Speaker 1: Media. I am stealing this man's time, bro one of
Speaker 1: my I like the trip to me ab solutely talk
Speaker 1: some more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, check one two, want two?
Speaker 1: You're talking little more than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, check one two one two one two, want too?
Speaker 1: Maybe get closer to the mic? Oh yeah, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I need to. I thought you
Speaker 1: was gonna get levels. I was like, get levels, But
Speaker 1: you've got the mic way over there, cat like in
Speaker 1: your arm pits. Why is the mic in your arm pit?
Speaker 2: Check one two one two one two one two.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's way better. All right, Okay, so we might
Speaker 1: even I might even keep this in the show because
Speaker 1: it's funny.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So this is the last terrorforming episode of the year.
Speaker 1: As y'all know, if you just new to the show,
Speaker 1: what I try to do in the midst of whatever
Speaker 1: burning building our news has been And we're recording this
Speaker 1: on Da Delus Morthos. So I don't know who the
Speaker 1: president is yet. This is gonna come out, and when
Speaker 1: it comes out, we may not we still may not
Speaker 1: go crazy.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we got wait till January.
Speaker 1: Six, until the next until the next insurrection.
Speaker 2: Oh my go that's crazy.
Speaker 1: You think they gonna. I'm my My feeling is no
Speaker 1: one's gonna accept the results.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bro, I ain't gonna. I try to be in
Speaker 3: Africa like every end of the December anyway. I just
Speaker 3: want to be in Ghana and not worried about it. Bro,
Speaker 3: I'll come back when they figure it out. Speaking, I
Speaker 3: feel you.
Speaker 1: Who is on this mic right now is a young
Speaker 1: man who I met a long time ago, who is
Speaker 1: doing some amazing things in Memphis, Tennessee with coffee. This
Speaker 1: is Can I call you coffee black? Or should I
Speaker 1: call you a bar?
Speaker 2: Everybody does? They call me a neighborhood a coffee?
Speaker 1: He called his boy coffee this is coffee black, a
Speaker 1: bar coffee. I talked about him on the It Can
Speaker 1: Happen Here podcast when I talked about that, like, we've
Speaker 1: only got twenty seven Harved's left unless we do something crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because crazy, it's only twenty seven of them left.
Speaker 2: That's wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But we got a terrorformer here and in the
Speaker 1: best way possible. You know, I can take a little
Speaker 1: bit of credit for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bro, gonna say all the way back to Wheaton
Speaker 3: College brat James, Yeah, but sir.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so I agree. I would love to be
Speaker 1: in Africa by November eighth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bro, I'm not even gonna hold you.
Speaker 3: Like, we're working on maybe doing this thing and kind
Speaker 3: of like because one of the Brest Exchange participants who
Speaker 3: didn't get a visa is ain't Ghana, and then another
Speaker 3: homie is like doing his West African coffee project and
Speaker 3: I'm like, it's a lot of.
Speaker 2: Reasons to not be here, bro.
Speaker 3: Just plus you know, they just broke it to the
Speaker 3: new jet, so I'm like, hey, the shop ban gonna
Speaker 3: be anyway, so like I might as well.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about things that we know that y'all don't.
Speaker 1: You don't know what the Brest Exchange program is. You
Speaker 1: don't know what the word junt means. It just means joint,
Speaker 1: it means location, kosa.
Speaker 2: Thing. I'm with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the dang thang, the tilt the spot anyway. Uh
Speaker 1: so let's let's back up for sure. So this is
Speaker 1: a coffee company, a roaster, which is so much more
Speaker 1: than that. It started as an education program, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I've been doing the pitch all weekend.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so out here trying to get some bread.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: We halfway through our pre prec but so we're a
Speaker 3: hip hop based coffee company out of Memphis, and to
Speaker 3: see that sources coffee from pre colonial communities in Africa
Speaker 3: through all black supply chain. Once we get the coffee,
Speaker 3: we do three things with it. So we do storytelling
Speaker 3: like we just sold a sitcom to HBO Max. We
Speaker 3: do podcasting, music, documentaries, apparel, stuff like that. We also
Speaker 3: do products, so we do CpG products, so like your
Speaker 3: consumer packaged goods, the roasted coffee, do a ken coffee
Speaker 3: call god brew is not co brew, it's gold brew.
Speaker 2: I told you.
Speaker 3: We do you know, instant coffee things like that. And
Speaker 3: then we do creative placemaking, So we work with hip
Speaker 3: hop artists, activists, our neighbors to train them about coffee
Speaker 3: as one job training, but then two models for entrepreneurship,
Speaker 3: and then three to reconnect them to their own heritage
Speaker 3: through the coffees that we source from these communities.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It's a light bulb for most black people to realize
Speaker 1: that coffee is an African fruit.
Speaker 3: It was for me, Bro, I mean I remember when
Speaker 3: you did Left coffee and like I was like sort
Speaker 3: of getting into coffee and like I didn't know, I
Speaker 3: was still kind of like I felt like I was
Speaker 3: still trying to do my best, like hipstory barista, yeah
Speaker 3: rendition when I was in these places and I saw
Speaker 3: y'all rapping and like I still remember that Guatemalan joint
Speaker 3: with the Mayer Lemon note, Oh my god, and being like, yeah, bro,
Speaker 3: my wife got me the coffee because my wife was
Speaker 3: the one who gave me shout out black woman, Like
Speaker 3: she was the one who really gave me permission to
Speaker 3: spend money on coffee, because like that was one of
Speaker 3: them categories, like you could spend money on Jay's, but.
