Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: So welcome back to QLs. This is Questlove.
Speaker 1: Then every year we do special programming in February for
Speaker 1: Black History Month.
Speaker 2: That's especially important for this year. I don't need to
Speaker 2: tell you all that.
Speaker 1: As we gear up for some new conversations, the team
Speaker 1: and I compiled some clips from this show that are
Speaker 1: worth revisiting. Of course, we are about all types of
Speaker 1: history here at a Questlove Supreme. This is kind of
Speaker 1: a historical records platform, but.
Speaker 2: You know, black history is important.
Speaker 1: One to know that we have a history, but also
Speaker 1: to achnowledge that Black history is American history.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not separate.
Speaker 1: And as we can plainly see if your eyes are open,
Speaker 1: if you are awake, you clearly see how easy it
Speaker 1: is with a little bit of misinformation, with a lot
Speaker 1: of unprocessed emotions and a lot of facts turn upside down,
Speaker 1: how easy it is to lose history, to lose information.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a lie one moment, then it's lost
Speaker 1: history years later. So it's important to always keep these
Speaker 1: stories alive. And you know what I really love about
Speaker 1: this platform at Quest Love Supreme is that you know,
Speaker 1: when we have artists come on. Most people come to
Speaker 1: a platform like specifically promote something from you know that's
Speaker 1: currently out, like oh, my new album or my new movie.
Speaker 2: We rarely do that.
Speaker 1: Like when you're a guest on Quest Love Supreme, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to first of all, we want your history just
Speaker 1: so that's on the record, and then ask you more
Speaker 1: timeless questions that don't have anything to do with the
Speaker 1: deadline or like some program that you're on, some movie
Speaker 1: that you're on. So that's why history is important, and
Speaker 1: that's why I think the show, no matter what episode
Speaker 1: we feature or that's in our cannon, it'll be timeless
Speaker 1: because you know, once you create something, it becomes history,
Speaker 1: and history is important. So that's why we are gung
Speaker 1: ho on history here at Questlep Supreme. All Right, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna begin with a good friend of the show,
Speaker 1: my personal friend, fellow aquarian Chris Rock, who spoke about
Speaker 1: how Saturday Night Live trained him for his career. I
Speaker 1: just had the good fortune to spend seventy two hours
Speaker 1: in SNL land. It's always one of those be careful
Speaker 1: for what you ask for movements. Of course, working at
Speaker 1: the Tonight show, going to what I call thirty Rock
Speaker 1: University any chance that I get to roam on the
Speaker 1: eighth floor and just I mean going through the pictures
Speaker 1: on the walls or one thing, but also like looking
Speaker 1: at the historical artifacts, just walking in Studio eight h
Speaker 1: studying the theater structure. It's just it's a one of
Speaker 1: one and it teaches me everything I know about not
Speaker 1: only how comedy shows work, but how creativity works, how
Speaker 1: leadership works. To describe the machine that is SNL, just
Speaker 1: as an outsider, I would take an hour explain that
Speaker 1: to you. But yeah, I spent time with all the greats,
Speaker 1: with Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Tracy Morgan celebrating the fiftieth
Speaker 1: anniversary weekend of Saturday Night Live. There was a musical
Speaker 1: concert that we did, and there was also like a
Speaker 1: kind of soret that we did with Lauren Michaels to
Speaker 1: toast him and his history. And then there was of
Speaker 1: course the blowout SNL fifty show, in which pretty much
Speaker 1: every cast member from all fifty years was represented in
Speaker 1: that studio, just like going to an All Star game,
Speaker 1: like watching people together, watching Eddie Murphy and Keenan Thompson
Speaker 1: and Will Furrow, like in the sketch together. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just anyway, enjoy this Chris episode.
Speaker 2: Yoh, like who recommends?
Speaker 3: Did you audition or I auditioned?
Speaker 4: A guy named James Dixon who's John Stewart's agents, and
Speaker 4: a couple other people.
Speaker 2: Who's the Higgins at the time.
Speaker 4: Who's the Higgins at the Higgins at the time was
Speaker 4: Jim Downey, And who's Higgins? Who's the head writer?
Speaker 2: Higgins is our Sideki Jim No no, no, no, but.
Speaker 4: And Senator Al Franken.
Speaker 2: Oh, keep forgetting it.
Speaker 4: I forgot Al Franken was a senator, he was I
Speaker 4: think they were both the head writers. Conan O'Brien was
Speaker 4: a writer on the show. Bob Odenkirk was a writer
Speaker 4: on the show. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Did you ever have any issues with the things that
Speaker 5: you wrote on that show? I always wonder like, is
Speaker 5: it ever too black for SNL? No?
Speaker 4: I mean or it was too black? Nothing was ever
Speaker 4: too black. It was just it was a situation. First
Speaker 4: of all, I had an amazing time at SNL. Is
Speaker 4: the best thing. It's absolutely the best thing that ever
Speaker 4: happened to me. Really, yeah, because it kind of made
Speaker 4: me legit, you know what I mean, Like it was
Speaker 4: like graduating Harvard.
Speaker 5: Which you did for the up and coming comedians from
Speaker 5: Howard and stuff made it even Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, like.
Speaker 4: I was on SNL man, it's only you know, come
Speaker 4: on like SNL forget even black, Like SNL is the
Speaker 4: X Men school of comedy.
Speaker 2: Okay, did Eddie give you any kind of preparation on
Speaker 2: what to expect?
Speaker 4: No, Eddie. The only thing Eddie told me, he kept
Speaker 4: telling me, is like, just just make sure you write
Speaker 4: stuff for update because it's the easiest spot to get on.
Speaker 4: But uh, what was your question?
Speaker 5: I was just asking it was it ever too edgy
Speaker 5: or black?
Speaker 4: To like it was too edgy or black? It was like,
Speaker 4: it's like this situation just white people in general. It's
Speaker 4: like the things they understand about black people tends to
Speaker 4: be it has to have a racial element to it.
Speaker 4: So a lot of stuff I did it was more
Speaker 4: obvious like net X chilling like that stuff's like obvious
Speaker 4: black stuff, you know what I mean. It wasn't really
Speaker 4: at the weird I wasn't allowed to get into my
Speaker 4: weird side the other you know.
Speaker 2: Like it had to be black.
Speaker 4: Yah, so it had to be black, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean? So you know, it's not Essenal, it's just
Speaker 4: white people in general.
Speaker 1: Is that the arcinio factor kicking in? Was that the
Speaker 1: Living Color factor kicking in?
Speaker 4: I got hired because of Living Color. I got hired
Speaker 4: just like every like whatever. That was the girl I
Speaker 4: keep forgetting her name.
Speaker 3: Se Shira I was.
Speaker 4: I got hired pretty much under the same circumstances. SNL
Speaker 4: hadn't had a black cast member in nine years, and
Speaker 4: Living Color was hopping, and they went out looking for
Speaker 4: a black cast member, and you know, I got the job,
Speaker 4: but I forgot what I was getting ready to say. No,
Speaker 4: just white people in general, when they're looking for black stuff,
Speaker 4: they tend to like something either ridiculously black. This is
Speaker 4: what it basically goes to, either Tracy Borga or Larry Wilmore,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, like in the middle, in
Speaker 4: the middle, nothing.
Speaker 5: In the middle, not for nothing.
Speaker 1: I'm taking well because you explained, but you explain in
Speaker 1: your whole, in your whole theory of you did a
Speaker 1: joke about Obama can only hope to be mediocre? Is again,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it's either the perception that we're
Speaker 1: animals or we are super huge.
Speaker 4: We're not calling any person an animal, let's let's let's
Speaker 4: get up.
Speaker 1: Well no, no, no, but I've meant like just whatever the
Speaker 1: one side of the spectrum where it's the extreme, it's
Speaker 1: triple raw or extreme.
Speaker 2: Caricature versus extreme intellect.
Speaker 1: Yes, but the thing with being ground zero middle is
Speaker 1: that that's just regular human yes, which is harder to Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean that's what's Hey, that's why a letter's genius,
Speaker 4: because it walks that thing. It's like, I was very rounded.
Speaker 5: I was recently told by a bunch of white women
Speaker 5: I take like a comedy class neiahbor I made one joke.
Speaker 5: I get really nervous about making black jokes in front
Speaker 5: of white people, and so when I did finally write one,
Speaker 5: they were like, oh my god, we love it. Tell
Speaker 5: us more about ourselves, tell us about white women.
Speaker 2: And I was like, really, that's to see that.
Speaker 1: That bothers me too, because I feel like that's almost
Speaker 1: like fetishizing.
Speaker 2: Or you know, the whole guilt the guilt factor kick
Speaker 2: it in, and.
Speaker 5: I was wonder if it was a setup. I didn't know,
Speaker 5: but I was like, okay, I got a lot th.
Speaker 2: That's a setup. Damn, I'm sorry, that's a setup.
Speaker 3: Set up.
Speaker 1: So okay, so you you're you're fine with your experience there, and.
Speaker 4: The best experience is literally the best thing that ever
Speaker 4: happened to me. I met the best people, uh not
Speaker 4: just I mean ay, I got exposed about around a
Speaker 4: bunch of comedy. So you know, I'm a guy from
Speaker 4: Bedsty who came through this white system. So I still
Speaker 4: I'm still the guy who has to go and with
Speaker 4: my uncle to go get the guns before the bad
Speaker 4: cousins come. And at the same time, I know, Conan O'Brien,
Speaker 4: how can you fuck with me? You can't fuck with me,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. Like that's all like, that's
Speaker 4: a lot of route, that's a lot of education.
Speaker 1: Which all right, So that leads me to evan the
Speaker 1: period between your your your in.
Speaker 4: Something forrom I'm sorry, cut you off. I wrote I
Speaker 4: think SNL. We edited a spin magazine that magazine and yes,
Speaker 4: I wrote an article about the end of the black
Speaker 4: super comic is coming because TV was getting more segregated
Speaker 4: and the black supercomic is me. Okay, let's take me
Speaker 4: out of it, because that sounds I sound like I
Speaker 4: sound like a cornerback, right, But uh, you know, there's
Speaker 4: a reason Eddie Murphy, Richard pryor all the greatest black comedians,
Speaker 4: the greatest comedians in America tend to be black. It's
Speaker 4: because you had to work these two systems in a
Speaker 4: world that everybody else has to work one.
Speaker 1: So you're saying Sam Cook record in Harlem, which is
Speaker 1: more blacker than the Sam Cook record at.
Speaker 2: The COPA, he had two live records come.
Speaker 4: Out, and this is the same thing that produced Michael Jackson.
Speaker 4: And like the the fact that you had to work
Speaker 4: two audiences in a world everybody else worked one. It's like,
Speaker 4: how can they fuck with you? Possible? Can't fuck with
Speaker 4: a guy that could work the Apollo and Carniou Hall.
Speaker 3: You can't fuck with that.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So that was Chris Rock speaking on having to maintain
Speaker 1: two audiences in his career, a black audience and a
Speaker 1: mainstream audience. I think that if you want international appeal,
Speaker 1: you have to learn how to code switch. And I
Speaker 1: think that's for everyone, of course, with black creatives, and
Speaker 1: this is what I explore in the slide documentary. I
Speaker 1: think for us it's a little bit deeper, like for
Speaker 1: some people it's you know, studying demographics to grow their
Speaker 1: audience as a creative exercise. My parents came from the
Speaker 1: generation in which you kind of had to adapt to
Speaker 1: cultural lifestyles that weren't your own, just for survivals. And
Speaker 1: I guess even growing up, you know, the way that
Speaker 1: I took to all types of music, maybe I inherently
Speaker 1: or subconsciously knew early that I had to learn the
Speaker 1: language of every type of music genre in order to
Speaker 1: survive in the world. For me, music was how I
Speaker 1: made friends. And if you listen to certain types of music,
Speaker 1: then that's something that you have in common with people.
Speaker 2: Because I went to.
Speaker 1: School with various you know, backgrounds and whatnot of different people.
Speaker 2: I saw the power of knowing other songs.
Speaker 1: Like in the ninth grade, I didn't know nothing about
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin, didn't want to learn anything about led Zeppelin.
Speaker 2: Like I fell for the I drank the kool aid.
Speaker 1: I went to a church that, like you know, was
Speaker 1: staunchly against rock music and MTV and the Thriller video
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. And so we were just told,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the problem them with where we are now.
Speaker 1: Like you just get told by an authority figure and
Speaker 1: you take that ass law without investigating it. So I
Speaker 1: was led to believe that led Zeppelin was like a
Speaker 1: demonic group. You know, if you're a music head, Bustle
Speaker 1: in your Head, Growl, google that. I believe there was
Speaker 1: a some past or something Baptist said that led Zeppelin
Speaker 1: was trying to lure our kids into Satanism, some silly shit,
Speaker 1: and they spun backwards the song Stairway to Heaven, and
Speaker 1: somehow he believes that Bustle in your Head Growl was
Speaker 1: some sort of demonic demon chant. That's the only words
Speaker 1: they can make from the backwards masking of Stairway to
Speaker 1: Heaven anyway, So the whole point is that, you know,
Speaker 1: I started to get into led Zeppelin well, firstly because
Speaker 1: the Beastie Boys started sampling them, so immediately my curiosity speaked.
Speaker 1: And soon thereafter, like if bands were having a jam
Speaker 1: or whatever and they would call out a song like
Speaker 1: the Lemons Song or Custard Pie or you know, in
Speaker 1: My Time of Dying or any of those led Zeppelin classics,
Speaker 1: I immediately knew it. So you know, it never hurts
Speaker 1: to why in your vocabulary, but it also I think,
Speaker 1: you know, you should also be aware of your history
Speaker 1: and not uphold your history in a way that it's
Speaker 1: disparaging to others or traumatic for others. Be proud of
Speaker 1: your history and learn other people's history too. So it
Speaker 1: should go without saying that QLs listeners know that already.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I thought I had my two cents.
