The Man Who Turned Dyslexia Into a Legacy: Okyeame Kwame | | Masterminds Podcast EP79

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He couldn't read. He came last in class. His father sent him to a teacher specifically to beat the failure out of him. Thirty years later, he has three master's degrees, is pursuing a PhD, has over a billion streams to his name, and is one of the most curious, well-read, and deliberately excellent human beings on the continent.

In this episode of the Masterminds Podcast, Richie Mensah sits down with Okyeame Kwame — rapper, author, activist, and one of Ghana's most enduring legends — for one of the most wide-ranging conversations this show has ever hosted. From being a dyslexic child in Fancy New Town who found his voice through poetry, to learning to rap from Lord Marquis through James Hadley Chase novels, to building a 21-year marriage on ego management and forgiveness, to healing from depression by reading every wisdom tradition on earth — this is the full story of a man who turned every disadvantage into depth. This episode will stay with you.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How Okyeame Kwame overcame dyslexia through poetry and rap — and why that built a discipline most people never develop
• The Lord Marquis rap apprenticeship and how literature became his entry point into his own genius
• Why consistency is the only thing that creates longevity — and why motivation has nothing to do with it
• Why he only works with people who are smarter than him in their field — and what that has produced
• Why the death of community is the root cause of so much modern unhappiness
• How ego management has kept his marriage alive for 21 years — and what he promised Anika on their wedding day
• Why he refused to let anyone indoctrinate his children — and what his son did at age seven that proved it was working
• Why Ghana's education system produces workers and not thinkers — and what needs to change
• How he healed from depression by throwing away expectations, going vegan, and reading from every wisdom tradition on earth
• Why love is his religion and what he wants his legacy to be

Chapters

00:00 – Intro
 06:36 – Dyslexia: When Books Flew Off the Page
 10:16 – Lord Marquis and the Rap Apprenticeship
 21:28 – Only Work With People Smarter Than You
 27:05 – We Have Lost Community to Social Media
 39:29 – 21 Years of Marriage: Ego Management and Forgiveness
 53:07 – Raising Children Without Indoctrination
 01:12:40 – Ghana's Education System Creates Workers Not Thinkers
 01:23:09 – Love Is My Religion
 01:36:06 – Depression, Healing and Becoming the New Okyeame Kwame

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When I was younger, I would open the book and the West will start flying at me. I went to Lord Marquis. I said, Teach me how to rap. Then Lord Marquis said, Bring your results. When I bought my results, I will have one day intimate rap. I want to understand the most important thing in life, especially if you want to move ahead, is consistency. Why is our relationship working even though we are two completely difficult, imperfect people? It's because we know that running away is not an option. My promise to Africa when we got married was not to get to us back, I will never lie to you.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

How do you handle people's response to your deconstruction from Christianity?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

I barely take advice from older people. I can work with you as an older person, but I like to be advised by younger people. 1920. Because our ideas are a cake.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Before we jump into the conversation, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for supporting and deciding to watch this episode. But now I have a favor subscribe to the channel. Subscribing to the channel helps me and the entire mastermind team to continue bringing you wonderful conversations and episodes that bring you closer to being the mastermind you deserve to be. So join the community. Now, this episode, honestly speaking, should have been my first episode. Because if I am interviewing people with great minds, people whose minds can make you marvel and question everything that you are doing, the man sitting in front of me should have been the first person I spoke to. Because be it creativity, be it being a genius himself, to understanding business, to building brands, to becoming a legend who is continuing his legacy. This man has done it all and is now even passing it on to two more geniuses. My friend, my big brother, and the awesome legend and the first musician on the Masterminds podcast, Ochiame Kwame, the rapduct. Mr. Mensa.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

That's a good intro. I almost fell down. If I wasn't exercising my neck out of the chair by now, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

But everything I said is true. Thank you. You know, guys, even before we started, we've been sitting down having a two-hour conversation because I don't lose any opportunity to just tap into this man's brain. Thank you. Me too. Same here, same here. I always like to start from the beginning, right? I always want to understand what growing up was like that helped build the mindset. You grew up in is it Fanti Fantinu Town. Fantinu town in Kumarse. So, what was childhood like that helped build the Chamekwandel?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

I was born in Ashtown. Okay. Ashtown is Ashantinu Town. And then when I was maybe eight, um my mother moved to Fantinu Town.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

So Fantinu Town is like just like Ashton, but it just has more Fanties than Ashanti's. That's why it's called Fantinu Town. One of the Ashanti uh kings was very generous, and he decided to share Kumase with people from all around the world. So when you go to Kumase, you have Mosizongo for people from the north, Asanwase, you have uh Enzima. Okay, there's Angloga for the Elver people, and there's Fantinu Town for the Fanti. So he wasn't called Enzima. Yes, Enzima for people from Enzima. So he surrounded himself with he was trying to build like a portpour of a cosmopolitan city. Okay. And he thought that um cultural diversity was important. So he brought people from all around to come and sit around. So that is how come there's a place in Kumasi called Fantinu Town. So I spent most of my formative years there. And in Fantinu Town, what did we have? We had um the it looks just like Anadabraka, where there are big houses built by cocoa farmers and earlier businessmen during uh colonial or post-enkroma farmers, building story buildings that we call abroad sign. So people who are slightly below, like, or there were people in the working class who come and rent two bedrooms or one bedroom in a full house that we call like a it's like an efficacy type of fee where we have like 40 uh families growing together. Um, it was a great, a unique opportunity to learn from everything that was happening in every home, to have friends. So if you grew up in a place like Fantinu Town, it was a proper, proper community. So apart from even the whole community, that every senior brother is an uncle who can spank you for doing something bad. Within your house, there are 100 children. Oh, okay, you're and about 50% of them could be your age. So you are interacting in school, you come home, you are interacting. Did we have like um leaders in Fantino Town? Not that many. It was quite difficult to see uh people rise and become lawyers and doctors, and but what was usually the case was that people will complete school, high school, and go to a doom to sell, or their parents will have shops and then they'll go and shop, or they'll travel to Germany, Holland, and um America. Boggers, they'll be they'll become boggers, and when the both boggers came back, they were the heroes of our community. So growing up in Fantino Town, you have plans of becoming a trader or becoming a bogger. You know, so when I was growing up, I just knew that I was going to become one of these. So I think this is in a brief, in a nutshell. But once in a while, some a kakra will rise up and become a medical doctor, someone will rise up and become a lawyer, someone will come become a lecturer from Fantino Town. But the key thing was to either become a trader or a bogger, a bogger.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

So then what led to the transition from trader, bogger to rapper?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Okay, so I um when I was a kid, so before we came to Fantino Town, I had uh learning difficulties. I know you are going to ask about, so I won't go too much into it. So growing up, I had a a lot of difficulty in learning my ABCs, uh, my mass. So I have what you call dyslexia and dyscarpia. So it was difficult for me. For those who don't know, explain what dyslexia is. So dyslexia is a very, very difficult a person who has a difficult time um reading, beginning with memorizing letters, bringing phonics together, pronouncing words, reading and making meaning out of already existing tests. Like you pick a so when I was younger, I open a book and the words will start flying at me. You know, so so even till date, what someone, an average person will read once and understand. If I'm trying to read it for academic purposes, I must read it five times and write it down and come back and look at it again to be able to, or I must create stories out of them to be for it to mix meaning to me. So growing up, I didn't know of any coping mechanisms, and I was completely dyslexic. You know, so I wasn't very happy at home because my father, who was a very smart man, expects me to succeed academically, yeah, and I'm not. And my mother is a teacher, she understands a little bit, she has some patience for me, but my father is the leader in the home. So together they take me and send me to my class two teacher, whose name is Mrs. Boama, and tells Mrs. Boama that I grow when I need so so sort of beat it out of him. So I go to school, I'm unable to add, I come last in class, and Mrs. Boama is shouting, scolding, beating, finger wagging, and I'm depressed in school. And I'm coming home to report what's being done to me, and my parents have sanctioned it. So I was trapped between that, yeah, completely depressed. But I missed that. My mom had introduced me to Akant poems as early as four. So, and these poems, beautiful words may have penny four, may I have a friend this year, and I dare me sang me nine can Sabra Bobe Dio, Abrabo Bem Roman Fanyaga, Fis Ensu Bussi Kwinewan, a dear busy quainhua no man found, the ensue ye no weabe ye in sure in chini and coonsre I wadu and I mean these poems, I can't beautiful account poems. I remember that I would go to school and be beaten in the head, and then I'll come home afraid of homework. But between that period, people will come and carry me from house to house to house to go and recite these poems, and the satisfaction that it gave my audience gave me a sense of ownership of my spirit. And I said that one day when I grew up, I'm going to stay in this very small corner, and that is what made me a rapper.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Interesting. Yes, so did the poems actually help you to overcome the dyslexia?

