QLS Celebrates Black History Month Part 1

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Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: So welcome back to QLs. This is Questlove.

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Speaker 1: Then every year we do special programming in February for Black History Month.

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Speaker 2: That's especially important for this year. I don't need to tell you all that.

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Speaker 1: As we gear up for some new conversations, the team and I compiled some clips from this show that are worth revisiting. Of course, we are about all types of history here at a Questlove Supreme. This is kind of a historical records platform, but.

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Speaker 2: You know, black history is important.

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Speaker 1: One to know that we have a history, but also to achnowledge that Black history is American history.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's not separate.

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Speaker 1: And as we can plainly see if your eyes are open, if you are awake, you clearly see how easy it is with a little bit of misinformation, with a lot of unprocessed emotions and a lot of facts turn upside down, how easy it is to lose history, to lose information. You know, it's a lie one moment, then it's lost history years later. So it's important to always keep these stories alive. And you know what I really love about this platform at Quest Love Supreme is that you know, when we have artists come on. Most people come to a platform like specifically promote something from you know that's currently out, like oh, my new album or my new movie.

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Speaker 2: We rarely do that.

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Speaker 1: Like when you're a guest on Quest Love Supreme, I'm trying to first of all, we want your history just so that's on the record, and then ask you more timeless questions that don't have anything to do with the deadline or like some program that you're on, some movie that you're on. So that's why history is important, and that's why I think the show, no matter what episode we feature or that's in our cannon, it'll be timeless because you know, once you create something, it becomes history, and history is important. So that's why we are gung ho on history here at Questlep Supreme. All Right, so we're gonna begin with a good friend of the show, my personal friend, fellow aquarian Chris Rock, who spoke about how Saturday Night Live trained him for his career. I just had the good fortune to spend seventy two hours in SNL land. It's always one of those be careful for what you ask for movements. Of course, working at the Tonight show, going to what I call thirty Rock University any chance that I get to roam on the eighth floor and just I mean going through the pictures on the walls or one thing, but also like looking at the historical artifacts, just walking in Studio eight h studying the theater structure. It's just it's a one of one and it teaches me everything I know about not only how comedy shows work, but how creativity works, how leadership works. To describe the machine that is SNL, just as an outsider, I would take an hour explain that to you. But yeah, I spent time with all the greats, with Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Tracy Morgan celebrating the fiftieth anniversary weekend of Saturday Night Live. There was a musical concert that we did, and there was also like a kind of soret that we did with Lauren Michaels to toast him and his history. And then there was of course the blowout SNL fifty show, in which pretty much every cast member from all fifty years was represented in that studio, just like going to an All Star game, like watching people together, watching Eddie Murphy and Keenan Thompson and Will Furrow, like in the sketch together. I mean, that's just anyway, enjoy this Chris episode.

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Speaker 2: Yoh, like who recommends?

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Speaker 3: Did you audition or I auditioned?

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Speaker 4: A guy named James Dixon who's John Stewart's agents, and a couple other people.

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Speaker 2: Who's the Higgins at the time.

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Speaker 4: Who's the Higgins at the Higgins at the time was Jim Downey, And who's Higgins? Who's the head writer?

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Speaker 2: Higgins is our Sideki Jim No no, no, no, but.

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Speaker 4: And Senator Al Franken.

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Speaker 2: Oh, keep forgetting it.

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Speaker 4: I forgot Al Franken was a senator, he was I think they were both the head writers. Conan O'Brien was a writer on the show. Bob Odenkirk was a writer on the show. Yeah.

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Speaker 5: Did you ever have any issues with the things that you wrote on that show? I always wonder like, is it ever too black for SNL? No?

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Speaker 4: I mean or it was too black? Nothing was ever too black. It was just it was a situation. First of all, I had an amazing time at SNL. Is the best thing. It's absolutely the best thing that ever happened to me. Really, yeah, because it kind of made me legit, you know what I mean, Like it was like graduating Harvard.

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Speaker 5: Which you did for the up and coming comedians from Howard and stuff made it even Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I mean, like.

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Speaker 4: I was on SNL man, it's only you know, come on like SNL forget even black, Like SNL is the X Men school of comedy.

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Speaker 2: Okay, did Eddie give you any kind of preparation on what to expect?

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Speaker 4: No, Eddie. The only thing Eddie told me, he kept telling me, is like, just just make sure you write stuff for update because it's the easiest spot to get on. But uh, what was your question?

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Speaker 5: I was just asking it was it ever too edgy or black?

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Speaker 4: To like it was too edgy or black? It was like, it's like this situation just white people in general. It's like the things they understand about black people tends to be it has to have a racial element to it. So a lot of stuff I did it was more obvious like net X chilling like that stuff's like obvious black stuff, you know what I mean. It wasn't really at the weird I wasn't allowed to get into my weird side the other you know.

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Speaker 2: Like it had to be black.

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Speaker 4: Yah, so it had to be black, you know what I mean? So you know, it's not Essenal, it's just white people in general.

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Speaker 1: Is that the arcinio factor kicking in? Was that the Living Color factor kicking in?

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Speaker 4: I got hired because of Living Color. I got hired just like every like whatever. That was the girl I keep forgetting her name.

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Speaker 3: Se Shira I was.

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Speaker 4: I got hired pretty much under the same circumstances. SNL hadn't had a black cast member in nine years, and Living Color was hopping, and they went out looking for a black cast member, and you know, I got the job, but I forgot what I was getting ready to say. No, just white people in general, when they're looking for black stuff, they tend to like something either ridiculously black. This is what it basically goes to, either Tracy Borga or Larry Wilmore, you know what I mean, like in the middle, in the middle, nothing.

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Speaker 5: In the middle, not for nothing.

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Speaker 1: I'm taking well because you explained, but you explain in your whole, in your whole theory of you did a joke about Obama can only hope to be mediocre? Is again, it's like, you know, it's either the perception that we're animals or we are super huge.

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Speaker 4: We're not calling any person an animal, let's let's let's get up.

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Speaker 1: Well no, no, no, but I've meant like just whatever the one side of the spectrum where it's the extreme, it's triple raw or extreme.

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Speaker 2: Caricature versus extreme intellect.

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Speaker 1: Yes, but the thing with being ground zero middle is that that's just regular human yes, which is harder to Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I mean that's what's Hey, that's why a letter's genius, because it walks that thing. It's like, I was very rounded.

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Speaker 5: I was recently told by a bunch of white women I take like a comedy class neiahbor I made one joke. I get really nervous about making black jokes in front of white people, and so when I did finally write one, they were like, oh my god, we love it. Tell us more about ourselves, tell us about white women.

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Speaker 2: And I was like, really, that's to see that.

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Speaker 1: That bothers me too, because I feel like that's almost like fetishizing.

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Speaker 2: Or you know, the whole guilt the guilt factor kick it in, and.

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Speaker 5: I was wonder if it was a setup. I didn't know, but I was like, okay, I got a lot th.

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Speaker 2: That's a setup. Damn, I'm sorry, that's a setup.

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Speaker 3: Set up.

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Speaker 1: So okay, so you you're you're fine with your experience there, and.

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Speaker 4: The best experience is literally the best thing that ever happened to me. I met the best people, uh not just I mean ay, I got exposed about around a bunch of comedy. So you know, I'm a guy from Bedsty who came through this white system. So I still I'm still the guy who has to go and with my uncle to go get the guns before the bad cousins come. And at the same time, I know, Conan O'Brien, how can you fuck with me? You can't fuck with me, you know what I mean. Like that's all like, that's a lot of route, that's a lot of education.

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Speaker 1: Which all right, So that leads me to evan the period between your your your in.

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Speaker 4: Something forrom I'm sorry, cut you off. I wrote I think SNL. We edited a spin magazine that magazine and yes, I wrote an article about the end of the black super comic is coming because TV was getting more segregated and the black supercomic is me. Okay, let's take me out of it, because that sounds I sound like I sound like a cornerback, right, But uh, you know, there's a reason Eddie Murphy, Richard pryor all the greatest black comedians, the greatest comedians in America tend to be black. It's because you had to work these two systems in a world that everybody else has to work one.

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Speaker 1: So you're saying Sam Cook record in Harlem, which is more blacker than the Sam Cook record at.

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Speaker 2: The COPA, he had two live records come.

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Speaker 4: Out, and this is the same thing that produced Michael Jackson. And like the the fact that you had to work two audiences in a world everybody else worked one. It's like, how can they fuck with you? Possible? Can't fuck with a guy that could work the Apollo and Carniou Hall.

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Speaker 3: You can't fuck with that.

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Speaker 2: All right.

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Speaker 1: So that was Chris Rock speaking on having to maintain two audiences in his career, a black audience and a mainstream audience. I think that if you want international appeal, you have to learn how to code switch. And I think that's for everyone, of course, with black creatives, and this is what I explore in the slide documentary. I think for us it's a little bit deeper, like for some people it's you know, studying demographics to grow their audience as a creative exercise. My parents came from the generation in which you kind of had to adapt to cultural lifestyles that weren't your own, just for survivals. And I guess even growing up, you know, the way that I took to all types of music, maybe I inherently or subconsciously knew early that I had to learn the language of every type of music genre in order to survive in the world. For me, music was how I made friends. And if you listen to certain types of music, then that's something that you have in common with people.

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Speaker 2: Because I went to.

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Speaker 1: School with various you know, backgrounds and whatnot of different people.

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Speaker 2: I saw the power of knowing other songs.

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Speaker 1: Like in the ninth grade, I didn't know nothing about led Zeppelin, didn't want to learn anything about led Zeppelin.

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Speaker 2: Like I fell for the I drank the kool aid.

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Speaker 1: I went to a church that, like you know, was staunchly against rock music and MTV and the Thriller video and all that stuff. And so we were just told, you know, that's the problem them with where we are now. Like you just get told by an authority figure and you take that ass law without investigating it. So I was led to believe that led Zeppelin was like a demonic group. You know, if you're a music head, Bustle in your Head, Growl, google that. I believe there was a some past or something Baptist said that led Zeppelin was trying to lure our kids into Satanism, some silly shit, and they spun backwards the song Stairway to Heaven, and somehow he believes that Bustle in your Head Growl was some sort of demonic demon chant. That's the only words they can make from the backwards masking of Stairway to Heaven anyway, So the whole point is that, you know, I started to get into led Zeppelin well, firstly because the Beastie Boys started sampling them, so immediately my curiosity speaked. And soon thereafter, like if bands were having a jam or whatever and they would call out a song like the Lemons Song or Custard Pie or you know, in My Time of Dying or any of those led Zeppelin classics, I immediately knew it. So you know, it never hurts to why in your vocabulary, but it also I think, you know, you should also be aware of your history and not uphold your history in a way that it's disparaging to others or traumatic for others. Be proud of your history and learn other people's history too. So it should go without saying that QLs listeners know that already.

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Speaker 2: Anyway, I thought I had my two cents.

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Speaker 1: Next is the great late Prodigy of Mob Deep and Prodigy is going to speak about his family and their contributions to black culture through dance around New York City, and he shows that the black experience.

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Speaker 2: Is not a monolith.

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Speaker 1: Like what eventually brought you to the city to Queens.

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Speaker 3: When I turned like eleven twelve, my mom's moved to Left Rack. She moved to Left Rack City. My pops had split up because my pop said did some crazy shit. My pops was wild man. He he had kidnapped me, took me to Detroit. We was living in Detroit for a minute, balling out of control. He was working in the stock market doing some crazy shit.

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Speaker 2: And when did you live in Detroit?

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Speaker 6: Man?

