The Things Fall Apart Podcast
The Things Fall Apart Podcast
Rebuilding Through Reflection: A Conversation on Art, Education, and Authenticity
Dr. Eugene Lee Johnson returns with a soul-stirring conversation alongside musician and educator Lord Dexter Jackson, kicking off a new season dedicated to rebuilding what breaks apart in our lives.
The discussion opens with a question that stops you in your tracks: "Who are you without your trauma?" Lord Dexter's candid response reveals the confident, optimistic person beneath layers of life experience. This sets the stage for an exploration of how Black Americans navigate both personal and collective trauma while striving to live authentically in a world that often demands their resilience without offering respite.
As two political science minds, Dr. LJ and Lord Dexter examine the current political landscape through a distinctly Black perspective. Rather than despair, they advocate focusing on cultural contributions and grassroots coalition-building—finding power in creativity and community when larger systems fail us.
Lord Dexter's journey as an educator reveals the delicate balance between professional boundaries and genuine care. Teaching eighth-graders in a small Louisiana town, he's transformed his classroom from just 6% meeting standards to an astonishing 94% on track for success. His approach offers wisdom for anyone in mentorship roles: "My job is to teach you, to make sure that when I have you for these 75 minutes, you leave here with knowledge."
Music emerges as both metaphor and medium for authentic expression throughout their conversation. From founding the Yellow Door Sessions for overlooked Black artists to crafting seven-minute songs in an era of two-minute streaming hits, Lord Dexter champions artistic integrity over commercial appeal. His critique of contemporary music culture cuts deep: "We need to get back to a point where artists care more about the creation of art than being heard and being seen."
The most powerful moment comes when Lord Dexter reflects on professional setbacks that threatened his sense of worth. His path from nonprofit executive to classroom teacher reveals how rebuilding often requires both self-reflection and self-compassion: "Everything doesn't fall apart because you made a mistake. Everything isn't your fault."
Ready to rebuild something in your own life? Subscribe now and join our community finding strength in vulnerability and wisdom in setbacks.
Hello everyone, welcome back to the Things Fall Apart podcast. This is Dr Eugene Lee Johnson, dr LJ, here. We're going to have a great show. I'm looking forward to starting this new season. I know I haven't recorded in a while, but I told myself it was time to stop being lazy and become consistent. And so here I am. And so, guys, this new season is going to be great. We're going to be able to have one solo episode with me, and we're also going to have an episode with a guest every single week, and so I hope that you enjoy the conversations that we present to you.
Speaker 1:Understandably, the world is in a little turmoil right now, and with that turmoil, it is important for us to be able to connect as people, but also understand that, hey, even though things might get bad, we can always put them back together. Y'all. This is a podcast to rebuild. This is the Things Fall Apart podcast, season three, episode one. All right, all right, y'all. Look, I got my guest here, mr Dexter Jackson. Mr Dexter Nicholas, how would you like me to refer to you today, because I know you're an artist and you're sensitive about your stuff? No, but are you, are you, lord Dex, on all platforms for your music?
Speaker 2:Facebook because it wouldn't let me change my name. So that's the only reason that it stayed that way on facebook. But I retired the name dexter nicholas probably two years ago, I don't know ever since covid all the time kind of runs together. So I think about two years ago I retired dexter nicholas bought some land in scotland so that I could officially have the title lord and change my name to Lord Dexter. We do everything big over here.
Speaker 1:I love it. As the political scientist in me, I'm thinking about lords and serfs and knights and peasants and you know all those things. So look, I love it. I love it. But look y'all, I'm here with Dexter Jackson, also known as Lord Dexter in the creative community. Dexter, I got one question that I ask my guests every time they come on the show to kick off, and it's going to be an abstract question, but I want you to try to answer it to the best of your abilities. The question is who are you without your?
Speaker 2:trauma. Without my trauma I am a very confident, very happy, very optimistic person. But of course we know that the trauma that we live through and the disappointments and the hurt that we live through really shade who we are. And so on my best days, when I'm able to control those things, I am the very charismatic, the very optimistic, the very kind version of myself. But unfortunately, a lot of the times that is not a person that people get to deeply know, you know. But yeah, without all my trauma I'm basically a completely different person. I think everyone is right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 1:So that's why I asked the question, because people always answer it so differently and I think you know being a Black person in America and I think you know being a black person in America none of us can actually answer the question 100 percent fully who we are without trauma.
Speaker 1:Because even if we just disregard any type of familial trauma or, you know, platonic trauma or any of the things like that, when you get into the racial trauma that we have all experienced or currently experiencing or will experience, we all have to deal with trauma on a certain level, and I think it's very, very important, especially in today's day and age.
Speaker 1:I was talking with my students the other day and they were concerned about everything that our current president is doing, and there's always people that say, hey, you know, we're Black people, we've been down before and we got up, we made it through, and for me that is always. It's such a difficult thing to hear because all of us didn't make it through, some of us didn't, and so, yes, we have been able to stay here long enough for generations to grow, for some of us to amass wealth, for some of us to gain education, for some of us to find love and family chosen or blood, but everybody wasn't here to make it through, and so I think we always need to give the reverence to those people who weren't able to make it even though we're in this battle.
Speaker 2:I think you're right. I also think that just because you're strong enough to go through something and handle it doesn't mean that you should have to go through it and handle it Right, just because we yes just because we as a people have proven over and over again that we're we can survive at some point.
Speaker 2:You know our ancestors and our elders, current living elders, who got us through the civil rights movement and some are still alive, old enough to go back to Jim Crow right, they weren't looking for us to be able to perpetually survive. They were looking for us to be able to thrive in the way that other ethnicities and other folks have been able to thrive in the country, and unfortunately, that has been stripped away from us on a number of occasions. No-transcript, some traction. And then what do we do? We elect the same man who got us in the position to be protesting about george floyd and the racial problems that we were having in the years 2016 to 2020. Again, it just shows it. And this election. To me, it's the same thing I said after the attack on the Capitol, which was leave Black folks out of it. Leave us out of it, right. Don't bring us into it. Don't do none of that.
Speaker 2:Black folks voted, with 86% of people voting for Kamala Harris. A higher percentage voted for not Donald Trump, right. And so, when you bring those things together 86% of people voting for Kamala Harris, a higher percentage voted for not Donald Trump, right. And so when you bring those things together, you realize Black people spoke very firmly and typically we do, especially Black women spoke very firmly and very seriously about what we thought, and if you want to look at the history of voting records in the United States, you can go back and take a look.
Speaker 2:Black folks have never voted wrong in terms of the social and economic success of the country, you know, as a bloc, since we've had the right to vote, and so for this particular election I'm sure you've seen me on Facebook and I've said to a number of folks I'm not getting into it Everything this man said he wanted to do, let him do it right, everything that he said that he was going to change. I want you to do every single thing so that when the leopards eat your face, when the leopards come back and eat your face, you have no one to look at but yourself. This is a strictly to me, a white folk problem Again, because everyone, except for white men and white women in majority, voted for, and mexican men excuse me, hispanic voted for somebody not named donald trump, right?
Speaker 2:this is very clearly yeah a situation where the folks who hold the voting power need to need to experience the things that marginalized folks have experienced for so long. Right, right, and it's unfortunate, and it is. I will go even on a limb and say that it is probably unfair to a lot of people. However, I think at some point we, as black folks, have got to stop showing up in ways where we are continually disrespected. Don't ask, don't ask Dexter Jackson to show up to protests. Don't ask me to do, don't ask me to do, don't ask me to do nothing. Here's, here's what I think. You know what I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be the cousin that show up for thanksgiving when the food's already on the table, right, like, don't when. When the food, when, when the food is out the oven and y'all have done the prayer. That's when I need big cuz to text me and say hey, we eat. That's when I will show up to, whatever we do.
Speaker 2:I think we're just in a moment where non-marginalized folks just need to step back and say okay, this is what it is, this is what the other folks wanted, and it's a shame that we have to other people like that, but this is what the majority wanted. Let the majority have what the majority wants. And you see it, and for anyone who's listening, I am also technically a political scientist. That's what my degree from Southern University is as well. No, I think it's. Yes, I know Right. My beloved Southern University, nelson Mandela's College of Social Sciences. We, my beloved Southern University, nelson Mandela's College of Social Sciences. It's just a moment where we have shown up so many times for the protests and we have shown up so many times to nobody listens, right, and nobody listens because they never have to go through the things that we're telling them that you don't want to go.