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yes, so um, fast forward, um, secondary school, 1992, and I'm failing in maths, accounting, commerce, I'm getting nine, which is an I came to an F now in everything, but in English, literature, and in Akhan, I'm coming out one, a first one or two. You know, so I just decided to stay there. And then when I completed my O levels, usually I got my nines from my my O levels, and then I went to a gentleman in Fantinu Town called Lord Marcus, and I asked Lord Marcus to teach me how to rap. Okay, the house that we lived in was a nightclub, it was called Kupacabana. Before then, it was called uh it was called Saturday Night Club. That one was a bar, they became a club, and so from the eight from the time I was eight till I was eighteen, there was music blurring at home from Monday to Monday, 6 a.m. to 6 a.m. So I developed a big library of songs, funk, high life, big band high life, soul, jazz. I was fortunate enough to watch Michael Jackson uh movies and Michael Jackson dances because the nightclub had a big screen TV. You know, so with all that and rap music becoming the gem and everyone catching the fever, I went to Lord Marcus. I said, Teach me how to rap. Then Lord Marcus said, Bring your results. When I brought my results, I said, I wanna intimum rap. You know, so you are too dumb, you can't rap. So I begged him. And then he said that okay, because you did very well in literature, I'm going to teach you how to rap. But he will give me a James Hardley Chase book and teach me um one literary device, a metaphor. He said, Go and underline all the metaphors in this book and bring it back in four days. Okay, then I'll go and read the book, underline metaphors. Then the following day, the full when I'm back, he'll give me another one, simile, oxymoron, alliteration. And so by the time I was getting ready to write my second world war, which is to repeat my exam, my whole levels. Yeah, Lord Marcus had almost sort of subdued the dyslexia in me and giving me the confidence that I can read and understand because he had found what was interesting to me in the concept of storytelling. So he's teaching me rap, showing me examples of great rappers and how eloquent they were. Um Big Daddy King, um, Furious Five, um KRS One, uh, Later Nas, yeah, and all these people. When I listened to I said they were prolific, they were intelligent, you're talking about mass, they are talking about uh quantum physics. Um uh this group from New York that was akin to NW, I forgot their name, that method man was a part of. Um Wu Tang. Wu Tang. When I listened to Wu Tang, I realized that no, no, no, no. If I'm going to become a rapper, then I must improve my lexicon, improve the library of knowledge in my head. So Lord Marcus had used my use like a horse and a carol effect, used my interest in wanting to become a rapper to draw out of me all the things that teachers and parents couldn't draw. So, yes, their rap music, through the help of Lord Marcus, improved my confidence and gave me the opportunity to be able to speak like this.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Wow. I'm hearing so much in this story that you've told. I mean, the first thing is the fact that I know for a fact a lot of dyslexic people have shun in the world because they look at the world differently. It's true, which brings some level of creativity that most people aren't able to embody. And the second thing is I know that overcoming a challenge actually builds you to make you stronger. So now I actually understand how you're able to take your time and learn and grow so much because what most people found as basic studying, you had to challenge yourself into becoming someone who could study. Yes. So it's it builds that discipline where now when you take something, you learn, like you push yourself on it. And then the third one, too, is how Lord Marcus used your interest to actually push you further.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Which means most people who are trying to train children or teach people, and they are trying to push them out.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Trying to force them, yes, trying to force their regular academics of look, memorize, regagitate, look right. They are trying to force it on everyone. Exactly. All of us don't have the same brain. Some of us are neurodivergent. It doesn't mean you are stupid, it just means that you are different, and therefore you must learn differently.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

This is nice. I hope you educationists are listening to this. Everyone's biggest aim is to build wealth. Now, anyone who knows what they are about will tell you the one true way to build wealth is to have a system that gains that wealth over time. Now, most people are suffering to what system or what tool can they use? How did they get to invest easily? How do they get to invest over time? Small amounts, compound interest, and build their wealth. Well, that tool is Achieve by Petra. Download Achieve by Petra now and let's build wealth together. Now, let's come to what you currently are. Look, you are one of the few people I know in the entertainment industry who's transcended different decades, different generations. I want to understand how you've been able to do that. How, as time is evolving, you manage to still stay relevant and present with your talent.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

How? Thank you, thank you. You know, I don't get these questions asked. But that's a very, very interesting question. I think that for me, the most important thing in life, especially if you want to move ahead, is consistency. It's not motivation, it's not uh it's just it's dedication over a long period of time through action, creates consistency. Yeah, and because I find it difficult to learn, uh and I've I see that if I don't evolve, I dissolve. Therefore, I'm a constant learner. So I am always learning. And once I have the knowledge and I don't put the knowledge into practice, at my office we call it a hard drive behavior where you have lots of pictures and content and things on the hard drive, and you're not publishing them, you know. So I'm just publishing the things that I'm learning consistently. Okay, and I'm consistent. I am the question is how have I become um been able to evolve through the changing times? Yeah, I think it's because I am consistent. I'm consistent with knowing that having conclusions is wrong, and therefore, when the systems are changing, I'm not stuck in my ways. Okay, I have respect for Kwame Yujin's era, therefore, I'll make music with him. I have respect for Sarko Deus' era, therefore, I'll learn from his music. I have respect for the for uh for the olive the boy, Olive the Boy and Kodo Black's era. Therefore, I listened to it with an open heart, knowing perfectly well that this is completely different from what I am used to, and what can I learn from it to be able to make what I'm used to better? Okay, I called Kiddie one time and he had made the song. The song just sang him two lines, two uh bars. The song went into the chorus. You know that the classic music creation style, yeah, it's an intro, a four-bar intro, yeah, 16 bar verse, an eight-bar chorus, yes, 16 bar verse, a hook, a prank chorus, yeah, a change, another chorus, a resolution. This is the good old days. Exactly. Now it is not like that. The song is two minutes because Spotify is paying you for only 30 30 percent of this or 30 sec 30 seconds of the song being streamed, yeah. Therefore, the longer it is, what is then the 30 percent? You know, so I'm listening to Kiddie's music. He did an album that beat the Made in Ghana album at the uh TV T GMA album the um golden boy album. Exactly. There's a song on the album where he sings two lines and it gets to the chorus. I think, oh baby, you know, we are outside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We are outside. Champagne for my pain. I did for my lane. Every day it's a birthday thing. We gain chorus. Champagne for my pain, and everything it makes a lot of sense, and then the chorus comes in. This is like the whole song is an excuse to put the chorus. I didn't look at it, I called him. I said, How did you do it? How is it? Because it is very, very unusual to what we know. Yeah, so when I bring it into business, I'm calling people who do better business than I do, like Albert Okran, and people in my space who are working in the sort of arts and entrepreneur space, like Ancle Bo White, yeah, Albert Okran, um, Yola, and the wife Abraham O'Hini Jan. People who have doing similar things as I am doing, but have become financially successful. Yeah, I'm calling them all the time to ask questions. Sometimes I'll drive to their place to ask them, How did you do it? How do you do it? So I think that the I'm consistent with learning, I'm consistent with trying, I'm consistent with failing. I feel that so many things. I feel that one mic, I feel I feel that so many businesses, but I'm not shy. And when I try it again, it doesn't work, I put it out away. I'm consistent with creating new businesses, I'm consistent. So I think that for me, the most important thing in being able to evolve is to consistent, to be is to consistently evolve, knowing that your ways will be a kick and you must adapt.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

I like that. Yes, so learning and consistency, yes, that makes sense because to keep going like that, hmm. But speaking of learning, two master's degrees. Yes, some of us, even the right now it's three.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

It's three or sorry, it's three. I have a master's degree in marketing strategy from UGBS. Okay, I have an M Phil, a master's in philosophy in public relations at Unimark. That's right. And then I have a master a professional master's in alternative dispute resolution. Wow, and I'm pursuing a PhD in development communication. Is there ever going to come a day where you say it's enough? No, I think that I think that the day you stop learning, that day you die. And I for for it's the learning, we have the traditional way of the learning, which is going to school and humbling yourself under lecturers, yeah, and forcing them to teach you. And then we have also the non-traditional way where people who are serious about knowing their stuff are going on YouTube, they are doing the stuff, making the mistakes, talking to people, and learning it is their very exact learning. Why I keep going to school to submit myself under authority is because of dyslexia. If I'm not forced, I might not do it. True. So I go into an institution where they will force me to know what I want to know.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

That's why and that's what I mean by everything is individualistic. You know, somebody should not say you have to do it this way. Just because this way worked for me doesn't mean that way will work for you. Exactly. I think that's one of the problems society faces where we are trying to force everyone to fit in a book to wear the same suit. Yes, it's complex. I love the fact that you say because of your dyslexia, this is the best way for you to learn.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

For me to keep learning. Yes, that's it. And then another way, another thing that has helped me to move forward is that I only work with people who are smarter than me.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

So if you are not more intelligent than me in the field, I will not do anything with you. So all the work that I did with you on Warsaw and Brothers is because I came to the conclusion that you are smarter than me in that area, and therefore, completely. Completely. You are completely a genius completely. And I don't say this because we are on your podcast, because I tell you all the time you are a genius completely. Look at what you have done billions of streams in music. You have successfully. Produced unique items like a headphone, you are doing business, you have managed you know PR. Sometimes I'm wondering if I've done a master's in PR, I don't know as much PR as you as you know, and what you have done with it with your interest. So I only work with people who are smarter than me. Um, Ibu Taylor, I work with Abraham Mohenijan, Richie, I work with Dangral, I work with people. If you are not smarter than me, I don't work with you. And I barely take advice from older people. I can work with you as an older person, but I like to be advised by younger people, 1920, because our ideas are a cake, and I want to be able to evolve. Yeah, and I learned so much from just watching this young person produce me. You know, I learned so I learned a lot. I've done some songs with uh Kwame Yujin. The reason why I'm interested in working with Kwame Ujin, he knows exactly everything rule that he works with is the anti thesis of what I know. So when I go and work with him, I'm saying let's do it. He said, let's do that, a chim. And then we try his own and it's working. You know, so the next time I'm working, I'm thinking of okay, how would Kwame Yujin have done it? I'm quick enough to call medical, I call Amarado, I'm calling Flo Kingstone when I'm writing lyrics. I say, what do you think of this? You know, because I know that they are smarter than me in those areas where I lack. And once I get their I get their their input into my experience, what I produce, whether it's business or is always refreshing.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

But I would like to challenge you there because I always say the true mark of intelligence is to actually accept the fact that you don't know. Okay, so a truly intelligent person is you who actually walks up to somebody and says, Teach me.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

It's true, it's true, teach me, it costs nothing. Yeah, teach me, and then the young people are excited, really. Yeah, then they just pour out, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

They just they and that makes you more and more intelligent because if if let's say you say you're taking from Richie, you're taking from Imama, Hine Jan, you're taking from then it means you have something that we all don't have now because I'm collected when I could say yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

When my when my songs are ready, depending on the type of song, I'm sending it to Kwajenchi, I'm sending to Amachi Didi. Yeah, these are the legends ahead of me. I want them to hear it. I want to hear what they have to say all the time. The next time you talk to you meet Kwyonchi, tell him, ask him.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

So, do you think let's go back to the beginning? Do you think being born into community is also part of what's instilled this in you where you value opinions from community completely?

SPEAKER_00 24:45

I think that my ability to be born at Fantinuti, to be born at Ashtown and growing up at Fantinu Town is one of the reasons why my lyrics never finish. Because when I'm writing lyrics and I'm and I I get my roadblock or I get my my writer's block, I just close my eyes and go into Brab Waj's house.