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Speaker 3: This is like early eighties when scofid what year the scafface came out? Eighty three to three? Because my pops took me to the way. My pops took me to the movies in Detroit when at the premiere when Scarface first came out. So that's when I was out there.

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Speaker 2: In age when you were nine, I was nine.

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Speaker 3: So the lyrics pop talked, you try to shooting was seven and that was real that really? Oh yeah, the pop man, he was off the man that that that boy is something else? He was something else? Man.

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Speaker 2: Was he a musician as well?

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Speaker 3: Or like, yeah, he was. He was a singer, you know what I mean. Like I said, he had that group, the Chances du Ok group. They had a couple of dope songs, you know what I mean. But my father's things was computers. In the early eighties. He I remember, being like probably five six years old.

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Speaker 2: My father was.

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Speaker 3: Working on Mcinitar's writing programs, you know what I'm saying. Really he was really really dope with it. I think it's a school called TCI. I think it's called TCI. My father went there and he actually got so good he became like a professor there. He started teaching. He was in the commercials and all that. Like after a while, he got really nice with it, and you know that's what he was into. Computers, heroin, alcohol, karate. My father had a dojo on Jamaica Avenue, you know what I mean. So he used to teach karate.

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Speaker 2: You just said that convo back then. Computer it's crazy all that.

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Speaker 3: It's very crazy, man. My pop's life was wow, it was wild. That was his thing. He loved computers and he loved fighting and just doing wold ship. He was crazy, man.

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Speaker 1: And I know that you you have a closeness with your grandmother as well, that she was in the artist.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, my grandma, My grandmother was ill. She was she was one of the first Cotton Club dances when they first opened the Cotton Club way back and uh, you know, she was friends with Lena Horn. Horn used to dance there early before she became famous, you know. And that's how my grandmother met my grandfather because my grandfather used to play in the band at the Cotton Club, So that's how they met. And you know, after my grandmother started a dance school business in a basement of crib on a god Brewer and she started with like five students, you know what I mean, And it just grew and grew over the years until to a point where she started renting the building. And then it grew to a point where she actually bought her own commercial building in Queens. She was like the first black woman to own a commercial space in Queens. So you know, it was a dance school business, you know what I mean. She was that was her thing, dancing. So a lot of her students, man, she has some famous students that she uh that she raised, like Ben Vereen is one of she raised. Seen like you know what I mean? And uh, he used to you know, be in the house all the time, like you know what I mean, anytime he had something going on. We used to watch it in the crab. I don't seen roots thousands of times, you know what I mean. That's like, everybody get together watch Ben Ben is on. You know Michael Peters, he was a famous choreographer, Michael Michael Peters. Was that my grandmama's. That was when my grandma's students.

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Speaker 2: So much shook.

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Speaker 5: He did beat it.

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Speaker 3: He dancing he did so like that was like events same thing.

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Speaker 1: Like matter of fact, Peters is the and the beating nine battle.

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Speaker 2: He's the one in all white.

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Speaker 3: Be the one that got their hands tied up.

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Speaker 5: When I was six, my dad introduced me to him and I was like, but you can't dance better? Than Michael Jackson, and he walked away with me with so much app toude like.

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Speaker 3: Like I remember when I was a little kid, like we used to fly to Cali because a lot of her students live in Cali and whatnot, So we used to fly to Cali and visit them, and she used to take care of some business. And Michael Peters used to take me to the Universal Studios all the time. That was my favorite place when I was a little kid. Let's go again again. I've been there like a hundred times when I was a kid. That was my favorite ship, Like you know what I mean. But yeah, so this is my grandma. This is like my grandmother's life. She uh you know, this is her her thing in the dance world, and she got a lot of choreo cor aographers and she she helped out a lot of people as far as that in that world. So I grew up a lot around her concerts. She would do these concerts every year at Lincoln Center, at the Apollo at uh Carnegie Hall. You know, every year she would do like a big concert and you.

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Speaker 2: Were a backstage kid.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, me and my cousins be backstage wild and looking at the girls getting dressed in.

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Speaker 2: Backstage.

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Speaker 1: I used to watch old old ass dudes, you know, smoke reefers in the well yo.

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Speaker 2: But he had a better backstage experience.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, especially at my grandmother's dance school. She like hundreds of girls from Queen's Like that was like that was man. I used to love that place when I was a little kid. Man, we had so much fun running around Jamaica Avenue and you know, having fun, man with all the girls there, and it was crazy crazy growing up, Like you know what I mean.

00:21:03
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Quest Love Supreme. Good people.

00:21:06
Speaker 1: One of the things that's cool about the show is how different episodes can connect the dots. So before the ad break, Prodigy mentioned Ben Vereen and that was in the spring of twenty seventeen, before we lost p However, in twenty twenty four we had Quest Love Supreme spoke to Ben Veren, and Ben shared accounts of meeting Linkston News and his game changing work on the series Roots. Take me through your life as a creative. What was your first step into a profession.

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Speaker 6: I just graduated from high school for the performing arts. There's a woman there named Janette Carol and she was doing Michelle called The Prodigal Sun off Broadway at the Greenwich News Theater. So I'm talking about about a professional show, right. I never knew anything about Broadway or the the I had never been on a Broadway stage until Bob Fosse. But I go to the show. It was in a graduate Green's roof theater. It was downstairs, a little theater, and uh, that was my first production. And one night I'm coming out of the theater. I was in my first Son of be Bonn and I was lay getting to the theater. I had to spend time with my first wife and got back to the theater and the dance captain had taken my role and gave it to his love. And I wasn't going to have that because it was my role. So I went on stage anyway. So it stage where I said, they can't do that. I said, no, they can't. So I went on stage. Guy, I got dressed, went on stage, and we're fighting doing the show on stage. I'm he's in my place. I'm hitting him, he's hitting me. This org and people must say, they're going, wow, this show is so real.

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Speaker 4: I died.

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Speaker 6: So I come off stage. I'm angry. I'm leaving the theater. I'm going to Glenn's house, you know, you know, getting myself hold off. And it's a little guy sitting outside of the door, and he says, he says, excuse me, Yeah, what do you want? He says, I'm looking for Benjamin Verena. I'm bench Maine. What do you want? He said, you look like you could use the dinner. My name was Langston, used I wrote this.

00:23:17
Speaker 7: Whoa, Well, you can't just you just drop that. You did that?

00:23:25
Speaker 6: Yeah, took me to dinner, he said, you looked like nobody he did it. He took me a little to a little Italian joy in the village, and we sat and talked, and he told me about himself and told me a guy he's written the play and invited me up the Harlem for the first time. So that was my first professional job. Uh. And the time would buy. And the next time I got a job was uh you'll read about in the book. Was on the subway, I jumped and turnstile. I went to New York City. I was standing on the corner. I went by my school. I was really depressed. I went by performing Arts. I looked at the school and going where am I going, what's going to happen? And I walked down to the news stand and I opened up a newspaper. Backstage in his audition for that day for a show called Sweet Charity going to a place called Las Vegas, starring Woman and Juliette Prowse, directed by Bob Fosse. And that was the first time I was stept on Broadway. Storage at at the Palace Theater. I went to the audition. It was like the opening of all that jazz. Yes, and I went, that was one of those kids on the stage standing there washing. This cool guy walked down the middle of the aisle smoking a cigarette. He gets up on stage, he does the demonstration for us to do, and the ashes never fall. I said, this.

00:24:43
Speaker 5: Guy, he just smoked to the end and the ashes just grew and grew.

00:24:49
Speaker 6: Hung there, but he did the combination turns and boom and steps and step boom, and then stopped and going you take me, okay, do the steps. We couldn't do the steps because you too watching the asses see if they're in fall.

00:25:04
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:25:05
Speaker 1: So my mother is, you know, probably the show's biggest fan, and she.

00:25:11
Speaker 2: Will scream on me.

00:25:13
Speaker 1: You drop so many names that she'll scream on me if I don't go in the further detail. And my mom's from Pittsburgh. Okay, I'm gonna ask about Bob Fosse. But you mentioned the legendary Martha Graham. You study under it. What was what was it like studying under Martha Graham.

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Speaker 6: Well, I didn't actually have a class about the Graham. I studied with one of her dancers named David Woods. Okay, it was one of the teachers there. It was amazing, you know, for me getting into the middle. The first day of school, they have you line up and then they have you change and you get dressed for your class. You go to your classes. And my first day in school, I wore my suit that wore was sensational Tales to Brooklyn. My mother bought me in a tash sharecase. I stole like my attash shad case. And then they said, go get dressed. All the guys went and put on their dance clothes. I put on my dance clothes, put my suit back oncu that's what it was raised, you know, don't just walk around your underwear. So I get back out there in my suit on. She said, excuse me, doctor was saying you're taking class of that. I said, yes, said, well, where's your dance clothes? I said, my suit. You can't dance that way, Get in there, put on your dance clothes. And that was the beginning of whoa wonderment. Yeah. But David Woods who was really the foundation of my actings as well, because he would tell us, he say, you can't just dance. It's got to tell a story. So find the story that you want to tell through your movement. And that's why dance is so personal to me.

00:26:52
Speaker 8: You know, in.

00:26:53
Speaker 6: Mardern dance, you must tell a story. It isn't about just steps. It's about emotion. It's about the story that you're telling. Although it may not be the choreographer may not is telling you his story. But you got to find your story within the movement. What makes you move this way, what makes you sing this way? What makes you tell your story through drama, through the word this way? You have to create it, at least for me. You have to relate to something within you that connects to that emotion. And that's how we dance. That's how I danced for.

00:27:30
Speaker 1: A lot of us, at least for my generation. This conversation is really transformational as far as like my mind state, because I think every person thinks that their era in the world is the kind of you know, black and white, the color Wizard of Oz thing like everyone thinks like, oh, when I was born, then suddenly modern times began.

00:27:50
Speaker 2: But you know, I.

00:27:52
Speaker 9: Would assume that until Roots came along, that a lot of African Americans weren't even thinking in terms of their history going back to Africa, unless you know, they were of the generation that watched Tarzan as a kid in the fifties and sixties.

00:28:09
Speaker 5: The Marcus Garvey movement, and he was down.

00:28:11
Speaker 2: With that, right.

00:28:13
Speaker 1: So what I'm asking you is when you're told to tell your story and the vocabulary of our African history really wasn't super enforced unless you were part of specialized movements in your mind, when you are expressing yourself and reaching inside for your emotions and through dance, what is it that drove you creatively? Like, what are you thinking of when they're telling you tell your story?

00:28:43
Speaker 6: Well, I'm thinking of my emotional feelings and what I feel in that moment of that story makes sense, all right? If I have safe For example, if I tell a story of my let's see keep a simple going to performing us. What did that make you feel? Like? How did you feel the first day you stepped on that stage, when you stepped into that studio? What was it feeling to you and feeling? What's that story that you want to tell right there? And then that creates a whole movement, yes for us coming up. And I was as far as we're talking about ancestry now, when we talk about black history in my school coming up, in my era, it was one paragraph your slave and Lincoln freed you, you know, and we know that's not true. And long comes a wonderful man named Alex Haley who says, I'm going to watch that because it's not true. And he goes back to Gambia and he finds his roots, and he writes a wonderful book called Roots. And we all now say, and now the world is going whoa wait a minute, waking up. There was more to it than this what's in our history books. There's more to my story, you see. It's so interesting. When Roots came out, it was just the book and I had heard about it, and like lot of us there, and I just knew I wanted to be a part of that movie, that TV series that was And I went to my agent and I said to him, listen, there's this book I think ABC is gonna make a movie out of it called Roots Cinder. I really i'd like to be to try out what he says to me, Ben, you're a song and dance man.