Speaker 1: Next is the great late Prodigy of Mob Deep and
Speaker 1: Prodigy is going to speak about his family and their
Speaker 1: contributions to black culture through dance around New York City,
Speaker 1: and he shows that the black experience.
Speaker 2: Is not a monolith.
Speaker 1: Like what eventually brought you to the city to Queens.
Speaker 3: When I turned like eleven twelve, my mom's moved to
Speaker 3: Left Rack. She moved to Left Rack City. My pops
Speaker 3: had split up because my pop said did some crazy shit.
Speaker 3: My pops was wild man. He he had kidnapped me,
Speaker 3: took me to Detroit. We was living in Detroit for
Speaker 3: a minute, balling out of control. He was working in
Speaker 3: the stock market doing some crazy shit.
Speaker 2: And when did you live in Detroit?
Speaker 6: Man?
Speaker 3: This is like early eighties when scofid what year the
Speaker 3: scafface came out? Eighty three to three? Because my pops
Speaker 3: took me to the way. My pops took me to
Speaker 3: the movies in Detroit when at the premiere when Scarface
Speaker 3: first came out. So that's when I was out there.
Speaker 2: In age when you were nine, I was nine.
Speaker 3: So the lyrics pop talked, you try to shooting was
Speaker 3: seven and that was real that really? Oh yeah, the
Speaker 3: pop man, he was off the man that that that
Speaker 3: boy is something else? He was something else? Man.
Speaker 2: Was he a musician as well?
Speaker 3: Or like, yeah, he was. He was a singer, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. Like I said, he had that group,
Speaker 3: the Chances du Ok group. They had a couple of
Speaker 3: dope songs, you know what I mean. But my father's
Speaker 3: things was computers. In the early eighties. He I remember,
Speaker 3: being like probably five six years old.
Speaker 2: My father was.
Speaker 3: Working on Mcinitar's writing programs, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Really he was really really dope with it. I think
Speaker 3: it's a school called TCI. I think it's called TCI.
Speaker 3: My father went there and he actually got so good
Speaker 3: he became like a professor there. He started teaching. He
Speaker 3: was in the commercials and all that. Like after a while,
Speaker 3: he got really nice with it, and you know that's
Speaker 3: what he was into. Computers, heroin, alcohol, karate. My father
Speaker 3: had a dojo on Jamaica Avenue, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So he used to teach karate.
Speaker 2: You just said that convo back then. Computer it's crazy
Speaker 2: all that.
Speaker 3: It's very crazy, man. My pop's life was wow, it
Speaker 3: was wild. That was his thing. He loved computers and
Speaker 3: he loved fighting and just doing wold ship. He was crazy, man.
Speaker 1: And I know that you you have a closeness with
Speaker 1: your grandmother as well, that she was in the artist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my grandma, My grandmother was ill. She was she
Speaker 3: was one of the first Cotton Club dances when they
Speaker 3: first opened the Cotton Club way back and uh, you know,
Speaker 3: she was friends with Lena Horn. Horn used to dance
Speaker 3: there early before she became famous, you know. And that's
Speaker 3: how my grandmother met my grandfather because my grandfather used
Speaker 3: to play in the band at the Cotton Club, So
Speaker 3: that's how they met. And you know, after my grandmother
Speaker 3: started a dance school business in a basement of crib
Speaker 3: on a god Brewer and she started with like five students,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, And it just grew and
Speaker 3: grew over the years until to a point where she
Speaker 3: started renting the building. And then it grew to a
Speaker 3: point where she actually bought her own commercial building in Queens.
Speaker 3: She was like the first black woman to own a
Speaker 3: commercial space in Queens. So you know, it was a
Speaker 3: dance school business, you know what I mean. She was
Speaker 3: that was her thing, dancing. So a lot of her students, man,
Speaker 3: she has some famous students that she uh that she raised,
Speaker 3: like Ben Vereen is one of she raised. Seen like
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? And uh, he used to
Speaker 3: you know, be in the house all the time, like
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, anytime he had something going on.
Speaker 3: We used to watch it in the crab. I don't
Speaker 3: seen roots thousands of times, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: That's like, everybody get together watch Ben Ben is on.
Speaker 3: You know Michael Peters, he was a famous choreographer, Michael
Speaker 3: Michael Peters. Was that my grandmama's. That was when my
Speaker 3: grandma's students.
Speaker 2: So much shook.
Speaker 5: He did beat it.
Speaker 3: He dancing he did so like that was like events
Speaker 3: same thing.
Speaker 1: Like matter of fact, Peters is the and the beating
Speaker 1: nine battle.
Speaker 2: He's the one in all white.
Speaker 3: Be the one that got their hands tied up.
Speaker 5: When I was six, my dad introduced me to him
Speaker 5: and I was like, but you can't dance better? Than
Speaker 5: Michael Jackson, and he walked away with me with so
Speaker 5: much app toude like.
Speaker 3: Like I remember when I was a little kid, like
Speaker 3: we used to fly to Cali because a lot of
Speaker 3: her students live in Cali and whatnot, So we used
Speaker 3: to fly to Cali and visit them, and she used
Speaker 3: to take care of some business. And Michael Peters used
Speaker 3: to take me to the Universal Studios all the time.
Speaker 3: That was my favorite place when I was a little kid.
Speaker 3: Let's go again again. I've been there like a hundred
Speaker 3: times when I was a kid. That was my favorite ship,
Speaker 3: Like you know what I mean. But yeah, so this
Speaker 3: is my grandma. This is like my grandmother's life. She
Speaker 3: uh you know, this is her her thing in the
Speaker 3: dance world, and she got a lot of choreo cor
Speaker 3: aographers and she she helped out a lot of people
Speaker 3: as far as that in that world. So I grew
Speaker 3: up a lot around her concerts. She would do these
Speaker 3: concerts every year at Lincoln Center, at the Apollo at
Speaker 3: uh Carnegie Hall. You know, every year she would do
Speaker 3: like a big concert and you.
Speaker 2: Were a backstage kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me and my cousins be backstage wild and looking
Speaker 3: at the girls getting dressed in.
Speaker 2: Backstage.
Speaker 1: I used to watch old old ass dudes, you know,
Speaker 1: smoke reefers in the well yo.
Speaker 2: But he had a better backstage experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially at my grandmother's dance school. She like hundreds
Speaker 3: of girls from Queen's Like that was like that was man.
Speaker 3: I used to love that place when I was a
Speaker 3: little kid. Man, we had so much fun running around
Speaker 3: Jamaica Avenue and you know, having fun, man with all
Speaker 3: the girls there, and it was crazy crazy growing up,
Speaker 3: Like you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Quest Love Supreme. Good people.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's cool about the show is
Speaker 1: how different episodes can connect the dots. So before the
Speaker 1: ad break, Prodigy mentioned Ben Vereen and that was in
Speaker 1: the spring of twenty seventeen, before we lost p However,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four we had Quest Love Supreme spoke
Speaker 1: to Ben Veren, and Ben shared accounts of meeting Linkston
Speaker 1: News and his game changing work on the series Roots.
Speaker 1: Take me through your life as a creative. What was
Speaker 1: your first step into a profession.
Speaker 6: I just graduated from high school for the performing arts.
Speaker 6: There's a woman there named Janette Carol and she was
Speaker 6: doing Michelle called The Prodigal Sun off Broadway at the
Speaker 6: Greenwich News Theater. So I'm talking about about a professional show, right.
Speaker 6: I never knew anything about Broadway or the the I
Speaker 6: had never been on a Broadway stage until Bob Fosse.
Speaker 6: But I go to the show. It was in a
Speaker 6: graduate Green's roof theater. It was downstairs, a little theater,
Speaker 6: and uh, that was my first production. And one night
Speaker 6: I'm coming out of the theater. I was in my first
Speaker 6: Son of be Bonn and I was lay getting to
Speaker 6: the theater. I had to spend time with my first
Speaker 6: wife and got back to the theater and the dance
Speaker 6: captain had taken my role and gave it to his love.
Speaker 6: And I wasn't going to have that because it was
Speaker 6: my role. So I went on stage anyway. So it
Speaker 6: stage where I said, they can't do that. I said, no,
Speaker 6: they can't. So I went on stage. Guy, I got dressed,
Speaker 6: went on stage, and we're fighting doing the show on stage.
Speaker 6: I'm he's in my place. I'm hitting him, he's hitting me.
Speaker 6: This org and people must say, they're going, wow, this
Speaker 6: show is so real.
Speaker 4: I died.
Speaker 6: So I come off stage. I'm angry. I'm leaving the theater.
Speaker 6: I'm going to Glenn's house, you know, you know, getting
Speaker 6: myself hold off. And it's a little guy sitting outside
Speaker 6: of the door, and he says, he says, excuse me, Yeah,
Speaker 6: what do you want? He says, I'm looking for Benjamin Verena.
Speaker 6: I'm bench Maine. What do you want? He said, you
Speaker 6: look like you could use the dinner. My name was Langston,
Speaker 6: used I wrote this.
Speaker 7: Whoa, Well, you can't just you just drop that. You
Speaker 7: did that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, took me to dinner, he said, you looked like
Speaker 6: nobody he did it. He took me a little to
Speaker 6: a little Italian joy in the village, and we sat
Speaker 6: and talked, and he told me about himself and told
Speaker 6: me a guy he's written the play and invited me
Speaker 6: up the Harlem for the first time. So that was
Speaker 6: my first professional job. Uh. And the time would buy.
Speaker 6: And the next time I got a job was uh
Speaker 6: you'll read about in the book. Was on the subway,
Speaker 6: I jumped and turnstile. I went to New York City.
Speaker 6: I was standing on the corner. I went by my school.
Speaker 6: I was really depressed. I went by performing Arts. I
Speaker 6: looked at the school and going where am I going,
Speaker 6: what's going to happen? And I walked down to the
Speaker 6: news stand and I opened up a newspaper. Backstage in
Speaker 6: his audition for that day for a show called Sweet
Speaker 6: Charity going to a place called Las Vegas, starring Woman
Speaker 6: and Juliette Prowse, directed by Bob Fosse. And that was
Speaker 6: the first time I was stept on Broadway. Storage at
Speaker 6: at the Palace Theater. I went to the audition. It
Speaker 6: was like the opening of all that jazz. Yes, and
Speaker 6: I went, that was one of those kids on the
Speaker 6: stage standing there washing. This cool guy walked down the
Speaker 6: middle of the aisle smoking a cigarette. He gets up
Speaker 6: on stage, he does the demonstration for us to do,
Speaker 6: and the ashes never fall. I said, this.
Speaker 5: Guy, he just smoked to the end and the ashes
Speaker 5: just grew and grew.
Speaker 6: Hung there, but he did the combination turns and boom
Speaker 6: and steps and step boom, and then stopped and going
Speaker 6: you take me, okay, do the steps. We couldn't do
Speaker 6: the steps because you too watching the asses see if
Speaker 6: they're in fall.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So my mother is, you know, probably the show's biggest fan,
Speaker 1: and she.
Speaker 2: Will scream on me.
Speaker 1: You drop so many names that she'll scream on me
Speaker 1: if I don't go in the further detail. And my
Speaker 1: mom's from Pittsburgh. Okay, I'm gonna ask about Bob Fosse.
Speaker 1: But you mentioned the legendary Martha Graham. You study under it.
Speaker 1: What was what was it like studying under Martha Graham.
Speaker 6: Well, I didn't actually have a class about the Graham.
Speaker 6: I studied with one of her dancers named David Woods. Okay,
Speaker 6: it was one of the teachers there. It was amazing,
Speaker 6: you know, for me getting into the middle. The first
Speaker 6: day of school, they have you line up and then
Speaker 6: they have you change and you get dressed for your class.
Speaker 6: You go to your classes. And my first day in school,
Speaker 6: I wore my suit that wore was sensational Tales to Brooklyn.
Speaker 6: My mother bought me in a tash sharecase. I stole
Speaker 6: like my attash shad case. And then they said, go
Speaker 6: get dressed. All the guys went and put on their
Speaker 6: dance clothes. I put on my dance clothes, put my
Speaker 6: suit back oncu that's what it was raised, you know,
Speaker 6: don't just walk around your underwear. So I get back
Speaker 6: out there in my suit on. She said, excuse me,
Speaker 6: doctor was saying you're taking class of that. I said, yes, said, well,
Speaker 6: where's your dance clothes? I said, my suit. You can't
Speaker 6: dance that way, Get in there, put on your dance clothes.
Speaker 6: And that was the beginning of whoa wonderment. Yeah. But
Speaker 6: David Woods who was really the foundation of my actings
Speaker 6: as well, because he would tell us, he say, you
Speaker 6: can't just dance. It's got to tell a story. So
Speaker 6: find the story that you want to tell through your movement.
Speaker 6: And that's why dance is so personal to me.
Speaker 8: You know, in.
Speaker 6: Mardern dance, you must tell a story. It isn't about
Speaker 6: just steps. It's about emotion. It's about the story that
Speaker 6: you're telling. Although it may not be the choreographer may
Speaker 6: not is telling you his story. But you got to
Speaker 6: find your story within the movement. What makes you move
Speaker 6: this way, what makes you sing this way? What makes
Speaker 6: you tell your story through drama, through the word this way?
Speaker 6: You have to create it, at least for me. You
Speaker 6: have to relate to something within you that connects to
Speaker 6: that emotion. And that's how we dance. That's how I
Speaker 6: danced for.
Speaker 1: A lot of us, at least for my generation. This
Speaker 1: conversation is really transformational as far as like my mind state,
Speaker 1: because I think every person thinks that their era in
Speaker 1: the world is the kind of you know, black and white,
Speaker 1: the color Wizard of Oz thing like everyone thinks like, oh,
Speaker 1: when I was born, then suddenly modern times began.