SPEAKER_03 25:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

And then of what is happening in his marriage, I just go into the community drunkards hearts, what is happening. I just go into the ghetto, infantino time, and see what is happening. I just close my eyes. I'm in the I'm in the community center. You know, I just remember some fight that I was in with that girl from Wizjongo. You know, so I remember Chascali. So, yes, it has helped me a lot. It's also giving me, I think one of my my big talents is managing people, it's public relations. That is why my career is it keeps going on and on and on because I manage my publics properly. Okay. Because I have already lived in a lot of public. I lived in a public house. Yeah, so you can understand how people are thinking. I can understand how people I can understand how not paying the water bill when it's time for you to pay the water bill, not paying it on time can get the water and sewage at the time to come and cut water for 50 families and the pressure that the women will put on you. That's why I came to the uh to the interview early. You gave me 10. I came at 10 because not paying the water bill, I saw what I did to Brab.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

So you know how coming late will affect so many other things. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

So it's it is it was like a parent to me, okay, and the friendship that we built. That's where I met with Chamin Kofi actually in that very community. Oh, interesting. You know, so yes, being born in that, so sometimes I pity my children next to my house. My neighbor next to my house has children my daughter's age, and they've never met before. Sometimes when I'm out there working out, I see that they come to peep through the window to look at me and my children. But my children and my neighbors' children are the same age and they have never interacted before. And that is an indictment on the modern uh cosmopolitan society that Ghana is becoming.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Oh, but I would even say yours is better because you know that your neighbor has a child, your daughter's age, because I don't know any of my neighbors, I don't know their names, I don't know how many people are in the house, like nobody on my streets. Wow, and sometimes I feel like so much of the unhappiness, so much of everything that is going on with us right now stems from the fact that we have lost community. Yes, we have, and we've given that community to social media. Yes, we have hundreds of thousands of friends online who don't actually know us, don't care about us, but we don't have any people in our lives.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

So Ivan Okuru and I are great friends, like Delane. Okay, great, great friends of her. And I only talked to her, Ivan Okuro, on her birthday when I've posted her picture and said all the nice things about her. And in my head, I'm talking to my friend I've just given the information to a middleman and publicly expressed how much I love her. Yeah, when I didn't call her. So sometimes Annika will remind me that call her, call her. You know, so so that's um that is the community that we are building, but the whole idea of the African community is built on Ubuntu. I am, therefore, we are, you know, and we have taken that away and replaced it with the Eurocentric idea of um saying that I am, therefore, I think. So if I think and and I'm able to make business and move into uh a more secluded nucleotic uh economy or community, I think that I am I am becoming important, I'm becoming special, but that is not the African community, and so having the opportunity to be born at Fantino Town is one of my or to be born at Ashtown is one of my greatest assets.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Interesting. We have to go back to community.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

And I don't think it's it's late, but what you and I, as storytellers and content creators and musicians, what we can do is to organize shows around community so that communities will come together again, and assuming we die always in the night with alcohol, people are drunk and bumping into each other. No, we must organize family-oriented community programs where children have something to do, to meet, network, parents have something to do, there's art in the middle, there's indigenous trade around it, local food, skintee, and thing. I think that we need to go back into, I think that's why our foremothers were interested in organizing periodic festivals so that they can enforce the idea of community, yeah, and you know, and center it because there's joy, yes, there's this joy that comes from community that you can't get from 100,000 likes. Richie, the mind knows that the only way existence was possible and preservation was possible was community. That's why our foremathers used to band up into tribes and uh clans and religious groups. We are Christians, those are Muslims. All that came because it was important for to form community. Because during the dark ages, a person bigger, taller, and stronger than you is coming to beat you to take over your family. Like it happens with the lions. It is only possible in numbers. So community is the way that the brain has evolved for us to stay here. That's why without community, a person is more likely to commit suicide. Without community, a person is more likely not to be happy. So it is important we are codependent on each other, so it is important that we develop ourselves in community. But fortunately for us, school provides that for us. So from Monday to Friday, if you take your child to school, from 7 a.m. to say 3 p.m., there's community.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

And work also provides that after school.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Exactly. So we are just coming, sort of coming home to sleep. But you see, one someone, someone, you know. So when and when a robber is coming to steal from you, when you you scream a wee, who are you calling to? Yeah, your neighbor that you've never greeted. Good point.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

If a thief comes to my house right now, who do I call?

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Exactly. Call the police, yeah, yeah. But it will take a while for them to come. But if you are good friends with your neighbors, the thief will not come. True. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

I mean, and I like the lion example that you gave because that's the same way a head of buffalo can protect themselves from the lion, because the lion will hunt on its own. Yes, but the head will protect itself, exactly. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

So, community is very important, and as for some of us who have gone into producing um products, hair products, uh, music, yeah, headphones, what are you looking for? You are trying to create a community that loves to support what you are doing, beginning with your family, your friends, your schoolmates, your fans, yeah, and your fans, friends, family. It is a community that you are creating, and until you learn to use the idea of communicating legitimacy of how important the community is to you, they don't care about your production.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

One of the biggest lessons I've learned in life and in business is that not everything deserves access to you. Your attention is valuable, your focus is valuable, and in this world full of noise and distraction, the ability to control your world is your true power. Lynx Reverb was designed for premium sound, complete silence, and amazing clarity. So head to any Compute Ghana shop or to our website, linkselectronics.com, down in the description, and grab yourself a headset now. Lynx Reverb, now that's clarity. I always tell people that you don't sell products, you sell an emotion, you sell a feeling, sell an experience, sell an experience, and it's a community that buys into that. Yes. So until they feel connected to your community, nobody really you can have the medicine for cancer.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

People would rather die than to come and associate with something that they think might kill them. True. You know, so community, I'm I'm very happy that we started the conversation there because usually when we talk of business, we are looking at uh the metrics, we are looking at the numbers, the rise, the fall, profits, this, that, and the other. But it's all about creating a connection between the product, the brand, and the community and making sure that they resonate and coming back again to give something to the community so that they realize that it is not just business as usual. And that is one of the key ways that I have built my or Chamekwami brand. I don't like to say brand, but I think for purposes of the conversation, yeah, brand, because I'm not consistently here to force people to go and download my music or come to my shows. I'm giving them back free hepatitis B screening and vaccination. I'm giving myself to promote made in Ghana, I'm giving myself to change negative perceptions about things. I'm giving myself for free activations for things that will help the community. So I am becoming, I am making myself available for the growth of the community. And therefore, people, it is important for people to keep Ochame Kwame afloat as an artist because they will benefit every July from free hepatitis B screening.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

So I was going to ask you what was the one thing that connects the many businesses you've opened, but then now I'm understanding because it means every time you're opening a business, you're not just looking at the profitability of what the business does, you are asking how can I serve the community.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Yes, completely. That is the that is the thing that sits in the in the right middle, yeah, is this respect because once you are once you're you build your business around community, especially as an artist, one time about four years ago, I saw on Facebook that Shatowali had written that artists in Ghana should stop worrying over DJs and be focused on their fans, and for a PR scholar, nothing else made it more success, puts it in a much clearer light than what Shatter had written on Twitter. Yeah, so be focused on the community, you know. So everything that you are doing, and if the community is fair, if what you you give them, they don't like they they won't buy it, they will spit it out. When you are fortunate, they will give you feedback and then you throw it away and find a new thing and bring it up and bring it back to them. But I think community, community. When I started as an artist, I used to build my the succession of my brand plan around my image. So when I went solo, my first album was called uh uh was called uh, which was about me, I'm the promised child in those times when I thought I was special. And then the second album was called My Poetry, My Sim, yeah, that had also and other things. But when I realized that no, building my business around me lowers the number of people that can identify with it. So it's just building around my ego. Let me build it around my community. So the next one I'll do was Mr. Versatile to show to Andre. Then I started moving into things like made in Ghana about everybody else, about everybody else, and so during the time when most of my competitors, I use this respectfully, were dying and fading away because of time. My brand value was going up because now my career was about the people instead of about myself.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

You know, Abraham gave me this advice that you are saying on my first album, All of Me. I mean, the album was called All of Me, so you can see where my mind was at. Yes. And there was this particular song on the album called Another Day, and it was a very deep song where I spoke about the challenges I had faced in life and what I had learned from it. And Abraham said, Richie, your song is beautiful and deep. But my only problem with the song is that you are talking only about you, which makes when your fan listens to it, they can't put themselves in your shoes. If you are just stepped, yes, if you are just stepped out of yourself a bit to talk about the same challenges in a way that everybody can relate. I was too young to understand this, so I didn't change it.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

You know, Richie, just just talking about communities, let's talk about Warso. I talk about myself and getting my visa refused. Yeah, that's happening to 99% of my Kumas. Yeah, people use examples that everybody can exactly, and then I quickly go out of myself and talk about the rapper that's tried for so long, yeah, and it's not he even feels he can rap better than the rap rap doctor. He's about to give up, don't give up, yeah. Area fine boy, and then I talk about the area fine boy, you know, and position himself in the area. Then I come to I talk about the raster, I talk about the guy who has his last money is finished, and his wife is pregnant. You don't have to try, rap and you dry your eye.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

So you see, I am discussing the problems that I saw community, in the community, and then me, the immature one comes and says the track is so hard because you never got my name.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

The ladies excuse me, I was 20 at the time, but it's important that one is so blackadosho is also important because there's a group, there's a big percentage of the community that wants you to succeed, that wants you to show them visible growth, and that one also serves that.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

That's true, exactly. And and I think sometimes too, there's inspired confidence where somebody can watch the confidence you have in yourself and also take from that to have confidence in themselves. So even in my immaturity, maturity. Okay, speaking about community, please, let's talk about the best. You know, everybody comes online and says couple goals, couple goals, couple goals. But the real couple goals are this man and Annika. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Look, your house is filled with love, and you see, I've seen a lot of different couples together. Sometimes you see these two people, you're like, oh, these two, they are cute for now, but it won't go far. From day one, when I saw you and Annika, it just felt like this is a good fit. It is. And I've seen you guys grow more and more. Like every time I spend time with you.

SPEAKER_03 39:52

Which is a lot.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

It looks like your connection is even stronger than the last time that I saw you guys. Before I even jump into love lockdown and the book and the tour and everything, how have you been able to cultivate such a beautiful relationship?

SPEAKER_00 40:11

To be honest, I won't take the I won't take the glory for it. I look at my parents, my father and my mother were married for 20 something years, and then they divorced when my father died. So I watched them. I saw two imperfect people who were willing to stay through thick and that thing and not run away.

