Speaker 1: I'm a homegrowd that knows a little bit about everything
Speaker 1: and everybody, you know, if.
Speaker 2: You don't lie about that, right Lauren, Hey, y'all.
Speaker 1: What's up. It's Lauren Rosa and this is another episode
Speaker 1: of the Latest with Laura l. Rosa. This is your
Speaker 1: Deily dig on all things about culture, entertainment, news, and
Speaker 1: all of the conversations that shape the room. Baby. So today,
Speaker 1: y'all know, we kick off the podcast every single day
Speaker 1: with checking it behind the scenes of the Grind. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if y'all cannot tell, and my voice,
Speaker 1: I am exhausted. I recorded this whole opening for you guys,
Speaker 1: and then I was like, you know what, I'm too
Speaker 1: tired to even go into the detail of it. It's
Speaker 1: almost midnight right now, and the podcast goes live at
Speaker 1: six am, and my call time for Breakfast Club is
Speaker 1: about five thirty. So I running on fumes right now.
Speaker 1: But it really made me think about a lot of
Speaker 1: what my day entailed and why. And I was on
Speaker 1: a phone with one of my homegirls and I was
Speaker 1: telling her like, Oh, I'm about to go into a
Speaker 1: production meeting to prep for my show segments tomorrow, and
Speaker 1: she was like, damn, you still working like you've been
Speaker 1: at work all day long, Like you're just getting home.
Speaker 1: That's probably around like five six o'clock. She's like, you
Speaker 1: just getting home and you about to like work for
Speaker 1: a few more hours tonight. And I was like, yes,
Speaker 1: normally it's so crazy because normally I don't even like
Speaker 1: unless we're texting, I won't even really like just sit
Speaker 1: on the phone with my friends a lot during the week.
Speaker 1: I'm tired of y'all. I am pushing through though, because
Speaker 1: we made a commitment to consistency this year. We made
Speaker 1: a commitment to which we've been consistent. Like I do
Speaker 1: pride myself, like a daily podcast is not an easy thing,
Speaker 1: but I told myself that this year, not only was
Speaker 1: I going to be consistent and making sure you guys
Speaker 1: get episodes, but I was gonna be consistent in my
Speaker 1: upload times, which mean a lot as we're building together
Speaker 1: in the community. So here I am tired and all
Speaker 1: behind the scenes of the grind, but we pushing through
Speaker 1: because we're gonna go from grinding to living one day soon. Okay,
Speaker 1: but we gotta get the work done first, so let's
Speaker 1: get on into the latest. So it's different inspirations A
Speaker 1: Different World. Do you guys know the TV show A
Speaker 1: Different World Dwayne, Wayne and Whitley, and you know they
Speaker 1: go away to HBCU. A Different World has a spin
Speaker 1: off show or kind of like a sequel show that
Speaker 1: is coming to Netflix on September twenty fourth. Now this
Speaker 1: is amazing because majority of all of the original casts
Speaker 1: will be returning. The original A Different World premiere back
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven and followed a group of students
Speaker 1: who went away to college for the first time. At
Speaker 1: the it's like fake HBCU called him in college. But
Speaker 1: I feel like every student, Shoot, we're not students anymore.
Speaker 1: Y'all be grown. I feel like every student, or some
Speaker 1: of y'all may be students, every student who is going
Speaker 1: to an HBCU, or every alumni or alumni who have
Speaker 1: graduated from HBCU, at least one time you have sat
Speaker 1: and watched A Different World because they went to a
Speaker 1: fictional HBCU. It was Hill in college, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us envisioned hum in college in many
Speaker 1: different ways for ourselves as what we thought at HBCU
Speaker 1: would be like. So one of the original cast members,
Speaker 1: her name is Don Lewis. She co wrote the song
Speaker 1: that is the different World theme song that we know.
Speaker 1: Let's listen to the original theme songs.
Speaker 3: Know my Parents Love Me, sing behind Me, read.
Speaker 1: I'm right, But now a Different World has a new
Speaker 1: re done freshly redone theme song Our Girl Brandy. That's
Speaker 1: said liaten A Brandy doing the Different World theme song.