Speaker 2: Like not on coffee.
Speaker 3: It was like you you were considered wasteful growing up
Speaker 3: if you was like doing anything like that, and that
Speaker 3: she bought it for me and I had it, and
Speaker 3: I just it was like seeing the style of music
Speaker 3: that y'all wore bringing to it and like I was like,
Speaker 3: I want to see something like that from my community
Speaker 3: in Memphis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, yeah, the co chair for me, our
Speaker 1: Ethiopian co chair for me. I was like, there's advotasting
Speaker 1: nothing like this. You never got the Guatemalan second for
Speaker 1: y'all that don't know. Once upon a time before terror
Speaker 1: form my late record label that me and my friends
Speaker 1: kind of founded. We also had a coffee company called
Speaker 1: Left Roasters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: We would so part of my like merch package was
Speaker 1: you know, T shirts, hoodies and bounce bags of coffee.
Speaker 2: You know, legal work.
Speaker 1: Come on, yeah, legal work, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And so so so, like he said, you know, you
Speaker 1: have the business aspect, but the biggest part for why
Speaker 1: I would think to have him on the show is
Speaker 1: the community aspect. What's happening in Memphis and uh tell
Speaker 1: him a little bit about the anti gentrification coffee club.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: It was a joke to be honest, like he was
Speaker 3: in the studio. Honestly, most of the if we did
Speaker 3: start off as a joke in the studio. So it's
Speaker 3: like Guji Man, which is like our best selling coffee
Speaker 3: was like we was in the studio and had to
Speaker 3: bring out of coffee, and so me and my homies
Speaker 3: had to go to like the little history joint up
Speaker 3: the street, and we was like, brother, it's stilling the vibe.
Speaker 2: Like we didn't even want to rap anymore.
Speaker 3: So it was like what what if it was a
Speaker 3: brand that was like made since in the studio, it
Speaker 3: would we all love coffee from the Guji Zone.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, Guji is a location in Ethio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's in the southern region and it's in the.
Speaker 1: Southern reason of the Reason of Ethiopia.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it was like, well it would be, which is
Speaker 3: actually fascinating to talk about. Why cofee from the Gooozi zone?
Speaker 3: It is so dope, like to actually taught me to
Speaker 3: yg who's like our social partner there before you do that.
Speaker 1: So they named the coffee Gujie Maine. Yes, because let's
Speaker 1: multi versus yes. I'm going to assume you don't know
Speaker 1: any of this. There is a rapper named Gucci Maine. Okay, right, yo,
Speaker 1: So Guji Maine is a play on that. Look I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm just gonna assuming they assume.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so for us, it was like if coffee had
Speaker 3: always been black, what kind of names would we see?
Speaker 3: What kind of brands we So that was the Guji
Speaker 3: main thing.
Speaker 2: It was a joke.
Speaker 3: So same studio, we're chilling the pandemic is here that
Speaker 3: our neighborhood community development organization who's been a fiduciary with
Speaker 3: us for a minute, The Height Development Corporation Corp Corporization
Speaker 3: Corporation was like they had this space they were trying
Speaker 3: to use. It had been burned down. They were trying
Speaker 3: to get somebody in the community to activate it. It
Speaker 3: was like a like a freeze cup lady was there.
Speaker 3: If you don't know what freeze cups are, it's like
Speaker 3: kool aid, really really sweet kool aid.
Speaker 1: Then people freezing the star real hood stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some real like and you know, the business didn't
Speaker 3: do well, so they were trying to get a business
Speaker 3: in there, and they were like, y'all shit.
Speaker 2: The coffee thing we were like shipping.
Speaker 3: We had dropped the love Black People's shirts, like love
Speaker 3: Black People, like you love Black Coffee was his shirt
Speaker 3: we dropped during the George Floyd protests to like send
Speaker 3: money to support bail bonds for activists and also just
Speaker 3: to call out the like super super gentrified coffee industry.
Speaker 3: And yeah, man, we were doing well online and like
Speaker 3: we were just like trapping out of my house, my
Speaker 3: wife's mother's house, Kenny's house. Who just pulled up, my homie, Kenny,
Speaker 3: White Boy Kenny just pulled up and they literally everybody
Speaker 3: thought we were selling drugs. I'm like no, we're not.
Speaker 3: And we're like, yeah, we're roast and coffee, but it's
Speaker 3: a lot of like traffic. I'm on Instagram in front
Speaker 3: of my house. It's like it's kind of not a
Speaker 3: good look at this point to be like moving this
Speaker 3: much product just from my house.
Speaker 2: And so the.
Speaker 3: Neighborhood Community Development Org was like, well, you guys can
Speaker 3: work out of this space in the neighborhood a couple
Speaker 3: of minutes away. I'm like, all right, cool, And they
Speaker 3: kept trying to push us to do coffee and I'm like, bro,
Speaker 3: I'm not finish gentrified my neighborhood, Like I know one
Speaker 3: hundred percent. As soon as I pop up with specialty
Speaker 3: grade eighty eight point Ethiopian naturally processed goujie and it's
Speaker 3: like hip and new and we're doing music, everybody's finna
Speaker 3: pull up here and they're not gonna see my neighborhood
Speaker 3: been drunk all night and they're gonna call the police
Speaker 3: on this man, and it's gonna be George for again.
Speaker 2: Like I'm not I don't want to see that.
Speaker 3: And we had just had the issue with Starbucks right
Speaker 3: in Philly where they had called the police.
