Speaker 1: I'm a homegrown that knows a little bit about everything
Speaker 1: and everybody.
Speaker 2: You don't know if you don't lie about that, right,
Speaker 2: Laurie came, Hey, y'all, what's up.
Speaker 3: It's Lauren l. Rosa and this is the latest with
Speaker 3: Lauren L. Rosa. This is your DELI dig on.
Speaker 1: All things pop culture, entertainment, news and the conversations that
Speaker 1: shake the room. Now today if we're checking in behind
Speaker 1: the scenes of the Grind And no, we haven't checked
Speaker 1: it in a while. It's been some time. I don't it's
Speaker 1: not that I don't know how I feel. I guess
Speaker 1: that there's like a level of.
Speaker 3: Shock and sadness.
Speaker 1: Yesterday the news broke that Malcolm Jamal Warner uh tragically
Speaker 1: passed away in a drowning.
Speaker 3: He was on a family vacation in.
Speaker 1: Costa Rica when he went into the water and was
Speaker 1: taken down by a current and did not survive. He
Speaker 1: was pronounced dead on the scene after being rescued by
Speaker 1: some bystanders and you know, just didn't survive. Which man
Speaker 1: just even talking about it right now, we're talking about
Speaker 1: it this morning on the Breakfast Club. Make sure you
Speaker 1: guys will check out all our coverage over there as
Speaker 1: well too. When we got finished our first segment, I
Speaker 1: said to Just and I'm like, yo, I'm literally shaking,
Speaker 1: And I think what the feeling is is just like man,
Speaker 1: death is.
Speaker 3: It can be so sudden and just so unplanned.
Speaker 1: Not that anybody plans, you know, something like this, but
Speaker 1: I feel like he's been such a staple in entertainment
Speaker 1: and black storytelling my whole life. So it felt like,
Speaker 1: you know, this was somebody close to me, because I
Speaker 1: think I text someone and said, man, like, this is
Speaker 1: just so crazy. It came out of nowhere, and the
Speaker 1: response was, that's normally how death happened. We're getting on
Speaker 1: into the latest right now, because you know, as we
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, the passing of Malcolm Jamal Warner.
Speaker 1: You know, it's all over the news today, right and
Speaker 1: it was yesterday, all over the headlines, all over the news.
Speaker 1: It's anything everybody is talking about any and everybody are
Speaker 1: talking about it.
Speaker 3: I went on like a deep dive just now.
Speaker 1: And prepare for the podcast because I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about michaelm Jomo wanna on the podcast,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to just report it as news
Speaker 1: like I don't want to just say, Okay, here's what
Speaker 1: happened here, how here's how you passed away. We did
Speaker 1: that in the beginning. You guys got that, But I
Speaker 1: think that with this, it's like it's hard to just
Speaker 1: treat this as just a headline, which is very crazy
Speaker 1: for me to say, because you know, I live in
Speaker 1: a world of headlines. But this just feels so different
Speaker 1: because of the you know, untimely like the untimely passing,
Speaker 1: like you know, just how this came about and the
Speaker 1: story behind it, and you know, hearing him talk so
Speaker 1: much about family and his daughter and you know, his
Speaker 1: wife being in love with his life, and his daughter
Speaker 1: being a lover of his life, and just having to
Speaker 1: think about, you know, all the people that loved him
Speaker 1: being without him now. I don't know, it just doesn't feel
Speaker 1: good to make this just a story, just the headline.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to dive a bit deeper here and
Speaker 1: have a conversation about the passing of Malcolm Jamal Warner
Speaker 1: and some of the work that he left this earth doing.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people, I know for myself,
Speaker 1: when we think about what we want people to say
Speaker 1: about us after we can't say it ourselves anymore. I'm
Speaker 1: always thinking about like impact and what that looks like
Speaker 1: and how am I shaping that even if in the
Speaker 1: beginning the beginning stages, and I went to Malcolm Jamal
Speaker 1: Warner's podcast, i'd seen, if I'm being honest, I'd only
Speaker 1: seen one episode of his podcast prior to this, and
Speaker 1: then I saw the promos of Envy and Gia on
Speaker 1: his podcast prior to this. But this was my second
Speaker 1: episode that I watched, And this episode that we were
Speaker 1: going to feature today in our conversation is actually one
Speaker 1: of not even one. It was the last sit down
Speaker 1: episode that Malcolm Jamal Warner did on his podcast. So
Speaker 1: it's an episode called why the Hood Deserves More Respect?
