Lemme Ask You This
From the minds of Talib Kweli and Tef Poe comes Lemme Ask You This, a podcast that lives at the intersection of art and activism.
Lemme Ask You This
Episode 8 - The Corner of Shoot & Run
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Talib and Tef introduce themselves and talk about the intention behind the podcast. Talib talks about how people perceive him on social media and how there is a white supremacist problem in America. Tef asks Talib about how he navigated the trappings of fame and Talib reflects on his time in Hollywood. Talib breaks down the history of conscious hiphop and talks about how Black Star was influenced by the conscious artists who came before them. Tef asks Talib about how he met Yasiin Bey. Talib talks about having the confidence of knowing he would succeed. Tef asks Talib about the battle rap scene in NYC and the conversation turns towards the Lyricist Lounge. Tef talks about the St. Louis version of the Lyricist Lounge. Talib talks about the unsung heroes behind the scenes in hiphop. Talib and Tef talk about the need to leave smaller markets in order to make it in the music industry. Tef talks about the tough love he faced from his OGs and cheating his way thru 106 and Park Freestyle Fridays. Tef and Talib give El-P his flowers. Talib talks about what's expected of conscious MCs and tells a story about going to strip clubs. Talib and Tef then talk about people they recently lost. Talib recounts his history with John Forte and then talks about the health challenges that Black people face.
Peace of love, people. Welcome to another edition of Let Me Ask You This. My name is Talib Kwali. I got my partner in Rhyme. Def Town Place to Be.
SPEAKER_03What's up, man? Live on location and BK all day, man.
SPEAKER_00That's right. We are at the Brooklyn Brewery Studios. I want to thank them for having us. Um, you know, I've drank some beers here before, and now we're drinking water. And we're talking. You know what I'm saying? On the let me ask you this.
SPEAKER_01Let's do it.
SPEAKER_00Um, thank you for doing this podcast with me, Tef. This is only the the, we're just starting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I felt like I wanted to have a place that I could control where my voice is heard because clearly they don't want your boy on social media. You know what I'm saying? Like clearly I'm persona non-grata on a lot of platforms. But I feel like I got a lot to say. And I feel like there's a lot going on in the world that could use my input.
SPEAKER_03I agree, man. Um, you know, just having so many different styles of private conversations with you, and uh, I feel like the person that you are on your in your real friendships is not the person that the world quite knows, you know. So it's gonna be an enjoyable experience kind of unpacking some of that as we do this.
SPEAKER_00That's true. How much control do you feel like we have over how people see us?
SPEAKER_03Not a lot. And then when I think about somebody in your position who, you know, you've been a public figure for a very long time, bruh. Um, how much control can you have of it? You know, you still kind of move like an underground MC, even though you all over the world, you know?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, the social media aspect of of everything that we do has really changed a lot of dynamics on how people relate because we in a new space in a new world, and people, including myself, have been trying to figure out how to navigate social media, what's the etiquette, what's right, what's wrong. Um, the power dynamics of it is a conversation that's revolved around my name a lot. You know, I've been someone who has supported the idea that it doesn't matter whether how famous I am or how much celebrity I have, I should have the right to respond just how any other human being will respond. But, you know, there is something to be said about because of the you know, the Spider-Man shit with great power comes great responsibility, right? So if you have a bigger platform, how you respond to people is judged very differently.
SPEAKER_03Oh, for sure, for sure. Um, I remember when I first met you and I used to notice, like, I said, man, Kwali don't got no problem going back and forth with people online. And I I'd I would imagine that that's gotta be a very polarizing thing, though, even internally amongst your fan base sometimes.
SPEAKER_00Well, some of it was social experiment, and some of it was just saying that in a social media space, a lot of people use their social media just for branding. So they only trying to present their best face because they're trying to sell you something. Yeah, I never looked at social media as a selling tool, even though it's very potent, marketing is a selling tool. For me, social media, the social part of it was more interesting than me presenting my putting my best foot forward and presenting. So it's like, you know, you never see me going after people, but if people come into my space, I was more than willing and happy, excited, gleeful even about being able to respond to people as if I'm on the street with you. Because I saw the world moving in that direction early on social media. When you look at, you know, how much time do we spend online? People criticize how much time I spend online. And you know where they say that at? Online. You know what I'm saying? Where they at. They just you know what I'm saying, how they spending their time is different. I'm critiquing the system, I'm going at white supremacists, I'm saying, you know, there's a Nazi problem in this country. And by the way, for all the people who say Talib Kwali says calls everybody Nazis, a lot more of you people should be calling people Nazis because clearly we have a Nazi problem in this country. Donald Trump is absolutely a Nazi, and we're gonna prove that at some point in this podcast, if you don't believe me. But Donald Trump is absolutely a Nazi. And if you're not exposing these Nazis, you part of the problem, bro. You Nazi adjacent. I'm not I'm speaking for myself, I'm not speaking for Tef Poe. You know what I'm saying? But I'm just saying if the majority of white people in this country have elected a Nazi twice, then more of us should be calling out these Nazis.
SPEAKER_03I mean, my opinion ain't that far off from yours, so it ain't like we, you know, spread out about that one. Pause. New York dudes do the pause game. Y'all gonna have to understand I'm not from New York. My pause, my pause etiquette will be off in this show. So just get used to it. Because at home, we don't really do the pause game. You know what I'm saying? He's from St. Louis. St. Louis, STL, man. That's where we met. That's right. Um, in Ferguson, Missouri, which is just basically St. Louis County, a part of St. Louis County. Um, but yeah, that's where we met out there on the front lines of uh the Ferguson Uprising, the rebellion. We talked about that on one episode.
SPEAKER_00I don't know if y'all will ever see it, but we met on on in person, not on the internet.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, not on the internet at all. Not on the internet at all. Actually, I actually brag about this because that's when we met when I was in like a I had there was a distinction of like, all right, that's who dude is. But I booked Quali probably 2013, 2012. He came out there, did the show. Another thing about Talib is a good businessman, man. If you reach out in your business together, he's gonna holler back, player. He's gonna holler back. So here we are.
SPEAKER_00I had to learn how to be a businessman. It doesn't come natural to me. I became a businessman or a businessman in order to push my art forward. There was a point where I was like a more industry artist, you know, on the cusp of the mainstream, but that was fleeting. All this flame is an illusion, a mist is as as well.
SPEAKER_03I always wanted to ask you about that because a lot of how you move in a sense, I have modeled myself after. And in terms of being on the radio, having popping records, having a single that went, having this that goes, you find yourself in a situation where you got all this different type of influence coming upon you. How did you navigate not falling into the pits that other artists fell into when the momentum from that stuff slowed up?
