Episode 341 w/ Michael Eric Dyson

Published Nov 18, 2022, 10:30 AM

N.O.R.E. & DJ EFN are the Drink Champs. In this episode we chop it up with the one and only Michael Eric Dyson!Michael Eric Dyson shares his story as an ordained minister, American academic, author, professor and more.Listen as we discuss topics about poverty, economic policies, racism, and much much more!Lots of great topics that you don’t want to miss!!Make some noise for Michael Eric Dyson!!! πŸ’πŸ’πŸ’πŸ†πŸ†πŸ†

 

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Welcome to Drink Champs, the production of The Black Effect and I heart radio and his drinks motherfucking podcast makes He's a legendary queen's rapper. He's like Green is your boy in O R E. He's a Miami hip hop pioneer up his DJ E f N. Together they drinking up with some of the biggest players in the most professional, unprofessional podcast. And yet number one sorts for drunk drink is New year' z. That's time for Drink Champs. Trink up mother mother would it could be hopeully would be This your boy in O right? What up is dj E f N? And this is drink Champs makes an right. Now we have an author, we have a minister radio host, a professor, an intellect intellect. I love to hear his brother speak. I remember seeing him on Bill Moore just handling people like just I remember, you know this is one of and and I was naming all his titles. But besides all that, he's a brother hold it down, can talk. So it's like he's it's like he's spitting bars when he talks, his speeches, his the way he delivers the words. So he hit me the other day and I said, brother, and I need you. He showed up In case you I don't know who we're talking about, talking about the one, the only Michael. We don't get straight to the point. We're gonna food around, I said, drink Champs. You know we're we're not a political show, right this This is not why people come here. Um, and we don't. We don't really you know, prep our guests and say, yo, this is what we're gonna ask. So this is what we're gonna do. It's kind of like a free fall. You just come here and and things just happen. So well, this is for those who's tuning in. This is our first episode since the Kanye West episode. That might have seen other episodes that dropped, but this is not. This is the very first one recorded episodes since the Kanye West. So what did you think when you first heard also Kanye on this show? Well, first of all, I'm such a huge fan of this show. I watch every right and back when when we read Ditty's Christmas Party years ago, you got my numbers. Look, I want you to come on. So I'm finally I'm glad we're finally able to work it out for the people to know this. Hold on, I'm right. This has been on a show about two, two or three years ago something like that. I came with you. I was so excited you early dream shots because I truly understand that this is the balance that we need. You understand. I'm saying, if we cover our story that, um, that wasn't right. I want to I want to fix it. That's so. So so let's let's go back to that. So what did you what what was your getting phone calls? Was people calling you saying, man, Kanye West is on your show? Yeah, that's right, and say, man, you know that's the dude you love that cut the con and he got to the So the thing is, look, I've known Kanye for a while. So let me put my car straight on the table. Let me tell you how I came to know Kanye. So I'm texting j jay Z after I'm trying to flaws, but we're gonna get that stuff out your teeth. So the thing is is that this is right after the v m a's right when he does the Taylor Swift thing. I was in the audience when Kanye did what he did right, and we were it was like the Oscars is that a joke? Is that is that arrange? And then after we're when it went down and he was taking all the heat, I'm texting Jay going, I'm not feeling that I said, because what Kanye was trying to do in that moment is to say Black artists have always been appropriated, ex appropriated, denounced and then took all their content and then the gifts that they have have been abused, and then they don't get the recognition for they make the dump, the dope and bomb albums, but they don't get the recognition. Right, I'm imagining that night. Uh, little Richard was going like, go ahead, because because give me my Grammy. I bet Chuck Barry was like, yo, where was somebody when I deserved a Grammy that maybe was given to Elvis? So I saw it in the historical context. Yeah, he was drunk. Yeah, he went up there and did something rude. I love Taylor Swift, but at that moment, he was representative of a culture that was tired of being abused. So I told Jay, I'm not down with all the hate that's coming to Kanye. He says, do me a favor, you know, send it to my email, and I'm gonna send it to you, Kanye. So I did the thing. He sent it to many. That's how me and Kanye first met years and years ago. So we've been talking back and forth. He don't posted some of my stuff, my tweets, text to him in public. That's why I don't feel bad about going public, not because God name you ain't. You ain't had asked me, because you post my stuff. So let's have a public conversation, you know. So I love Let me be clear, I love him. He's a genius. He's extraordinarily talented. But I think uh dealing with the mental health issues that he confronts, whether he wants to admit them or not, that's part of it. Another party is that the mental health may exacerbate tendencies that already pre exist, that the conditions that underlied. Just like when you talk about COVID, COVID brings out some of the other stuff that has been hampering you high blood pressure, diabetes, and so on. So in this sense, the mental health issues and struggles that he's been clear and quite transparent about may have also touched off our analysis of some of his politics and ideology that are problematic. He's a genius and a menace. He's a genius and a nuisance. He's a genius who does extraordinary things. But this ain't his strong suit. Talking about George Floyd is not your strong suit. And I know you've been deeply inspired and influenced by Candice owns Uh, the conservative right wing host who lives in in Nashville like I do. So the thing is who you listening to? Who's your diet? You know, this is not Whole Foods. This is not a grocer that is of reputable stuff. You you're getting it from a ghetto grocer, and you're pumping that stuff back into the consciousness of the people. And it's sounding deeply, profoundly ignorant, you know, saying that, Well, he wasn't calling his mama, it was just what his girlfriend was called. Regardless, that may have been true, But the point is he's calling to his mother who had recently died, and he's feeling a kinship in intimacy with her, and then talking about fentonel was what caused this death? Bro When they did Martin Luther King Jr's autopsy at thirty nine years old, they discovered he had the art of a sixty three year old man. Now that's my age, So I hope that was pretty damn good. But they saying for thirty nine, you shouldn't have a sixty three year old hard Is that what killed him? No, it was the bullet from James Earl ray So Mr West brother, the ya Kanye. It was the force apply by a white supremacist cop. Now whether he had intention to hate black people, the function of his knee on the neck of George Floyd, despite Floyd saying I can't breathe, please get up, he was being extremely nice. He wasn't belligerent, he wasn't nasty, he wasn't for tuperative, he wasn't Hayden, he wasn't cussing the man out. He was saying, I can't breathe, and this man didn't hear him. It was the pressure applied by the knee of Derek Chovin. And by the way, the black cop who was on his back, and the white cop who was on his knees and his torso, and the Asian cop who was lookout. That's multiculturalism for you. That's why diversity has to be toward a goal of equality, because you're gonna have diversity towards some messed up goals. Kanye West, to me, has an extraordinary platform. He says, he wants independent thought. How are you being independent in the circumference of MAGA, in the circumference of Donald Trump. Let me give you another story. I had just written a book, Tears We Cannot Stop, a sermon to White America. And so I was out in l A on book tour and I come out of this warehouse looking place where I had done a show, and a brother standing there, and I says that Kanye say, hey, man, what's going on? Oh man, what's happening? Blah blah blah. Right, it was that my book? It was that. It was It was at a recording of a show that was talking about my book. But he happened to be outside where I was was coming out. So he totaled his companion said you know what this is Michael guys and blah blah blah, and then he, you know, we talked a bit. This is right after he had, you know, announced his support for Trump. So I went to my car, knock knock, knock on the window, and it's Jay saying, you know, hey, I'd like to talk to you about what's going on. So for the next half hour we're chopping up. I'm saying, why is it that you a rhetorical genius, a verbal master, in complete control of an aesthetic expression of hip hop that we hadn't seen in ever. You brought together in the Midwest, the sole traditions, digging into the crates to give us a sonic texture that continues to thrive today. It's so dense with blues and with with R and B and the love ethic of black people. Why would you leverage all of the genius you've created as a result of your own gifts for a man who is mediocre, who is a bigot, who has no concern for any beyond him, who is a lethal narcissist. He says, so, what do you think God should do? I said, I think you should distance yourself from him. I don't think that that's something healthy for you. So when he says, you know, people can't think and they can't be independent, who are you independent from? White supremacy is a dominant stream in American society. The belief that black people uh should not say black lives matter. You're wearing a white Lives Matter T shirt. It might be que to you, It might be an aesthetic representation of your imagination gone crazy. But the bottom line is we know white lives matter. That's why we say Black lives matter. You ain't got to say something that's apparent. When you come to the crib and you got your wife and kids there and you want to be daddy, you ain't got to say, hey, remember I'm daddy. They already know you daddy. If you in control, daddy is um is in your DNA. But when you announced that, that means it hasn't been made clear. So when we say black lives matter, we're saying that black lives have been disrespected, have been degraded, have been denied access, have been treated as if they were second class citizens. White folk already got the advantage. So you're wearing a White Lives Matter T shirt. May be cute to you, but it's destructive, it's harmful, and it hurts the core of Black American destination. And for Kanye to say, look, I want to be independent, I'm for independent thought. So let's hold you to account. Let's ask you what you're talking about. Let's speak about the interests and intentions you have by going to Paris, appearing there radiating a toxic racial identity that has been destructive not only the black people, but the white people. To whiteness has been a destructive reality for white folks themselves. That's where they're trying to struggle with it as well. So those are some of the things I thought off the top of the dome when I saw that. You know what was what's crazy is when he first wore the White Lives Matter T shirt. He I think that this is how he had left Gap and he had went to fashion week, right, And I think that I think that's why I think I'm outside of looking in an inside of looking out. Um, I think he only wore the White Lives Matter to steal the attention away from fashion Week. I think he didn't actually think about the people that was hurt by it. I think I think he was just thinking, like, you know what, now our own fashion week and and and and it's crazy, but he actually got the goal done. If that was the goal, you understand, I'm saying for all attention to just go to him, like once that picture got up, you don't try. But apparently that why not say cracker is gonna crack? That would have gotten. I don't believe that for those listening, But I'm saying, if you're trying to get attention, why not say that? Why not say Angela Davis Rocks. Why not say black suffering needs to be talked about like pornography. Right, there's a lot of stuff he could have said, because when you are that person, what you do comes out. So the choice he made he can't be he can't escape responsibility for because when you said that, if you're only thinking about yourself, that's part of the problem. You claim to be a leader in terms of thought, you claim to be independent, but you are supporting it to a kind of thinking and logic. This is what we mean by white supremacy. It don't mean that every white person hates black people. That's not what white supremacy is. White supremacy is the conscious or unconscious belief in the inherent superior priority of one group and the inherent inferiority of all others. So when you're performing that your own anti blackness, Kanye, you're a black man who's being anti black. Take for example, um Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. But Clarence Thomas is a dark skinned black man, anybody gonna miss that he a Negro. But at the same time, when he opens his mouth, white supremacist ideas, white supremacist thought, white supremacist rhetoric, white supremacist logic is coming out. And then his wife wiled and out on the January six tip writing letters and emails to figures within the Trump administration to amp up their resistance, uh to what's going on in this country by stealing the voting or saying the vote was stolen. All of this, Kanye, you were buying into that. If you're naive, you're still dangerous. If you're intentional, you're destructive. But regardless of what your intent was, the consequent was horrible. And if he didn't mean it, he could have said, by now you know what I was tripping. It was a ploy to get some recognition, but what idea was destructive. I don't think he believes that. I think he actually meant what he said, and we have to take him at his word. Like I supoke to Todler quality this morning and we were chopping and told him, how had you come in? And um, he said that what what it was spreading was white supremacy. Like how you say how can how how can I How isn't that an oxymoron? A black man spreading white supremacy? How can that? How can those two exists? Right? That's a great point. Well, that's why I said, even with Clarence Thomas's ventriloquism, black mouth open white ideas coming forward. So you know how that works. You're the one talking, but somebody else's voice is being amplified, so you can take into your own. You know, we used to call the old days internalized white oppression. In other words, you become the most vehicle effective vehicle for the spread of white supremacy because you could have passed or he can't be white supremacis he's black. He can't be anti black, he's black himself. Well that's the thing with Clarence Thomas. How are you going to claim Clarence Thomas is anti black because he's a black man. Don't mean he can't be against black people. We see it every day, don't we call it black home black crime. I think that's a problematic moniker. I think that doesn't describe what's going on. But at the end of the day, when a black person takes the life of another black person, and not a white person. That is what we are doing. So we can see rhetorically, verbally, intellectually, ideologically, politically, anyway, academically, scholarly, anyway you want to put it, You as a black person, can talk about ideas that instructive to black people. What did what did Zora Neil Hurston say, all my kin folk, I mean all my skin folk, ame my kinfolk. And what she meant by that is that certain ideas hibernate in the unconscious of black people and come out at very interesting moments when they began to reinforce the very ideas that hurt and harm us. So that's the oxymaronic statement. New scholarship has talked about anti blackness and and trying to be an anti racist because black people themselves can harbor horrible beliefs that are destructive to our people. You want to see the perfect example of that, Look at Stephen and Django. Look at Samuel L. Jackson. Samuel Jackson's a friend of mine. When I saw my said negro, I wanted to knock your black office said the same thing though exactly. But Kanye, I'm just saying that right. So Stephen is up here, he is more effectively expressing the ideas of white dominance, white privileged, white superiority, and black subordination to them than any any white person ever could. So that's what we mean when we say black people ourselves can begin to express ideas that are harmful and destructive to our own communities. Because on one hand, it was it was confusing for me. And I've been doing this for six years. I'm not a journalist, I'm not a therapist, but I'm a realist. I'm hearing this and it was confusing to me at times because he'll say, you know, the white Lives Matter shirt, but then he'll didn't help peach black excellence. So I was confused to do, like you, I want our community to have this. I want our community, I want us to do this, and and and and it's like how does they how does that both exist? Like yeah, that's part of the fact is he is a genius. So it's like no question, it's like kind of like hard to like to distinguish, like which part do you Actually that's a great point, you know what I'm saying. Look, we can acknowledge his genius, but his genius is in certain areas. You know, when you're a genius. You're a genius did everything. You know what I'm saying. You could be. Einstein was a mathematical genius, but he could hardly keep his clothes clean, so he wouldn't know clean genius. Like Ell told me yesterday. For Ell told me this was his analogy. He called me. He said, Oh, well, people don't go to ESPN to talk about stocks, right, so you gotta respect the genre. What genre? I'm against the rapper, so I'm I'm not a conscious rapper. I'm not common. I can't talk about elevated ideas of black identity because that ain't what I do. Right. I can't say that, Hey, I will. I can't buy you a new person, but I will match your work. Nah, I don't know what that's about. I got you a birkin open up. So you gotta understand what you're good at. And Kanye is great at music. Kanye is great at, you know, productivity within the concepts of aesthetics and fashion. Kanye is great at producing. Kanye is great at being Kanye as a provocative figure. What Kanye ain't great at is understanding the relationship between what he does and the political consequences. That that that result from that. Now, if he's conscious of it, if he goes, I dare you to say that I'm I'm conscious, I'm a genius. I know what I'm doing. Well, then we're gonna have to really hold you accountable. But your genius is not in this area. It's it's gobbledygook. It's confused. On the one hand, you talking about black excellence, and he's made some brilliant music with jay On Watch the Throne from Black Excellent, Black Murder, the Black excellence, beautiful, uplifting, powerful, Then you turn right around or you make you know, crack music, you know, talking about that black music and talking about Ronald Reagan and destroying black communities. You're going like, wow, that's powerful. Or when his mother took him and his parents took him to march in civil rights marches, that's powerful, that's