00:30:22
Speaker 10: They're looking for actors, he said, So listen, there's a there's this group that starting out, you got a big hit called your Family's Sister Sledge. He says, they're going to open for you in Chicago, So why don't you go do that? And you have another gig for you guys down in Savannah. So I said yeah, But Kenny said, Ben, they're looking for actors. So I get on I get on the plane. I go to Chicago. Sisters Sledge. They opened to me a wonderful these little girls, the little Girls, and we get to Sabana, Georgia.

00:30:51
Speaker 6: He used to do a character called Bert Williams about my ancestry, about the performer there was a time in America history where black people in the theater were not allowed on stage unless we wore a blackface, and he went through that. So I told that story and coming at the show, that afternoon in Savannah, Georgia, there was a guy came backstages and they would staying Margolis and he said, I want you to read my Chicken George. And I said, I said, said, what's the chicken George? He said, we'll shoe it down here shooting the show called Roots, he said, And I said, I don't care, man, if Chicken George's gout and the boat going, let me yut of here, let me yut here, please please, I'll be there. And that's how I got the bar. But I had no idea how deep it was going to go and what I mean. It opened up a whole avenue for me and for all of us to look back and honor our ancestry, which you must continue to do, to stay forward, because our ancestry of the reason why we're here today, their struggle, their fight, their determination to go through slavery. Imagine coming across the water, having being stolen from your family. You're on and you're put on chains, change what was a chain, and you're being put on a boat on and you put to an island and you're gone away with a bunch of people you've never seen the white and you see a bunch of other people your color, were not the same languages, and we're all chained inside this boat and someone jumping off the side as they refuse to go to They don't know what's gonna happen. They don't want to be a part of it. But the bravery of those people who went through that passage and stood on that on that slave block and watch their families being torn apart, which which I think in my mind, destroyed our culture togetherness, that strength, and to tell their stories to be forgotten. No, no, not on my watch.

00:33:02
Speaker 1: How long did they give you to prepare that role, take us through the process of preparing, executing, and then leaving that character.

00:33:12
Speaker 6: I never looked their character boar.

00:33:17
Speaker 2: All right, ta good joys.

00:33:20
Speaker 6: Well, for me, it was all because I understand my family we never sat around and talked about then, because we were surviving in the now. My family was the educators or the you know, they were not of that ilk, you know, if they were field workers, you know, survivors, and so we never sat around talked about education, about government, about what's going on day to day survival. So when I got this, I knew there was a deeper story. When I got the opportunity to tell my story, it was like, how do I find my research? So I called my elders. You know, can you tell me about what it was like during this time that time? And you know, and a lot of it came from imagination once again, what it must have felt like. And Chicken George, he's so beautiful.

00:34:17
Speaker 11: You know.

00:34:17
Speaker 6: The one thing I do is that when I get to a character, especially someone like Chicken George, I asked permission to enter into that realm of consciousness. What's been like for you? Educate me, teach me? And he took me on his journey. And I tell you the respect and the admiration that the cast and the crew had doing that, it was amazing. It was amazing.

00:34:43
Speaker 5: Did it feel safe? Did they provide like a cause? You know in twenty twenty if you guys made this in twenty twenty four or twenty five, there would be all kind of counseling on set, and you know, when you when you broke out a character, there'd be somebody to make sure are you okay? Like, how did y'all handle that? No? Not in twenty twenty four, Sorry to jump in now, go please, That will come later oh not in twenty twenty four, my bad.

00:35:08
Speaker 6: Okay yaour During that time it was self nurturing. And that's why I say the cat the crew, even the crew was aware that we were touching upon something that was in other words, I hate to use this word but taboo. But the respect and the reverence that the crew had and would like to see that one scene. I never forget the scene where Richard Rowntree was dating my mother time Leslie other one was playing kissing and there's a scene where she had talked him into taking her to find her father and they go back and they're late coming back to the plantation and his masa at the time was supposed to tastise him and Richard Rowntree was supposed to beg for him not to beat him. And I'll never get this. Richard said, you want me to grobble to a white man? Do you know why?

00:36:07
Speaker 5: I am mm hmm.

00:36:10
Speaker 6: I don't grabble for no white man. And the direct said said, Richard, we need this just for the next scene. He said no to he said, he said you can do this. He says, I ain't grabbling no white man. It's like that, And he said, well, he said just one time, he said. He looked around, he looked at them, at Kissey and my mother Leslie, looked at the castle and the crew. You went, you got one shot and he gets down. He does that scene where he says, please bost some morsel, don't beat me, and we just finished the direction that gun. Okay, that was a good friend. Anybody go home. The one said okay, thank you, thank you very much. Because it was, like, I mean, all of a sudden, we had to reflect on the fact that what it must have been like to have the wobble to white people for our survival. That the big you know, I think about my oof, don't get me started. I think about what people went through as slaves, kings, inventors, doctors, leaders being stripped. We built empires and civilizations and now we are at the bottom of the chain. They gave us slop and we made it a proisine. We made it a proisine.

00:37:39
Speaker 5: I can't even get to that extent of thought. It makes me think of also the artists who have had to play these roles. And it's funny because as you said, as you said, this was a taboo thing and now it's not. Now we've had several movies that have followed, and it makes me think about all the black actors who have had to tackle these roles, like from Chiwaitel e Joe for to Jamie Fox, to Lapita and Jongo. And I'm curious if anybody ever reached back to you and went, how did you do this?

00:38:06
Speaker 7: How did you do this thing?

00:38:09
Speaker 6: Because we who were there at the first beginning a waiting to say this is how we did it? Because what annoysment? I loved my brother LaVar Burden, love him, yet he felt that maybe I let me take it this way, but he never allowed us to talk to the cast, They say, what did you go through? How did you get there? At this point?

00:38:33
Speaker 5: Oh with the newer roots? Are you talking about the new roots? The newer roots?

00:38:37
Speaker 6: I said, Okay, they did a good job, but as far as they could do. But we could have given them another layer that's much deeper because we were there.

00:38:47
Speaker 5: We were I was curious about thank you for answering that question.

00:38:51
Speaker 6: We cried and wept and we what to do, but we knew we had to do it for the art and to tell the truth story as far as Hollywood would allow us to tell the true stories. You understand, Ruth just scraunged upon the surface really went down, But what really went down? You get into those wounds, you go deeper. They were knights. I come home and my wife Nancy, she go you okay, I say yeah, And nights I was just being tears and he was like, okay, okay, and let me get myself ready. Okay, let's go do the scene. And although I was friend chicken George, who was like a dandy, but there was that moment when he finds out his father is white. It's gone through and watching your fellow neighbor brothers, they whipped because they didn't want to pick up something they didn't want to do, so they said the same wrong thing because they were field niggas, then the house niggas, because it was to you a little better with the field nigga telling those stories, and I think those stories have not been told enough. As long as my Jewish brother and sisters can tell us about the Holocaust, we must talk about our Holocaust. Excuse me, agreed, Let's read so we know where we are going, otherwise they will do it to us again.

00:40:21
Speaker 1: So before that last break, we shared a clip from Ben Vereen, right, now we got Jennifer Lewis, who just gave team supreme wisdom on life from her experience and courage. I guess you can say in and out, I've been doing therapy for like thirty years. But you know the thing is, when the pandemic came, really you know again, like I do, I feel like a person shouldn't have to be at rock bottom to make the change.

00:40:52
Speaker 2: So that's why I'm really glad the pandemic happened.

00:40:55
Speaker 1: Because it wasn't a rock bottom moment, But that was definitely somewhat of a paradigm shift for me and taken mental health seriously and all those things. But you mentioned something, and I noticed that probably the time that I might be liable to get in an argument.

00:41:18
Speaker 2: I mean, not a.

00:41:19
Speaker 1: Fight, not like pugilism or anything. But there's a moment after I get off stage where I can't describe the feeling. And you you said that, and I was like, oh, so I'm not I've you know, I just thought like, well, me're sometimes you're just in an asshole after the thirty minutes after roots show. It's almost like after a root show, I purposely look for a place to just sit silent and literally come down and.

00:41:45
Speaker 2: I can't explain it.

00:41:46
Speaker 1: And the thing is is like right after a show, that's when people were pulling for you and Amir, let's talk to get it write, and I can't explain. And the thing is, it's like, because these people aren't entertainers, it's hard to really explain to them the process I go through, which is kind of why it's almost like an ad that feeling of when you're done a show, and that how you feel is such a description less addiction that I can't describe that. I figured out that for the at least the last thirty years, I've been doing DJ gigs after the Root show because I love music and because I love DJ, but basically I need to slowly come down off that high normalcy.

00:42:35
Speaker 2: So usually after.

00:42:36
Speaker 1: Root show, I will DJ for three hours so that way I don't have to talk to people. I'm playing music and I come down. But and sometimes when I'm not DJing, I wonder what that is, And I thought I was the only person going through that, because again, if I feel weird in talking about the mental health space thing and have my occupation, because I always feel like people look at me like eh, here's the world Stiny's violin. Like, if people are in a certain profession, they might not. They might feel unworthy of having problems or whatnot.

00:43:12
Speaker 2: Like people might not.

00:43:13
Speaker 5: At this point, the world knows entertainers have trauma.

00:43:16
Speaker 7: Right, I'm just let me interject here. Yes, yes, please please.

00:43:20
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:43:21
Speaker 12: First of all, we are not normal creatures. Yeah right, we are artists. We are different. Are we better or worse than anyone? No, we just are who we are and we form who we form the artistreet.

00:43:46
Speaker 7: It's like Lena Simone said, an artist's duty is.

00:43:52
Speaker 12: To speak to the times. Nina Simone didn't hide her pain and need. It's a more laid it on the piano. We have to learn where to put that quest. You have to put that somewhere. You have to compartmentalize that you expressed it beautifully. It's called a glory train. Love you hear me talking to you. It's a glory train. And nobody can stay on that train too long.

00:44:27
Speaker 7: You got to come off.

00:44:28
Speaker 12: You got to get in the grass, and you got to surround yourself with nature and have that gratitude. It is a gratitude moment, so use it for that. You don't have to go crazy. Most people go and get drunk and party and carry on. Okay, you get a couple of those a month, but then sit the fuck down and talk about those feelings.

00:44:52
Speaker 7: Write them down so that the next time you feel it, you have something to balance it.

00:44:59
Speaker 12: Nobody's coming with the answer, nobody's coming with the recipe. You got to pay attention to the self. It is the journey within that will get you where you need to be, because what you will discover, hmm, is how short life is.

00:45:20
Speaker 7: Listen to me, you want to know how You want to know how I live?

00:45:24
Speaker 12: I live like I got five minutes left?

00:45:28
Speaker 7: What if? What if you add five FDA minutes left? Who would you call? Hmm? Think about that?

00:45:41
Speaker 3: Shit?

00:45:43
Speaker 6: What if?

00:45:44
Speaker 7: And I live like that? I ain't gonna lie to you.

00:45:47
Speaker 12: Sometimes it's something as like when my assistant leaves. I want to swim, but the shadows have.

00:45:58
Speaker 7: Come over the pool so it gets a little.

00:46:01
Speaker 12: Chill, and I stand there and go, oh, I don't want to get in this pool. Jenny, get in the fucking pool and relax yourself.

00:46:13
Speaker 7: You gotta talk to yourself.

00:46:15
Speaker 12: But guess why I got in the pool, Because when I woke up, I wrote it down. You will swim today. You got That's what living on purpose is about. You can't go willy nelly through this bitch.

00:46:30
Speaker 7: It'll eat you a line. This is why that you are in charge. Write the ship down.