Speaker 2: I just didn't want to see it.
Speaker 1: This is around that time, Yes, around the time we
Speaker 1: pulled you in for Poor Gummy Fridays too.
Speaker 2: Yes, bro. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, man, I just didn't want to see
Speaker 3: that happened in my neighborhood. So I was like, bro,
Speaker 3: if we did do something, it wouldn't even be it'd
Speaker 3: be like an anti gentrification joint and it wouldn't even
Speaker 3: be a coffee shop. It'd be like a like a
Speaker 3: coffee club, like it was just for the homies, like
Speaker 3: members only come join the club energy. And then like
Speaker 3: the community development organization was like all right, bet yeah,
Speaker 3: They're like all right, run.
Speaker 1: It like anti gentification coffee club. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I'm like okay, but like how am i gonna
Speaker 3: make money with that business concept? Like I'm head first
Speaker 3: into the e commerce thing like everybody was. We had
Speaker 3: just done like sixty K in a month. You know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, I'm focused on I'm trying to do this,
Speaker 3: you know, like not knowing that once people come back outside,
Speaker 3: you actually gonna need you need to diversify your revenue streams.
Speaker 2: So that's guy right there, shut out to yaweh. But
Speaker 2: like I was like, I didn't think it made sense,
Speaker 2: but I was like, if we do it, I'm not
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm gonna be able to pay rent.
Speaker 3: So we need like a sliding scale, and the coffee's expensive,
Speaker 3: so I'm gonna want to give We say the first
Speaker 3: ship is free.
Speaker 2: I got neighbors on a thirty second ship. It's still free,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Like we were having it would be like a pay
Speaker 3: what you can model, and like I would want to
Speaker 3: employ people from the community and all this other stuff.
Speaker 3: I didn't even have an espresso machine at first because
Speaker 3: I was like, that's the colinizes.
Speaker 1: So I told you on the other show espressos from Italy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I was trying to highlight this pre colonial perspective
Speaker 3: for what we were learning about, like the coffee ceremony
Speaker 3: and Ethiopia, and eventually I would learn a lot more.
Speaker 3: Right when we went to Guji, we went to tap
Speaker 3: in with the Abogadas and out of Sins and learn
Speaker 3: about the Godda system in Bunokalla and all these like
Speaker 3: pre colonial even pre Jebena like methodologies and perspectives and
Speaker 3: like philosophies. But at the time, I just knew, like
Speaker 3: I wanted to connect people to the coffee itself. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to do that, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: do it in a way that was one affordable, but
Speaker 3: two still highlighted like this beautiful metaphor that I think
Speaker 3: coffee represents to black people but also to all people
Speaker 3: at the end of the day. And so like that's
Speaker 3: the start of the anti gentrification Coffee Club. Now we've
Speaker 3: been open. We started the end of the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one it's about to be the end of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: so officially three years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, praise God.
Speaker 1: Also step back. A jevnah yeah, yeah yeah. A jevna
Speaker 1: is a clay pot that is traditionally used in Ethiopia
Speaker 1: for Ethiopian coffee ceremonies, which I again I'm referencing the
Speaker 1: It Can Happen Here episode where a lot of this stuff,
Speaker 1: like I tried to walk y'all through. But so now
Speaker 1: it's the world's first coffee pot. It's exactly, it's the
Speaker 1: world's first pop coffee pot.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So I've been there to the to the spot and yeah,
Speaker 1: they do a cipher. I'm going to assume you know
Speaker 1: what a cipher is. So they set up beats, you know,
Speaker 1: they set up like their MPs at different paths, and
Speaker 1: they just and we just sat around in freestyled. It's
Speaker 1: a very it's a very beautiful experience. And it's an
Speaker 1: experience that is the question that like, going back to
Speaker 1: something you said earlier, like I told y'all four seasons ago,
Speaker 1: something a term called hintification, which is a Spanish term
Speaker 1: because hint they just means my people. Right, So in
Speaker 1: the Latino community, if you were to say, what if,
Speaker 1: what does gentrification look like if we were doing it
Speaker 1: to ourselves, So they call it hintification. Wow, So you
Speaker 1: see this picture right here, like, okay, that's hintification. That's
Speaker 1: like so the way that it's like we're still it's
Speaker 1: still graffiti, it's still la you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But that is y'all can't see this obviously, but that's
Speaker 1: a escaleta from Diadelli's werthows, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, there's a spot down the
Speaker 1: street out here called I told you before, called tiert
Speaker 1: A MIAs A. It's a third wave coffee shop, but
Speaker 1: it's pon dulce, it's for chopa lattes. It's like Wahakan chocolate.
Speaker 1: Like it's all very Mexican stuff. And it don't look
Speaker 1: like a coffee shop. It looks like a pan naia
Speaker 1: where your grandma would go every morning to go get
Speaker 1: her breakfast. Little ponds, you know what I'm saying. So,
Speaker 1: so they're like, this is you know, we did this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there's a term for it in the Latino community.
Speaker 1: It's called henthification. Right, So essentially that question is, like,
Speaker 1: what would it look like if we were gonnatrol our
Speaker 1: own future? And like you said, it was never interrupted
Speaker 1: as an American, especially an African American, Like it's it's
Speaker 1: hard for us to imagine if you because we don't
Speaker 1: live in that type of land, if the indigenous American
Speaker 1: was not sectioned off or wiped out, if they were
Speaker 1: allowed to flourish alongside of the culture that we exist
Speaker 1: in now, Like if they were done properly, allowed to
Speaker 1: be a part of the American system and their way.