Speaker 2: But you know, I.
Speaker 9: Would assume that until Roots came along, that a lot
Speaker 9: of African Americans weren't even thinking in terms of their
Speaker 9: history going back to Africa, unless you know, they were
Speaker 9: of the generation that watched Tarzan as a kid in
Speaker 9: the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 5: The Marcus Garvey movement, and he was down.
Speaker 2: With that, right.
Speaker 1: So what I'm asking you is when you're told to
Speaker 1: tell your story and the vocabulary of our African history
Speaker 1: really wasn't super enforced unless you were part of specialized
Speaker 1: movements in your mind, when you are expressing yourself and
Speaker 1: reaching inside for your emotions and through dance, what is
Speaker 1: it that drove you creatively? Like, what are you thinking
Speaker 1: of when they're telling you tell your story?
Speaker 6: Well, I'm thinking of my emotional feelings and what I
Speaker 6: feel in that moment of that story makes sense, all right?
Speaker 6: If I have safe For example, if I tell a
Speaker 6: story of my let's see keep a simple going to
Speaker 6: performing us. What did that make you feel? Like? How
Speaker 6: did you feel the first day you stepped on that stage,
Speaker 6: when you stepped into that studio? What was it feeling
Speaker 6: to you and feeling? What's that story that you want
Speaker 6: to tell right there? And then that creates a whole movement,
Speaker 6: yes for us coming up. And I was as far
Speaker 6: as we're talking about ancestry now, when we talk about
Speaker 6: black history in my school coming up, in my era,
Speaker 6: it was one paragraph your slave and Lincoln freed you,
Speaker 6: you know, and we know that's not true. And long
Speaker 6: comes a wonderful man named Alex Haley who says, I'm
Speaker 6: going to watch that because it's not true. And he
Speaker 6: goes back to Gambia and he finds his roots, and
Speaker 6: he writes a wonderful book called Roots. And we all
Speaker 6: now say, and now the world is going whoa wait
Speaker 6: a minute, waking up. There was more to it than
Speaker 6: this what's in our history books. There's more to my story,
Speaker 6: you see. It's so interesting. When Roots came out, it
Speaker 6: was just the book and I had heard about it,
Speaker 6: and like lot of us there, and I just knew
Speaker 6: I wanted to be a part of that movie, that
Speaker 6: TV series that was And I went to my agent
Speaker 6: and I said to him, listen, there's this book I
Speaker 6: think ABC is gonna make a movie out of it
Speaker 6: called Roots Cinder. I really i'd like to be to
Speaker 6: try out what he says to me, Ben, you're a
Speaker 6: song and dance man.
Speaker 10: They're looking for actors, he said, So listen, there's a
Speaker 10: there's this group that starting out, you got a big
Speaker 10: hit called your Family's Sister Sledge. He says, they're going
Speaker 10: to open for you in Chicago, So why don't you
Speaker 10: go do that? And you have another gig for you
Speaker 10: guys down in Savannah. So I said yeah, But Kenny said, Ben,
Speaker 10: they're looking for actors. So I get on I get
Speaker 10: on the plane. I go to Chicago. Sisters Sledge. They
Speaker 10: opened to me a wonderful these little girls, the little Girls,
Speaker 10: and we get to Sabana, Georgia.
Speaker 6: He used to do a character called Bert Williams about
Speaker 6: my ancestry, about the performer there was a time in
Speaker 6: America history where black people in the theater were not
Speaker 6: allowed on stage unless we wore a blackface, and he
Speaker 6: went through that. So I told that story and coming
Speaker 6: at the show, that afternoon in Savannah, Georgia, there was
Speaker 6: a guy came backstages and they would staying Margolis and
Speaker 6: he said, I want you to read my Chicken George.
Speaker 6: And I said, I said, said, what's the chicken George?
Speaker 6: He said, we'll shoe it down here shooting the show
Speaker 6: called Roots, he said, And I said, I don't care, man,
Speaker 6: if Chicken George's gout and the boat going, let me
Speaker 6: yut of here, let me yut here, please please, I'll
Speaker 6: be there. And that's how I got the bar. But
Speaker 6: I had no idea how deep it was going to
Speaker 6: go and what I mean. It opened up a whole
Speaker 6: avenue for me and for all of us to look
Speaker 6: back and honor our ancestry, which you must continue to do,
Speaker 6: to stay forward, because our ancestry of the reason why
Speaker 6: we're here today, their struggle, their fight, their determination to
Speaker 6: go through slavery. Imagine coming across the water, having being
Speaker 6: stolen from your family. You're on and you're put on chains,
Speaker 6: change what was a chain, and you're being put on
Speaker 6: a boat on and you put to an island and
Speaker 6: you're gone away with a bunch of people you've never
Speaker 6: seen the white and you see a bunch of other
Speaker 6: people your color, were not the same languages, and we're
Speaker 6: all chained inside this boat and someone jumping off the
Speaker 6: side as they refuse to go to They don't know
Speaker 6: what's gonna happen. They don't want to be a part
Speaker 6: of it. But the bravery of those people who went
Speaker 6: through that passage and stood on that on that slave
Speaker 6: block and watch their families being torn apart, which which
Speaker 6: I think in my mind, destroyed our culture togetherness, that strength,
Speaker 6: and to tell their stories to be forgotten. No, no,
Speaker 6: not on my watch.
Speaker 1: How long did they give you to prepare that role,
Speaker 1: take us through the process of preparing, executing, and then
Speaker 1: leaving that character.
Speaker 6: I never looked their character boar.
Speaker 2: All right, ta good joys.
Speaker 6: Well, for me, it was all because I understand my
Speaker 6: family we never sat around and talked about then, because
Speaker 6: we were surviving in the now. My family was the
Speaker 6: educators or the you know, they were not of that ilk,
Speaker 6: you know, if they were field workers, you know, survivors,
Speaker 6: and so we never sat around talked about education, about government,
Speaker 6: about what's going on day to day survival. So when
Speaker 6: I got this, I knew there was a deeper story.
Speaker 6: When I got the opportunity to tell my story, it
Speaker 6: was like, how do I find my research? So I
Speaker 6: called my elders. You know, can you tell me about
Speaker 6: what it was like during this time that time? And
Speaker 6: you know, and a lot of it came from imagination
Speaker 6: once again, what it must have felt like. And Chicken George,
Speaker 6: he's so beautiful.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 6: The one thing I do is that when I get
Speaker 6: to a character, especially someone like Chicken George, I asked
Speaker 6: permission to enter into that realm of consciousness. What's been
Speaker 6: like for you? Educate me, teach me? And he took
Speaker 6: me on his journey. And I tell you the respect
Speaker 6: and the admiration that the cast and the crew had
Speaker 6: doing that, it was amazing. It was amazing.
Speaker 5: Did it feel safe? Did they provide like a cause?
Speaker 5: You know in twenty twenty if you guys made this
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty four or twenty five, there would be
Speaker 5: all kind of counseling on set, and you know, when
Speaker 5: you when you broke out a character, there'd be somebody
Speaker 5: to make sure are you okay? Like, how did y'all
Speaker 5: handle that? No? Not in twenty twenty four, Sorry to
Speaker 5: jump in now, go please, That will come later oh
Speaker 5: not in twenty twenty four, my bad.
Speaker 6: Okay yaour During that time it was self nurturing. And
Speaker 6: that's why I say the cat the crew, even the
Speaker 6: crew was aware that we were touching upon something that
Speaker 6: was in other words, I hate to use this word
Speaker 6: but taboo. But the respect and the reverence that the
Speaker 6: crew had and would like to see that one scene.
Speaker 6: I never forget the scene where Richard Rowntree was dating
Speaker 6: my mother time Leslie other one was playing kissing and
Speaker 6: there's a scene where she had talked him into taking
Speaker 6: her to find her father and they go back and
Speaker 6: they're late coming back to the plantation and his masa
Speaker 6: at the time was supposed to tastise him and Richard
Speaker 6: Rowntree was supposed to beg for him not to beat him.
Speaker 6: And I'll never get this. Richard said, you want me
Speaker 6: to grobble to a white man? Do you know why?
Speaker 5: I am mm hmm.
Speaker 6: I don't grabble for no white man. And the direct
Speaker 6: said said, Richard, we need this just for the next scene.
Speaker 6: He said no to he said, he said you can
Speaker 6: do this. He says, I ain't grabbling no white man.
Speaker 6: It's like that, And he said, well, he said just
Speaker 6: one time, he said. He looked around, he looked at them,
Speaker 6: at Kissey and my mother Leslie, looked at the castle
Speaker 6: and the crew. You went, you got one shot and
Speaker 6: he gets down. He does that scene where he says,
Speaker 6: please bost some morsel, don't beat me, and we just
Speaker 6: finished the direction that gun. Okay, that was a good friend.
Speaker 6: Anybody go home. The one said okay, thank you, thank
Speaker 6: you very much. Because it was, like, I mean, all
Speaker 6: of a sudden, we had to reflect on the fact
Speaker 6: that what it must have been like to have the
Speaker 6: wobble to white people for our survival. That the big
Speaker 6: you know, I think about my oof, don't get me started.
Speaker 6: I think about what people went through as slaves, kings, inventors, doctors,
Speaker 6: leaders being stripped. We built empires and civilizations and now
Speaker 6: we are at the bottom of the chain. They gave
Speaker 6: us slop and we made it a proisine. We made
Speaker 6: it a proisine.
Speaker 5: I can't even get to that extent of thought. It
Speaker 5: makes me think of also the artists who have had
Speaker 5: to play these roles. And it's funny because as you said,
Speaker 5: as you said, this was a taboo thing and now
Speaker 5: it's not. Now we've had several movies that have followed,
Speaker 5: and it makes me think about all the black actors
Speaker 5: who have had to tackle these roles, like from Chiwaitel
Speaker 5: e Joe for to Jamie Fox, to Lapita and Jongo.
Speaker 5: And I'm curious if anybody ever reached back to you
Speaker 5: and went, how did you do this?
Speaker 7: How did you do this thing?
Speaker 6: Because we who were there at the first beginning a
Speaker 6: waiting to say this is how we did it? Because
Speaker 6: what annoysment? I loved my brother LaVar Burden, love him,
Speaker 6: yet he felt that maybe I let me take it
Speaker 6: this way, but he never allowed us to talk to
Speaker 6: the cast, They say, what did you go through? How
Speaker 6: did you get there? At this point?
Speaker 5: Oh with the newer roots? Are you talking about the
Speaker 5: new roots? The newer roots?
Speaker 6: I said, Okay, they did a good job, but as
Speaker 6: far as they could do. But we could have given
Speaker 6: them another layer that's much deeper because we were there.
Speaker 5: We were I was curious about thank you for answering
Speaker 5: that question.
Speaker 6: We cried and wept and we what to do, but
Speaker 6: we knew we had to do it for the art
Speaker 6: and to tell the truth story as far as Hollywood
Speaker 6: would allow us to tell the true stories. You understand,
Speaker 6: Ruth just scraunged upon the surface really went down, But
Speaker 6: what really went down? You get into those wounds, you
Speaker 6: go deeper. They were knights. I come home and my
Speaker 6: wife Nancy, she go you okay, I say yeah, And
Speaker 6: nights I was just being tears and he was like, okay, okay,
Speaker 6: and let me get myself ready. Okay, let's go do
Speaker 6: the scene. And although I was friend chicken George, who
Speaker 6: was like a dandy, but there was that moment when
Speaker 6: he finds out his father is white. It's gone through
Speaker 6: and watching your fellow neighbor brothers, they whipped because they
Speaker 6: didn't want to pick up something they didn't want to do,
Speaker 6: so they said the same wrong thing because they were
Speaker 6: field niggas, then the house niggas, because it was to
Speaker 6: you a little better with the field nigga telling those stories,
Speaker 6: and I think those stories have not been told enough.
Speaker 6: As long as my Jewish brother and sisters can tell
Speaker 6: us about the Holocaust, we must talk about our Holocaust.
Speaker 6: Excuse me, agreed, Let's read so we know where we
Speaker 6: are going, otherwise they will do it to us again.
Speaker 1: So before that last break, we shared a clip from
Speaker 1: Ben Vereen, right, now we got Jennifer Lewis, who just
Speaker 1: gave team supreme wisdom on life from her experience and courage.
Speaker 1: I guess you can say in and out, I've been
Speaker 1: doing therapy for like thirty years. But you know the
Speaker 1: thing is, when the pandemic came, really you know again,
Speaker 1: like I do, I feel like a person shouldn't have
Speaker 1: to be at rock bottom to make the change.
Speaker 2: So that's why I'm really glad the pandemic happened.
Speaker 1: Because it wasn't a rock bottom moment, But that was
Speaker 1: definitely somewhat of a paradigm shift for me and taken
Speaker 1: mental health seriously and all those things. But you mentioned something,
Speaker 1: and I noticed that probably the time that I might
Speaker 1: be liable to get in an argument.
Speaker 2: I mean, not a.
Speaker 1: Fight, not like pugilism or anything. But there's a moment
Speaker 1: after I get off stage where I can't describe the feeling.
Speaker 1: And you you said that, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: so I'm not I've you know, I just thought like, well,
Speaker 1: me're sometimes you're just in an asshole after the thirty
Speaker 1: minutes after roots show. It's almost like after a root show,
Speaker 1: I purposely look for a place to just sit silent
Speaker 1: and literally come down and.
Speaker 2: I can't explain it.
