Speaker 1: You are listening to waiting on reparations production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Yeah, you're waiting. We're waiting on reparations right now.
Speaker 1: So we say we rot from gen A to show
Speaker 1: me stay. I hit the game winner like Kobe play
Speaker 1: can go to Texas and took away to ROEVI wait,
Speaker 1: so he said, Greg Abbott, Yes, because of him, I
Speaker 1: got balls like Nicki Minaj cousin Frank Trump is still
Speaker 1: brain dead. Yeah, you shouldn't win, Turtle Mitch still trying
Speaker 1: to shut down the government and the news got quite
Speaker 1: the addiction that got how when the white girl's missing,
Speaker 1: they don't see the indigenous victims. You're trying to talk
Speaker 1: about it, and they're like, no, listen, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Y'all got a bunch of dope. Should I want to
Speaker 1: show y'all? I can't believe. I just run and show
Speaker 1: y'all twice. I'm dope, Knife, Frank. We are waiting on
Speaker 1: reparations that should be today. We're here with Barls born
Speaker 1: mc Disna and Queen's born m C and vocalist Asia Black.
Speaker 1: Together they are the reminders both married couple and hip
Speaker 1: hop duo based in Colorado. So thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. How many you can tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit a bit about who you are and what
Speaker 1: your roots are, both musically and politically. Okay, I'm Baxa Mayor.
Speaker 1: I was born in Belgium, raised in Congo, moved around
Speaker 1: quite a bit. My mother remarried. My stepfather was in
Speaker 1: the Air Force, so I landed in Colorado. UM musician, father, husband,
Speaker 1: just all around hard worker and uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: just stand for I just stand for the people, for
Speaker 1: what I believe in, um spiritually and and just you know,
Speaker 1: I'm here to uplift people. So mine is my Both
Speaker 1: of my parents are from the House Queens. I was
Speaker 1: born in House Queens. My whole family is from Howes Queens.
Speaker 1: UM my my grandmother, my mom is Puertrican and Dominican,
Speaker 1: uh and my dad is Jamaican and French Creole. And
Speaker 1: I have super duper hip hop roots in my family
Speaker 1: just because being from Holles Queens, my aunts and uncles
Speaker 1: and dads were there in the seventies eighties when all
Speaker 1: of this stuff was really starting to come in and
Speaker 1: pop off in My grandfather is actually one of the
Speaker 1: first black reporters for the New York times. Um, he
Speaker 1: tried to be an editor, and they said that his
Speaker 1: race kept him from having that as a possibility, and
Speaker 1: that kind of broke my grandfather's spirit. But on my
Speaker 1: father's side of the family, where my grandfather is, they've
Speaker 1: always been very involved in political understandings. On my mother's side,
Speaker 1: it's always been very involved in politics in terms of
Speaker 1: how they infected the community. So I remember one thing
Speaker 1: my grandfather told me. I was young and the nineties
Speaker 1: and everybody's ranting Malcolmax shirts and everything, and my grandfather
Speaker 1: was like, if only he would have had that support
Speaker 1: when it mattered, Um, it was dangerous for people to
Speaker 1: be associated with Malcolm X or Martin Luther King at
Speaker 1: the time because people are losing their jobs. Um, they're
Speaker 1: being oppressed for different reasons. They were being blacklisted if
Speaker 1: they were supporting out of these movements and they had
Speaker 1: white employers, and so, you know, my grandfather kind of
Speaker 1: brought that to me. And I've been, you know, championing
Speaker 1: different causes ever since I was small because I was
Speaker 1: encouraging that way. What would you say is y'all's biggest
Speaker 1: music influences? Oh Man? When I was I was raised,
Speaker 1: my parents I really a clept the music taste, so
Speaker 1: jazz blues. My mom really liked like Woodstock type of music,
Speaker 1: like rock music, because she understood that it was a
Speaker 1: derivative of blues, and so it was really important for
Speaker 1: in my house for us to understand every kind of music.
Speaker 1: I was really inspired by Lauren Hill when I was young.
Speaker 1: I loved larn Hill, but I also loved Miles Davis.