beautiful. George Bush doesn't care for black people, that's great. Then you flip so easily on this other side where you demonizing black people, where you're saying white lives matter. Where now George Bush doesn't care for black people. Now you're saying that white lives matter. You're proving to certain black people that Kanye doesn't care about black people. So there's no question that Kanye is confused. But his confusion has consequence because he has such a monumental platform. And the reason we respond to him is not because we don't love him. I suspect that he'll hear me. You you're you betrayed me. You're supposed to be my friend. No, sir, the old black people say, where you did it, where you messed up, is where you get it. Where you're gonna get your punishment, right, I'm not administering any punishment. All of us are frail and fragile and flawed. I've made many mistakes. I pray to God people forgive me. The women, the men, the children that I've heard inadvertently or in intention intentionally forgive me. So I believe. I don't believe in Cancil culture. I don't believe in disposable human beings. I believe people mess up, then they are should be allowed to come back into the fold. But you got to admit what you did was wrong. And Kanye brokers no acceptance. Brooks no acceptance, has no one understanding of responsibility. By saying I did this, I said this is jacked up. He thinks what he says is right, and at this very moment, he needs to be held to public account for the public distress and harm that he has caused and the trauma that he's imposed upon the blood the black people in America. I think I think you should make some but um, how so how do you how do because me, like I heard you say it, it's like I do. I do love Kane, right, I love And what's crazy about me and him is our relationship is never political. So I didn't understand like not to say because I'm guilty too for for not being aware of what happened on on my platform. But most of the time me and him speak is never never political, right, So how do how do I move forward? Like, still love my friend, but I'm absolutely against his political views, but I'm still my friend. Of course, you gotta you gotta tell him that, you gotta say, yeah, look, I love you. What you're doing is amazing. Now if he's mature enough to accept your critique in love, That's why I do it in love. I'm not coming on here to try to harangue him, to harass him, to demonize him. That's not what I'm trying to do however, or James Brown would say house and never. What we got to do is get into the thick of it. And bro, I love you, I respect your genius. You're a remarkable creative in this American society. But what you're doing is problematic. And when you say, look, I understand what you mean when you say it's not explicitly political. But you know, most of life is political. This water, this, this, this booze are sitting here in a neighborhood in Miami, right, this is all political because somebody had to make the decision about what zoning was available. Well, how could this bar or this club exists here? That's politics. Politics is about what school your kids go to and do they get a good education? So, in one sense, your show is extremely political because it broadcasts and amplifies the diversity of black identity and hip hop at its heart. That's a deeply and profoundly political statement in a culture that doubts the humanity and the intelligence of black people. Because um, and I believe you say, sixty five right, okay, okay, so lets well, so have you in these sixty three years have you ever seen something like this Prior? I mean, obviously, you know, people have done horrible things, made mistakes, uh aft up, and so I mean we ain't that far past the oscars saying right now, I know Will too, He's a beautiful, beautiful man, and I know you and jaded stuff, but yeah, I mean take that attention off on man. Or you know, when Dreymond Green just punched you know, Jordan Pool, now, it didn't have the significance and the impact of this. And arguably obviously Will Smith's slap of Chris Rock And both of them are dear friends of mine and I love them. I'm in the same dilemma as you. I love both of these men, geniuses at what they do, extraordinary human beings. One of them made a horrible mistake in publicly humiliating another black man, and that black man is left to deal with the consequences of that, even though he says he's fine. The depression, the trauma, the internal sense of question self questioning should I have done this? And if I had done something differently, could I have been could it have led to a different consequence? But what Kanye has done is to amp the five the worst instincts of white folk against black folk and he's done done it as a as a sheep in one sense, as a wolf in sheep's clothing, because if you come as a friend defending us in your music, defending us in your culture and politics. Although a lot of black people would say it's been a long time since he's been defending us, he's been offending us a lot longer. But the point is that Kanye West has had moments where he has stood up high and powerful in the culture. George Bush making music, I mean when he's talking about blackness, going up on that stage with Taylor Swift saying, Beyonce deserved that. All my single ladies, all my single ladies. Oh even the Pope was singing that, if you really want me to be pumped up, put put a ring on it. So the point is that was deeply and profoundly consequential and influential. But another compatriot of his, I won't name his name, a famous musician, said, but when I was hanging with Kanye, we never talked politics like you were saying we talked about So Kanye was never really explicit political, even though his statements had political consequence, it wasn't his intent. It's just what happened. It is. My past used to tell me a mosquito don't more meaning no harm. It just wants some blood, but it can't give you malaria. So Kanye may have meant this to be exciting. He may have meant this to be controversial, although I suspect this deeper than that. But the consequence to us is that we've got a kind of psychological malaria. We've got racial harm and trauma being delivered to us. And Kanye must be made aware of that. Eiven, He's going to accept that responsibility and go, let me do something different. But I suspect the crowd he's hanging out with now is telling him your brave, You're courageous, You're doing a good thing. He's hanging out with Donald Trump. Donald Trump, this orange apparition, this guy, this guy who, when when Twitter was existing and he was on it, got up every morning to excrete the feces of his moral depravity into a nation. He turned into his psychic commode. He was doing horrible, devastating, nasty stuff to us, and for Kanye to amplify that, for Kanye to amen that, come on, bro, you are now contagious. You got the COVID of racial self hatred or at least hatred of black folks, and you got the quarantine for a minute, to get that ship straight. It is it? Could it be an extreme version of trying to reach greatness or on your way to greatness. You're going to have those failures in those potholes, sure, because you we see the genius in him. We see when he does really great things, but he's still trying to rise to this greatness that he hasn't achieved it in his mind. Is it full of those failures and potles that we're seeing. Of course. I mean, look, Kanye is a genius, rising even higher doing incredible things. But part of that genius has to be the ability to acknowledge a moral mishap, an ethical failure. I did something and it's wrong. You can't be just to not Nope, I don't care. I did it. I said it. That's cool. Let me keep moving on. We can't move on because you've left us with the consequences, right you the baby you don't craft in the diaper? You want to move on. We got to change that day. We got to deal with the consequences of it. So Kanye undeniably is rising to higher heights in terms of his fashion presence and being a bellion there. I know he keeps saying he's the richest black man in America. That would be Robert Smith, right, Robert Smith worth nearly seven billion dollars, Robert Smith who stood at more House College and said, let me forgive forty million dollars your loans. That's what a negro with money does. That's what a black man with bank does. That's what a black billionaire does. And I know there are a lot of people out here speaking about racial capitalism and trying to talk about the subversion of American economy for black people predicated upon being a billion there. I get that. That's a different argument for a different day. I'm just saying, Kanye West is trying to do the best he can, but the best he can is hurting and harming us. And you're hanging out with people, you know, he's hanging out what Canda's owns, and God bless her. Candas Owns is a highly intelligent young lady doing her things. I deeply and profoundly disagree with her. If you want to hang out with some brilliant, beautiful black women, UH call up Treva Lindsay at Ohio State University, a brilliant woman wrote a book called America God Damn, a tremendous feminist. If you want to hang out with some young, brilliant, beautiful Black women, call Brittany Cooper, who wrote a book called Eloquent Rage about feminism in America and the way in which black feminism has to be assaulted has been assaulted both from within the culture and beyond. If you want to hang out with brilliant black women, talk to Salomisha Tillott, who just want to pull a surprise and writes for The New York Times and wrote a book on the making of the color purple. If you want to hang out with brilliant black women, talked to Stephanie Jones Rogers, who won National Book Award and wrote a book they were hurt property about white women owning Black women that you see l a. If you want to hang out with brilliant black women, there's so many others who are available to talk to you, and they love hip hop and they're dope and they got mad swag. Do that. Bro, just learned some different black women that would be helpful to again with because I guess that's I guess that's what he was trying to do and say, I believe Snoop critiqued him at one time and Snoop said that he didn't have black woman around him, and then and then and every down. Now people are teaking him because not only did he get a black woman, but he got somebody that believes in the total different. That's a great point, but she ain't his woman. That's different when when the woman at your crib like Negro, I know you a big time professor and everything, but you need to slow that down. Make you're killing him all right? You need that pillow talk right. The pillow may be white, but the black woman is radiating some intense blackness and that makes the difference. I'm not trying to judge what he does because Kanye predicted it. He said, you the first thing you're gonna do when you get famous gonna get a white girl. Right. He said that in his own music, And I'm for look love who you will if you and this microphone can get together, y'all get down. Hey, I love you, I love you? Why do you love me? You amplify? So if y'all can have little baby, little microphone. So I'm I'm for that for sure. But the problem is is that, yes, having a black woman in your life and intelligent, informed, incisive, you know, incredibly caring black woman makes a difference in this country and in this world. But if you, as you said, if you talk to ones who don't necessarily curry the same kind of favor or carry the same kind of burden that their hearts wren because of what black people confront, then yeah, you're in trouble. Your has Hold up a second, I got something to say. 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She's married to a woman's but she's a dominant ball player. She is a phenomenal cultural icon. There is no question. Even Lebron had admitted that was him over there. Why want you to remember your thoughts? But I admitted that I smoked weed and Russia. U was with me one time? You do? Right? Come out on submitted like this was this is like a normal thing for rappers to go to Russia and getting we like, so this is kind of crazy for for me. But no, no, you absolutely right. Well know it's arbitrary, but see that's the point. You're dealing with a strong man. You're dealing with a dictator, you're dealing with a fascist. You're dealing with a person who saw her um being arrested as a moment that he could leverage her body in Russia for his advantage in fighting America. Now, if it been Donald Trump. Look how Donald Trump was vicious by saying, you know, she shouldn't have been doing what she was doing. He didn't support her, he didn't stay with Oh my god, he doubled down on Russia's incarceration of her and harmed her. This is another reason just by tangential relationship. And that's what I'm saying, Kane, Look who you're supporting. Look at this kind of dude, right who is anti black at his heart. They held him and his daddy responsible for doing stuff with real estate back in the seventies and eighties, took out a full page page ad against the so called um you know, Central Park five and they're tolerated five now. But the point is that's who you're supporting. But yes, this black woman, had she been anybody else, even a straight black woman, would have received more support than a queer black woman with a black wife, both of them beautiful, intelligent women, but who are being used as a pawn and a patsy by a Russian government to get back at America. And he's a dictatorial fascist person appealing to a dictatorial fascist impulse within the country. That is Donald Trump and those who follow him for the most part. And this is why again Kanye West's support of him is so undignified. It's so harmful to black people and so destructive to the fundamental process of American democracy. But let me be Devil's advocate. Why are we not hearing Commona Commanda as a black woman doing more for her, Like you know what I'm saying, like this is kind of like the time because I'm gonna be honest, uh and i know what I'm about to say. It's not gonna be popular. But in the in the cities, people is kind of like they're done with the Joe Biden's like that's done with the with the Kmmona. It doesn't feel like there was any change, like you know, after a while, the first four years of Obama, we were the hood was happy, we were like and then the last four years the hood kind of comes like yo Obama where it's all black, where it's all black, you know, piece of something for something like it felt like Obama didn't do like like a black agenda that that was just for you know, black people to help us. Then now with k Commona coming in, were saying that and then we say, at least can we go get the girl from Russia. Right, Well, let me let me address that directly, because I know all the people you're talking about, I know Obama, no, Kamala Harris, the president, I mean, and I know you know. Let me say because I'm about to say some critical stuff now. The thing is is that Kamala Harris, however, as a sitting vice president, doesn't want to do something by a public intervention that will count negatively against Brittney Griner. So in other words, if they behind the scenes trying to work it out, you gotta ask yourself a question. Do you want the commercial or do you want the product? Right? Because you can get the commercial, Yes, come here and your teeth will be cleaning tomorrow, right or do you just not announced that and just have Quentin teeth war going on? It's the war going on. They're using her body as a war zone, and they are criminalizing her blackness, her queerness, and her Americans at the same time. So to Kamla to Comma, in commla's defense, vice President Kamala Harris, she can't say much right now because then the people over and rested get man, oh really up to the black woman saying crazy things? Now? We're gonna punish the black woman so that I give her a pass on. However, because the woman already got nine years, he's sentenced well ten years. At least she got ten years, but that she got ten years. And what they trying to do now is to negotiate a prisoner exchange so that they can release some real thug in America, some real criminal who did some horrible things in exchange for her. So they're trying to leverage her, and they're upping the anti The worst the war gets over there, the more critical America is of Russia in regard to keep and in regard to what's going on in the Ukraine, then her body becomes even more of a precious bounty to be used by Russia. But let me say this though, the same folk who mad now and I get it because I'd be telling black people to vote all the time. Well, it ain't working out, dude. A lot of stuff don't work out. A lot of stuff don't work out. You have to keep trying. I know you a first time person. The person I voted for didn't win, dude. That's the nature of the game, right. I made an album, it didn't sell five million Okay, making another one. All right, chiep working, go on the internet, up your profile. Where are white? Okay? So the point is right. So the point is that that the ain't black folk mad at Biden now, wasn't mad at Obama when Obama wasn't doing dead least for black people in this country. Now, I'm a person who was twice a surrogate for Barack Obama. That means I went out, I spoke for him. I told people to vote for him. I have no regrets about that. But the moment after each time he was elected, I was his critic. I was his critic because before you were president and after you president, I'm still on Michael Eric Dison, I'm still committed to black people. No one black journey is greater than the Black journey. Your individual life as a black person cannot outweigh outweigh the fortunes of black people. So I knew that Barack Obama, as important as he was, was not more important than the struggle of black people to become whole in this nation. And so yeah, here's the guy. They were putting them up on the posters with Martin Luther King Junior, Slow slow, slow, slow down with that slow down. As as Albert com You says, you got to go on the ground and rise up the third day before you get that kind of love. Bro, that's on some genius level, Jesus level. Love. It ain't really where you is now. There's a difference between Martin Luther King Jr. And Barack Obama. One of the civil rights leader standing outside the parameters of politics, challenging it from from without with his moral vision and his ethical courage. Another one is sent to be the black face of the white American empire. So the point is his job from the guinea that we knew was to represent America with all the good that that means and with all the self destructive nastiness that that brings us. Well, this man was in charge of the American empire, one of Nobel Peace Prize, while having two wars going on right like a motherfucker like you hustle. I'm a hustler when the rembers of the system ain't no telling what I drown him or I kill him, That's what they'd be asking. I'm a pimp blah blood. So that's a president uh imbut with moral principles. But anyway, but the point is. Barack Obama was a man who was given the responsibility and the reins of the American Empire at a very moment when it's fortunes were declining. That's when they always get negroes, the car keys. When the car ain't working, take it over to you know, Jiffy fix up and try to get the damn thing fixed, because oh it is a rose Roys, but it ain't got no engine that's working. Okay, So that's what they do to us. But Barack Obama was a genius. He figured out the American economy. He got people working