected said black people, I owe you
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna pay here. Now that's what Joe Biden said. Now,
Speaker 1: whether or not he followed through exactly as you thought,
Speaker 1: the fact that he put it into the public spear. Now,
Speaker 1: let me say this for all those naysayers out there
Speaker 1: who are black. This hypocritical professor doesn't recognize that that Biden,
Speaker 1: that Obama couldn't say certain things. I do recognize that.
Speaker 1: I recognize that Obama couldn't say a lot of things
Speaker 1: that a white guy could say. Obama couldn't be as
Speaker 1: black as uh Bill Clinton. Going on our cene or
Speaker 1: Hall Plan, the saxophone, I get that, But there are
Speaker 1: ways in which the substance of his policy could reflect
Speaker 1: a commitment to the transformative practice of politics for black people.
Speaker 1: So all I'm saying to you is Obama could have
Speaker 1: done that and could also have used his bully pulpit
Speaker 1: to inform America about what was going on. Because at
Speaker 1: the second term, they ain't gonna love you no more. Bro,
Speaker 1: They don't love you like that, So therefore do what
Speaker 1: you think is necessary. But here's the thing we didn't
Speaker 1: want to accept about Obama. What he was doing is
Speaker 1: what he felt, you know. You know, Michael Jordan said,
Speaker 1: after I get out of you know, basketball, then I'll
Speaker 1: be more political. And to a certain degree it has been.
Speaker 1: But people were saying, can you when you're in offices
Speaker 1: when it makes a difference. Nobody want to hear from
Speaker 1: you after you leave, when you retire. Obama was president,
Speaker 1: and since he's been retired, he's coming back now for
Speaker 1: the midterms. He out didn't making dough, he had to
Speaker 1: hanging out with multi white billionaires. Obama. Yes, And now, look,
Speaker 1: I ain't mad at him getting no dough. I ain't
Speaker 1: mad at him making no money. I ain't mad at
Speaker 1: him getting everything he can, but using and I know
Speaker 1: he has to be relatively silent because he wants to
Speaker 1: respect the president president. I get that, but he does
Speaker 1: come out every now and again to make statements, uh,
Speaker 1: and to articulate his idea and his ideas. And it's
Speaker 1: extremely important that we hear from him. But it was
Speaker 1: especially important when he was in office to make use
Speaker 1: of that bully pulpit to change the lives of many
Speaker 1: black people. And many things he left on the table,
Speaker 1: and he had nothing to do with white folk denying
Speaker 1: him an opportunity to be able to do what he did.
Speaker 1: He didn't have to go to black churches and and
Speaker 1: squash black men. He didn't have to. He didn't have
Speaker 1: to go to the fifth anniversity of the March on
Speaker 1: Washington and then and then dog black people saying that
Speaker 1: we used the excuses of Malcolm's death and Martin's death
Speaker 1: to engage in the culture of crime. Had a white
Speaker 1: boy said that, we would have been nuts. I sound
Speaker 1: like white supremacy. Well. Again, the anti blackness and some
Speaker 1: of Obama's rhetoric has pointed out by many writers and
Speaker 1: thinkers was really real, including Tana Has Colts who wrote
Speaker 1: about it why does he speak to us that way?
Speaker 1: In the Atlantic magazine, Obama was on some of that
Speaker 1: anti blackness as well. Man, that got deep ready for
Speaker 1: a quick time. We played a game on our show.
Speaker 1: It's called quick Time with Slim, Right, So, uh, if
Speaker 1: you could pick one or the other, and um, if
Speaker 1: politically reckon you pick both, we drink and that you're
Speaker 1: not drinking, We'll drink for you. We'll drink for you.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get you all drunk. You Sunday computer real Sunday,
Speaker 1: your ring your ringer drinker. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. So okay,
Speaker 1: I feel like because he was rushing it. Because he
Speaker 1: was rushing it, Okay, okay, so that's cool. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the first part of it. Oh let me see okay, okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead. Oh this is good. Yeah, yeah said the
Speaker 1: first one is tupac DMX pack. Okay, ice cube, but
Speaker 1: chuck d damn y'all better drink because because Elvis was
Speaker 1: that he wrote the most money never meant to me
Speaker 1: straight up races the sucker was simple and plain or
Speaker 1: ice cube? I mean, come on, man, why is it
Speaker 1: that own time black people get it ride in a
Speaker 1: limo when they did I mean both of them genius? Yeah,
Speaker 1: jay Z Nas I mean, but look, obviously, obviously jay
Speaker 1: Z is a unique figure in the history of hip hop.
Speaker 1: There's never been a figure with that much rhetorical genius,
Speaker 1: intellectual capacity, cultural momentum, and the power to shift and
Speaker 1: change the culture with his rhetoric and then follow that
Speaker 1: up with his extraordinary embodiment of a boss. So in
Speaker 1: that sense, jay Z is unique and above anyone else
Speaker 1: to whom he could be compared. But when you look
Speaker 1: at the poetry of Naas and of Jay their geniuses sixteen,
Speaker 1: I mean started at six, and these young guys music,
Speaker 1: and they're be like, well, well they all have enough experience,
Speaker 1: and and you're like, wait a minute, look now, I
Speaker 1: started a bull assassin my architect pleases when I was hoef.
Speaker 1: I want to help for stuff in Jesus, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's only right that I was going to use mikes
Speaker 1: and the stuff that I write, it's even tougher than Dice.
Speaker 1: I'm taking rap into a new plateau through rap slow.
Speaker 1: My ram is a vitamin hell without a cap, a
Speaker 1: smooth cram on beat break. Never put me in your
Speaker 1: box at your stakes. Doubt, doubt hold, hold, but when
Speaker 1: you pay that and see, my only beef with j
Speaker 1: is that he puts Kingdom come too low in his estimation.