Speaker 1: I love Prince Um. I really used to love Freddie
Speaker 1: Mercury uh a lot because I loved how he I
Speaker 1: loved watching him as much as I loved watching James
Speaker 1: Brown people like that. So for me growing up, you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in the Congo, so a lot of
Speaker 1: Congolese music like Papa Wembay. But then when I moved
Speaker 1: to Belgium, one of the first artists I listened to
Speaker 1: was Michael Jackson, you know, in the eighties, and then
Speaker 1: from there it's everything from classic rock for jazz, reagae um,
Speaker 1: you know, pop, R and B, just everything in the
Speaker 1: soun Just do you feel um those influences come out
Speaker 1: and what you guys have been making. Yeah, mostly I
Speaker 1: think for me, mostly in my creative process, I really
Speaker 1: like artists like New York like I like artists that
Speaker 1: have really open, honest freedom of expression, um in their creativities.
Speaker 1: At Mamma is the same way. She kind of just
Speaker 1: starts to basic sonic elements to start putting me together.
Speaker 1: So definitely comes out because my music will go from
Speaker 1: reggae to hip hop too, blues, two roots to America,
Speaker 1: like kind of all over the place. Yeah. So any
Speaker 1: born in New York, but you got family from Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico and Jamaica, and Samir you hail from Belgium, but
Speaker 1: you're racing the Congo. And I'm very curious how your
Speaker 1: experiences of of a blackness outside of the US or
Speaker 1: you know, drawing from other places in the Dietsphora influence
Speaker 1: your view of your your music as well as your worldview. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing Asian and I always talk about
Speaker 1: is how growing up in the Congo we had we
Speaker 1: deal more of colonization and not so much slavery, So
Speaker 1: that was more of my upbringing was more of uh,
Speaker 1: you know the history of people coming into your country
Speaker 1: and taking over there, right and then you know my
Speaker 1: my my mom is half Congoles, half Belgium. So then
Speaker 1: we we went back and forth between Belgium and the
Speaker 1: Congo and just feeling like an outcast whenever we're in Belgium,
Speaker 1: like they don't want you there, but somehow they came
Speaker 1: to your country and took over, do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? And it's the same experience for even Algerians
Speaker 1: in France. But then coming to America, I got to
Speaker 1: I got to see and experience something completely different, um,
Speaker 1: with the black American experience. Talking about slavery and where
Speaker 1: uh where a lot of the history come from h
Speaker 1: starts and where uh. You know a lot of Americans say,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know anything. Ask this in terms
Speaker 1: of where I'm trunk, you know, in terms of my
Speaker 1: lineage and things like that. So um, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: thankful for the for the rich history that that I
Speaker 1: haven't that I can that I can U go back to,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, but I know it's it's different for here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my experience with blackness is very interesting because I was
Speaker 1: raised like super black, like in a super duper black household,
Speaker 1: like in kindergarten. My mom has a picture of me
Speaker 1: and I have like eyes on the prize shirt, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like super duper like black history
Speaker 1: trivia games. You know, my father, my grandfather's half white,
Speaker 1: um and then have a quarter Cherokee and quarter black.
Speaker 1: My grandfather worked for the New York Times. But we
Speaker 1: were always just raised black, like. I never questioned my blackness, right,
Speaker 1: White people always said I was black, like I was
Speaker 1: always black. And then when I went I went to
Speaker 1: Florida and m for college, and that was the first
Speaker 1: time anybody ever questioned my blackness because of the way
Speaker 1: that I spoke or the way that I navigated things,
Speaker 1: or my ideas or it wasn't at the time. It
Speaker 1: wasn't popular in two thousand and one to have an
Speaker 1: afro and to like be natural, like this whole natural
Speaker 1: movement was not there. So I was holding that the
Speaker 1: whole thing down solo, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: they were saying, like, you look like animal from them
Speaker 1: up with babies. And I had a culture shock because
Speaker 1: you know, in New York is so diverse, right, and
Speaker 1: you see people that look like you and that don't
Speaker 1: look like you, and you kind of feel the same
Speaker 1: way about it, you know, And then and fam, I
Speaker 1: kind of have culture shock. Then my father got stationed
Speaker 1: in Colorado and we came to Colorado, and I had
Speaker 1: culture shop there too, because it was all white people everywhere,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, And and they were I
Speaker 1: was very black to them, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Our friends started this project called the Very Black Project,
Speaker 1: and I told him, I like that you started this
Speaker 1: project because my experiences having to tell people all the time, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not just black, I'm very black. Like I'm a
Speaker 1: very black person whether I'm kayaking or fishing or enjoying
Speaker 1: Freddie Murcury or b York. Like, I'm a very black person.