again, He saved the automobile industry. He did amazing things, but for black folk, not so much. You know. I compare him to another different Shaquille O'Neil, whom I know y'all love and admire. Shaquille was one of the greatest ball players ever. Kobe said, had he had a certain kind of work ethic, he would have been the greatest of all time. So we know he was the most dominant big man of all time. But he wasn't a great foul shooter necessarily, So you can acclaim Shack as one of the greatest of all time. But don't put him on the category of greatest free throw shooters ever. Barack Obama might be top ten president for everybody else, but for us, not so much. He wasn't a top ten president for black folk because he would scold us. He would dog us in public. He would tell us stop feeding your kids chicken, and don't do this. Now. He's scolding us, but he ain't scolding white folks. The one time he tried and a tony fundraiser in San Francisco while he was running for president, he said, yeah, man, they get down I'm paraphrasing here, they get that juice on him when they get upset, and they get religion and neigg grab some guns. These white folks wore him out and never again did he ever attempt to be critical of white folks. But Negroes taken Negroes take abuse as a sign of love. Negroes take imposed trauma as a sign of respect. And so they felt that when Barack was doing at least he paying attention to me. Yeah, he beat me. It's like colored purple. He beat me because see, we like we like to We like the Oprah character. I ain Man's mess ceiling. I never thought in my own home. You're telling hard for to beat me. And so we have to say to black people, don't be like Donald Trump supporters. That's how we were with Barack. Now, I ain't saying Barack and Donald Trump are the same thing. Barack Obama is a genius, an incredible political figure, and a great mind. But he also was deeply and profoundly problematic for black people. Two things can be true at the same time, and so we got to hold him to a like what Kanye. Except you know, although now that you mentioned that, I hold Barack Obama at least a little responsble for Kanye. How do you say, because when when when Kanye did his thing with Taylor Swift, remember they called Barack Obama, he called him a jackass. Well, he had more courage than you, Barack. Maybe if you called out white supremacy from the bully pulpit of the most powerful platform in America and indeed in the world, the Kanye West of the world wouldn't have to call that kind of thing out. So calling him a jackass while you're sitting around being silent and complicit in the face of horrible transactions of anti blackness in America, wasn't a good luck either. But black people, we would Barack regardless, remember on Saturday Night Live. No matter what he did, we love him. And I understand that he was the first one white people that had forty four presidents. We had one. That's our baby daddy. We rolled in with him, and we love our apartment. Cutting you off. People said that he was the first black president. So he said, the Republicans always outvoted him, and so it was a little much that he can do. But then the very next president, even when he got outvoted by the Democrats, he did what the funk he wanted to do. Like, don't one before and after George. I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do the one after him. But you don't one in between the sandwich. You you know it reverse Oreo. You're the reverse Oreo cookie. You got two whites in the black on the middle, you know, and you ain't got no ice cream to put it in and no milk to dip it in. The point is this that when you're the president, bro, you know. Now, he did do some stuff in terms of executive decisions and executive orders and the like. There's no doubt about that. And yes, Barack Obama was in a precarious position back against the wall, deeply and profoundly uh fighting the forces of white supremacy. And he did an ingenious job in many ways. But here's my point. If you can't do something special folk negroes, don't do nothing special against them. Though, this is the problem. It's one thing for you to say I can't I can't acknowledge what I'm doing in a certain way. Look, I've been in the White House at a table that was about twice this size with Barack Obama and nine other so called negro leaders, and I shared with him my vision that was problematic. Now, I had a radio host say, Michael, you're writing a book on the presidents about two thousand and eleven and twelve. You're writing a book on the president. You're a very You're a famous black person with influence. You could really harm his chances for re election. Now he's said, right, I like, dude, I said, are you Nostra Thomas wrote the damn book here? So? And since I got kids, tell me how many books I myself? So I don't know how much money I can right, And Obama laughed him. He said, yeah, and he's sitting here eating my eating my food. Well, you might be the president, but you ain't as mean with this Mike is me homes So, without missing a beat, I said, yeah, I paid for about my tax money. And I said, based on what I'm paid, I'm gonna be here next week. Give me the menute. That's what I do, right. But but he said, look, I respect Michael because I said I disagree with you, Mr President. And I said to his face, I wasn't trying to backstab him to be nasty. I said, you believe a rising tide lifts all boats. He said, I wouldn't quite put it that way, but I understand your point. I said, when you go when you're sick and you go to the hospital, you don't get medicine. That's universal. That's something that's non that's non specific. I said, if you got a hangnail, you get asked him, if you've got diabetes, you get into it, if you've got if you've got cancer, you get hemotherapy. I said, medicines, like public policies, should be aimed at the ills they're meant to relieve. So you know, one size fits all. You got to we still black and citizens, if you're taking care of everybody else but afraid that if you hook us up. It looked like you're giving us a hook up in the White House right there? What is the advantage of us supporting you? And I said in the book, I wrote a three hundred semi page book, so I write books like Nigga's right hooks Right. So I put that down in the book. And I laid that down right in book number I don't know twenty six. I mean I lost count, but I'm still doing what I do. So the thing is is that I put it there careful analysis. Again, like what Kanye, I love Barack Obama. I respect Barack Obama right, but as in the guard Father, but I never trusting Okay, never trust right. So the point is I love Obama, I respect him, I supported him. I went out and asked people to vote for him. But we've also got a whole black leaders to account. We got to hold the Michael Eric Dyson's to account. We gotta hold every black public figure to account, not cancel him, not be nasty, not destroy them. And where I do agree with Kanye uh is in this cancel culture which is so destructive, Like you don't make no mistakes, like if somebody messes up and does something a white person. And Obama said this the other day, let me give him some kudos. He said, people don't want to think they're walking on eggshells. If they say one wrong thing, then they're done. You know that's this younger generation, y'all. I mean that ain't what I'm a Baptist preacher. Jesus have done. That the world would be dead right now. Right. People got to be forgiven for the mistakes they've made. Now, they got to know they made a mistake. Kanye gotta ADMITTI made it. And if he don't admit it, then we got to keep hammering him, hollering at him and trying to talk to him to get him to see a different way. So, for me, Barack Obama was an extraordinary president. But all the black people who blindly followed him, who didn't criticize him, not want to criticize Joe Biden. You wouldn't criticize your own You had a black man in there, who could I do the fact with you? What did Joe Biden do? He put a black woman on the ticket and gave her the vice presidency or allowed her to be elected, and he put a black woman on the Supreme Court. Barack Obama had three bites at the apple. He couldn't put one sister on the court. And you man at the old white man. That old white man has done more for neg roles in total, in terms of what he's trying to do, not perfectly, not without flaws, than a whole lot of black politicals who have not taken up the mantle of a black agenda or the interests of black people. So that's why we can be about no cancel culture and trying to get rid of people who we feel have done a wrong thing. I I don't want to be canceled. I'm a black man who's made mistakes. I try to be a feminist in identification with black women and white women and women of coloring throughout the world. But I mess up. Hold me to account, tell me where I did wrong, but allow me to step back into the arena and participate again. That's what we gotta do when it comes to race and class and gender and culture in this country. So I don't I don't have the numbers, and I don't know if this is I'm going to fulfilling right when Barack was back was in office, it felt like a lot more police killing of innocent black men happen, And it felt like a lot more a police killing innocent black men getting freed happened, getting getting of course, is that is that true? Well? Yeah, I feel that I share the same feeling. I wrote a book called Long Time Coming where I addressed the martyrs of this this movement, fallen martyrs, not intentional martyrs, martyrs because of their circumstance look or on the under Barack Obama. And here's the point. Let's let's put it this way. Given the rising tide of white supremacy, because you know, Barack Obama sent the meter of white supremacy off off the chart right here. It just went with Anita, went off the recording mechanism itself. It just went haywire. Because they needed him. That's why Black people still defending him. And I understand why because no matter what he did that was failed and flawed, the white supremacists out here are trying to kill him every day. The death threats against him were more than any other president, the harm and hate that he received, and he was so cool with it, right, I mean, the thing we love about him. He's like jay Z president. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. But we saw the effect when he came out office, how he looked, no doubt, I mean, there's no doubt. But you know, he was cool, he was calm, he's collected, he's doing this thing. But beneath there was a fire raging, and it was it was burning us. So they wanted to get Barack. Couldn't get him. Who can you get vulnerable black people? So he was Barack Obama was in one sense our iconic representative and we were his uh proxies. Can't shoot him, shoot us, can't kill him, kill us. I'm not suggesting there was some broad conspiracy that was conscious on the parts of white people. But that's the genius of white supremacy. It's an institution that operates on its own. But is the data show that there was more of it or was it always there and just social media and the access to film these things and bring it out more to las. I mean, that's that's partly true that it was. It was focused on in a way because you got a black man in the White House. You never had that before, you got a black man having to respond to black people dying and what will he say in Obama was tentative on some of that stuff. Right after Trayvon Martin. You know that's not a police killing, but it is a vigilante killing. After Trayvon Martin's death, after the jury, uh, you know, did what it did and let George Zimmerman off, Barack Obama says, the people have spoken. The jury is to be trusted. And that's what women, women bro with slow down. So he got to go to the crib. His kids are there, his wife's there. Then he comes up and makes one of the greatest statements about race. Because you gotta push PSI. Presidents ain't gonna never do what you don't make them do. Right. That famous story that Harry Belafonte likes to tell and others of f Dr. Fred Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president having his black kitchen and cabinet with Mary McLeod Bethune and A Philip Brandolph. They were great leaders. Uh. She was the National Council of Negro Woman. He was the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters, tremendous. They were part of his informal cabinet meeting women the White House and and he and he listened to what they said, and he said, look, I believe everything he's saying. I go out in the streets and make me do it. In other words, create a social movement where I go, what was I gonna do? I mean, look at what the tidest turns. So presidents rarely do unless you make them do so. Yeah, Barack Obama exposed what was underlying there, and the technology caught up with the truth. The empirical. Empirical is just a big word to say that which can be falsified, to verify through the census, the cameras picked up. They no, no, no, that can't be true. There's just no way. Imagine if there was no camera for George Floyd, Dad another dad, nigga, We don't care. He was belligerent and he was nasty. The reason white people poured into the streets. I think that the numbers they did, they saw that video. First of all, it was COVID. That meant we were all at home used to watching stuff on our screen. Right five weeks before old men like me telling people get off that damn fault. Don't you talk to me face to face now with COVID, Hey, thank god, you didn't listen to me, and we're talking right now. So the thing is is that we were used to seeing things on screen and they were more alive and more colorful for us. Number one, number two, there were no more. But white people said, women, Hey, have we seen this film before? Didn't this happen like six years ago. We're a guy named Eric Garner out in uh, you know, New York, and he said, I can't breathe. Jiminy cricket. They were right. They keep saying us that what we don't believe that it still exists. And then thirdly, what they saw, there was no more excuse. He was running, he was trying to resist the rest, No he won, he was CUsing up, No he wan he was. He was being hateful and growing for a gun. No he wasn't. And they saw no more excuses, and they fled the streets. So yes, I think the cameras exposed it. I think the fact that a black president was there magnetized the biggots in this country. And Howard Thurman, the great mystic, said, the biggot is the person who makes an idol of his commitments. So they were committed to their vicious understanding of whiteness is dominant, and black people were messing it up and Obama was seen as a person taking their rights. Can you imagine white people who were upset with Obama and Obama was hooking y'all up in the way he ain't never hooked us up. He was giving y'all the keys to the kingdom, and you still hated him because the person handing you the keys was a black man. So in that sense, yes, it exposed what was already there. So it may have seemed to be more dense than happening more. But the reality is black life being lost is a constant in America. The hatred of black people, anti blackness is a constant. Which is why again not to keep harping on Kanye, why what you're doing is more than a ploy, it's destructive. How do you get produced by a people who, out of their loins delivered you into the world like Moses, protecting you so that you could one day rise up to lead your people through sonic you know, expression and asthetic expression and fashion and music for you to turn around and be Faro when you're supposed to be Moses. And what you do when you say white lives matter is that you turn into the very destructive enemy of the very interests that produced you. Now when you tell us, oh, I mean for black excellent stuff, that's a sideshow. The main theme is your destructive addiction to white supremacy and to anti blackness in your own mind. Let me let me ask you something. As a president, right, you're seeing these people are as multiple shootings of unarmed and innocent killings of black men, black people, period, because this woman in there, anyone not just say men. Isn't it How hard is it to just change the law that if you get caught killing somebody that's out of goddamn pisso that you automatically going going to jail, because then then I'm sure, I mean, I'm seeing people getting convicted now, seeing people. Uh. But he can't do that though, he wouldn't be able to change the No, he can't do that because most of all dictator now he's Donald Trump, he would think he could. But Barack Obama was a constitutional lawyer. He was a scholar of the constitution. He knew that way we can't go. So he can't know. He can't. He's a state laws, federal laws and law federal law and the people that you want to change it are invested in the very white supremacy that you don't want to talk about. Look at the police department, how was exposed. All these white bigots are in law enforcement. Some of them are in state legislatures, Republican state legislators maybe thirty eight to forty. Some of them are Republican controlled, which means that the local law will always mitigate against, militate against, go against trying to create laws that hold them accountable. Look at the notion of you know, you know, impunity, immunity that police people are granted. So now when you talk about the immunity that they are granted, that means even if they mess up and it proves that you proved that they kill somebody, well they're granted immunity because they were representing the state in this case, your cop. So Obama couldn't change that. But what he could change he didn't necessarily do, which has changed the rhetoric, which has opened your mouth. Yes, he convened the Police Committee and all that, but you got the bully pool pit, you got influenced. Kanye has shown you that you can talk, and by talk alone, you can change the atmosphere, you can change people's perception, you can influence them in deep ways. That's what the darn social media is about. Social media influencers. Yeah, got no power. You might be making money off of that, but you've got influence in the world to change people's perception. Obama had the biggest bullet pulpit in the world and often had to be pushed into saying something because of his own reticence to deal with race in America. And Trump took advantage of it and did use it like a But couldn't he have at least threatened and said you're listening from now on any law enforcement that it's called killing the innocent person. And maybe not just black people. Maybe obviously black people is the biggest part. But could he, like at least have threatened them. So so some people were feel feel scared, like the president said, they're gonna get me, because the first of all, they didn't respect him as president. He was already the most Look, it's like being the baddest man in the world when you're the headweight champion of the world. Right, whoever has that title is the baddest man in the world. Mike Tyson Lennox Lewis. You know, Tyson Fear, You're the baddest man on the planet, the heavyweight champion. You're the most powerful person in the world when you're the American President, the most powerful. And yet what they showed is that Obama had a lot of limitations on him. You might have been the most powerful in terms of theory. Right now, there are two theories. That's what you're saying in terms of theory, because it was crazy about that. You're saying that. But when it came time to kill Osama, he was in that room. He had that power. He said, I'm a Merkhan falling back on