SPEAKER_00I feel like I did. I feel like I did fall into those pits. I just have a solid background, solid uh upbringing, solid family behind me, solid movement work behind me in my past. So even when I was falling into the pits, the trappings of fame, the trapping of celebrity, the trappings of greed and and FOMO and wanting to be a part of everything. Um even when I was doing that, my output was still conscious. You know what I'm saying? So it was like it was more personal. It was more things that was happening in my personal life that it was like, you know, I was married, I was living in Hollywood, I was going to the brunches. You was living in Hollywood? I was, yeah, I was living in Hollywood. I was going to all the like events, the step and repeats, all the little award shows. You know what I'm saying? I had watches and sunglasses and car notes, and I was buying, you know, for for my wife, I was buying bags and shoes. I was doing the whole thing. You know what I'm saying? Double date, you know what I'm saying? Like I'd be out there, I'd see like Tisha Campbell and Dwayne Martin. You know what I'm saying? You see you wanted to, you know, Terry Cruz and party, that type of life I was living. And um it wasn't for me. I look back at some of the I looked back at pictures of myself from that time, and even though like I was still doing activist work, I still my record still reflected a conscious attitude. But in terms of how I was living, I felt like I was following a blueprint that was set up for me. But that I had to, in retrospect, it wasn't actually who I was. I thought that if you made it, you had to move out to Hollywood because there was more opportunities out there. You had to try to do the film thing, you had to have the escalade, you had to have the chain, you had to have the.
SPEAKER_03About what what what what songs, records, moments bring you from Talib Kwali, the underground icon, to the dude living in Hollywood, going on double dates with celebs. What brings you to what what what put you in that world?
SPEAKER_00What put you in that that that I think it was, you know, the desire to compete at the base of hip hop, of what we do is you you like I'm the nastiest, I'm the nicest, nobody could fuck with me. So it's a sport, right? And sport is could competition in a lot of ways is competition is is could help be give you a sense of self-esteem and could drive you forward and give you purpose and and ambition, but a lot of ways it's toxic. You know, and if you're not careful, if you're not strong mentally, who you psych yourself up to be, who you build yourself up to be as a rapper, as an artist, because hip-hop is more brazen with it. Like I'm the best. All artists feel like that, but hip-hop is part of the art to say it.
SPEAKER_01Yes, right.
SPEAKER_00So the more you do that, you got it's you gotta be careful. I will say that I spent a lot of years competing with other MCs.
SPEAKER_01Really?
SPEAKER_00Um, I don't do that no more. But I don't do that because I learned the hard way that that's not me. But when I was competing with other MCs, my whole thing was I'ma come aggressive with the conscious. But I'm I looked at it as a Trojan horse. I was like, everything that y'all doing is easy to do. I can go wear the white t-shirt and the and the bandanas with the with the headbands and the and have the watch and the chain and the Ben Baller design. If you look on eardrum, I'm wearing a Ben Baller chain that that he made that has a little tape deck.
SPEAKER_03I remember that.
SPEAKER_00A little cassette, right? So I got the Ben Baller. Shout out to Ben Baller, you know what I'm saying? Like, who also designed my wedding ring at that time. I was going crazy with it. You know what I'm saying? But um, I felt like I was gonna go to the most popping club and get the VIP section next to the most popping rapper or RB singer or athlete and buy the bottles and show them by example that this conscious rap shit is just as fly as everything y'all do. I think I was a little bit triggered by the idea that if you do conscious rap, which they told me and Yasseen Bey, everybody on Rawkus back then, if you do conscious rap, yeah, somehow that's weak. Somehow you a loser, somehow that's an alternative to what all what hip hop is. And I'm like, no, what y'all niggas is doing is the alternative. What we doing is actually hip-hop.
SPEAKER_03So here we go. Let me let me ask you this. This is really how we talk. The let me ask you this comes out of me listening to him and putting it in my mind what he's saying. Do you in 2026, 25, 24, there are several conversations going on like about who invented trap music, right?
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, there's like been different conversations coming out of Atlanta about who would be on the trap Mount Everest because they were the originators of the genre, T.I., Jeezy, Gucci, etc., etc. With conscious music. Is it safe to say that we can say you and I, you and Yacine invented the notion of that as a genre? Not necessarily the style of music, but for me, I don't really recall when people were labeling labeling it a particular thing. And I feel like a lot of times you guys were the poster children for what we thought it should be in the mainstream.
SPEAKER_00I think we became the poster children for it at a certain point, but it's only based on our influences and the people who came before us. I I can't say that we invented it at all. Um, you know, for me, the conscious rap lineage starts with really it starts with, you know, Negro spirituals, you know what I'm saying? Like and and and and Psalms in the Bible. That's the first conscious raps, you know what I'm saying? But then it's like, you know, you get to you get to the last poets, and you get to Gil Scott Heron, and you get to, you know, that whole poetry scene that was going on in Greenwich Village and Uptown and Lower East Side with the you know, you had Latino poets and and New Eureka style of poetry that was that was innovative in hip-hop. Um, and then the real first mainstream example you see of it is of course Melly Mel with the message. Um Mellie Mel was considered the best MC. He was the Drake, he was the Kendrick, he was the KRS. And after Mellie Mell, you had the KRS era, which I would put, you know, put Chuck D and them in the in the public enemy in the era. And then you had the children of them, which was X-Clan, you know, PRT, poor righteous teacher, but then there was like some comp there's like some clash of philosophy. Now we're seeing different styles of conscious rap. Are you more of a NOI? You more of a, you know, they was they was clown and career, because he at one point he said, I'm a humanist. Yeah, you're a public enemy on the on the black nationalist tip. You know, so um I'm I was a child watching all of that, and that's how I thought hip-hop should be. My parents is professors, so they had like you know, conscious material in the house. We go to libraries and museums on the weekends, stuff like that. So when I was hip-hop was defining who I was as a man, was 87, 88, KRS was it, Chuck D was it, and then you also had like the people I just mentioned, poor H's teachers, um, Queen Latifah, you know what I'm saying? Like people like that. Yeah, so that was already looked at as conscious.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, I think if I if my memory serves correct, it were already when I came out in '97, '97 was the era that bad boy and Rockefeller was running the mixtapes, running the clubs, running the radio. And that move, that music was sexy, and it was sleek, and it was gangster, and it was it was voyeuristic, and it wasn't conscious at all. And if you looked at something, they looked at conscious as something that you didn't want to be. It was like that was like, oh, we don't do that no more. It wasn't cool. So I think what Yasin and I did, we made it cool.
SPEAKER_03See, that's what I what I feel y'all did is a person that's uh ideological child of y'all's in a sense. You know, like you got people, different hip-hop uh family trees that produce different things, right? So UGK, you could see the direct link between them and TI. You could see the direct link between outcasts and other artists. Uh what I think y'all did for artists like myself is um modernized it. Yeah, I could see that. You know, you gave it the swag that I'm used to. I dress like that, I talk like that. I wouldn't mind rapping like that if I could get my skills set up. You know what I'm saying? Like it wasn't just the message, the the you know, the politics of it all. It was these dudes kind of serious and they kind of bring it in in a in a particular way.