Speaker 2:You don't want to go to that. We've been through it. Right, we've been there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that road rides you know, got the whole whole did that, so you didn't want to go through that we'd have been through it right, we've been there and that road rides, you know, got the hove hove, did that, so you didn't have to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know as well, it's like. It's like it's with my students all the time. I say I tried to tell you, you know, like I tried to tell you. But I mean we see everything that's happening, we see where this is going, we see.
Speaker 2:If anyone is a student of history, as as I know you are, I'm teaching my eighth graders about World War II at the moment in social studies, and we just finished talking about the end of World War II and Hitler and Stalin and the Nazis and the propaganda that was used to talk about all those things, and for a second we talked about the Japanese internment camps and we talked about the holocaust, of course, and a couple of the kids made very, you know, linear and serious connections to be like oh, that sounds like a lot of stuff that donald trump is saying, right, like the way that he taught, the way that the jews were talked about in terms of being vermin, and, you know, like, like, even they are starting to see those very literal connections and so it's easy for us to sit back and be like oh, it's hyperbole or he's not serious. No man, like one of the things that you have to realize is that the people who were around the main person doing the terrible thing also believed in the terrible thing. You know, like they weren't. They weren't captors, it wasn't a Stockholm syndrome. Like Goebbels believed in that right Ava Braun believed in that.
Speaker 2:You see Donald Trump surrounding himself with people and I'm just like. I don't know if you saw the report came out today that Hexeth is cutting the budget of the Pentagon by 8%, including some high-ranking generals, and he's going to replace them with other generals. In my head, I'm like you mean generals that will either ignore lawful orders or execute illegal ones, like this is what. This is what we're seeing at this point, but I don't want to get off on a tangent, because I could talk about politics all day. I want to make sure we make space for no, no, it's totally fine.
Speaker 1:It's totally fine because, you know, as a political sciences and a political science professor, this is literally my life and it's one of these things where, when you there's so many things that are similar to not just Hitler and Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, but to other atrocities that have happened across the globe throughout history and throughout time. You know, just recently, donald Trump was on Twitter quoting Napoleon Bonaparte, you know. And so these things are very it's a very interesting time and I always try to figure out, basically, where does my balance come in? And I think a lot of black people probably exist in that same space where we're like, oh my gosh, we told y'all we're not coming outside, we're going to find something else to do. And then also understanding, like the people who voted for this man, they going to still be the last people to be impacted by all of these things. And so figuring out, how do I build coalitions during this time? Who is willing to build coalitions during this time? Right, because all politics is local. We're doing everything from the grassroots.
Speaker 1:I was talking to Dr Albert Samuels, who is the chair of the political science department. For those who don't know, the chair of the political science department at Southern University Agricultural and Mechanical College on Scotts Bluff in Baton Rouge, louisiana, and we were just discussing how there's always these stories that you see on the news these days or social media where they say Trump voters having remorse, trump voters feel tricked, etc. Etc. Etc. And I personally think all of these reports are lies. I think people are opposing them to have something to talk about, but these people aren't actually experiencing remorse, because I think about it like this, when you think about the Republican Party, as Kamala Harris was running her race, the Republican Party.
Speaker 2:That party doesn't exist. I don't know who we talk about. That party doesn't exist. I don't know who we're talking about that party doesn't exist.
Speaker 1:All right, we could say you know, Kendrick Lamar said the Rebloodicans yeah.
Speaker 1:You know. So we could use that the Rebloodicans but you had so many people coming out that were in support or at least I won't say in support. They were more for Kamala Harris than they were for Donald Trump becoming president again, and they were members of that party. But I always talk about this and I was having this conversation with Dr Albert Samuels is Republicans have been trying to figure out how do we remove Donald Trump from the equation while also maintaining his voters, and that question is asinine, because what they aren't realizing, or what they choose not to realize, is those were your voters all alone. You created this conundrum when fox news starts in the mid-nights and the entire channel says well, you know what. We're not going to actually care about telling the news. We're just going to make sure that we uplift conservative values and ie republican politicians, but also the dastardly deets that comes with it. You created this party. This is you, and so you can't say how do we remove trump from this equation and keep his voters? They're the same voters they are.
Speaker 2:Well, I think. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut y'all um, but oh no, you're good, you're good. The thing that they don't realize when donald trump is not on the ticket, they lose. Point blank period. Right, when donald trump is not on the ticket, they lose. And how do you? I mean, there was a district in what was it? Iowa a couple months ago that went to a democrat that donald trump won by something like 30 or 40 points and the democrat ended up winning by 20 points in a special election in that city.
Speaker 2:And the Republican Party has a conundrum on their hands. The first thing that you have to realize even coming into the presidency, donald Trump was unpopular, one of the only. I mean. He came in with a 48% approval rating, somewhere around that 52% disapproval rating. Right, for anyone who's listening, who doesn't know, when presidents come into office, you're coming in with a 55, 60% approval rating. If you're Barack Obama, you're leaving office with over 60% approval rating. You know which is crazy. It speaks to his legacy that he wasn't able to get Hillary, not Hillary Clinton who ran against. Yeah, hillary Clinton over the Donald Trump. But the problem with Donald Trump truly is that and the Republicans realize this fairly soon. 30-ish, 32%-ish of the vote is his floor right, not his ceiling.
Speaker 2:It's his floor, 33% of people are gonna vote for donald trump, which is, which is crazy right for anyone, like just automatically, and so with that, he only really need to win an election, because you don't need a majority to win something like that somewhere in there for anyone who doesn't, for anyone who doesn't know um, it only takes about I think it's 23 see the 23 or 30 percent of the actual population to make someone president because of the electoral cops, right.
Speaker 2:And which is, which is an absolutely absurd number, right, even if the number is 33 percent, are you? Are you 33 percent of people can decide an election, and then 67 percent of people voted the other way and the other folks like that is a crazy system to begin with voted the other way, and the other folks like that is a crazy system to begin with. And then you take on into account of that, that Donald Trump's floor is 30-ish 35 percent somewhere in there, and you realize that he is pretty formidable when it comes to being beat because his, his path to victory is so much easier than everyone else. At that point, you know kamala harris. First of all, no one liked her, and then, of course, there were the lies about how she got to where she was and the fact that she was a woman and the fact that she was a black woman.
Speaker 2:You know like they're. They're just all these marks against her. But I say all that to say that donald trump really isn't representative. He's representative of a good chunk of folks. It's really more about who the democrats chose to run against him. You know, like if it weren't hillary clinton, I mean, when he ran against joe biden, obviously he got creamed right, which is funny, because not funny in that way, but like abusers can only beat women anyway, like that's usually the way that it is you've never seen an abuser like stand up to a man in any sort of way. I mean, and when you think about what the way that Donald Trump has perpetuated his first couple of weeks, what it's straight out of the abuser's playbook, right, I'm going to make my enemies your friend.
Speaker 2:I'm going to isolate you from the people who you know and who you care about. I'm going to straight up, lie to you and gaslight you and then tell you, and then tell you that you know what you're seeing is phrasing. Only believe me, look what I can do for you. Like everything he does is straight out of the abuser's playbook. And that's not even taking into the account that he cheated on his first wife with a second wife, cheated on his second wife with his third wife, cheated on his third wife with a porn star like we, we got to go the whole gambit to understand who this man is and why people elected him, but I don't, I just I don't want to talk about this man right like it is yeah, yeah, we don't know, not to you, I mean, I just for me as black folks generally
Speaker 2:yeah, it's just like let them do whatever they want to do first time. Donald trump's president, you know what we got? We got beyonce's homecoming coachella performance. Look, that that's a win for me. Like that's that's, and I just want to focus on those things. I want to focus on LeBron James doing what he's doing. I want to focus on the beautiful music that Kendrick Lamar is making at this moment, the things that are positive in our community, because unfortunately, like you said earlier, it's not fair. We've been through this, although I do think Donald Trump is giving up for trying to get a third term. You know, I really believe that.
Speaker 2:But, we've been through this before and I am just choosing peace in this moment for me, right? I don't want to read the stories. I don't want to hear what he's doing. I don't care that he's calling himself a king. I don't care about none of that. You know what I care about? Rihanna wins the next album. You know what I'm saying? It's not. Look, let me dream, bro. Let me dream.
Speaker 1:ASAP going to be free. She's going to have another two babies in the next two years. Y'all not getting no album asap. Please get off that woman. Like three babies in three years is some crazy work. But him, russell wilson and yannis antetokounmpo they need to stay off.
Speaker 2:Leave them alone. For real, I know they wives tired. You know what I'm saying. So it's, it's unfortunate and I, the most I will say I am enjoying watching the, the politics of it, you know, like not in a just as a political scientist, watching the chess pieces move across the board and please, anyone listening, I'm not arrogant enough to believe I'm a real political scientist. I just happen to know how to dig into the details, right, but don't ask me to make no policy or nothing, but watching the chess pieces move across the board.