that A what a hell of fight. So no, no doubt. But he can control He can control that con that's the deep thing. You can control the killing of Osama. But you can't get Yokol, you can't get you can't get Obama boy over here. And they got he can again because that would be criminal, right. Uh. Some people already thought the killing of a so called terrorists was problematic enough, but can you imagine Obama turning that power against American citizens. That was his greatness, the refusal to to be seduced by the temptation to use and abuse your power in ways that are destructive of the American democracy. But on the other hand, uh, you could use your bully pullup it in ways that you didn't. I was about to say. They're two big theories of power. One, a guy named Max Weber, sociologist, talked about it as inherent in institutions, as hierarchies. You above me, this person is above you. They got there the big dog. Another guy named Michelle forhu co talking about power breaking out everywhere. It's lateral. So if you try to get up into the club and the bouncer won't let you in, he might not be president, but he got damn power over your life that night. And you ain't. You ain't going nowhere, son, and you with your girl, maybe I'll say I could get in, I could get in. I'm gonna show you the dude going like now take your b a and you ain't going nowhere. So that's power of who Coo said. And people exercise power against each other and laterally not just top down. So Obama had enormous forms of micro politics of Obama had enormous forms of power that he could have used to try to get America to think a different way. And when he was when he was, when he was inclined to do so, he did the famous race speech he gave in Philadelphia, the speech he gave it the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Selma when John Lewis got his brains nearly beat out of his cranium. So when Obama was willing to do so, he could do it, but he was loath to do so. He didn't want to do it. He didn't want to use his political capital that way. He didn't want to be ghetto wise and seen as a president only for black people. But dude, and the second term, especially black people gave him pass in the first one. See dude, you could paint the White House black, red, black, and gray. Another rumor, they were saying that he didn't want to legalize marijuana because he didn't want to be the black president. I'm sure well he didn't. They tried to get him to part Marcus Garvey, the great Marcus Garvey. Right. Guess who did I think Donald Trump? What right? Am I wrong? I think I said to be corrected, but I think Donald Trump partners considering partner. I think he did was considering partner. I think he did partner Marcus Guy, but he couldn't get Barack Obama to do it. And how is that gonna hurt the political Black Trump got colda blackout, you know what I'm saying. I'd rather be under the ground, put the flowers and people got out. Wow. Man. So the thing is is that And and Donald Trump met with the Congressional Black Caucus sixty days after he was in office. It took Obama nearly three years. So black people who are mad at white folks who uncritically and blindly expressed loyalty to Donald Trump don't see it closer to home. And they were doing the same thing for Barack Obama. Now again, we know Barack ain't Donald. We know Barack Obama is smart. He actually reads books, you know Constitution. He knows the Constitution. He reads things that he didn't write, and he interprets them with brilliance. But at the same time, the truth is that Barack Obama did not exercise the full range of his authority while in the office. And Black people loved him regardless, or the brothers on the street say, he're regardless. Do you think we're gonna have like and listen, I don't want to say this word. I don't want to say this word. Man, I'm gonna I'm gonna say you did whatever have like a legal president Richard Richard remember he was, he was, he was. He was doing there like, oh yeah, hey, I got a press converence because I'm trying to get away too. They were trying to kill me like Trump was, like he had like he would do. So I would say Trump was niggard to leave, let's just sh something. Uh, you know, and he's still calling, you know, according to something, he's calling black people nigger. He wasn't saying nigger, right, so he wasn't identifying with that. Now, first of all, that's off limits to you, Donald, That's not something you can be saying. Even you know, the great Marshall Mathers understood that. Even though I want to rephrase that, we we have a president that's black and that's hood. That's that's not to say that Barack can not from the hood or not from the hood. What I'm saying, whether or not, you know, you know, what I'm trying to say is like what the hood tendencies like, you know, I don't know if people remember as a Dave Chappelle's ski and Dave Chappelle was like, he was like, you know what, what what you like that from my wife? You ever, No, they could never get elected. I mean that's right. I mean, look, Obama wasn't the first black man to be capable of being president who was black. He's the first black man they allowed to be elected, right, Jesse Jacks Jackson, I mean the rhetorical genius of a Jesse Jackson uh receiving the baton symbolically from Martin Luther King Jr. And carrying it through the wilderness of white backlash, of anti affirmative action, of the culture of narcissism, of the hatred of black people, of white supremacist resurgence and recredescence, and still being out there doing this thing. He could have been president by far in the eighties. Oh yeah, right in the eighties. Surely chishoen running even before then. So yeah, there are other black people who were taking as the president by a boarded with Chisholm, right like that, like that, like that. But here's the point that to get a black person like that, it's got to be by stealth. You gotta be Whitney Houston and will always love you. Right, and then beneath you know, all y'all trying to cancel Whitney she ain't black enough. Oh she was really black in ways she couldn't even afford to say in public. She couldn't tell the truth about that blackness. Right, So you never know what people are doing, and we see black people have to signify, you know, on the surface, we had to be cool and come, hi, how are you fine? How are you? Yes, let's have dinner at the soonest, thanks so very much, bye bye now, And then underneath, like you know what's up? But to get to the stints, right, So, yeah, there's gonna be some great deal of signifying. But there are levels, as the great philosopher Meek Mills said, their levels to this. And the thing is is that, yes, I think. Look, Jackie Robinson was the first black ball player for the net you know, National, the major leagues. Jackie Robinson was a great ball player. He wasn't the greatest, but he was great, right. He was chosen not because he was the greatest Larry Doobie right behind him, uh Newcombe, Roy Nucombe. But he was chosen because his temperament was even when they stepped on his fingers, even though he wanted to break them off, he was kind enough, he was disciplined enough to stand back up. So he was chosen as much for his pr skills and as much for his ability to defer his anger, asked for his skills. But coming behind him was William Mays, arguably the greatest player ever and some would say Barry Bonds. So while Barack Obama was Jackie Robinson, yeah, pri steroids, he was the coldest. He was already, so that so let him in the hall, dude, because the stuff he did after he just had a bigger neck and he could hit longer, but he was still killing the ball before then. But my point is that Barack Obama is Jackie Robinson. Who were waiting for is Willie Mays. And Willie Mays will be a dominant, brilliant, capable president who's committed to Black people in a certain way, but he's still gonna have to disguise it. Let's be real, That's what I mean by Whitney Houston. You're gonna have to signify. But yes, I think there will come a point where a person who has historically been identified with us, who's not afraid because the culture allows him not to be afraid. Although that's that's that's a long way off to embrace his blackness. I mean, don't you think with Kamala Harris there's some of that going on, whom I knowing love, but you know, not wanting to appear to be too black on the one hand, and trying to appeal to a broader audience. At the end of the day, you got to be who you is, as the old lady said, be who you is and not who you ain't, because if you is, what you ain't you and what you're not. That was all that was. So I've been critical of this regime. I've been critical cap Kamaa, and I've been critical of a Biden. I think Biden it looks weak. I think he almost acts the crepit um. But besides all that, I feel like they don't come outside. I feel like I feel like, like like me, I'm used to see and presidents, I'm just seeing presidents going And I get COVID, I get all that, but it felt like it felt like even Bryan's a COVID. After COVID, I'm not seeing them, for lack of a better turn, seeing them in these streets. Yeah. See, this is what I'm not gonna speak for. Biden's gonna say to you, young man, I love your show, watch it all the time for my name. But at the same time, he goes, it's it's a bit up there. I'm trying to run the world from America and it's hard. I'd love to take off time and watch reruns of MTV raps, but damn it's rough out here. Now. Your point is, though about the pr side of it. Though, Hell fella, well, met Obama wasn't that real social? Bill Clinton was social? Hello, how are you? How are you? What? They said this, They said Obama was like a cat and and and Clinton was like a dog, no pun intended, So a dog. It would be a hundred people in the room. People love you. But the one person that don't the dog were like, don't the cat be like, you can take me to leave me home? I don't really give it an amp right, And Obama was like, look, it's good, I know what I'm doing. I'm gonna take care of business. If you like me, that's cool. If you know, check you later. So I think that Joe Biden is an older American trying to preserve his health, trying to in the midst of COVID, trying to get the job done. Let me tell you something about Joe Biden. I went to the White House. I was invited along with a few other scholars and historians to talk to him. So we did our presentation. I thought it was gonna be like eight of us, we're gonna present our give our presentations, and then he goes, Okay, great, thanks a lot, it was great, take a photo op and leave. After every presentation, this dude is giving fifteen minutes response. Do you think this? Uh when you set this uh Dr Dyson about you know, what was going on with civil rights in regard to LBJ and so. And he's asking serious questions and Michael, do you think this all of that? I'm going like, damn, we were only supposed to be to the hour and a half we met for damn there four hours. The man's energy was crazy. So I think that, Look, there's a there's room to be critical of all presidents. That's our job as American citizens. And you said you weren't political. Your job as an American citizen is to hold the people who represent you to account. You don't work for them. They work for you. That's why the police got it twisted. They think we're supposed to obey him. You work for us, and yet you're out here killing us. So I think I think Joe Biden is doing a hell of a job. He had a lot of stuff to clean up. Yes, he should be criticized like any other president, but I'll tell you, in terms of the strides he's made and the efforts he's made and what he's tried to do is pretty darn remarkable. And if you compare him to his black president who was he who for whom he was vice president, he hasn't done some stuff, man, In terms of substance that again may not look the same part cosmetically, but in terms of infrastructure, in terms of internal dialogue, in terms of politics, in terms of distribution resources, uh, it's far more powerful in many ways and advantageous to us than in previous Amabe. You got to think about it in comparison to Trump. That's what he doesn't look like he's outside, but politically he's outside. Trump was outside tweeting a but that's why he wasn't doing no damn job. He was tweeting all the time trying to get us and likes. You know, there was Again, I'm not big en up Trump because I have no room to pick up anybody on that side right now. But what I'm saying is I do not like Donald Trump. Like what I'm trying to say is I can go two weeks without hearing something about Biden or Camala. When Trump was in office, I couldn't go half an hour. Do you want the commercial or the product? And it's where looking too? Are you looking? Are you looking at like Twitter? Helon Elon Musk Twice I could go this week they were killing me. Yes, there now you can edit on Twitter now. But here's the thing. He said, I got your back. Yeah you got a knighte of it. Right. But but here's the thing. If they're in the house, the people's house, doing they work, although he's traveling and doing his thing, if he's trying to take care of business, that's what we want. We don't want the performative presidency. That's what Trump was doing, going around hell fella mail with a well met, shaking people's hands, kissing babies, grabbing. Okay, So the thing is is that is that this is what he was doing, but he wasn't doing the work of the people. First of all, he didn't know what the hell he was doing. His level of incompetence was amazing, his mendacity was astonishing. And at least what Joe Biden is doing is showing you one old white man can undo what another old white man did, and so let him do what he's got to do within and inside. That doesn't mean you can't hold him to account. But it's the flashy, conspicuous elements of political theater, uh that may be lacking in Biden, but the underneath it's like Jay said, now, I might not be saying like a bust of rhymes, but when you break down my lines, you see what I'm doing. And in that sense, when you break down what Biden is really about, it's been far more substantive in terms of policy. Barack Obama gave us my brother's keeper. You could have done that when you were out of office. Man, God dang, what were you you had power inside? Don't be giving us no damn Sunday School approximation of feel good black male ism give us a serious, systemic alter alternative to the productive forces of evil, hurt, and pain that are out there, and I think he missed the boat in many ways in that regard. Do you think Obama had to do raging in a white house? Yeah, man, this is what I want to see. I wanted to see Obama come out one day down you know, down the stairs and they come with a do rag on with a grill, with his terry cloth road and it's Magic Johnson's sucks and his slippers and go, yeah, I'm living in public house. That's what I do. Yeah, that's the best public house. But I feel living in public I mean. And then when he comes down, Air Force one, you know, was playing. I don't know what you heard about, but the right got a dollar right. I mean, look, let me let me be the anger translator if I can. Baptist preacher cussing. I'm giving you a warning. So if you want to turn your ears away, don't listen to this. I'm gonna be Obama's anger translator. So Obama was given a speech, his penultimate, that is, his next to last speech as the in the State of Union, and he goes, well, I have no more racist to run, and then of course the Republicans got yeah, thank god, and Obama have more racist to run because he was eight years he had to come out racists are as okay, racist run and then and then the promosas clapping. He says, well, that's because I beat you. Well, that's not not asking for the Niggarais presidency or at least the blackened catfish presidency. You know what Obama wanted to say, and allow me that privilege to say, look bit twice and if we had another election, we have that ass again. That's what obma. Holy, So, what happens in this crazy world? Right, because we've seen things crazier? Right? What happens if Kanye was I'm sorry, I didn't really Damn, I didn't know whatever, thinking I'm a ship, She's more like Florida. No, I didn't know. Let me tell you what I'd be like. I'm gonna answer your question. I was at the crib one day after having appeared on the Today's Show after the fourth fifth year anniversary of the killing of the folk involved Nicole and Ron Goldman. Right, uh so, I said, ain't nothing black on o J but the bottom of his shoes? WHOA? And I said, when when O J took that long, slow ride down the l A freeway in A. C. Collin's Bronco. It wasn't the first time he used a white vehicle to escape of black reality. Boom right. So I go home at data phone, rang phone, handed to me. Wife gives me the phone. She said, it's a call for you. I said hello. He said, do I call you Professor Reverend or Dr Dyson. I'm saying myself whole day. I said, you could call me Mike. Mike is fine. Most people who know me called me that, and it's all good. I was. I was a straight you know what I'm saying, because now I'm talking trash on today's show, right, I'm chilling them with the rhetoric. I'm giving them vicious vicissitudes in the midst of vituperation. I'm just smoking them right with big words. And then I came home and this food called me. I was like, huh yeah, he said, I want to come to your class. Okay, any time you want to, You're you could come. It's amazing. And I'm saying and I called Johnny Cock. I said, how do you get this? They grown my prone number. I said, you know that's oh, Jane, you know what he'd be doing. I'm just people are vulnerable. Right. So same with Kanye. I go, oh my god, I've had no idea. No, I'd have to stand against. I'd have to say, Kanye, if you're president and you do great things, I'm gonna support you and stand by you and show you love. And if you don't, I'm gonna be your worst enemy, your most convicted uh, you know, critic, and to say to you that now that you have political power, that you must exercise it prudently. See, here's the problem. A lot of hip hoppers who love Donald Trump loved him as an iconic figure in the cultural space. You got a bunch of money, he floss and he's our kind of dude, even as he hated Negroes at the same time. Just just keep that clear. So they're already got a problematic relationship with him, but now that he switches over to president, they have a hard time, some of them trying to make that transition. He is now the president of the United States of America. He is wilding power against the masses of black people. He's using his bully pulpit to demonize Mexicans, Muslims, queer people, and the like. We canna, we can have no truck with a guy like that. Kanye West, should he win, has to be opposed if he puts fourth policies rhetoric um that is destructive to American If he's doing what he's doing, now, we got to organize vigorously against his presidency. But what if he changes his ideologies and he calls you and says, I want you to be my running me. Yeah, I'm gonna run from him, but I'm gonna run from him. I got to see proof. I got to see. I got to see thirty days. I got to see thirty straight days. Are you just going I can't, no, dog, no, no, no, I got no. I got to know. First of all, it ain't gonna happen. And if it did, I'd say, Oh, they are far better people than me, sir. I am just a little minion out here doing my thing. But no, I mean, my job as a public intellectual and the cultural critic is to stand outside the amateurs of power, relatively speaking, and to offer a prudential insight and judgment about the forces of