Speaker 1: And the thing is is like right after a show,
Speaker 1: that's when people were pulling for you and Amir, let's
Speaker 1: talk to get it write, and I can't explain. And
Speaker 1: the thing is, it's like, because these people aren't entertainers,
Speaker 1: it's hard to really explain to them the process I
Speaker 1: go through, which is kind of why it's almost like
Speaker 1: an ad that feeling of when you're done a show,
Speaker 1: and that how you feel is such a description less
Speaker 1: addiction that I can't describe that. I figured out that
Speaker 1: for the at least the last thirty years, I've been
Speaker 1: doing DJ gigs after the Root show because I love
Speaker 1: music and because I love DJ, but basically I need
Speaker 1: to slowly come down off that high normalcy.
Speaker 2: So usually after.
Speaker 1: Root show, I will DJ for three hours so that
Speaker 1: way I don't have to talk to people. I'm playing
Speaker 1: music and I come down. But and sometimes when I'm
Speaker 1: not DJing, I wonder what that is, And I thought
Speaker 1: I was the only person going through that, because again,
Speaker 1: if I feel weird in talking about the mental health
Speaker 1: space thing and have my occupation, because I always feel
Speaker 1: like people look at me like eh, here's the world
Speaker 1: Stiny's violin. Like, if people are in a certain profession,
Speaker 1: they might not. They might feel unworthy of having problems
Speaker 1: or whatnot.
Speaker 2: Like people might not.
Speaker 5: At this point, the world knows entertainers have trauma.
Speaker 7: Right, I'm just let me interject here. Yes, yes, please please.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 12: First of all, we are not normal creatures. Yeah right,
Speaker 12: we are artists. We are different. Are we better or
Speaker 12: worse than anyone? No, we just are who we are
Speaker 12: and we form who we form the artistreet.
Speaker 7: It's like Lena Simone said, an artist's duty is.
Speaker 12: To speak to the times. Nina Simone didn't hide her
Speaker 12: pain and need. It's a more laid it on the piano.
Speaker 12: We have to learn where to put that quest. You
Speaker 12: have to put that somewhere. You have to compartmentalize that
Speaker 12: you expressed it beautifully. It's called a glory train. Love
Speaker 12: you hear me talking to you. It's a glory train.
Speaker 12: And nobody can stay on that train too long.
Speaker 7: You got to come off.
Speaker 12: You got to get in the grass, and you got
Speaker 12: to surround yourself with nature and have that gratitude. It
Speaker 12: is a gratitude moment, so use it for that. You
Speaker 12: don't have to go crazy. Most people go and get
Speaker 12: drunk and party and carry on. Okay, you get a
Speaker 12: couple of those a month, but then sit the fuck
Speaker 12: down and talk about those feelings.
Speaker 7: Write them down so that the next time you feel it,
Speaker 7: you have something to balance it.
Speaker 12: Nobody's coming with the answer, nobody's coming with the recipe.
Speaker 12: You got to pay attention to the self. It is
Speaker 12: the journey within that will get you where you need
Speaker 12: to be, because what you will discover, hmm, is how
Speaker 12: short life is.
Speaker 7: Listen to me, you want to know how You want
Speaker 7: to know how I live?
Speaker 12: I live like I got five minutes left?
Speaker 7: What if? What if you add five FDA minutes left?
Speaker 7: Who would you call? Hmm? Think about that?
Speaker 3: Shit?
Speaker 6: What if?
Speaker 7: And I live like that? I ain't gonna lie to you.
Speaker 12: Sometimes it's something as like when my assistant leaves. I
Speaker 12: want to swim, but the shadows have.
Speaker 7: Come over the pool so it gets a little.
Speaker 12: Chill, and I stand there and go, oh, I don't
Speaker 12: want to get in this pool. Jenny, get in the
Speaker 12: fucking pool and relax yourself.
Speaker 7: You gotta talk to yourself.
Speaker 12: But guess why I got in the pool, Because when
Speaker 12: I woke up, I wrote it down. You will swim today.
Speaker 12: You got That's what living on purpose is about. You
Speaker 12: can't go willy nelly through this bitch.
Speaker 7: It'll eat you a line. This is why that you
Speaker 7: are in charge. Write the ship down.
Speaker 12: You write your story instead of like I said, go
Speaker 12: on willy nilly skipping timptoeing through the fucking tulips.
Speaker 7: That's what life. Look, Life is not a rehearsal. Live
Speaker 7: this bitch.
Speaker 13: Can I just say real quick, excuse me?
Speaker 5: Let me let me just say this, And I hate
Speaker 5: to be on corny and go to the book that
Speaker 5: you have our walking in Your Joy? But I just realized,
Speaker 5: Am I saying that walking in your joy?
Speaker 7: Yes? Walking in my joy?
Speaker 5: In my joy? But it's so interesting because a lot
Speaker 5: of people write books and they say things, But I
Speaker 5: like that you have some real practical things, like what
Speaker 5: you just said to a mirror about living in those
Speaker 5: five minutes. And then you wrote something else that caught
Speaker 5: me and you said, when you're feeling down, you come
Speaker 5: up with a song about your how much you love
Speaker 5: yourself and how much.
Speaker 7: People love you.
Speaker 5: That's not I'm realizing. Although I haven't finished the book,
Speaker 5: can people like depend that like you pretty much got
Speaker 5: little workable jewels in here. Not just like girl, live
Speaker 5: your best life. It's actually like no, exactly exactly, but.
Speaker 7: Here's the work. The work is how am I gonna
Speaker 7: live my best life?
Speaker 11: Right?
Speaker 12: And that's what And that's the work. That's what you
Speaker 12: write down in the morning, y'all. I don't know if
Speaker 12: you know, but when I wrote The Mother Black Hollywood,
Speaker 12: I started writing in a journal in the seventh grade,
Speaker 12: No I because I knew I was gonna be a
Speaker 12: star and I would need my book.
Speaker 7: That's seventh grade continuously.
Speaker 12: I am sixty five. There are sixty seven journals.
Speaker 14: Oh I'm so jealous.
Speaker 7: That is why don't we do this?
Speaker 5: Why do we start and stop?
Speaker 7: And I got about six?
Speaker 12: Damn it sood details? She saw the Black Hollywood.
Speaker 3: It's so good.
Speaker 7: Because of the details.
Speaker 12: I can tell you that I had hot apple pie all.
Speaker 7: The mold with your only Ralph on this date. Damn
Speaker 7: you see, you see, you see, so nothing is wasted.
Speaker 7: Live your life.
Speaker 12: And when I got into therapy the first time, my
Speaker 12: therapist looked at me when I told her I had
Speaker 12: written all those journals.
Speaker 7: She said, that's what saved your life.
Speaker 4: Little girl, I believe it.
Speaker 7: I didn't know I was saving my life. Yeah, but that.
Speaker 12: Journal served in me learning at an early age. I
Speaker 12: didn't even know I was doing it to be in
Speaker 12: charge of me and leave other people alone. Jour people
Speaker 12: come and go for a season, let it go. When
Speaker 12: they're no longer of reflection of you.
Speaker 7: You're not gonna be comfortable around them.
Speaker 12: If the toxic shit is going on the lines and
Speaker 12: the chaos, y'all get the fuck out of there.
Speaker 7: You ain't there.
Speaker 12: There are many rooms to go to, there are many cities.
Speaker 7: All your dude, leave the room fuck out of there.
Speaker 12: Shit simple, don't sit there with all that drama and shitty.
Speaker 5: Practical things you can use.
Speaker 7: It's so boring. It's boring.
Speaker 2: I said.
Speaker 12: The greatest sin is somebody to say, oh, I'm bored,
Speaker 12: bitch thet to.
Speaker 7: Have my money.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So, of course, like in the last two years is
Speaker 1: the most that I've heard black people speaking on finding
Speaker 1: joy and finding their mental health and all those things.
Speaker 1: Because previously there's a secret I would never like in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, I would never share with nobody that.
Speaker 5: Likes trauma attached to that you right, because.
Speaker 2: You don't want to share like people think I'm crazy
Speaker 2: or whatever. The thing is is.
Speaker 1: That I know that for black people, their go to
Speaker 1: answer was always the church, especially of an older you know,
Speaker 1: I was born in seventy one.
Speaker 2: I know you were born before I was fifty seven.
Speaker 1: For a lot of people in you know, pre eighties
Speaker 1: people whatever, like their thing is always like I'll find
Speaker 1: God or I'll talk to my preacher.
Speaker 2: How so this is almost a phenomenally to hear.
Speaker 1: Of your generation, of your experience really not even diving
Speaker 1: into the pool of mental therapy, but I mean you're
Speaker 1: going to the abyss of it, You're going to the
Speaker 1: deepest level of it.
Speaker 2: So what was it?
Speaker 1: What was the moment that told you that my mental
Speaker 1: health has to be addressed in and handled this way
Speaker 1: as opposed to I do consider that, I do consider
Speaker 1: organized religion as a vice akin to gambling, sex, joys.
Speaker 7: Let me say this to you.
Speaker 12: Yeah, there's a line in the movie I did, Karina
Speaker 12: Karina where the the little girl says, these people believe
Speaker 12: I'm paraphrasing, but they said, these people believe in God.
Speaker 12: And the people that somebody has said it was Jewish.
Speaker 12: And the question that was asked by a child was
Speaker 12: She said, why do these people sing about this? And
Speaker 12: the mother said because it makes them feel good? And
Speaker 12: the little girl said, what's wrong with that? Mother said,
Speaker 12: I guess nothing. Look, if you want to be an
Speaker 12: organized religion, that's okay. Let people do what they want
Speaker 12: to do. That's what gets me through life. To allow
Speaker 12: allow others to be where they are. What you're gonna do,
Speaker 12: Go and make them a Buddhist, go and make them
Speaker 12: a move them. You're gonna make them what.
Speaker 6: You gonna do.
Speaker 12: Once again, once again, pay attention to yourself. Everybody on
Speaker 12: this planet has one job, and one job on it self.
Speaker 7: Care and if you need to cry to Jesus to.
Speaker 12: Do that, then you go on and cry to Jesus.
Speaker 12: But allow other people to cry to whoever the hell
Speaker 12: they want to cry to. That's what I don't like
Speaker 12: about religion. Everybody think their religion is the best one.
Speaker 7: So oh, I don't believe in that. Lead people alone,
Speaker 7: Lead people alone.
Speaker 12: If they want to work, you, let them work to Jesus,
Speaker 12: let him work the Buddha or a Mohammed or Allah.
Speaker 12: Let people do what the fuck they want to do.
Speaker 7: I know who I am. I searched every religion in
Speaker 7: this world.
Speaker 12: I have been down the road, let's travel, and when
Speaker 12: I got to the end, that wasn't nothing but the
Speaker 12: big ass mirror. You cannot run. Wherever you run, you
Speaker 12: will meet yourself.
Speaker 7: So there's no running. And I told them on the
Speaker 7: breakfast Club, I got money.
Speaker 2: To run, and you can't even run.
Speaker 6: You can't run.
Speaker 7: You can don't ask me. Don't ask me for now.
Speaker 7: I'm like, what's his name?
Speaker 12: The baby I love, Daje Pel I'm rich, bitch, don't.
Speaker 7: Ask me for shit? All right, there you go.
Speaker 5: What do you say to him?
Speaker 6: Even?
Speaker 5: Like to what onn Amir's question, like you're leading the
Speaker 5: pack of your generation in that way, like he said,
Speaker 5: like you're it is kind of special. Do you see
Speaker 5: in the difference in the generational hower Now? I'm using
Speaker 5: words and had vocabulary for things that we didn't have before.
Speaker 7: When I went I Got you.
Speaker 12: When I went on the road with the Mother Black Hollywood,
Speaker 12: because it was my journey through bipolar disorder, I was
Speaker 12: able to feel not only the temperature, but the temperament
Speaker 12: of the United States.
Speaker 7: I went all over.
Speaker 12: During the Trump era, people are starting to wake up.
Speaker 12: I was very pleased. They're starting to get counseling in churches,
Speaker 12: they are starting to put more counseling in youth centers.
Speaker 12: Our children are falling apart, and I'm not the only
Speaker 12: woman in the world that cares. People are coming together.
Speaker 12: We are getting better. Everybody wanted to talk about the stigma. Yes,
Speaker 12: there is a stigma, but we are getting better. You See,
Speaker 12: my mother didn't have the Oprah Winfrey ship. Okay, that's
Speaker 12: what I'm saying. Mamma didn't know nothing about mental illness.
Speaker 12: And yet if someone were to ask me, I would say,
Speaker 12: absolutely she was.
Speaker 7: I do believe that she was depressed.
Speaker 12: She had me when she was twenty six years old
Speaker 12: and I was her seventh child. Whoa, she was scrubbed,
Speaker 12: and she was scrubbing white people's floors.
Speaker 7: You think she had time to give me affection.
Speaker 12: She was exhausted by the time I came along. Listen
Speaker 12: eve Insler, who wrote the Vagina Monologues.
Speaker 7: She ran all around the world.
Speaker 12: She went to Africa with the women that were having
Speaker 12: the clitterictism.
Speaker 7: If it's clitterists, I don't know. If it's her plural,
Speaker 7: I only have one, all right. I used to have
Speaker 7: three but I get y'all want remember one of those
Speaker 7: first wnch stns.
Speaker 12: That bitch tied to when we just had listen, God, damn,
Speaker 12: I have.
Speaker 7: To web it.
Speaker 12: That bitch tied to glitter and she.
Speaker 7: Has something like that, something like that.
Speaker 12: It was funny, but it Let me get back to this, sorry,
Speaker 12: let me get back to serious ship. Listen all I
Speaker 12: can say that, then not go into three clitterists, honey.
Speaker 5: Last in the glitterists, I did too.
Speaker 12: I need to find somebody to tell me whether clittericist
Speaker 12: it's clitterisstens.
Speaker 7: Come on, Jennifer, if.
Speaker 1: You don't need clitter, clit glitteriz, I have no idea.