Speaker 1: I would write it if y'all could get it. But
Speaker 1: being intricate or get you would critics on the internet.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you should spit it. I'm saying you should
Speaker 1: buy it. Nigger, that's good business. Yeah, that's good. I
Speaker 1: agree with you. I agree. I agree with everything you said.
Speaker 1: They're both my home boys. How about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: the next one is Trump or Biden. I'm gonna pour
Speaker 1: my drink on you fast. You know it's Joe big Okay, good? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he picked and we're drinking. That's books made in America
Speaker 1: or the Black presidency made in the Oh my books.
Speaker 1: They're two tall, slim black men who are geniuses, j
Speaker 1: and and Barack Obama. But jay Z, it's such a
Speaker 1: towering figure. I gotta again to live quality or comment.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Oh, by Jesus, y'all be killing her
Speaker 1: brother started drinking because I mean, ty lib, these cats
Speaker 1: drink champagne, told death and pain like slaves on the ship,
Speaker 1: bragging about who got the flyers chained? I mean and
Speaker 1: and when common says to a girl. You know, I
Speaker 1: won't buy you a shirt, but I will match your work.
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of and then you know the
Speaker 1: genius that he's expressed since the time he was a
Speaker 1: young boy in Chicago. Yeah, just just extraordinary people. Killer
Speaker 1: Mike or T. I again, I know both of these figures.
Speaker 1: In fact, I've known everybody you talked about. Damn, they're
Speaker 1: both incredible, man. I mean, Killer Mike, Run the Jewels
Speaker 1: is just amazing. T I bring them out, bring them out. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're both amazing. We gotta drink. We're gonna drink. We're
Speaker 1: gonna drink. Eddie Murphy, Oh damn. Now I'm gonna say this,
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor prior to pun intended. Uh, Eddie Murphy. I
Speaker 1: mean he's still maybe the stand up goat Richard. Richard
Speaker 1: Pryor right in terms of bringing the full weight of
Speaker 1: black popular culture to bear in the narratives that he spread.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, he's alone. But Eddie Murphy in
Speaker 1: terms of acting, in terms of multi you know, more
Speaker 1: than a billion dollars at the box office, nobody has
Speaker 1: been that great of a comedic actor and be able
Speaker 1: to do a great stand up and music. He did
Speaker 1: music all the time, party all the time. I mean
Speaker 1: I would say I might give a daddy on that. Okay,
Speaker 1: okay on that. You know. I'm gonna tell you why
Speaker 1: about Eddie. I was, I'm a little I'm forty five,
Speaker 1: so i'm a little um younger. I didn't really get
Speaker 1: to see prior right right, it was VHS or something
Speaker 1: like that. I remember Eddie movies coming out and me
Speaker 1: driving by the movie did and everyone suited and booted
Speaker 1: as if they're being seen. I've never seen that before
Speaker 1: like he did it. Man, he sexualized black comedy. Bill
Speaker 1: Cosby couldn't be sexualized. Well, not that we knew, man,
Speaker 1: we just got on the pool. They cut that. But
Speaker 1: I mean Dick Gregory. But Eddie Murphy brought the sexual
Speaker 1: ethos of black masculinity to bear. Not again. Richard Pryor
Speaker 1: is nonparree in terms of no comparison in terms of
Speaker 1: mud Bone and all the stories he told and the
Speaker 1: television stuff he did. But when you look at it
Speaker 1: all together, and then when you add acting, he wasn't
Speaker 1: nearly as great a comic actor as Eddie Murphy. And
Speaker 1: Eddie Murphy's range is astonishing and another young man coming up.
Speaker 1: We didn't mention him. I mean, Kevin hard to me
Speaker 1: has gotten so much more funny, has refined his craft.
Speaker 1: Is a monster on that film, and it will be
Speaker 1: challenging soon that title because of the comprehensive character of
Speaker 1: the kind of work that he does. He sat in
Speaker 1: the same see that you're sitting in, and we told
Speaker 1: him to his face, you are the closest thing to
Speaker 1: Eddie that we've been seeing. Like, because people are coming
Speaker 1: out to Kevin and there's a whole bunch of people,
Speaker 1: dumb people that say Kevin ain't funny. I'm not with them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's okay, o dB or Bismarkey, you you got what
Speaker 1: I need? What you say, He's just different. It might
Speaker 1: be the greatest hip hop song going Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I mean I love me and Maria going back, Babil
Speaker 1: pacifying old dirt Dog. I have to get that to
Speaker 1: a biss market. Okay. Bismarck, Okay, that's cool. That's that's
Speaker 1: the person who I wanted to be like Bismarck because
Speaker 1: at the time Rapp was so serious and when I
Speaker 1: heard picking Boogers, I was like, wait a minute, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to be like that. Yeah, no, no doubt, no,
Speaker 1: this is like an oxymor wrong because I think we
Speaker 1: ask you this in a different way, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: actually it again. In w A or Public Enemy Oh damn,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I mean the I mean Public Enemy's
Speaker 1: influence is just it's just astonishing. I mean when you
Speaker 1: think about the clown and the court gesture and the
Speaker 1: king right in terms of right, I mean just what
Speaker 1: was right? Right? Yeah, exactly, I mean, I mean Terminator
Speaker 1: X is right in terms of that. So but n
Speaker 1: w A was powerful. I mean when the fter police
Speaker 1: came out, But then I had to explain to myself,
Speaker 1: a B is just to be as just, to be
Speaker 1: as just to be. So the parts of toxic masculinity
Speaker 1: that they expressed, the misogyny and the hatred of women,
Speaker 1: is so overwhelmingly negative. But at the same time, the
Speaker 1: power of their witness uh to social justice. But I'd
Speaker 1: have to choose p you Oh you skipped the quen
Speaker 1: Latif for MC light Oh damn drink because they're both
Speaker 1: I love them and know them both amazing, and they
Speaker 1: affected the genre in many ways. I mean, and to
Speaker 1: see both of them go on to become what they
Speaker 1: are I mean, you know, Queen Latifa, like who knew right,
Speaker 1: can sing, can act? I mean like a female Will
Speaker 1: Smith at that level if you will, she can fight
Speaker 1: to me in my mind, oh yeah, no doubt and
Speaker 1: mc light. I mean just in terms of the flow,
Speaker 1: the funky acrobatics of her rhetoric. And then now making
Speaker 1: a career job what is it? What is it Benjamin
Speaker 1: Button's when you were Oh yeah, she's she's young God
Speaker 1: just incredibly uh intelligent and beautiful both because I've been
Speaker 1: her voice is everywhere now, I mean her as as
Speaker 1: right doing these you know shows. I mean, she has
Speaker 1: invented another career in terms of announcing, in terms of
Speaker 1: broadcasting and stuff, and still out there. I did. I've
Speaker 1: done many events where where we we did a at
Speaker 1: Syracuse University where we had a conversation brilliant, brilliant, both
Speaker 1: of them, amazing beautiful eighties hip hop or nineties hip hop.