Speaker 1: Georgia and Me speaks the truth and it features a
Speaker 1: conversation that is extremely interesting.
Speaker 3: So in this episode Not All.
Speaker 1: Hood, which is the NA podcast by Malcolm Jamal Warner
Speaker 1: and his co host Kandae Kelly, they sit down with
Speaker 1: a poet. She's also an actress and an activist. Her
Speaker 1: name is Tamika Georgi and Mee Harper. So she's known
Speaker 1: for being a part of HBO's Deaf Poetry Jam.
Speaker 3: She was also on.
Speaker 1: Broadway as well, and they have a real conversation. The
Speaker 1: description here says, this is a masterclass and radical self love, hood, pride,
Speaker 1: and the resilience of Black creativity.
Speaker 3: Georgia me apologetically uplifts the.
Speaker 1: Hood as a sacred space of community, survival and joy.
Speaker 1: She also delivers powerful insight on the gentrification of Atlanta,
Speaker 1: the misrepresentation of black stories in the media, the commodification
Speaker 1: of struggle, and the need to honor working class Black
Speaker 1: America Americans. So they have a ton of conversations here.
Speaker 1: In this conversation, they start off just talking about the hood.
Speaker 3: For anyone that was raised in the.
Speaker 1: Hood, whether you stayed and you built your life, you know,
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood you grew up in or you moved
Speaker 1: and you know, do you go back and forth to
Speaker 1: where you're from or whatever the case may be, You
Speaker 1: instantly kind of get the sense of what the conversation
Speaker 1: is like that tribal. It takes a village feeling that
Speaker 1: you really understand only if you grew up in a community.
Speaker 3: Interlocked being black and growing up in the hood.
Speaker 1: It has its things, but the sense of community and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stand next to you, not behind you or
Speaker 1: in front of you, because we need to do this together.
Speaker 1: Is different, especially if you're from different generations as well.
Speaker 3: So let's take a listen to the conversation on the
Speaker 3: hood and how the hoood is shown in the media.
Speaker 2: What the media shows us is one side of black culture.
Speaker 2: It's the hood side, and of course, and the hood side,
Speaker 2: you know, ALTI historically is what has always created American
Speaker 2: culturehood and then it becomes mainstream exactly. But I just
Speaker 2: loved your I just I loved your take and your
Speaker 2: reminder that the hood should be as celebrated as the
Speaker 2: rest of the lanes of black culture.
Speaker 4: We thrive because there's devised planned for our demise every day,
Speaker 4: so for you to still smile, still find ways to
Speaker 4: make it.
Speaker 3: And then in the hood, we help each other.
Speaker 4: Poor people help each other more than rich people.
Speaker 3: All day.
Speaker 4: In my neighborhood, my whole life growing up. We don't
Speaker 4: just borrow some sugar. Ain't no thing about no sugar.
Speaker 4: I might borrow a whole chicken from missus eighty across
Speaker 4: the street, make a whole dinner.
Speaker 3: And bring her plate. Get what I'm saying, that's my hood.
Speaker 1: They then get into a conversation right, because once you
Speaker 1: then once you start to have a conversation about the
Speaker 1: hood and the way it's.
Speaker 3: Perceived, and you know kind of how things used to be.
Speaker 1: To an extent, I think right now because of the
Speaker 1: things that we're dealing with, like you know, people really
Speaker 1: really don't have money, they really really don't feel like
Speaker 1: there's hope. You have all of the things that people
Speaker 1: have dealt with before in our civilization and in our neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: But now things are personified because you have social media
Speaker 1: personifying everyone who's not in the hood or even the
Speaker 1: people in the hood that are doing well. So it's
Speaker 1: easy to make one person feel less then because of that,
Speaker 1: or it's easy to paint a picture of a neighborhood
Speaker 1: or a group of people from a certain area for
Speaker 1: lack thereof right.