SPEAKER_00But look how we did that. I mean, look at the science. What's our first single? It's definition. Definition is essentially you put stop the violence by Boogie Down Productions Keras, one who I was mentioning, together with with with um the P is still free. Okay. Beat. So it's one, two, three, all that's from K. All of that's from Keras. All we had to do was write to it. But the the the foundation of what Boogie Down Productions was already there. If you look at Knowledge itself, the original Knowledge itself on the Black Star album, I rapped to, you know, Rakim uh had rapped to the ghetto sample. Ghetto, nobody's smiling. I had rapped to that, hot tech flipped it with the same mini ripping sample that Tropical Quest used for uh Check the Rhyme. So when I perform Rest of Peace to Fife Thorg, when I perform Knowledge Itself, I perform it over Check the Rhyme because my fans resonate with that. They grew up on Check the Rhyme as well. It's the same loop. And so it's like if you look at we had the interlude, we had a couple interludes. One interlude was from uh one of those poets, one of those you know, classic black poets. Um, the other interlude was from called B Boys Will Be Boys. We started out our Rocksteady crew. That's what we talk about. So everything Blackstar was talking about. When you listen to Astronomy, that's Weldon Irvine, rest in peace, playing on that. Everything we talked about, everything on that album, what we were saying that you felt was modern. Everything we were sampling, everything we were saying was we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. I see what you're saying. We going back, and that's what was crazy. Everybody else was going forward. Height Williams video styles, fish eye lens into the future. Black Star broke the mold by going backwards. Yeah. And that's why people who was really listening to real hip hop, mixtapes, vinyl, go into fat beats, still break dancing, you know, still into the five elements, really supported Blackstar.
SPEAKER_03So at the time that you and Yassine coming up, first of all, for the public, how the hell did y'all meet?
SPEAKER_00That's a good question. Yassine Bay, aka Most Deaf, aka Dante Terrell Smith. I hope you don't get mad that I put the government out there. You know what I'm saying? Um he was like a child prodigy in my eyes, a child star. Like the first time I seen Yassine, that I can remember, there was a show that Nell Carter. Remember Nell Carter from Give Me a Break?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00There was a TV show she had, I forgot what it was called, but he was like the kid on the TV show. So I remember seeing him as a little kid, as seeing the little kid version of him on television. Wow. And then uh man, man, rest in peace to the good brother Malcolm Jamal Warner. Such a good brother, such a bright light, such a whoo, such a positive, talented, amazing human being. Malcolm Jamal Warner was was amazing. But he had a he had a spin-off from the Cosby show where he was teaching in the inner cities for a couple years and a bunch of badass inner city kids. And Yasin was one of those kids. And I remember seeing, I remember this because he has a very distinct face. So I didn't know who he was, but I remember seeing that face. So then when I used to see it.
SPEAKER_03So he was already into acting and all that as a child.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And so I used to see him around in the park. We was in the park, you know, with Supernatural and Aguilar and people like this, Hotine Gray. Legends. Yeah, we was in the park, uh, as Mike Epps would say, dusty, hungry, dusty, sharing Big Macs and shit, sharing fries and shit like this. Yassine would come through and like kind of dressing how we do now, like the hats and the and the and the suits, and the and we was on some wearing Echo Gear, you know, Nietzsche shit like this. You know what I'm saying? And Yassine would have on like gabardine pants, and he just looked bugged out. Like he didn't, he was one of us. But he it was something different about him. And he had a group called uh Urban Thermodynamics with his brother DCQ and his sister Sess. And they had a record on Payday Records, I believe. Diamond D produced it. Uh what's the name? Manifest Destiny. I'm just here to let you all know. I got the flow and the lock stick roll. Yeah, it was it was dope. It was super dope. And I like that. So I was a fan of his. Saw him on television, see him in the park, he would freestyle with us. And that was really it. And I saw him in the Deion Sanders commercial.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00And I'm like, that's the dude from the he did a uh American Express commercial with Deion Sanders. That's the dude from the Deion Sanders commercial. Yeah, I was like, yo, y'all see uh most deaf from that group Urban Thermodynamics. That dude is dope. And he used to come in a bookstore. I was working at Ankiro books. Shout out to NQ Books. You can go to qualityclub.com. We still got in Kira Books cracking. Uh, Chino, if you um when you come back, bring some of them books. I got some of them books in my bag. Um Yassine used to come in T and Kira Books. We kind of knew each other as acquaintances, and he was shopping in a bookstore, and then uh he invited me over his house. We had children, uh we had our our our girlfriends were pregnant at the same time. And so we we related on that. So we became friends on like the family level, breaking bread. He would give me books, I would give him books, and um, I left a demo tape. I was working on a demo tape of high tech at his crib, and his son Elijah.
SPEAKER_03Back then you was working on a demo tape with high tech.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this was 97. Or 90. No, this was 90. No, we were we were cracking by 97, so this was like 95. Um 95. And uh his son Elijah, thank you. Put some books out there. We can get this at at Acuba Books at qualityclub.com. My autobiography, you can get books by Quest Love. This is just a couple of the books that we have, because I still sell books, bro. I'm still hustling books on the street like bean pods. This is what I did. But uh but yeah, that's how I met Yassine. We was we were friends and uh through the family connection, and he came in the bookstore one day, he was like, yo, Elijah, put your tape on, and I like it.
SPEAKER_03Wow. At the time that you are conceptualizing what you want to be as an MC, are you seeing any of this where where you took it? Are you seeing now that you're here in the future, in the past, are you seeing what you see now?
SPEAKER_00Me and Jay Rawls just dropped an album last year called The Confidence of Knowing. And I got that quote from Jay-Z, and he might I think he got it from someplace else, where he said, you have to have when when you're not cracking, when you're not on, we have no fans, the world's gonna tell you you're crazy. You're gonna, I'm gonna be a rap star. Are you crazy? That sounds insane. You have to have the confidence to know that no matter how crazy that sounds, because it is, it is crazy.
SPEAKER_03And I mean, that's why I asked you that, just knowing some of your lifestyle. I've been places with you where you do a show, you gotta run out the venue to go be somewhere else, figure out how to be the same place at two times. Uh but also what's intriguing to me about you is it appears that more and more people are coming towards your music as it maturates as you get older, versus like other people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're trying to stop that from happening real hard, but you can't stop it. That's exactly what's happening. Um, but I did see I had the confidence to know that I could do this. If I didn't have that, I wouldn't have done it. I had the confidence to know that I was gonna do that as far as where my path went. When I was younger, when I first started trying to do it, you know, my hero's music. Was De La Sole, Tropical, Native Tongues in general, Tropical Quest, you know, KRS, Public Enemy. But I did see myself as like on some LL Cool J shit. I saw myself on some big rap star shit. I want to be a rap star when I was 14, 15, 16 years old. And then you you start to get you know the fame and celebrity of it as you grow out of becoming, grow out of teenage mind state, you know, you start that starts to dissipate a little bit. But um, I did think I was gonna make it. I did think that I was I would listen to people rapping, and I didn't know that I was, I felt like I was better than them. People who was cracking, you know.
SPEAKER_03What's what are some who are some MCs and some groups that were running around New York at the time that you and most was like, if we bump into these cats, man.