Speaker 1: He could go back to that. Yeah, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to rock with nineties nineties. I mean, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna have to say, uh, back in the
Speaker 1: days our parents used to take care of us, Look
Speaker 1: at them now they're even scared of us calling the
Speaker 1: city for help because they can't maintain damn things done.
Speaker 1: If I wasn't in the rap game, I probably have
Speaker 1: a key knee deep in the crack game. I mean
Speaker 1: nineties and then Nas and Jade. I mean when Jay
Speaker 1: said they're having a debate about who's the three greatest
Speaker 1: biggie not he wasn't even he wasn't even in the
Speaker 1: conversation at that point, But he was in the conversation.
Speaker 1: That's how, that's how, that's how for making his genius. Oh,
Speaker 1: there ain't no doubt about he put himself in a
Speaker 1: category he wasn't. He knew and that's a lesson. That's
Speaker 1: a lesson to people. You know who you are, you assistance.
Speaker 1: He spoke that, He spoke that. Now you won't think
Speaker 1: of those three without each other because he's in a stratus.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Forgot that. Yeah, you want um higher learning
Speaker 1: or American History X ah, Yeah, I might have to
Speaker 1: go higher learning. You know. American History X was beautiful
Speaker 1: because it exposed the gut bucket realities of white supremacy
Speaker 1: in this transformation. But higher learning, I mean John Singleton
Speaker 1: was just such a great artist, director, and I think
Speaker 1: you're trying to rest, right, trying to struggle with what's that?
Speaker 1: Plus he put Pocket in the movie. You know, wanted
Speaker 1: to put Pocket in the movies and it was beautiful
Speaker 1: and baby, you know what was that place? Big rabbing
Speaker 1: for who's getting jacked right now because he you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes people gotta mind any business. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: this is to his case, but I feel like this
Speaker 1: is this is even though because he chalmed in on
Speaker 1: something that you said about black people, and when he
Speaker 1: chalmed in, he called yeah crackpot and oh man, I
Speaker 1: go it was it was almost like our people was
Speaker 1: like we could talk about him, not you, right, So
Speaker 1: they are dragging report right now. But he made that
Speaker 1: he made that documentary on tropical Quests quest. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one of the greatest documentary. So pick him up.
Speaker 1: Let's see him getting dragged to the meeting. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: get him on drink. I think should do the podcast,
Speaker 1: podcasts or radio. Who I mean, podcasts are where it's
Speaker 1: at right now. But I'm old school too. I love
Speaker 1: to go just listen to that day I'm radio and
Speaker 1: here's some music I've never heard before. The podcast, But
Speaker 1: drink Champs in particular, this is this, this is this
Speaker 1: is the same question. Let's out right, But I want
Speaker 1: to know if you met either, because the stories Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson or Prince I met him both. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you what. Here's Michael Jackson. We're in the bathroom at
Speaker 1: Johnny Cochran's funeral. That already sounds crazy, already sounds like
Speaker 1: a crazy set up. We're in the bathroom and Michael
Speaker 1: in the church at West Angeles Church of God in
Speaker 1: Christ passed by the great UH Bishop Charles Blake now
Speaker 1: his son co pastor, and we're in the bathroom during
Speaker 1: you know, ol J is in the in the funeral too.
Speaker 1: I got hope. I was hoping that Nero didn't recognize
Speaker 1: we're in the bathroom. Michael Jackson is washing his hands
Speaker 1: and he turns them and he says, did you have
Speaker 1: gloves on? When he goes, I like how you talk
Speaker 1: on TV? I said what I said, I like how
Speaker 1: you saying single on stage? All right now with Prince,
Speaker 1: Prince invited me along with a couple others to his
Speaker 1: UH to his palatial mansion of what do you call it?
Speaker 1: The in UH Minneapolis and Lake Minetauqua. Yeah, right, to
Speaker 1: the what's the purple palet? I mean, not the purple palete?
Speaker 1: My why am I blocking? This is a senior moment.
Speaker 1: The famous place he has there in Minnesota will come
Speaker 1: to it. What did they call it? Yeah, please google
Speaker 1: that because I don't want to look like a complete fool.
Speaker 1: Thank you man. And so he invites us and we
Speaker 1: haven't Paisley Park. Yeah, so he has Uh is that
Speaker 1: what it's called? The one where where we went? Okay,
Speaker 1: so he we're having a little He invites me because
Speaker 1: he sees me on TV. Thinks I'm smart talking stuff.
Speaker 1: He says, but he says, you, you know, you defend
Speaker 1: gay people. I said, yeah, I mean, but you're a preacher.