00:46:39
Speaker 12: You write your story instead of like I said, go on willy nilly skipping timptoeing through the fucking tulips.

00:46:47
Speaker 7: That's what life. Look, Life is not a rehearsal. Live this bitch.

00:46:53
Speaker 13: Can I just say real quick, excuse me?

00:46:55
Speaker 5: Let me let me just say this, And I hate to be on corny and go to the book that you have our walking in Your Joy? But I just realized, Am I saying that walking in your joy?

00:47:03
Speaker 7: Yes? Walking in my joy?

00:47:05
Speaker 5: In my joy? But it's so interesting because a lot of people write books and they say things, But I like that you have some real practical things, like what you just said to a mirror about living in those five minutes. And then you wrote something else that caught me and you said, when you're feeling down, you come up with a song about your how much you love yourself and how much.

00:47:23
Speaker 7: People love you.

00:47:24
Speaker 5: That's not I'm realizing. Although I haven't finished the book, can people like depend that like you pretty much got little workable jewels in here. Not just like girl, live your best life. It's actually like no, exactly exactly, but.

00:47:38
Speaker 7: Here's the work. The work is how am I gonna live my best life?

00:47:44
Speaker 11: Right?

00:47:44
Speaker 12: And that's what And that's the work. That's what you write down in the morning, y'all. I don't know if you know, but when I wrote The Mother Black Hollywood, I started writing in a journal in the seventh grade, No I because I knew I was gonna be a star and I would need my book.

00:48:10
Speaker 7: That's seventh grade continuously.

00:48:13
Speaker 12: I am sixty five. There are sixty seven journals.

00:48:18
Speaker 14: Oh I'm so jealous.

00:48:19
Speaker 7: That is why don't we do this?

00:48:21
Speaker 5: Why do we start and stop?

00:48:23
Speaker 7: And I got about six?

00:48:25
Speaker 12: Damn it sood details? She saw the Black Hollywood.

00:48:30
Speaker 3: It's so good.

00:48:31
Speaker 7: Because of the details.

00:48:33
Speaker 12: I can tell you that I had hot apple pie all.

00:48:37
Speaker 7: The mold with your only Ralph on this date. Damn you see, you see, you see, so nothing is wasted. Live your life.

00:48:48
Speaker 12: And when I got into therapy the first time, my therapist looked at me when I told her I had written all those journals.

00:48:54
Speaker 7: She said, that's what saved your life.

00:48:56
Speaker 4: Little girl, I believe it.

00:48:58
Speaker 7: I didn't know I was saving my life. Yeah, but that.

00:49:01
Speaker 12: Journal served in me learning at an early age. I didn't even know I was doing it to be in charge of me and leave other people alone. Jour people come and go for a season, let it go. When they're no longer of reflection of you.

00:49:26
Speaker 7: You're not gonna be comfortable around them.

00:49:29
Speaker 12: If the toxic shit is going on the lines and the chaos, y'all get the fuck out of there.

00:49:34
Speaker 7: You ain't there.

00:49:35
Speaker 12: There are many rooms to go to, there are many cities.

00:49:39
Speaker 7: All your dude, leave the room fuck out of there.

00:49:42
Speaker 12: Shit simple, don't sit there with all that drama and shitty.

00:49:46
Speaker 5: Practical things you can use.

00:49:48
Speaker 7: It's so boring. It's boring.

00:49:50
Speaker 2: I said.

00:49:51
Speaker 12: The greatest sin is somebody to say, oh, I'm bored, bitch thet to.

00:49:55
Speaker 7: Have my money.

00:49:57
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:49:57
Speaker 1: So, of course, like in the last two years is the most that I've heard black people speaking on finding joy and finding their mental health and all those things. Because previously there's a secret I would never like in two thousand and eleven, I would never share with nobody that.

00:50:18
Speaker 5: Likes trauma attached to that you right, because.

00:50:22
Speaker 2: You don't want to share like people think I'm crazy or whatever. The thing is is.

00:50:26
Speaker 1: That I know that for black people, their go to answer was always the church, especially of an older you know, I was born in seventy one.

00:50:40
Speaker 2: I know you were born before I was fifty seven.

00:50:43
Speaker 1: For a lot of people in you know, pre eighties people whatever, like their thing is always like I'll find God or I'll talk to my preacher.

00:50:52
Speaker 2: How so this is almost a phenomenally to hear.

00:50:57
Speaker 1: Of your generation, of your experience really not even diving into the pool of mental therapy, but I mean you're going to the abyss of it, You're going to the deepest level of it.

00:51:09
Speaker 2: So what was it?

00:51:10
Speaker 1: What was the moment that told you that my mental health has to be addressed in and handled this way as opposed to I do consider that, I do consider organized religion as a vice akin to gambling, sex, joys.

00:51:32
Speaker 7: Let me say this to you.

00:51:34
Speaker 12: Yeah, there's a line in the movie I did, Karina Karina where the the little girl says, these people believe I'm paraphrasing, but they said, these people believe in God. And the people that somebody has said it was Jewish. And the question that was asked by a child was She said, why do these people sing about this? And the mother said because it makes them feel good? And the little girl said, what's wrong with that? Mother said, I guess nothing. Look, if you want to be an organized religion, that's okay. Let people do what they want to do. That's what gets me through life. To allow allow others to be where they are. What you're gonna do, Go and make them a Buddhist, go and make them a move them. You're gonna make them what.

00:52:29
Speaker 6: You gonna do.

00:52:31
Speaker 12: Once again, once again, pay attention to yourself. Everybody on this planet has one job, and one job on it self.

00:52:43
Speaker 7: Care and if you need to cry to Jesus to.

00:52:46
Speaker 12: Do that, then you go on and cry to Jesus. But allow other people to cry to whoever the hell they want to cry to. That's what I don't like about religion. Everybody think their religion is the best one.

00:52:59
Speaker 7: So oh, I don't believe in that. Lead people alone, Lead people alone.

00:53:04
Speaker 12: If they want to work, you, let them work to Jesus, let him work the Buddha or a Mohammed or Allah. Let people do what the fuck they want to do.

00:53:14
Speaker 7: I know who I am. I searched every religion in this world.

00:53:19
Speaker 12: I have been down the road, let's travel, and when I got to the end, that wasn't nothing but the big ass mirror. You cannot run. Wherever you run, you will meet yourself.

00:53:38
Speaker 7: So there's no running. And I told them on the breakfast Club, I got money.

00:53:42
Speaker 2: To run, and you can't even run.

00:53:47
Speaker 6: You can't run.

00:53:49
Speaker 7: You can don't ask me. Don't ask me for now. I'm like, what's his name?

00:53:52
Speaker 12: The baby I love, Daje Pel I'm rich, bitch, don't.

00:53:57
Speaker 7: Ask me for shit? All right, there you go.

00:54:01
Speaker 5: What do you say to him?

00:54:02
Speaker 6: Even?

00:54:02
Speaker 5: Like to what onn Amir's question, like you're leading the pack of your generation in that way, like he said, like you're it is kind of special. Do you see in the difference in the generational hower Now? I'm using words and had vocabulary for things that we didn't have before.

00:54:17
Speaker 7: When I went I Got you.

00:54:19
Speaker 12: When I went on the road with the Mother Black Hollywood, because it was my journey through bipolar disorder, I was able to feel not only the temperature, but the temperament of the United States.

00:54:34
Speaker 7: I went all over.

00:54:35
Speaker 12: During the Trump era, people are starting to wake up. I was very pleased. They're starting to get counseling in churches, they are starting to put more counseling in youth centers. Our children are falling apart, and I'm not the only woman in the world that cares. People are coming together. We are getting better. Everybody wanted to talk about the stigma. Yes, there is a stigma, but we are getting better. You See, my mother didn't have the Oprah Winfrey ship. Okay, that's what I'm saying. Mamma didn't know nothing about mental illness. And yet if someone were to ask me, I would say, absolutely she was.

00:55:17
Speaker 7: I do believe that she was depressed.

00:55:19
Speaker 12: She had me when she was twenty six years old and I was her seventh child. Whoa, she was scrubbed, and she was scrubbing white people's floors.

00:55:28
Speaker 7: You think she had time to give me affection.

00:55:31
Speaker 12: She was exhausted by the time I came along. Listen eve Insler, who wrote the Vagina Monologues.

00:55:41
Speaker 7: She ran all around the world.

00:55:42
Speaker 12: She went to Africa with the women that were having the clitterictism.

00:55:48
Speaker 7: If it's clitterists, I don't know. If it's her plural, I only have one, all right. I used to have three but I get y'all want remember one of those first wnch stns.

00:56:05
Speaker 12: That bitch tied to when we just had listen, God, damn, I have.

00:56:14
Speaker 7: To web it.

00:56:16
Speaker 12: That bitch tied to glitter and she.

00:56:20
Speaker 7: Has something like that, something like that.

00:56:23
Speaker 12: It was funny, but it Let me get back to this, sorry, let me get back to serious ship. Listen all I can say that, then not go into three clitterists, honey.

00:56:37
Speaker 5: Last in the glitterists, I did too.

00:56:39
Speaker 12: I need to find somebody to tell me whether clittericist it's clitterisstens.

00:56:44
Speaker 7: Come on, Jennifer, if.

00:56:45
Speaker 1: You don't need clitter, clit glitteriz, I have no idea.

00:56:55
Speaker 7: You know, I'll come out of the bag with anything.

00:56:56
Speaker 5: I don't multiple clitterists last.

00:56:59
Speaker 7: Thank you? Did you look it up?

00:57:01
Speaker 2: No?

00:57:04
Speaker 7: I was in uh.

00:57:05
Speaker 12: When I was in the serah gaddy uh, two little baby rhinoceroses thought I had some food, so they came over to.

00:57:12
Speaker 7: Me and they just gone like this, just a don't get, don't get, don't.

00:57:17
Speaker 12: And they when they saw it and have no food, they kind of don't don't get don't away from me, and I start screaming.

00:57:25
Speaker 7: I ever heard of Jenny Craig.

00:57:30
Speaker 3: Had no food for you.

00:57:32
Speaker 12: I'll cuts out a rhinoceros, bitch you hear me? And then I had to look up whether it was not rhinocerih because most of my friends was wait.

00:57:42
Speaker 7: Man, because wait a minute.

00:57:43
Speaker 12: Listen, because most of my friends are major intellectuals.

00:57:48
Speaker 7: I keep smart people around me.

00:57:49
Speaker 12: Honey, listen, I can feel enough for everybody.

00:57:52
Speaker 7: You just tell me what the ship? What's going on?

00:57:55
Speaker 6: But here?

00:57:55
Speaker 12: But if I listen, if I'm a stand in the getty and cuffs out two baby rhinoceroses, what do you think I'm gonna do with the story of the clitterists? Get the fuck out, Let's go.

00:58:09
Speaker 7: What's that?

00:58:12
Speaker 4: Oh?

00:58:13
Speaker 7: Cos is out? But what you need to know is, Jennifer Lord, We'll go anywhere.

00:58:18
Speaker 12: I ain't no shame in my game, baby, I'll do anything to make people laugh.

00:58:28
Speaker 1: So clearly, if you're a longtime fan of the show, you'll notice that we've had a curious metamorphosis. In the beginning, we were raw talking over each other like there's no rules of podcasting or interviewing when you first jump in the game. And of course, unlike radio, where you're supposed to go to communication school and learn how to backsell and do stuff in like fifteen seconds.

00:58:56
Speaker 2: Distinctly, it's really a learning process.