Speaker 7: You know, I'll come out of the bag with anything.
Speaker 5: I don't multiple clitterists last.
Speaker 7: Thank you? Did you look it up?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 7: I was in uh.
Speaker 12: When I was in the serah gaddy uh, two little
Speaker 12: baby rhinoceroses thought I had some food, so they came
Speaker 12: over to.
Speaker 7: Me and they just gone like this, just a don't get,
Speaker 7: don't get, don't.
Speaker 12: And they when they saw it and have no food,
Speaker 12: they kind of don't don't get don't away from me,
Speaker 12: and I start screaming.
Speaker 7: I ever heard of Jenny Craig.
Speaker 3: Had no food for you.
Speaker 12: I'll cuts out a rhinoceros, bitch you hear me? And
Speaker 12: then I had to look up whether it was not
Speaker 12: rhinocerih because most of my friends was wait.
Speaker 7: Man, because wait a minute.
Speaker 12: Listen, because most of my friends are major intellectuals.
Speaker 7: I keep smart people around me.
Speaker 12: Honey, listen, I can feel enough for everybody.
Speaker 7: You just tell me what the ship? What's going on?
Speaker 6: But here?
Speaker 12: But if I listen, if I'm a stand in the
Speaker 12: getty and cuffs out two baby rhinoceroses, what do you
Speaker 12: think I'm gonna do with the story of the clitterists?
Speaker 12: Get the fuck out, Let's go.
Speaker 7: What's that?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 7: Cos is out? But what you need to know is,
Speaker 7: Jennifer Lord, We'll go anywhere.
Speaker 12: I ain't no shame in my game, baby, I'll do
Speaker 12: anything to make people laugh.
Speaker 1: So clearly, if you're a longtime fan of the show,
Speaker 1: you'll notice that we've had a curious metamorphosis. In the beginning,
Speaker 1: we were raw talking over each other like there's no
Speaker 1: rules of podcasting or interviewing when you first jump in
Speaker 1: the game. And of course, unlike radio, where you're supposed
Speaker 1: to go to communication school and learn how to backsell
Speaker 1: and do stuff in like fifteen seconds.
Speaker 2: Distinctly, it's really a learning process.
Speaker 1: Learning process when you podcast on your own without any
Speaker 1: communication training. Then I'll say, like, after twenty twenty kind
Speaker 1: of had a life epiphany, and without really getting too
Speaker 1: deep into it, let's just say that I became more
Speaker 1: aware of what I wanted to put out into the world.
Speaker 1: And I guess in some abstract way, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: going to Hamilton saying like not wasting my shot, or
Speaker 1: you know, Chuck de says, not rhyming for the sake
Speaker 1: of riddling. Just want to be more mindful of any
Speaker 1: content that I put out in the world. And you know,
Speaker 1: of course that's not in the kind of conservative eighties slash,
Speaker 1: you know, typic Gore way of you know, this whole
Speaker 1: idea that positivity or that sort of thing is seeing
Speaker 1: as a bore or a negative. I think wisdom an
Speaker 1: accurate information. It's important. I think processing of emotions is important.
Speaker 1: I think creativity is important. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: guests like coming onto the show because they're not here
Speaker 1: just to sell you product.
Speaker 2: You know, we're just so used to promoting the movie,
Speaker 2: promoting the movie.
Speaker 1: Promoting the movie, artists rarely get a chance to just
Speaker 1: talk about how they feel or feel safe to do, so,
Speaker 1: you know, and sometimes we've had episodes in which people
Speaker 1: have been wide open. One of the episodes which I
Speaker 1: you know, even though you've heard me say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: the Jimmy Jam episode or the Babyface episode or one
Speaker 1: of those drunken Christmas episodes, the Family Stand episode is
Speaker 1: definitely exemplary of where there was no filter whatsoever, and
Speaker 1: you know, the truth came out, feelings came out. And
Speaker 1: then there's some episodes in which people held back. We
Speaker 1: still to this day, Joe about Faith Newman's very type
Speaker 1: lipped experiences in the record industry in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 2: Understandable.
Speaker 1: You know, what happens in life stays in life in
Speaker 1: that present moment when it was. But for me, like,
Speaker 1: wisdom is important. So that way, even if you listen
Speaker 1: to an old episode, like you could listen to that
Speaker 1: Jimmy Jam episode forever because he dropped so much wisdom gyms.
Speaker 1: So that's why wisdom's important, all right. So we've had
Speaker 1: some rather difficult conversations on Questlove Supreme as well. Back
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, Solange recounted how she felt profiled at
Speaker 1: a craft Work concert. There was one entry on your
Speaker 1: site that really had me curious, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: call you about it. What I've forgot to and that
Speaker 1: was the I guess we can call it the craft
Speaker 1: Work incident. Yeah, And the thing was I understood. I
Speaker 1: guess what I got from it was that it's really
Speaker 1: hard for you to make people understand that you still
Speaker 1: go through human experiences, which because people perceived you as
Speaker 1: coming from such a this.
Speaker 2: Perceived dynasty of.
Speaker 1: Giants that you know would be time to pull out
Speaker 1: the violin or whatever, like, oh, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: never validated. What I'm saying is that what I got
Speaker 1: from that entry was the fact that you were frustrated
Speaker 1: that you really couldn't figure out a way to express
Speaker 1: the anger you have when those injustices and those situations
Speaker 1: happened to you, because people don't see you as a
Speaker 1: human being and just see you as part of this,
Speaker 1: you know, this dynasty that's supposed to be taught line
Speaker 1: to emotions, and I can imagine that being frustrating.
Speaker 2: Can you explain the craft Work situation?
Speaker 15: Yes, but I will say before before I get into
Speaker 15: that just to carry on what you said. The thing
Speaker 15: is is that doctor Dre is going through this in
Speaker 15: front of his home, and Oprah Winfrey is going through this,
Speaker 15: you know, in the Hermez store, and these are billionaires,
Speaker 15: So that in that landscape, I think those kind of
Speaker 15: micro aggressions happen to everyone daily as as a black
Speaker 15: woman and man in this country. It doesn't matter your class,
Speaker 15: it doesn't matter how much money you have, what kind
Speaker 15: of quote unquote empire dynasty you come from.
Speaker 16: That's just the lay of the land. Essentially.
Speaker 15: My husband and my son who's twelve jewels, and his
Speaker 15: friend Rashid, we went to see craft work. And the
Speaker 15: interesting thing was it was a Friday night. My son
Speaker 15: had his friend over. They had never heard of craft work,
Speaker 15: to be honest, that was the last thing that they wanted.
Speaker 16: To do with their Friday night.
Speaker 15: So, you know, Allen and I are showing them YouTube
Speaker 15: videos and trying to make the link with hip hop
Speaker 15: to get them more interested, and showing them visuals and like, no,
Speaker 15: you guys are gonna love this, like you know, just
Speaker 15: relating and specifically showing the samples that Jules's uncle.
Speaker 16: Sample of craftworks.
Speaker 2: So whoever that is because it took me a minute.
Speaker 16: So essentially.
Speaker 15: That's important to note, just just for the story itself,
Speaker 15: that here you have two young black kids who are
Speaker 15: not really interested, don't have much, you know, knowledge about
Speaker 15: this bad yeah, and we are, you know, trying to
Speaker 15: navigate them into the show and build interests and whatever.
Speaker 16: As soon as we walk in, we got our three
Speaker 16: D glasses said their museum run.
Speaker 15: No, this was at the Orpheum Theater and so yeah,
Speaker 15: we're basically walking to our seats, and it just so
Speaker 15: happened the very song.
Speaker 16: Yes exactly was on, and so we were super stoked.
Speaker 16: We had box seats.
Speaker 15: There was two rows in front of us in one
Speaker 15: row behind us, and we walked our seats and we're
Speaker 15: dancing and these women essentially just started yelling at the
Speaker 15: top of their lung sit.
Speaker 1: Down, now, sit down, shut up.
Speaker 5: You guys are been so disruptive.
Speaker 15: And I turned around and I, in that moment, had
Speaker 15: to make a decision. Am I gonna respond or am
Speaker 15: I just going to enjoy this song and deal with
Speaker 15: it later.
Speaker 16: I actually clocked.
Speaker 15: Into myself, you know, you have that moment, and said
Speaker 15: I'm gonna dance to this song and then I'm gonna
Speaker 15: sit my ass down because I already know where this
Speaker 15: is heading. Simultaneously, which I didn't write about, which Alan
Speaker 15: thought was really important for me to note and note you.
Speaker 15: My son is he was eleven at the time, and
Speaker 15: this the attendant comes over to him and his friend
Speaker 15: who are sitting down.
Speaker 16: They weren't standing up dancing. Alan an hour and.
Speaker 15: Says, put your no electronic cigarettes. Put your cigarettes away
Speaker 15: to these children.
Speaker 16: Yes, yes, cigarettes, note you.
Speaker 15: As soon as we walked in and we saw these
Speaker 15: two older white men sitting in front smoking the cigarettes,
Speaker 15: we took note of that. We weren't bothered, but you know,
Speaker 15: it was just the assumption that if someone was breaking
Speaker 15: the rule, surely it was the two eleven year old
Speaker 15: black kids.
Speaker 13: Because somebody said, yeah, yeah, vaping.
Speaker 16: So it was just a lot of tension in general.
Speaker 15: And thank God, by the grace of God, Allan opped
Speaker 15: into that immediately and was like, ma'am, these are children,
Speaker 15: You've got the wrong people.
Speaker 16: Whatever.
Speaker 15: And then after that, Alan's going to kill me for
Speaker 15: for blinking on the name of the song Ottomond.
Speaker 16: That comes on.
Speaker 15: And on the ride there, Alan had played me the
Speaker 15: entire twelve minute song, and it just so happened that
Speaker 15: that's what they played. So I was like, well, I'm
Speaker 15: gonna just dance to this one too, because we had
Speaker 15: just had that moment, right, and we're at an electronic
Speaker 15: dance music concert.
Speaker 16: It's not like.
Speaker 2: Engaged in.
Speaker 15: So there's two there's two parts of this problem. The
Speaker 15: problem is also that, you know, we probably should have
Speaker 15: asked for floor seats, but we were under the assumption
Speaker 15: that people were going to be dancing all night long.
Speaker 2: So you're in the balcony of the theater.
Speaker 15: Yes, so we're dancing, and then I feel something hit
Speaker 15: me on the back of my head. But I say,
Speaker 15: surely I am tripping, must be tripping, must be tripping, right,
Speaker 15: So I actually tell Alan, I said, I swear, and
Speaker 15: maybe I'm just losing my motherfucking black ass.
Speaker 16: Might but I just felt something hit.
Speaker 15: Me on the back of my head, and he was like, babe,
Speaker 15: you might just be tripping, like just lay low. So
Speaker 15: I actually, you know, shook it off, and then I
Speaker 15: felt something harder, Oh yeah, me on my shoulder, and
Speaker 15: my son, my eleven year old son, tapped me.
Speaker 16: He picked up.
Speaker 15: A line from the ground I have eating line, and
Speaker 15: he said, Mom, I just watched these women throw this
Speaker 15: at you.
Speaker 13: Used to tested in all kinds of ways, and I feel.
Speaker 16: So bad because they gave us the tickets.
Speaker 15: I've never met them, but you know, it just it
Speaker 15: just sucks that they also had to be associated with
Speaker 15: this incident. But yeah, you know, in that moment, I
Speaker 15: basically knew we had probably three choices. One was to react,
Speaker 15: which probably would have led to someone getting arrested, you know,
Speaker 15: just spiraling out of control.
Speaker 16: Or I called the police on.
Speaker 15: Them because essentially, you know, they did throw ship at me.
Speaker 16: Yeah, I mean, you know, you're here sometimes exactly that's
Speaker 16: what they do.
Speaker 15: Literally, But I knew that even if that happened that
Speaker 15: somehow would it would still be our fault, or just
Speaker 15: to just take it and be silenced, because I knew
Speaker 15: that if I spoke to them that it would escalate.
Speaker 16: And my son was there.
Speaker 15: It was already traumatic enough for him to have to
Speaker 15: experience that, especially in a context where it was a
Speaker 15: predominantly white space, and he didn't want to be there
Speaker 15: in the first place. And so now I think the
Speaker 15: thing that saddened me the most is that here we are,
Speaker 15: as parents trying to expand, you know, his horizon and
Speaker 15: his experience and make him feel like he belongs wherever
Speaker 15: he chooses to be.
Speaker 16: But that was not the message that we got.
Speaker 1: That next, what do you think he took from that experience, Like,
Speaker 1: did you explain to him, Oh, yeah.
Speaker 16: Several talks. No, No, we had several talks.
Speaker 15: In fact, you know the we had it was it
Speaker 15: was quite a three days after that.
Speaker 16: I think that number one, I think just as as.
Speaker 15: A young man and him and Alan, both as the
Speaker 15: men and the family also felt silent and powerless just
Speaker 15: in protecting me in that situation because they are black men,
Speaker 15: and no matter what would have been said or done,
Speaker 15: they would have been the aggressive in the situation. So
Speaker 15: on one end, it was about teaching him, you know,
Speaker 15: after the last eleven twelve now twelve years of teaching
Speaker 15: him about injustices and how to stand up for himself
Speaker 15: and to not be afraid and to speak up and
Speaker 15: then having to say but right, So it was it
Speaker 15: was just it's very complicated, but I felt the need
Speaker 15: to write that piece for him.
Speaker 16: I felt the need to essentially not be.
Speaker 15: Silenced in that situation and to let him know that
Speaker 15: there is an outlet in a way to use his
Speaker 15: voice responsibly because there are so many people who read
Speaker 15: that piece who I felt had a deeper understanding of
Speaker 15: the microaggressions that we face as black men and women
Speaker 15: on a daily basis, who were able to empathize, which
Speaker 15: is something that we have the expectation of people to
Speaker 15: do on a daily basis and to treat us with humanity.