Speaker 1: Now he had just got converted, remember being uh some
Speaker 1: no not some day uh when Michael Jackson with Michael
Speaker 1: Jesson left and he went in not something. Jehovah's witness
Speaker 1: was Jehovah's witness. And I'm thinking, Prince, you've been a
Speaker 1: patron saint for androgeny and to myself. I didn't say
Speaker 1: this him, but moving forward, but what I did say
Speaker 1: to him is that, yeah, because I believe God loves everybody,
Speaker 1: either God created everybody a God ain't created nobody, sir, so,
Speaker 1: I I definitely believe. So we had a little argument
Speaker 1: there and then uh, I said, are you telling me
Speaker 1: that all the music you had before you were converted
Speaker 1: is the devil's music? And he basically said yes. I said,
Speaker 1: I disagree with that. I said, when you made Signs
Speaker 1: of the Times, I said, that's God speaking to you, sir, so,
Speaker 1: I disagree. But then out in an event with Tavis
Speaker 1: Smiley out in l a, uh, Princess playing on stage
Speaker 1: and he says, I know Mr Dyson can talk, but
Speaker 1: any dance, I said, son Son Son, So me and
Speaker 1: Centric Entertainer got on stage and started a little dance party.
Speaker 1: Everybody else joined it. So yeah, my Prince and uh
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson stories there and then Princeton to have his assts.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no chapters revealing the as tronomical side.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no. At least Prince was gangster what
Speaker 1: his ass out playing basketball in them high heills. I
Speaker 1: mean Prince was was was cold bloody, no doubt about that.
Speaker 1: I haven't met either one, just like Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: on Malcolm X, I love them both, and Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King Junior for me, and the reason, I'll tell you,
Speaker 1: Malcolm X changed the psychology of black people in such
Speaker 1: a fundamental way. He would have been so tonic and
Speaker 1: helpful to Kanye West, teaching him about the complicity he
Speaker 1: exhibits with the white supremacy that he's been seduced by.
Speaker 1: All Right, but Martin Luther King Jr. Changed the world
Speaker 1: for black people. He changed the law. Malcolm X changed
Speaker 1: the mindset of some ching changed to the law. When
Speaker 1: I say King, I mean, uh, you know, Ella Baker,
Speaker 1: I mean Septum mclark, I mean all the black women
Speaker 1: and others who work with him. But he has the
Speaker 1: symbol the nineteen sixty four Civil Rights Bill, the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty Voting Rights Act, and in the wake of his death,
Speaker 1: the nineteen Fair Housing Act. That's the holy trinity of
Speaker 1: social justice. And then when I was nine years old,
Speaker 1: he was murdered. I'd never heard of him, and I'm
Speaker 1: looking at television. I'm sitting there, my father's in his
Speaker 1: favorite seat behind me. We're in the hood and the
Speaker 1: ghetto in Detroit. And the newsman broke faith with the
Speaker 1: original program and said, tonight at six o one local time,
Speaker 1: martinster King Jr. Was shot. I don't think they announced
Speaker 1: he was dead. And then he was standing there. Uh,
Speaker 1: We've got some difficult days ahead, but I'm not concerned
Speaker 1: about that now. I just want to do Guard's will.
Speaker 1: And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain,
Speaker 1: and I've looked over and I've seen the promised Land.
Speaker 1: I may not get there with you, but i want
Speaker 1: you to know tonight that we as a people will
Speaker 1: get to the Promised Land. And so I'm not worried
Speaker 1: about anything. I'm not fearing any man mine eyes. And
Speaker 1: then he turned around and fell into the arms of
Speaker 1: Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson for the last words and
Speaker 1: the public declaration that he uttered on this earth before
Speaker 1: a bullet sent across a parking lot of a motel
Speaker 1: found its unerring target in the skull and flesh of
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Jr. At thirty nine years old, clipped
Speaker 1: his tie, pulled open his jaw, and his feet were
Speaker 1: bicycling as if he were on a vice go. And
Speaker 1: the greatest we've ever produced died that day. Gobs Bruce
Speaker 1: Lee or Chuck Norris, Oh, Bruce Lee, Yes, Donald Trump Jr.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump Norris is Oh my good, Chuck Hill, and
Speaker 1: I'll be watching them retreads of the seventies mill. Chuck
Speaker 1: Norris is a right winger. Bro. It also wasn't need
Speaker 1: Bruce Lee student to start with. I mean he was, right, Chuck.
Speaker 1: I mean, Bruce Lee is the man. I mean, Kareem
Speaker 1: ab dude Jabbar was even checking out with him and
Speaker 1: Jim Kelly with water flow like water Oh yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, Chuck Norris. Can't you know, handle his
Speaker 1: new Chucks? Okay, most of death or Black Thought. Oh damn, drink, Bro, drink,
Speaker 1: I can't. I mean, both of them geniuses speaches my
Speaker 1: hammer banged the world in the shape and now let
Speaker 1: it fall. All the black thoughts said, slice him like
Speaker 1: a vic um like Michael Eric Dyson. Okay, I just
Speaker 1: I gotta show him love. I gotta show him. Look, therefore,
Speaker 1: I better say black call. I gotta give Black Thought
Speaker 1: to Nod because he gave me so much love. And
Speaker 1: but both of the her geniuses. I mean, when you
Speaker 1: have Lynn Manuel Miranda texting you saying, did you see
Speaker 1: the friend? What the the funk? Flash? I mean the
Speaker 1: oh my god, he was like, Bro, He's already knew
Speaker 1: he was top ten. But my god, so yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Black Thoughts body of work is so powerful and so dance.
Speaker 1: I mean both of them. Her genius is. But Black
Speaker 1: Thoughts extraordinary output even into his fifties. It's quite remarkable.
Speaker 1: Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock drink up, bro drink up.
Speaker 1: But both of them again, I mean Chris Rock in
Speaker 1: between after Eddie, Chris Rock had the crown, I mean
Speaker 1: as a stand up right and and getting into acting
Speaker 1: as well, Top five and others that he did extraordinarily
Speaker 1: well stand up. Whatever he do, it is gonna be Oh.
Speaker 1: I mean he's doing around, going to country now. I
Speaker 1: just want to see him, right, you're right, you're right.
Speaker 1: So his genius, I mean, he's more political in that sense.