Speaker 2:And the elections that are going to be happening, I mean, most people don't know. Because Donald Trump chose three people in the House of Representatives, there is a possibility that by June, democrats could take the House back right Because of these three special elections Could happen. I'm not saying it will, it could happen and given the fact that Republicans don't typically vote unless Donald Trump is on the ballot, it is a very real possibility that you could win back the House in June and Donald Trump is not able to pass any legislation for four years at that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think Democrats are and this is the last thing we're doing politics y'all but I think Democrats are in an interesting space because I think number one they have been doing some work, but they need to do more. As always, I believe that Democrats have historically had a communication problem. If they fixed it, it could cure a lot of their ailments. The other thing is, people are going to be pissed off and so, just like in 2020, when we had COVID and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and Donald Trump just being overtly racist, people were angry. People showed up, even with the risk of getting a fatal illness right. And so I think Democrats, they probably understand that people are going to be angry over the next couple of years, and so they might have some strong outcomes in elections, but that doesn't mean that you should take it for granted. That means you need to figure out how to make that those numbers even larger, because you want to build coalitions that actually have staying power and working.
Speaker 2:You know, I think people are being a little too hard on the Democratic Party after this election.
Speaker 1:They did what they were supposed to oh no, so hold on, let me say. Let me say this I was hard on the Democratic Party before this election.
Speaker 2:Let me rephrase. Let me rephrase.
Speaker 1:The Democrips and Rebleticans.
Speaker 2:I think they're being too hard on Democrats. You got me standing there, democrats, about this election. Now let me preface this by saying messaging issue sure, joe Biden staying in the race when he know he, when he knew he, should have dropped out? I mean, there were reports coming out that were showing joe biden was going to lose by 400.
Speaker 2:You know electoral votes and then he knew internally that that was the case and you can make the argument that he wanted. He knew and they knew that trump was going to win. He wanted to save comalist political career. But whatever we, we can hold off on that. Explain to me, as a party, how do you win an election when the other candidate is just straight up lying? And when you say he's lying, he can't do that election on what is an objective truth and someone already has the high road that they're telling you, even though they are 100 lying. There is. You do not come back from that. There is. There is no world in which, in the structure that that election went where I mean in the debate, the man said they're eating the dogs. That's what he said. That was pretty good. I do a great Trump impression. I've had eight years to get this work. There is no world in which that is a winnable election for you. There's none, and we see that now. There is no winning the argument they just said they're going to cut 80% of the, the Pentagon budget.
Speaker 2:How is it that Democrats are the ones being like you probably shouldn't cut the military budget like that? That's not smart. And it's Republicans who are like no, we need less military defense. It's like what world do we live in? What is happening? Where we have just flipped and it's just because there's nothing that Donald Trump can do wrong? That's genuinely what it is. If that is the person that you're running against, how can you blame? And don't get me wrong, I'm not giving the Democrats pass. I promise I'm not. But how do you win an election in that climate where, no matter what you say, you are deemed a liar and untrustworthy, when you're the one telling the truth?
Speaker 2:yeah it's, it's unwinnable I think democrats.
Speaker 1:I think their issues in the 2024 election actually didn't happen in 2024. I think they were long-standing issues that happened a while ago. That kind of bubbled to the surface because of joe biden's ailments, because of their lack of creating newer popular candidates in the Democratic Party or embracing the candidates that are popular but maybe going against the party's ideals. Because you'll see the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you'll see the Ilhan Omar, you'll see Cori Bush who was spent out of her office, and you know stuff like this. So you have you have some popular candidates, but because they may stray a little bit too far to the left, you know they aren't someone that the party will actually want to embrace, but overall their problems weren't just the 110 days that Kamala Harris had to run for president.
Speaker 1:Like Donald Trump had a pretty good head start in this race, regardless of who was going to run for president, like donald trump had a pretty good head start in this race, regardless of who was going to run for democrats. But we also kind of see the democratic playbook coming back into play, where we keep every week. We keep seeing gavin newsom on our tv. We keep saying we keep seeing fish gerald grant on our tv. Right, and so they're. They're showing him towering over donald trump. When donald trump gets off the plane. They're showing him saying we're gonna fight these fires in california because a lot of, for a lot of the country, they believe the only person that's gonna beat the overtly racist white man is the quiet racist white man yeah, the one who meets our requirements. They don't want any of the diversity that comes with the party to actually be the leader of the party. But that's enough politics. We're going to get off of that.
Speaker 1:But in speaking about this right, you mentioned something. While you were speaking, you were saying you were teaching your eighth grade students. So you're an educator. What do you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am so I am for the last six, seven months. Yeah, I am, so I am for the last six, seven months. I decided to try my hand at teaching after doing about 10 or 12 years in the nonprofit sector, mostly in work involving around education, mostly. Whether a it's been an interesting experience is the word I'm going to use. I now understand stockholm syndrome so much because I love them dearly and also they make me miserable, you know, all the time, as a room full of 14, 13 and 14 year olds will do pretty much anyone. So it's just been a. It's been a difficult six or seven months, but I'm happy to say, like I was looking at my numbers today when I took the job, about 6% of the kids in my classes were on track to to make their leap goal Right as of today, 94% of them are on track to make their leap goal in a couple of months when we take a leap in April. So you know it's-.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, that's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really cool, and that's the social studies. The English one's a little bit more, not as big, but even still. I think when I came in 10% of them were at basic or above, and I think I haven't looked at the numbers because we just got the scores back, like yesterday, but my master teacher told me about 48% of them are now at basic or above.
Speaker 2:So a nice 38 point swing there in six or seven months. So it's a cool job. I definitely miss being in my community. It's very demanding, but you know it's been. It's been cool so far. But I'm trying to get to the collegiate level and that's really where I want to be.
Speaker 1:So, number one, I just want to applaud you for taking the baton to be a K through 12 teacher Right? Everybody can't do it. A lot of people just feel like, hey, I'll go teach if stuff don't work out, and some of them won't take it seriously. They just take it as this is a means for me to get money Right, and so I know my start in education was working for the Boys and Girls Club and so I would do after school enrichment. That eventually led to some substitute teaching, and you know, of course, now I'm a college professor and so it's just one of those things where people do not understand what you have to do in Louisiana as an educator. It is one of the worst states that you could be in trying to give your students positive outcomes, because there are so many other socioeconomic factors, political factors that go into play to make sure that these kids have the ability to even leave their houses to get to school, to have a quality education.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and I remember being, when I was an educator, being scared like you, cause you get to know these kids and they, they, they come, you come to love them, they come to love you. You have these really good relationships where you care about their wellbeing at the moment and in the future and you ultimately end up understanding and knowing when something is wrong. Or you become a confidant where they have to tell you things. I know I've been in situations where I've had to been a designated first reporter and stuff like that. And so these kids, they trust you, they get to love you and understand you and trust you, and when you know that they're going home to a place that may not be the safest for them, it makes you feel a certain sadness that I can't really explain. But when you get them back in your building you're like I got to pour as much into you as I can in these. However many know however many hours I got during the day that you're in my classroom.
Speaker 1:So number one, I just want to applaud you for being an educator, because that's I think it's one of the most thankless jobs, where people think like people think I saw somebody on Twitter, they was like and they were talking about college professors and they were talking about high school teachers and they were like being a teacher is one of the easiest jobs. You know. You work three to five hours a day. You got summers off. You don't really do much and I was like three to five hours.
Speaker 1:Where does that come from? Like, not only are you in class for eight hours, but then you have to lesson plan, then you have to have meetings with your school district and meetings with your principal and the rest of the staff. You have to go to trainings before school starts, trainings when school ends. You have teacher in service days where your students get a day off, but you still gotta come to work and they're looking stupid, you know I don't know what he was talking about I think you know, I think it's from the outside looking in.
Speaker 2:Yet it's an. It's an easy gig, especially if you've never worked with kids before in any capacity. So I come from recreation right. So I come from Kids are mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. The amount of mean things that are told to me on the daily is crazy. But I think I was a youth developer for a very long time. I did mentorship, I did recreation, I did coaching. You know, outside of the school. I was school adjacent and not really in the school, and so my relationships tended to be much deeper than the ones that we have as teachers.
Speaker 2:But what I learned when I transitioned to the classroom and I'm warning you, this is going to sound so cold, right, it's going to sound so cold and so mean, but teaching is about survival, right, that's number one. And what I mean by that is I have to be able to show up in that building every day with a feeling of I want to be here. I like this job. The only way to do that, for me personally, is to disconnect. Right, is to be like I cannot get into the weeds of what's going on with you individually, right, like I can't if I know, as a youth developer that I am, if I know this is going on, I'm going to be obsessive over it. Well, I need to do this and I need to call this person and I need to. No, I can't. Right, if I am going to show up here for 180 days. I need to be and to be able to do that as my best self.