Speaker 1: And our identity is infinitely expensive and all directions. And
Speaker 1: just because you have a limited understanding of blackness, it
Speaker 1: doesn't compromise my blackness in any way, you know. And
Speaker 1: I think my experience with blackness has really just been
Speaker 1: defending the expansiveness of it, whether it's Afro Latina, whether
Speaker 1: it's black people being able to be light skinned, very
Speaker 1: very light skinned, all the way to the tip of
Speaker 1: creole people. Two people in Africa, you know, talking to
Speaker 1: them about the African American experience, Like it's always just
Speaker 1: been in defensive blackness is expensiveness. My experience with them,
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about lineages, um and you
Speaker 1: know a lot of people like we you know, I myself,
Speaker 1: I'm the whole y'all line. But like my you know,
Speaker 1: millennials and gen Z and younger, we're actually like the
Speaker 1: post hip hop generation. So we were like, you know,
Speaker 1: we may have uncles or parents that were growing up,
Speaker 1: um when hip hop we was like first kind of
Speaker 1: popping off, I'm taking taking the world by storm, but
Speaker 1: we've sort of come into it. It's like a second
Speaker 1: uh second wave of of its of its evolution. And
Speaker 1: then particularly I mean as hip hop spread across the country,
Speaker 1: there was also this disconnect from how it was very
Speaker 1: rooted in like the geography of New York City and
Speaker 1: the culture of New York City and so um age,
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you could talk to us a
Speaker 1: little bit about, um uh, the connections that you have
Speaker 1: sort of like the genesis of hip hop with like
Speaker 1: battery and right in your family, those folks being actually
Speaker 1: involved in like when it was popping off, and how
Speaker 1: I might give you a different perspective than some of
Speaker 1: us who maybe removed either geographically or generationally or otherwise
Speaker 1: from like the roots of what hip hop is. Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: So my uncle was a DJ Blue Massive Beef, So
Speaker 1: he used to do like all the park dams and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. My mom uh new Rust of Simmons
Speaker 1: and ran DFC so before Rust of Simmons had Deaf
Speaker 1: Champ Pop and off. He used to hand out flyers
Speaker 1: and stuff for part dams and my mom would help him.
Speaker 1: My other aunt was dating Curtis Blow at the time.
Speaker 1: My uncle designed the first logo and T shirts for
Speaker 1: Biggie Down Productions, very involved in it. But one thing
Speaker 1: I learned, because it's like a lot of people like
Speaker 1: I referenced my like ethnic cultural backgrounds, but my cultural
Speaker 1: background is music, like growing up in music and an
Speaker 1: urban environment and hip hop pretty much. So what I
Speaker 1: learned about hip hop is that hip hop is like
Speaker 1: a vehicle. It's like a spirit, like a vehicle, right,
Speaker 1: and it aligns itself with the stories of the youth,
Speaker 1: like it aligns itself to maintain its life. It has
Speaker 1: to get fresh stories and fresh perspectives and fresh understandings.