Speaker 1: He's more traced to you know, some of the white
Speaker 1: you know, Mort Saul and some of the white comedians
Speaker 1: who were explicitly political than to Richard Pryor. Richard Pryor
Speaker 1: was cultural in a way that had political consequence when
Speaker 1: he was he wasn't explicitly political in the way that
Speaker 1: Chris Rock is. So Chris Rock would be the greatest
Speaker 1: political comedian in that sense within our genre. And then
Speaker 1: Dave Chappelle as you know, taking up and combining the
Speaker 1: kind of cultural apparatus of a of a of a
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor and then being able to improvise. Right, Chris
Speaker 1: Rock is hip hop. Dave Chappelle is jazz, you know,
Speaker 1: just telling the story. He's just aking to you, and
Speaker 1: Chris Rock is hitting you with the rapid fire you know,
Speaker 1: insight from there. So they're both extraordinary geniuses. Okay, Jesse
Speaker 1: Jackson or Al Sharpton, Yeah, drink up, bro, But you
Speaker 1: know they're both friends of mine, and they're both amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean Jesse Jackson. I put Jesse Jackson number one,
Speaker 1: Martin to King Jr. Number two, Frederick Douglas number three,
Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson. Well, between Jesse and Harry Tubman, they can
Speaker 1: flip either one. But I'm gonna tell you how Jesse
Speaker 1: Jackson has never been given his due, and not until
Speaker 1: he's dead for a few years will people understand what
Speaker 1: he did. He took the time from Martin US King Jr.
Speaker 1: Who was thirty nine, Jesse was twenty six. He's not
Speaker 1: what eight e three, somewhere around eighty four almost, uh
Speaker 1: maybe eighty two eighty three, and they just had a birthday.
Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson carried us from Martin Luther King Jr's death
Speaker 1: right until Al Sharpton Essentially right takes that of that
Speaker 1: particular variety of leadership. So Jesse canceled Muhammad Ali. Jesse
Speaker 1: Jackson was biased. I mean all of that, from from
Speaker 1: nineteen eight King's death to the backlash against the Fern
Speaker 1: of Action the nineteen seventies. Jesse Jackson, I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: your story. I was writing Jesse Jackson's just Just Anyone.
Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson was I was writing his book nineteen nine.
Speaker 1: I was writing his Uh, I've never written a book before,
Speaker 1: but he hired me. I was, yeah, I was gonna
Speaker 1: ghost right. I might even had my name on the
Speaker 1: cover his book. And we were going we had gone
Speaker 1: to see Mandela in London. We were there were at
Speaker 1: a table Anita Baker parents, Trent Darby, Patty LaBelle, and
Speaker 1: Tracy Chapman, and it's like ninety one and pet Bell
Speaker 1: said I could listen to you talk all day. I
Speaker 1: was like, thank you. If only you knew. So. So
Speaker 1: I'm with Jesse Jackson in the car once and he's
Speaker 1: going He's I said, where are you going? Rev? Because
Speaker 1: I'm still writing something. The interviewing, and he said, I'm
Speaker 1: going to Harvard. I said, what are you doing to Harvard?
Speaker 1: He said, I'm about to have a debate. I said,
Speaker 1: who are you debating? He said, it really don't matter. Damn.
Speaker 1: I mean, like bro, like, I don't it don't I
Speaker 1: don't care. I'm gonna be in this battle and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna whip that ass right. That's how great he was
Speaker 1: and is. Al Sharpton is the grost remarkable leader we
Speaker 1: have in present day, and a man who's transformation has
Speaker 1: been astonishing from being seen as an outsider limited in
Speaker 1: uh in the minds of many of his greatness and
Speaker 1: invented himself. He he became half the man he was
Speaker 1: like literally and then metaphorically, he transformed himself into a
Speaker 1: leader that Barack Obama saw as the premier black leader
Speaker 1: in America. And Sharpton had to do something no other
Speaker 1: black leaders had to do, deal with the black president
Speaker 1: as the power that be and hold him to account
Speaker 1: and at the tame same time show him love. That
Speaker 1: was an extremely difficult thing in Al Sharpton as the leader,
Speaker 1: but as an articulate spokesman, as a person who shows
Speaker 1: up to give visibility to the most serious issue we
Speaker 1: have in America today for black people, which is police
Speaker 1: brutality in the murder of our people. And Al Sharpton
Speaker 1: was doing that. I was arrested with Al Sharpton in
Speaker 1: the late nineties. Al Sharpton was onto police brutality when
Speaker 1: he was a bigger version of himself and in those
Speaker 1: running suits and black people were looking down at him. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's he dealing with what thugs. He's dealing with criminals.
Speaker 1: He's always dealing with the police until their kids started dying.
Speaker 1: And now he became an American hero. So both of
Speaker 1: them incredible geniuses. I can't lie to you. I've had
Speaker 1: dinner in Crustaceans in l a and they they said,
Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson is over there. It was the only person
Speaker 1: like slash celebrity that I was scared to say I to.
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like, how then do you
Speaker 1: go say how to Jack Jackson? I'm just like, my
Speaker 1: name is yeah, how do I woke O? YEA, yeah.
Speaker 1: I was so scared though I was alive. Al Shopton,
Speaker 1: so let me say say that about Jesse and of
Speaker 1: course all the beautiful things him showing up. But you know,
Speaker 1: me being from New York and me, you know, getting
Speaker 1: to see any type of type of crime, bad things
Speaker 1: that happened. Al Shopton will always have Remember when I
Speaker 1: first got like a little bit famous. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit and I would see certain things that that would
Speaker 1: be my goal to thing. I'm calling out Shopton and
Speaker 1: people would sho, what do we do wrong? Oh? Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever met me, know the
Speaker 1: hell I am. I weaponized your name Bottles, I don't
Speaker 1: know about Oh you lumped definitely will say that. What
Speaker 1: would you say? Yeah, I just looked like I knew
Speaker 1: I'll Sharpton and Al Sharpton comes out of that tree.