Speaker 2:I, dexter Jackson, to be a good teacher, have to disconnect from that and while I have very good relationships with my kids, I really don't allow them to get on like a personal. That level. That's a boundary. I don't want to know who you're in a relationship with. Like don't, don't tell me that. I don't want to know, don't care, yeah, and the more. And I think one of the things people don't realize is the more you know, the more you have to be accountable for Right. And so if I know that, you're in a relationship with this person.
Speaker 2:Now I got to watch you that much more closely to make sure don't nothing be happening, whether I'm in the room, whether we're in the room or in the cafeteria, walking through the hallway. So it's just a very like. For me it is just a very, very unfortunate thing, because I really love to deeply pour into kids and show them love and let them know who I am, but in this particular context it's just not true. It's not something that I think is appropriate for the kids that I teach. They have boundary issues, number one, because they're from a very small town down in Seville. It's a super small town, and so their idea of relationship with someone is I know who your cousin is and I know this and I know that about you and I know all of your business and we'll do what we do right. And so if they didn't have to, they call me sir. I always tell all my other teachers with me. If I didn't have to tell them my name was Ms Jackson, I would be fine with them just being like sir, sir, sir. That would be perfect for me, because that's the only way, by maintaining my job, is to get you to learn new stuff. My job is to teach you, to make sure that when I have you for these 75 minutes that you leave here with knowledge.
Speaker 2:I have to let go of the youth developer Dexter to be able to do that, because otherwise, every time a kid act up, let's step outside and have a conversation about why that ain't, why that ain't the right thing to say and why that's me. Now. I've been talking to you for 12 minutes and now I only got 63 minutes to do what I need up somebody else acting up? I gotta take them outside to converse like nah, it's very like's, very like. I'm very in the classroom. Don't get me wrong, the kids love me, right, we get along well. But they also know Mr Dexterism, right, they'll quote me all the time. What that got to do with me is one of my favorite lines. Like that is probably like I don't understand it I tell them all the time.
Speaker 2:They know when it's about to happen. They know when it's about to happen, they say something. And I'll pull up that nini leaks meme on youtube. Now, why am I in it? See how they bought me in it. I had nothing to do with it, right. Like you know, I, if we ain't talking about english and we ain't talking about social studies, we ain't talking about nothing, unless it's like a chill day like I only have four kids in my class today because they're on field trip or whatever. But yeah, that is how I feel the need to be a good teacher, and the numbers bear fruit. If the numbers didn't bear the fruit, then I would switch up the game, but right now I'm like all right, we in a groove, let's keep it like that.
Speaker 1:I actually and I actually don't think that's code at all Like our job is to get them to the next stage of their life, whatever stage that is whether that you're elementary, middle, high school, college your job is to teach them while they're in your presence, make sure they understand the knowledge and they can articulate it and get them to the next stage. And I remember there was a conversation on social media a couple of years ago about is being an educator a calling or is it a job? Right? And people were saying things like you can't be a teacher unless you love it. You can't be a teacher unless you love it. You can't be a teacher unless you love it.
Speaker 1:And at the end of the day, every all we're in a capitalistic society, bro. Uh, I got, I get paid to do this. Now, some of the people in the classroom if they weren't getting paid, you know they wouldn't be there they don't have that desire to teach kids and be around kids. And because, look, as somebody who's been in a K through 12 classroom at every level, come on, man, I can't be in there with them all day, every day. I just can't do it. And so it's one of those things where I don't think, you know, disconnecting is cold at all. I think you're doing what you need to do to make sure that the best version of yourself shows up for the kids, and that's ultimately all that matters.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that you know but you're also Lord Dex Like. Tell me about your art, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, give me one second. I'm just going to turn my AC on real quick. All right, so ask me that question one more time. I'm sorry, I'm starting to feel a little bit nauseous and hot. Yeah, I can't tell if it's I'm hot or if the fluting got me Like. I'm trying to figure it out. Hopefully it's not the flu.
Speaker 1:I went through that fingers crossed. Yeah, fingers crossed. That is not the flu or anything else. Now I was saying you're also lord dicks. Could you tell us about your?
Speaker 2:art. Yeah, so I am a singer, you know, mostly like every young or most young or most black singers in general. I started off in the church about the time I was three, singing in the choir and, and you know, wait hold on time out.
Speaker 1:See, you said. You said, like most black singers, you're talking about a forgotten time. Because these black singers today they I don't know if they got that church in them. I don't hear it coming from the stomach, like that you don't hear.
Speaker 2:You don't hear the cornbread meshing around in there.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm saying um I'll, I'll hear, I'll hear the greens, I'll I'll hear all I hear is you know music that I can do yoga to?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think. Uh, you know I have a. I have a different respect for it. I would consider myself a vocalist. I'm a singer first. I rapped for a while, which is why I retired the name dexter nicholas was because I wanted to transition fully to singing, and so, to do that, I went ahead and dropped my name so that I could just focus on being a vocalist, auditioned for the Voice back in the day, made it to the second or third round right before you get on TV, and so I grew up in my late teens 19, 18, singing in bands around town and around 26 or 27,.
Speaker 2:I decided to make my first album that I started working on in like 2016, I'm sorry. I released my first album in 2016, uh, and then released my second one in 2020 and my third in 2022, 2024, excuse me, and um, I just started. I just finished my last one that's going to be released in a couple of well, hopefully by, hopefully by early summer. But my art is just very R&B, alternative R&B. I like to write from the perspective of scenes. I'm really interested in conversations that people have, whether they're awkward or tense or whatever, and how those conversations play out and those thoughts play out artistically, and so if you listen to my music, it's very much character-driven more than it is experience-driven, with the exception of my second album, 30, which I wrote after I lost my grandmother Excuse me, Both my grandmothers within you know about two months of each other, two or three months of each other in 2016. Further along, in 2016, ended up losing eight or nine people from my family, and so that album is just really shaded by loss and grief and and turning 30, I turned 30 in 2020 as well, and so, just trying to and and I've continued to I've transitioned kind of now from the music making and performing to being a facilitator.
Speaker 2:So I founded an organization called the yellow door session where, um, in 2022, I just got really tired of artists who I appreciated and who I thought were really talented not getting an opportunity in baton rouge and because they were black and because people who have the venues in baton rouge particularly when you say you're a hip-hop artist or a rap artist in baton rouge they have a very particular view of what kind of music you make and that's not necessarily what people are doing. And so I was like you know what? I'm just going to turn my house into a concert venue and an art gallery for one night and I invited, like you know, 25, 30 people and some performers that I really like. And next thing, I know Instagram messages are coming through because we're live and people are like where's that set, where's that set, where's that ad? And my you know, my guy drops the address and I had 90 some odd people in my house enjoying this concert and after it was over, because it was supposed to just be a one night thing, after it was over, people were just kind of like, oh, you got to do that again.
Speaker 2:So we started the yellow door sessions, me and my team, um, and we take, we take venues that aren't music venues and tournament and music videos to one and only to barbershops and studios. You know a couple of interesting places. And then, from those, my good friends Byron and Janelle Washington wanted to bring a festival to North Baton Rouge, actually in Scotland Plaza, right off the hump of Southern University. They asked me to write a grant that would award them some money to be able to bring 30 free concerts to Scotlandville, and so I did that. The grant got awarded, which I'm about a million and a half dollar fundraiser through grants or so, and when that got funded they asked me to come back and be the one to book the artists and help manage the stage. And so I've been doing that for a couple of years, along with the Crew of Olshan Parade and Festival.
Speaker 2:I've been curating that through Yellow Door for a couple of years now, so it's just kind of been a journey. And so now I've kind of transitioned to making music that I just really want to make oh, excuse me, and I do it because I'm good at it and because I like it. I taught myself how to mix and master everything. So anything you hear I have mixed and mastered on my own Wrote, written, recorded, edited, mixed, mastered all of that by myself. And so it's just been a. It's been a fun journey.
Speaker 2:It's been an interesting journey, you know, as I, as I'm pushing 40, I'll be 36 in a couple of weeks you know I'm looking forward, I'm looking towards retirement and like what that means for me and all of that. Not that I would stop creating, but just stop kind of trying to pursue the. Maybe this single will blow up and I'll be able to do this full time, you know, but I'm in a position where I'm lucky enough to have been an executive director, often had some really cool jobs that make me very, a very competitive candidate for a lot of things with high paying not high paying well-paying job, and so I get to do it as a hobby, which is very nice, and so maybe I'll transition. It's just being a hobby soon and not a like career thing, but who knows, you can blow up at any moment, you know so first I want to give a shout out to byron washington.