Speaker 1: It's a different world and where you come from? Ye see,
Speaker 1: you know, go again tole I know my parents love
Speaker 1: stand behind me, Come one, lady.
Speaker 2: And none of that.
Speaker 3: I'm ready for how Bunny we have them faces. It's
Speaker 3: the different world and where you come from it's the
Speaker 3: different world.
Speaker 1: Then where you come from, it's a different world. The
Speaker 1: way you come from, it's a different world and where
Speaker 1: it comes from.
Speaker 2: Some mom different world.
Speaker 1: Put me in the world. What's so dope about this
Speaker 1: to me is when I think about, you know, like
Speaker 1: motivation in the space and pride and what I'm doing
Speaker 1: and how I'm doing it and like all of that.
Speaker 1: Of course, I mean, you got these staple shows that
Speaker 1: I think about, Cosby Show, Living Single Girlfriends, Moesha, but Moesha,
Speaker 1: but Moesha, I remember why? I mean a different world
Speaker 1: as well. We're talking about a different world. But I
Speaker 1: remember watching a Different World and wanted to go to
Speaker 1: an HBCU. I remember watching Living Single and wanted to
Speaker 1: work at a magazine because you know, like Queen Latifa,
Speaker 1: they ran a magazine. And I remember watching Girlfriends and
Speaker 1: wanted to be fly. I wanted to be successful, want
Speaker 1: to own a home and do all the cute look
Speaker 1: you know, lunch outings and grabbing drinks with my girlfriends.
Speaker 1: But I remember watching Moisha and just wanting to be
Speaker 1: just be like Moaisha's story was such a story of
Speaker 1: a young black girl just going through life. Like you know,
Speaker 1: we experienced so many different things for the first time
Speaker 1: with her, learned so many things for the first time
Speaker 1: with Mosha, but she really just was a black young
Speaker 1: woman going through like figuring things out as you know
Speaker 1: it came along, and I wanted to be in Mosha
Speaker 1: like I wanted to be in the show. I wanted
Speaker 1: like I wanted to be in something that felt like
Speaker 1: that watching her and now she is singing the theme
Speaker 1: song to A Different World, which another show where it's
Speaker 1: like yo, I wanted to go to the HBCU like
Speaker 1: I wanted to hang out in the student center like
Speaker 1: they did where the merch, like they did find my
Speaker 1: you know, find my love who and shout out to
Speaker 1: my man Cozy both friends Adel State, find my Love
Speaker 1: you know at college like Dwayne, Wayne and Whitley did,
Speaker 1: like all of these. What I'm trying to say is
Speaker 1: I think it is so fitting for Brandy. If anybody
Speaker 1: was going to redo this theme song, it was so
Speaker 1: fitting for her because A Different World it was such
Speaker 1: a staple show for so many young people. It made
Speaker 1: such an impact on people, and Brandy, you know, she
Speaker 1: says that it made an impact on her. So she
Speaker 1: gave a quote to Netflix, which is where again the
Speaker 1: new rendition of a Different World will be. Although it
Speaker 1: don't have the original cast, there will be a new
Speaker 1: young cast. And the storyline in the plot is that,
Speaker 1: you know, Dwayne, Wayne and Whitley's daughter is going away
Speaker 1: to college and she's experiencing her first year of college.
Speaker 1: And guess where she's going, y'all? She following her parents.
Speaker 1: She's going to Hilman. But Brandy says, when they called
Speaker 1: me to do the theme song, I was so blown away.
Speaker 1: First of all, I had to get myself together that
Speaker 1: show was actually coming back. What because I'm a fan
Speaker 1: of the show. She says, a Different World inspired me
Speaker 1: as a kid. It made me feel like I could
Speaker 1: go out into the world and become my own person.