Speaker 1: So I've never been a person that's rooted in what
Speaker 1: hip hop definitively is, you know what I mean. I've
Speaker 1: always been a person that understood that it's going to
Speaker 1: change shape and or based on who it's aligning itself
Speaker 1: with and how they're expressing it, you know. And so
Speaker 1: I get in a conversation with old heads all the time,
Speaker 1: Like I'm all, you always see me arguing with like
Speaker 1: some old hip hop heads saying, I understand that when
Speaker 1: you were growing up, it was this expression that you had,
Speaker 1: but it's almost like a memory, I mean, of some
Speaker 1: thing being extant cement and not being fluid, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And so I'm always encouraging young people
Speaker 1: because for a long time, stories of people like us
Speaker 1: were suppressed, you know what I mean, like really pushed down,
Speaker 1: like you couldn't tell these you couldn't people would never
Speaker 1: hear these stories of the things that were happening in
Speaker 1: our neighborhoods. If you were like a kid that was
Speaker 1: still closeted and was coming from a rough neighborhood, there
Speaker 1: was no place for you to tell your story, not
Speaker 1: on TV, not on music, not in in books anything
Speaker 1: like that, you know. And Audrey Lord is somebody who
Speaker 1: always talks about that a lot, the important importance of
Speaker 1: finding a medium through which to express yourselves, you know,
Speaker 1: and hip hop just happens to be the most successible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you can go on YouTube and get beats
Speaker 1: and download them and wrap to them. You can just
Speaker 1: like have your friend beatbox. You can just snap and wrap.
Speaker 1: It's a very accessible art form that allows people to
Speaker 1: express their stories easily and fully. You know, whether they
Speaker 1: can do it at the capacity of kendrickal Mark really
Speaker 1: isn't the purpose of it, right, It's really just letting
Speaker 1: people know that they have that vehicle. When hip hop
Speaker 1: was first coming out, you have people on the East Coast,
Speaker 1: like in New York, putting the life experience into music,
Speaker 1: and the people around could relate because they you know,
Speaker 1: they're telling the story of what's actually happening, right. And
Speaker 1: then then on the West Coast was the same thing,
Speaker 1: whether it be the game band culture on the Bay,
Speaker 1: the pimp culture, and everybody around was like, Yo, this
Speaker 1: is our lifestyle and this is what we were rocked.
Speaker 1: Even run DMC like, Yo, we rock aldi we dressed
Speaker 1: like this. And it wasn't until you had music videos
Speaker 1: that people started seeing, Oh, that's how it is on
Speaker 1: that side, that's s how it is on this side.
Speaker 1: The difference with you know me at the time I
Speaker 1: grew up in Belgium in late eighties, and it made
Speaker 1: no difference. We didn't know what East Coast West Coast was.
Speaker 1: It was just all music. It was just all hip hop,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, So we all that's how
Speaker 1: that's how hip hop reached people overseas, was that we
Speaker 1: just took it all as one one music and not
Speaker 1: necessarily East Coast, West Coast or you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: not exactly and and and I always always like to
Speaker 1: bring that up because, um, you know, when people come
Speaker 1: from New York they have that experience, and people come
Speaker 1: from certain certain parts of the country, but when people
Speaker 1: come from outside of the country, they just took it
Speaker 1: all in as as just one body of music, and
Speaker 1: I just appreciated it off what it was. It's it's
Speaker 1: interesting in hip hop because like most music changes hands regionally, right,
Speaker 1: It's like you go from East Coast to West Coast
Speaker 1: to this style or even blues you have like Hill
Speaker 1: blues and Delta blues and Chicago blues. But hip hop
Speaker 1: changes forms generationally, you know what I mean. It like
Speaker 1: changed forms first regionally, and it was just such a
Speaker 1: big thing that then now it's like, but now I'm
Speaker 1: going by generation, not by region, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I think the internet was huge in that book. It's
Speaker 1: interesting to watch it because people really hold tight to
Speaker 1: their definitions of it, and then when the next generation
Speaker 1: gets in their hand, they're like putting hip hop, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, and they're like, it's almost inevitable.
Speaker 1: I'm imagining, like in the net like six or seven years,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have people who are like being like, ah,
Speaker 1: he's sixteen year olds. Just so I don't know how
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah, back in two thousand and fifteen,
Speaker 1: when hip hop is really good, hip hop is like
Speaker 1: it's a rebellious spirit, like it sparks, It sparks something
Speaker 1: inside of people that gives them the courage to express
Speaker 1: themselves in the ways that they need to express themselves.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why hip hop and politics are so
Speaker 1: closely a line, very closely a line. It's a very
Speaker 1: intimate relationship between those two things. And we're already at
Speaker 1: the age now where you know, songs are being remade
Speaker 1: that we were listening to, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: not too long what feels like not too long ago,
Speaker 1: and kids they're remaking it and I'm like, what are
Speaker 1: you doing to this. He's sounded like our parents, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, like whenever uh snooping, Dr dre
Speaker 1: was sample and stuff. And but what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: our son will play if he hears a song it
Speaker 1: came out two years ago, He's like, no back. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's just two years ago. Like to me, a throw
Speaker 1: back and something twenty years Well, how old is your son?