Speaker 1:I'm the executive chair for the north baton rouge ignited development district and we were able to give some money for the music sessions. It was kind of late, but we were able to get it through, um, and so I'm just happy. I is a really great event If you can ever make it to Baton Rouge y'all. There's some great things going on over there at Skyland Plaza all the time, so just make sure you come out but also check out those Yellow Door sessions.
Speaker 1:When I listen to you talk about your artistry and you said a lot of it is character-driven, right, and so I'm a writer. I don't write music, but I write poetry, I write fiction, nonfiction, of course, academic texts and stuff like that, because I'm an academia and so I'm the type of person where I see character in narrative and everything, right. And so I can't remember where I was. Somebody maybe was on social media with somebody, was like people are just like, hey, it's raining outside and they're like, well, an artist is like the sky is pouring right now. The sky is crying because they're tears. You know, it's something crazy, because, as an artist, you want to add this extra imagery and this extra meaning, you have to add alliteration and all this stuff to your art.
Speaker 1:So now that you are in a space where it's possible that your art becomes a hobby, right, and with it becoming a hobby, you get to also make it, I believe, in the exact way that you want to make it right. Because when you're trying to, you know, get a, maybe get a record deal, or if you're trying to, like you say, have, maybe, have this single, possibly blow up, there are certain things that you know that the audience is looking for, and there are certain things that you know maybe national record play, record labels or radio shows are looking for, and so a lot of artists go about chasing that. And one of the things that I've been thinking about is, of course, as a fan of hip-hop. I've been enjoying the drake and kendrick battle just as much as everybody else. One of the things that kendrick has shown us is that caring about the art is still important is it?
Speaker 1:right? I believe so. I believe caring about the art is still important. Now we, on the other side of that, I think we have the total opposite, where we can see how pop music has been shifted in a way where, as long as this candy cutter and it's going to get people to dance with on TikTok, we like it.
Speaker 1:But sometimes, if I want to turn on the To Pimp a Butterfly album which has these heavy jazz and funk samples, you know, and I'm a 30, 30, 33 year old, 34 year old in a couple, in a couple weeks or a few weeks now, it's like I didn't grow up with jazz and I didn't grow up with funk like that. Now, magga Brain by Funkadelic is one of my favorite albums, but those are things that I had to learn about, I had to find on my own in my search for art, and so when I think about just art in general and what you were just saying, it just makes me think about the care that you have to put into making art and the desire you have to put into wanting to continue to make it, even if the story isn't necessarily going the way that you want it to go. And the reason I say that is because I want to know what was your goal when you first started making art and how did that shift over time.
Speaker 2:Well, the goal was to get noticed. Right, the goal was to get noticed. I felt like I had I was. Well, let me back up.
Speaker 2:I've always struggled with self-confidence deeply, whether that's body or whether that's you know, abilities or accomplishments, whatever it may be, or whether that's you know, abilities or accomplishments, whatever it may be. And I made a very conscious decision in my mid, early 20s, 24, 25, that I needed to be more confident and be more, have a greater belief in myself, and so one of the things that that manifested in was I always felt like I needed a band, right, Like I need a band. I need friends, you know, who are going to play music with me. You know, tell me that I'm doing good, Tell me that I sound good, that I sing good, and I really, around 25, I started making my first album to be like why do you feel like you need other people? Like you are a great vocalist, you are a good writer. You know, I didn't know how to mix music at the time, but I was like you can learn in you. You can learn anything.
Speaker 2:you're a smart individual just take, you know, just take a leap and so around. After three years of kind of hunkering down and and just recording music, most of it never saw the light of day. Most of it, a lot of it, was just practice, right. But after three or four years of doing that, I finally stepped out and said, said I want to try and perform and shout out to Marcel P Black. He gave me my first opportunity to perform at what he called.
Speaker 1:Shout out to Marcel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, shout out to Marcel and I killed it right. And I killed it so much that I was invited back to be one of the all-stars, which they do 12. They did 12 shows a year. They chose six of the best performers from the year and they asked me to come back and do that and I was and I, you know, I killed it again. And throughout that whole year, you know, in those couple of years, from the time that I booked that first show with Marcel to 2025 now, I probably played like 600 shows. Right Of just me going out performing. But it was also, you know, like my performances are more performance art, which is why I navigated towards Kendrick.
Speaker 2:My songs go into each other. There are skits in the middle. When I perform, I practice ridiculously. If I know I have a show coming up and it's a big show, I'm usually practicing two weeks ahead of time. I try and dedicate between two and a half to three hours a night where I get my equipment out. I invested heavily in equipment. I have three or four vocal pedals that I use.
Speaker 2:I learned how to DJ. I learned how to run sound so that I understood. I started investing in microphones for different venues and different experiences. I have different cables for the same thing. I have different mixes, where some are more bass heavy for my live performances, some are a little more airy. I have them none of them are over vocals but I have some that come in at different places just so that I can have the ideal setup for wherever I am, and I practice all of those setups and so at any moment, I can switch on a dime and know exactly what's going to happen. I can switch microphones in the middle and understand, stand in a venue and do sound check and know that I need to switch this and I need to do that, I need to do this.
Speaker 2:But that's all about the performance of it and really taking into account the story that I want to tell when I'm performing right. The covers that I choose to do go into that as well, right. And so Kendrick is an anomaly because he's still able to break through that barrier in a way that no one has in a very long time, and the reason for that is our young people don't listen to hip-hop anymore, they listen to rap two completely different things. Right, there is no, as beyonce said, I look forward to a body of work. I want to hear the album, right, I want to hear the story that you tell. I want to know why, like I love the Weeknd's albums and I do the same thing, I love the Weeknd's albums because the way that I mix a song, the space that the song lives in the vocals, the way the vocals sit in the mix, tell a story about that song, right, like there's a perfect example is.
Speaker 2:There's a song that I have called Lay Hands On Me. That is a song that's about the desperation after a breakup, where you're really willing to make some very terrible choices that you know are a terrible idea. And in that song the vocals sit very far back and I can't remember who it was. But somebody asked me on the podcast, like, why did you make that decision? And I was like thank you for catching that, because most people don't catch that. It's because the character in that song is unsure, right, like his voice is quiet, because he's like should I make this choice or should I not? And by the time you get to the end of the song, the vocals kind of make it up towards the front of the song, because he's made his choice and he understands now that you know, or that he's more forceful in and committed to his choice. And you hear that all the time in kendrick's kendrick's music. You know, in my favorite kendrick songs sing about me I'm dying of thirst, like every verse, of course everybody lives it everybody.
Speaker 2:It's an amazing song when not to give anything away he says but if I die before I hear pow, pow and the shots go off right. Or or when it ends two bars before the hook comes in. Or in the second verse, when the female character in that particular one is saying I'll never fade away, I'll never fade away. And then for the next eight bars she just gradually fades out Until those are the artistic decisions that people don't notice or care about anymore, like Lil Y yanni ain't doing that, louisie bernie ain't doing that, rob 49 ain't doing that. And the second thing that it does is their music.
Speaker 2:Granted, I'm not the old head who's shit. I'm sorry, can I press on your podcast? I didn't know that. That's okay. I'm not the old head who's shitting on new music, because I like a lot of the new music that's out and I appreciate it for what it is.
Speaker 2:But we also need to recognize that the hip hop that we know we're not going to have that for much longer. When you think about under Kendrick Lamar, because Kendrick Lamar and J Cole probably got about another 8 years of domination. Kendrick Lamar is 37. Drake's almost got about another eight years of domination, right, kendrick Lamar is 37. Drake's almost 40, if we still want to count Drake in that Cole is, you know, might be 40 already.
Speaker 2:The young, when you look behind them, are who are the lyricists, who are the storytellers that we have coming up? They ain't popular. You got JID. You got Cordae. You got JID. J-i-d. You got Cordae. Who else? You know who else? So it's unfortunate, but we also just need to recognize that the industry has changed. The goal is to put out singles and catch fire, and when that single blows out, then you come out with another single and hope that you can catch fire again. You know it's not about putting together a body of work. As a matter of fact, I listened to Big X Glug's album, which had 15 songs and it was 28 minutes long. I'm sorry. What?
Speaker 1:Yep, they were all like two minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like what. What are we talking about?
Speaker 1:I want to know how he got the samples cleared. I want to know how he got the samples cleared. He had a sample on every song.