Speaker 1: Al Sharpton is the greatest from jaxponent of Jesse Jackson
Speaker 1: way of thought and way of approach and Jesse from
Speaker 1: from King. So that's a hell of a triumvirant. Okay,
Speaker 1: hold on, God, When the next one, Tyson or Ali,
Speaker 1: I'd have to say, Muhammad Ali. I love Mike Tyson too,
Speaker 1: though just in terms of fisticals. But Ali was so
Speaker 1: huge in terms of what he meant in terms of
Speaker 1: off stage, off the canvas, outside the boxing ring, I'll
Speaker 1: give you a Muhammad Ali story if you want to
Speaker 1: hear it. So again, I was one of eight scholars
Speaker 1: who was invited to give papers on Muhammad Ali. So
Speaker 1: I talked about his rhetoric and his daughter was rapping then,
Speaker 1: so I talked about the relationship between his dog girl.
Speaker 1: You know lights, you know, but what is it? Light?
Speaker 1: Is a butterfly stinging like a b you know, and
Speaker 1: float like a butterfly's thing like a b. And I
Speaker 1: was talking about doggerel poetry in his relationship to hip hop.
Speaker 1: So anyway, so I got a chance to hang out
Speaker 1: with him, asked him questions. I said, you were wrong
Speaker 1: about Malcolm X, weren't you. He said, yes, I was
Speaker 1: because remember he split with Malcolm with the minister Mohammed Uh.
Speaker 1: And he showed me pictures of him and him and
Speaker 1: uh Elvis Presley had two pretty two pretty man that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Then about a year later, we see
Speaker 1: him coming through the airport and I, you know, I
Speaker 1: tell my wife, he'll he'll never remember me, you know,
Speaker 1: It's just it was just a magical day. So we
Speaker 1: get closer and I go up to him. I said,
Speaker 1: Mr Alie, I said, you know my name is Michael
Speaker 1: Eric Dyson. And before I can finish, he leaned over.
Speaker 1: He said, you that nigga that can talk. I said,
Speaker 1: I wear that with prize. I'm that nigga that can talk, Yes, sir.
Speaker 1: But he was amazing, amazing, transformative figure. Tyson was a
Speaker 1: bad boy too. I mean Tyson was equally important in
Speaker 1: terms of the culture, uh, in terms of style, in
Speaker 1: terms of his presence, his complications, his changes and what
Speaker 1: he's become right now. It's pretty remarkable. See. I always
Speaker 1: picked Tyson over Ali. People chastise me for this. I
Speaker 1: picked Floyd over Ali. Right. I got to see as
Speaker 1: a fighter, I got yeah, yeah, yeah, I got to
Speaker 1: fight the Floyd fights. Yeah, Floyd was most fights. I
Speaker 1: got to see what was on re run and when
Speaker 1: my father watched it. My father will always tell me
Speaker 1: what happened before watch watch the left. When why are
Speaker 1: you telling me, like I'm sitting here trying to learn that.
Speaker 1: He he would always do that. So that's the reason. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I mean, Floyd there is a fighter just on
Speaker 1: the fight game. Be hard to say. He was the
Speaker 1: greatest man, the defensive fighter. I sat down with him
Speaker 1: into the HBO, specially when we talked about is fighting
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, yeah, I love Floyd master Po bird it. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to go Masterp. I don't know no plane.
Speaker 1: I don't know no dope. I don't ship no dope
Speaker 1: from coast to cope. You know. Come on, man, I
Speaker 1: don't know no plane. I don't know no boat. I
Speaker 1: don't ship no dope from coast to coast. Come on.
Speaker 1: He made grunting in the bathroom and National Time, and
Speaker 1: he's a He's a wonderful, sublime human being. Nipsy Hustle
Speaker 1: or easy Nipsey. I gotta go Nepsy. We are easy.
Speaker 1: I mean I loved Easy, but Nipsey Hustle. Let me
Speaker 1: give me my Nipsey Hustle story, if you know. So.
Speaker 1: I'm getting on a plane from l A to New
Speaker 1: York and I'm getting into my seat. Walter Mosley, the
Speaker 1: great writers on the right, Van Jones on the left.
Speaker 1: I'm on this plane and this young man gets in
Speaker 1: and he says, uh, excuse me, are you Michael Eric Dyson.
Speaker 1: I said, yes, sir, I am. He said, wow, I
Speaker 1: read your books. I said, are you Nipsey Hustle? Look,
Speaker 1: he said, yes, I am. I said, and I pulled
Speaker 1: up my my iPhone and I had his latest Marathon
Speaker 1: playing right here. He was like, oh my god, I said, Oh,
Speaker 1: I ain't talking to dog I live in And so
Speaker 1: for three and a half four four hours, four and
Speaker 1: a half hours we had a NonStop conversation, mostly led
Speaker 1: by the way by Nipsey Hustle, his intelligence, his curiosity.
Speaker 1: He's wanting to know things. You're ready to pick my brain,
Speaker 1: asked me. Certain things respond to certain things. A remarkable,
Speaker 1: remarkable human being. Rest in piece of the ball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: rest in peace to the boy damn you know him?
Speaker 1: Both do yeah, drink up? So Pharrell, Look, they're both geniuses,
Speaker 1: let's be real. Pharrell changed the sonic landscape in his
Speaker 1: own right too. Kanye and a performer with Chad you
Speaker 1: go in with the Neptunes, so irremarkable what Kanye did
Speaker 1: as a rapper, right, maybe arguably before Kanye, it was
Speaker 1: say Dr Dre in terms of can rap and control
Speaker 1: the maestro? You know, you know, because people look, look
Speaker 1: Drey has skills on that microphone. I mean it just
Speaker 1: one of the dopest come on right. So then you
Speaker 1: but Kanye comes along with that backpack mentality and the
Speaker 1: honesty that he has the ability to bring together a
Speaker 1: most definite talent quality and a j just to get by,
Speaker 1: just to get hot, right, I mean to bring them together,
Speaker 1: to bring Jay together with um the spoken word artist
Speaker 1: j I Vey on his first album to have themes
Speaker 1: about social justice, about wanting material things about your own hypocrisy.