Speaker 1: Wantes he like the seven or yeah, so like two years.
Speaker 1: It's like his whole I half was like throw back years.
Speaker 1: It's relative. I think that might be a way of
Speaker 1: how we consume media now though, because I even find
Speaker 1: myself when i'm you know, going on YouTube and I'm
Speaker 1: looking for videos like if I see something that came
Speaker 1: out like even last week and yeah, yeah, so I
Speaker 1: don't need to watch that. I'm good exactly, You've got
Speaker 1: like eight seconds of it and say you saw it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that. As you mentioned rebellion a little bit,
Speaker 1: and also because I know you have to run, I
Speaker 1: had this question for you about on your song if
Speaker 1: you didn't know you you say you steal the key
Speaker 1: from the oppressor's at the cage bird carey, I'm paid
Speaker 1: into the cadence of Freda Scott king that he should
Speaker 1: bas Asada, Angela and Kathleen, And so I wanted I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you in the line of talking about
Speaker 1: like what rebellion means, what do you does stealing McKey
Speaker 1: from the oppressor mean? And how do the women you
Speaker 1: reference um in the song kind of influence your work
Speaker 1: towards that end? You know. The thing to me is
Speaker 1: it's twofolds, well even more than just twofold. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about women number one, who were women, right that were
Speaker 1: incredibly intelligent, right, And a lot of times when women
Speaker 1: who are incredibly intelligent get discredited a lot or people
Speaker 1: go out of their way to discredit their intelligence. Right,
Speaker 1: do you have women who are very intelligent? You have
Speaker 1: in that group of them women who were mothers, right,
Speaker 1: And they were all black on it. And so what
Speaker 1: they did, like even like just rocking and natural is
Speaker 1: like a huge statement, right, or showing up somewhere with
Speaker 1: your children in your community to say, yo, like this
Speaker 1: is mad racist, right, And I got my kids, right,
Speaker 1: I'm nursing a kid, I got an afro, and I'm
Speaker 1: like confronting the police, you know what. I just like
Speaker 1: occupying that dynamic and also like mediating conversations because of education.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Okay, look, we're gonna sit
Speaker 1: down and we're gonna have this conversation this way, learning
Speaker 1: to understand and navigate emotion. You know. Um, I really
Speaker 1: love all of those women, all of their published works,
Speaker 1: all of the things that they said, all the things
Speaker 1: that they stood for, because a lot of times, intelligent
Speaker 1: Black women that stand up for their communities are always
Speaker 1: marked like they're just racist, right, as if race wasn't
Speaker 1: a condition that was strusted upon them, upon them to
Speaker 1: operate inside of the same thing happened with Lauren Hill.
Speaker 1: When Lauren Hill said I don't make my music specifically
Speaker 1: for white people to listen to. It's not their experience.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, she's a racist, But that's not a
Speaker 1: racist thing to say, but it was an honest expression.
Speaker 1: And in naming those women and taking the key back
Speaker 1: from the oppressor is being able to stand in your
Speaker 1: being and in your person right without compromise, you know,
Speaker 1: definitely with conversation, with confrontation when it has to happen,
Speaker 1: you know, with with compassion, but not with compromise in
Speaker 1: terms of who I am as a mother, as a
Speaker 1: woman and as a black woman, all three equal of
Speaker 1: equal importance. We're gonna take a quick little break. We
Speaker 1: will be right back after the job. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're we're a show about hip hop and politics and
Speaker 1: most we talked about poblic policy. But there's all these
Speaker 1: ways of being political. It's into personal. It's you know,
Speaker 1: in uh, resisting oppression by standing in your truth, by
Speaker 1: being who you are. And so I think feel like
Speaker 1: you were speaking a little bit of that. But to me,
Speaker 1: I wonder if you want to librate a little bit
Speaker 1: on what you see how you see politics. Man invested
Speaker 1: in hipop as well. For a lot of young people,
Speaker 1: for people who listen to it, sometimes that's where they
Speaker 1: find this information from. They have no idea what goes
Speaker 1: on on the news. They don't turn the TV on,
Speaker 1: but they turned the music and whether they be Kendrick
Speaker 1: the Chuck d and they get this information from there.