SPEAKER_02 40:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

And so growing up, I saw that okay, the option in a marriage is not running away. It's staying, as long as there's goodwill, it's staying and planning to become better. So I don't a sage said that marriage is not a relationship between two people, it's a relationship between two spirits who are willing to forgive over and over and over and over and over again. I like that. You know, so I saw that because my father was the most imperfect gentleman that I know, but he did his best. Yeah, and my mother was a bit better, but she also gave her all. Yeah, there were times that she had to run away, but there were five of us, she said, I'm staying, you know. You know, so I saw that. So growing up, I had already formed an idea of how I was going to marry my wife. Okay. And so when you listen to a song like Sis Yobano, which I wrote before I got I married Anika.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

So I'm talking this is in my twenties, in my mid-20s, I'm saying things like, What dear dance, yeah siese, and ya dia wujani mu. What the nachia chia, nan fufu ny na se ne yehu keke. Ebanese na denye poinching bag na poo poo poo. W say Sahara cra wonina ni bedru. Weddin hunkomo be brebe sena n ken hu. Wod the na chia w nanfufu nyina sene yehu. Eba n say nadina ya poinchin ba upiana and sam hero. The last four bars before the song. I say, O ba yeoba fiso ba ba sum ryaba oba newwa e treso yo mama nasoba tawe chia and chenwa yo mama intioba do wa do ni bimen yekama.

SPEAKER_02 42:30

Oh nice.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

So this is me at twenty five. You already had that mindset. I already had the mindset that I was going to respect women and stay at home and not abuse them and be truthful to my word because the beginning of the verse tells me that you have lied to her and now you have punished her and you are disrespecting her. That's the trajectory. So, my in my thinking, I'm not going to lie to Annika, I'm not going to disrespect her, and I'm not going to abuse her no matter what. Okay. And then we marry. So I think it's training. Maybe Christian values from when I was a child and they used to take me to church. I realized that love your neighbor as yourself and all those things also played a role. And also, my personal me as a my personal temperament. When I was a kid, I a lot of people say, and they said it to me so many times that I wanted to continuously enforce it. Okay. So I they tried to become serviceable. And that is the fruit that Annika has come to me. And she also puts in her best. So why is our relationship working, even though we are two completely difficult, imperfect people? It's because we know that running away is not an option. We also know that respecting each other is the only way to go. My promise to Annika when we got married was not till dead do her's part, was I will never lie to you. That's my promise to my wife. I will never so when I'm going to cheat, when I'm going to spend the house money, when I'm going to do something stupid, stay late at night with the boys and not be able to account for it, I will not do it at all because I'm not going to become a lie about it. But as I've grown up, I see that the thing that has kept our marriage together during the period after 20 years when it's be in sour, it's becoming boring, the sex is repetitive. So the thing that has kept this relationship together is the management of our egos. Okay. So I know that nature, God, universe, whatever, puts the ego inside everything the snake, the cow, man, to protect the unseen self. But sometimes the ego overdo. Instead of reminding you when you have done something stupid, when you have not paid Santi school fees, yeah, and the school is calling so chammy, or chambi, don't do that, that's the the the the reason why the universe puts the ego there. They say, Why has Annika looked at me three times? And they will name seven amounts. Doesn't she know I'm seven years older than her? Doesn't she know I pay the bills around here? Why didn't she say good morning to me? So managing that ego, not deleting it, not dissipating it, but letting it find the right expression of being ashamed when I've done what I'm shouldn't do as the leader. Okay, managing that ego is the thing that creates that essence of peace that you enjoy in the house. Okay, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

Ego management, yes, ego. So ego management is better than anger management. Oh if you manage your ego, you can't be angry.

SPEAKER_00 45:44

If you manage your ego, because the anger pride, all those things are inside the ego, yeah, and like Buddha puts it, that is your monkey mind.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

Hey, so far, you've mentioned Christianity, yes, you've mentioned Buddha. You will get there later. Let's behold my horses. Yes, okay. Let's talk about the book. So, so this is the essence of the book, yes, right. This is like you are basically trying to teach us that if the two of you are able to put your egos aside, yeah, then you can lock the lockdown.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

Yes, then you can. So the the the the aim the theme for the book is being be intentional, okay. Because to be honest, as a relationship progresses through time, it becomes very, very expectant, it becomes repetitive, it becomes boring. So, unless you are intentional about making sure that you can enjoy that bottle and use it to create new opportunities in the relationship, yeah, it will break down, or you guys will become family members. Okay, she'll become like your sister. Yeah, and then so that is one arm of the book. I think the book stands on three main arms. The next arm that the book stands on is become dynamic. Okay, be dynamic. You go to the gym, get a haircut, smell great in the evening when we're going to sleep, brush your teeth, become sexy, clean the room. Yeah, find out what her love languages are. Like Annika's love language is act of service. When I'm looking for some in the evening, I wake up at dawn and come to clean the room, right? Clean everywhere, clean kitchen. When she comes down and the whole place is clean, then she realizes that I did it. In the evening, I'll be rewarded. You know, so that is investment into the evening. Exactly. Become intentional about what your partner wants and be dynamic. And then also the third arm is that do not lose your charm, okay, do not lose your spontaneity because she married a young, dynamic dreamer, vision holder who had plans of becoming an MP, number one, winning awards, going places, traveling the world, who had cosmopolitan ideas about his life, and ending up in Honolulu, and all that was a part of the whole Zygeist that she bought into. And now you have become the beer, drinking, office going, yeah, homecoming, dreams, dead, school fees paying, 50-year-old man, and all you know how to do is give instructions. You have killed her. Yeah, if you are a woman and you are doing the same thing, so do not forget the reason for which you guys are together, and that the there's a um, I don't know if you know the philosophy of hypergamy versus hypogamy. Please teach me, teach me. So, hypergamy is that when a woman or any female animal is choosing a partner, they are usually looking for a taller one, okay, a stronger one. Oh, no, no, no, it's taller in this sense in psychology, as in a thinking one, okay, yes, uh, one that makes money, one that shows leadership, you know, one that's so and looking for all that because everything in this um in this earth is trying to survive and looking for a partner for purposes of security. Okay, everything is from the snake to the woman, yeah, and so that is the idea. So the woman is trying to date up, and the man is trying to date down because he's looking for submission, okay, he's looking for congruence, he's looking for understanding, reasonability. So he's trying to date someone that he can have that soft authority over, and it will not lead to resistance. Okay, so they may be able to move to the same place together. So if you are a man and you stop being attractive, you stop moving. Attraction is not just having sparkle, yeah, it's doing work now. The the number one marker for attraction in the current in the modern dispensation is finances, money in the bank. True, you know, so you stop doing. I'm not saying that that should be the mark, but I'm just telling you what psychology says. So you have to consistently keep that youth in you, yeah, that drive, that energy. So even sometimes I'm trying to evolve, evolve just to show Anika damn. So I think this is not the learning, sometimes sometimes, yes, sometimes it's to show her that I'm capable. Yeah, it's to show her that this year I'm going to change inside. That she married right. Yes, you married right, yeah, and I'm up there. You know, so it's about that conversation, it's about that, but beneath that is some of the things that do not work for Annika and I that we are trying to share with people so that if it doesn't work for, for example, the the the voice of the third party, okay, of the of the elder, the family member, the uncle, yeah, the friend, the the the the pastor that can come in and destroy everything. Yeah, the voice of the society that is purely uh built on or that purely stands on um it stands on expectations, also gender roles. You are a woman, cook, clean, yeah, therefore you are a man, find money. That that you know, that voice can also destroy the relationship because the voice of time, that's time is moving, therefore, this thing we are doing should become a cake. You know, so we are also we also share things that we have realized on our 21-year-old journey that we think could disturb the peace. One last one before I go. We have also seen that every relationship has three main stages. There's the stage for romance where everything is flowering, everything where everything is perfuming, then the stage for reality. Where hey, son out here. I mean, why am I saying I didn't know you were capable of saying that? Did you do that? That period where both of you have lowered your guards and you have become your true selves. Yeah, and there's the third period. So beyond the stage of reality, it's either you run or you stay, and when you stay, you have you stay at one risk that whatever abuse that you endured could continue or you become wise. Okay, and so when both of you stay, this is now you are now in a relationship where you know all your demons, but you have decided to stay no matter what. That is where true love is.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

Oh, nice, yes, I love that. Thank you, please clap for him at home. Okay, now you've spoken against gender rules, but I have to ask, because in this current world that we are in, one of the biggest divisions, you know, the divisions used to be religion, ideology, race, yes, right now, one of the socialism, right now, one of the biggest divisions is the gender wars. Yes, men are supposed to do this, women are supposed to do that. I want to understand from your point of view. Let's leave the woman because there's no woman here. Yes, when I have a woman, I'll ask her to from your point of view. What is the man's role in a relationship?

SPEAKER_00 53:02

Wow, that's that's a very, very so I think that previously, like I said, the man's role was protection, was uh dominance, yeah, was to prevent harm from coming to the children and yeah, keeping them safe. But now I think that the man's role, but whatever I'm going to say will be biased. Let me establish my biases because I am a feminist. Okay, I was born a feminist. I am a I am more feministic than more than the feminist. Yes, so I might be biased. So take whatever I'm about to say with a pinch of salt. Okay, so so the man's role in the past was physical presence to scare predators away from coming to heads, to prevent lions from catching his children, and also prevent other men's semen from entering his woman because he's trying to keep his gene alive. Yeah, now the man's role I think is more like to humble himself to the point that it prevents the problem that arise from the ego to come and destroy the relationship. Because the the number one cause of all relationship breakdowns is the gender roles, and the gender role uh problem comes because of the presence of the ego, which is saying that you are supposed to do this. Why didn't it used to do that? So I think now the leader at home's role is to be able to humble himself, not to take abuse, but to lead the home with such love that the predator, which used to be a lion or another man, which is now the ego, the anger, the pride, the self-satisfaction attitude, self-uh-satisfying attitude, yeah, so that whenever it rises, the man can see it and tame it with more love. Yeah, but whilst you are doing all that, if you make enough money for the international travel, for the Dubai small to buy gifts one time, if you make enough money to look good and smell good, so she can brag about you to her friends, it helps.

SPEAKER_01 55:13

Okay. I like that. I like that direction. Yes, I personally think that the man's role, the role of a man hasn't changed, but society has changed, which makes the role have to be different. As in, the man is still supposed to protect his woman, still supposed to protect his children, but now you are not protecting her from a lion, yes, you're protecting her from random people. Do you get what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 55:43

You are protecting her from her child self, which is lost, you know, which was lost in parenting, which was lost in societal expectations, yeah, which was lost in all the things that was heaped on her. So that is what you are you are protecting her from an internal evil, yes, which is the ego.

SPEAKER_01 56:00

Because I think what has happened is that technology has managed to solve a lot of our basic problems, you know, from a time when um shelter was difficult. So a man is the one who can fix a roof. Yes, you know, a time when transportation was difficult, so a man is the one who can carry kids and move when the war is coming. Thank you. To a point in time right now where you can pay somebody to come and fix your roof, yes. You know, you can pay for and live in an estate, you can pay somebody to protect you at the gate.