Speaker 1: Like I wonder what our healthcare system would look like
Speaker 1: right now. I wonder what our education system would look
Speaker 1: like right now, What types of foods would be considered
Speaker 1: the American diet, like you know what I'm saying, Like
Speaker 1: if we'd actually listen to the natives and they'd be
Speaker 1: like that don't grow here. You have to change the
Speaker 1: soil to make this grow here. And there are locations
Speaker 1: like I know because I tour so much around Native
Speaker 1: populations that in their world there are they didn't stop existing.
Speaker 1: They continue to exist like that, and in modern Native
Speaker 1: towns you can see, you know what I'm saying, But
Speaker 1: it was still interrupt that wisdom was interrupted by a
Speaker 1: colonizing force. So for us as African America is the
Speaker 1: same thing, like it's interrupted that to the point to
Speaker 1: where it is what it is. But like you said,
Speaker 1: like we have our connection to our indigenous soil, like
Speaker 1: my like my wife, she understands Nawak, she understands Spanish,
Speaker 1: she understands, you know what I'm saying, a continual understanding
Speaker 1: of her ancestry. We don't have that, Like don't even
Speaker 1: know what part of Africa I'm guessing, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like I think this part you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, But that the the what you're doing is
Speaker 1: using the catalyst of coffee to try to reclaim that
Speaker 1: tie to our ancestral yes history, and.
Speaker 2: That's what that's So, this is how amazing the most
Speaker 2: ig is.
Speaker 3: It's like, this is the thing that I learned from
Speaker 3: these coffee elders of baganizing of sins and this whole
Speaker 3: social system called the Goddess system where coffee is like this, uh,
Speaker 3: it's a sacred plant right within the system is that
Speaker 3: they believe coffee was a gift from the most High,
Speaker 3: from the divine, from the singular creator God to re
Speaker 3: establish peace after man's first transgression. And so the plant
Speaker 3: was given to like read the blessing Buna Naga Hindabina,
Speaker 3: which is like a traditional coffee blessing, especially in like
Speaker 3: the southern region with the Oromo people who kind of
Speaker 3: curated this perspective is mayor house lack no coffee nor peace.
Speaker 3: But my favorite translation is wherever there is coffee, there
Speaker 3: must also be peace. And so the belief is that
Speaker 3: the coffee is the is a plant that represents an
Speaker 3: opportunity for us to re establish a contract or a
Speaker 3: covenant of peace between ourselves and the creator, ourselves and
Speaker 3: the land, and then ourselves and each other. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: like that's what it was meant to do. So when
Speaker 3: I'm here and these people are looking at me and
Speaker 3: they're like, welcome home, bro, Like this plant brought you back.
Speaker 1: Home, you know what I'm saying. And it was meant
Speaker 1: to reconnect you to us and to even for.
Speaker 2: My wife and I.
Speaker 3: They made us honorary a boganizing out of SINC in
Speaker 3: November for the first half of the Baristic Exchange program,
Speaker 3: which we missed you on.
Speaker 2: We definitely got to run that.
Speaker 1: Back next time. I'm coming.
Speaker 2: I was I was being.
Speaker 1: I was being selfless.
Speaker 2: No, you did what you have to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't get in trouble on my behalf. You use
Speaker 3: having business, but to shout out you one. You were
Speaker 3: on the board for the first effort Pan African Blackburist
Speaker 3: ex Change program.
Speaker 2: We hustled with Vanderbilt and Better.
Speaker 1: Which is explain it. So the idea was us over
Speaker 1: here in America get to see specialty coffee third wave
Speaker 1: sort of situations. So we're at the other end of
Speaker 1: the supply chain where it's fancy, blitzy, beautiful. We get
Speaker 1: to do the you know Poindexter, you know, full extraction
Speaker 1: depth over decaf like really like first world experience for
Speaker 1: coffee being very pompous, right, But most people here have
Speaker 1: never seen, especially Black bearistas. I've never seen the soil
Speaker 1: like they've never seen where it comes from. And the
Speaker 1: connections that Bart and I are coffee Black and I
Speaker 1: are making because we've seen coffee at at origin in Africa,
Speaker 1: that connections already made for us.
Speaker 3: And not only have we seen coffee, we've seen pre colonial, yes,
Speaker 3: fully self expressed and autonomous coffee cultures.
Speaker 1: Coffee that was not interrupted by anything. We've gotten to
Speaker 1: see that. So this is the like balling, crying, getting
Speaker 1: back into your van, going back to the hotel, just
Speaker 1: unconsolable crying.
Speaker 2: Like like that, yes, I can't believe.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Just like like feeling like
Speaker 1: you've been robbed from your childhood of like we don't
Speaker 1: know who we are and then can't and then having
Speaker 1: to try to go back to America and try to
Speaker 1: explain to Pooky and them like nigga, we are more.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, We can say nigga. Okay.
Speaker 1: So that's the thing I think too, is like I
Speaker 1: don't know if you're following way before. Don't forget that thought.
Speaker 1: I want to explain the Brees Exchange program.
Speaker 2: Yes, keep going.
Speaker 1: So so the idea was, first half, let's take American
Speaker 1: black American baristas and bring them to Africa so they
Speaker 1: can see it and they can meet baristas out there,
Speaker 1: meet farmers.
Speaker 2: Meet the thing.
Speaker 1: And then the second half was bring coffee professionals from
Speaker 1: Africa to America, which was the heart by far that
Speaker 1: we haven't even debriefed on that already.