00:59:00
Speaker 1: Learning process when you podcast on your own without any communication training. Then I'll say, like, after twenty twenty kind of had a life epiphany, and without really getting too deep into it, let's just say that I became more aware of what I wanted to put out into the world. And I guess in some abstract way, I guess I'm going to Hamilton saying like not wasting my shot, or you know, Chuck de says, not rhyming for the sake of riddling. Just want to be more mindful of any content that I put out in the world. And you know, of course that's not in the kind of conservative eighties slash, you know, typic Gore way of you know, this whole idea that positivity or that sort of thing is seeing as a bore or a negative. I think wisdom an accurate information. It's important. I think processing of emotions is important. I think creativity is important. I think a lot of guests like coming onto the show because they're not here just to sell you product.

01:00:17
Speaker 2: You know, we're just so used to promoting the movie, promoting the movie.

01:00:20
Speaker 1: Promoting the movie, artists rarely get a chance to just talk about how they feel or feel safe to do, so, you know, and sometimes we've had episodes in which people have been wide open. One of the episodes which I you know, even though you've heard me say, like, oh, the Jimmy Jam episode or the Babyface episode or one of those drunken Christmas episodes, the Family Stand episode is definitely exemplary of where there was no filter whatsoever, and you know, the truth came out, feelings came out. And then there's some episodes in which people held back. We still to this day, Joe about Faith Newman's very type lipped experiences in the record industry in the eighties and nineties.

01:01:09
Speaker 2: Understandable.

01:01:10
Speaker 1: You know, what happens in life stays in life in that present moment when it was. But for me, like, wisdom is important. So that way, even if you listen to an old episode, like you could listen to that Jimmy Jam episode forever because he dropped so much wisdom gyms. So that's why wisdom's important, all right. So we've had some rather difficult conversations on Questlove Supreme as well. Back in twenty sixteen, Solange recounted how she felt profiled at a craft Work concert. There was one entry on your site that really had me curious, and I wanted to call you about it. What I've forgot to and that was the I guess we can call it the craft Work incident. Yeah, And the thing was I understood. I guess what I got from it was that it's really hard for you to make people understand that you still go through human experiences, which because people perceived you as coming from such a this.

01:02:31
Speaker 2: Perceived dynasty of.

01:02:34
Speaker 1: Giants that you know would be time to pull out the violin or whatever, like, oh, you know, and it's never validated. What I'm saying is that what I got from that entry was the fact that you were frustrated that you really couldn't figure out a way to express the anger you have when those injustices and those situations happened to you, because people don't see you as a human being and just see you as part of this, you know, this dynasty that's supposed to be taught line to emotions, and I can imagine that being frustrating.

01:03:15
Speaker 2: Can you explain the craft Work situation?

01:03:17
Speaker 15: Yes, but I will say before before I get into that just to carry on what you said. The thing is is that doctor Dre is going through this in front of his home, and Oprah Winfrey is going through this, you know, in the Hermez store, and these are billionaires, So that in that landscape, I think those kind of micro aggressions happen to everyone daily as as a black woman and man in this country. It doesn't matter your class, it doesn't matter how much money you have, what kind of quote unquote empire dynasty you come from.

01:03:59
Speaker 16: That's just the lay of the land. Essentially.

01:04:04
Speaker 15: My husband and my son who's twelve jewels, and his friend Rashid, we went to see craft work. And the interesting thing was it was a Friday night. My son had his friend over. They had never heard of craft work, to be honest, that was the last thing that they wanted.

01:04:25
Speaker 16: To do with their Friday night.

01:04:28
Speaker 15: So, you know, Allen and I are showing them YouTube videos and trying to make the link with hip hop to get them more interested, and showing them visuals and like, no, you guys are gonna love this, like you know, just relating and specifically showing the samples that Jules's uncle.

01:04:54
Speaker 16: Sample of craftworks.

01:04:57
Speaker 2: So whoever that is because it took me a minute.

01:05:02
Speaker 16: So essentially.

01:05:05
Speaker 15: That's important to note, just just for the story itself, that here you have two young black kids who are not really interested, don't have much, you know, knowledge about this bad yeah, and we are, you know, trying to navigate them into the show and build interests and whatever.

01:05:30
Speaker 16: As soon as we walk in, we got our three D glasses said their museum run.

01:05:37
Speaker 15: No, this was at the Orpheum Theater and so yeah, we're basically walking to our seats, and it just so happened the very song.

01:05:56
Speaker 16: Yes exactly was on, and so we were super stoked. We had box seats.

01:06:06
Speaker 15: There was two rows in front of us in one row behind us, and we walked our seats and we're dancing and these women essentially just started yelling at the top of their lung sit.

01:06:24
Speaker 1: Down, now, sit down, shut up.

01:06:28
Speaker 5: You guys are been so disruptive.

01:06:33
Speaker 15: And I turned around and I, in that moment, had to make a decision. Am I gonna respond or am I just going to enjoy this song and deal with it later.

01:06:45
Speaker 16: I actually clocked.

01:06:46
Speaker 15: Into myself, you know, you have that moment, and said I'm gonna dance to this song and then I'm gonna sit my ass down because I already know where this is heading. Simultaneously, which I didn't write about, which Alan thought was really important for me to note and note you. My son is he was eleven at the time, and this the attendant comes over to him and his friend who are sitting down.

01:07:14
Speaker 16: They weren't standing up dancing. Alan an hour and.

01:07:18
Speaker 15: Says, put your no electronic cigarettes. Put your cigarettes away to these children.

01:07:25
Speaker 16: Yes, yes, cigarettes, note you.

01:07:29
Speaker 15: As soon as we walked in and we saw these two older white men sitting in front smoking the cigarettes, we took note of that. We weren't bothered, but you know, it was just the assumption that if someone was breaking the rule, surely it was the two eleven year old black kids.

01:07:47
Speaker 13: Because somebody said, yeah, yeah, vaping.

01:07:53
Speaker 16: So it was just a lot of tension in general.

01:07:57
Speaker 15: And thank God, by the grace of God, Allan opped into that immediately and was like, ma'am, these are children, You've got the wrong people.

01:08:06
Speaker 16: Whatever.

01:08:09
Speaker 15: And then after that, Alan's going to kill me for for blinking on the name of the song Ottomond.

01:08:20
Speaker 16: That comes on.

01:08:21
Speaker 15: And on the ride there, Alan had played me the entire twelve minute song, and it just so happened that that's what they played. So I was like, well, I'm gonna just dance to this one too, because we had just had that moment, right, and we're at an electronic dance music concert.

01:08:43
Speaker 16: It's not like.

01:08:46
Speaker 2: Engaged in.

01:08:48
Speaker 15: So there's two there's two parts of this problem. The problem is also that, you know, we probably should have asked for floor seats, but we were under the assumption that people were going to be dancing all night long.

01:09:05
Speaker 2: So you're in the balcony of the theater.

01:09:07
Speaker 15: Yes, so we're dancing, and then I feel something hit me on the back of my head. But I say, surely I am tripping, must be tripping, must be tripping, right, So I actually tell Alan, I said, I swear, and maybe I'm just losing my motherfucking black ass.

01:09:28
Speaker 16: Might but I just felt something hit.

01:09:31
Speaker 15: Me on the back of my head, and he was like, babe, you might just be tripping, like just lay low. So I actually, you know, shook it off, and then I felt something harder, Oh yeah, me on my shoulder, and my son, my eleven year old son, tapped me.

01:09:56
Speaker 16: He picked up.

01:09:57
Speaker 15: A line from the ground I have eating line, and he said, Mom, I just watched these women throw this at you.

01:10:08
Speaker 13: Used to tested in all kinds of ways, and I feel.

01:10:21
Speaker 16: So bad because they gave us the tickets.

01:10:24
Speaker 15: I've never met them, but you know, it just it just sucks that they also had to be associated with this incident. But yeah, you know, in that moment, I basically knew we had probably three choices. One was to react, which probably would have led to someone getting arrested, you know, just spiraling out of control.

01:10:51
Speaker 16: Or I called the police on.

01:10:53
Speaker 15: Them because essentially, you know, they did throw ship at me.

01:11:02
Speaker 16: Yeah, I mean, you know, you're here sometimes exactly that's what they do.

01:11:13
Speaker 15: Literally, But I knew that even if that happened that somehow would it would still be our fault, or just to just take it and be silenced, because I knew that if I spoke to them that it would escalate.

01:11:28
Speaker 16: And my son was there.

01:11:29
Speaker 15: It was already traumatic enough for him to have to experience that, especially in a context where it was a predominantly white space, and he didn't want to be there in the first place. And so now I think the thing that saddened me the most is that here we are, as parents trying to expand, you know, his horizon and his experience and make him feel like he belongs wherever he chooses to be.

01:12:01
Speaker 16: But that was not the message that we got.

01:12:03
Speaker 1: That next, what do you think he took from that experience, Like, did you explain to him, Oh, yeah.

01:12:08
Speaker 16: Several talks. No, No, we had several talks.

01:12:12
Speaker 15: In fact, you know the we had it was it was quite a three days after that.

01:12:20
Speaker 16: I think that number one, I think just as as.

01:12:25
Speaker 15: A young man and him and Alan, both as the men and the family also felt silent and powerless just in protecting me in that situation because they are black men, and no matter what would have been said or done, they would have been the aggressive in the situation. So on one end, it was about teaching him, you know, after the last eleven twelve now twelve years of teaching him about injustices and how to stand up for himself and to not be afraid and to speak up and then having to say but right, So it was it was just it's very complicated, but I felt the need to write that piece for him.

01:13:18
Speaker 16: I felt the need to essentially not be.

01:13:22
Speaker 15: Silenced in that situation and to let him know that there is an outlet in a way to use his voice responsibly because there are so many people who read that piece who I felt had a deeper understanding of the microaggressions that we face as black men and women on a daily basis, who were able to empathize, which is something that we have the expectation of people to do on a daily basis and to treat us with humanity. But it was really interesting, and I felt regretful because I had so much rage in the moment that I started tweeting because I wanted them to see it.

01:14:04
Speaker 16: When they got home, they were put on blast.

01:14:06
Speaker 15: But I wish that I would have just channeled my emotions and that waited and channeled in that piece, And it was a great lesson learned that you know, it really is no way to condense that experience in however many letters that you get on one hundred and forty.

01:14:26
Speaker 5: Characters had to write a book about it.

01:14:29
Speaker 16: Yeah, yeah, it's really no way.

01:14:33
Speaker 1: Solange's experiences related to something that I shared on the show along with Journey Smollett and Journey and I shared a story of the time that both she and I got stopped by police, and these were the things that people in the mainstream may not always hear because we never get again asked about our daily life experiences.

01:14:56
Speaker 2: It's all about our product.

01:15:00
Speaker 1: We uh decided to share that story, and we felt it was important to take our you know, take the space to share our experiences journey.

01:15:10
Speaker 2: Are we going to tell the story.

01:15:12
Speaker 11: That story you're talking about, to.

01:15:14
Speaker 2: Tell the story? You know the story? Answer? Yes, the story?

01:15:21
Speaker 5: Oh said No, huh, okay, tell it, I'll tell it.

01:15:28
Speaker 8: I mean, it's it's we were you're talking about the Marina del Ray one.

01:15:33
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:15:34
Speaker 7: So often what we.

01:15:35
Speaker 11: Were doing is we were phone bank. You know, he's talking about eight, Like really when we started heavily? No, no, no, it was Maria del Ray.

01:15:49
Speaker 2: We were leasing place where white people were. That's all I remember. Maria.

01:15:55
Speaker 8: Yeah, we were leaving a grassroots organizing meeting. Were Obama and eight and it was he was during the primaries. He hadn't even won yet.

01:16:07
Speaker 2: Tuesday.

01:16:08
Speaker 7: Yes, we were.