SPEAKER_00 56:34

In the same way the woman can also pay for a cook, like Annika does, exactly, or pay or pay for someone to wash their dishes, exactly, but she puts her feet up on Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 56:44

So those whole basic gender roles where people are still thinking a man should do this and a woman should do that, it's a bit arcaique because technology has solved most of that for us. Like you are expecting a woman to be a washing machine when we have a washing machine, which is not expensive. Exactly. I remember the first time I bought a washing machine a long time ago, it was a big deal. Now everybody has a washing machine.

SPEAKER_00 57:11

I even had two, I just dashed one and have someone coming to the house to wash exactly to wash the other things that we can't wash with it. Now it has even become a rule in my house that Santi should not enjoy of those services of the person coming to work. But I want her to learn how to learn how to because when she leaves school and she doesn't have those um things available to her, yeah, then she'll be wanted. So I just made a rule just about two weeks ago.

SPEAKER_01 57:38

At first, a man had to be alert at night, yes, in case there were intruders coming, a lion coming, yes, so that he can defend. But right now, you have an alarm system.

SPEAKER_00 57:48

That is why the man had to sleep on the side of the road, on the side of the bed, which is closer to the door. Yes, I have friends in America who are divorcing over the woman trying to sleep there now. I have a friend in this country, he's a lawyer, his wife is a pediatrician. But when their children are sick, he wants to take the children to the hospital. Last night they were fighting, they are fighting. The woman called Mr. Wachami Unyanweu Krasini. Like she, like, he because I'm a woman, he wants to lead so much, he's so traditional in his thinking that he will not let me take my even though I'm a pediatrician. That's that's literally what she does. Exactly, because of the because of the rules. Yeah, so and another thing that I think it's important that we note in the book is that there are seven types of relationship based on what we have seen. There's a relationship based on the it's a male with a feminine energy, and some females have masculine energy, yeah. You know, so for for example, for example, I am a man, but I have a feminine energy. And when I say feminine energy, I'm not saying I do this, you're not hair, or you're not fruity, or yes, or I eat, I eat tofu. What I'm trying to say is that the feminine energy is the one of care, guidance, love, acceptance, forgiveness, you know, creation. That's a feminine energy, you know. So the traits we are used to getting from women, from mothers, yes, exactly, and then there are also some other women who are tough, like Annika, that have some masculine vibes around them, negotiate really hard. You can solve it amicably or amicably, you know. So it is not all relationships that the man must lead. Sometimes we realize that there are relationships where when the man leads, it works. There are relationships that when a woman leads, it works. There are relationships that when they are co-equals like mine, it works. There are relationships that when the when the the man leads sometimes, and the woman comes to also lead sometimes. There are relationships that where the the woman or the man can allow the man to lead in certain aspects of her life and not the rest. So, for example, Annika lets me lead her in terms of solving problems, leading with love, bringing harmony in the house. I think that's my role in the house. Yeah, but I'm vegan for almost six years, but she still eats her meat. And when I talk to her about it, she says, No, you don't have dominance over my diet. You will not affect my beef. Exactly. You don't have dominance over my diet, and yeah, I need to be able to accept her individuality when it comes here and respect that okay, she's allowed me to lead these parts of her body, yeah, therefore, she must have her own places where so there are relationships, there are seven types of relationships that we recognize, yeah, and that's not the every time may the man lead as Christ led the church. And so if you marry a PhD in psychology and your child is suffering from anxiety, you say, I am the man, I will solve it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:53

But I I I actually think anybody who believes that the man is the leader, therefore the man must always lead, has never been a leader before. Because no leader always leads. I run multiple companies and I don't always lead. When we are coming to do a production, let me shout him out right now. Macjo is head of all my productions. So when we are coming to do a production, I may have bought the equipment, but McDo is leading. When McJo tells me Richie, this and we are doing four cameras, I don't say, hey, I am the boss, so let's do six. No, he is leading. When we are doing set design, Baba leads. I may have done work for so many years, but she has a better creative eye than I do. So once you understand that, even in work where you may be the one funding everything, you cannot lead. I don't know how anyone can think when it comes to the house, you can automatically be a leader.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:47

It is society, it is religion, it is tradition, it is culture that already have prescribed rules. But what people who have not studied the culture as much as I have done do not know or seem to gloss over is that the society creates prescriptions for the general good. So it's not for outliers, yeah, it's not for people who want to do extra. This is okay, people can do extra. However, if you can you cannot do anything, this is the level. Yeah, you know, this is the level. And I think that they think that they make that the level, and especially if it is backed by the authority of a church or a book or an ancient scripture, then people follow it, leaves, roots, and stem. Then of course it becomes loss, and even though it is clear that the woman knows how to make more money than the man, she must stay home and have children because the average money guy must lead.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:48

Like I was I was listening to somebody's story, and I laughed. Where um a man and a woman got married, and then the woman had to stop her job and stay at home to take care of the children, which she did. So while she was taking care of the children, she started a side hustle. And she was doing the side hustle while raising the children. Now it's reached a point, her side hustle is making six digits every month. Of course. And the man feels threatened that like he should still be making decisions for the house, like, even with what is done. The side hustle was done with her money. I'm thinking, bro, if your wife is making six digits a month with her business, first of all, it's no longer a side hustle. Yes. Secondly, humble yourself. We we have those, I think, like like you're saying, the ego. Let me give you an example with Baba and I. I may be paying for something, but everybody knows that Richie does not know how to negotiate. Me too. I also I am horrible at negotiating. Whereas Baba, on the other hand, is an excellent negotiator. So even if we go somewhere and I'm going to pay for it, she will do the negotiation. If I say I'm the man, let me negotiate, we'll be cheated.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:05

Exactly. And this very simple thing is just that the presence of the ego, if you are not careful, it ain't overdo. The ego can overdo. And so going back, the the responsibility of the modern man is to prevent attacks from attacks on the relationship, but not from outside, from within. True.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:28

But don't you think then the real way to frame it so that people know what to do is that leadership is about moving the entire machine. It's not about moving just you. So, like when I use the example of McDowell being in charge when it comes to production, me saying that I do things my way when somebody knows better than I do means that I'm being a bad leader because I'm not moving the whole machine. So for your ego to actually do the right thing, you should actually do what is best for the collective. I agree with you. Yeah, I agree with you. If people saw it like that, they wouldn't make some of the decisions that they made, thinking that they need to be right or they need to be also I agree with you, but I also think that a lot of people go into long-term relationships like a marriage, not having found themselves.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:21

So if you have not found yourself, why are you going to find another person's son or daughter? Yeah. So all the confusion and the intrapersonal conflict that you are dealing with, you have not dealt with it already. And you have gone to plug that into another person, probably also going through the same, yeah, the same tragedy. And then both of you have become a tragedy. So when you get money, you suffer the money. When you are poor, you suffer the poverty. When you have a child, you have a child, you suffer the child. When you are childless, you suffer that. But when you have dealt with yourself and come to understand that you are capable of a lot of evil and capable of A lot of good, but you are consistently choosing good, and so you choose someone who is good. But realizing that that person is also capable of evil, yeah, then you are innate consciously, you are aware of what is happening, and you don't gloss or you don't hide things, and that is how it's done based on the scripture, based on the tradition, yeah, based on culture, or based on my feelings. I think that is one of the key things that we need to let young people understand before they take on difficult things like marriage.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:32

Now, let's go to my two favorite people. You know, your daughter Santi is CEO of her own brand at her age, yes, and said, Dear the genius, you know, he's been in a Disney movie. Do you get me? Like, uh, I remember the Daddy Lumba uh speech or rants that he gave, and everybody was just amazed at his emotional intelligence. I need to understand. I mean, first of all, good genes between you and Annika. Thank you, thank you. Let's not show that away. The second thing is how have you deliberately been able to raise them to become the way that they are?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:11

I think that I will I would um first thank the doctor that took care of my wife when she was pregnant. Oh, okay. Dr. Pia. Yes, Dr. Edward Kofi Apia. He is the one, it's not just him, he and another another one called Kwambuedu. They were the ones who took care of Annika when she was pregnant, and they made sure that she took her supplements calcium, okay, um, potassium, she they made that she ate food that had lots of iron. She they introduced you know, like um non-heme iron, iron from plants, from cruciferous vegetables, and showed how to eat it with uh vitamin C. They were they are the ones who helped Annika during her pregnant periods. And they told us that if a woman has all the minerals that she needs during pregnancy, it is very possible that she will give birth to a child that has their fertile brain. Interesting. Oh, really? When a woman is pregnant, and then they also told me to give her social support, okay, not to fight with her or anything because whatever happens to her happens to their children. So that is one.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:20

If you shout on her, you're shouting to her.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:21

Shouting on your child, and when she's she has cortisol running through her body, she gives it to the child, and the child comes out angry and this, that, and the other. Okay, and when we gave birth, I remember Dr. Pia, Mystic, thank you, telling us that we should make sure that the child gets exclusive breast milk. Remember, we used to have this conversation, exclusive breast milk for at least six months. Okay, so both of our children, we gave them only breast milk for six months. My mother and Anikes' mother love each other, but they barely talk. But during this period, they will come together to call us, catch them, Alice friend, catch up, they should give their children food. They are hungry, you know. But they say that the breast milk has every single thing that a child needs to form their best brain. And until the child's brain is six to seven months, introducing cocoa, em cow milk, and other things, formula, formula, will not be the most beneficial for the child. Unless, of course, the mother's breast milk is not coming, or the mother is suffering from some the mother did uh maybe a surgery and the child on hair worries or something. The best way is the natural way. So I think that the pregnancy, the the breastfeeding played a very, very important role. The second most important thing is that especially he was with me until he was four years before he went to school. So before the teacher got inside his brain, I was there already. The teacher came to meet you in the brain. Exactly. The teacher came to meet me already. I already started programming my child, yeah, answering his questions. Remember, he asked why for everything. Everything why is that? I remember one time he went to um church at the sun in that sense and came back and said, when they were saying that God is a man, man, man, who saw his wee we said exactly. This is four, you know, and I had the the the role as a father to beat him into submission to say don't question those things, or to tell him that I don't know. Can we learn it together? So I think it's that's is the before the child, breast milk is key, and then giving the child the room to ask questions. And I think that is what has given my children the opportunity to be able to function the way they do. And another, apart from allowing them to have wandering minds, I have also said that I will not let anyone indoctrinate my children, not with a political ideology, not with a tribal ideology or a religious ideology. When Say was seven, he went to school one day, his art teacher told him that when a priest, when an African priest, or Confur paints herself, she is evoking evil spirit. Say raised his hands up, questioned the teacher, and told the teacher that it's not true. Because the Oconfur is the one who is telling the community that they should clean, the Oconfore knows herbal medicine, the Oconfur is the one that is channeling the ancestral information into the community and taking it back. The Oconfour is the chief advisor to the chief, to the king. How can this come from an evil spirit? And when the teacher didn't stop, he went, the teacher tried to shout him down. He left the class, went to administration to report the teacher, and then they called us. And then fortunately, the following day, the head of the school asked the teacher to apologize to him. He was seven. He was seven. This is because I have decided that I will not let anyone indoctrinate my children into a political ideology, uh scientific ideology or nothing, because I want the brain to be as open as possible so that they may learn on their own.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:22