Speaker 2: Know. We just wrapped that part up.
Speaker 3: I actually hit the group chat, but that was by
Speaker 3: far the most beautiful and also the most difficult, but.
Speaker 2: The most worth it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you can't just get a visa, Like that's
Speaker 1: the problem, Like you can't just so we've had people
Speaker 1: that we were like and then it sucks cause it's
Speaker 1: like you're almost feeding into this socio economics stratification of culture,
Speaker 1: this system of like haves and have nots and privilege
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, because it's like you're trying to
Speaker 1: open it to people that can get here, but it's
Speaker 1: like I can't. I can't tell your government to release
Speaker 1: a visa for you for you to go to America
Speaker 1: because of geopolitics, and some of that just has to
Speaker 1: do with we just don't trade with that company country.
Speaker 1: So because we don't trade with that country, you can't
Speaker 1: come here. And now us saying well, I'm sorry, you
Speaker 1: can't come is enforcing this system that is keeping you
Speaker 1: a developed country.
Speaker 2: And this is what I say.
Speaker 3: When they brought my African ancestors over, there was no
Speaker 3: visa requiirrems, no visa was everybody. So like, now I
Speaker 3: want to bring my coffee cousins over. You know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying, shut out coffee cousins, merge covery soon. Well,
Speaker 3: now I want to bring my coffee cousins over. And
Speaker 3: it's a problem. And it really really it was like
Speaker 3: this experience of trying to reclaim what I believe is
Speaker 3: a like biblical mandate for like blood lines to have
Speaker 3: the opportunity to produce a certain fruit. Like there's this
Speaker 3: perspective of like in the Book of Revelation where every
Speaker 3: nation is going to bring their crowns and lay them
Speaker 3: at the feet of God. And so like I remember
Speaker 3: being in Wheaton College, right and asking these questions, like
Speaker 3: what does that mean, Like they're going to have like
Speaker 3: a physical crown. And the perspective my professor told me
Speaker 3: was this is actually their cultural treasures. So every bloodline
Speaker 3: or nation or tongue or whatever has the idea was
Speaker 3: they have these certain outputs that they've been given the
Speaker 3: capacity to produce.
Speaker 2: Wow, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: And like part of my frustration and wrestle with my
Speaker 3: faith was I feel like our bloodline has been.
Speaker 1: Like like hobbled and like what we were given to
Speaker 1: bring to the world to present.
Speaker 3: As like a reflection the image of God never had
Speaker 3: the capacity to operate without being a handicapped, you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying. And I'm like, why are we playing
Speaker 3: with a handicap? Like why I gotta play with the
Speaker 3: deflated ball?
Speaker 1: Like let me ball?
Speaker 3: Like let me oh, because it's gonna be beautiful and
Speaker 3: the whole world is gonna benefit and it's gonna glorify
Speaker 3: our creator and it's going to be amazing, and like
Speaker 3: so much like don't y'all know y'all love it when
Speaker 3: we get busy, Just let us cook, let us don't
Speaker 3: don't you know you finna eat? Like just quit playing
Speaker 3: and let us cook, because it's gonna bless the world.
Speaker 3: It's gonna bless our creator. And like to realize all
Speaker 3: the way back to coffee that it was. This is
Speaker 3: one of those things that our blood literally is in
Speaker 3: our soil, and it only exists. All one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty species of the cafe a plant, whether we're talking
Speaker 3: about arabbaica or Conifera or Siniphala or liberica or you genoid,
Speaker 3: these whatever, they all and then all of their varietals.
Speaker 3: Speaking of Typica, all of the thousands of varietals, tens
Speaker 3: of thousands of varietals of each species, they're all here right,
Speaker 3: And the world has only experienced a tiny, little, medium,
Speaker 3: tiny fraction of this. Because the only way we're willing
Speaker 3: to engage with our root is if when I say,
Speaker 3: we know what the world is.
Speaker 1: Willing to engage with our root is if they get
Speaker 1: to control the fruit.
Speaker 3: And it's like, just let the root cook and honor it,
Speaker 3: and you will get so much more diverse, so much
Speaker 3: more of a wider palette.
Speaker 2: So we're all over the place.
Speaker 3: But I'm like, this is what I wanted my community
Speaker 3: to experience, and I believe it's part of my life
Speaker 3: spiritual responsibility to be a steward, to be a vice regent,
Speaker 3: to be a a whatever of this little space that
Speaker 3: I got in the hood and myths in this corner
Speaker 3: and whatever opportunity to connect with our coffee cousins and
Speaker 3: our elders Ethiopia, Uganda, even folksing a diaspora for Latinos
Speaker 3: whoever that we're in community with, to try to establish
Speaker 3: this experience and perspective, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 3: like that experience and perspective was a big reason why
Speaker 3: I wanted to reach out to you for the Barist
Speaker 3: Exchange program because we needed a board, a very informal board,
Speaker 3: but I was like, man, the perspective on terror forming
Speaker 3: in this idea even going back actually like the Andy
Speaker 3: kroutchbook Whatever the Culture Care that I read and Wheaten
Speaker 3: and like, you know, all these things of like I was,
Speaker 3: I feel like you are, you know, to toot your horn,
Speaker 3: no diddy, you know what I'm saying. It's like the
Speaker 3: one of the foremost experts of like this philosophy on
Speaker 3: what it's terraforming. Yeah, for futurism, culture care, whatever the word.