Speaker 1: And I've always looked up to that. I've always looked
Speaker 1: up to artists like that too, artists who who um
Speaker 1: express themselves and where they stand in the music, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? And I and uh and and uh.
Speaker 1: I made a conscious decision to to always do that
Speaker 1: as well, always speak my mind. When we were younger
Speaker 1: and we weren't as well in farm, all of our
Speaker 1: like the emotional center of a lot of our activism
Speaker 1: came from like anger or frustration, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: our disappointment or and then now our activism comes from
Speaker 1: a very positive center. Like it's not reactive, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, it's proactive all the time. Unfortunately, sometimes
Speaker 1: we have to be reactive because of what's happening, but
Speaker 1: we try to be proactive. And the thing hip hop
Speaker 1: and politics is so dope because there are two mediums
Speaker 1: that show people that black people are not a monolate
Speaker 1: Like there's still conversations we have that we don't all
Speaker 1: think the same and we don't move the same we
Speaker 1: don't all do the same things. But it kind of
Speaker 1: lets us see like the areas where we can have
Speaker 1: these conversations because generally it isn't until something happens and
Speaker 1: some type of activism have to take place in our
Speaker 1: to remedy what's happening or have a conversation about what's
Speaker 1: happening that people actually have a conversation. I think politics
Speaker 1: and hip hop both do that, like very prevalently. You know,
Speaker 1: you might sometimes refer some kids are hearing about any
Speaker 1: political concept might be through a hip hop song, and
Speaker 1: the first time kids that are active on politics are
Speaker 1: hearing about community concepts are do a hip hop song,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So those two they're like
Speaker 1: they inform one another, hip hop and politics. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like to some people, hip hop makes makes it makes sense,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like you're sometimes the politics
Speaker 1: people just don't understand the language that comes from the TV,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, They don't understand what they're reading.
Speaker 1: But then you get killed Mike. That breaks it down
Speaker 1: in the language that we speak. Now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: people are like, oh, that's what you meant. Like now
Speaker 1: I'm putting you into together. Now it's like the total condition.
Speaker 1: Like you have rampant conspicuous consumption and capitalism and hip
Speaker 1: hop like with flaws in and balling and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and then you have people just talking about being dead
Speaker 1: broke and like having nothing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So you get if you look at hip hop thematically,
Speaker 1: you get so many political like concepts that are available
Speaker 1: to you at one time. Like here's excess of capitalism. Right,
Speaker 1: here's when we have no community programs. What happened. Here's
Speaker 1: people consistently being chased down by the least. Like every
Speaker 1: every political aspect, uh, every political point that's affecting that
Speaker 1: community is going to become clear right through the music
Speaker 1: you hear. It's telling the story of the communities. Um,
Speaker 1: would y'all say that y'all's music at this point is
Speaker 1: like a extension of your activism, Like do you kind
Speaker 1: of view them as one and the same? How kind
Speaker 1: of it depends? It's like, yes, on one hand, directly,
Speaker 1: do we directly talk about political concepts a lot of
Speaker 1: the time? Yes, But in music so much stuff is veiled. Right.
Speaker 1: There's sometimes when you wrap and you're like this, this
Speaker 1: and this. But I might write a story about a
Speaker 1: sun that hasn't come out in thirty days, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, and be talking about something very political.