Speaker 1: With hard work and with dedication, I could make my
Speaker 1: dreams come true. Brandy, who became known for her throwing
Speaker 1: rolls and Mosha which was from nineteen ninety six to
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, and Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella Yo
Speaker 1: in ninety seven with Whitney Houston. Watching Brandy and Cinderella
Speaker 1: was so magical and it's so crazy that she's saying
Speaker 1: at a different world that inspired her and made her
Speaker 1: want to be on TV and do all these magical things,
Speaker 1: and then she goes on to do them and now
Speaker 1: it's coming back full circle and she is singing the
Speaker 1: theme song, and I'm like, we had such good, feel good,
Speaker 1: substantive television and movies that were black, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: like it wasn't like black where it's like they couldn't act,
Speaker 1: like they couldn't talk about the black experience. I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of suf now it's like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: got black people on television and a lot of these series,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's like they're racially in big ambiguous,
Speaker 1: or you might have one conversation about things are actually
Speaker 1: happening in young black people's lives, if at all. Outside
Speaker 1: of that, everybody's on stream. And I'm not mad at
Speaker 1: the stream, but it's like we had television that was
Speaker 1: it was like curated and centered around certain conversations, even
Speaker 1: if they had to fight behind the scenes to make
Speaker 1: those conversations happen, almost like a teacher has a curriculum
Speaker 1: at school. And we learned so much it was crazy,
Speaker 1: if you think about it. We learned so much by
Speaker 1: the conversations they were having on shows like a Different
Speaker 1: World like Moesha through the TV, and if you were
Speaker 1: lucky and blessed enough, you were taking that back into
Speaker 1: your home and having those conversations at home as well too.
Speaker 1: But think about what that exposure and seeing people like you,
Speaker 1: really like you too, I mean, dressing like you, lip gloss,
Speaker 1: popping brown lip, lying a girl around the way like
Speaker 1: you on televis Brandy continues, you know, watching all of
Speaker 1: this and watching a Different World inspired her singing career
Speaker 1: and inspire her to want to do more acting. She says,
Speaker 1: just seeing people that look like me on television made
Speaker 1: me dream bigger. I know exactly what she's sad. Even
Speaker 1: living in California because Brandy like lived in California. I thought.
Speaker 1: I was like I literally remember being like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to move to California and I want to go to
Speaker 1: school in California because I want to hang out and
Speaker 1: do the things like that Brandy and her friends was doing.
Speaker 1: Like I remember one episode specifically of Moosha where she
Speaker 1: was dating Q and they was head into the house
Speaker 1: parties and she had the like the jeep, I think
Speaker 1: it was his jeep, and then it broke down. They
Speaker 1: weren't supposed to be there. It was like a whole key.
Speaker 1: But when I moved to La, I wanted to get
Speaker 1: the jeep. I wanted to be like Moysha. When I
Speaker 1: went to the HBCU, I wanted to be like all
Speaker 1: of the people that I watched World. So whoever put
Speaker 1: that connection together, I'm just like, Okay, if we're going
Speaker 1: to do this, we need somebody who like, you know,
Speaker 1: can actually sing and it sounds good, but also like
Speaker 1: it's also a staple in television that impacted and change
Speaker 1: people's lives, and I think with you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of these newer shows being added to Netflix. Like I
Speaker 1: remember when Moisha was added to Netflix. There's a younger
Speaker 1: audience who doesn't remember the impact of Masha on television
Speaker 1: that is going to watch it because it went so viral.
Speaker 1: People were having conversations about Moisha. She was a good friend,
Speaker 1: horrible friend, a good person, a bad or like it
Speaker 1: started a conversation, and conversation is like word of my
Speaker 1: recommendation at this point. So then you have a bunch
Speaker 1: of younger audiences that will go and watch a different world, right,
Speaker 1: And they're going to trickle in through the Moosha and
Speaker 1: the Brandy realm of things, but then they get to
Speaker 1: a different world and they get to experience not only
Speaker 1: the original different world because you can watch that on
Speaker 1: Netflix as well, but now this new refreshed story and
Speaker 1: I think the intergenerational thing is just amazing. So I
Speaker 1: was excited to see this. I'm excited to see what
Speaker 1: the spinoff gives, and I'm excited to review it. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think when that drops, we'll do like some dedicated
Speaker 1: episodes just to it, because like, I really can't tell
Speaker 1: y'all enough how watching these shows are the reason y'all
Speaker 1: are hearing from me right now, like literally speaking of school.