Speaker 2:He did. He did. And, for context, my favorite songs about like one of the songs that I have is called Ghost and it's seven minutes long. And I remember the producer telling me nobody is going to sit through this and listen to it for seven minutes. I was like I don't care, like you are going to sit here and you are going to listen to this seven minute song, because it takes me seven minutes to tell the story.
Speaker 2:It takes Kendrick Lamar 11 minutes to tell the story of Sing About Me. I'm Dying of Thirst, right. Like it takes time. I'm not going to rush through because I want your attention for two minutes. No, brother, you're going to sit here and you are going to listen to the art that I created. You wasn't complaining when that movie was three hours. You wasn't complaining when that TV show was 90, 90 minutes long. Sit here and listen to my art. The way that I want my stories to be told, you know. And so we gotta get. We gotta get back to a point where artists care more about the creation of art than they do being heard and being seen, because some people don't want to make music, some people don't want to be, or they just want to look cool and be seen, and that's unfortunate yeah, I.
Speaker 1:I can't remember who exactly it was. It was one of these young rappers. Might have been a young boy, I'm not sure, but they they. When they asked them like why do you make music? And they were like for money. And I get it. We stay in america. As a capitalist society. We all are gonna do something for money. Um, you know, but when it comes to art, I was just like man.
Speaker 1:I wish you would put your all into this and create a story for the people to actually feel. Like I love some of the songs. You know that people get hyped to Right. Like I love Young Boy. You know I love like some rock fortnight songs, like you mentioned previously.
Speaker 1:But at the end of the day, when I go back to my catalog at the end of the year, it's going to show some of the same songs that got the most plays the entire time and, like I was just mentioning previously, like one of my favorite albums is Funkadelic's Maggot Brain. The Maggot Brain song, where Eddie Hazel is playing the guitar for 10 minutes and 12 seconds and there's no lyrics. They talk at the front with the mother earth has been for the third time. Y'all have knocked her up. I've chased the maggots of the mind and the universe. Like they talk for 50 seconds and then it's just guitar for nine minutes and like 30 seconds, and so it's like. I love when an artist is willing to craft a story where, when kendrick brought out sing about me dying of, there were other artists who tried to copy that on their albums. I can think about Logic as an example. Perfectly.
Speaker 2:He had a song.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I used to like Logic, but then he started going a little crazy. But he had a song called Under Pressure on that album that was 11 and a half minutes, 12 minutes long, and he was basically took the same exact formatting as kendrick lamar. You could tell he looked up the kid and that's cool. And it's just like when you have an artist that has a skill like that, there's going to be some other people that recognize it and they want to, they want to pay homage to it, they want to mimic it, they want to recreate it, and you also gonna have some people that said, nah, that's too long, I'm not gonna listen to it, so I don't care. Like one of the things I liked about big x, the plugs album, is he tried to craft and, uh, I think the overall narrative of the album is like, yeah, I, I didn't have it at first, or I wasn't nobody at first, but now I am, and so, like, I love the song that he has. It was a good album. The song he has, uh, what he's talking, I didn't have it at first, or I wasn't nobody at first, but now I am, and so, like, I love the song that he has. It was a good album, the song he has.
Speaker 1:When he's talking to his therapist and they ask me how I'm doing, I say I'm not great, but good, I can't lie, I'm better doing better than I should, something like that. I'm like, yes, give me that it's two minutes and 18 seconds or something like that. But it gets to a point. But then you have some other people where it's just like turn up, turn up, turn up, turn up, turn up, turn up, turn up, and it loses the culture. So one of the things last year I presented on using hip hop in classrooms and culturally relevant pedagogy to teach kids about political power, and so one of the things that I had to go through in giving that presentation at South by Southwest and using hip hop pedagogy to teach in my classroom is to understand all of the elements of hip hop. Right, we got the emceeing, we got the break dancing, we got the DJing, we got the graffiti. But then there's number five knowledge of self. And one of the things that we have tried to do as it pertains to hip hop is we've tried to remove knowledge of self out of the music.
Speaker 1:Now, what a lot of people don't understand is when hip hop gets its starts in the early beginnings and you have people bringing knowledge of self as an element of hip hop that came from, actually a religious attitude Weird thing about New York where you got the five percenters up there and you got, you know, the guys of earth and the nation of Islam. They're bringing this understanding like hey y'all, you are a God, you are a king, respect yourself as such, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so when I go back and listen to Rakim, I hear him talking about knowledge itself. When I go back and listen to even LL Cool J, who was a more commercial rapper for his time when he first started, he's also mentioning knowledge yourself. And so now, when I get to the music and I think this goes back to the Kendrick and Drake situation is one of the things that really decided that battle was authenticity, and being authentic a lot of times happens once you know who you are.
Speaker 1:And so when we see Kendrick, we see a person where we're like this is him. He's, he's grown, he's changed, but this is the same person we remember from 2009. Right, and then when we see Aubrey, on the other hand, drake seems to be a character that he's playing. We all connected that this kid that was on degrassi, that eventually became a global superstar, was this type of person who had a connection with his feelings and with the art where he can make this melodic music sound so beautiful and so relatable.
Speaker 1:And then all of a sudden he starts shifting from that and now a lot of us believe outside of his off the, you know, I don't want to say off the court, but his off the court actions. You know the the, the touching and texting little girls, uh, the disrespecting black women, the specific massage in the war that he's showing to Serena Williams and to Rihanna and all the other women that he's dated. You know, I used to always say that him and J Cole do like a nice misogyny. You know they'll say something like I hate calling the women bitches, but the bitches love it like. It's always something like that. They had this nice form of misogyny where, as long as it is with a melodic note, people don't really pay attention to it, right? But then he started to go off the rails and this is where we get to where we are now, where I listen to the new album it sucked, did you?
Speaker 2:I made it three songs and cut it off three percent.
Speaker 1:Once I started something. I'm gonna finish it and I might hate myself for doing it, but I started it and I was just like this sucks in this thing, but you know thoroughly unenjoyable.
Speaker 2:I didn't even thoroughly unenjoyable, but I I also think that that we as black folks have limited um our experiences. You know my on my spotify my excuse me, I don't use spotify on my apple music rap. That lady right there that you see, that picture of Nina Simone was number one on my most listened to right and my favorite song by her is Another Spring, where she starts the song talking about how, you know, old people talk to themselves all the time when they're alone in their living room. I used to sit with this young, this old woman. Sometimes she told me, sometimes it gets so cold, the cold gets in my bones, right. And so she transitions from being this person and then she starts singing as the old woman who's talking about how she's ready to die because her husband's gone and her kids have gone on and moved on and don't talk to her. No more got families of their own. But then another spring is right outside my door, children playing birds are singing and I ain't sad. No more right like these if I.
Speaker 2:I played nina simone for my students and for anyone doesn't know nina simone. First of all she was a psychotic woman, a good kind of psycho, but was really good friends with malcolm x and was the first person to curse on a popular record when mississippi got damned, when she wrote after four girls where I can't remember it was, somebody got killed, some, some, some young girls in mississippi got killed and she was. Or in alabama got killed, excuse me when they bombed the um, the church, and she wrote mississippi got damned. That talks about those girls. I play nina simone for for my kids.
Speaker 2:What is this? Why are you listening to this? This is terrible music. First of all, that's a write-up and get out my room. Second of all, that's neat, that's nina simone, right, but they've lost that, that connection. They view it as they view things, as white people music and not music that's theirs. You know, like when I play local natives, who's my favorite band, um, what you doing listening to this white people music? Well, these white people are playing music that are, and I really like that music and I played paramore and in their defense they did like paramore because all black people love paramore.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure that's a rule of course but think about the think about the energy that you carry around when all you listen to is Youngboy and all you listen to is Rob 49 and all you listen to is Gangsta Music. And then you wonder why kids have such a warped view of life and why they're so quick to react and not respond and why they being able to to bare knuckle brawl as a, as a positive on your character. You know, not saying that defending yourself is a bad thing, but I had a conversation all the other day about they had a massive brawl at a at an apartment complex and they were talking about how one of my students told her oh she a dog like I ain't even gonna lie, she be fighting high schoolers. And then she eighth grade and I'm just like okay, but you don't know, you can't identify an adjective in a sentence. You know Like, so when, when the priorities are those things, because that's what you feed your soul. Eventually your soul is going to be starved and it's going to be devoid of the things that make us complex and complete individuals and have the ability to be introspective and to feel things from music that aren't anger or or just sadness, but to be able to to feel joy and inspiration and and you know all the other things empathy that are so important to being a complete person, and I just think that our young people again, I'm not the old head hating on new music. I listen to new music all the time and I enjoy it, but that's because I have a balanced diet of music. My plate is full with the red meats, the grains and fruits, and when we talk about and we want to converse about what the issues are in our community, I think a major part of it is how we view creativity and how we view creation and the things that we consume. And Kendrick Lamar.