Speaker 15: But it was really interesting, and I felt regretful because
Speaker 15: I had so much rage in the moment that I
Speaker 15: started tweeting because I wanted them to see it.
Speaker 16: When they got home, they were put on blast.
Speaker 15: But I wish that I would have just channeled my
Speaker 15: emotions and that waited and channeled in that piece, And
Speaker 15: it was a great lesson learned that you know, it
Speaker 15: really is no way to condense that experience in however
Speaker 15: many letters that you get on one hundred and forty.
Speaker 5: Characters had to write a book about it.
Speaker 16: Yeah, yeah, it's really no way.
Speaker 1: Solange's experiences related to something that I shared on the
Speaker 1: show along with Journey Smollett and Journey and I shared
Speaker 1: a story of the time that both she and I
Speaker 1: got stopped by police, and these were the things that
Speaker 1: people in the mainstream may not always hear because we
Speaker 1: never get again asked about our daily life experiences.
Speaker 2: It's all about our product.
Speaker 1: We uh decided to share that story, and we felt
Speaker 1: it was important to take our you know, take the
Speaker 1: space to share our experiences journey.
Speaker 2: Are we going to tell the story.
Speaker 11: That story you're talking about, to.
Speaker 2: Tell the story? You know the story? Answer? Yes, the story?
Speaker 5: Oh said No, huh, okay, tell it, I'll tell it.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's it's we were you're talking about the
Speaker 8: Marina del Ray one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So often what we.
Speaker 11: Were doing is we were phone bank. You know, he's
Speaker 11: talking about eight, Like really when we started heavily? No, no, no,
Speaker 11: it was Maria del Ray.
Speaker 2: We were leasing place where white people were. That's all
Speaker 2: I remember. Maria.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we were leaving a grassroots organizing meeting. Were Obama
Speaker 8: and eight and it was he was during the primaries.
Speaker 8: He hadn't even won yet.
Speaker 2: Tuesday.
Speaker 7: Yes, we were.
Speaker 2: Depressed and we were depressed. He lost cow.
Speaker 11: California to Hillary.
Speaker 8: We were so depressed and so he was driving his
Speaker 8: Mini coup whatever whenever I mean, would come to l A.
Speaker 2: Would listen.
Speaker 1: You could you could tell like who's knowing me, like
Speaker 1: based on the car I was driving, doing the period.
Speaker 5: And it just goes from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you remember, I forgot the we were depressed. Then
Speaker 1: we then we go see like there will be blood
Speaker 1: or something like. It was something depressing, just something I remember.
Speaker 11: I don't remember, but we got pulled over.
Speaker 2: That's that's that's that's the story that slightly putting it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I forgot.
Speaker 11: I mean pretty much we had. It was almost like
Speaker 11: that scene I think of traffic, traffic, it was it was.
Speaker 2: It was it was traffic for you. It was more
Speaker 2: like Boys in the Hood for me.
Speaker 5: Having done she don't trying to think it was so
Speaker 5: many stories in traffic, which was.
Speaker 1: A crash crash.
Speaker 2: But they're both like the same kind of movie.
Speaker 11: They are a lot of stories and always confusing.
Speaker 8: AnyWho, we get pulled over and I pull out my
Speaker 8: camera and I'm like starting.
Speaker 2: To It's not like it's a phone camera. It's like that.
Speaker 7: Jim Quarter.
Speaker 2: You have to hit the red button like a ghetto
Speaker 2: boom box, like one of the big motherfuckers.
Speaker 11: So the cop walks up to the car and and
Speaker 11: then Journey has the record.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was dead.
Speaker 8: Uh, it was like joy that damn thing.
Speaker 7: Wait, you ain't ele Baker right now? Okay, like to
Speaker 7: take the time to be ele Baker.
Speaker 11: Put it away because it's massive, and so they they she.
Speaker 2: Was ready to start the revolution in the car, ready.
Speaker 11: To televise it. And you know, they asked me here
Speaker 11: to get out of the car.
Speaker 8: Don't tell them why then they asked me to get
Speaker 8: out of the car.
Speaker 11: Oh oh, They start patting him down.
Speaker 8: They walk him to the back of the car and
Speaker 8: handcuff him, put him in the back of the car.
Speaker 11: They pat me down, search me in ways.
Speaker 8: That I will say it was incredibly violated.
Speaker 1: They yeah, I mean the difference between now and then
Speaker 1: is that, of course, with the technology it cell phones,
Speaker 1: you don't know if you're being recorded or not. But
Speaker 1: that was definitely, I mean, there's definitely, you know, a
Speaker 1: moment in time where they were just reckless because they
Speaker 1: knew that nobody's ever going to see this or believe
Speaker 1: this or get away with this. Even when they were
Speaker 1: asking me questions like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what were they say, like what happens?
Speaker 1: We keep calling the thing is is that I know
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it's it's like the price, it's
Speaker 1: like it's like being on the prices right, And it's
Speaker 1: like when you're home, you know that you know that
Speaker 1: bottle Windexes whatever six ninety nine or whatever. Like when
Speaker 1: you're home, you know, you know all the answers on Jeopardy,
Speaker 1: But when you're there and you see the look in
Speaker 1: their eyes, I was just like, I'm going to die tonight,
Speaker 1: Like this is this is the it's the most helpless,
Speaker 1: e masculating feelings ever. And you know he's talking about
Speaker 1: where's your register? I forgot what question he asked, And
Speaker 1: I said, well, you know my I said, you know,
Speaker 1: my assistant at the office Internet, I mean like office.
Speaker 1: Like it's like you can't be too smart or else
Speaker 1: your assassin or that sort of thing. And your mind
Speaker 1: is just blink because they know you don't know your
Speaker 1: rights of course, you know, knowing what I've seen now,
Speaker 1: like we shouldn't have gotten out the car.
Speaker 5: Yeah, how did he even put handcuffs on you?
Speaker 6: For what?
Speaker 11: Like, I don't well, they didn't give us any explanation.
Speaker 8: They then handcuffed me and put me in the back
Speaker 8: with the mirror and we sat there. It felt like
Speaker 8: an eternity sitting in the back of that car.
Speaker 6: Together.
Speaker 8: We like neither one of us knew what to say.
Speaker 8: We just sat there in silence, you know, in the
Speaker 8: back or in front, in back, Oh.
Speaker 16: My god, that's.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: And then they came back. They had like, you know,
Speaker 8: looked throughout everything in his car and my purse and
Speaker 8: and just kind of like handed him back his driver's
Speaker 8: license and said, Okay, the weird.
Speaker 1: Ship, the weirdest ship was they wanted to look in
Speaker 1: the trunk and Journey and.
Speaker 2: I had stopped by.
Speaker 1: Borders because Dawn manager had just moved to LA and
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I'm gonna get her. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get her a deluxe crap. I'm gonna get her a
Speaker 1: deluxe scrabble game. In my mind, I was like, he's
Speaker 1: going to open this trunk and see all these scrabbles
Speaker 1: and psychology books in the in the back, and he's
Speaker 1: going to say, there's no way it's this car belongs
Speaker 1: to these two.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 1: And his thing was that and I never verified it.
Speaker 1: I think we did ask like, why did.
Speaker 2: You pull us over? Rich was calling me on the phone.
Speaker 2: Here's the weird shit.
Speaker 1: Rich was calling me on the phone about Prince's table
Speaker 1: at the jam session. And me, quote being a good citizen.
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, let me pull the car over
Speaker 1: so I can take this phone call, you know, or
Speaker 1: I could have just picked up the car, you know
Speaker 1: call while I was driving, but I didn't, and we
Speaker 1: happen to be in front of a Mini Coup dealership.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, I mean he said.
Speaker 8: About you know, he said he said something as if
Speaker 8: the lights the plates didn't match.
Speaker 11: The rental car uh contract.
Speaker 8: And we were like, but how do you know to
Speaker 8: pull us over to check to see if the plates
Speaker 8: matched the rental car contract?
Speaker 11: Like you didn't have a.
Speaker 8: Contract when you decided to pull us over to know
Speaker 8: if they didn't match.
Speaker 11: And and it just was pretty much they let us
Speaker 11: go without a ticket.
Speaker 8: Without a warning, without anything, because there was nothing that
Speaker 8: Emir had actually done wrong.
Speaker 11: It was just he was driving while.
Speaker 8: Black in a Mini Coup with a big fro right,
Speaker 8: and and we just felt, honestly, we just when we
Speaker 8: drove away, it bring night ruined just inside Mayor you
Speaker 8: kept you kept want to Grammy that week.
Speaker 1: That's a weird thing. I don't even consider it, like
Speaker 1: even to look at that. I think that's when I
Speaker 1: started just putting my ships in them, Like I honestly,
Speaker 1: if if you week was it that week?
Speaker 2: The following Sunday I did eight?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and so did you.
Speaker 6: Bill.
Speaker 13: I'm going to say it again.
Speaker 1: Oh damn, that was too Okay, you're right, Bill, You're
Speaker 1: not I get pulled over.
Speaker 2: I did win a Grammy thank you anyway, So that's
Speaker 2: talk about it.
Speaker 5: Like I was just I was gonna let that just
Speaker 5: because I know he know better, he was gonna come that.
Speaker 17: No, no, no, I'm the mini Cooper. I'm sorry. I'm making
Speaker 17: a joke. I shouldn't, but I'm so fucked up by
Speaker 17: all this.
Speaker 2: I don't know what to say.
Speaker 1: Really, this is the one story I rarely share in
Speaker 1: public because it's just, you know, just the process, just
Speaker 1: the process it.
Speaker 8: But it was that word you kept using, you kept saying, jarn.
Speaker 8: I just feel so emasculated.
Speaker 17: Yeah for you to say yeah. Also, the two of
Speaker 17: you in the back of a cop card not speaking
Speaker 17: to each other is the quietest quiet I think I've
Speaker 17: ever heard of. Quiet, Like you're the most talking of
Speaker 17: people I've met in a long time. I feel like
Speaker 17: you would have a lot to say in this particular
Speaker 17: crazy fucked up momentat quiet, it's even more the intense
Speaker 17: than we.
Speaker 1: Live in such a machismo society where I don't let
Speaker 1: other men overpower them in anything and intellect, physically or
Speaker 1: those things. But it's almost like this unspoken thing that
Speaker 1: citizens know that any moment a cop can in your
Speaker 1: life within the bounds of the quote unquote law, and for.
Speaker 5: You, Amir has been to do about it, and you
Speaker 5: had journey with you.
Speaker 8: So as a man, that's what I.
Speaker 11: Was going to say. It's it's deep.
Speaker 8: It goes back to the slave days of like, you know,
Speaker 8: the emasculation of the black man, of like, Okay, we're
Speaker 8: going to do this in front of you and say
Speaker 8: nothing this woman, and guess what, guess what you can't do.
Speaker 8: You can't stop us, right, And so that's what we
Speaker 8: both could feel as we were driving away and he
Speaker 8: kept being like, John, I'm so sorry, and I kept
Speaker 8: being like, what could you have done?
Speaker 11: There was nothing you could have done. Like, we made
Speaker 11: it out a lot.
Speaker 7: That's better than a lot.
Speaker 8: Of people in this situation can say, like, and that's
Speaker 8: a shitty that's a shitty reality to have to settle for.
Speaker 11: It's like, oh well, at least we made it out
Speaker 11: a lot, but we did, y'all. We made it out alive.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 8: That's the shitty thing of driving while black, and the
Speaker 8: shitty thing of you know, walking and walking by black
Speaker 8: black or black and male.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you had any situation like that ever? Or since?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 11: God, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 8: I've shot so much in the South too, you know,
Speaker 8: so I've had several experiences. I mean, I remember shooting
Speaker 8: Great Debaters. Was that after before I can't remember. I
Speaker 8: think that was before, but I remember we did the
Speaker 8: lynching scene and I was driving a set in the
Speaker 8: van and over the radio I heard one of the
Speaker 8: teamsters say, well, we're having a lunch in today, ladies
Speaker 8: and gentlemen. I mean, like, yeah, I've dealt with some
Speaker 8: crazy as stuff, you know, yeah, as you all have too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you deal with it and then you acted out.
Speaker 13: It's different, you like re enacted.
Speaker 5: So it's it's to me, it's like.
Speaker 8: Well that's my that's my way of channeling the pain,
Speaker 8: I guess, yeah, is trying to place it somewhere.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: Obviously with love Craft, there was a lot I had
Speaker 8: to pull bro Okay, A lot in my life was
Speaker 8: shitty at that time.
Speaker 2: But is there talks of season two or a return or.
Speaker 14: I don't know that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Wait still, this is not an instant slam dunk.
Speaker 5: And she said we will see like we will see
Speaker 5: like we will see.
Speaker 7: I mean as in, like.
Speaker 11: The powers that be that's above my pay grades.
Speaker 5: To get their ship together. That's what I know.
Speaker 1: Nothing angers me more when I get emotionally involved in
Speaker 1: a series only for it to be yanked away.
Speaker 17: Phone calls that you can't make your phone calls at
Speaker 17: what I am exactly.
Speaker 8: The good news is that all signs point to very
Speaker 8: positive response from folks, from critics from I mean, the
Speaker 8: I was recently told the pilot is like it's, you know,
Speaker 8: setting records for how many people have watched it.
Speaker 18: So it's yeah, I'm sure that I count for I
Speaker 18: count for twenty eight of those views. Johnny, I watched
Speaker 18: the pilot like maybe eleven times because I've made other
Speaker 18: people me too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, watch as well.
Speaker 11: We're in good shape, y'all.
Speaker 7: We're in good shape, all right.