01:16:09
Speaker 2: Depressed and we were depressed. He lost cow.

01:16:13
Speaker 11: California to Hillary.

01:16:15
Speaker 8: We were so depressed and so he was driving his Mini coup whatever whenever I mean, would come to l A.

01:16:22
Speaker 2: Would listen.

01:16:27
Speaker 1: You could you could tell like who's knowing me, like based on the car I was driving, doing the period.

01:16:32
Speaker 5: And it just goes from there.

01:16:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, you remember, I forgot the we were depressed. Then we then we go see like there will be blood or something like. It was something depressing, just something I remember.

01:16:45
Speaker 11: I don't remember, but we got pulled over.

01:16:50
Speaker 2: That's that's that's that's the story that slightly putting it. Yeah, I forgot.

01:16:56
Speaker 11: I mean pretty much we had. It was almost like that scene I think of traffic, traffic, it was it was.

01:17:05
Speaker 2: It was it was traffic for you. It was more like Boys in the Hood for me.

01:17:11
Speaker 5: Having done she don't trying to think it was so many stories in traffic, which was.

01:17:14
Speaker 1: A crash crash.

01:17:18
Speaker 2: But they're both like the same kind of movie.

01:17:19
Speaker 11: They are a lot of stories and always confusing.

01:17:22
Speaker 8: AnyWho, we get pulled over and I pull out my camera and I'm like starting.

01:17:27
Speaker 2: To It's not like it's a phone camera. It's like that.

01:17:34
Speaker 7: Jim Quarter.

01:17:35
Speaker 2: You have to hit the red button like a ghetto boom box, like one of the big motherfuckers.

01:17:41
Speaker 11: So the cop walks up to the car and and then Journey has the record.

01:17:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was dead.

01:17:46
Speaker 8: Uh, it was like joy that damn thing.

01:17:50
Speaker 7: Wait, you ain't ele Baker right now? Okay, like to take the time to be ele Baker.

01:17:53
Speaker 11: Put it away because it's massive, and so they they she.

01:17:59
Speaker 2: Was ready to start the revolution in the car, ready.

01:18:02
Speaker 11: To televise it. And you know, they asked me here to get out of the car.

01:18:08
Speaker 8: Don't tell them why then they asked me to get out of the car.

01:18:13
Speaker 11: Oh oh, They start patting him down.

01:18:17
Speaker 8: They walk him to the back of the car and handcuff him, put him in the back of the car.

01:18:23
Speaker 11: They pat me down, search me in ways.

01:18:27
Speaker 8: That I will say it was incredibly violated.

01:18:33
Speaker 1: They yeah, I mean the difference between now and then is that, of course, with the technology it cell phones, you don't know if you're being recorded or not. But that was definitely, I mean, there's definitely, you know, a moment in time where they were just reckless because they knew that nobody's ever going to see this or believe this or get away with this. Even when they were asking me questions like.

01:18:58
Speaker 5: Yeah, what were they say, like what happens?

01:19:01
Speaker 1: We keep calling the thing is is that I know it's you know, it's it's it's like the price, it's like it's like being on the prices right, And it's like when you're home, you know that you know that bottle Windexes whatever six ninety nine or whatever. Like when you're home, you know, you know all the answers on Jeopardy, But when you're there and you see the look in their eyes, I was just like, I'm going to die tonight, Like this is this is the it's the most helpless, e masculating feelings ever. And you know he's talking about where's your register? I forgot what question he asked, And I said, well, you know my I said, you know, my assistant at the office Internet, I mean like office. Like it's like you can't be too smart or else your assassin or that sort of thing. And your mind is just blink because they know you don't know your rights of course, you know, knowing what I've seen now, like we shouldn't have gotten out the car.

01:20:11
Speaker 5: Yeah, how did he even put handcuffs on you?

01:20:13
Speaker 6: For what?

01:20:13
Speaker 11: Like, I don't well, they didn't give us any explanation.

01:20:16
Speaker 8: They then handcuffed me and put me in the back with the mirror and we sat there. It felt like an eternity sitting in the back of that car.

01:20:24
Speaker 6: Together.

01:20:24
Speaker 8: We like neither one of us knew what to say. We just sat there in silence, you know, in the back or in front, in back, Oh.

01:20:31
Speaker 16: My god, that's.

01:20:34
Speaker 7: Yeah.

01:20:34
Speaker 8: And then they came back. They had like, you know, looked throughout everything in his car and my purse and and just kind of like handed him back his driver's license and said, Okay, the weird.

01:20:47
Speaker 1: Ship, the weirdest ship was they wanted to look in the trunk and Journey and.

01:20:53
Speaker 2: I had stopped by.

01:20:57
Speaker 1: Borders because Dawn manager had just moved to LA and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna get her. I'm gonna get her a deluxe crap. I'm gonna get her a deluxe scrabble game. In my mind, I was like, he's going to open this trunk and see all these scrabbles and psychology books in the in the back, and he's going to say, there's no way it's this car belongs to these two.

01:21:25
Speaker 6: Oh.

01:21:26
Speaker 1: And his thing was that and I never verified it. I think we did ask like, why did.

01:21:32
Speaker 2: You pull us over? Rich was calling me on the phone. Here's the weird shit.

01:21:39
Speaker 1: Rich was calling me on the phone about Prince's table at the jam session. And me, quote being a good citizen. I was like, Okay, let me pull the car over so I can take this phone call, you know, or I could have just picked up the car, you know call while I was driving, but I didn't, and we happen to be in front of a Mini Coup dealership. I guess yeah, I mean he said.

01:22:10
Speaker 8: About you know, he said he said something as if the lights the plates didn't match.

01:22:15
Speaker 11: The rental car uh contract.

01:22:19
Speaker 8: And we were like, but how do you know to pull us over to check to see if the plates matched the rental car contract?

01:22:26
Speaker 11: Like you didn't have a.

01:22:27
Speaker 8: Contract when you decided to pull us over to know if they didn't match.

01:22:32
Speaker 11: And and it just was pretty much they let us go without a ticket.

01:22:37
Speaker 8: Without a warning, without anything, because there was nothing that Emir had actually done wrong.

01:22:42
Speaker 11: It was just he was driving while.

01:22:44
Speaker 8: Black in a Mini Coup with a big fro right, and and we just felt, honestly, we just when we drove away, it bring night ruined just inside Mayor you kept you kept want to Grammy that week.

01:23:01
Speaker 1: That's a weird thing. I don't even consider it, like even to look at that. I think that's when I started just putting my ships in them, Like I honestly, if if you week was it that week?

01:23:15
Speaker 2: The following Sunday I did eight?

01:23:17
Speaker 6: Right?

01:23:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and so did you.

01:23:21
Speaker 6: Bill.

01:23:22
Speaker 13: I'm going to say it again.

01:23:24
Speaker 1: Oh damn, that was too Okay, you're right, Bill, You're not I get pulled over.

01:23:29
Speaker 2: I did win a Grammy thank you anyway, So that's talk about it.

01:23:36
Speaker 5: Like I was just I was gonna let that just because I know he know better, he was gonna come that.

01:23:43
Speaker 17: No, no, no, I'm the mini Cooper. I'm sorry. I'm making a joke. I shouldn't, but I'm so fucked up by all this.

01:23:50
Speaker 2: I don't know what to say.

01:23:53
Speaker 1: Really, this is the one story I rarely share in public because it's just, you know, just the process, just the process it.

01:24:01
Speaker 8: But it was that word you kept using, you kept saying, jarn. I just feel so emasculated.

01:24:06
Speaker 17: Yeah for you to say yeah. Also, the two of you in the back of a cop card not speaking to each other is the quietest quiet I think I've ever heard of. Quiet, Like you're the most talking of people I've met in a long time. I feel like you would have a lot to say in this particular crazy fucked up momentat quiet, it's even more the intense than we.

01:24:28
Speaker 1: Live in such a machismo society where I don't let other men overpower them in anything and intellect, physically or those things. But it's almost like this unspoken thing that citizens know that any moment a cop can in your life within the bounds of the quote unquote law, and for.

01:24:49
Speaker 5: You, Amir has been to do about it, and you had journey with you.

01:24:52
Speaker 8: So as a man, that's what I.

01:24:54
Speaker 11: Was going to say. It's it's deep.

01:24:57
Speaker 8: It goes back to the slave days of like, you know, the emasculation of the black man, of like, Okay, we're going to do this in front of you and say nothing this woman, and guess what, guess what you can't do. You can't stop us, right, And so that's what we both could feel as we were driving away and he kept being like, John, I'm so sorry, and I kept being like, what could you have done?

01:25:23
Speaker 11: There was nothing you could have done. Like, we made it out a lot.

01:25:26
Speaker 7: That's better than a lot.

01:25:27
Speaker 8: Of people in this situation can say, like, and that's a shitty that's a shitty reality to have to settle for.

01:25:35
Speaker 11: It's like, oh well, at least we made it out a lot, but we did, y'all. We made it out alive.

01:25:40
Speaker 7: You know.

01:25:41
Speaker 8: That's the shitty thing of driving while black, and the shitty thing of you know, walking and walking by black black or black and male.

01:25:52
Speaker 11: You know.

01:25:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you had any situation like that ever? Or since?

01:25:59
Speaker 6: Oh?

01:25:59
Speaker 11: God, yeah, yeah.

01:26:04
Speaker 13: You know.

01:26:04
Speaker 8: I've shot so much in the South too, you know, so I've had several experiences. I mean, I remember shooting Great Debaters. Was that after before I can't remember. I think that was before, but I remember we did the lynching scene and I was driving a set in the van and over the radio I heard one of the teamsters say, well, we're having a lunch in today, ladies and gentlemen. I mean, like, yeah, I've dealt with some crazy as stuff, you know, yeah, as you all have too.

01:26:36
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you deal with it and then you acted out.

01:26:38
Speaker 13: It's different, you like re enacted.

01:26:40
Speaker 5: So it's it's to me, it's like.

01:26:42
Speaker 8: Well that's my that's my way of channeling the pain, I guess, yeah, is trying to place it somewhere.

01:26:49
Speaker 4: You know.

01:26:50
Speaker 8: Obviously with love Craft, there was a lot I had to pull bro Okay, A lot in my life was shitty at that time.

01:26:59
Speaker 2: But is there talks of season two or a return or.

01:27:05
Speaker 14: I don't know that's interesting.

01:27:07
Speaker 2: Wait still, this is not an instant slam dunk.

01:27:11
Speaker 5: And she said we will see like we will see like we will see.

01:27:17
Speaker 7: I mean as in, like.

01:27:20
Speaker 11: The powers that be that's above my pay grades.

01:27:23
Speaker 5: To get their ship together. That's what I know.

01:27:27
Speaker 1: Nothing angers me more when I get emotionally involved in a series only for it to be yanked away.

01:27:36
Speaker 17: Phone calls that you can't make your phone calls at what I am exactly.

01:27:42
Speaker 8: The good news is that all signs point to very positive response from folks, from critics from I mean, the I was recently told the pilot is like it's, you know, setting records for how many people have watched it.

01:27:58
Speaker 18: So it's yeah, I'm sure that I count for I count for twenty eight of those views. Johnny, I watched the pilot like maybe eleven times because I've made other people me too.

01:28:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, watch as well.

01:28:12
Speaker 11: We're in good shape, y'all.

01:28:14
Speaker 7: We're in good shape, all right.

01:28:21
Speaker 1: So Qols discusses black history through political and global lenses. Here's Angela Raie speaking about what she learned from Congresswoman Maximum waters.

01:28:31
Speaker 2: I hope Angela Rye runs for office one day.