Speaker 3: So then they.
Speaker 1: Start getting into the conversation of black excellence in black love.
Speaker 3: And this stems from comment.
Speaker 1: That Malcolm Jamal Warner made about his experience or like
Speaker 1: his learning of black soldiers like actual soldiers.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 2: And it was that conversation. So before I have a thing,
Speaker 2: we talked about a lot of time. I have a
Speaker 2: thing about black excellence and black love. Like you, when
Speaker 2: you put black in front of it, it makes it
Speaker 2: a subset of that thing. But then when I started,
Speaker 2: you know, having this argument with him, not argument with
Speaker 2: discussion about the history of black soldiers for the first time,
Speaker 2: it made me think of black excellence in a different way, right,
Speaker 2: like the because black excellence now is attributed to fame
Speaker 2: and money. Never so that's been my issue never for
Speaker 2: me with it. But now when I'm looking into the
Speaker 2: story like black Black survival in end of itself, is
Speaker 2: black excellence.
Speaker 1: Because we've always had to supersede do better and more
Speaker 1: things that have been putting our way to cross over.
Speaker 1: Now the reason why I thought that this was like
Speaker 1: fire and I'm like, yo, if I'm an you know,
Speaker 1: do a segment on Malcolm Jamal Warner for Malcolm Jamal Warner,
Speaker 1: for the Latus with Laurna Rosa. I want to have
Speaker 1: a conversation almost like a teaching of like Okay, here's like,
Speaker 1: you know, some thing that he was, you know, set
Speaker 1: on teaching and putting into the world.
Speaker 3: Because I don't know.
Speaker 1: I was watching this episode and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: I might not agree with everything that's being set here,
Speaker 1: but the notion that we need each other more than
Speaker 1: we are willing to allow ourselves to act on. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, I felt it.
Speaker 3: It's like it's hard to get around.
Speaker 1: It's hard enough to think about, it's hard enough to
Speaker 1: have a conversation about.
Speaker 3: As a media personality.
Speaker 1: I remember when I moved to LA, I was told,
Speaker 1: don't do the black stuff, like you don't want to
Speaker 1: be the black girl, Like, make sure if you're doing
Speaker 1: you know, the beets or the this or the that,
Speaker 1: you don't just cover black news or black music or
Speaker 1: black this or black that. And if you do get
Speaker 1: a job outside of the black entertainment realm, make sure
Speaker 1: you don't become the black girl that only does the
Speaker 1: black things. And then I remember coming to Breakfast Club
Speaker 1: and feeling so good about being able to do the
Speaker 1: black things and being able to really speak to those
Speaker 1: things because those are the things I grew up on.
Speaker 1: Some of the stuff I can have conversations about in
Speaker 1: my sleep because I grew up hearing it, watching it,
Speaker 1: knowing who these celebrities are, watching them grow in their
Speaker 1: careers and things of that nature. Y'all, Like it f'd
Speaker 1: my mind up when I made this transition because for
Speaker 1: so long I was like to Malcolm Jamal Warner's point
Speaker 1: of putting black in front of things, black love, black excellence.
Speaker 1: Right even with like me having a conversation about being
Speaker 1: a business owner, black business owner, black entrepreneur, black.
Speaker 3: Journalists, I always felt like.
Speaker 1: If I leaned into those things, I would always end
Speaker 1: up with less than And that is not the way
Speaker 1: that I was raised in my neighborhood, and you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like those are not the morals and
Speaker 1: the backbone of the things that made people where I'm
Speaker 1: from great. Understanding who you are and like understanding why
Speaker 1: black is so amazing, and understanding why being able to
Speaker 1: go out into the world as a person who knows
Speaker 1: all of that is such a superpower. You get into
Speaker 1: the world of things where you're then hearing so much
Speaker 1: about the disparities and what we don't get and how
Speaker 1: things are unfortunate and just all these things right for me,
Speaker 1: it was like I wanted to run from it. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be black excellence, Like I just wanted
Speaker 1: to be excellent.