Speaker 1: So Qols discusses black history through political and global lenses.
Speaker 1: Here's Angela Raie speaking about what she learned from Congresswoman
Speaker 1: Maximum waters.
Speaker 2: I hope Angela Rye runs for office one day.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna manifest that for her, although I wouldn't wish
Speaker 1: it on anyone because of the amount of stressed and
Speaker 1: gaslighting one has to deal with, but.
Speaker 2: I would like to see that. So Angela Raie.
Speaker 1: Of course, Lensenderry for her work on the Congressional Black Caucus,
Speaker 1: and even though this was from twenty seventeen, it's unfortunately
Speaker 1: still very relevant.
Speaker 5: Can you break down what the Black CAUs does? Because
Speaker 5: there are people who really don't.
Speaker 19: Know, sure they're often they don't know, especially those that say,
Speaker 19: where's the Congressional White Caucus, as if the rest of
Speaker 19: the four hundred and thirty five members aren't white?
Speaker 16: I digress.
Speaker 19: So the Congressional Black Caucus is an entity that was
Speaker 19: founded in nineteen seventy one. By then, I think it
Speaker 19: was twelve members that were black in the House of
Speaker 19: Representatives and they established the organization so that there could
Speaker 19: be a space where black people's issues were heard. They're
Speaker 19: known as the Conscience of the Congress and now they
Speaker 19: are almost to fifty members. And of course there are
Speaker 19: two senators in the United States Senate who also serve
Speaker 19: as members of the Congressional Black Caucus. There are three
Speaker 19: Black senators, but one opted not to join. Tim Scott say, thank.
Speaker 5: You, write it down.
Speaker 1: So can I assume that most of the members of
Speaker 1: the CBC are Democrat?
Speaker 19: Yes, there is one current member of the CBC who's Republican.
Speaker 19: Her name is Mia Love. She is from Utah. My
Speaker 19: aunt that's not your aunt.
Speaker 2: Well, her last name was Love. So just that all
Speaker 2: loves related.
Speaker 19: My dad normally says maybe the same plantation. That's what
Speaker 19: he says today, Just to be honest with you, that's
Speaker 19: what he.
Speaker 2: Says, the same plantation.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Has she attended meetings or Yeah?
Speaker 19: She has been active on some issues. She it definitely
Speaker 19: divergent on others, but she's been active on some issues.
Speaker 3: I see.
Speaker 1: So not why because I appreciate your your grassroots involvement
Speaker 1: and you using elbow grease and getting down and dirty,
Speaker 1: but why would you choose this particular field?
Speaker 2: I mean, you went to law school. You could have
Speaker 2: you know, you could have just.
Speaker 4: Been some other stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean what what truly made you?
Speaker 1: Was it following the family business or in your father's
Speaker 1: footsteps as far as the community, like what most lawyers
Speaker 1: I know are thinking in terms of, oh, success from
Speaker 1: my own law firm, being a partner and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 2: So should we know who her father is?
Speaker 19: His name is Eddie Yeer Jr. He's an activist in Seattle.
Speaker 19: But it's actually a really interesting story. What I'll tell
Speaker 19: you is there were two other paths that I thought
Speaker 19: I would choose before I chose politics. I grew up
Speaker 19: in a house with a dad who's an activist, and
Speaker 19: I thought he was always on the opposite side.
Speaker 16: Of elected politics.
Speaker 19: So I hated it growing up because I couldn't understand
Speaker 19: why they didn't understand why, you know, why he was
Speaker 19: pressing pressing for you know, or a part of the
Speaker 19: parts antipartsy movements, or you know, getting involved with ensuring
Speaker 19: that subcontractors and contractors of color had an equal share.
Speaker 16: Of the pie.
Speaker 19: I didn't understand why that was even an issue, right,
Speaker 19: And so growing up with him, I hated politics because
Speaker 19: they were never on his side. And it wasn't until
Speaker 19: I was in my last year, my fall semester of
Speaker 19: law school. I wanted to do an internship in Los
Speaker 19: Angeles and Maxine Waters was someone I respected a lot,
Speaker 19: and so I was like, well, if I can learn
Speaker 19: from her, you know, maybe this will be good. But
Speaker 19: I'm gonna go so that I could be a trial attorney.
Speaker 5: Like Johnny Coppran.
Speaker 19: I just want to get an offer at the Cochran firm.
Speaker 19: And before that, I wanted to be a sports entertainment lawyer.
Speaker 19: But I'll save that story for another day. It's really
Speaker 19: interesting how that happened or didn't happen. But in my
Speaker 19: I did my internship and like fell in love with
Speaker 19: the bridge between activism and politics, and there's no better
Speaker 19: bridge for that than Maxine Waters. I started calling her
Speaker 19: the Nation's Congresswoman then that was in two thousand four,
Speaker 19: two thousand and five, and just loved working with her,
Speaker 19: loved how she made everything work together for us, regardless
Speaker 19: of if we lived in her district or not. And
Speaker 19: I did get an offer from the Cochran firm, like
Speaker 19: had a mentor, Shawn Chapman Holly shout out to Seawan
Speaker 19: Chapman Holly, who's still a good friend, had an offer
Speaker 19: with the firm, and then he died, damn, And I
Speaker 19: was like, oh Lord, maybe this wasn't the path. So
Speaker 19: at my the National Black Lost in Association.
Speaker 2: Weird he died with your thousand and five Okay.
Speaker 19: At the convention, I was getting ready to introduce Congressman
Speaker 19: Waters who came to our convention.
Speaker 5: I was like, what am I gonna do now?
Speaker 19: Johnny concran died, and She's like, I told you to
Speaker 19: go to the hill. So I was like, well, maybe
Speaker 19: y'all think about that now. And that's really the short
Speaker 19: version of how that happened. But she's never been wrong,
Speaker 19: and I'm so happy to see millennials woke about her now.
Speaker 19: But she been doing this. The nation's congresswoman, Queen Maxine's
Speaker 19: been doing this.
Speaker 5: So you got her back to it all makes sense
Speaker 5: now too. Why you had her back even more when
Speaker 5: that whole stupid bill o'reiley, I think.
Speaker 19: I would have had any results.
Speaker 5: I want to through that. That was stupid.
Speaker 19: She's on the floor of the United States House of
Speaker 19: Representatives talking about what patriots in the era of Trump
Speaker 19: really means, like it's not, you know, pledging blind allegiance
Speaker 19: to some concept. It's about standing up for what we
Speaker 19: know to be truthful and righteous. And for her to
Speaker 19: be talking about that and he's talking about it, damn
Speaker 19: James Brown Wig. It took me to send me to
Speaker 19: a place it's dismissive. Yeah, yeah, among other things, a.
Speaker 2: Lot of shit, but dismissive of the kind.
Speaker 16: Yes, that was very kind of.
Speaker 1: So do you I mean, obviously, I know it gets overwhelming,
Speaker 1: but just watching you in action, of course, like in
Speaker 1: the age of social media, a lot of people are
Speaker 1: familiar with you as as far as your your clips
Speaker 1: on the internet, usually going at people well and rightfully,
Speaker 1: so whenever facts are are are sprouted out. And that's
Speaker 1: the thing, like when I when I watch you go
Speaker 1: against two, three, four people at a time, it is
Speaker 1: I mean, it's baffling to me. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's the equivalent of someone asking, well, you know, how
Speaker 1: do you how do you coordinate your kick drum and
Speaker 1: your high hat foot in your left hand in your
Speaker 1: right hand and talk to people?
Speaker 5: You know, how are you not exhausted?
Speaker 16: I didn't say I wasn't exhausted.
Speaker 1: I did not say that, But I mean have I mean,
Speaker 1: as I read the the era that we live in now,
Speaker 1: which is, of course, I guess the alternative facts era
Speaker 1: in which things are said with such a straight face,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, in general, a lot of us
Speaker 1: have been programmed to believe that if any information comes
Speaker 1: from someone wearing a suit and spoken in the King's English,
Speaker 1: then why should they lie to me? Like, you know,
Speaker 1: why would they want to lie to me? And usually,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of benefits of doubt are given,
Speaker 1: and we're seeing straight up false information. How I mean
Speaker 1: to me, it's like the equivalent of you playing a
Speaker 1: tennis match to with five people on the other side. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you I mean, just in this era,
Speaker 1: especially when you agreed to do pundit remarks on on shows,
Speaker 1: how do you grasp your information? Because you have to
Speaker 1: know what they stand for and how they come Like
Speaker 1: do you does someone train you?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 19: I've never had media training, but I will say that
Speaker 19: I did get Crossfire training. I don't know if you
Speaker 19: all remember Crossfired, like the CNN show back in the
Speaker 19: day when it was all the old white dudes at
Speaker 19: the table.
Speaker 5: Just growing up with my dad.
Speaker 19: Now he doesn't lie, but we don't always agree on
Speaker 19: the means to an end goal. So growing up like
Speaker 19: just debating him or you know, talking to my friends,
Speaker 19: or debating race issues, like I went to a majority
Speaker 19: white high school, you know, started to black student union,
Speaker 19: and so you get used to having to explain to
Speaker 19: people your perspective because it's not the majority view.
Speaker 16: So whether or not.
Speaker 19: This is this may be an alternate universe, but it's
Speaker 19: still not the majority view on the panel, so it's
Speaker 19: just debating.
Speaker 16: The problem I have, and I think when.
Speaker 19: People see me get really upset is when I remember
Speaker 19: the responsibility that we have to give people factual information.
Speaker 19: I think the frustration that I have, if nothing else
Speaker 19: right now, is being able to speak to people in
Speaker 19: their homes on their TV screens is an awesome privilege,
Speaker 19: and we have an obligation to give them information they
Speaker 19: can rely upon. And so I'll normally lose it, especially
Speaker 19: on like black networks, like on TV one. If I'm
Speaker 19: on Rolling Show and somebody's lying, I flip out, like
Speaker 19: there's been you know, Jiff or Gift depending on how
Speaker 19: you said jiffable moments just from that, like please don't
Speaker 19: come here and lie to our folks. Not that folks
Speaker 19: should be lied to unseen in either, but I just
Speaker 19: think that there's a different type of responsibility and even
Speaker 19: with seeing it, and I think it is really hard
Speaker 19: because I remember one of the debates during the general
Speaker 19: election the Debate Commission decided that the moderator did not
Speaker 19: have an obligation to fact check the candidates, and I
Speaker 19: lost it.
Speaker 5: I was like, what do you mean, Like, that's your only.
Speaker 19: Responsibility besides asking the questions like you had one job
Speaker 19: or two? You know, one an one b like all
Speaker 19: in one, but you have something What do you mean like,
Speaker 19: of course you have to make sure that they're being like,
Speaker 19: what are you debating? Then if if facts become a
Speaker 19: debatable point and not just the perspectives on those facts,
Speaker 19: that is a new challenge.
Speaker 16: And so I do.
Speaker 19: I find it immensely frustrating because I don't understand how
Speaker 19: someone could be deemed credible at all if they're not
Speaker 19: relying on the same principle of truth. You know, it's
Speaker 19: just it's maddening, really, it really really is. And so
Speaker 19: to me, I just think that the energy I take
Speaker 19: into those spaces is if you're not going to be
Speaker 19: told the truth from anyone else, you're going to hear
Speaker 19: it from me. And if I'm ever if I ever
Speaker 19: misspeak on something, if a stat is wrong, you know,
Speaker 19: if I said a word wrong, I'll fact check it
Speaker 19: later on Twitter. But I'm not gonna lie to people
Speaker 19: intentionally deceiving.
Speaker 7: Them like that is just wrong.
Speaker 5: And that's just kind of where I draw the line.
Speaker 2: Now as of this particular taping. Right now, the healthcare.
Speaker 1: Situation is in the hands of the Senate, and I'm
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of them. I guess at one point
Speaker 1: on Twitter there were at least three or four of
Speaker 1: them that tweeted out or gave interviews sorted to the
Speaker 1: tune of you know, you're saying that you know that
Speaker 1: twenty two million people might lose their insurance or and
Speaker 1: this several hundred thousand might die if this law goes
Speaker 1: and you know that was that was not a good
Speaker 1: conversation point to sway them the other way. But I mean,
Speaker 1: what is for those because I have a lot of
Speaker 1: friends who are so overwhelmed with what's going on that
Speaker 1: now my friends are at the point where they're just
Speaker 1: so not even past the point of indifference, but just
Speaker 1: so overwhelmed that they don't.
Speaker 2: Watch the news at all.
Speaker 1: And these are the ones who are generally on my
Speaker 1: side of the fence.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I can't sleep at night unless I at least watch
Speaker 1: an hour or two of at least Rachel's show, or
Speaker 1: just someone that I know that's going to give.
Speaker 2: Me straight up facts. But how do you how do we.
Speaker 1: Reignite people or a community of people that just feel
Speaker 1: like it's it's no use.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no use. I started. God, have you guys heard
Speaker 2: of a handmaids Handmaid's Tale?
Speaker 13: I haven't watched it yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you watched it? I haven't watched it, but
Speaker 2: I know something. It's yeah, I heard.
Speaker 5: It's the future really sad like like.
Speaker 1: If you yeah, if you think that like a House
Speaker 1: of Cards or you know, whatever's being depicted now in
Speaker 1: television as don't hamm okay, almost feels like this is
Speaker 1: that's where it's going to go to.
Speaker 2: Okay, I checked that. I haven't even watched it. I
Speaker 2: gave up on House of Cards, like I just because.
Speaker 13: It was.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't know how they did that. Yeah, I like
Speaker 5: weight blame House of Cards actually right, all of it.
Speaker 2: You're not even being ironic.
Speaker 19: Just I need to find somebody to blame because this
Speaker 19: makes no sense besides old lad like I just I
Speaker 19: gotta I don't know, don't happen.