So do you like you brought me right into it? Yes. Do you think that the Ghana education system or the education system in general does not allow for children to be curious, but rather just feeds us with what it believes we should know?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:39

Yes, so completely. Especially the Ghana, the Ghana system. At a point, we did homeschooling, and in Ghana, when you do homeschooling, you must register the child with a Ghanaian school.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:50

Even he might not go to classes, but you must register the child with a Ghanaian school where he periodically goes to take tests. During the period when I was I was trying to let's say try his hands on um the JSS exam, I realized that when you pick the the moral and religious book, it discusses um the creation story and talks about the Akan creation myth where Mamia Brewa uses a pistol to push God away. Okay, and then it discusses the Dagumba one, it discusses everything, and then all those ones they call them myths, and then it ends at now the creation story where it discusses the the Christian the Christian judo Jewish one as the real creation story with the talking snake, so that one is not a myth, but the A can one I mean, because a talking snake is more realistic than an old woman who cares about her children so much, giving them the time and poking God when because we've all seen talking snakes, haven't you? So you can see that that it's not just that, and also the way the whole education system is curated. So there's a woman, one woman, and then I don't blame the government or anyone, it's just the number of teachers to the children available to teach and under their conditions. There's one woman who is or one man who is teaching 50 children, and what and all these children, they both all of them have different attention levels, different absorption level, different rejection level. Some of them have different temperaments. One person to 50 children. And how is this person going to have the time to engage an inquiry mind for a child to question a why, a why, and why that person that child will be will be retarding the class, yeah, and so that child will be moved somewhere else or labeled and set aside so that the class must move, you know. So the education system from that, and also the inability of the education system to have critical thinking as an independent subject.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:57

So at the point I took my children to a British for them to study British curriculum at Galaxy International. And from class one, you see that they always have thinking skills. Uh thinking this, thinking that. They every year they do it, they write reflections. The children are asked to write reflections on all the things that they are learning, and they have this non-score classes where they just go and sit down and argue and debate. You know, so that side of the Ghana education system that is lost. It creates, and I say this most respectfully, people like me that went through their system. If you are not careful, if you don't unlearn somewhere in the future, you become a robot where you have been trained to fit into a machine where you are specifically either packing boxes at the office as a PR person or you are labeling things, or you are creating this. So the whole education system, in my according to me, was created to fit a certain production unit style. Yeah, and I think it's time that we change it. And as the world is moving on, different types of education systems have come. You have the international baccalaureate system, the IB system, which is built on enquiry. At the point, I took my children to go and study that, but I came back to end on the Cambridge system because a hybrid of the Ghana system and the international baccalaureate system. And my children, I want my children to live in Ghana. So I want them to be able to be able to work with people in their country. Yes, but the education that we have in Ghana is about regurgitation and reproducing the information under stress. Very, very little about teaching people how to use their hands, how to question authority, how to question existing uh state or school. And that is one of the key problems. That's that's why in May we keep flooding and no one knows what to do about it. It's the education system.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:50

I have a question which may sound redundant, but the British created our Ghanaian system. Yes. So why does the British system have critical thinking and the Ghanaian system doesn't?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:02

Because they created a Ghanaian system, but we have adapted it to suit our our own style. Okay, so the the system that we work now is called Wyack, it's designed by Wyack. The exam is West African WASI, so it's a West African system. So the British curriculum, even though the West African system takes from it, it's quite different from uh the our system. They designed it for us. I don't know if they still do, they designed something for us that Chemar Rollins took, threw away, and started the SHS system. Okay, so I don't know if the SHS system is also still designed by the British. That I don't know. I have to research on this. Exactly. But what I know is that that system doesn't teach, doesn't teach thinking directly, it hides it under probability, it hides it in summary, it hides it in mathematics, it doesn't teach thinking. So if you call the regular Joe like myself, and you ask, What is thinking, they might not be able to tell you that thinking is a movement of thoughts from a homogeneous place to a heterogeneous place with the aim of solving a problem and probably make a difference between that one and brooding. Yeah, you know, so the education system is not designed to create thinkers, it is designed to create workers, yeah. Because when workers think, or when workers think, they work less and think more, and when thinkers work, they work more and think less. True. You know, so then they wanted to fit a certain a certain machine where things move in a particular order. The same Ghana education system, like 60% of us are farmers in this country. They like if I became number one, I'll build the whole everything, or 50% of the whole economy will be about agro business, yeah, agri business and creating value for agricultural products, turning them into juice, into chocolate, into that, into that, and then the rest will go into technology and health. You know, because everybody in this country has land in his own village. And when you go to when we went to Kumasi Anglican Secondary School, whenever you did something bad to punish you, you were given a catalyst to go and weed, which makes you feel like farming is a form of punishment, and all these things are going on in schools. Another thing that goes on in Ghanaian schools that I think we need to talk about is the beating of children. I know that now it has been outlawed in policy, but when teachers beat children, what's when you take it to GES, they say you take the teacher to court. So the GES sort of exempts herself from saying, okay, it's a wabo, yeah, police. But the GES must be the police to make sure that children are not holding canes to intimidate, teachers are not holding kings to intimidate children in the schools. And they also let's look at the concept of wedding first. This one came first, let's praise him. These ones came last, let's hoot at them. That creates unnecessary competition to the point where I think it creates negative reinforcement. Yeah, that if you do something good, we praise you, if you do something bad, we punish you. To the point that the satisfaction from doing that something good and the praises becomes the benchmark so much. When he ends up in parliament, he will always be seen to be right in the name or in the faces of the people, and therefore might do things. Yeah, get the loan to get a car he can't pay for, take the bribe, he can't, he's not willing to fall for, and things like that. So we need to look for the praises instead of actually doing doing the work. So we need to, and I hear that number one, which is uh his excellency um jm, is trying to bring critical. I heard it on social media in a in a speech he had made that he's trying to make uh critical thinking a thing in our schools. Okay, but I think that he cannot that's a great idea. He cannot achieve it immediately, but he must begin in the secondary schools where everybody that wants to be a teacher must the same way children are going to school, they say, I want to be a lawyer, I want to be a doctor. The ones who want to be teachers must go to specific schools or do specific courses like child psychology, like pedagogy, yeah, and things in what's pedagogy? Pedagogy is the way um the way we teach people. Okay, it's the strategy that we use to teach. So if you are you want to be the same way if you want to be a doctor, you are studying biology, physics, chemistry. Yeah, a person that wants to be a teacher in the secondary school must be studying psychology, yeah, child psychology, pedagogy, and teaching skills. And if they pass that one, then they go to the training colleges, knowing that they want to be teachers, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:04

And then we increase their pay so that they are passionate about what they are doing. They are passionate about it. My mom always says it that one of the biggest problems with the educational system is that a lot of teachers don't want to be teachers, yes, because they couldn't become lawyers, their parents, okay, and they're caught uh we're training college, at least, and then they become sad teachers, yeah, and then they transfer it to our children.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:24

So I think that the government must become intense. It is the one most important thing, maybe that one and medicine and mathematics and the STEM and that must become very intentional about creating the teachers who are coming to teach this STEM that I think should be STEM anyway. Yes, science, technology, engineering, math, right? It should be science, technology, engineering, arts, and maths. True, they leave they leave us arts people out too.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:52

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, you've you've come hard on education. Let me move from education in this conversation. I've heard you talk about your Christian background, then you mentioned Buddha, then now you've mentioned traditional, traditional. Please, I need to ask what religion does Ochame Kame practice practice.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:14

Um, I think Ziggy Mali has a song. Love is my religion. Love is my religion. My religion is love. So I practice uh similar to what um uh RNAQ practices, ominism. Okay, yeah, so I'm an ominist, and at the philosophical level, I think that all religions have some truths, but not one religion have all truths. Okay, so I take from every religion, okay. So every religion that I know, Taoism, I I love Taoism. I take a lot from Buddhism. It sits very well with my personal bias as a utilitarian, you know. So I take a lot from I think for Christianity, I don't even need to take I was born into it. So almost 100% of all the Christian values that I think are progressive, I try to practice. Okay, I also take a lot from the traditional religion. I think that one of Ghana's inability to develop is because we have thrown away the traditional religion. And before we will give it the opportunity to evolve, like Christianity is um Judaism 2.0, yeah, like um Buddhism is Hinduism 2.0. Yeah, you know, African traditional religion was also to get a 2.0 that wasn't involved in animal sacrifices and cananyaring and things like that. We threw it away so we didn't get to evolve it. Why do I say that? On my research, on my master's uh Mphil research in public relations, I was looking at the way the public relates to the forest, to natural resources. Yeah, and I used indigenous knowledge systems as my evaluating tool, and then I realized that in the past, our forefathers will create something that they call in Samapo, a place where they will probably bury chiefs and royals and say that this place, the spirit of the gods, live here. So no one should go there for 200 years, and they will use myths, songs, taboos, and things like that to protect the forest. There's no police, there are no guns, there are no knives, and no one goes there. So many of these sacred forests still stand. Example is the Doruha Forest. Okay, example is the Sumaja uh forest in um in the Ashanti region. So many of them stand. And if you compare it, and these ones, they use the African traditional religious systems to manage them, and the outcome is still strong and green, biodiversity is there. But if you compare it to the forest patches that we use policy and governance and forest police to we see that they are doing galamse in it, they are they are destroying, they are cutting the chain so operators are cut down. Why are they cutting it down? Because our forefathers, through the concept of animism, said there's a soul in everything, there's a soul in the rock, a soul in the water, soul in the people, soul in the leaves. So they come up with um adegis like Udibeekum trauma, nu a very successed rudier, Jan Mom Fanahoma then and an amho.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:22