Speaker 2:To me, that Super Bowl performance proved that there is no space for art as protest and as creation, because the folks who got it first of all were Kendrick Lamar fans, and if you've ever watched a Kendrick Lamar performance on any level, whether it's the BET stage or otherwise, you would have known that he wasn't coming out there with fireworks and playing his hits. I mean at the BET Awards in 2015,. He played how Much a Dollar Costs or Black of the Berry. Excuse me, that ain't even one of the best songs on the album, but he did that to prove a point and so to think that he was going to come out and do anything. But that is crazy.
Speaker 2:And the second thing is, even if you did dislike that because you view you view art as supposed to be entertainment, only keep that at the house. Don't go out on beyonce internet talking about how much you didn't like it and giving those you know, white folks who didn't like it for other reasons than the fact that they didn't like the performance, to be honest, right, who don't like it for other reasons ammo to be like, look, I can say it was terrible because this black person said it was terrible, and like we have just lost that consciousness of togetherness that made us so successful in everything that we do. But let me get off my high horse and soapbox. It's about those young people.
Speaker 1:And back in my day, nah, but spike lee uh had a quote one time and he actually uh, I think he added it to the movie black clansmen, uh, in a line of dialogue, and he was basically saying that for black artists and black academics, we have a responsibility to help the world see and define what is beautiful. When we write about things, when we photograph things, when we draw things, when we film things, things, we're giving ourselves an opportunity to shape the way that the world views these things. And you can see when an artist is taking the responsibility of making art that is meaningful, that can be powerful, versus an artist who's just saying like, hey, I found a way to make money and I'm here, right, oh yeah, but I got two funny stories, two quick funny stories on thinking about music and thinking about Nina Simone specifically. I teach a hip-hop and politics class at Southern University and so part of the student's grade is they have to pick a song every week for the lecture that we're doing, and I don't give them a parameter like hey, it has to be a protest song or it has to be a song about politics, because music is subjective. You might get a message that you need in a song that is about something totally different, right? And so I remember we were in class and I have a lecture called who created the hood. It's a two-part lecture, double entendre. The first part is about the government creating the ghettos that black people stay in. The second part is about the kkk and white supremacist organizations. And so it's a double entendre, two-part lecture who Created the Hood? And so I pick a song for every week with the students, just to kind of give them an explanation of what the week is going to be like. And so I picked Nina Simone's version of Strange Fruit. Right, and you know, nina Simone's version of Strange Fruit is so eerie. It feels like you're there when she's singing it.
Speaker 1:Me, being the idiot that I am, I decided you know what I'm about to turn off the lights in the classroom. I'm about to let this picture there was a picture in the lecture of the KKK with burning crosses, and I left that picture up on there. One of the kids in the classroom they're not kids, they're young adults One of the young adults in the classroom was like oh my gosh, man, this song's so deep. I ain't never heard this. And at first I was taken aback. I'm like this is Nina Simone Strange Fruit, how have you never heard this song? But on the other side I was like, well, I'm glad that I'm able to introduce to you something historic, something powerful, something meaningful.
Speaker 1:But then I got another story and my students who take me they know I have a hate list. There are five people on my hate list that I talk about all the time and one of those people is the initials are TP. And so one of my students told me her song for the week was Sam Cooke, a Change Gonna Come. Now, the irony here is this student is from Shreveport Louisiana, or no, she's from Oakdale Louisiana, but North Louisiana. And if anybody knows the story of Sam Cooke's A Change Gonna Come, it was written after his experience at a hotel in Shreveport Louisiana. So this story, this song, kind of comes from where she comes from. Yeah, but she picked the song and the students got to give me an explanation how does this song go with the lecture that we're having this week? How does it go with the discussion? And she said I say so, why did you pick that song? She said, oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I saw it on this movie, daddy's Little Girl, and I thought it was cool and my heart dropped because I was like, wait, you only heard Sam Cook's. A Change Is Gonna Come, because you was watching Daddy's Little Girl for the 100th time on BET. At that moment I was like, all right bro, I'm becoming the old head, like I can't be Unk. I can't be Unk until I turn 35. I'm big bro right now. I'm big bro Thirty five, I become a, you know. But all right man.
Speaker 1:Look, we went on that. We discussed politics, we've discussed music, but at the Things Fall Apart podcast, where this is a podcast to rebuild we're always asking our guests to be able to give a guide for the listeners on what you went through and how you were able to get over it. I think it's very important to let people know that things fall apart but you're able to put them back together again. And so for you, mr dexter jackson, for you, lord dex, for you, dexter nicholas you know all of the, the titles that you've carried what was the moment in your life when things fell apart and how were you able to put it back together?
Speaker 2:You know, I don't think it's a moment. I think my life is an exemplar of nothing ever really comes together in the way that you hope, right. But what I can say not to ruin your whole question what I can say is that I've been on a continuous journey to try and figure out how to be better and how to bend the universe to my will, almost right. There have been a number of different times, most recently over the last summer when my job, when I was executive director, I got white woman at my job and if you know, you know I'm not gonna go into super details, but for those of us who are in the professional world, you know what it means to get white woman and that was very, very difficult and still something I'm going through right now, a very difficult time where I come through it very damaged and very untrusting and just very hard on myself, but things fall apart all the time. The question is, what is your process, your process to putting them back together? And for me? For me, that is really understanding what I control and, a lot of times, acquiescing to the universe or God or karma, whatever your belief system, whatever your belief system is In my early 20s, in my 20s in general, and to an extent now, it was about gathering knowledge right and learning not just from my experiences but from other people's not just from my experiences but from other people's and that looked like reading every book that I could every book, non-fiction, about specific topics, but also reading as much fiction as I can, because I think one thing people lose sight of is that fiction stories do teach you things right. It's not just about the story, it you. There are a number of times where I found myself in a situation that played out in a book and I was like good thing I read that In a fiction book. Good thing I read that, because this is a great way to navigate this system Learning to find your tribe. I always struggled with fitting in, I always struggled with having confidence, and the thing that I learned is eventually, your tribe finds you. It may be later in life, your journey is your journey, but you have to be the steward, the captain of that ship. You have to figure out. You have to figure out what it is that needs to be fixed and what works for you as the solution. Right, Like currently. I mean, I'll run the story now when I got white woman.
Speaker 2:You know, I was devastated, just devastated, because I created an organization where you were encouraged to tell the truth. If it was a difficult truth. I never punished anyone for telling the truth. You know, to me or anyone else, I put my team's needs above everything. Right? You're a person first. You're an employee second. You know I didn't people would take time off and I wouldn't use the PTO because I'm like what? Use the PTO for an emergency. If you need a day off, just take the day off, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:And as I've been talking with my mentor, lisa Delpit shout out to Lisa Delpit, who has been helping me walk through the trauma that I experienced I've really just come to understand that, yes, that fell apart, but everything doesn't fall apart because you made a mistake. Everything isn't your fault. But that doesn't mean that you can't analyze the situation and see what you could do better and what you learn for the next time. It doesn't mean that you stop trying to grow and it also doesn't mean that you try and enact vengeance on the people who did that to you. You just kind of got to walk away and keep your head high and figure you know, move on. And so from that, you know, I was like well, I finally got my dream job. I screwed it up was my initial. You know, my initial feeling on it was I screwed it up, I should have done this better. And don't get me wrong, you know, like, like George Washington said in his farewell address, I am I'm not going to say I didn't make any mistakes, but I know that if I did make a mistake it wasn't because I was trying to be malicious or mean or anything like that. It was either lack of knowledge or lack of experience.
Speaker 2:And as I walked away from that and couldn't find another job, right, and luckily I have really good friends who saw me going through this, and one of my good friends, marcy, was like look, I know you said you never want to go back to the classroom again, but you're really good at it. We have a job opening. I think you would, we could, you would be a really good fit and it would really help me because we need a, we really need an English and social studies teacher and you have a degree in political science, right. And so you know, I was like you know I can do anything for nine months, you know whatever. And plus, you know it would be nice to just get re-centered with the kids and and why I do the work that I do. And so all of those decisions have led to this moment of me realizing that I'm a good teacher, right, and I'm able to do things really well with kids that other people struggle with, but also give me the space to make a lot of decisions that I had been putting off for a while.