Speaker 1: There was a video that was circulated on my timeline
Speaker 1: today on Instagram as I was just trying to take
Speaker 1: a second to wind down from work in between going
Speaker 1: back to work for the podcast. But there's a chef.
Speaker 1: His name is Darius Williams, but he goes by Darius
Speaker 1: Cooks on Instagram. He's known, you know, pretty known online.
Speaker 1: I actually didn't know him as it cook This video
Speaker 1: actually is what brought me to him in his Instagram.
Speaker 1: But I was like doing some diggings just finding out
Speaker 1: who he was, and I saw that a lot of
Speaker 1: people were talking about how he's this like really well
Speaker 1: known chef online. Then I went to his Instagram and
Speaker 1: saw a lot of the plating and the food. But
Speaker 1: more recently he had posted a video talking about decorating
Speaker 1: his class for the first time first day at school,
Speaker 1: and this was literally this week. These videos were posted
Speaker 1: this week. He's an early first time teacher who is
Speaker 1: getting a very rude awakening about what our education system
Speaker 1: has done. We talk about, you know, hope, belief, inspiration
Speaker 1: and having that through television. We don't have that, But
Speaker 1: we also don't have a lot of the educational practices
Speaker 1: outside of school that you know, I feel like our
Speaker 1: parents were doing with us, and it's shown in the kids. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I feel like this has always been an age hotel,
Speaker 1: especially in inner city schools with black kids. But let's
Speaker 1: take us to the Varius Williams.
Speaker 2: So I am on my lunch break. It is I
Speaker 2: don't know, eleven thirty or something like that, and I
Speaker 2: just finished a three hour class. We have what's called block,
Speaker 2: and block is where first and second periods are combined
Speaker 2: for subjects that needed.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 2: I literally broke down in the middle of class because
Speaker 2: I'm teaching seniors. These kids are leaving high school and
Speaker 2: going to college hopefully. After they finished, we had two
Speaker 2: paragraphs to read, one sentence complete to write. I gave
Speaker 2: them the sentence stamps, basically configured the sentence for them
Speaker 2: in the model.
Speaker 3: These are seventeen and eighteen year old kids, and they
Speaker 3: couldn't fill in four words four words.
Speaker 2: I gave them the scenario we annotated together. I gave
Speaker 2: them the answers before we even had the problem, and
Speaker 2: they couldn't do it.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I simply don't know where the problem is. This is
Speaker 2: only day two, and I have seniors who simply cannot
Speaker 2: read and singers cannot write. They cannot write, they can reason,
Speaker 2: they have the ability to defend their reasoning if it's
Speaker 2: talking to their homeboy, but applying that to a written text,
Speaker 2: to paragraphs, and they couldn't do it. Our young black men,
Speaker 2: our young brown men, our young black girls, and our
Speaker 2: young prop girl.
Speaker 1: Now I begin looking up, like what is reading literacy
Speaker 1: like for black students in the United States? According to
Speaker 1: a website called DC Action, there is a severe and
Speaker 1: persistent achievement gap. So national data shows that only about
Speaker 1: seventeen percent of black fourth graders and fourteen percent of
Speaker 1: black eighth graders read at or above proficiency levels, trailing
Speaker 1: significantly behind their white and Asian peers. Which is crazy
Speaker 1: because think about in eighth grade, where like if you
Speaker 1: remember where you were in eighth grade as far as
Speaker 1: like what your mental was like and the things that
Speaker 1: you were beginning to think about. Like I remember being
Speaker 1: in eighth grade and I was excited to go to
Speaker 1: high school, but like you're getting prepared to drive, you're
Speaker 1: getting prepared to like start working eventually, and there are
Speaker 1: some people that are having to prepare for all of that,
Speaker 1: and then it's like college prep stuff if you're starting
Speaker 1: that early in ninth grade. Once you're leaving eighth grade,
Speaker 1: you know, you start doing SAT classes if you're early
Speaker 1: enough and smart enough, and a lot of the schools
Speaker 1: just offer that ahead of time now so that you're
Speaker 1: not cramming to prepare for the SATs. Imagine all of
Speaker 1: that and you can't read or write proficiently. Now. Some
Speaker 1: of the contributed factors to this poverty and resources. So
Speaker 1: black children faced higher rates of economic disadvantage in neighborhood poverty,
Speaker 1: which directly correlates with lower school funding and fewer learning supports.