SPEAKER_00The battles, the battle situation, the what battling is and how people see battling, it has gone through many different things. There was like the new music seminar battles, shout out recipes to Clark Kent, you know, he was involved in that the DJ battles, the MC battles for world domination, they called it, even though it was just at like the Jacob Javis Convention Center. You know, and um you had those type of industry battles, right? Then you had like street battles back then, back then, it wasn't a you didn't really it wasn't like Smack DVD. You and people from my experience, and this might be other people have different experiences, my experience is it wasn't it wasn't really smoke, it was more like friendly competition. Music is subjective, you know, you like some people better than others, but you would everybody would gather in Washington Square Park, but we was all cool with each other, and it was more like it was like how Ari Spears talks about white comedy clubs. He said, White people go there, they applaud the effort. Yeah, black clubs nigga, you better be funny. Yeah, I'm not applauding your effort. Like I I I paid a lot of money to come out. You got to be funny, and that's our my generation of MCs, we was applauding each other's effort. It wasn't dissing each other, it wasn't like you whack, get the fuck out of here. It was like, okay, that was nice. You tried the little freestyle, okay. But there was definitely people who was rose to the to the top of the pile, like a supernatural or Yassine Bey. Um so it wasn't it wasn't like I'm a battle you, but it was competitive.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I remember um we had our own version of basically what was going on in New York kind of being motivated by underground hip-hop at mass in St. Louis. So for me, I think a lot of our best acts come out of that style of tradition. And I'm the battling. Not necessarily battling, but we had this place called The High Point, which was like our version of the lyricist lounge. Shout out my man Fenster, uh the ruckus crew, uh Luke Mon DJ Trackstar, Autoscats, uh Charlie Chan. Um they pretty much brought us to this space to groom us to BMCs, to be better participants of hip-hop. And since we wasn't an NY, it wasn't like you could go outside and be like, yo, there goes such and such, or there goes such and such, right? So we had to learn how to turn these local people into our equivalent of that, basically. So I felt like we had a local version of KRS1, my man lifestyle. Uh we had a local version of this, a local version of that. And some of us come come out of that to become figures in the national underground, and then some of us just kind of become St. Louis legends. You know what I'm saying? Who did you say started that? Finstor. Well, I Finster, John Harrington, a bunch of cats that were older than me, you know, and I used to have to sneak into it. Uh one of our main DJs, DJ Charlie Chan, he goes on to leave St. Louis and become Run DMC's DJ after uh Jam Master J passed. So recipes J. You know, that's a whole you could get booed off the stage in there too. So they wasn't coming to just see what you had. This was like, no, we want to see if our best people could go out in the world and actually do this, so we're not gonna play with it, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Now, I wanted to you just shout out who started that because in hip hop, the MCs and the DJs, and they we get a lot of light, but there's unsung heroes who are promoters and people who may not rap well or DJ or be creative in that way, but they create these showcases, stuff like that. Now, Lyricist Lounge that was became more competitive than us just in the park. And Lyricist Lounge was Danny Castro and Anthony Marshall, and they took the park vibe and brought it inside. Um, and they were curators of who could get on that stage based on their knowledge of the culture. And I always chopped them out because they were hard on me. They was like, oh, yeah, I don't know if you're ready yet. And that was very important to my development.
SPEAKER_03That's how they used to do us as an MC.
SPEAKER_00You know what I'm saying? So it's like whether it's those guys or what's going on in Detroit at the hip-hop shop with uh uh proofing them or what was going on in in Unity in in LA with Bigger B in them. There's always someone in the culture who is your job to be, they call it gatekeepers, but I like to, it's not gatekeeping. That's a negative term in my in my in my view. It's more about curation than gatekeeping. Because it's not about just uh get off my lawn, stay out the gate. You know what I'm saying? But it's more like, hey, bro, like what prove that you could be in here.
SPEAKER_03I remember when I was uh catching more steam as an MC, and one of my my guys was like going around town telling different DJs about me. Uh my guy Tech Supreme, who's one of my first earliest producers, he was going around telling everybody about me. And uh my guy Fence, who was like an icon to us locally, about he taught us a lot about how to promote ourselves, market ourselves, and just get our music out there. Uh when he first went to Fence, he said, Man, is Tep serious? And I took such offense to him asking, Was I serious? that it made me prove to everybody that I was beyond serious. You know what I'm saying? Because it was like, What you mean am I serious? You know, but that's the attitude that they had as people who were kind of responsible for seeing what could get let through the cracks, you know.
SPEAKER_00I remember when I was first making a name for myself in Cincinnati working with high tech, there was a a young lady, I don't remember her name, but she was an MC. And um she had asked me, you know, what I gotta do to make it. And I was like, you need to get the fuck out of Cincinnati. And I remember she got really mad at me because she felt like I was dissing her city. Yeah, yeah. It was an argument we had. But I was I was like, I'm not dissing your city. I'm just telling you, there's no music business in Cincinnati. You have to represent for your city, but you gotta go to New York or LA to do that. I just feel like it's changed a little bit. You could go to Atlanta these days. Yeah. But back then it wasn't no, you know, the the South didn't have something to say, as Andre had put it. You know what I'm saying? The South did have something to say, but it wasn't it wasn't being recognized like that back then. Um, as somebody coming from St.
SPEAKER_03Louis, do you agree with what I told her? Fully. Um here's the thing: people in like these breadbasket places don't realize. Like you in Iowa trying to be a rapper, you in Wisconsin, you in Missouri. Yeah, you could catch traction by manipulating the internet in different ways, uh, getting out there, getting your city.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there wasn't no internet back then either when I told her this.
SPEAKER_03Getting your city behind you. Um but ultimately, in order to meet a tali of quality, you're gonna have to get out of Nebraska. He don't live in Nebraska. You're gonna have to get out in order to meet Dr. Dre, you're gonna have to get out of Idaho. He don't live in Idaho. So sure you can Idaho is just like Compton. You can build it, but it's only those connections and the fullness of the industry, and not even the industry. I hate when people talk all that industry bullshit. The fullness of hip-hop and the nationwide music-making community does not reside in these smaller places that are like fly-over country United States. And you can make it in the in terms of like TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and your way into better positions of having fans at Mass, but ultimately you got to get the heck up out of there because there's nobody there to really put you in the a music community that you probably deserve to be in.
SPEAKER_00That first time I saw you was on 106 in Park, which was filmed in Harlem at the time. Tell me about your journey. How did you get from St. Louis to be to dominating on 106 in Park?
SPEAKER_03The high point, the the community I just described to you. Uh I got involved in that when I was a very young man. Uh, I didn't know what I was doing. I I sucked on the mic. I had lyrics, always had lyrics. Couldn't rap on beat when I first came into hip hop. I was terrible. I used to listen to a lot of stuff like Def Jux, LP, and them guys. Shout out to Big Homie. Um, and they kind of taught me how to rap. But I knew coming from my environment, I was gonna have to have something else because I'm in the Midwest. So they listening to stuff like Do or Die, Crucial Conflict, Bone Thugs and Harmony. Um, but you know, Cass is listening to that with a mixture of Wu-Tang. So I can't come in there rapping straight, completely like Jizer, completely like Inspector Deck, completely like the Rizza. I gotta learn how to take that metaphysical part and pair it up with this part where it kind of sounds like he's on some regular shit a little bit, but he's not. You know what I'm saying? And that really creates me as an MC. Um when I was up in those environments, you know, they could come to us grown ass men and say, hey man, that sucked. That was terrible. Uh don't you ever do that again. You know, like we don't want to hear no more shit like that. Right. Matter of fact, get the hell off the mic and come back when you got it a little bit more together or keep coming. We'll just keep booing until you got it together. But uh we couldn't be fragile about it. So those guys kind of uh bred me into being a killing machine. Now, by the time I get to 106 in Park, this is something I never really said before publicly, and y'all gonna hear this live and direct on the podcast. For me, 106 in Park was counting cards. I was in the casino cheating. I cheated my way through 106 in Park. Break that down. I can say it now. It's 30 seconds. They can say now you see me. It's 30 seconds of verse. That means James Brown starts his his music on the one and hip hop. We start ours on the two. What's the two? The punchline.