Because you have to give me translations for all my non-Ghanaian watches.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:26

Exactly. So so trauma, I think it's a bison or one of the big and uh big like bull-like animals. So if you are going to kill it and then eventually have to go to a priest for them to give you um medication or medicine to ward off its soul or its spirit or its ghost, then leave it to run loose with its strength. So, this is how our foremathers, so I say forefathers, our foremathers realized that the bison or the animal in there had such important ecological um ecological role that it's playing that don't go and kill it, leave it there. But in you said that if you kill it, its ghosts will come and hunt you. Yeah, so okay, I don't want the ghost to hunt me. Let me leave it there. And they are preserving the animal. Look, at times in our in our traditional sense, they will say on Tuesdays we don't go to farm, on Tuesdays we don't fish for this whole month, don't make noise. What all that's is they are trying to do is that allow the pregnant fishes to give birth for their children to grow so that you may get some to eat in the future. We don't urinate into the river. They say why? Because there's a goddess in it. No, because maybe there's a goddess in it, or because once the river travels 20 kilometers for where urinate, that is the source of clean water for a group of people. Yeah, and when we took Away all this, the concept of animism when we destroyed it and replaced it with an anthropocentric ideology, which is which is the euro, the European idea that human beings are the most important entities in the whole world. You can get this in Genesis chapter 1, verse 28. Dominate everything, the world is ours, exactly. And therefore, we can dominate everything. And we replaced the idea that there's a soul in the river, and then now I am a man, the universe revolves around me. Then there's Galamse in the rivers, causing all the problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:37

Because me making money is more important than the river surviving. Surviving.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:58

Christianity is a kinder version of Judaism. And Buddhism is a kinder version of Hinduism. So the African traditional religion, if it had been given its opportunity to grow, they would have would have had a much more kinder version where human beings will have a symbiotic relationship with nature, where nature gives us life and we give it protection.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:21

You know, one thing I always say, I talk about this thing in when I'm referring to slavery, and it's also similar to the religions. One thing I say is that Africans always bonded with nature and were nicer people and everything because the world was in our favor. Like when you are born in Africa, the weather is good. Oh, the land is good. The land is good. There's food everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:46

The people are good.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:47

The people are good. We never learned how to be selfish or make bumps or strategize to go and dominate other people. Because, like you see, people say that the European outstinks African. It's not true. No, the European needed to outstink nature to survive. Yes. Whereas Africans survived in nature.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:09

I want to say that the European, through science and research, has intellect, but the African has intelligence. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:17

So the sad thing is that we've let go of that connection to nature and we've adopted what wasn't meant for our surroundings. Yes. And then now we are suffering because it's not natural.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:31

So we've lost it, we've lost our identity. So we've lost the identity to say that I am a Ghanaian. Yeah. And therefore, I won't take bribes. Yeah. Therefore, the the this education that I'm having must benefit everyone. Oh no, let me go and stay in my small corner and be given some position and let me just chop money and take my children to Harvard. You know, this is all Eurocentric ideologies. You know, but the the concept of animism, where I am my brother's keeper, where my brother goes beyond just another human being, another woman, or another um, or another person that's even considered a slave. Look at the names that we gave our slaves. They were not, they were called a phenipa or odonko, meaning if I love you enough, you won't go. Yeah, so it's not to say that there wasn't servitude, but there was a big difference between what happened here and what happened in the transatlantic slave trade. Yeah, based on the identity that we are a people of spirit, we are a people of love. So I will not say that because my parents were Christians, I've grown up to come and see this in my field research, but I'm going to throw it away and not learn from it because I was from some yung. I can't say that.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:51

What was the process of because this means you deconstruct it?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:54

So what was that process? First of all, personally, what was it like moving away from your Christian upbringing?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:01

I think the first time that I saw, the first time that I saw I had to question religion was when I was growing up. I had a friend called um, I had a friend, oh, he went to Hamas, I've forgotten his name. I'll tell you, I had a friend, he lived at Asafu, he was a Muslim. And out of all of us that played, his name was Maswood.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:26

Out of all of us that played, he was the cleanest, he was the most considerate, he was the kindest, but he was Muslim. And I've been programmed to think that Muslims are wicked. And I'm playing with Maswood, I'm going to school with Maswood, and he's the gentle, on time, most proficient, most kind. Even when we are maltreating a girl, Maswood is the first person to come and say, No, no, no, no, no, no. What you are doing is wrong. Oh, I miss you. If you hear this, find me. You know, and so that was the period I realized that no, this thing is separating me from my environment. So I started paying attention. And then but before that was the time where I started quite first time. I went to my father and asked him that if it is true that Muslims are bad, why is Masood better than all the five Christians I play with? That was the beginning. But before then, when I was 14, I used to go to a church, I won't mention the name. And as when you go to um uh Sunday school, the my mother will pay money, maybe I was 12, I don't remember. My mother will pay money to get uh dark chocolate with milk and meat pie. So after the Sunday school, so that we don't disturb. After the Sunday school, we were all given a glass with one meat pie. My mother had paid. This very day when I went to take my my cocoa drink and my meat pie, they said it's finished. And I asked why. They said that the the pastor's children and the elder children took two, two, therefore, we didn't get. So I said, then give me back my mother's money. Then they said, when you bring money to church, you don't take it back. So I rushed into the church and I asked my mother, Ma, they didn't give me the meal, give me money to go to the prisons to go and buy some. She said, I'm free me. So call me castan. That was the day I started saying, Ah, if God lives in this building, then why can they do this to another person? So I started questioning. I was in the process of questioning, reading, and I got very fortunate. I told you about Lord Marcus. Lord Marcus was about four years older than me, and she was playing with rasters already. So along that line, I found rasters in Fantino town that we will go and sit down in the ghettos and discuss slavery, the black nobility, emancipation, emancipation, reparation. You know, so I was fortunate, and one of the rasters that introduced me to proper, proper what Africa was um through uh Hailey Salasi and other things was um Kilby's senior brother, Papa Ja, who was the one writing songs with Nanakin, Papa Ja to saying Nanakim Boko. You know, so Papa Ja and Lord Marcus and Lotha at that time now um he lives in America. His name is Jah Beloved. These were the old slightly older people who are introducing myself and Lord Kenya and Swazibi to Rasta consciousness. Okay, so that was the first experience of uh sort of a religion which was slightly Christian but African centered, you know, talking about Marcus Gavi being the African Maziah, introduced me to Malcolm X, introduced me to the 50s, the hippies, the Great Depression. So these are the one guys that introduced me to to sort of open my thinking. Okay, I mean still in my teens, and so at a point I'm questioning, okay, if you leave this religion, you can't get a wife, you can't get a business partner. Okay, it has some fidelity. When you go there, it's yeah, you you get a group of people. When you are sick, you get a group of people, they give gifts, they it's a great community. That one I I but when I turned 40, I became sick, and when I was trying to heal from my sickness, then I decided to throw away all the things that I realized were not true in my life. And one of them was religion to throw it away completely. So I threw out away the eating of meat, I started exercising. Yeah, I like meat. I started exercising. I realized that I didn't need meat to get protein, I could get it from plants in a more healthier and get more fiber with it. So I threw that away. I threw religion away, I threw social expectations away, I threw away the concept that if I release a song and it doesn't get one million views on YouTube, it doesn't mean I'm stupid. I threw away my inabilities, I broke my glass ceiling, and I said that the universe is mine for the taking. So that's 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:12

Do you mind sharing what you went to, like how you got sick and what maybe about it?

SPEAKER_00 1:37:17

Okay, so I think three things made me sick. The first one was the music. I'm growing, and then I've done great songs, and then when after I did the versatile show album, and I did the versatile show, my career was at its peak. Then it started diving down. So I did one of the songs that I love so much. Um small, small, you even co-wrote lyrics in that song, and I've done live recording. Remember, you were the one who advised me to put you on the pack ticketing, pack ticketing. I got Osai to play. I put the music out. I went to Nigeria to promote it. I shot a 10,000, 15,000 video with Ju, and still the song would hey, what is this? I did billboards, I had put, if I'm not exaggerating, almost 80,000 Ghana CDs on promotion. Yeah, at that time. At that time, I did I put billboards all around, and still, I wasn't getting what then I released a follow-up song. I've at the song was about money. I featured Nero X. This is at the peak of Nero X's career, and we went to Takrade Vienna to go and uh that was the thing that broke everything now. We went to Takrade Vienna to go and and launch the song, and apart from Abuakese Harold and the team that I went with, who were more than the people that came to watch it that came to watch the song with Takrade's number one. Wow, I said to on the on the way back, I'm crying, and I'm hiding it from Abuakese and all my team members. I said on the back, I'm crying with him. I said, why? Why have I allowed expectations of others to put me down this much? So I went into a depression for one year. This is 2016, I guess. So between that and 2017, I put down my phone. I realized that the phone was also a part of it, the doom scrolling. So I put down the phone for one year, I slept, and then I thought, and I read, and then I opened the opan shots, I opened my Angelo's books, I opened the Bible, I opened the Quran, I opened the Tao, the Jin. I opened the Gita, I I read the conversations between Krishna and Arjuna. I read more about the African traditional religion. Then I saw that there's a lot of wisdom in all of these things. Why do I just hold on to one?