Speaker 1: The sad thing about this is I went to an
Speaker 1: inner city school. Shout out to Howard High School Technology.
Speaker 1: I went to an inner city school, and I remember
Speaker 1: what school was like before the state stepped in, and
Speaker 1: what school was like after. I was kind of toward
Speaker 1: my end of my matriculation through the high school at
Speaker 1: that point, like I was a senior headed out by
Speaker 1: the time the state stepped in. But I just remember
Speaker 1: our teachers, like I said this all the time that
Speaker 1: the high school I went to saved lives. They didn't
Speaker 1: just teach us as students. It saved lives because our
Speaker 1: teachers were working with nothing. I remember our buildings falling apart,
Speaker 1: our books were old, like you know. Literally toward my
Speaker 1: junior senior year, we started getting more support. I went
Speaker 1: to a votech high school. At I was a legal
Speaker 1: administrative assisting career path like that, I was learning how
Speaker 1: to do that. A lot of the people I went
Speaker 1: to high school with didn't go on a college. They
Speaker 1: became legal administrative assistants and then went on to be paralegal.
Speaker 1: Some of them did go to college. A lot of
Speaker 1: people went to college, and if they did, they might
Speaker 1: have stayed in the criminal you know area criminal justice
Speaker 1: areas for our study, or like they went on to
Speaker 1: become lawyers. I just remember everything we needed and how
Speaker 1: like we would be really excited when the local businesses,
Speaker 1: like the local banks or local law firms or whatever
Speaker 1: would come and partner with our career areas, because then
Speaker 1: our shops would have all of the i't want to
Speaker 1: say shops, I mean like your shop is like your
Speaker 1: career path, but like so like your main courses of study,
Speaker 1: which had to do with where you wanted to go.
Speaker 1: Trade wise, we had a lot of support in those
Speaker 1: areas because local businesses would come in. But in the
Speaker 1: other areas where local businesses are not coming in and
Speaker 1: donating books and time and all, like, it wasn't that
Speaker 1: teachers were stressed. Like we went through it, and I
Speaker 1: remember when the state stepped in, And I don't remember
Speaker 1: exactly what made them step in, but I just remember
Speaker 1: when they did, how things changed. Physical location of our
Speaker 1: school change, like we were in the same address. I
Speaker 1: don't mean that, but just like the look of it,
Speaker 1: Like they begin revamping the physical structure of our school,
Speaker 1: renovating inside of the school books. There was more technology available,
Speaker 1: Like everything just changed, and that matters. This article also
Speaker 1: talks about how many public schools have historically used outdated
Speaker 1: reading techniques rather than evidence based, phonic focused instruction.
Speaker 3: And that's what I like.
Speaker 1: When I was listening to this video and then I
Speaker 1: went back and I watched how he was teaching his class,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Oh, he reminds me like an old school
Speaker 1: teacher who's like actually taking the time to like break
Speaker 1: down and like, you know, all the things that he
Speaker 1: was talking about in that video, and I don't really
Speaker 1: know how much of that is done nowadays because there's
Speaker 1: so much technology. And that's another thing too, that a
Speaker 1: different world. I'm like really anxious to see how they
Speaker 1: navigated a different world. Is to have the task of
Speaker 1: telling the story of what HBCU looks like today while
Speaker 1: also keeping it not too like, oh my god, we're
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six. Everything is so woke and everything's
Speaker 1: technology based in AI because a different world has such
Speaker 1: a black like enriched HBCU feel, And I really don't
Speaker 1: know how to describe the feeling I'm talking about much.
Speaker 2: It's like you.