Speaker 1: I mean, Kanye's transparency was astonishing or is astonishing. And
Speaker 1: as an artist, and his ability to evolve and to
Speaker 1: grow and to make incredible music not only for the
Speaker 1: ear in the in the radio, on the radio in
Speaker 1: the car, but in stadiums and to transform the sonic
Speaker 1: landscape and then to bring that all together and continue
Speaker 1: to evolve and grow, uh, is damn remarkable. But yet
Speaker 1: when you think about what Farrell has done in terms
Speaker 1: of the architecture of sound and his high intelligence and
Speaker 1: his reflection about the aesthetic accouterments that constitute a powerful
Speaker 1: expression of identity through music, you're just they're both genus.
Speaker 1: Thank you. That's why we drunk up, Okay, Pete Primo
Speaker 1: or Pete Rock Frank, Yeah, just so you know, Pete Rocks.
Speaker 1: When I come to to work every day become a
Speaker 1: I have to pass by this mirror as a mirror
Speaker 1: of man, I don't want to ride here. I don't
Speaker 1: want to come here unless we go through there and
Speaker 1: I just look at it. I don't get out and
Speaker 1: take a picture. It's right up the block, but I
Speaker 1: have to see because it's a big mural of Pete
Speaker 1: Rock And I feel like this is my way of
Speaker 1: paying homies coming to hip hop. I mean looking at
Speaker 1: and then pre Pete Rocking in the sale, smooth coming out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just both of them, just so fertile, so so creative
Speaker 1: at a at a crucial part of hip hop history. Okay,
Speaker 1: bad Boy or death Row? Mm hmmm, who I mean
Speaker 1: death Row was Snoop? I like your Snoop? Imprecious? I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, it's Snoop's the capital. So yes, I'm fresh
Speaker 1: and double O p p O double G y d
Speaker 1: O double G. You see it showing much flex when
Speaker 1: it's time to reckon Mike pimping holes in the clock
Speaker 1: of the grip, Like my name is Dolo Mike, Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, no doubt. But I mean Biggie, I mean
Speaker 1: little Kim like wow, I mean the death Row with
Speaker 1: pocket as well. Oh, I'm gonna have to give the
Speaker 1: Edge to to to bad Boy. It's funny you said
Speaker 1: how you broke up Biggie. You know that's what changed
Speaker 1: my life. Um. One day, I'm chilling in the Bronx,
Speaker 1: I think it was something the restaurant the mouthside, smoking
Speaker 1: a cigarett. I don't smoke Stay Risks no more, but
Speaker 1: I didn't. I did, and this woman comes up to
Speaker 1: me and she just started talking to me. I'm talking
Speaker 1: to her, that's the tonic conversation. But she said to me, man,
Speaker 1: it's boring. I wish your Biggie record was out. And
Speaker 1: she said it as if like Biggie was like going
Speaker 1: to Great Adventure. And I was just like what. I
Speaker 1: was like, what did you say? And I just started rapping.
Speaker 1: I just started, well, I've been was rapping. It's just
Speaker 1: I just started getting on. That's the reason why I've
Speaker 1: made Super Tug. What What What? What? What? Forrel is
Speaker 1: right to Parrell because I remember me telling him I
Speaker 1: want venting record. Yeah, And I remember, like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if he said what does an event record? Or
Speaker 1: someone in the room said what does an event record?
Speaker 1: And I was like, one more Chance? I want my
Speaker 1: version of One More Chance? And it was because the
Speaker 1: stranger that I didn't know just just just told me
Speaker 1: the most genius thing ever. She said, I it's boring out.
Speaker 1: I wish Biggie had a record. That's like as if
Speaker 1: that was something to do, like like to me, she
Speaker 1: described it like I wish I could go to great adventures.
Speaker 1: And I was just looking at her. I was like,
Speaker 1: she changed my life. Yeah that's me for like three
Speaker 1: minutes and then that was it. But all right, this
Speaker 1: is this is the last question, especially for a quick
Speaker 1: time with slave. Everyone thinks it's a trick question. Me
Speaker 1: and E. F N thinks it's pretty much. Um, loyalty
Speaker 1: or respect. Damn, that's deep. I say loyalty because if
Speaker 1: you have loyalty, respect is built in. You can have
Speaker 1: respect but not be loyal. Mm hmm. That's where. That's where.
Speaker 1: So I just want to thank you, you know you.
Speaker 1: I just want to I want to stay. I don't
Speaker 1: want to I'll thank you. And before before I also
Speaker 1: want to say, you know, to our fans and to
Speaker 1: the people, you know, we have a responsibility uh to deliver. No. Um,
Speaker 1: we're not politicians, but we're not dumb. Right. That's the
Speaker 1: reason why I apologize like, as a journalist, I could
Speaker 1: have left the the interview out. I could have said,
Speaker 1: that's just his views and that's it. But the minute
Speaker 1: that I heard that anybody from George Floyd family was offended,
Speaker 1: I took it down. You know, I mean, excuse me
Speaker 1: when I say, I mean us, the offenders in cases. UM.
Speaker 1: I was just like, you know what, we had, We
Speaker 1: had conversations, we had multiple UM conference calls, and you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, like we said earlier with with with
Speaker 1: with the COVID, like, you know, I got to see this,
Speaker 1: so you know, big up to my brother Kanye, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: he tried to give me to watch this documentary and
Speaker 1: I was just like, you know what, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I don't care if you show me a documentary. It
Speaker 1: just the eight minutes that I saw. It's so so
Speaker 1: I would like to say for our platform, and we
Speaker 1: did nothing wrong. We didn't say this rhetoric, We didn't
Speaker 1: say but us not being responsible enough to just say, yo,
Speaker 1: you know what if something in there that's going that
Speaker 1: it may hurt people, because I believe in free speech,
Speaker 1: but I don't believe in free speech when it hurts people.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying I got I can say
Speaker 1: you know whatever, but if if I'm hurting you, I
Speaker 1: want to tell you I apologize. So so anybody that
Speaker 1: was hurt by what Kanye said on our platform wasn't us.