SPEAKER_04Ah, uh.
SPEAKER_03The regular human mind thinks most rappers that can really rap can't rap because they can't process the intricacies of a real real lyrical verse. So I'm not coming on here the lyrical miracle, you niggas to death. One, two. One, two. Eventually I'm gonna punch your ass the fuck up out of here. That's a boxing strategy.
SPEAKER_00But in terms of writing, that's like Supreme Alchemy right there. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's like I don't have to break stride on a televised rap battle that's basically just about the punchline. That's all it's about. And I got 30 seconds, two verses. I'm out of here, man. This is easy work. You know what I'm saying? Just don't break that every week. I'm good.
SPEAKER_00That's incredible, bro. They're gonna study that. Welcome to this TED Talk. Um on 106 and Park Freestyle Friday.
SPEAKER_03And even if you get in trouble as an MC, you're gonna get up out of it like that. Because eventually you're gonna stumble into a punchline that's way better than anything, dude. Say, or at least makes it a debatable argument. Like, ah, I think he got him.
SPEAKER_00You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mentioned LP as you were talking as an influence.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, a product though, man.
SPEAKER_00We have an overlap there because uh LP is very LP is successful what he does. He gets his respect for running the jewels, and but he's he's still underrated.
SPEAKER_03He's so underrated.
SPEAKER_00Because it's like the whole Raucus thing was based on official recordings, which which LP started with his homeboy. Official recorders had the their whole ethos was independent as fuck. And Raucus co-opted that. And Raucus LP became company flow became a part of the Raucus thing. But the energy behind why people fuck with Ruckus was partially due to company flow and what LP was doing. And later, Blackstar, we picked up the mantle and we built, I feel like we built on what LP had laid the foundation for. But then he didn't like what was going on with his situation there. He left and he started Def Jux. So he did what he did at Ruckus, but again, how many times did somebody do that twice? Right? So now Def Jux is now he's doing a whole different thing, and now there's a whole lineage of people from Mr. Lyft to Murz. LP went from that, and when when the Def Jux thing ran its course, now you partner with Killer Mike and Run the Jewels, man, is such a behemoth. It's so important. What uh table in the racial dynamics because that's not even really what it's about. It's there, but that's not really what Run the Jewels is about. What they're doing musically, uh LP able to bring out things in Mike that we never seen before. Mike able to bring out sides of LP lyrically and musically, I never seen before. Run the Jewels is such an important group, bro. And it's like he's kind of like a godfather of how to do it independently. And when I was talking to you about how I was living that Hollywood life and I was had all the trappings of rap fame, LP was building indie. I was still on the major label. I had I had graduated from the independent Raucus to dealing with major labels, and I had major label headaches. I was at, you know, people's, you know, I was at like big mansion cribs of dudes who who own record labels having frustrating meetings. I was at Cheryl Crow concert with trying to get in Jimmy Ivy's ear about putting my record out. Like this is the type of frustrations I was having. I was I tried to get Sting on I have a record called Around My Way, me and John Legend. Shout out to John Legend. I tried to get Sting on the record. I went to a party and Sting was drunk at the party, and I'm trying to convince a drunk Sting to hop on this record. And then during during that time, Jim Jones put out the record on a mixtape, uncleared, while I was trying to get the clearance from Sting. This this is the type of shit I was dealing with. LP is building his own. And so LP was somebody I looked at. When I finally made the move to go indie and just deal with indie and have blacksmith do an indie thing and do Javodi Indy, is uh LP was a big huge part of that.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Yeah, I I feel like for anybody who has any idea about that era of music, LP is a big part of motivating you. Uh but the thing I want to ask you coming in, because you said something that uh we kind of skipped over in the prior. You said a lot, but uh I want to back take kind of push rewind a little bit. So you Talib Kwali in position to have all these different dynamic conversations with folks now coming out of the underground scene out here, and you out there in the world now, doing your thing, and people like, oh Talib, oh whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you thinking about yourself at that time? Like, like coming as a conscious rapper with the message, and you and you and y'all seen with some wild boys for real. You know what I mean? Talking about different things, y'all talking about Bush, Bush knocked down the towers, tell the truth, nigga. It was you, nigga. It was you, nigga. What? What? Yeah, classic. You gotta understand somebody like me at the crib, bagging up dime sacks. I'm like, these niggas on TV really saying this shit, man. Yeah, man. How is that working out intertwining with celebrity like that?
SPEAKER_00It was a trip. I think I had to, you know, recalibrate and have you have to constantly remind yourself. It's like this this movie Pop Star, uh, Lonely Island Dudes uh made that I that I really love this movie. It's like a mockumentary about a white pop rapper and everything he goes through. And you know, they they're listing his crew. He got a blunt roller and he got, you know, you know, someone to carry his weed for him, and and he's a who's that? He's like, that's just a dude from around his way who just punch him in the stomach every once in a while just for him to keep it real. And it's like I because of the activism work I did, there was always like that metaphorical or metaphysical punch to the gut for me. Um, you know what? To add on to that, when you present yourself as a conscious rapper and you out here in the world, people change the way that they act around you, and people hold you to a higher standard than they hold most people, and they hold themselves. And then you as a man, you gotta be responsible for that because you put that out there. So it's like an extra, like you know, um I didn't go to a strip club until I made it as a rapper. It's crazy too, because the dudes I grew up with, one of them, you met him the other day, Zon, at one point was a bartender at a strip club. And I didn't know this. They was all talking about we go to the strip club. They they were telling back in the day stories about a time that I was hanging out with these niggas at. And I wasn't part of this story. And I was like, What you talking about? You remember when Zawn used to work at the strip club and we used to all go up there? I'm like, wait, what, what, what, when did this happen? Oh, we didn't think you wanted to come. How the fuck did you think that I'm not? This is my own crew, you know what I'm saying? So I had never been to a strip club until I did hip hop. The first strip club I ever went to, I was working with Jermaine Dupree on a remix for an artist he had named Fundisha. And Jermaine Dupree took me to strip club, him and Janet Jackson took me to strip club. Wow. So I was spoiled. The life you have lived, bro. Yeah, I was spoiled, man. Your first strip club experience with Jermaine Dupree and Janet Jackson. You think it's that's not even normal at all. Bro, I was highly disappointed to see how some other strip clubs operated. But that whole Atlanta scene, I mean, I man, I was about to say another name of somebody I went to strip club with, but I shouldn't, because we in public. But um what I started like really liking it. There was a point in my life, because a point where when Atlanta kind of took over the hip-hop industry, the strip clubs became so important. If your record wasn't cracking in the strip club, it wasn't going national. And that was a thing, you know what I'm saying? But for sure, but you know, so I'm in a space where the DJs who who DJ at the strip club, they know who I am and they respect me, but they don't have my catalog and they Serato.