Speaker 3: Conversations like these.
Speaker 1: Where people are like behold on, but why not, like
Speaker 1: let's reacenter and really think about, like how much of
Speaker 1: a privilege it is to even be able to be
Speaker 1: a part of Like think about your family reunion, right,
Speaker 1: or like whatever tradition.
Speaker 3: Is amazing in your family.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking to black people specifically a lot like us.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I go how many white listeners
Speaker 1: I got or others any other race. But right here,
Speaker 1: this is a this is for us. But think about
Speaker 1: something really sacred in your family. So for my family,
Speaker 1: it's our family reunions. And we do this thing called
Speaker 1: the mother daughter sleepover. And we've been doing it since man,
Speaker 1: like I was maybe two years old, and it's so
Speaker 1: special and it's something that not everybody gets to experience.
Speaker 1: And when I speak from that experience or when I
Speaker 1: operate in the world as a person that grew up
Speaker 1: in love like that, right, like a family that is whole,
Speaker 1: that gets together, that loves on each other, when I
Speaker 1: operate in the world off of that, the way that
Speaker 1: things are received literally has changed my life. One of
Speaker 1: the biggest things that people say to me a lot
Speaker 1: is is they talk to me about my family, like
Speaker 1: how I was raised like my mom, my grandmother, And
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it until I begin to talk about
Speaker 1: it that like everybody don't have that, Like, not everybody
Speaker 1: has a family that gets together for every holiday that
Speaker 1: celebrates the mothers in their family. And it's a legacy
Speaker 1: tradition that really understands wholeness and like, you know, that
Speaker 1: warm feeling of tribe and community. Not everybody has that.
Speaker 1: When I got in LA and I got any spaces,
Speaker 1: like you know they're talking about, like Malcolm Jawon Warner said,
Speaker 1: these soldiers were fighting for these privileges that they didn't
Speaker 1: even get to enjoy. Right, the only difference between journalists
Speaker 1: and black journalists is the experience and the expertise that
Speaker 1: I bring. And that's an asset anywhere, and I might
Speaker 1: not be able to, you know, always get to enjoy
Speaker 1: all of the fruits of my labor because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm black and I'm a woman and all of these things.
Speaker 1: But like, who's to say that what I'm doing isn't
Speaker 1: excellent and that I can't love it and I can't
Speaker 1: continue to do it and work for it. And you know,
Speaker 1: like this conversation made me think about that feeling of
Speaker 1: and maybe that was like an identity battle too, right,
Speaker 1: because you're in these spaces where you feel like you
Speaker 1: have to convert, you have to shrink the world as
Speaker 1: a black woman who shows up Like I'm telling you guys,
Speaker 1: like I think when you are part of a community
Speaker 1: in a neighborhood and the hoods like what they are
Speaker 1: talking about, and you think about the good things that
Speaker 1: come from it, the learning to survive, the understanding of culture,
Speaker 1: of family, of I got you no matter what, of
Speaker 1: whatever you need right, being able to hold those things
Speaker 1: and those pillars that you learned throughout your whole life
Speaker 1: literally changes your life. It puts you on a pedestal
Speaker 1: that is so amazing. Like you have these black soldiers
Speaker 1: that Michael Jamal Warner is talking about, who you know,
Speaker 1: even though they're trying to erase it, they're being written
Speaker 1: about in these books right and and talked about throughout history,
Speaker 1: not just because they're like, you know what, we just
Speaker 1: want to go be soldiers.
Speaker 3: You couldn't get around the fact that they were black soldiers.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that their upbringing, their families, their faith
Speaker 1: that they were in still with made them operate in
Speaker 1: ways that allowed them to achieve the great things that
Speaker 1: they did.
Speaker 3: Even under those circumstances.
Speaker 1: Where they didn't even get to enjoy the fruits of
Speaker 1: their labor, but it made them great talking about them today.