American white supremacy, social injustice, economic inequality. I stand for the masses of people who are vulnerable, whose backs are against the wall. So at that level, I can never go inside. So many people approached me, Dr Dyson, can you come in and run for the office. Now, I don't want to do that. I want to maintain my what Kanye says, independence of thought that allows me to support who I think needs supporting, but to be critical at the same time. And do we speak about the Bill More after Bill More used the in word and you came no, no, no, we didn't talk about speak about that too, because I thought, what you what you spoke with the Bill after that? Because we all see the joke that Bill made right, Um it was a white guy, white guy on the show and said, man, Bill, you gotta come on the field with me and build more, which was I really liked this man prior to this and I saw I saw it live. This is this wasn't a feed. I was Friday night watching Bill More Become on Friday tm PM on the East Coast and I got to hear him make this joke and he was like, um, he was like, uh, said you gotta come out here on the field with me and Bill Moore goals he goes, hey, man, I'm a house nigger, and it was like Honestly, I kind of got it, but I was like, oh, they're gonna fry him. I said, I knew it. I knew, I knew that was gonna fry Bill More. One of his guests coming up afterwards were that was black. Were you and were ice cu right right? Simone Sanders? Three of us? So yeah, three for the price of one. Yeah. Well, you know, Al Frankin was supposed to be the lead guest, because I was the lead guest on the show. Al Frankin said, let Michael Rick Dyson do that. I'm not trying to really be involved with that right now. Thanks to Al, that's very white of you. So I went, look, Bill Mars a friend of mine. We we we argue like cats and dogs. We agree about a lot, we disagree about a lot. But I knew that he made a mistake. He owned up to that mistake, He took a serious cognizant of that, cognizance of that mistake, and he wanted to address it. So as a friend of his, yes, I felt compelled to go there, uh, to hold him to account. First of all, that what you did is wrong. You can't white people can never use that term. Period. Let me give white people listening a rule of thumb when you can use the N word. Never Right now, I'll make one exception. If white people want to use that word, I'll give you a twenty four hour pass. If you transfer all wealth from white America to Black America every dime for twenty four hours, you can go right after that. It's done. It ain't gonna happen, right So the point is that I knew Bill Maher had made a mistake. I believe he had often pummeled the forces of white supremacy, jammed up the very forces that were hurting in arming black people. So I didn't think that we should cast away an ally again, cancel culture. I didn't believe we should cancel him, hold him to account, absolutely, tell him what he did is wrong. Absolutely, tell him that what he did was destructive and harmful in certain ways, and make that plain, as Ice Cube did, as Simone Sanders did, as I tried to then allow him to return chastened by his uh if you will, conspicuous, uh, if you will, punishment. But more than that, it wasn't in punishment. It was really instruction and trying to share a podium with a person who had made a mistake, but who was willing to try to confront it. And that's why I looked when Farrell, speaking of Farrell called me up one day and he said, hey, Doc, I got some some black lawmakers over here in Virginia because he's from Virginia. I want to know what to do about the Governor Northam who had done the black face. Should we stand against him, should we oppose him, should be staying him? And so I said, I'll meet with him. I met with him, and they said, Doc, what do you think. I said, don't get rid of the dude. Nothing better than a white guy who can be forgiven into his greatness. Nothing better than a white guy who has made a mistake, who's conscious of that mistake and is willing to try to right what is wrong. So I said, if you do the right thing with Northam, he is the governor right now. And look, let's be real. He first admitted, yeah, I was trying to do with Michael Jackson, you know, invitation, and he says, you want me to do the dance? Now? His wife said, seriously, you nut right, No, that is not the move. But he was going to admit it first. But there's no room in this culture to admit you made him six. So we had to lie and say no, I didn't, I didn't. That wasn't me. You know. It was the shaggy defense. Right. But at the same time, you know, he was a twenty years ago? Was twenty years ago? Has he changed? Has he evolved? Does he have new understandings? Does he have a new standard? Has he admitted that what he did was wrong and if he couldn't admit it in public, has he made stri nights toward transformation? So when he said right that that wasn't me. But but at the same time, he was trying to make good on what was going on in that state. I told the black lawmakers, if you forgive him and stand with him, this man might turn into Abraham Lincoln. And what did he do first? One of the first things he did was forgive uh ten thousand felons, uh, you know, so that allowed them to vote again. He restored their rights, He worked with black maternal healthcare. He pulled down the Robert E. Lee statue. This man went on a tear all because he wasn't canceled, but he was forgiven. He was integrated back into the community as a whole figure, and he was allowed to exercise his gifts because now he understood that what had happened then was wrong. So that's why I believe in forgiveness. I'm sorry, I'm a Baptist preacher. I believe if you mess up, you fess up, your dress us up, and then you go into the world doing the best you can. I mean, what's what's that saying in the Bible? Who cast the first one? With? What is that? What's that? What he who was without saying cast the first? Done right? And then a lot of people have throwing stones living in glass houses. It ain't a good look. So let me ask you, as being a minister, how can you be a minister but still love hip hop so much? Man? Yeah, it's just look, it's rough. I don't know he's bros. Look, I'm afraid of hip hop. I was a teen father they start before hip hop. How could I be a preacher and get a woman pregnant? I was eighteen, she was six. Yes, those hidden skills are amazing, So so got a pregnant. I ain't said it was a shotgun wedding, but a revolver was in the room. So we got married and then wars. Right. So I had a son, and I'm eighteen years old with a baby. I got to teach him. I gotta listen to the music he's listening to. After police, coming straight from the underground. A young nigger got it bad, cousin brown and not the other color. So police think they have the authority to kill a minority. I got a little I was blasting out. I was a seminary professor in Hartford, blasting after police. So you can tell I'm Irreverend Michael Eric Dyson. Right. I've never been on um, the side of black religion that is so observant to protocol that it undercuts the ability to be redemptive or transformative. I believe black people who believe in God know the frailty of our humanity, are and more intimately acquainted with our own sin, which is why we should forgive others their sins. An old preacher told me once. He said, young man, Uh, it's easy for a young preacher to damn the you know, humanity on the heat pile of sin, he said. But the older I get, the more I learned that you gotta offer forgiveness, he said, and give east. And maybe because I need more of it myself. So as I've evolved, I've learned that we need grace. But hip hop has been an extraordinary extension of some of the prophetic traditions of the Black Church that the Black Church used to talk about social injustice, racial inequality. When Jay says, you know, Ben Laden been happening in Manhattan back when, back then police was alkina the black men, right, I felt that I heard that right when nas it's only right that I was born to use mikes and the stuff that I write, it's even tough of the dice. I'm taking rap into a new plateau through rap slow. I felt that right, Um, I felt KRS one, you know, and and how many seconds of philosopher will begin to speak? Right? So I felt that they at their best represented the powerful expression of Black struggle for social justice. And in the beginning, I know, Fat Joe took a lot of heat on this. Black and Latino culture produced hip hop at its very roots and beginnings. Right, All kind of scholarship has done about this. This is why I think it's important again for Kanye and other people talk to scholars. There are a lot of scholars out here who love hip hop There are a lot of intelligent Black people with pH d s. And I'm not saying that all intelligent people have to have PhDs because jay Z is one of the greatest geniuses I've ever met and didn't graduate high school nas went to eighth grade. Uh, Little Wayne, and I can go on and on and on, but those are outliers. The rest of y'all outlying, and what y'all need to do? Okay, come on, respecting jokes, respecting joke, Respect these jokes. So so, the thing is, though, is that less not undervalue education, not schooling. Schooling is the institutional matrix that receives the impulse to learn. Education means I'm curious about the world in which I live, and I'm gonna read and dig deep and think and I think again. For Kanye, there are so many brilliant Black people out here. Why is it that black people have our entertainers as our spokespeople because of white supremacy, because they only allowed entertainers and athletes to represent us. Hey, we like them. We like the Jackie Robinson's, we like the well not so much Jack Johnson's. We like the Joe Lewis has, we like the you know Louis armstrongs, we liked the Pearl Bailey's, we like the Ella Fitzgerald. So they were allowed into spaces that we couldn't get into. So, as a result of that, white supremacy mandated our spokesmen and women be celebrities who had received the kind of impromoter of acceptance by white folk. So ain't nobody looking toward Miley Cyrus to be a spokespeople for young white folks Britney spears for surely not. But the point is we got young people who don't know a damn thing about history. And look, you know, I love hipp and I might answer that, but if you don't know what in the hell you talking about, be quiet. The great philosopher vic Innstein said, where every one cannot speak, there if one must be silent. In other words, shut your damn mouth. If you don't know what you're talking about. And when they come to ask you what's going on, say let me get back to you, because I'm gonna go call somebody who I know on speed dial and get they insight so they can help us out. So I think that's necessary. Look, I ain't know, I ain't no rapper or even though I got bars, I write I got bars and alcoholics six But I do what I do. But I'm saying I don't. I don't rap out on sing out on dance, but god dang it, I do think this is what I do, and black people should take advantage of that. That doesn't mean everythinking black person is gonna agree with every other thinking black person. That's what it means. No, we're independent, we're critical. We're self critical, uh sometimes too much. So that's why some intellectuals can't get into the room, because all they do is tearing down as opposed to reconstituting and building. So I take that responsibility seriously. However, the reason I can be a preacher in love hip hop is because Jesus was ostracized as a figure in the community. First of all, the Bible says Herod was trying to kill him when the announcement made that he was born. The powers that be are always trying to kill color kids of color, always trying to destroy them, sending them to school and kicking them out of school at ten, at seven and eight and nine years old. Herods of the world are always trying to undermine our children. Kick him out incarcerat them, send them from school to detention to prison. And so Jesus was born in the main here. That ain't just no pretty picture on Christmas. That means he's outside the political order. He has no money, his back is against the wall. And when he's spitting lyrics by saying two people, I give you now a parable, he might as well be Kendrick Lamar. He might as well be j He might as well be you know Megan the Stallion. Yes, you know the woman at the well. She's speaking back. That's Megan the Stallion. Remember you know that when no system, when Jesus went to the well says where is thou husband? Now, you know a siste would have said, you Jesus, you tell me I've been waiting year. But anyway, respect the second joke there. So the thing is is that as a preacher, I understand intimately the transactions and transgressions of human beings who fail. Right when you lead the league in hitting as a batter, that means you strike out seven out of ten times. Because you're bat in three thirty, that means you strike out seven out of ten times you go to the plate. That's what it means to be a Christian is to understand that we are frail, we are fragile, we are flawed, we mess up, So stop judging other people, accept them into the fold. And I learned something valuable about hearing hip hop. And now I don't mean this drill music. This out here now because on the one hand, I hate that the American legal system is trying to hold people accountable for some lyrics. I mean, come on, I mean, do you go to the Godfather? Why don't you come to me first? Why? Why? I understand? You know, look how them massaking my boy? I mean, are you going? I mean, I'm killing the Marlin Brandon. I mean I can go for you, you know, verbs now for down on. You know Michael sitting in the chair. If you put a gun there, I'll kill him both and Sunny goes they're laughing at him, but no, he says, why why can't we do it? So my point is this that if we are talking about a culture that is sensitive to its limitations, and as a Christian, you shouldn't be judging nobody and beating up on nobody. You should be loving and transforming people. That doesn't mean we don't hold each other accountable. That only means when we mess up big, we say we messed up big. That doesn't mean we don't suffer the consequences of our failures, but it also means we are invested in reconstituting society restorative justice, not vengeance. And so much of what's going now on now is about vengeance. And when I hear this drill rap, that's different. I believe people have the right to say what they want to say. I've defended it. I've testified before Congress several times, the Senate and the U. S. House to defend hip hop right. I was there with with Dion Warwick and see the Lord's Tucker when they were trying when they were trying to get new filling back on that ask where the hell of gangster you? I was gonna ask you about that? It's crazy. Let me let me say this and then so, so the thing is, I've defended them, but the drill, I'm tired of black people dying in the hands of black people, and I'm tired of people writing songs about it that are about literal human beings that either they have killed, want to kill, or in celebrating that drill wrap. Then going out trying to live the life they sing about in their song. That was beautiful. When was the gospel music? Right? I want to live the life I sing about in my song. That was a great gospel song. BB King even saying about it. But that's beautiful when you're dreaming about love and community. It's not good when you're talking about killing, mayhem and murder. And so going out here, you know pop smoke or or PNB, you know you're at roscoals and it's a father and son tag team of toxic masculinity and murderous masculinity. And you kill that kid. You couldn't have just taken his chain, You got to shoot him in his back, in his head. This is a cultural addiction to death that we must announce for what it is and denounce it and figure out other constructive ways to embrace and love and edify each other. And I think we need to be clear of of the trajectory of of of hip hop rotting where it was a cautionary tale and now we're just telling you what's happening in real time and we're doing it. That's a difference, and that's dangerous, right, or the third one desiring to do it no snary tale reporting as journalism and end up here. Now that's what I want to do, right, It's one thing. I mean, listen to Regrets by Jay Z. Listen, you know I'm from the place where you know, uh what, as they said, the churches are the flick of this. People been praying to God so long that they're atheists. Or I was here the other day, and then you know he talks about time traveling so on in his own mind. Look about think about Nas talking about you're talking to the young kid, uh speaking to him on the stoop. They made belly out of a verse from from from from Nas is one love. So there were ways in which poetry or biggie niggas bleed like imagine me, you know, being scared of a nigga breathe the same air I breth right and he's he said, you know, the old dude with care seemed mostly rock to Isleys, giving us novelistic details about the lives that these people live. Now it's about murder, murder, kill, kill, do you again? Kill kill? And the mumble rap. I don't want to sound like some old negro, but I'm saying, like you know that you said that, you know what I'm saying. No, no, Negro, no, no, no. Actually, actually I've been black for sixty three years and don't know what the hell you said. Now, what I love about so called mumble rap, And we don't get Beyonce her credit for stouting it. In one sense, I mean, Beyonce was alighting syllables and slurring them deliberately as an a laconic and sonically interesting and vocally vibrant way. She should get credit for that. In terms of this music, I'm telling you she was mumbling and and she was alighting and distorting. Go listen to go listen to Beyonce that all right, listen to what she was doing, the interesting ways in which she was playing with syllables and alighting them and distorting them for musical purposes. They took it literally and started doing it like now we went to hear what you're talking about now, and then what you're talking about. Look, I believe in the blues, so I believe the beautiful melodies that come out of so called mumble rap. I'm being an old, uh kind of consternating man here, but on that hand, I love a lot of that music because it's so melodically rich, it's so powerful, and it's so beautiful in terms of the blues. But the lyricism right standing by the speaker, suddenly I had a fever. Wasn't me or even summer madness? We got to we got to pick back up on the lyrical integrity. Not a lot of the young people do. We know Jake Cole is lyrical. We know Kendrick is lyrical and and and I think Drake combines both of them. Drake, you know when Drake first came out, when when Kanye talks about being independent, I was an independent thinker because I was riding for Drake. What people like what I said, Drake is a monster, It's gonna be a it's gonna be a juggernaut, and was bigger than any of us thoughts. But he he had the beautiful melodies and singing. Men didn't think, oh that's not manly. You're singing on a song. You're an R and B artist in the in the middle of rapping. But what was he doing? You know, jealousy is just loving hate At the same time, he's dropping bars and he's doing it with Little Wayne, one of the hardest out there. And he's integrating it into his own ethic of masculinity that doesn't have to kill and murder and create, ma'am in order to be a real man. How about elevating that? How about loving that? Now, part of it is it's