Speaker 3: We're gonna use a hint gapification, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: It's this idea of like, Okay, what did the creator intend? Okay,
Speaker 3: obviously this is what we are experiencing this outline with that,
Speaker 3: and how do we use our talents, our gifts, our imagination,
Speaker 3: our will, our skill to present a picture of that
Speaker 3: back to our world and have the opportunity to move
Speaker 3: in that direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, and like, yeah, bro, so.
Speaker 3: That's why I wanted you on the board and like
Speaker 3: being able to pursue that to some capacity because a
Speaker 3: lot of that, you know, to use the word discipleship
Speaker 3: was a part of my discipleship, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 3: was like these ideas and thoughts read like listening to
Speaker 3: croocket chord or like being able to like just these
Speaker 3: things of like, man, can we don't have to our
Speaker 3: imagination and the vocabulary of our imagination does not have
Speaker 3: to be determined by the words that currently exist. Yes,
Speaker 3: we can make up new ones. Yes, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying. Yeah, so that's what we want to do
Speaker 3: with Coffee in the Hood. And like that's one of
Speaker 3: the things I think that is the most exciting about
Speaker 3: and honestly relieving about the anti gentrification Coffee club right
Speaker 3: now is like it's to let's be honest, right, it's
Speaker 3: a goofy idea, Like it sounds like a comic book.
Speaker 1: You know, it sounds like a group of teenagers with
Speaker 1: like in a steampunk that that read a red soul
Speaker 1: on ice. Yeah, like the atrification.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they fly around with steampunk backpacks and bruper like
Speaker 3: trap houses.
Speaker 2: But it's like, that's kind of what we're doing.
Speaker 3: Actually, it's like in this space like creating, because what
Speaker 3: I realized is the most fascinating about living like we do.
Speaker 3: We moved into our neighborhood with the John Perkins model
Speaker 3: right of like this like community development based in the Bible.
Speaker 1: So let me let me back up, like everybody on here,
Speaker 1: like matter of fact, barely in Christians, okay, but the
Speaker 1: John Perkins was a civil rights activist, like one of
Speaker 1: the last living ones and one of the issues which
Speaker 1: most people have. Like first of all, y'all got to
Speaker 1: remember like our I say it's all the time on
Speaker 1: the show, Like our like black church experience is very
Speaker 1: different than white evangelicalism.
Speaker 3: We have.
Speaker 1: We have our own issues, our own baggage. But the
Speaker 1: shit y'all did is not that was not our experience.
Speaker 1: It's very different. So when y'all be like, I'm not religious,
Speaker 1: I don't do nothing to do with the church. It's
Speaker 1: like you're still picturing white church.
Speaker 2: Yo.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like, that's not our experience. That being said,
Speaker 1: like I said, black church. Don't get me wrong, black
Speaker 1: church got problems, y'oll saying. But John Perkins addressed this
Speaker 1: thing that was he started these things they were called
Speaker 1: like parachurch organizations, which was this idea that like, all right,
Speaker 1: since there's so much turmoil, trauma, and sort of in
Speaker 1: some ways one could argue like conflicts of interest in
Speaker 1: the sense of like, what is your role in this community?
Speaker 1: Are you supposed to just am I here for your
Speaker 1: spiritual care, your physical care, your financial care, you know?
Speaker 1: And the answer, according to their believes is really all
Speaker 1: of it, you know what I'm saying. But you can't
Speaker 1: do it all right. So what John Perkins had this
Speaker 1: idea of saying, well, what we could do is rather
Speaker 1: than kind of using the term colonial, rather than having
Speaker 1: a colonial model where it's like you have this big
Speaker 1: financial institution and you're going out into these like inner
Speaker 1: city areas, there's all these poor areas. We're gonna feed
Speaker 1: the poor. We're gonna do this outreach, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. You know, since kids Guatemala, that's still a
Speaker 1: still very colonial approach, and you're trying to bring them in.
Speaker 1: What he was trying to say is like, well, nigga,
Speaker 1: we live here. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, So like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: since we live here and I know the elders of
Speaker 1: the city, like I know, pookin them.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of times you may think, you know,
Speaker 1: you want to really like like this is a true example.
Speaker 1: It's like, all right, you want your church want to
Speaker 1: come and give out backpacks to the kids to start school,
Speaker 1: but the park that you're doing at, you got to
Speaker 1: talk to the pyrus and like, but you got to
Speaker 1: know which piru to talk to. Just because they wearing
Speaker 1: a red rag don't mean they from the same set.
Speaker 1: If you don't notice this because you're not from here,
Speaker 1: right and you're you're not fluent in our language, that's
Speaker 1: because you don't live here, right. And even and even
Speaker 1: talking to the power, you still may have to talk
Speaker 1: to Miss Jenkins because the Pyroue still got to check
Speaker 1: in with Miss Jenkins, because that's grandma who took care
Speaker 1: of all of us, who was our babysitter. So there's
Speaker 1: these things that happens when you just live here that
Speaker 1: if you're trying to, for example, accomplish you know, the
Speaker 1: great commission of Like again, we're still talking about church organizations,
Speaker 1: the great commission of making disciples, making a place better
Speaker 1: than what it is. Like again, in the Black tradition,
Speaker 1: we come from some some of y'all might call liberation theology,
Speaker 1: but like we come from a position where you're the
Speaker 1: the liliberate. The liberty Christ gives is for your whole person.