SPEAKER_03Correct, right.
SPEAKER_00You know what I'm saying? Right. Why would they? Right. This they might have get by and they serato. Oh, it wasn't no title, you couldn't go on and get the shit. Right. If you didn't have it in your Serato back then, you didn't have it in your crates back then. Right, it wasn't in there. It wasn't in there. So I walk in the strip club, well, he's Jim, we got Talib Kwali. And the DJ throw on get by. You know what I'm saying? And then the strippers is oh, I don't want to fucking have to shake my ass and just uplift the music. That happened more than once. To the point where it's like, you know, I don't just, I got other records, bro. There's other records I could play. You could play for me that would fit the environment more, but they don't know those records.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And they don't define me by those records. They that's not even a lot of times, that's not even the type of record they want to hear from me. Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That's very intriguing because for me as a fan, it probably started around Reflection Eternal, where I felt like, yeah, I don't really know if I want to hear him doing nothing else.
SPEAKER_00You know what I'm saying? And then like And for me at that time, so for me at the time when I'm doing Reflection Eternal, and my fans are like, we don't want to hear you do nothing else. I'm I'm a true artist. I'm like, fuck that. I'm doing everything you don't expect me to do.
SPEAKER_03And you know, now that I've heard you say that before. Yeah, I'm not on that no more.
SPEAKER_00I had to get that, but I had to get that out myself.
SPEAKER_03It makes sense for what I was seeing and interacting with in retrospect, some of the different stuff that came out. And even mentally, I understand why you would do that. Because now, what y'all talking about? I got classics. Let's see if I can get some other style of classics. That's right. But that album was so damn good, man. You kind of shot yourself in the foot with how good that Reflection Eternal was, bro. It was great.
SPEAKER_00Shout out to High Tech, man. He's half of that at least. Oh, for sure.
SPEAKER_03Like y'all, y'all were a match made in heaven. It's almost like uh shout out my boy Rockwell Knuckles in St. Louis. We bumped into Michael B. Jordan uh one time on an elevator in Atlanta, and this is completely irrelevant to Michael B. Jordan, but it's hella relevant to us. But but but uh Rock was telling Mike like Michael B. Jordan, like, oh snap, I need you and Kugla to stay together, man, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because as a fan, I don't know if I can handle not seeing the progress of what's going on. And that's how we really felt about you and high tech, man.
SPEAKER_00Well, me and High Tech have been talking about Reflection Eternal Part Three. You know, in my mind, it's a trilogy. We're not there, we have part two that came out, um, and I'm proud of that. But we've been talking lately. We got a show coming up. We actually gonna be performing, and it's the first time I'm announcing this because I just signed the paperwork for it. We're gonna be performing at the Cincinnati Jazz Fest, which is, I don't know what date it is exactly, but in Cincinnati, you know the Jazz Fest is a big thing. It's a huge thing. We bring it back Reflection Eternal.
SPEAKER_03The whole Ohio, man. We don't people don't talk enough about how important Ohio is to a lot of stories and hip hop. A lot of stuff goes through Ohio in order to get to other places. That's right. But you really wouldn't know if you weren't really tapped into the culture for real. You know, you wouldn't know it. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00So, Tef, I definitely want to tell you I'm a fan of your Substack. Oh, I appreciate you. I like what you're doing there. Like I said, when we first started this, I gotta figure out where I'm gonna live on social media because I do be getting FOMO, I'll be missing out on the conversation. You know, they they don't want me on Blue Sky, they don't want me on TikTok. Everywhere. So Substack. I've been paying attention to more a YouTube more. Donna sent me something called Upscrolled. I don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_03I haven't got into that yet, but I've heard about it.
SPEAKER_00But I saw on your Substack a very heartfelt post. Condolences to your cousin who just passed away.
SPEAKER_03My cousin Romeo, man. Good dude. I just want to give you an opportunity to speak on him. Thank you, man. Shout out my family in general, everybody in St. Louis, Mississippi, wherever I got folks at. But uh yeah, man, my cousin Romeo used to move around with me uh a lot, going to different shows and stuff. Have I met him? I think you met him one time. You did. And um he basically called me after a wedding and was like, Man, you know, I make music, man. Can I move around with you? I said, Yeah, cuz come on. A week later, we was at Ron Isley's house filming a commercial uh with my boy Brandon Vaughn. Um and my cousin's in there, he's chilling, he's getting to meet some of the Braxton's and different people. And, you know, I felt good about that because uh a lot of times when you hit your people up, they say, Yeah, you can mob with me, but they don't really let you mob with them. And he got to move around with me. He met a lot of different rappers, he was backstage at a lot of shows, and um he passed away from he had kidney problems that he was fighting his whole life, and uh he passed away from that, man. But yeah, his energy is definitely motivating me. Um and even doing this podcast with you is really helping me out because a lot of times us brothers from the Midwest that are in the under in the underground, um one of the problems is we got a lot of big homies that are global big homies, worldwide big homies. But sometimes you getting dropped back off on the corner of shoot and run, as we call it, right? Like corner, shoot and run. Like you said. I can come to New York, I can come to Detroit, I can come to this, go back, but I gotta go back to the corner of shoot and run when this whole process is over. And for me, I was trying to keep my cousin off the corner of shoot and run, give him something else to do, something else to focus on, you know. So definitely rest in peace, my dog Romeo. But also, man, in your world, uh we've lost somebody, man. Um, a giant, you know, John Forte, man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, man. John Forte, let me clear my throat. Uh-uh, uh-uh. John Forte. That's my guy, man. Um, I miss that man so much. Oh man, that was that was the that's a piece took a piece of me with him. That was the closest person to me coming into this game. John Forte put me in this game. Wow. And a lot of people just know him from the Fuji's. Yeah. Or just know him from you know, the charges he caught up and the things he got caught up in. But his story is like a movie. Like, if I told you John Forte's story, you wouldn't believe it. This is like black excellence uh personified. Like, this is a dude straight up from Brownsville, Brooklyn, God-body dude, early, you know, rest in peace, Allah, son. Shout out to Sabar Allah, you know, Brownsville, Legends, who helped raise up John Forte, his mom, Flo, you know, um Miss Flo. Yes, indeed. And um John, shout out to my man Vic Black from the Gangstar Foundation. Like my man Rubik's and Juju, they introduced me to John Forte. I met him on the platform of the two where the two intersect with the four train, Franklin Avenue. And we used to go to Greenwich Village, and we was little kids in the Greenwich Village, uh, by Grey's Papayas, by House of Nubian, walking up and down Broadway, freestyling Washington Square Park. John Forte was a king in that park. And in that park, he met Jessica Rosenbloom, who was a very popular party promoter. She had an entertainment company called Stress Entertainment. And at that time, I heard about stress. Yeah, she managed DJs, and she managed a little-known DJ's name, Funkmaster Flex. Wow. Big Cap, rest in peace, DJ Enough. She was working Bismarck E at the time, Mad Wayne, the Flip Squad. They were the Flip Squad. And this is pre-Hot 97, right? So this whole era is when Funk Master Flex is getting on Hot 97, and Hot 97 is built around what Flex did. And and John Forte was he rapped for her and got her to invest in him as an artist. And so John Forte started taking us. And she she drew that party the tunnel. You heard the tunnel? Yeah, for sure. Belly scene with sure. Jessica was one of the promoters of that party. So one of my jobs when I was rolling out with John Forte was I had to go to the tunnel early on a Sunday and put up the posters for whatever artist was coming. So like Domino was coming to do ghetto jam at the tunnel. You know what I'm saying? I had to go up there and you know what I'm saying, like, yeah, man, it Forte had us in those circles with those people. I seen old dirty bastard freestyle battle with Buster Rhymes in those clubs. With your own eyes. You know, I seen I smoke the blunt with Biggie and Tupac because of John Forte in the country. Pause, pause. Absolutely. You smoke the blunt.