Speaker 1: But I'm a poet as well, right, So the power
Speaker 1: of being able to use metaphor is that you can
Speaker 1: give emotional context to something and give it a lot
Speaker 1: deeper meaning, you know what I mean, And when you
Speaker 1: look at a lot of poetry is also directly involved
Speaker 1: in the political and active sphere because you're basically taking
Speaker 1: something and giving it more significance. And by taking a
Speaker 1: tangible object like say, for instance, you have UH Team Suicide,
Speaker 1: and you take a visible object that people can understand,
Speaker 1: that they can picture, that they could smell, that they
Speaker 1: could taste, that they could touch, and you explain this
Speaker 1: object and you go into depth about this object, and
Speaker 1: then you turn the object around and say this object
Speaker 1: is me right, and people go, oh, my gosh, you
Speaker 1: are like a bleeding orange or whatever it is that
Speaker 1: the thing, you know what I mean. But metaphor increases
Speaker 1: depth of meaning. So we are incredibly active and political
Speaker 1: in our music, whether the meaning is apparently clear to
Speaker 1: everybody initially, not always, not always, yeah, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times we just you know, we are people who
Speaker 1: push ourselves creatively, whether it be it means Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna try to do this type of song, or well,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, you're trying different things. But
Speaker 1: for example, you know, a few years back, we were
Speaker 1: in the Bronx and our good friends Rebel Daza just
Speaker 1: came back from Ferguson. They were documenting what was happening
Speaker 1: at the time. They were working for uh A Latin
Speaker 1: news news station, and so they showed us the footage
Speaker 1: that they gathered and we're talking about how things were
Speaker 1: on the ground. You know, we had just met Tefo
Speaker 1: and directly after we watched this footage made it beat.
Speaker 1: You know, we were in the studio and we created
Speaker 1: a song that people with you as political right, And
Speaker 1: so I think it just depends on which song we're
Speaker 1: working on at the time and what the spirit in
Speaker 1: the room is. Yeah, we played different positions all the time.
Speaker 1: Like we played it we might we were not we
Speaker 1: recognized now when we were younger, it's like we were
Speaker 1: out there like you will see pictures of us, like look,
Speaker 1: and now it's like our position has changed. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of my friends who entered politics like to become
Speaker 1: members of political organizations in their county or country or
Speaker 1: state or you know, local area. They say, Okay, now
Speaker 1: the way I navigate this has changed because I can
Speaker 1: affect change differently from over here. Right. You might not
Speaker 1: see me at the protests like banging, you know, banging
Speaker 1: for the cause, But I'm the person that's making sure
Speaker 1: that the litigation is getting discussed, and I'm the person
Speaker 1: making sure that the laws are gonna change, and I'm
Speaker 1: the person. So I feel like like the music gives
Speaker 1: visibility to the problems in the community, and the politics
Speaker 1: address those problems, you know, and and we have we
Speaker 1: We also work a lot with the mental health crises.
Speaker 1: We developed the financial literacy curriculum. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff we do, but when it's in speaking to the
Speaker 1: point I made earlier about you know, talking about things
Speaker 1: through music speak. We we were dealing with a lot
Speaker 1: of suicide. Colorado used to have the highest team suicide
Speaker 1: rate in the nation. We're getting ready to go do
Speaker 1: a performance in a town where they had seven suicides
Speaker 1: in one week, right, and so we're dealing with deep,
Speaker 1: deep loves of depression and people are not even paying
Speaker 1: attention to the kids. You know. I love the phrase
Speaker 1: the kids are all right, because that's what people always say.
Speaker 1: These kids are so resilient, but they're getting damaged. Right.
Speaker 1: They don't express themselves the same way that we do.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes they can endure a lot, but that's
Speaker 1: not always healthy. So we have this song and it's
Speaker 1: I just say, I have a friend who lives on
Speaker 1: the moon. It's always winter, even in June. I visit
Speaker 1: often but I leave too soon. My lovely friend on
Speaker 1: the moon, she traveled quite slowly, one step each day,
Speaker 1: or things all around her slowly turned gray. Used to
Speaker 1: be close. Now she's so following my lovely friend on
Speaker 1: the moon. And it's talking about the helplessness of having
Speaker 1: a friend that's dealing with depression, right, But I'm not
Speaker 1: specifically referencing depression. I'm just saying I have a friend
Speaker 1: who lives on the moon, and I'm in and I
Speaker 1: get to see her every once a while because the
Speaker 1: moon has phases like somebody who's depressed, you know, And
Speaker 1: and that would be that would be a way we
Speaker 1: built something closely tied to our activism in our music.