SPEAKER_02 1:39:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:56

Then when I woke up, I did the Made in Ghana album, and then I changed my career from making music about myself to now making music for the community. And another thing is that from that time, so around this time, my cholesterol was 4. What's 4.7 going up? My back pain, the most sleep I could get was two hours. I couldn't eat, I couldn't think, brain fog, I couldn't create. I had morning headaches within that time since like 30 to 40. But when I gave up on all this, that is what has given birth to this new Ochiname Kwame.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:38

That's why you are you are younger than me, and I'm younger than you.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:41

Exactly. That is that is why now when I go and take my blood samples and they check my metabolic age is 33 instead of 80. Yes. And I I I go to hospitals, they do checks. The last time I did my blood test at uh Lancet, the lady that was reading the thing to me said, Brah Kwame, what are you doing differently? So it is what Buddha will call mindfulness. I've stopped following expectations, I'm doing what is good for me, and then two, exercises at the physical level, and then three, I am eating the diet that I know helps me, and then four, I put all my energy in making the world better, you know. So this is what has given birth to the new me.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:27

But you thought you've talked about how you handle deconstruction. Yes, how did you handle the world's uh response? Because let me ask you this, for instance. Shoot me, shoot me. As we're having this conversation, yes, somebody is in the comments right now insulting you. Somebody will come and comment, Jesus is kin. What you are saying is blasphemy. I know that. How do you handle people's response to your deconstruction from Christianity? My secret is simple.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:58

I don't care. I don't care what happens, it's not your life, it's my life. If there's a Jesus that really loves that people live, I think Jesus loves this version of me where I'm not using the number of people that commented on my Instagram page to kill myself. Yeah. Where I love myself, where I am happy, where I can get eight hours of sleep, wake up the next morning, eat breakfast, and sleep again.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:26

But just know if Jesus came in 2026, you would have to be an influencer. Or no my goodness, you would have to care about comments.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:34

You know, you understand. So, so like the I don't care because it is not your life. Yes, Jesus is kin. Thank God. At there are points in my life where Jesus is kin for me. Look, this guy, Jesus, came to say that no matter what happened happens, turn the other cheek. So they just catch him and try to try it. So they slap him, he turns the other cheek. And Peter brings out a knife, he says, put it back. And then they go and kill him. And whilst he's dying, he instead of cursing everybody and their mother, he says, God, forgive these ignorant people, for they know not what they do. That's why I bow. So if Jesus has come to save me, it is not his blood, it is his life, it is his example of forgiveness, it is his idea of consistent forgiveness 77 times, seven times. That is what is saving me. That is what's saving my relationship with my children. Well, I forgive my children 77 times. They say, Ah, that is forgiven. That is what is saving me. Not that he died. So, but if he his dying saves you, hallelujah!

SPEAKER_01 1:43:46

To each his own.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:48

Exactly, different strokes for different folks. Yeah, you know, I've read about Buddha, where Guateman, in me when he's about turning 20 or 21, his father is the great emperor, the richest person in Asia at that time, big emperor, leaves the palace for the first time and realizes that there's death, there's suffering, there's pain, there's sickness, and decides that ah, why have you guys heading me away from the world like this? Let me go. Then he walks for 50 years, looking for the answer to the suffering for everyone. And then he finds that answer, as in four things, that there's dharma, which is suffering, and that uh there's also a solution for the dharma, which is mindfulness. And he gives the the eight noble paths, where it tells you that yes, you suffer when you step on a nail, it pricks you a yeah. However, after a while, forget about it. But it tends beautiful stories like a man and and his uh trainee and his student, a monk and his student crossing a river, and the monk had already told the student, do not touch a woman on this training path. And then they see a woman suffering, and so the monk goes to carry the woman and helps her cross. Then two days later, the student asks the monk, I'm angry with you. You said we shouldn't touch a woman. Why did you touch the girl? Yeah, then the monk says that I dropped her two days ago. Why are you still carrying her? How can I say I won't learn from these stories? Do you get my argument? So there's a lot of knowledge in the world, all these sages, Jesus, Anoche, uh, Buddha, uh Krishna, Horus, uh Osiris, all these people have something to teach us. Yeah, so if you want to just take one and run with it, and it will help you do it. But if another person decides to learn from all of these people, insult him.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:53

So please, those in the comments insult him. You have permission again. Did you get the Buddha story? It's a beautiful story. Why are you still carrying head for two days?

SPEAKER_00 1:46:04

Yes, what a mind.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:06

And Buddha, in this sense, it's not a person, it's you when you have got into the the uh nirvana where you no longer care about Instagram uh likes and insults, yeah, where you just put love in the world, and you I heard a Buddha story um where a very rich woman who had many children and many grandchildren, she loved children, you know, and then one day she comes to Buddha and she's soaked in water, and you know, in in those times, when you are soaked in water, it's a way of um showing that somebody in your family is dead. So Buddha asks her, What's wrong? Then she says her favorite granddaughter is dead. She doesn't know what she's going to do to herself, she's so sad and everything. And then Buddha says, I know you, and I know how much you love children. So I have a question how many children do you wish you had? How many children and grandchildren? I said, if I had more children than the entire nation, I would be happy. Then Buddha asked her again, How many people do you think die a day in this nation? And said, Oh, maybe 50 hundred. Said, Okay, let's say ten people die a day. If you want as many children as the nation, then you will be drenched in water every day. Because you'll be crying, you'll be crying every day. So then the Buddha went on to say that if you have a hundred things you love, you have a hundred ways to suffer. If you have ten things you love, you have ten ways to suffer. But if you detach from everything, then you become unattached.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:42

You see, talking about attachment, let me add one Buddha story. Exactly. Well, a young man goes to Buddha and and tells him, I want to be happy. What do I what must I do if I want to be happy? The Buddha tells the young man, want is desire, take it off. To be is expectation, take it off. Now you are happy. Okay, it's clear. Someone went to Buddha and asked, What do I carry with me when I die? He said, The only thing that you carry is your actions. That's when they follow you wherever you go, even when you are not dead. There's a lot to learn from this. Let's come to our Muslim brothers. Yeah, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, says, When you are angry, sit down. When you are angry, I miss anger. You are talking to your wife, you are completely angry. Sit down. Because as um Seneca, in I think it's uh yes, Seneca on anger. You have to read that book. Seneca has an amazing book on anger, it's uh available on YouTube. So I used to listen when I was asleep, when I was deconstructing. Seneca on anger. Seneca says that everything in nature that is angry rises, and then you see the bull salivating, yeah, it's for the um for the snake, the cobra, the neck opens. It happens to the same, the same thing happens in a human being. Okay, and Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, says, Do the opposite of that when you are angry, calm down, sit down. I think that is why our foremathers, whenever they are going to talk about difficult things, they say, Yen Tanasi, yeah, you know. So, what should I learn from this? Because my parents are Christian. No. When the Muslims are fasting, I'm fasting with them because it's going to create autophagy in my system. Yes, imagine me. Look at the way the Muslims pray five times a day. And usually it's about it's about every time after meal. Three of them will be after me, after breakfast, after lunch. What they are they doing apart from everything, let's say there's nothing that they are praying to. That's a solid cardio exercise. So if the prayers is 10 minutes, that is 15 minutes of cardio exercise a day. Look at the effect on their heart health and cardiovascular. Popular act I can't learn from it because I was born a Christian. No. But I think we need to learn from everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:08

Wow. I mean, where you are, I can say that your work speaks for itself. So anybody who's listening to you right now, for those who are attacking him in their minds, people, the same way you have been able to learn from others, people should be able to learn from you that your open-mindedness, your ability to question, your ability to ask and really listen to other people is what has kept you going. Let me ask this for all of you what would you say you would want your legacy to be?

SPEAKER_00 1:50:45

To be honest. When you go on Facebook, I've written down my personality there on Facebook. I think let me read it. You can even find it for them. On my fan page, I've shared exactly who I am. It says musician, showstopper, nature lover, feminist, pragmatist, vegan, global citizen. Quote, love your nature, it is yourself. Yes, this is who I who I am. I am utilitarian. What it means is that I only take actions, or I mostly take actions that brings the most joy to all involved and lower the suffering of all involved. So when I'm gone, two things I wish will be remembered, I'll be remembered for that this man died empty. Okay. He put all out, and two, if it's true, if they can feel the love that I think I'm putting into this world, then if it follows me, I want to be remembered as a guy that loved. Oh I like that. Yes. That is if they think I truly loved, but if they think I was full of bullshit, I should remember like that way as well. Yeah, but I want to die, and that's why I'm trying everything. I'm touching business, I'm touching philanthropy, even in the philanthropy, climate change. I'm advocating for uh dyslexia, I'm around the world doing policy for children with learning difficulties, um, hepatitis for the past 16 years. Every single year I've I have celebrated the world hepatitis day, whether I have government support, sponsorship, or not, for the past 16 years. This year I'm going to insam prison with MDS Lancer Laboratory and uh Noguchi. We are going to give free screening to 1,000 inmates. Yes. So I want to be remembered for some of this and also a dope rapper.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:41

Look, we definitely have to do part two, part three, part four. Yes, yes, yes. But before we close, do what I always ask everybody to do. I want you to look in that camera and imagine you had the power to drop one mindset into the mind of the person who has watched. Mindset. Yes. That will help them become a mastermind. What would you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:53:04

Motivation doesn't do jack. Just be dedicated to that thing you know will help you and keep doing it over and over and over and over again, even if you don't immediately see results. The rough that in the building like bricks and mortar. Even if you don't see results, do it. Yeah, yes, I think that's it. If you know it will help you, do it. Because I think um Bruce Lee speaks of the cake, right? Yeah, where he says the one that he fears is the one who does the same kick over and over a thousand times because that day when that cake lands, you are dead.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:43

Yeah, and I think we live in a world where we have become too results oriented. Yes, you know, you post something, you instantly get like you you do a podcast, you are expecting 50,000 views, 100,000 views. So we have forgotten the the nature of doing things because I want to do it. That's what that's what we did when we're kids.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:05

So I remember when I met you when we're doing the caravan of love. You see, you dancing when we're doing that movie when we are scoring, you I remember the the energy. I just wanted to wanted to score a movie. Yeah, when we're playing. Look, listen to the phrases that you played in all those songs where they're just it's just youth, it's just pouring yourself into it over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:33

You know, I think when you lose that, you lose life, yes, because life should be about pouring out, yes, not about what you are getting back from it, not that even if it doesn't come back, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:46

Even you just it's a one-way traffic of give, give, give, give. Not like my my community told me that love is a giving thing. It's a give. No, it's not, it's a give, give, give, give. Whether you are giving some or not, because immediately you take, then it's a transaction.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:02

That's always my goal as I'm doing masterminds. You know, every time I post an episode, I don't want my concern to be how many views I got, how many comments.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:14

Thank you. And you might not even know it. Thank you. I met a guy at uh at the court about seven years ago. He a lawyer rushed down and came to hold me. He said, Please let me talk to you. I said, please speak. He said that he was in final year law school at KNUSD. His father had died, mother had died, he had nobody. The school was paying his school fees. Friends were teasing the only reason why he didn't quit was Warsaw. Wow, that's a testimony.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:43

Yes, love that. Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. It's been an amazing conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:49

Oh, yes, yes. You have later, I was I was rising. I was coming in my own.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:56

Thank you for the opportunity, Richie. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:58

Always, always great.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:59

We'll definitely have a continuation of this. Yes, thank you. I hope this has really brought you another step closer to being the mastermind. I know your destiny. Thank you for watching this episode. Now, the mastermind's dream is about building a community of people who have the right mindset and are ready to take their success into their own hands. So do me this wonderful favor, subscribe and share with anybody out there who you believe you want to see have the right mindset to succeed so that together we can all become the masterminds we deserve to be.