Speaker 1: You know we we we used to say about this ship.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. You know we have we have
Speaker 1: g Z in the camp. We have all these other
Speaker 1: things in the camp. But it was more important for
Speaker 1: me to sit down with you. I remember how you
Speaker 1: sat down with Bill Moore after that, and you are people.
Speaker 1: That's why in the intro I said, my brother, he's
Speaker 1: your brother, and you know, for the for the people
Speaker 1: out there, like you said about cancel culture, because I
Speaker 1: don't want to be cocky. Y'all can't cancel us. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be cocky. But we own our own ship.
Speaker 1: We're doing the responsible ship. This is there's no one
Speaker 1: telling us, yo, don't do this, so don't do that.
Speaker 1: We're doing it. We owned up our own ship. We
Speaker 1: sat there and we said, you know what, let's own up.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. You know what I'm saying for a lot
Speaker 1: of people who who are sitting there saying, you know what, well,
Speaker 1: why is Nori only apologizing. Uh, and why is not
Speaker 1: an apologizing y'all don't get blaming when Norri talks all
Speaker 1: the fucking take a ball the fucking episode, I represented him, then,
Speaker 1: I'm representing him. Now we are together, we are collectively
Speaker 1: and we are apologetic. We actually said sorry, we can
Speaker 1: we put out reports on the Hollywood Reporter. We all
Speaker 1: make mistakes. But that's why I'm here to learn. They say,
Speaker 1: the mistake is not The mistake is about how you
Speaker 1: react to the mistakes. And that's the reason why we
Speaker 1: did it. And I got so many people that's calling
Speaker 1: me saying you did the right thing. First off, you
Speaker 1: did the right thing by the interview, and that you
Speaker 1: did the right thing about letting them talk. But they're
Speaker 1: doing it privately, right, it's great, But they saw we
Speaker 1: was going through out there. And what I would like
Speaker 1: to say is one, that's who we are. We are people.
Speaker 1: We can't know we made a mistake until we know
Speaker 1: we made a mistake. That's right, That's right. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't get why people think that we're supposed to
Speaker 1: premeditated holy ship, But anyway, how do you know how
Speaker 1: you know it's hot until you actually burn yourself? You
Speaker 1: know your your bombs already told you the stove is hot,
Speaker 1: don't go over there, but your dumbass still put your
Speaker 1: finger in there, and you didn't know it was because
Speaker 1: sometimes even like this and it didn't you didn't actually
Speaker 1: tell hip. So you just got a little hot and
Speaker 1: you didn't even know if it was gonna burn. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until you put your fucking finger on that
Speaker 1: ship and your your finger bubbled up and you saw
Speaker 1: that white thing that you said, this is a mistake,
Speaker 1: and let let me try to let me try to
Speaker 1: correct this. So this is what we're trying to do.
Speaker 1: And we could have left it up. We could have
Speaker 1: left it up on you know what, this is our
Speaker 1: journalistic point. We didn't do that. We said, we don't
Speaker 1: want to give views off of that. That's something that
Speaker 1: offended a family of a person that I saw. Then
Speaker 1: I and this it could affect my relationship with Kanye.
Speaker 1: But what I did first was I called him. I
Speaker 1: didn't want him to hear from the media that it
Speaker 1: was taken down. I called him like a man, and
Speaker 1: I said, maybe politics ain't my game, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And and so I appreciate you but we're
Speaker 1: in the fire right now. We got a couple more
Speaker 1: days and we'll be out the fire, but hopefully, but
Speaker 1: right now we're in the fire and you, you know,
Speaker 1: reaching out to me. And I remember a scene the text.
Speaker 1: I said, who who this? And he said, I said,
Speaker 1: I called you immediately wait for you to call back
Speaker 1: and say, hey, man, yo, listen. And it's necessary. It's necessary.
Speaker 1: It's necessary for us not to be chastised, for us
Speaker 1: to be corrected the same way, the same way, the
Speaker 1: same way we want him to be corrected. But ya know,
Speaker 1: we this coach. You know this this coach. You know
Speaker 1: that's why I love brothers like Killer Mike and Todd
Speaker 1: Live Quality and Q Tip and all these people who
Speaker 1: called me. And you know they laughed at first cause
Speaker 1: I was like, man, you should not to stand next
Speaker 1: to him. But you know, for for every everyone who
Speaker 1: called me fat Joe, um, everyone who called me so uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to really thank you, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, for standing next to us and schooling
Speaker 1: us and helping us out. Okay, what you're doing is important,
Speaker 1: and you're brave and courageous and you're honest, and you're
Speaker 1: admitting a mistake, which is what we all make and
Speaker 1: all do. You didn't intend it, like you said, You're
Speaker 1: not literally responsible for Kanye. You gave him a platform.
Speaker 1: He said some things that are deeply, profoundly problematic, anti semitic,
Speaker 1: against George Floyd's family, that really are anti black. And
Speaker 1: to have the courage to call him and tell him,
Speaker 1: but also to do this publicly, uh, to grapple with
Speaker 1: it is extremely necessary. So I sleep both. Salute both
Speaker 1: of you. I watch your shows every every segment. I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan, so thank you for having me. By
Speaker 1: the way, this is a great episode. I didn't drink
Speaker 1: They're gonna get me twe Thanks for joining us for
Speaker 1: another episode of Drink Champs hosted by yours truly, d
Speaker 1: J E F and n O r E. Please make
Speaker 1: sure to follow us on all our socials. Let's at
Speaker 1: Drink Champs across all platforms, at the Real Noriega and
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Speaker 1: on Twitter, and most importantly, stay up to date with
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