Speaker 1: I know, you got a jet so while three minutes,
Speaker 1: but I love talking to it. I'm like flushing it
Speaker 1: to appreciate it. You got the music coming out soon
Speaker 1: or anything people should? Uh, you know. We just put
Speaker 1: out a couple of singles. The latest one is called
Speaker 1: ten Kings, got music video out for it. Our music
Speaker 1: is easy to find, it's just the reminders where at
Speaker 1: the reminders on those social media So yeah, make sure
Speaker 1: you check out tin k y'all. SA have a song
Speaker 1: called the Moon but I was check. I was taking
Speaker 1: that out this morning to yo. That song is by here,
Speaker 1: thank you. So that's like one of our thinks, like
Speaker 1: it's our political and active presence in all of our music.
Speaker 1: It's just a matter if you if you understand us
Speaker 1: enough to catch what it is at happenings. Sometimes it's direct,
Speaker 1: like the Moon, but sometimes it's interact like tin K
Speaker 1: and again. You know, last year we locked in for
Speaker 1: a week during the summertime with our friend Carcarell, and
Speaker 1: he produced a lot of the music. We just locked
Speaker 1: in and you started recording, but every day was a
Speaker 1: different energy, you know what I mean, Like tin K
Speaker 1: and the moona wire recording, you know, two days back
Speaker 1: to back, but the energy is different. And we have
Speaker 1: a lot more songs like that. But you know, the
Speaker 1: Moonba came from a conversation we were having then once
Speaker 1: we turned turned the microphones on and and and beat machines,
Speaker 1: and there was yeah that that those both of those tracks,
Speaker 1: those are the first takes we ever did. Like those
Speaker 1: were like supposed to just be sketches, but the energy
Speaker 1: behind it, we were so pumped up loving when that happens,
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful, right, you know how it goes, and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, you do like twelve other takes and
Speaker 1: you're like, keep the sketch. Yah, We're gonna have to
Speaker 1: get you all back because I'm real curious and like
Speaker 1: how y'all worked together to put you know what I
Speaker 1: mean to Actually, yeah, I hate that I have to
Speaker 1: leave by uh an appointment, but you know, let's do
Speaker 1: a part too to it, because I want to have more.
Speaker 1: Like we answered a lot of questions here, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot more that I'd like to know about you
Speaker 1: guys as well, and what it is you're doing, and
Speaker 1: how we can work together and how we can create conversations.
Speaker 1: And when I say create conversations, I don't even care
Speaker 1: if we have different opinions or understandings or perspectives, just
Speaker 1: the fact that we can sit and talk about things
Speaker 1: and learn from one another and create an understanding and camaraderie.
Speaker 1: When you can create comaraderie with people that maybe aren't
Speaker 1: exactly like you, you start building a really strong community.
Speaker 1: I mean, and we're probably very similar, Like looking even
Speaker 1: at me and right right now, I'm like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: probably I think we're here and looking at you and
Speaker 1: Samaria right here. Yeah, It's like I want to have
Speaker 1: these kind of conversations where in the conversation intelligence is
Speaker 1: present activism, politics, music, but also joy, right and understanding
Speaker 1: and and and creating opportunities for changing good this and
Speaker 1: growth in these kinds of relationships. And that's really you
Speaker 1: know why we were excited when you have this to
Speaker 1: do this, because when I heard you speak and I
Speaker 1: had to like mute myself because I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: and I didn't even know. I mean, I knew of
Speaker 1: your activism, but um, I never got in to hear
Speaker 1: you speak to very pointed questions about like the relationship
Speaker 1: with hip hop and music, which is what we I
Speaker 1: knew with hip hop and faltics is what we are
Speaker 1: always getting asked about. So my sister, my brother, yeah,
Speaker 1: go back. Yeah, we're doing part two. Let us know
Speaker 1: when when we come to Georgia. We'll get you up.
Speaker 1: Oh you got it, Yeah, you got I'm dope, Knife Frank,
Speaker 1: and we are waiting on Reparations. Peace. Winning on Reparations
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
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