SPEAKER_03This is why this America, this is why y'all got me on this show, man. Because he's not going to talk about that. It's just another dig in his life. Yeah. So many stories to him are just enough, it's just something that happened.
SPEAKER_00I need to qualify that. John Forte was in the VIP section. Shout out to my man C No, C knowledge from Diggable Planets. He was there. That's my man's. Yeah. Shout out to my man. That's my man's. That's my man. It was in the VIP section with Biggie and Tupac. I wasn't cool enough. I was, you know how I got the rope? And then it got the VIP. And then I was in a chair outside of the VIP. Right? And the blunt was going around, and somebody passed it, seen me and was like, yo, you wanna hit this? So I wasn't like in the VIP, but I I got to hit that blunt. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um after that, we were still in high school. I got sent away to border school. John Forte got sent away to border school. I went to Cheshire Academy. John Forte went to Phillip Phillips, Exeter, and we remained good, good friends, close, close friends, to the point where we graduated at the same time and we made a pact. We said, we're gonna apply to New York University and we're gonna get into NYU and we're gonna be roommates of NYU. And that was solely based on the fact that our entire world was Greenwich Village and Washington Square Park. And Washington Square Park is the campus of NYU. So we was like, that's as far as we thought it. He went to business school. I was in Tish Experimental Theater. I think he was in Stern Business School. And um, as far as we thought it was, it was like, yo, we're gonna be in the park. But that didn't work out. John Forte, he never came to class, he never came to the dorm. Because at that point, he started going to the book of basement. And through John Forte, I met Miss Lauren Hill and Y. Clef. He he told a story about how he went to the when Fuji's had blunted a reality out. He went to one of their little events and he told the Fujiis how much he appreciated appreciated them as a group. And he got down with the crew.
SPEAKER_03That's how he got down with them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just being a food.
SPEAKER_03I was gonna ask you that, but I didn't want to centered around the uh the Fuji universe because, like you said, a lot of people only identify him from the Fuji's. But I did want to know how he got down with them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he got down with them, and he was assisting and helping out in production. And you know, you hear John Forte, he was learning how to be a producer at that time, and he learned on that album. So if you look at the production credits on Cowboys and Family Business, and he's rapping on these records, and now he's touring with the Fuji's, you know, and then and then Lauren came out and blew blew up and Wycliffe, and then they did that record, and then John had the record. It was John Forte was next. So he did a record called Polly Sci. Um, have you seen that that that cipher that Torrey is interviewing? It's got Yasin Bey and Big Pun and Cannabis, and John Forte is in the center of it. He got uh Fat Joe on his debut album, DMX on his debut album.
SPEAKER_03Oh, the the John Forte album for for the hip-hop fans at the time, that was a big deal. It was sleek though. It was it was like slept on it.
SPEAKER_00It was I didn't it was sleek. I mean, the production on it was like it was slick, it was like for the clubs, for the industry. Yeah, and it tanked, it didn't do well. And that set John back in terms of like how he saw himself.
SPEAKER_03I remember it being one of the more slept-on hip-hop albums as a fan, but I also remember at the time a lot of hip-hop media was behind that album.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he had, you know, he was you know Refugee Camp, Refugee Camp All-Star. Uh that album didn't do what it's supposed to do, and John has told his own story, so I'm not gonna tell his own story, but he gets caught up in the mix of trying to just you know make up bread. According to how John tells the story, he wanted to go independent. So he was doing doing certain things to try to you know supplement his income so he could go independent and it didn't work out. He ended up getting sent to jail for some time. But before he went to jail, he got he got sentenced to 14 years, which is a long time. And that was hard for me as you know as I was starting my career, he was starting his career. Yeah, we were getting separated. I can imagine. We weren't hanging out as much. I can imagine. So I for I'm watching this from a distance. Man, that's my boy. I can imagine damn, what's going on with John? He got 14 years. I can only imagine. What's going on?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And right before he went in, he did a record called I John, which is not on Spotify, but if you go on YouTube, you can listen to it. I John is an incredible record, and everything that he wanted to do to be realized on Polisci was fully realized on i John. I John to me is a more representative, uh uh, a better representation of John musically than Pollisai. Because now he's he's thinking this isn't the last piece of music I'm gonna make. You know what I'm saying? Imagine you got 14 years. You're gonna make an album. What you gonna say on that album? Damn, man.
SPEAKER_03That's deep. I need to go check that out and and and listen to it with that mindset.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's crazy. So he goes in, and at this point, remember, we were we started to get separated, so I don't really have a way to contact him. Carly Simon, he he's good friends with Ben Taylor, who's the son of legendary artist James Taylor and Carly Simon. Carly Simon, I was in King's Plaza Mall buying something. Carly Simon called my phone. She's like, I heard you're friends with John Forte. I was like, I am. She's like, here's how you get in touch with him, here's what we're doing to try to free him. She put me in a mix. So I was able to go visit him, and I went to visit him what I thought in my mind to um to lift his spirits. But the tables turned and he lifted my spirits. Wow. Um, which was amazing to me.
SPEAKER_03I'm like, how you went to visit him? Yeah. And he was locked up. Yeah. And you you go in there kind of with the hope that you coming from the Alps would motivate him and he motivated you. That's right. Wow.
SPEAKER_00That's right. And he got me on my dean a little bit more. And then there was a crazy situation where he would be like, yo, I think I think I'm gonna get out. I'm gonna get out, I'm gonna get parted. What are you talking about? He's like, yo, George Bush. Think I'm gonna get this George Bush parted. And I was I had to go back around the way and be like, yo, John is losing it. He's talking about George Bush. Going to him out of the gym. You know what I'm saying? And then the shit happens. And George Bush, and I don't like George Bush at all. Yeah. Like the way we talk about Trump now, that's how we was talking about George Bush.