01:28:35
Speaker 1: I'm gonna manifest that for her, although I wouldn't wish it on anyone because of the amount of stressed and gaslighting one has to deal with, but.

01:28:45
Speaker 2: I would like to see that. So Angela Raie.

01:28:47
Speaker 1: Of course, Lensenderry for her work on the Congressional Black Caucus, and even though this was from twenty seventeen, it's unfortunately still very relevant.

01:29:01
Speaker 5: Can you break down what the Black CAUs does? Because there are people who really don't.

01:29:04
Speaker 19: Know, sure they're often they don't know, especially those that say, where's the Congressional White Caucus, as if the rest of the four hundred and thirty five members aren't white?

01:29:11
Speaker 16: I digress.

01:29:12
Speaker 19: So the Congressional Black Caucus is an entity that was founded in nineteen seventy one. By then, I think it was twelve members that were black in the House of Representatives and they established the organization so that there could be a space where black people's issues were heard. They're known as the Conscience of the Congress and now they are almost to fifty members. And of course there are two senators in the United States Senate who also serve as members of the Congressional Black Caucus. There are three Black senators, but one opted not to join. Tim Scott say, thank.

01:29:49
Speaker 5: You, write it down.

01:29:52
Speaker 1: So can I assume that most of the members of the CBC are Democrat?

01:29:58
Speaker 19: Yes, there is one current member of the CBC who's Republican. Her name is Mia Love. She is from Utah. My aunt that's not your aunt.

01:30:08
Speaker 2: Well, her last name was Love. So just that all loves related.

01:30:14
Speaker 19: My dad normally says maybe the same plantation. That's what he says today, Just to be honest with you, that's what he.

01:30:19
Speaker 2: Says, the same plantation.

01:30:21
Speaker 8: Yeah.

01:30:21
Speaker 2: Has she attended meetings or Yeah?

01:30:23
Speaker 19: She has been active on some issues. She it definitely divergent on others, but she's been active on some issues.

01:30:30
Speaker 3: I see.

01:30:32
Speaker 1: So not why because I appreciate your your grassroots involvement and you using elbow grease and getting down and dirty, but why would you choose this particular field?

01:30:47
Speaker 2: I mean, you went to law school. You could have you know, you could have just.

01:30:54
Speaker 4: Been some other stuff.

01:30:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean what what truly made you?

01:30:58
Speaker 1: Was it following the family business or in your father's footsteps as far as the community, like what most lawyers I know are thinking in terms of, oh, success from my own law firm, being a partner and that sort of thing.

01:31:13
Speaker 2: So should we know who her father is?

01:31:15
Speaker 19: His name is Eddie Yeer Jr. He's an activist in Seattle. But it's actually a really interesting story. What I'll tell you is there were two other paths that I thought I would choose before I chose politics. I grew up in a house with a dad who's an activist, and I thought he was always on the opposite side.

01:31:35
Speaker 16: Of elected politics.

01:31:37
Speaker 19: So I hated it growing up because I couldn't understand why they didn't understand why, you know, why he was pressing pressing for you know, or a part of the parts antipartsy movements, or you know, getting involved with ensuring that subcontractors and contractors of color had an equal share.

01:31:54
Speaker 16: Of the pie.

01:31:55
Speaker 19: I didn't understand why that was even an issue, right, And so growing up with him, I hated politics because they were never on his side. And it wasn't until I was in my last year, my fall semester of law school. I wanted to do an internship in Los Angeles and Maxine Waters was someone I respected a lot, and so I was like, well, if I can learn from her, you know, maybe this will be good. But I'm gonna go so that I could be a trial attorney.

01:32:23
Speaker 5: Like Johnny Coppran.

01:32:24
Speaker 19: I just want to get an offer at the Cochran firm. And before that, I wanted to be a sports entertainment lawyer. But I'll save that story for another day. It's really interesting how that happened or didn't happen. But in my I did my internship and like fell in love with the bridge between activism and politics, and there's no better bridge for that than Maxine Waters. I started calling her the Nation's Congresswoman then that was in two thousand four, two thousand and five, and just loved working with her, loved how she made everything work together for us, regardless of if we lived in her district or not. And I did get an offer from the Cochran firm, like had a mentor, Shawn Chapman Holly shout out to Seawan Chapman Holly, who's still a good friend, had an offer with the firm, and then he died, damn, And I was like, oh Lord, maybe this wasn't the path. So at my the National Black Lost in Association.

01:33:17
Speaker 2: Weird he died with your thousand and five Okay.

01:33:21
Speaker 19: At the convention, I was getting ready to introduce Congressman Waters who came to our convention.

01:33:25
Speaker 5: I was like, what am I gonna do now?

01:33:27
Speaker 19: Johnny concran died, and She's like, I told you to go to the hill. So I was like, well, maybe y'all think about that now. And that's really the short version of how that happened. But she's never been wrong, and I'm so happy to see millennials woke about her now. But she been doing this. The nation's congresswoman, Queen Maxine's been doing this.

01:33:44
Speaker 5: So you got her back to it all makes sense now too. Why you had her back even more when that whole stupid bill o'reiley, I think.

01:33:52
Speaker 19: I would have had any results.

01:33:53
Speaker 5: I want to through that. That was stupid.

01:33:55
Speaker 19: She's on the floor of the United States House of Representatives talking about what patriots in the era of Trump really means, like it's not, you know, pledging blind allegiance to some concept. It's about standing up for what we know to be truthful and righteous. And for her to be talking about that and he's talking about it, damn James Brown Wig. It took me to send me to a place it's dismissive. Yeah, yeah, among other things, a.

01:34:20
Speaker 2: Lot of shit, but dismissive of the kind.

01:34:23
Speaker 16: Yes, that was very kind of.

01:34:25
Speaker 1: So do you I mean, obviously, I know it gets overwhelming, but just watching you in action, of course, like in the age of social media, a lot of people are familiar with you as as far as your your clips on the internet, usually going at people well and rightfully, so whenever facts are are are sprouted out. And that's the thing, like when I when I watch you go against two, three, four people at a time, it is I mean, it's baffling to me. I don't know if it's the equivalent of someone asking, well, you know, how do you how do you coordinate your kick drum and your high hat foot in your left hand in your right hand and talk to people?

01:35:17
Speaker 5: You know, how are you not exhausted?

01:35:19
Speaker 16: I didn't say I wasn't exhausted.

01:35:22
Speaker 1: I did not say that, But I mean have I mean, as I read the the era that we live in now, which is, of course, I guess the alternative facts era in which things are said with such a straight face, I think, you know, in general, a lot of us have been programmed to believe that if any information comes from someone wearing a suit and spoken in the King's English, then why should they lie to me? Like, you know, why would they want to lie to me? And usually, you know, a lot of benefits of doubt are given, and we're seeing straight up false information. How I mean to me, it's like the equivalent of you playing a tennis match to with five people on the other side. Yeah, yeah, I mean, how do you I mean, just in this era, especially when you agreed to do pundit remarks on on shows, how do you grasp your information? Because you have to know what they stand for and how they come Like do you does someone train you?

01:36:30
Speaker 2: Is it?

01:36:31
Speaker 6: No?

01:36:32
Speaker 19: I've never had media training, but I will say that I did get Crossfire training. I don't know if you all remember Crossfired, like the CNN show back in the day when it was all the old white dudes at the table.

01:36:45
Speaker 5: Just growing up with my dad.

01:36:46
Speaker 19: Now he doesn't lie, but we don't always agree on the means to an end goal. So growing up like just debating him or you know, talking to my friends, or debating race issues, like I went to a majority white high school, you know, started to black student union, and so you get used to having to explain to people your perspective because it's not the majority view.

01:37:06
Speaker 16: So whether or not.

01:37:08
Speaker 19: This is this may be an alternate universe, but it's still not the majority view on the panel, so it's just debating.

01:37:17
Speaker 16: The problem I have, and I think when.

01:37:18
Speaker 19: People see me get really upset is when I remember the responsibility that we have to give people factual information. I think the frustration that I have, if nothing else right now, is being able to speak to people in their homes on their TV screens is an awesome privilege, and we have an obligation to give them information they can rely upon. And so I'll normally lose it, especially on like black networks, like on TV one. If I'm on Rolling Show and somebody's lying, I flip out, like there's been you know, Jiff or Gift depending on how you said jiffable moments just from that, like please don't come here and lie to our folks. Not that folks should be lied to unseen in either, but I just think that there's a different type of responsibility and even with seeing it, and I think it is really hard because I remember one of the debates during the general election the Debate Commission decided that the moderator did not have an obligation to fact check the candidates, and I lost it.

01:38:24
Speaker 5: I was like, what do you mean, Like, that's your only.

01:38:27
Speaker 19: Responsibility besides asking the questions like you had one job or two? You know, one an one b like all in one, but you have something What do you mean like, of course you have to make sure that they're being like, what are you debating? Then if if facts become a debatable point and not just the perspectives on those facts, that is a new challenge.

01:38:46
Speaker 16: And so I do.

01:38:48
Speaker 19: I find it immensely frustrating because I don't understand how someone could be deemed credible at all if they're not relying on the same principle of truth. You know, it's just it's maddening, really, it really really is. And so to me, I just think that the energy I take into those spaces is if you're not going to be told the truth from anyone else, you're going to hear it from me. And if I'm ever if I ever misspeak on something, if a stat is wrong, you know, if I said a word wrong, I'll fact check it later on Twitter. But I'm not gonna lie to people intentionally deceiving.

01:39:19
Speaker 7: Them like that is just wrong.

01:39:21
Speaker 5: And that's just kind of where I draw the line.

01:39:24
Speaker 2: Now as of this particular taping. Right now, the healthcare.

01:39:34
Speaker 1: Situation is in the hands of the Senate, and I'm seeing a lot of them. I guess at one point on Twitter there were at least three or four of them that tweeted out or gave interviews sorted to the tune of you know, you're saying that you know that twenty two million people might lose their insurance or and this several hundred thousand might die if this law goes and you know that was that was not a good conversation point to sway them the other way. But I mean, what is for those because I have a lot of friends who are so overwhelmed with what's going on that now my friends are at the point where they're just so not even past the point of indifference, but just so overwhelmed that they don't.

01:40:30
Speaker 2: Watch the news at all.

01:40:33
Speaker 1: And these are the ones who are generally on my side of the fence.

01:40:38
Speaker 2: I don't know.

01:40:38
Speaker 1: I can't sleep at night unless I at least watch an hour or two of at least Rachel's show, or just someone that I know that's going to give.

01:40:45
Speaker 2: Me straight up facts. But how do you how do we.

01:40:52
Speaker 1: Reignite people or a community of people that just feel like it's it's no use.

01:41:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, no use. I started. God, have you guys heard of a handmaids Handmaid's Tale?

01:41:08
Speaker 13: I haven't watched it yet.

01:41:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you watched it? I haven't watched it, but I know something. It's yeah, I heard.

01:41:13
Speaker 5: It's the future really sad like like.

01:41:16
Speaker 1: If you yeah, if you think that like a House of Cards or you know, whatever's being depicted now in television as don't hamm okay, almost feels like this is that's where it's going to go to.

01:41:29
Speaker 2: Okay, I checked that. I haven't even watched it. I gave up on House of Cards, like I just because.

01:41:33
Speaker 13: It was.

01:41:36
Speaker 5: Right.

01:41:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't.

01:41:37
Speaker 5: I don't know how they did that. Yeah, I like weight blame House of Cards actually right, all of it.

01:41:43
Speaker 2: You're not even being ironic.

01:41:45
Speaker 19: Just I need to find somebody to blame because this makes no sense besides old lad like I just I gotta I don't know, don't happen.