Speaker 5: On the hils of what a Mirror said and on
Speaker 5: that note, how do you prioritize the issues you should
Speaker 5: be most careing about, because yes, health care is the
Speaker 5: issue right now, but there are numerous issues that you know,
Speaker 5: our president right now and his congress are about the
Speaker 5: fuck up life with. So how do you do that, Angela?
Speaker 19: How do you prioritize so first that y'all's president's that's
Speaker 19: so no. So I think that that's a really, really
Speaker 19: good question, And what I appreciate about it is I
Speaker 19: get so frustrated with whether they're elected officials that are
Speaker 19: sitting members of Congress right now, who will say, well,
Speaker 19: we don't need to be talking about Russia because what
Speaker 19: people really want to know about is their health care.
Speaker 5: What people really want to know about is you know
Speaker 5: where the.
Speaker 16: Next job is going to come from the economy.
Speaker 5: But here's the that's.
Speaker 19: Right, And if so, if we're honest, every single day,
Speaker 19: all of us are responsible for balancing something mer we
Speaker 19: were talking about your time earlier, like we're responsible for
Speaker 19: balancing some things. We are people who can walk into
Speaker 19: gum at the same time and be okay. So it's
Speaker 19: actually okay for us to try to get to the
Speaker 19: bottom of what happened with Russia and how they ended
Speaker 19: up in several you know polls, you know, precincts, messing
Speaker 19: with stuff. You know, that's important for us to understand
Speaker 19: because over time, if if countries, if entities can continue
Speaker 19: to uh interrupt and disrupt our democracy the ways in
Speaker 19: which we engage in the electoral process, people are going
Speaker 19: to become disillusioned with that. That is very very very dangerous.
Speaker 19: That's exactly right. That means a select few are picking
Speaker 19: your your leaders. And what happens is this healthcare bill
Speaker 19: to bring this back full circle, which is you know,
Speaker 19: very toxic. It is you know, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 19: a tax cut for billionaires. You know, it is a
Speaker 19: way of One of the Senate compromises that came about
Speaker 19: yesterday was okay, well we'll just uh, we'll reinstitute the
Speaker 19: mandatory healthcare you have to sign up mandatorily. But what
Speaker 19: we're going to do is if there's a lapse in
Speaker 19: your health care, then there's gonna be a six month
Speaker 19: window for you to get healthcare.
Speaker 16: Again.
Speaker 19: What happens if something happens to you in those six
Speaker 19: months and you can't afford to pay for health care
Speaker 19: out of pocket.
Speaker 7: That's not a compromise.
Speaker 19: And if it's a compromise, who is it on the
Speaker 19: backs of And those are folks who normally look like us,
Speaker 19: if they're underserved and marginalized communities, black and brown communities.
Speaker 7: We have to pay attention.
Speaker 19: And so if there's nothing else that I hope comes
Speaker 19: out of this treacherous, dangerous, awful time, it is that
Speaker 19: I hope we realize that these people are working for us.
Speaker 19: And I use this analogy on a panel the other day.
Speaker 19: There's not a single one of us who if we
Speaker 19: are employing people, just are like, Okay, we're gonna pay you.
Speaker 19: You go and do whatever, and never check in. There's
Speaker 19: a team call, there's a team meeting, there's an agenda,
Speaker 19: there's some type of metrics for accountability where they have
Speaker 19: to check in with us. We pay these people, they
Speaker 19: owe us answers, they owe us to do the right thing.
Speaker 5: I think it's town halls, and town halls aren't even
Speaker 5: a got to show up to those, and people.
Speaker 19: Are starting to show up townhouse. But even that's not enough.
Speaker 19: We need to be checking them on what they're doing,
Speaker 19: what they're doing in pacts us more in some instances
Speaker 19: than the employees that we have.
Speaker 1: All Right, here is Gina your share speaking about her
Speaker 1: family who immigrated to London, England from Nigeria and the
Speaker 1: experiences that they had and it's a fact.
Speaker 2: On Gina's upbringing. This from twenty twenty one.
Speaker 5: Can I ask the question though, because even though Gina
Speaker 5: is born and raised in London, her mother is not,
Speaker 5: and so I must think that your mother does not
Speaker 5: feel the same way about this English food. And on
Speaker 5: the back of that question, can you also break down
Speaker 5: like how dope and royal of a situation your mother
Speaker 5: came to to come and they came to London and
Speaker 5: it was a flip of thew the switch.
Speaker 20: Oh yeah, For one, my mom loves a bit of babings,
Speaker 20: don't even knock it.
Speaker 14: My mom is full.
Speaker 20: Nightge though she loves Nigean food like when mother kids
Speaker 20: at Nigeria foods in the house. But my mom loved
Speaker 20: mashed potatoes and my mom loves beans, so it was
Speaker 20: the dichotomy. But yeah, yeah, my mom was from a
Speaker 20: wealthy way well on her family. My mom's from a
Speaker 20: family called the Abasaki family and they are practically royalty
Speaker 20: in Nigeria. And my mom is from a wealthy family.
Speaker 20: Her dad had a load of wives. She was educated.
Speaker 20: Her dad traveled all over the world on business and
Speaker 20: he took her with him and she went to private
Speaker 20: school and she was a school principal in Nigeria before
Speaker 20: she was twenty four years old.
Speaker 14: So she was very you.
Speaker 2: Know, she did.
Speaker 14: Yeah, she was very She achieved a lot and then
Speaker 14: she came to England.
Speaker 2: Before why did she come to England?
Speaker 20: Well, long story short. If you read my new book
Speaker 20: that's coming, that's how you know that. My mother was
Speaker 20: the daughter of the first wife. So my grandfather had
Speaker 20: many wives. As you know, polygamy was widely practiced in Nigeria.
Speaker 2: Tell me about it.
Speaker 20: Oh yeah, lots of wives, lots of lots of wives
Speaker 20: and daughter. My mom was the daughter of the first wife.
Speaker 20: But the first wife was very powerful, as the first
Speaker 20: wife is as the first The otherwise were very jealous
Speaker 20: and there was the other wives murdered my grandmother.
Speaker 2: They pull you.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well we never get the beginning the throne ship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for real greatship.
Speaker 20: So yeah, the other wives did not my mother. My
Speaker 20: grandmother was like, listen, the other wives don't like me.
Speaker 20: These bitches are trying to kill me if anything happens
Speaker 20: to me, get my daughter out of Nigeria. So she
Speaker 20: ended up dying. She was poisoned and when she died
Speaker 20: she had a mark on her throat. Now, before my
Speaker 20: grandmother died, she always used to say when I come back,
Speaker 20: when I come back, I'm going to I'm going to
Speaker 20: speak English, I'm going to be in England. I'm not
Speaker 20: going to have all these children because my mom and
Speaker 20: my grandmother had eleven kids and I don't want to
Speaker 20: all these children.
Speaker 14: I'm going to do a man's job. I'm going to
Speaker 14: have freedom, all of you.
Speaker 13: Thing.
Speaker 20: When she died from a poison she had a mark
Speaker 20: on her throat.
Speaker 14: Obviously, when she.
Speaker 20: Died, my grandfather sent my mom out the because who's
Speaker 20: like weld, I've killed the wife. I'm not going to
Speaker 20: have them kill my daughter to so he sent my
Speaker 20: mom to England to study and that is where my
Speaker 20: mom met my dad. They met each other, they had me,
Speaker 20: and I came out with this mark on my flow.
Speaker 20: So basically I'm a reincarnation of my grandmother.
Speaker 14: So that that's the story.
Speaker 20: Because Nigeras believed heavily in the incarnation, and I came
Speaker 20: out doing all the things that my grandmother said.
Speaker 14: I fulfilled everything.
Speaker 20: So when I said my mo, mom was like comedian,
Speaker 20: you want to become a clown.
Speaker 14: I was like, mom, remember this is what your mother wanted.
Speaker 14: I am your mother. That's how I get away with her.
Speaker 14: But yeah, my mom.
Speaker 20: So that's how my mother ended up in England studying
Speaker 20: and she was a teacher. She came to England. She
Speaker 20: wanted to carry on working as a teacher. For England
Speaker 20: was super racist. She couldn't my dad.
Speaker 14: She met my dad.
Speaker 20: My dad was studying for his PhD. He was and
Speaker 20: he was also a qualified lawyer. They could he couldn't
Speaker 20: get work as a lawyer in England. So basically they met,
Speaker 20: they got married, they had us, and then my dad
Speaker 20: was like, forget this, I want to go back to Nigeria.
Speaker 20: This is not I am driving a bust when I'm
Speaker 20: a lawyer. I'm a lawyer in Nigeria. I'm not staying
Speaker 20: here to drive a bus. Let's get the kids, let's go.
Speaker 20: And my mom was like, no, I've had my children
Speaker 20: in England. They are British. I want them to stay
Speaker 20: in England and be afforded all the opportunities that being
Speaker 20: British entails. I'm staying here with my kids. So basically
Speaker 20: my mom and dad's My dad went back to Nigeria
Speaker 20: when I was three and I didn't see him again
Speaker 20: till I was thirty seven, and when I went out
Speaker 20: there to do a show in Nigeria.
Speaker 5: So that was it.
Speaker 2: Wait, you met your father backstage at a show.
Speaker 14: He came to my show.
Speaker 20: So at that point I was pretty well known in
Speaker 20: England and pretty well known in Nigeria. I'd done a
Speaker 20: couple of sketches on television in England that had gone
Speaker 20: viral in Nigeria. So I got flown out to Nigeria
Speaker 20: to do a show, and obviously I still carried my
Speaker 20: father's name, so my father was like when I was going,
Speaker 20: my mom was like, oh, your father is going to
Speaker 20: turn up.
Speaker 14: You watch he's going to.
Speaker 6: You.
Speaker 7: And he did.
Speaker 14: He turned off the show with a.
Speaker 20: Bunch of brothers and sisters I'd never met. So it
Speaker 20: was it was it's all in the book. It's all
Speaker 20: in the book, people.
Speaker 13: It is.
Speaker 5: And also in the book, I remember I want to
Speaker 5: tell people too. You give a good history on the
Speaker 5: Empire of Benin and whatnot. I was like, oh, Wow,
Speaker 5: I had no idea, So can you.
Speaker 1: Can you briefly let me know about I just recently
Speaker 1: found out my lineage to Benin like a year ago and.
Speaker 20: In the country next to Nigeria or been in the
Speaker 20: city in Nigeria. I've been in this because there's two Benu.
Speaker 20: There's been in city in Nigeria, which is where my
Speaker 20: family from. And then there's been in the country which
Speaker 20: is next country, Nigeria where they speak French.
Speaker 14: Yeah, so are you. But if they say Banin in
Speaker 14: your I'm assuming it's been in the country.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: I believe that it was the country simply because when
Speaker 1: there was a civil war happening, the Nigerians had some
Speaker 1: beneen prisoners that they used as.
Speaker 2: Leverage to Nigger allotiate.
Speaker 19: Uh.
Speaker 2: My great your great grandfathers was one.
Speaker 1: Of those, uh those captured and sold in the slavery
Speaker 1: in America.
Speaker 14: So the country, Yeah, it's definitely the country then in yes,
Speaker 14: but yeah.
Speaker 20: I opened my book with history of Nigeria and the
Speaker 20: be In within Nigeria which is now southern Nigeria where
Speaker 20: my family is from, and and how advanced the society
Speaker 20: was and how the British came and tried to take
Speaker 20: and they got their asses handed to them by the
Speaker 20: Bnin warriors. And then they came back and burnt Been
Speaker 20: into the ground and stole all those bronzes. And hence
Speaker 20: while you've got all these bill In bronzes in museums
Speaker 20: in New York and around the world, because the British
Speaker 20: came burnt down Benin, stole all the bronzes and sold
Speaker 20: the bronzes to pay for the army that they've used
Speaker 20: to burn down Been In.
Speaker 2: The British have done to the world, man Jesus.
Speaker 20: Like, yeah, exactly when you guys go, oh Britain is
Speaker 20: so polite and genteel it, No it is they are
Speaker 20: straight savages well.
Speaker 5: And also not for nothing. Nigerians usually act like ain't
Speaker 5: nobody come and mess with them at all, So this
Speaker 5: history is not always told in that aspect. It's like
Speaker 5: anybody comes, try to colonized us, We got no, We're good.
Speaker 13: Oh no, they were coming.
Speaker 14: We only got our independence.
Speaker 20: Niger only got air independence in nineteen sixty and from
Speaker 20: nineteen sixty we got our independence, and even then, the
Speaker 20: economy was completely messed up after that because white people
Speaker 20: came out and took everything with them, and they'd already
Speaker 20: raked it of all the resources, all the oil, all
Speaker 20: the everything. And then there was a lot of money
Speaker 20: in oil for a while, but it all collapsed.
Speaker 14: It all collapsed.
Speaker 20: The school systems was based on the British school systems.
Speaker 20: You know, they took away the element that Nigerians were
Speaker 20: all about. Africans were all about family and learning trades
Speaker 20: and passing down stuff within the family. And the British
Speaker 20: came and went, now, don't forget about family stuff. That capitalism.
Speaker 20: It's all about capitalism. You learned to get these qualifications
Speaker 20: and then like it. And so they completely change the
Speaker 20: way that Nigerians worked and it's just ruined, in my opinion,
Speaker 20: ruined the country. Now you've got a few greedy people
Speaker 20: just creaming everything off there.
Speaker 7: Just so that's the history.
Speaker 5: Hey, at least you know yours. You don't have to
Speaker 5: go to Africa ancestry, right somebody?
Speaker 20: Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's part one of qols's celebration of Black History Month.
Speaker 2: Please come back next week for part two.
Speaker 1: All right, y'all. Peace Quest Love Supreme is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit
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