SPEAKER_03You brought up a good point about that last night in conversation, saying how like sometimes stuff be sticky. Like George Bush gets your homeboy out the pen. Meantime, meanwhile, on the other side of the ball, you and Yassin have been smoking on the George Bush pack. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Absolutely. And I know John's politic is the same as ours. I know he agreed with what we're saying, but he was able to. John was good at navigating relationships, and whatever relationships he was able to navigate, I don't know the ins and outs of it, but he was able to make that happen just based on who he was as a human being. Wow. And he was important enough in the world where the world, the universe was like, nah, we can't have that man locked up.
SPEAKER_03Do you think it was a pardon where because a lot of these Trump pardons are people who got the means to get the money to the right person. Right. The gold card. Yeah. How the hell do you think it was one of them pardons where he was such a favorable person in certain corners?
SPEAKER_00Alright, so he did my he did my podcast, People's Party. What I learned about one of the things I learned People's Party is let the guest answer the question. Because you had your your answer, your idea of what you think happened. And then so I was watching it recently, and that's why I'm thinking about it. I was like, so John, this happened, and this is how this happened, right? He was like, no, that's that's not how that happened. I'm like, no, but then remember this happened, and he was like, no, that's and I had developed my whole narrative in my head. And so I don't know if either either my narrative was incorrect or I was supposed to be speaking on it to that degree. I'm not sure which one it was.
SPEAKER_02Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_00But in my mind, you know, umch was someone who was a Republican senator, I think from Utah or Pennsylvania. Where's Oren Hatch from? See, I did I did this on my podcast, and I'm fucking up again. Oren Hatch was uh someone who was a fan of John Forte, and Oren Hatch was someone who supported George Bush. Um, and so in my mind That's a heck of a combination.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, in my mind I was a fan of John Port Forte, but I supported George Bush. Yeah, and this is where these roads meet.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I thought Oren Hatch has something to do with it, and Forte was like, I'm not sure if that's the case. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I you know, I don't know exactly what it was. But he came out, and uh Orin Hatch is from Utah, yeah. So he gets out of jail seven years, and as soon as he gets out, we do a record called Homecoming. I think we went to the studio that day or the next day. We rhymed on that Kanye homecoming beat. And um John began when he got out, he began like being an ambassador for music. He really got good at the guitar and he stripped down his music to just play guitar while he was in there. There's a record he got called Wind Song with a Russian artist. If you're watching this, I encourage you, put this on pause and go listen to John Forte's win song. I don't remember the name of the Russian artists, both of them sound amazing on it, but it's one of my favorite songs. But John Forte put out a bunch of albums uh just with just focused on him and the guitar after he came out of prison. And the lyrics he was always dope lyrically, but now he has the experience of being locked in in the belly of the beast. So now his his vision and his lyrical vision is just a lot more stronger. And he has man, his bars teared up listening to his music because it's like he knew he was gonna go, and he knew he had to say things for his children and for his family, and um his last record is a record called Rhythm Drive, and it's just him on guitar with bars, and I'm on it, and Ben Taylor's on it, and I put it out through my label, Javodi Music, um, two or three years ago was his last project. And my last conversation with John Forte was a week before Christmas. He had called me up. He said, Remember that record we put out? He said, Yeah. He said, Did we did we make anything from that? Because that was our relationship. I was like, Yeah, I hadn't checked. And I checked and we made some money from it, and so I sent him some money, and he was like, yo, and I sent it to him like within the that all while we was having the conversation. He was like, yo, man. And then we we had a very deep spiritual conversation about how important our relationship was and how important it was that we stay in touch and how we link up, how much he means to me, and how much I mean to him, and his relationship with my son. He was he was good friends with my son and Mani. And um, that was my last conversation with John.
SPEAKER_03That's crazy.
SPEAKER_00So I'm glad that we got to have that conversation.
SPEAKER_03That's crazy, man. I met John Forte only one time in my many, many travels, and I'd rather not see on camera where where and how we met. But it wasn't nothing studio about John Forte. And it's crazy because I I don't have nowhere near the relationship with him that you had. I just met him in transit. But even some of the things that you're saying were present in that interaction. He was playing guitar, he uh but I could tell he was like a street dude in a sense, and but but he was a different type of street dude off our interaction. Like he was kind of like I was like, I ain't never really met nobody like this. Like, like you obviously not to be played with, but you also are like a different type of person.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he was different. Recipes to John Forte, and you know there's racial disparities in health between black people and white people, particularly black men. We die at higher rates. Um it says uh black adults. I was reading this in the study, black adults who live in the United States have a 59% higher risk of premature death than white adults. And you know, premature is damn red. I don't know how old your cousin was.
SPEAKER_0333.
SPEAKER_0033, that's premature as fuck. Yeah, John Forte is 50 years old, same age as me. That's really, really premature. Um, Tulane University did a study. Uh they found that the disparity, the gap in these deaths can be entirely explained by disparities in eight areas of life critical to health and well-being. Uh social determinants to health is what they call it. Yeah. There's eight social determinants to health, okay, according to this study: employment, income, food security, education level, access to health care, quality health insurance, home ownership, and interestingly enough, marital status. Right? So Tulane researchers modeled the impact of each factor on a person's life expectancy when all when all unfavorable social determinants were accounted for, that 50 that 59% mortality disparity reduced to zero.
unknownWhat?
SPEAKER_00Disappears. So if people are living these lives, like the disparity, it's it's crazy. You know, so how do we how do we be healthier and close these gaps? That's what I want to close on today.
SPEAKER_03I think for one man, um we got to start learning the difference between depression and oppression. Right? Because sometimes you're not really classically depressed or clinically depressed, you're oppressed. Like it starts off talking about not, you know, employment. That's a uh a societal metric of the system. Like, do I got a job or not? Do I got the ability to take care of my family? Um, do I gotta think about where this next dollar is going? Can I just passively buy myself a bottle of water even without having to think about it? A lot of brothers are in that space where they don't have the opportunity to just breathe. And I don't have children, so a lot of times I don't have to think about the things that a lot of men who do have kids have to think about. And when I have different conversations with brothers that do have children, man, they got a lot on their mind that the average person don't know they got on their mind.
SPEAKER_00You know. Absolutely. I definitely have children. I have three children. Shout out to my children, Amani, Diani, Justice. My name is Tyler Kwali.
SPEAKER_03I'm Tef Poe.
SPEAKER_00This has been Let Me Ask You This, and thank you for tuning in, and we'll be back next week. Peace. One lap. Okay. Okay. Tell me when you're ready. What's up, everybody? This is Ty Lib Kwali, the BKMC.
SPEAKER_03This is Tef Poe in the Place to Be.
SPEAKER_00No doubt. St. Louis in Brooklyn. Welcome to Let Me Ask You This. There's something new we trying. Thank you, Tef Poe, for being my partner in ROM in this.
SPEAKER_03Man, thank you for having me, man.
SPEAKER_00We just gonna have some fun and we're gonna have some conversations that I feel like are necessary and are not being had in the space.
SPEAKER_03I still won't listen. Remember when I made out the kitchen, clocks with extensions. Which one of us gonna die for this mission? An alien visit. I'm POE, I defy the physics. Show money's been bountiful, so we don't beef out the digits, the people consistent.