Speaker 1: Had to experience attending an HBT you to understand what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. But it feels like home, it feels like community,
Speaker 1: it feels like family. So I'm interested to see how
Speaker 1: the directors, the epes like how they make this new
Speaker 1: different world still feel like that way, still feel like family,
Speaker 1: still feel like home, but also capture like everything that
Speaker 1: should be happening in classrooms with black students today that
Speaker 1: potentially isn't anymore because you don't like even the way
Speaker 1: that teachers like nurture kids are different because there's so
Speaker 1: many like things that you have to be careful of
Speaker 1: that I feel like during that time I mean, you
Speaker 1: still should have had been careful of certain things, like
Speaker 1: you know, all the weird stuff, But there are certain
Speaker 1: things during these times, like when you watch a different world,
Speaker 1: you know the teachers cared about the students because it
Speaker 1: wouldn't beyond the books. Twenty twenty six. It's really kind
Speaker 1: of hard to go beyond the books because I don't know,
Speaker 1: people are just weird and you you can't. Everything is
Speaker 1: so different now. So I'm excited to see how that
Speaker 1: will work out, especially because there are teachers like the
Speaker 1: literally what y'all just listen to. There are teachers like
Speaker 1: that in so many schools across the country who need
Speaker 1: to see and understand that what they're doing is a sleepless,
Speaker 1: endless fight. They don't get enough credit for, they don't
Speaker 1: get enough money for, but they literally save lives. Getting
Speaker 1: an inner city black student from middle school to high
Speaker 1: school to college literally can save their life. And I
Speaker 1: don't just mean because they're in college and you know,
Speaker 1: they graduate and they can go on to all these
Speaker 1: beautiful things. I mean, you may literally save a child's
Speaker 1: life because they're not wrong time, wrong place in their
Speaker 1: neighborhood and all the things that come with that well,
Speaker 1: it's not having a name, you know, so many different things.
Speaker 1: I feel so bad when I saw this video though,
Speaker 1: of a former chef turned teacher, Like I felt really
Speaker 1: really bad, only because I feel like those are the
Speaker 1: type of compassionate people that you need in schools, but
Speaker 1: it always seems like those are the people that get
Speaker 1: burnt out from it. He's only on day two of
Speaker 1: his teaching join this is the first week. But that's
Speaker 1: why it shows, like A Different World are important that showcase,
Speaker 1: you know, prestige education with black young people, because I
Speaker 1: think also to the kids kind of lose there, like
Speaker 1: it's you got to say, motivated to learn, And I
Speaker 1: remember all of the times I was motivated to learn
Speaker 1: and want to do better in school, it was because
Speaker 1: I love the teachers. I love the direction on top
Speaker 1: of maybe just loving it, Like you know, you had
Speaker 1: your favorite subjects in school, but how you're being taught
Speaker 1: on what you're being taught, it matters. And I think
Speaker 1: A Different World showed that early early on, and we
Speaker 1: need that now. You guys heard it first hand here.
Speaker 1: We need it so looking forward to that. Shout out
Speaker 1: to Brandy, you know for doing the theme song, and
Speaker 1: I really really play that this teacher is able to.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I find I was gonna say, like
Speaker 1: find resources and help, but sometimes that's impossible too literally like,
Speaker 1: sometimes that is impossible. I'm gonna give you, guys his
Speaker 1: instagram in case you want to go pour some love
Speaker 1: over on his Instagram. So head on over to Darius
Speaker 1: Cooks on Instagram if you have an Instagram, if you
Speaker 1: don't have an Instagram. He also has a website, but
Speaker 1: it's like a shopping website, so I don't know if
Speaker 1: that would make the most sense. Yeah, it's a shopping
Speaker 1: website for his brand. Let me see if there's an email,
Speaker 1: let's say, cause sometimes I feel like people who are
Speaker 1: working in very high pressure, debilitating spaces just need to
Speaker 1: hear your yo, you're doing a good job. His email
Speaker 1: shop Darius Cooks at gmail dot com. Send him some love, y'all.
Speaker 1: I'm one on the Rosa. This has been another episode
Speaker 1: of the Latest with Louran the Rose. I tell you, guys,
Speaker 1: every single episode, y'all could be anywhere with any old body,
Speaker 1: but you guys choose to be right here with me,
Speaker 1: my lowriders. I appreciate you, guys, and I'll catch you
Speaker 1: in my next one.