Speaker 1: It's your your the laws, your stomachs, your families, your bills,
Speaker 1: your bills, and your souls. So like it's not just
Speaker 1: about downloading information and making you vote against like gender
Speaker 1: neutral bathrooms, Like it's that's white shit, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So so the John Perkins model that he's
Speaker 1: talking about is you can't just you can't just be
Speaker 1: like I do inter city ministry and you don't live
Speaker 1: here like.
Speaker 3: You I'm saying, and you know, just thinking about it's
Speaker 3: crazy because it's been a missonce I read, you know,
Speaker 3: the book that he wrote, but he's watten a lot
Speaker 3: of books. But like even those three different identities of
Speaker 3: the ways you can interact with this right you can
Speaker 3: be a person who partners, you can be a person
Speaker 3: who sponsors, or you can be a person who actually
Speaker 3: does the work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he kind of identifies the voice to participate for us.
Speaker 3: I grew up in the Haven, which is like in
Speaker 3: it's like an ex verb which we need to define
Speaker 3: experb expert. Yeah, okay, so expert sociologically was like a
Speaker 3: former suburb that has since experienced white like even though
Speaker 3: suburbs are where the white you know, like you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, fun enough confidence, Yeah that's kind of crazy. Yes,
Speaker 3: So like white Haven was an expert of South Memphis.
Speaker 3: South Memphis like the south part of any black city,
Speaker 3: like side every south side of everywhere. And so like
Speaker 3: I grew up in the Haven. If you listen to
Speaker 3: Memphis Rapp deuces from the Haven, like you know, and
Speaker 3: so like we were growing as ninety eight percent black,
Speaker 3: my church felt like, man, we need to go reach
Speaker 3: the nations, ironically, so they moved to the most diverse
Speaker 3: zip code of Memphis, which is just sixty percent black. Yeah,
Speaker 3: super black, but also Muslim and also poor white and
Speaker 3: also you know what I'm saying, Vietnamese and also increasingly
Speaker 3: very Latin, know, anyway, we moved there.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I feel like I feel called to incarnational man.
Speaker 3: So we buy a house in the neighborhood, you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, Which actually I went to high school
Speaker 3: over there, so it's not like I don't know this neighborhood,
Speaker 3: not from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we buy a house. We're still in Memphis.
Speaker 2: I'm living there. I've been there ten, ten years whatever.
Speaker 3: And like the reality of like living in the community
Speaker 3: is like there there are rules, but there aren't rules.
Speaker 3: Like nobody says I can't sit outside on a corner
Speaker 3: and like make beats with my son and drink a lot.
Speaker 2: There's no rule that says I can't do that. Yea.
Speaker 3: And what's fascinating about like this idea of like terriforming
Speaker 3: or after futurism or like you know, decolonizing all this
Speaker 3: stuff is like a lot of the things that we
Speaker 3: see and don't see are not based on what we
Speaker 3: can and can't do.
Speaker 2: It's just based on the fact we haven't seen it before.
Speaker 3: But like the desire as a like very publicly identifying
Speaker 3: like nerdy kid growing up in the hood, was that
Speaker 3: you have to keep that nerdy stuff in the house,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying, But why though, like why
Speaker 3: but there was actually like other than the option of beating.
Speaker 3: But ain't nobody touching me now, you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 3: you're not going to beat me up. Now I'm an
Speaker 3: adults and I'm much significantly larger. But it's like, yo,
Speaker 3: So the crazy thing about doing an anti gentrification coffee
Speaker 3: club is that we can you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 3: And like the only reason why it didn't exist before
Speaker 3: is because maybe somebody hadn't listened to the Diitrified song
Speaker 3: long enough in.
Speaker 2: Mainhood and been like, well, what if we do the
Speaker 2: cof shoping?
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying, Like, we can just do
Speaker 3: this joint and I can take the little homies that
Speaker 3: I'm mentoring who are currently like I don't got no
Speaker 3: work or the only work I have is not the
Speaker 3: legal CND and be like, all right, come be a Barisa,
Speaker 3: come back up, legal beans, legal let's teach you something. Yeah,
Speaker 3: come on, do that and you haven't done it before,
Speaker 3: but that's fine. I'm competent. I got a master's degree
Speaker 3: in urban education. I know I can teach you apostrophes
Speaker 3: and sentence diagramming. I can definitely teach poor overs, you
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And then the fun part about that is, like you know,
Speaker 1: you get these kids, like you said, like all they
Speaker 1: knew is illegal work. Once once they catch the vision,
Speaker 1: then their imagination starts opening and now they're tapping into
Speaker 1: their gifts.
Speaker 2: They're like, yes, bro, why won't we do this?
Speaker 1: Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Now, the craziest story, right, yeah, let's end with this story.
Speaker 3: Craziest story. Blackberries to Exchange Program Phase two is happening.
Speaker 3: We're hosting five for bury from the African constant and
Speaker 3: diaspora who are here in Memphis, and we're partnering with
Speaker 3: Vanderbilt to do this. Right, We're about to go see
Speaker 3: Lyn Butler, probably the greatest black buristo. Yeah, only black
Speaker 3: person to win the US BARISA Championship. Mostly I don't
Speaker 3: even know that there is, yeah BARISA Championship, much less
Speaker 3: a country or world or a regional one. He's also
Speaker 3: the only black person to get top five in the
Speaker 3: world for the World BRITISA Championship.
Speaker 2: First person to do all these things.