Speaker 3: So as I'm thinking through like the.
Speaker 1: Malcolm Jamal Warner passing, and you know, just man, I remember,
Speaker 1: I remember watching a Cosby show and that was my
Speaker 1: first time ever seeing a black family all in one house.
Speaker 3: Like I swear to you, that was the first time
Speaker 3: I ever saw it.
Speaker 1: In that way where like they weren't struggling, like they
Speaker 1: were dealing with life, but they weren't struggling like they
Speaker 1: were doctors and they were astute, and their kids were
Speaker 1: going to college. And think about that, like, imagine if
Speaker 1: Malcolm Jamal Warner has said, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: on this show because I don't want to be the
Speaker 1: black son on the black show that's talking only two
Speaker 1: black people. What I'm talking about is a sense of
Speaker 1: pride that these hoods and these neighborhoods instill in us.
Speaker 1: And when I put that parallel to like the life
Speaker 1: and the legacy of Malcolm Jamal Warner from what I
Speaker 1: grew up watching and how I felt about him from
Speaker 1: my you know what I mean, like just watching him
Speaker 1: and my household and growing up on The Cosby Show
Speaker 1: and things of that nature. It's like taking who you are,
Speaker 1: where you're from and being able to teach through whatever
Speaker 1: gift it is that God gave you to be able
Speaker 1: to do so can literally change people's lives and you
Speaker 1: can't run from that, and he didn't. He was so
Speaker 1: intentionable about the things that he did. I'm thirty three
Speaker 1: years old, and I will say that this year has
Speaker 1: really taught me about intention and being intentional. And I'm
Speaker 1: not the best at it all the time, you know,
Speaker 1: but I've learned a lot about it. But when I
Speaker 1: you know, look at people like him and what he's done,
Speaker 1: that wasn't just a one off show for him. He
Speaker 1: lived every moment after that and intentional, intentionally speaking to
Speaker 1: black people and doing things that bettered people, even if
Speaker 1: people didn't agree with him all the time. So definitely
Speaker 1: want to send, you know, a rest and peace to him.
Speaker 1: And man, I can't imagine what his family is going
Speaker 1: through right now if we feel like this, and you know,
Speaker 1: we're you know, selfishly because this is a character.
Speaker 3: Well he had a character that we grew up on.
Speaker 1: But you know, Charlottinne was talking a lot today on
Speaker 1: the show about like the man, you know, Malcolm Jamal Warner,
Speaker 1: the man and not THEO the character we you know
Speaker 1: in our loving Theo from the Cosby Show. The character
Speaker 1: are devastated and we're shocked and we just have so
Speaker 1: many questions. But imagine those who loved and got to
Speaker 1: experience malolm Jamal Warner as the man and how they
Speaker 1: feel right now, you know, like, so definitely take some time,
Speaker 1: send a prayer for them. Legacy, like that's that's just
Speaker 1: the only place you can end something like this is
Speaker 1: legacy and thinking about legacy because if nothing else, those
Speaker 1: you know, family members, those friends who know Malcolm Jamal
Speaker 1: Warner the man, that is what they're going to have
Speaker 1: to hold on to. Now, thank you guys so much
Speaker 1: for tuning in. This has been another episode. I know
Speaker 1: that this episode was a bit different. I hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoyed our conversation that hopefully shape you know, shakes
Speaker 1: your room. You can't run from your you can't run
Speaker 1: from the things that are still pride in you from
Speaker 1: the beginning. And when you choose not to run, you
Speaker 1: build real legacy. Look at the life of Malcolm Jamal
Speaker 1: Warner and go check out his podcast. The podcast you
Speaker 1: can find on YouTube, Not All Hood in Ah on YouTube,
Speaker 1: there are some episodes there for you to check out.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, you guys could
Speaker 1: be anywhere with anybody talking about all these things, because
Speaker 1: there's always a lot to talk about.
Speaker 3: But you guys are right here with me, my low Riders.
Speaker 3: I appreciate you guys. I'll see you in the next episode.