Speaker 2:You know like I wanted to go away for grad school. I have the time now, like research, and you know I'm not committed to anything and be able to do that. I wanted to make another album. Finally, I'm not leading an organization. I get to write music and I have time off and everything's not on my shoulders and I'm able to just do a lot of the things that I wanted to do.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, I mean, for me it's a constant struggle because I typically, over the last five to seven years, have made the same mistakes over and over again. I typically, over the last five to seven years, have made the same mistakes over and over again and that have resulted in, you know, burnt bridges and relationships and all of that. But I'm willing to sit back and say that the only common denominator in those things is me, and that's something that you know. You have to be able to sit back and self-reflect and understand that, first of all, everybody's not out to get you. Most people don't care about you enough to try and get you. That's a big part of it, and that if the same mistakes are being made over and over again, you got to recognize that it's you. It just is.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying that everything is 100% your fault. I'm not saying that it's going to work out the way you want it to, but you have to step back and look at what you're bringing into the world and how you're affecting your own circumstances For anyone who's listening as you walk through life and experience those things, which I'm very lucky to say. I was an executive director at 33. I was your age and that's usually a role that's 40 and up, 45 and up, you know and so I was very lucky to be able to get a shot at it and really gain some good experience early. And, as I look forward to getting my Master's of Public Administration from George Washington University or University of Seattle or California State, los Angeles whichever one of them give me the most money. We're going to be 100% out of society, as I look forward to that.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm able to move through the world just a little bit differently and I just encourage you to self reflect. I encourage you to recognize that everything isn't your fault and to learn quicker than I did that you are deserving to be in rooms that you go into, no matter your skill set, no matter your that you go into, no matter your skill set, no matter your resume, your college status because, as a reminder, I did not graduate college until I was 32 or 33 years old. The same day Kendrick Lamar released Mr Morales and the Big Steppers is the day that I graduated from Southern University, so that was only three years ago. I believe you are worthy and the mistakes that you make don't define you and things are going to fall apart.
Speaker 2:So you know, and as time goes on, what's important and hurtful today is a distant memory tomorrow and you just have to continue to get up, continue to move, continue to try and be a little bit better than you were the day before, and just understand that your steps are ordered by whatever, whatever higher power you believe in. Your destiny was already determined forever ago. It just was. You're just trying to get to that place, that's it. So if you need me, reach out, I'll definitely give you a pep talk, but also I'm going to tell you maybe you need to get your life together and and and take ownership and do what you need to do to change your circumstance.
Speaker 1:So really thankful for some of the things that you shared, especially at the end, speaking of thinking about self-reflection, thinking about knowing that you deserve to be in the rooms that you enter into.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that I really enjoyed with you, this conversation, is you were very adamant about saying I'm a great singer, I'm a good songwriter, I'm a good mixer now, I wasn't before, but I taught myself, and I am now Speaking to the ability that you have. I think often a lot of us, as Black people, and especially younger people, we get imposter syndrome. We get this thought process that we are not supposed to be in the room, or that we aren't prepared, or that this person is better than us, or just because they have better opportunity or better resources, that they're better prepared. You're living proof, I'm living proof, that that just isn't true, right? And I think Michelle Obama says something similar in her book about going into these rooms and thinking these people are super smart and then, once you get there, you realize they're not, and so I'm really thankful that you were able to speak to that point about being self-reflective, like having confidence in yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but also I want to be clear to whoever's listening right now Not only are they usually not as smart as you think they are, they're not as skilled as you think they are. Right, I can get. I can sit down and write a program, a mentorship program. I've written mentorship curriculums. I can write a grant. I can do. And there are people who are higher than me asking me questions about this stuff.
Speaker 2:I think one of the things that you have to move through the world with is you know, a lot of times, especially black and brown folks, our abilities are either underestimated or suppressed. Right, we look at the opportunities that other people get around us, the networks that they have, the fact that we got to start from the bottom and build everything up, you know, from the ground level, but all that means is that when it's time to get out in the real world, oh, you got to see me. You might be comfortable, valedictorian. You might be comfortable, dude, whose family owns a business that you were able to take over, but when you got to sit down in a room full of people who can make important decisions and you got to be judged on your skill and your ability to articulate, oh, you're going to have to see me right. You think it's a cakewalk. It is not a cakewalk. And not only is it not a cakewalk, I'm that one. That's, I'm on the.
Speaker 2:There's a great story about Kobe Bryant and Jay Williams where they were about to play each other. Jay Williams said he liked to get a work in two or three hours before a game, you know, the morning of a game or whatever and when he walked out on the court he's usually the only person on the court and Kobe Bryant's one of my favorite people, by the way. Right, this is where I live by mama mentality. He said he walked on the court and Kobe Bryant was already there with a good lather. It looked like he had already been in the gym in a real workout before a game. And so Jay Williams said he did his workout. He was like I feel good. And he said when he was leaving, kobe Bryant was still on the court, still getting that workout in that good lather, in sweating it up. And so when they saw each other after the game, he asked Kobe something to the tune of like man. After the game, he asked Kobe something to the tune of like man, why you work out so hard before and after the game. He was like Kobe I just wanted you to know that I was there before you and that I was going to work harder after you left. That's it and that is the way that I live my life. I'm going to be the first one to show up See kills. I'm going to be the first one that every time, I'm going to be the first one to show up seed kills, I'm gonna be the first one there. Every time I'm gonna be the last one to leave.
Speaker 2:So when you tired like this is why artists don't like working with me in particular. This is a big reason why I don't have features on my songs is because when you're in the studio with me, you are in the studio with me right, like don't come here half stepping. Don't come here half-stepping. Don't come here. You don't know your lyrics. All right, you don't have to sit there for 30 minutes and sit and learn your lyrics, because I'm not going to let you read off your phone and record, because it doesn't give the same emotional context as when you're able to just focus on executing the words as opposed to reading them and executing them. Right. You need to do that takeover. We need to do X, y and Z. This is why people don't want to work with me.
Speaker 2:And actually I went to a friend's dinner about a year ago right at a year ago and his nephew was there. His nephew's an up and coming, or was an aspiring rapper at the time. He was 16 or 17. And he had seen me perform or something. He was like oh, I saw you at this festival. You were so good. What I got to do to get in the studio with you. I really want to work with you.
Speaker 2:And my friend, antoine Antoine Lacey, looked at his nephew and was like you don't want that. And Neff was like what you mean, I don't want that. He was like let me tell you something you are too lazy to work with him. It ain't going to work. Don't do it.
Speaker 2:And that is the reputation that I am most proud of, even with my students, if they bring me something that is garbage, I don't mince words. This is terrible. What is this? Do it again. You know what I'm saying and so you need to walk in understanding that you are the prize. What you have done has prepared you for the moment and, in most cases, being where we're from, it is? I don't know. I keep seeing something pop up on my screen, sorry. In most cases, where we come from, we are the most prepared, the most educated, the most experienced. The only thing we're fighting for is the opportunity. But once we get excuse me, once we get the opportunity, oh that's a wrap. That's why Black women are the most educated. Black women are the most competent people I've ever worked with in my life. Point blank period. If you need a pep talk, let me know I got you. If you want to work, let me know I'll work with you, but you ain't going to have a good time, I promise.
Speaker 1:Man Dexter, thank you so much for being the first guest on this season. Three of the things fall apart. Podcast man you are an artist, you're creative. Let the people know where they can follow you at. Where can they find you?
Speaker 2:yeah, so on instagram you can follow me at um king lord dex on facebook is dexter nicholas. Both of my names are dexter nicholas on facebook, if you want to follow my personal page or my um, my other page, and if you just want to, you know, if you want to chat, if you want to hit me up, if you just want to chat, if you want to hit me up, if you just want to talk music, if you want to do anything, you can hit my email at stupidhappysadboy at gmail and, of course, you can stream all my music anywhere. You get your music under the names Dexter Nicholas and Lord Dex, because I'm too lazy.
Speaker 1:Man, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. Of course, I know know you. I've met you many times before, but this is the first time we've really been able to have a continuous extensive conversation, and so I learned a lot of stuff about you tonight. But also I'm just very thankful that, uh, you have a great story that people need to hear, and this is why I have this podcast. I believe in people telling their own stories in the way that they do it, and you just told your story in such a great way that I think people are going to want to listen to and it's going to actually help some people as well. So thank you so much for coming, man I hope so.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it and, doc, you know, if you ever need me up there on the yard, let me know. I'm about to fill out my application for master's of public administration please believe it's cool, but thank you for having me. My new album, my next single, comes out March 11th. March 11th Everywhere you get your music is called Butter. Go check it out. Other than that, doc, see you on the other side, right.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir, all right y'all. So, as I sign off, as I always say, don't hurt your brother, help your brother. When you help your sister, when you help your sister, you help yourselves. Everybody bye.