Speaker 3: We're about to go spend a week with him, but
Speaker 3: first we have to go to Vanderbilt to host like
Speaker 3: a decolonizing Coffee symposium with Ted Fisher who and Gabby
Speaker 3: who's a professor of anthropology. I see both of these
Speaker 3: are an anthropology. But anyway, we're working with these professors
Speaker 3: doing amazing work. Ted wrote this book called Making Coffee
Speaker 3: Better and it's about reclaiming Indigenous Perspectives from Guatemala and
Speaker 3: like working with the Maya people to reclaim an indigenous
Speaker 3: perspective on land in general and how that could integrate
Speaker 3: in coffee. Which is how we connected because he was like, wait,
Speaker 3: there actually is one specific four coffee from Africa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was like there's multiple. I just him
Speaker 2: learning about when.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're doing this work anyway, we're bringing all
Speaker 3: these people up in the van where in our first
Speaker 3: barista from the neighborhood, O Marion, who to be clear,
Speaker 3: did not move illegal work, you.
Speaker 2: Know what I'm saying. He was like, he's like a
Speaker 2: little kid.
Speaker 3: It was like just we had we were doing hot dogs,
Speaker 3: doing the vacation Bible, cool stuff, and he used to
Speaker 3: pull up and kick it with us.
Speaker 2: But he was our first barista.
Speaker 3: Now he's twenty, right, so he started when he was
Speaker 3: teen nice twenty right, and so he's seen the brand grow,
Speaker 3: he's seen us go all over Africa, he's seen us
Speaker 3: do the documentary be the most notable rosters in the world,
Speaker 3: which it just happened in February, and.
Speaker 2: Now he's on the way with us.
Speaker 3: But his experience with coffee is from this afro futuristic
Speaker 3: terraforming what if coffee was always black? So that's actually
Speaker 3: his experience, especially coffee, that it's always black. So we
Speaker 3: go and speak at Professor Ted Fisher's class and it's us.
Speaker 3: It's like ten of us, real deep in front of
Speaker 3: all his students, most of whom are not black. And
Speaker 3: we're in the car debriefing about the experience, and he
Speaker 3: was it's like, Bro, the craziest thing, I'm realizing, like
Speaker 3: it's so cool, don't feel real to see all these
Speaker 3: people from Africa here with us, and I seen y'all go,
Speaker 3: but out there here with me in the car and
Speaker 3: I'm getting to chop it up and check them and
Speaker 3: make fun of them and make coffee with.
Speaker 2: Them and like just be brothers and sisters.
Speaker 3: But it's like the craziest part was going to this
Speaker 3: class and seeing all these kids talk about coffees like bart,
Speaker 3: I didn't know this many white people drink coffee.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah, crazy.
Speaker 3: And I think that with this current election reality and
Speaker 3: like everything that's going on to me, that the possibility
Speaker 3: of creating a world where the next generation doesn't even
Speaker 3: understand it when we try to explain how screwed up
Speaker 3: the world is right now is possible, even if only
Speaker 3: with a small thing like coffee. Right if we do
Speaker 3: the work to reimagine and terror form, even just our
Speaker 3: small corner of the space we've been given to steward,
Speaker 3: there is a possibility there's a possible multiverse where like
Speaker 3: the next generation looks at us crazy when we try
Speaker 3: to explain the problems.
Speaker 1: Where it's it's amout.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have nothing to add to that. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: please drop the website.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, Coffee Black with an X no oh, like
Speaker 3: Malcolm so Ce x f fee Black just gave my
Speaker 3: first Ted Talk. Go run it up, because you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying. It's like a competition between people who
Speaker 3: give ted Talk. So my streams is not great right now.
Speaker 3: But I did do it Ted Talk. You did it though, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I just dropped this, so y'all go check it out.
Speaker 3: And we're currently in the midst of like a community
Speaker 3: crowdfunding campaign on we funder. So if you love what
Speaker 3: we're doing, you can be an equity partner, do revenue
Speaker 3: share project with us and uh, you know, be a
Speaker 3: part of what we're doing. First little as one hundred bucks,
Speaker 3: so you know we thunder dot com backslash coffee black
Speaker 3: check it out, No sugar, no cream, need it.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. I have nothing.
Speaker 1: That's he nailed it. That's a possible future where through coffee.
Speaker 1: That that's what I mean by Terraformer. Yeah, all right, politics,
Speaker 1: All right, now, don't you hit stop on this pod.
Speaker 1: You better listen to these credits. I need you to
Speaker 1: finish this thing so I can get the download numbers. Okay,
Speaker 1: so don't stop it yet, but listen. This was recorded
Speaker 1: in East Lost boil Heights by your boy Propaganda. Tap
Speaker 1: in with me at prop hip hop dot com. If
Speaker 1: you're in the coldbrew coffee, we got Terraform Coldbrew. You
Speaker 1: can go there dot com and use promo code hood
Speaker 1: get twenty percent off get yourself some coffee. This was
Speaker 1: mixed edited and mastered by your boy Matt Alsowski Killing
Speaker 1: the Beast Softly. Check out his website Matdowsowski dot com.
Speaker 1: I'm a spell it for you because I know M
Speaker 1: A T T O S O W s ki dot
Speaker 1: com Matthowsowski dot com. He got more music and stuff
Speaker 1: like that on there, so gonna check out. The heat.
Speaker 1: Politics is a member of cool Zone Media, executive produced
Speaker 1: by Sophie Lichterman, part of the iHeartMedia podcast network. Your
Speaker 1: theme music and scoring is also by the one and
Speaker 1: nobly Mattowsowski. Still killing the beats softly, So listen. Don't
Speaker 1: let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living,
Speaker 1: you understand politics. These people is not smarter than you.
Speaker 1: We'll see y'all next week.