yellow upon yellow love. And I do recognize that, right his birthday is October is October. So there is some sepatico because I'm trying to help Drake and Steff Orry bring yellow people back because we've been on the margins. We have been on the margins where you, Drake, Steph Curry and dj Envy all go to the same karate class, karate class. And here's the thing, and here's the thing that's so funny. Let's chop it up. But here's the funny thing about it. Because when we we were we've been in exile now for so long, right, oh, you pretty chocolate boys had been dominant. You know, Denzel Andres Wesley killed us. Wesley killed us, Oh my god, Midnight and Magic Chocolate charmed he just murdered us. Right. But here's the point. So we've been in exile because we realized when we had the whip the first time, we were wrong, Like bright almost white. We believe we were superior. We believe we were cut or at least people told us that. I'll be sure who dropped the balls. Yeah, the second album didn't hit like I mean, we got pushed out. We were trying to get We just got elbow because the chocolate Boy said, oh no, we got heart and think nig so so so we got marginalized. So we're trying to come back now, but with a redeemed consciousness. Right because light skinned people don't want to talk about light privilege anymore than white people want to talk about white privilege. What I'm saying, we're loath to do that. We don't want to be honest about it. So this time around, we got to admit that we were giving privileges that we didn't learn a scene in ways that we can't control. And I'm not dissing you know, I look how I look, So I'm not trying to demonize yellow people. But I am saying at the same time, there are ways in which we have to be uh cognizant of and conscious of and responsible for the consequences of such worship. You know, they would have a paper bag down in New Orleans if you were darkening that you wasn't getting in the club, certain sororities and fraternities keeping them light, bleaching them. So we got to be honest and open up about that. We didn't invent that as light skinned people, but we took advantage of it. It's like white people saying, I wasn't here when slavery started. Yeah, but when you but when you get out here, you damn sure did not take advantage of what the opportunities were. So we didn't create the love of light skin, but we took advantage of it. We were benefited from it. So I want to do that at the same time. So, yes, the new light skin is socially conscious. I just want to announce that that that's a lot of Jamaicans that's doing bleaching right now. That's that's that's I mean, Sammy, Sammy was Jae he was he was hitting balls in the bleachers, but he wasn't, you know. So yeah, that's that's that's painful. That's self that's self hatred, man, that's self hatred. Why why are you trying to darken? I mean, to lighten your skin. Sammy Sosa had a beautiful brown skin. I mean, you know, some of our rappers and people I don't want to name, no name, you know who it bleached their skins. It is so painful to me to see the beautiful, my beautiful black skin. My daddy was blue black from all Benny Georgia. I saw how black people treated him. I saw how the white society treated him. They looked down on him like he was a simi in an ape and a range of team. They saw him as an animal and and and they saw me as a light skinned, curly haired kid wearing glasses or he must be smart. I had brothers who equally smart. The brother went to prison, I went to Princeton, one brother in the pen. I taught at University of Penn right, but because of I'm not saying it's all based on skin and colorism, but a lot of it was driven by that. And the failure to recognize my brother's talent was driven by colorism as well. We gotta fight that with everything in us. I've been trying to get down. I've been trying to get dark. I've been trying to get a calm, been trying to get a calm black. You gotta start with a kind's hair tramplan I can't wait to tell him he's horrible. Oh my god. Listen, all of that is product of colonialism still affect there is no question. But see now we bring a coming full circle because what we're talking about, what Kanye or the ideas he's promoting, is the colonial mindset in your own mind, unconsciously using your tongue as a freeway to deliver the vehicle of its white supremacy. That's what's going on. And until we recognize that colonialism, neo colonialism, the internalized self hatred, the oppression of the dominant culture UH projected onto us, all of that is happening. And until we confront that, we won't be healthy. I'm not saying every person who was a conservative of self hating. That's not what I'm saying at all, Because if you're going to study conservative people, then there's Thomas Soul, There's Walter Williams, there's Robert Woodson. I mean, there are a lot of conservatives I disagree with and fight against UH, but have respect for at least trying to make an intelligent argument about what they see going on. But for some people who take advantage of white supremacy, dollars to fund their own anti black campaign. I ain't got no love or compassion for that at all. Let me let me ask you, thinking the news lately, which they just said that student loans being forgiven, is that something our community it should be happy for? Absolutely? Okay, But look, the white supremacists tell you that's true because they're going they got laws out here. There's a I think a state senator trying to sue the Biden administration now because he says, really, what that is about is forgiving black people what their loans are, and therefore, as a result of that, we need to stand against it. So the white supremacists understand better than some of us that that helps us in a disproportion of fashion, because a lot of the people who make an under a hundred thousand dollars can be forgiven that twenty dollars. And the Biden administration said that in part, this would help those who are economically disadvantaged and historically underrepresented minoritized and racialized communities. And no doubt, no question about that. So moving forward, why why we don't have in America free college? Like why you have to pay for education? But but but like I go to people like my friends in Europe, they go to hospitals for free, they go to the school. Canada elect the searches dogs along as a monster country. Oh you want to know that, No, you're gonna have that's that's ten years in seven days. Okay, see you then. So, But having said that, I agree with you wholeheartedly. We should have universal health care. We should have the ability to go into any hospital in this country and darn be able to get help. We should go to any college that our minds take us to that we're able to go to. For that matter, why is it that we don't have a free holiday holiday for voting? Why? Why don't you get registered the moment you're born. Every citizen in America should be able to vote. Why we gotta go through you can look, you can have UH card a registration for a gun and be able to vote, but have one for college and not be able to vote. This is the twisted mentality. They think the Second Amendment is the Second Commandment right, And the problem is they worship guns, They idolize and fetishize all forms of ignorance and dominance and control, and at the same time, the masses of people, including white folk, would be advantaged by free college, by voting universally, and by universal health care. How better, how much happier would this nation be were we to be afforded those opportunities. And we're the richest nations in the world you ain't talking about. I mean, the nations you're talking about ain't the richest. We are the richest per capita, and yet we have some of the greatest chasms between the have gods and the have nots. The inequality is atrocious in this country, and we are continually creating economic policies that reinforce the poverty of the poor and the wealth of the wealthy. And we're exporting money currently right now in proxy wars, when just a fraction of that money could help that here, that disparity right here, right here at the crib, could be helping out. So, oh yeah, no, I'm agree with you. Holy The other day, right, I couldn't sleep. So when I can't sleep, sometimes I don't watch Netflix. I don't watch Hulu. I like to do is go watch old school cable. Right. I want to watch Jerry Springer, I want to watch ship like that. So I'm watching Cheetahs the other day, right, And Cheetah's Cheeta chee cheeters. You know this is get caught cheating. But this white couple come on, I could I couldn't watch it. The Chinese couple come on, I couldn't Chinese. You know what I'm saying. I couldn't. I couldn't watch it. But as soon as black pain came on, identified with it, I was like, I was as soon as I've seen a black couple come, I was like, oh, ship, now be rocking. And then I seen the Latino a couple come on, and me being half of Latino, I did, I thought to myself, I said, You'll wait a minute. Am I addicted to back trauma not even know it? It could be the case or representation matters, or you identified with what you are. Look, it relates relates to you can see you right you You can't identify with a white person or an Asian person necessarily although most of us, you know black people, we go to movies all the time and got no black people and we'll be a girl, get out the way. The man is behind you throwing stuff at the theater. Right, ain't no black people involved? Right? So we have an ability to transcend our ethnic boundaries and tribalism in many ways. But having said that, I grew up in an era where they had Jet Magazine, which is a physical magazine's not gonna line and every week and Jet Magazine when Beauty of the Week, well, I mean that's why, that's why I looked at that man that was number one. But I'm a baptistreacher, so I have to say number two. So the Jet Beauty Week, which was cold. But then at the end of the book, always this week in television, all the black people and shows that were involved were lifted in Jet. Oh, Diane Carroll is going to be a guest star on but and so Sammy Davis Jr. Will have a guest starring role on mann X and so on. Now, first of all, it was tragic because all the blackness could be listed at the end of a magazine right that that that black people are on. But that's how hungry we were to see ourselves represented the Real Housewives of right, We're so desperate to see ourselves represented. Now we have over representation and over indexing in some negative situations, but we are still desperate to see representation, to be counted, to be seen and part of that is you wanted to be saying even if it's night and I was like, wait a minute, man, I don't just used to see him. That can be at the same time. But the thing is is that representation does matter. We perk up when we see those who look like us. And the problem with white supremacy is not that white people identify with white people, is that that they only identify with white people, and that they identify with people in a way to exclude opportunity for others. Remember that Saturday Night Live skilled with Eddie Murphy when they go into the bank and he dresses up like a white man. Yeah, they were like, right, and then then you know he goes every bank. You know, black people can't get no money. He go to get it along, just take all the money. Right. So that's what it right, That's that's what it is. Right. When you're in a dominant position, you don't understand. Uh. David Foster Wallace, a late great, uh incredible um novelists, had a little story, a little parable. He said. It was these two fish in the war, right, and they're floating along, they're doing their thing, and they see this older fish, you know, coming in the opposite direction, and the older fish says to them, afternoon, how's the water boys, and then goes on about his business. And then they turned to each other, what's water? Because when you're in it, you don't recognize where you are. So white of premises the same way whiteness is the same way you're born on third base, think you hit a triple. You think the world operates and has the same advantage as you do. You think the world operates according to your viewpoints. Even if you're a poor white person, you think you have the ability to work hard and therefore make a difference, not knowing that millions upon millions of black and brown and Latino and queer and other people have worked hard, and Asian folks work hard and never got the rewards they deserve. So they're in water, and you never know you're in water unto somebody calls attention to it, and then you pay attention to what that is. And that's what whiteness is in this country. Even white folks rapport who go, look, I'm poor, I ain't got no advantages. Uh, people are mistreat me and so on and so forth. I say to them, if you can meet a police person and live to tell about it. You ain't got to be rich to take advantage of white privilege, the privilege to be taken seriously. I've seen white folks chasing police car is down with machetes, right, and the police are running from them with a gun in their hoster because their mentality is I'm not going to harm this fellow citizen. If only they could apply that to us. And so this is why black people are so deeply entrenched in abolishing the police, reconstructing the police, trying to grapple with police powers because they have been unleashed two on us in a way, because white people don't understand they have an advantage and a privilege and an opportunity and an experience that the masses of non white people will never know. Well that was, that was, But let's say something to you. I know us about giving people flowers. You know, that's why we are That's why we are pulled that we received this black last because we know if people pre dominantly watch our show. We did check Kanye We did check him on his anti semites, and we did check him on the George Floyd thing, did check him on Black Lives Matter, But most people just watched the first fifteen minutes or eighteen minutes. But our show is pre dominant about giving people flowers, and we would be remissed if we didn't give you your flowers. So we wanted to give your flowers face to face. Man, you know what I'm saying. Let's you get the flowers? Yes, yes, yes, my god, marijuana, no no, no, but I got I got some beautiful thank you. But I got one more question because I know you gotta go. So I know you gotta let's let's hang out, and let's hang out and did not now look an older serious? Then then I'll take a little champagne. But I wanted I wanted to be so do this, motherfucker. I was scared that I'll see you over there. I ain't want to say now that he had one bit. You know we're serious over but but I didn't. You didn't do a quick time and then we can end it there um reparations. First off, we're we stand as a people on on getting or receiving reprobations, and to where do you stay? Do you think this is something that we we deserved, It is something that that that we should get moving forward? Absolutely, Martin usin King Jr. Nine three in his book Why We Can't Wait, said that a nation had, excuse me, a nation that has done something special against the Negro for two hundred and fifty years must now do something special for the Negro. And he talked about a g I bill, Remember the g I bill. World War two soldiers returned home. What did they get? They got extra points on a test to get into school. That was cool. You got to hook up right, you got money for a house, and you got the ability to get a job. That's the holy trinity of affirmative action. There's a scholar named Iraq Hats Nelson, Professor of sociology in history at Columbia, who wrote a book when affirmative action was wait, see a lot of white folks. I'm you know, the Supreme Court is gonna, as soume uh, you know, vote again on affirmative action and probably will undercut it. The point is that affirmative action was a white thing from the getty up. So reparations are due. I think it's Tupaca somebody saying the The truth is that we are deserving of reparations, having worked for free to build this nation. Literally the institutions, the buildings, the infrastructure. Everything that we see in this nation was created and constructed by black labor, indigenous labor, Asian labor, black free labor forced against our will, being brought here in sixteen nineteen symbolically, as the record says, twenty and some negroes brought here to America, and from then the proliferation of black bodies to support this nation. Why wouldn't we pay reparations? Yes, and reparations come, by the way, in many forms. It could be educated sational subsidies, land. How about not not not having negroes pay taxes for the next fifttle next we not pay taxes right there? And look, if you can't give us forty acres in the mule, give us an acre on Wall Street. And if you ain't got a mule, give us a jackbar and call it today. But the point is that, yes, reparations are necessary, They are critical, they are vital, They have been critical in Europe. What happened to Jewish brothers and sisters who were demonized by Hitler in Germany? What happened to Japanese brothers and sisters in this country were demonizing interment camps so yes we are, and there are some state legislatures that are talking about reparations for black people, at least under Joe Biden. Right, we are now speaking about the possibility of studying reparations because the black president, Barack Obama was against them, right, against reparations. Absolutely, they put up a vote with Now he talked about it in his discussions that he didn't think it was gonna win, he didn't think it was feasible, and let's not do it. So so again, the old white man, Joe Biden, the night he was elected said black people, I owe you and I'm gonna pay here. Now that's what Joe Biden said. Now, whether or not he followed through exactly as you thought, the fact that he put it into the public spear. Now, let me say this for all those naysayers out there who are black. This hypocritical professor doesn't recognize that that Biden, that Obama couldn't say certain things. I do recognize that. I recognize that Obama couldn't say a lot of things that a white guy could say. Obama couldn't be as black as uh Bill Clinton. Going on our cene or Hall Plan, the saxophone, I get that, But there are ways in which the substance of his policy could reflect a commitment to the transformative practice of politics for black people. So all I'm saying to you is Obama could have done that and could also have used his bully pulpit to inform America about what was going on. Because at the second term, they ain't gonna love you no more. Bro, They don't love you like that, So therefore do what you think is necessary. But here's the thing we didn't want to accept about Obama. What he was doing is what he felt, you know. You know, Michael Jordan said, after I get out of you know, basketball, then I'll be more political. And to a certain degree it has been. But people were saying, can you when you're in offices when it makes a difference. Nobody want to hear from you after you leave, when you retire. Obama was president, and since he's been retired, he's coming back now for the midterms. He out didn't making dough, he had to hanging out with multi white billionaires. Obama. Yes, And now, look, I ain't mad at him getting no dough. I ain't mad at him making no money. I ain't mad at him getting everything he can, but using and I know he has to be relatively silent because he wants to respect the president president. I get that, but he does come out every now and again to make statements, uh, and to articulate his idea and his ideas. And it's extremely important that we hear from him. But it was especially important when he was in office to make use of that bully pulpit to change the lives of many black people. And many things he left on the table, and he had nothing to do with white folk denying him an opportunity to be able to do what he did. He didn't have to go to black churches and and squash black men. He didn't have to. He didn't have to go to the fifth anniversity of the March on Washington and then and then dog black people saying that we used the excuses of Malcolm's death and Martin's death to engage in the culture of crime. Had a white boy said that, we would have been nuts. I sound like white supremacy. Well. Again, the anti blackness and some of Obama's rhetoric has pointed out by many writers and thinkers was really real, including Tana Has Colts who wrote about it why does he speak to us that way? In the Atlantic magazine, Obama was on some of that anti blackness as well. Man, that got deep ready for a quick time. We played a game on our show. It's called quick Time with Slim, Right, So, uh, if you could pick one or the other, and um, if politically reckon you pick both, we drink and that you're not drinking, We'll drink for you. We'll drink for you. I'm gonna get you all drunk. You Sunday computer real Sunday, your ring your ringer drinker. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. So okay, I feel like because he was rushing it. Because he was rushing it, Okay, okay, so that's cool. Yeah, that's the first part of it. Oh let me see okay, okay, okay, okay, go ahead. Oh this is good. Yeah, yeah said the first one is tupac DMX pack. Okay, ice cube, but chuck d damn y'all better drink because because Elvis was that he wrote the most money never meant to me straight up races the sucker was simple and plain or ice cube? I mean, come on, man, why is it that own time black people get it ride in a limo when they did I mean both of them genius? Yeah, jay Z Nas I mean, but look, obviously, obviously jay Z is a unique figure in the history of hip hop. There's never been a figure with that much rhetorical genius, intellectual capacity, cultural momentum, and the power to shift and change the culture with his rhetoric and then follow that up with his extraordinary embodiment of a boss. So in that sense, jay Z is unique and above anyone else to whom he could be compared. But when you look at the poetry of Naas and of Jay their geniuses sixteen, I mean started at six, and these young guys music, and they're be like, well, well they all have enough experience, and and you're like, wait a minute, look now, I started a bull assassin my architect pleases when I was hoef. I want to help for stuff in Jesus, I mean, it's only right that I was going to use mikes and the stuff that I write, it's even tougher than Dice. I'm taking rap into a new plateau through rap slow. My ram is a vitamin hell without a cap, a smooth cram on beat break. Never put me in your box at your stakes. Doubt, doubt hold, hold, but when you pay that and see, my only beef with j is that he puts Kingdom come too low in his estimation. I would write it if y'all could get it. But being intricate or get you would critics on the internet. I'm like, you should spit it. I'm saying you should buy it. Nigger, that's good business. Yeah, that's good. I agree with you. I agree. I agree with everything you said. They're both my home boys. How about that. I mean, the next one is Trump or Biden. I'm gonna pour my drink on you fast. You know it's Joe big Okay, good? Yeah, he picked and we're drinking. That's books made in America or the Black presidency made in the Oh my books. They're two tall, slim black men who are geniuses, j and and Barack Obama. But jay Z, it's such a towering figure. I gotta again to live quality or comment. Oh my god. Oh, by Jesus, y'all be killing her brother started drinking because I mean, ty lib, these cats drink champagne, told death and pain like slaves on the ship, bragging about who got the flyers chained? I mean and and when common says to a girl. You know, I won't buy you a shirt, but I will match your work. I mean in terms of and then you know the genius that he's expressed since the time he was a young boy in Chicago. Yeah, just just extraordinary people. Killer Mike or T. I again, I know both of these figures. In fact, I've known everybody you talked about. Damn, they're both incredible, man. I mean, Killer Mike, Run the Jewels is just amazing. T I bring them out, bring them out. Uh, yeah, they're both amazing. We gotta drink. We're gonna drink. We're gonna drink. Eddie Murphy, Oh damn. Now I'm gonna say this, Richard Pryor prior to pun intended. Uh, Eddie Murphy. I mean he's still maybe the stand up goat Richard. Richard Pryor right in terms of bringing the full weight of black popular culture to bear in the narratives that he spread. So in that sense, he's alone. But Eddie Murphy in terms of acting, in terms of multi you know, more than a billion dollars at the box office, nobody has been that great of a comedic actor and be able to do a great stand up and music. He did music all the time, party all the time. I mean I would say I might give a daddy on that. Okay, okay on that. You know. I'm gonna tell you why about Eddie. I was, I'm a little I'm forty five, so i'm a little um younger. I didn't really get to see prior right right, it was VHS or something like that. I remember Eddie movies coming out and me driving by the movie did and everyone suited and booted as if they're being seen. I've never seen that before like he did it. Man, he sexualized black comedy. Bill Cosby couldn't be sexualized. Well, not that we knew, man, we just got on the pool. They cut that. But I mean Dick Gregory. But Eddie Murphy brought the sexual ethos of black masculinity to bear. Not again. Richard Pryor is nonparree in terms of no comparison in terms of mud Bone and all the stories he told and the television stuff he did. But when you look at it all together, and then when you add acting, he wasn't nearly as great a comic actor as Eddie Murphy. And Eddie Murphy's range is astonishing and another young man coming up. We didn't mention him. I mean, Kevin hard to me has gotten so much more funny, has refined his craft. Is a monster on that film, and it will be challenging soon that title because of the comprehensive character of the kind of work that he does. He sat in the same see that you're sitting in, and we told him to his face, you are the closest thing to Eddie that we've been seeing. Like, because people are coming out to Kevin and there's a whole bunch of people, dumb people that say Kevin ain't funny. I'm not with them. Yeah, yeah, that's okay, o dB or Bismarkey, you you got what I need? What you say, He's just different. It might be the greatest hip hop song going Oh yeah, man, I mean I love me and Maria going back, Babil pacifying old dirt Dog. I have to get that to a biss market. Okay. Bismarck, Okay, that's cool. That's that's the person who I wanted to be like Bismarck because at the time Rapp was so serious and when I heard picking Boogers, I was like, wait a minute, Yeah, I want to be like that. Yeah, no, no doubt, no, this is like an oxymor wrong because I think we ask you this in a different way, but we're gonna actually it again. In w A or Public Enemy Oh damn, oh my god, I mean the I mean Public Enemy's influence is just it's just astonishing. I mean when you think about the clown and the court gesture and the king right in terms of right, I mean just what was right? Right? Yeah, exactly, I mean, I mean Terminator X is right in terms of that. So but n w A was powerful. I mean when the fter police came out, But then I had to explain to myself, a B is just to be as just, to be as just to be. So the parts of toxic masculinity that they expressed, the misogyny and the hatred of women, is so overwhelmingly negative. But at the same time, the power of their witness uh to social justice. But I'd have to choose p you Oh you skipped the quen Latif for MC light Oh damn drink because they're both I love them and know them both amazing, and they affected the genre in many ways. I mean, and to see both of them go on to become what they are I mean, you know, Queen Latifa, like who knew right, can sing, can act? I mean like a female Will Smith at that level if you will, she can fight to me in my mind, oh yeah, no doubt and mc light. I mean just in terms of the flow, the funky acrobatics of her rhetoric. And then now making a career job what is it? What is it Benjamin Button's when you were Oh yeah, she's she's young God just incredibly uh intelligent and beautiful both because I've been her voice is everywhere now, I mean her as as right doing these you know shows. I mean, she has invented another career in terms of announcing, in terms of broadcasting and stuff, and still out there. I did. I've done many events where where we we did a at Syracuse University where we had a conversation brilliant, brilliant, both of them, amazing beautiful eighties hip hop or nineties hip hop. He could go back to that. Yeah, I'm gonna have to rock with nineties nineties. I mean, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna have to say, uh, back in the days our parents used to take care of us, Look at them now they're even scared of us calling the city for help because they can't maintain damn things done. If I wasn't in the rap game, I probably have a key knee deep in the crack game. I mean nineties and then Nas and Jade. I mean when Jay said they're having a debate about who's the three greatest biggie not he wasn't even he wasn't even in the conversation at that point, But he was in the conversation. That's how, that's how, that's how for making his genius. Oh, there ain't no doubt about he put himself in a category he wasn't. He knew and that's a lesson. That's a lesson to people. You know who you are, you assistance. He spoke that, He spoke that. Now you won't think of those three without each other because he's in a stratus. That's crazy. Forgot that. Yeah, you want um higher learning or American History X ah, Yeah, I might have to go higher learning. You know. American History X was beautiful because it exposed the gut bucket realities of white supremacy in this transformation. But higher learning, I mean John Singleton was just such a great artist, director, and I think you're trying to rest, right, trying to struggle with what's that? Plus he put Pocket in the movie. You know, wanted to put Pocket in the movies and it was beautiful and baby, you know what was that place? Big rabbing for who's getting jacked right now because he you know, sometimes people gotta mind any business. And I'm not saying this is to his case, but I feel like this is this is even though because he chalmed in on something that you said about black people, and when he chalmed in, he called yeah crackpot and oh man, I go it was it was almost like our people was like we could talk about him, not you, right, So they are dragging report right now. But he made that he made that documentary on tropical Quests quest. I mean, that's one of the greatest documentary. So pick him up. Let's see him getting dragged to the meeting. Yeah, to get him on drink. I think should do the podcast, podcasts or radio. Who I mean, podcasts are where it's at right now. But I'm old school too. I love to go just listen to that day I'm radio and here's some music I've never heard before. The podcast, But drink Champs in particular, this is this, this is this is the same question. Let's out right, But I want to know if you met either, because the stories Michael Jackson or Prince I met him both. Let me tell you what. Here's Michael Jackson. We're in the bathroom at Johnny Cochran's funeral. That already sounds crazy, already sounds like a crazy set up. We're in the bathroom and Michael in the church at West Angeles Church of God in Christ passed by the great UH Bishop Charles Blake now his son co pastor, and we're in the bathroom during you know, ol J is in the in the funeral too. I got hope. I was hoping that Nero didn't recognize we're in the bathroom. Michael Jackson is washing his hands and he turns them and he says, did you have gloves on? When he goes, I like how you talk on TV? I said what I said, I like how you saying single on stage? All right now with Prince, Prince invited me along with a couple others to his UH to his palatial mansion of what do you call it? The in UH Minneapolis and Lake Minetauqua. Yeah, right, to the what's the purple palet? I mean, not the purple palete? My why am I blocking? This is a senior moment. The famous place he has there in Minnesota will come to it. What did they call it? Yeah, please google that because I don't want to look like a complete fool. Thank you man. And so he invites us and we haven't Paisley Park. Yeah, so he has Uh is that what it's called? The one where where we went? Okay, so he we're having a little He invites me because he sees me on TV. Thinks I'm smart talking stuff. He says, but he says, you, you know, you defend gay people. I said, yeah, I mean, but you're a preacher. Now he had just got converted, remember being uh some no not some day uh when Michael Jackson with Michael Jesson left and he went in not something. Jehovah's witness was Jehovah's witness. And I'm thinking, Prince, you've been a patron saint for androgeny and to myself. I didn't say this him, but moving forward, but what I did say to him is that, yeah, because I believe God loves everybody, either God created everybody a God ain't created nobody, sir, so, I I definitely believe. So we had a little argument there and then uh, I said, are you telling me that all the music you had before you were converted is the devil's music? And he basically said yes. I said, I disagree with that. I said, when you made Signs of the Times, I said, that's God speaking to you, sir, so, I disagree. But then out in an event with Tavis Smiley out in l a, uh, Princess playing on stage and he says, I know Mr Dyson can talk, but any dance, I said, son Son Son, So me and Centric Entertainer got on stage and started a little dance party. Everybody else joined it. So yeah, my Prince and uh Michael Jackson stories there and then Princeton to have his assts. No no, no, no chapters revealing the as tronomical side. No no, no, no. At least Prince was gangster what his ass out playing basketball in them high heills. I mean Prince was was was cold bloody, no doubt about that. I haven't met either one, just like Martin Luther King on Malcolm X, I love them both, and Martin Luther King Junior for me, and the reason, I'll tell you, Malcolm X changed the psychology of black people in such a fundamental way. He would have been so tonic and helpful to Kanye West, teaching him about the complicity he exhibits with the white supremacy that he's been seduced by. All Right, but Martin Luther King Jr. Changed the world for black people. He changed the law. Malcolm X changed the mindset of some ching changed to the law. When I say King, I mean, uh, you know, Ella Baker, I mean Septum mclark, I mean all the black women and others who work with him. But he has the symbol the nineteen sixty four Civil Rights Bill, the nineteen sixty Voting Rights Act, and in the wake of his death, the nineteen Fair Housing Act. That's the holy trinity of social justice. And then when I was nine years old, he was murdered. I'd never heard of him, and I'm looking at television. I'm sitting there, my father's in his favorite seat behind me. We're in the hood and the ghetto in Detroit. And the newsman broke faith with the original program and said, tonight at six o one local time, martinster King Jr. Was shot. I don't think they announced he was dead. And then he was standing there. Uh, We've got some difficult days ahead, but I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do Guard's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've looked over and I've seen the promised Land. I may not get there with you, but i want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. And so I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man mine eyes. And then he turned around and fell into the arms of Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson for the last words and the public declaration that he uttered on this earth before a bullet sent across a parking lot of a motel found its unerring target in the skull and flesh of Martin Luther King Jr. At thirty nine years old, clipped his tie, pulled open his jaw, and his feet were bicycling as if he were on a vice go. And the greatest we've ever produced died that day. Gobs Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris, Oh, Bruce Lee, Yes, Donald Trump Jr. Donald Trump Norris is Oh my good, Chuck Hill, and I'll be watching them retreads of the seventies mill. Chuck Norris is a right winger. Bro. It also wasn't need Bruce Lee student to start with. I mean he was, right, Chuck. I mean, Bruce Lee is the man. I mean, Kareem ab dude Jabbar was even checking out with him and Jim Kelly with water flow like water Oh yeah, right, I mean yeah, Chuck Norris. Can't you know, handle his new Chucks? Okay, most of death or Black Thought. Oh damn, drink, Bro, drink, I can't. I mean, both of them geniuses speaches my hammer banged the world in the shape and now let it fall. All the black thoughts said, slice him like a vic um like Michael Eric Dyson. Okay, I just I gotta show him love. I gotta show him. Look, therefore, I better say black call. I gotta give Black Thought to Nod because he gave me so much love. And but both of the her geniuses. I mean, when you have Lynn Manuel Miranda texting you saying, did you see the friend? What the the funk? Flash? I mean the oh my god, he was like, Bro, He's already knew he was top ten. But my god, so yeah, yeah, yeah, Black Thoughts body of work is so powerful and so dance. I mean both of them. Her genius is. But Black Thoughts extraordinary output even into his fifties. It's quite remarkable. Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock drink up, bro drink up. But both of them again, I mean Chris Rock in between after Eddie, Chris Rock had the crown, I mean as a stand up right and and getting into acting as well, Top five and others that he did extraordinarily well stand up. Whatever he do, it is gonna be Oh. I mean he's doing around, going to country now. I just want to see him, right, you're right, you're right. So his genius, I mean, he's more political in that sense. He's more traced to you know, some of the white you know, Mort Saul and some of the white comedians who were explicitly political than to Richard Pryor. Richard Pryor was cultural in a way that had political consequence when he was he wasn't explicitly political in the way that Chris Rock is. So Chris Rock would be the greatest political comedian in that sense within our genre. And then Dave Chappelle as you know, taking up and combining the kind of cultural apparatus of a of a of a Richard Pryor and then being able to improvise. Right, Chris Rock is hip hop. Dave Chappelle is jazz, you know, just telling the story. He's just aking to you, and Chris Rock is hitting you with the rapid fire you know, insight from there. So they're both extraordinary geniuses. Okay, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, Yeah, drink up, bro, But you know they're both friends of mine, and they're both amazing. I mean Jesse Jackson. I put Jesse Jackson number one, Martin to King Jr. Number two, Frederick Douglas number three, Jesse Jackson. Well, between Jesse and Harry Tubman, they can flip either one. But I'm gonna tell you how Jesse Jackson has never been given his due, and not until he's dead for a few years will people understand what he did. He took the time from Martin US King Jr. Who was thirty nine, Jesse was twenty six. He's not what eight e three, somewhere around eighty four almost, uh maybe eighty two eighty three, and they just had a birthday. Jesse Jackson carried us from Martin Luther King Jr's death right until Al Sharpton Essentially right takes that of that particular variety of leadership. So Jesse canceled Muhammad Ali. Jesse Jackson was biased. I mean all of that, from from nineteen eight King's death to the backlash against the Fern of Action the nineteen seventies. Jesse Jackson, I'm gonna tell your story. I was writing Jesse Jackson's just Just Anyone. Jesse Jackson was I was writing his book nineteen nine. I was writing his Uh, I've never written a book before, but he hired me. I was, yeah, I was gonna ghost right. I might even had my name on the cover his book. And we were going we had gone to see Mandela in London. We were there were at a table Anita Baker parents, Trent Darby, Patty LaBelle, and Tracy Chapman, and it's like ninety one and pet Bell said I could listen to you talk all day. I was like, thank you. If only you knew. So. So I'm with Jesse Jackson in the car once and he's going He's I said, where are you going? Rev? Because I'm still writing something. The interviewing, and he said, I'm going to Harvard. I said, what are you doing to Harvard? He said, I'm about to have a debate. I said, who are you debating? He said, it really don't matter. Damn. I mean, like bro, like, I don't it don't I don't care. I'm gonna be in this battle and I'm gonna whip that ass right. That's how great he was and is. Al Sharpton is the grost remarkable leader we have in present day, and a man who's transformation has been astonishing from being seen as an outsider limited in uh in the minds of many of his greatness and invented himself. He he became half the man he was like literally and then metaphorically, he transformed himself into a leader that Barack Obama saw as the premier black leader in America. And Sharpton had to do something no other black leaders had to do, deal with the black president as the power that be and hold him to account and at the tame same time show him love. That was an extremely difficult thing in Al Sharpton as the leader, but as an articulate spokesman, as a person who shows up to give visibility to the most serious issue we have in America today for black people, which is police brutality in the murder of our people. And Al Sharpton was doing that. I was arrested with Al Sharpton in the late nineties. Al Sharpton was onto police brutality when he was a bigger version of himself and in those running suits and black people were looking down at him. Uh, that's he dealing with what thugs. He's dealing with criminals. He's always dealing with the police until their kids started dying. And now he became an American hero. So both of them incredible geniuses. I can't lie to you. I've had dinner in Crustaceans in l a and they they said, Jesse Jackson is over there. It was the only person like slash celebrity that I was scared to say I to. I was like, I was like, how then do you go say how to Jack Jackson? I'm just like, my name is yeah, how do I woke O? YEA, yeah. I was so scared though I was alive. Al Shopton, so let me say say that about Jesse and of course all the beautiful things him showing up. But you know, me being from New York and me, you know, getting to see any type of type of crime, bad things that happened. Al Shopton will always have Remember when I first got like a little bit famous. It's a little bit and I would see certain things that that would be my goal to thing. I'm calling out Shopton and people would sho, what do we do wrong? Oh? Like, yeah, I don't know if you've ever met me, know the hell I am. I weaponized your name Bottles, I don't know about Oh you lumped definitely will say that. What would you say? Yeah, I just looked like I knew I'll Sharpton and Al Sharpton comes out of that tree. Al Sharpton is the greatest from jaxponent of Jesse Jackson way of thought and way of approach and Jesse from from King. So that's a hell of a triumvirant. Okay, hold on, God, When the next one, Tyson or Ali, I'd have to say, Muhammad Ali. I love Mike Tyson too, though just in terms of fisticals. But Ali was so huge in terms of what he meant in terms of off stage, off the canvas, outside the boxing ring, I'll give you a Muhammad Ali story if you want to hear it. So again, I was one of eight scholars who was invited to give papers on Muhammad Ali. So I talked about his rhetoric and his daughter was rapping then, so I talked about the relationship between his dog girl. You know lights, you know, but what is it? Light? Is a butterfly stinging like a b you know, and float like a butterfly's thing like a b. And I was talking about doggerel poetry in his relationship to hip hop. So anyway, so I got a chance to hang out with him, asked him questions. I said, you were wrong about Malcolm X, weren't you. He said, yes, I was because remember he split with Malcolm with the minister Mohammed Uh. And he showed me pictures of him and him and uh Elvis Presley had two pretty two pretty man that kind of thing. Then about a year later, we see him coming through the airport and I, you know, I tell my wife, he'll he'll never remember me, you know, It's just it was just a magical day. So we get closer and I go up to him. I said, Mr Alie, I said, you know my name is Michael Eric Dyson. And before I can finish, he leaned over. He said, you that nigga that can talk. I said, I wear that with prize. I'm that nigga that can talk, Yes, sir. But he was amazing, amazing, transformative figure. Tyson was a bad boy too. I mean Tyson was equally important in terms of the culture, uh, in terms of style, in terms of his presence, his complications, his changes and what he's become right now. It's pretty remarkable. See. I always picked Tyson over Ali. People chastise me for this. I picked Floyd over Ali. Right. I got to see as a fighter, I got yeah, yeah, yeah, I got to fight the Floyd fights. Yeah, Floyd was most fights. I got to see what was on re run and when my father watched it. My father will always tell me what happened before watch watch the left. When why are you telling me, like I'm sitting here trying to learn that. He he would always do that. So that's the reason. Yeah. But I mean, Floyd there is a fighter just on the fight game. Be hard to say. He was the greatest man, the defensive fighter. I sat down with him into the HBO, specially when we talked about is fighting as well. Yeah, yeah, I love Floyd master Po bird it. Man, I'm gonna have to go Masterp. I don't know no plane. I don't know no dope. I don't ship no dope from coast to cope. You know. Come on, man, I don't know no plane. I don't know no boat. I don't ship no dope from coast to coast. Come on. He made grunting in the bathroom and National Time, and he's a He's a wonderful, sublime human being. Nipsy Hustle or easy Nipsey. I gotta go Nepsy. We are easy. I mean I loved Easy, but Nipsey Hustle. Let me give me my Nipsey Hustle story, if you know. So. I'm getting on a plane from l A to New York and I'm getting into my seat. Walter Mosley, the great writers on the right, Van Jones on the left. I'm on this plane and this young man gets in and he says, uh, excuse me, are you Michael Eric Dyson. I said, yes, sir, I am. He said, wow, I read your books. I said, are you Nipsey Hustle? Look, he said, yes, I am. I said, and I pulled up my my iPhone and I had his latest Marathon playing right here. He was like, oh my god, I said, Oh, I ain't talking to dog I live in And so for three and a half four four hours, four and a half hours we had a NonStop conversation, mostly led by the way by Nipsey Hustle, his intelligence, his curiosity. He's wanting to know things. You're ready to pick my brain, asked me. Certain things respond to certain things. A remarkable, remarkable human being. Rest in piece of the ball. Yeah, rest in peace to the boy damn you know him? Both do yeah, drink up? So Pharrell, Look, they're both geniuses, let's be real. Pharrell changed the sonic landscape in his own right too. Kanye and a performer with Chad you go in with the Neptunes, so irremarkable what Kanye did as a rapper, right, maybe arguably before Kanye, it was say Dr Dre in terms of can rap and control the maestro? You know, you know, because people look, look Drey has skills on that microphone. I mean it just one of the dopest come on right. So then you but Kanye comes along with that backpack mentality and the honesty that he has the ability to bring together a most definite talent quality and a j just to get by, just to get hot, right, I mean to bring them together, to bring Jay together with um the spoken word artist j I Vey on his first album to have themes about social justice, about wanting material things about your own hypocrisy. I mean, Kanye's transparency was astonishing or is astonishing. And as an artist, and his ability to evolve and to grow and to make incredible music not only for the ear in the in the radio, on the radio in the car, but in stadiums and to transform the sonic landscape and then to bring that all together and continue to evolve and grow, uh, is damn remarkable. But yet when you think about what Farrell has done in terms of the architecture of sound and his high intelligence and his reflection about the aesthetic accouterments that constitute a powerful expression of identity through music, you're just they're both genus. Thank you. That's why we drunk up, Okay, Pete Primo or Pete Rock Frank, Yeah, just so you know, Pete Rocks. When I come to to work every day become a I have to pass by this mirror as a mirror of man, I don't want to ride here. I don't want to come here unless we go through there and I just look at it. I don't get out and take a picture. It's right up the block, but I have to see because it's a big mural of Pete Rock And I feel like this is my way of paying homies coming to hip hop. I mean looking at and then pre Pete Rocking in the sale, smooth coming out. Yeah, just both of them, just so fertile, so so creative at a at a crucial part of hip hop history. Okay, bad Boy or death Row? Mm hmmm, who I mean death Row was Snoop? I like your Snoop? Imprecious? I mean yeah, it's Snoop's the capital. So yes, I'm fresh and double O p p O double G y d O double G. You see it showing much flex when it's time to reckon Mike pimping holes in the clock of the grip, Like my name is Dolo Mike, Yeah, uh yeah, no doubt. But I mean Biggie, I mean little Kim like wow, I mean the death Row with pocket as well. Oh, I'm gonna have to give the Edge to to to bad Boy. It's funny you said how you broke up Biggie. You know that's what changed my life. Um. One day, I'm chilling in the Bronx, I think it was something the restaurant the mouthside, smoking a cigarett. I don't smoke Stay Risks no more, but I didn't. I did, and this woman comes up to me and she just started talking to me. I'm talking to her, that's the tonic conversation. But she said to me, man, it's boring. I wish your Biggie record was out. And she said it as if like Biggie was like going to Great Adventure. And I was just like what. I was like, what did you say? And I just started rapping. I just started, well, I've been was rapping. It's just I just started getting on. That's the reason why I've made Super Tug. What What What? What? What? Forrel is right to Parrell because I remember me telling him I want venting record. Yeah, And I remember, like, I don't know if he said what does an event record? Or someone in the room said what does an event record? And I was like, one more Chance? I want my version of One More Chance? And it was because the stranger that I didn't know just just just told me the most genius thing ever. She said, I it's boring out. I wish Biggie had a record. That's like as if that was something to do, like like to me, she described it like I wish I could go to great adventures. And I was just looking at her. I was like, she changed my life. Yeah that's me for like three minutes and then that was it. But all right, this is this is the last question, especially for a quick time with slave. Everyone thinks it's a trick question. Me and E. F N thinks it's pretty much. Um, loyalty or respect. Damn, that's deep. I say loyalty because if you have loyalty, respect is built in. You can have respect but not be loyal. Mm hmm. That's where. That's where. So I just want to thank you, you know you. I just want to I want to stay. I don't want to I'll thank you. And before before I also want to say, you know, to our fans and to the people, you know, we have a responsibility uh to deliver. No. Um, we're not politicians, but we're not dumb. Right. That's the reason why I apologize like, as a journalist, I could have left the the interview out. I could have said, that's just his views and that's it. But the minute that I heard that anybody from George Floyd family was offended, I took it down. You know, I mean, excuse me when I say, I mean us, the offenders in cases. UM. I was just like, you know what, we had, We had conversations, we had multiple UM conference calls, and you know, like I said, like we said earlier with with with with the COVID, like, you know, I got to see this, so you know, big up to my brother Kanye, you know. Uh, he tried to give me to watch this documentary and I was just like, you know what, it doesn't matter. I don't care if you show me a documentary. It just the eight minutes that I saw. It's so so I would like to say for our platform, and we did nothing wrong. We didn't say this rhetoric, We didn't say but us not being responsible enough to just say, yo, you know what if something in there that's going that it may hurt people, because I believe in free speech, but I don't believe in free speech when it hurts people. You know what I'm saying I got I can say you know whatever, but if if I'm hurting you, I want to tell you I apologize. So so anybody that was hurt by what Kanye said on our platform wasn't us. You know we we we used to say about this ship. That's right, that's right. You know we have we have g Z in the camp. We have all these other things in the camp. But it was more important for me to sit down with you. I remember how you sat down with Bill Moore after that, and you are people. That's why in the intro I said, my brother, he's your brother, and you know, for the for the people out there, like you said about cancel culture, because I don't want to be cocky. Y'all can't cancel us. I don't want to be cocky. But we own our own ship. We're doing the responsible ship. This is there's no one telling us, yo, don't do this, so don't do that. We're doing it. We owned up our own ship. We sat there and we said, you know what, let's own up. That's beautiful. You know what I'm saying for a lot of people who who are sitting there saying, you know what, well, why is Nori only apologizing. Uh, and why is not an apologizing y'all don't get blaming when Norri talks all the fucking take a ball the fucking episode, I represented him, then, I'm representing him. Now we are together, we are collectively and we are apologetic. We actually said sorry, we can we put out reports on the Hollywood Reporter. We all make mistakes. But that's why I'm here to learn. They say, the mistake is not The mistake is about how you react to the mistakes. And that's the reason why we did it. And I got so many people that's calling me saying you did the right thing. First off, you did the right thing by the interview, and that you did the right thing about letting them talk. But they're doing it privately, right, it's great, But they saw we was going through out there. And what I would like to say is one, that's who we are. We are people. We can't know we made a mistake until we know we made a mistake. That's right, That's right. I don't I don't get why people think that we're supposed to premeditated holy ship, But anyway, how do you know how you know it's hot until you actually burn yourself? You know your your bombs already told you the stove is hot, don't go over there, but your dumbass still put your finger in there, and you didn't know it was because sometimes even like this and it didn't you didn't actually tell hip. So you just got a little hot and you didn't even know if it was gonna burn. But it wasn't until you put your fucking finger on that ship and your your finger bubbled up and you saw that white thing that you said, this is a mistake, and let let me try to let me try to correct this. So this is what we're trying to do. And we could have left it up. We could have left it up on you know what, this is our journalistic point. We didn't do that. We said, we don't want to give views off of that. That's something that offended a family of a person that I saw. Then I and this it could affect my relationship with Kanye. But what I did first was I called him. I didn't want him to hear from the media that it was taken down. I called him like a man, and I said, maybe politics ain't my game, you know what I'm saying. And and so I appreciate you but we're in the fire right now. We got a couple more days and we'll be out the fire, but hopefully, but right now we're in the fire and you, you know, reaching out to me. And I remember a scene the text. I said, who who this? And he said, I said, I called you immediately wait for you to call back and say, hey, man, yo, listen. And it's necessary. It's necessary. It's necessary for us not to be chastised, for us to be corrected the same way, the same way, the same way we want him to be corrected. But ya know, we this coach. You know this this coach. You know that's why I love brothers like Killer Mike and Todd Live Quality and Q Tip and all these people who called me. And you know they laughed at first cause I was like, man, you should not to stand next to him. But you know, for for every everyone who called me fat Joe, um, everyone who called me so uh, you know, I want to really thank you, you know what I'm saying, for standing next to us and schooling us and helping us out. Okay, what you're doing is important, and you're brave and courageous and you're honest, and you're admitting a mistake, which is what we all make and all do. You didn't intend it, like you said, You're not literally responsible for Kanye. You gave him a platform. He said some things that are deeply, profoundly problematic, anti semitic, against George Floyd's family, that really are anti black. And to have the courage to call him and tell him, but also to do this publicly, uh, to grapple with it is extremely necessary. So I sleep both. Salute both of you. I watch your shows every every segment. I'm a huge fan, so thank you for having me. By the way, this is a great episode. I didn't drink They're gonna get me twe Thanks for joining us for another episode of Drink Champs hosted by yours truly, d J E F and n O r E. Please make sure to follow us on all our socials. Let's at Drink Champs across all platforms, at the Real Noriega and I g at Noriega on Twitter, mine is at Who's Crazy on I g at d J E F N on Twitter, and most importantly, stay up to date with the latest release, says news and merch by going to drink Champs dot com for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Legendary Queens rapper-turned show host N.O.R.E. teams up with Miami hip-hop pioneer DJ EFN for a n… 
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