01:41:55
Speaker 5: On the hils of what a Mirror said and on that note, how do you prioritize the issues you should be most careing about, because yes, health care is the issue right now, but there are numerous issues that you know, our president right now and his congress are about the fuck up life with. So how do you do that, Angela?

01:42:12
Speaker 19: How do you prioritize so first that y'all's president's that's so no. So I think that that's a really, really good question, And what I appreciate about it is I get so frustrated with whether they're elected officials that are sitting members of Congress right now, who will say, well, we don't need to be talking about Russia because what people really want to know about is their health care.

01:42:35
Speaker 5: What people really want to know about is you know where the.

01:42:38
Speaker 16: Next job is going to come from the economy.

01:42:40
Speaker 5: But here's the that's.

01:42:41
Speaker 19: Right, And if so, if we're honest, every single day, all of us are responsible for balancing something mer we were talking about your time earlier, like we're responsible for balancing some things. We are people who can walk into gum at the same time and be okay. So it's actually okay for us to try to get to the bottom of what happened with Russia and how they ended up in several you know polls, you know, precincts, messing with stuff. You know, that's important for us to understand because over time, if if countries, if entities can continue to uh interrupt and disrupt our democracy the ways in which we engage in the electoral process, people are going to become disillusioned with that. That is very very very dangerous. That's exactly right. That means a select few are picking your your leaders. And what happens is this healthcare bill to bring this back full circle, which is you know, very toxic. It is you know, it's it's it's it's a tax cut for billionaires. You know, it is a way of One of the Senate compromises that came about yesterday was okay, well we'll just uh, we'll reinstitute the mandatory healthcare you have to sign up mandatorily. But what we're going to do is if there's a lapse in your health care, then there's gonna be a six month window for you to get healthcare.

01:44:03
Speaker 16: Again.

01:44:04
Speaker 19: What happens if something happens to you in those six months and you can't afford to pay for health care out of pocket.

01:44:10
Speaker 7: That's not a compromise.

01:44:11
Speaker 19: And if it's a compromise, who is it on the backs of And those are folks who normally look like us, if they're underserved and marginalized communities, black and brown communities.

01:44:20
Speaker 7: We have to pay attention.

01:44:21
Speaker 19: And so if there's nothing else that I hope comes out of this treacherous, dangerous, awful time, it is that I hope we realize that these people are working for us. And I use this analogy on a panel the other day. There's not a single one of us who if we are employing people, just are like, Okay, we're gonna pay you. You go and do whatever, and never check in. There's a team call, there's a team meeting, there's an agenda, there's some type of metrics for accountability where they have to check in with us. We pay these people, they owe us answers, they owe us to do the right thing.

01:44:57
Speaker 5: I think it's town halls, and town halls aren't even a got to show up to those, and people.

01:45:02
Speaker 19: Are starting to show up townhouse. But even that's not enough. We need to be checking them on what they're doing, what they're doing in pacts us more in some instances than the employees that we have.

01:45:12
Speaker 1: All Right, here is Gina your share speaking about her family who immigrated to London, England from Nigeria and the experiences that they had and it's a fact.

01:45:23
Speaker 2: On Gina's upbringing. This from twenty twenty one.

01:45:27
Speaker 5: Can I ask the question though, because even though Gina is born and raised in London, her mother is not, and so I must think that your mother does not feel the same way about this English food. And on the back of that question, can you also break down like how dope and royal of a situation your mother came to to come and they came to London and it was a flip of thew the switch.

01:45:47
Speaker 20: Oh yeah, For one, my mom loves a bit of babings, don't even knock it.

01:45:50
Speaker 14: My mom is full.

01:45:51
Speaker 20: Nightge though she loves Nigean food like when mother kids at Nigeria foods in the house. But my mom loved mashed potatoes and my mom loves beans, so it was the dichotomy. But yeah, yeah, my mom was from a wealthy way well on her family. My mom's from a family called the Abasaki family and they are practically royalty in Nigeria. And my mom is from a wealthy family. Her dad had a load of wives. She was educated. Her dad traveled all over the world on business and he took her with him and she went to private school and she was a school principal in Nigeria before she was twenty four years old.

01:46:26
Speaker 14: So she was very you.

01:46:27
Speaker 2: Know, she did.

01:46:28
Speaker 14: Yeah, she was very She achieved a lot and then she came to England.

01:46:33
Speaker 2: Before why did she come to England?

01:46:37
Speaker 20: Well, long story short. If you read my new book that's coming, that's how you know that. My mother was the daughter of the first wife. So my grandfather had many wives. As you know, polygamy was widely practiced in Nigeria.

01:46:51
Speaker 2: Tell me about it.

01:46:52
Speaker 20: Oh yeah, lots of wives, lots of lots of wives and daughter. My mom was the daughter of the first wife. But the first wife was very powerful, as the first wife is as the first The otherwise were very jealous and there was the other wives murdered my grandmother.

01:47:11
Speaker 2: They pull you.

01:47:11
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well we never get the beginning the throne ship.

01:47:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for real greatship.

01:47:21
Speaker 20: So yeah, the other wives did not my mother. My grandmother was like, listen, the other wives don't like me. These bitches are trying to kill me if anything happens to me, get my daughter out of Nigeria. So she ended up dying. She was poisoned and when she died she had a mark on her throat. Now, before my grandmother died, she always used to say when I come back, when I come back, I'm going to I'm going to speak English, I'm going to be in England. I'm not going to have all these children because my mom and my grandmother had eleven kids and I don't want to all these children.

01:47:48
Speaker 14: I'm going to do a man's job. I'm going to have freedom, all of you.

01:47:52
Speaker 13: Thing.

01:47:52
Speaker 20: When she died from a poison she had a mark on her throat.

01:47:55
Speaker 14: Obviously, when she.

01:47:57
Speaker 20: Died, my grandfather sent my mom out the because who's like weld, I've killed the wife. I'm not going to have them kill my daughter to so he sent my mom to England to study and that is where my mom met my dad. They met each other, they had me, and I came out with this mark on my flow. So basically I'm a reincarnation of my grandmother.

01:48:17
Speaker 14: So that that's the story.

01:48:18
Speaker 20: Because Nigeras believed heavily in the incarnation, and I came out doing all the things that my grandmother said.

01:48:24
Speaker 14: I fulfilled everything.

01:48:28
Speaker 20: So when I said my mo, mom was like comedian, you want to become a clown.

01:48:31
Speaker 14: I was like, mom, remember this is what your mother wanted. I am your mother. That's how I get away with her. But yeah, my mom.

01:48:40
Speaker 20: So that's how my mother ended up in England studying and she was a teacher. She came to England. She wanted to carry on working as a teacher. For England was super racist. She couldn't my dad.

01:48:48
Speaker 14: She met my dad.

01:48:49
Speaker 20: My dad was studying for his PhD. He was and he was also a qualified lawyer. They could he couldn't get work as a lawyer in England. So basically they met, they got married, they had us, and then my dad was like, forget this, I want to go back to Nigeria. This is not I am driving a bust when I'm a lawyer. I'm a lawyer in Nigeria. I'm not staying here to drive a bus. Let's get the kids, let's go. And my mom was like, no, I've had my children in England. They are British. I want them to stay in England and be afforded all the opportunities that being British entails. I'm staying here with my kids. So basically my mom and dad's My dad went back to Nigeria when I was three and I didn't see him again till I was thirty seven, and when I went out there to do a show in Nigeria.

01:49:32
Speaker 5: So that was it.

01:49:33
Speaker 2: Wait, you met your father backstage at a show.

01:49:36
Speaker 14: He came to my show.

01:49:37
Speaker 20: So at that point I was pretty well known in England and pretty well known in Nigeria. I'd done a couple of sketches on television in England that had gone viral in Nigeria. So I got flown out to Nigeria to do a show, and obviously I still carried my father's name, so my father was like when I was going, my mom was like, oh, your father is going to turn up.

01:49:54
Speaker 14: You watch he's going to.

01:49:58
Speaker 6: You.

01:49:58
Speaker 7: And he did.

01:49:59
Speaker 14: He turned off the show with a.

01:50:00
Speaker 20: Bunch of brothers and sisters I'd never met. So it was it was it's all in the book. It's all in the book, people.

01:50:06
Speaker 13: It is.

01:50:07
Speaker 5: And also in the book, I remember I want to tell people too. You give a good history on the Empire of Benin and whatnot. I was like, oh, Wow, I had no idea, So can you.

01:50:15
Speaker 1: Can you briefly let me know about I just recently found out my lineage to Benin like a year ago and.

01:50:23
Speaker 20: In the country next to Nigeria or been in the city in Nigeria. I've been in this because there's two Benu. There's been in city in Nigeria, which is where my family from. And then there's been in the country which is next country, Nigeria where they speak French.

01:50:38
Speaker 14: Yeah, so are you. But if they say Banin in your I'm assuming it's been in the country.

01:50:44
Speaker 3: Okay.

01:50:44
Speaker 1: I believe that it was the country simply because when there was a civil war happening, the Nigerians had some beneen prisoners that they used as.

01:50:59
Speaker 2: Leverage to Nigger allotiate.

01:51:00
Speaker 19: Uh.

01:51:01
Speaker 2: My great your great grandfathers was one.

01:51:03
Speaker 1: Of those, uh those captured and sold in the slavery in America.

01:51:08
Speaker 14: So the country, Yeah, it's definitely the country then in yes, but yeah.

01:51:12
Speaker 20: I opened my book with history of Nigeria and the be In within Nigeria which is now southern Nigeria where my family is from, and and how advanced the society was and how the British came and tried to take and they got their asses handed to them by the Bnin warriors. And then they came back and burnt Been into the ground and stole all those bronzes. And hence while you've got all these bill In bronzes in museums in New York and around the world, because the British came burnt down Benin, stole all the bronzes and sold the bronzes to pay for the army that they've used to burn down Been In.

01:51:50
Speaker 2: The British have done to the world, man Jesus.

01:51:53
Speaker 20: Like, yeah, exactly when you guys go, oh Britain is so polite and genteel it, No it is they are straight savages well.

01:52:03
Speaker 5: And also not for nothing. Nigerians usually act like ain't nobody come and mess with them at all, So this history is not always told in that aspect. It's like anybody comes, try to colonized us, We got no, We're good.

01:52:12
Speaker 13: Oh no, they were coming.

01:52:14
Speaker 14: We only got our independence.

01:52:15
Speaker 20: Niger only got air independence in nineteen sixty and from nineteen sixty we got our independence, and even then, the economy was completely messed up after that because white people came out and took everything with them, and they'd already raked it of all the resources, all the oil, all the everything. And then there was a lot of money in oil for a while, but it all collapsed.

01:52:38
Speaker 14: It all collapsed.

01:52:39
Speaker 20: The school systems was based on the British school systems. You know, they took away the element that Nigerians were all about. Africans were all about family and learning trades and passing down stuff within the family. And the British came and went, now, don't forget about family stuff. That capitalism. It's all about capitalism. You learned to get these qualifications and then like it. And so they completely change the way that Nigerians worked and it's just ruined, in my opinion, ruined the country. Now you've got a few greedy people just creaming everything off there.

01:53:07
Speaker 7: Just so that's the history.

01:53:11
Speaker 5: Hey, at least you know yours. You don't have to go to Africa ancestry, right somebody?

01:53:15
Speaker 20: Oh yeah yeah.

01:53:19
Speaker 1: And that's part one of qols's celebration of Black History Month.

01:53:25
Speaker 2: Please come back next week for part two.

01:53:27
Speaker 1: All right, y'all. Peace Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.