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 18 - Revolutionary Love
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Episode 18 of Lemme Ask You This with Talib Kweli and Tef Poe starts in Yellow Springs Ohio, with Talib asking Tef about the Ozarks, which leads into a conversation about the white characters in RZA's movie, One Spoon Of Chocolate. Talib compares a scene in the film to the Chud The Builder situation. Tef talks about instant karma and Talib and Tef salute Joshua Fox. Tef tells a story about having to find a racist troll and confronting him. Talib asks Tef about drowned Black towns in Missouri. Talib breaks down the progressive vibe of Yellow Springs, Ohio and how people make false assumptions about Dave Chappelle. Tef talks about what he's learned by being around Black men who challenge the system. Talib asks Tef about his participation in the video of Jasmin Crockett supporting Wesley Bell. Tef criticizes Wesley Bell for taking AIPAC money and speaks on how the democrats do not support progressive Black candidates. Tef criticizes the centrist mentality and Talib talks about calling people in rather than calling them out. Tef talks about his opposition to political Zionism and how Israel helps to train American police. Talib talks about how people try to be progressive except for Palestine. Tef ties Pan Africanism to anti Zionism and breaks down why Malcolm X was against classic liberalism. Tef talks about why he did not watch the roast of Kevin Hart and Talib breaks down the problem with modern roasting. Talib criticizes Tony Hinchcliffe and Tef talks about the fetishization of George Floyd. Talib talks about not feeling safe when he sees the American flag. Talib and Tef explain why Charlie Kirk is not like MLK. Tef talks about gun sense and Talib breaks down the hypocrisy of Candace Owens' recent apology. Tef talks about how anti intellectualism is permeating the country. Talib brings up the Ray J and Supa Hot Fire fight and criticizes the optics surrounding it. Tef talks about Drakes MAGA overlap and Talib talks about revolutionary love.
Shot and Edited By Chino Chase. Additional Filming By Aaron Ross Media Co.
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Which side are you? Get off the fence. Which side are you? Get off the fence. Which side are you? Which side are you?
SPEAKER_03I'm kind of a country boy for real. So St. Louis is like half and half. Like we born and raised in a metropolis. That's like uh, but it's like the land is retook the city. So you grow up seeing wildlife and coyotes and possums and raccoons and you know, so.
SPEAKER_00You just saying that on the way here, it's like the animal out here at Yellow Springs is on a suicide mission. Oh, yeah. All types of squirrels and deers jumping out, trying to end their life, bro. Yeah, they was on crash out missions for all day.
SPEAKER_02You heard me.
SPEAKER_00This is, let me ask you this. We are in Yellow Springs, as Nico says, where they do ghetto things, even though it's not ghetto about Yellow Springs, but we out here. I mean, shout out to the whole village Yellow Springs. My name is Tyler Kwali.
SPEAKER_03I'm your boy Tef Poe to Van Glorious, you know what I'm saying? Javati Shooter. The Javati Shooter is one of my new names. Okay, I like that. Javati Shooter is one of my new names.
unknownYou know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00St. Louis. So, you ever watch that show, The Ozarks? Yeah. How far is that in Missouri from St. Louis? Not very far. Maybe minimally like an hour out, you know what I'm saying? I didn't know nothing about the Ozarks until I seen that TV show. Oh, really? Yeah, Jason Bateman is a great actor. And that young girl, I don't know her name, but she's like a breakout star from that show. Um, but I had heard the term, you know, the Ozarks, but I know nothing about the history of it. Um, how accurate would you say is that show to that area?
SPEAKER_03I mean, it's some exaggeration involved, definitely. Um, during the summer, a lot of the more wealthy people, uh, some more successful musicians, they go out there and kick it on like they boats and stuff at the lake. It's a lot of parties and stuff.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, they they showed that in the uh in the show, the juxtaposition of the local people versus the out-of-town tourists who come to the lake for the summer. Yeah. And the problems that causes. How people come there and hide out.
SPEAKER_03For sure. So when I was a shorty, we used to go to uh field trips once a year in elementary school to the Trail of Tears, which is also out there, which is starts out there, goes through Oklahoma, all of that, where they push the native people off their land. And so they taught us about those rocks and how they were like, you know, the archaeological history of the rocks and how they were considered mountains to the people in the local area, but they weren't really mountains for real. And uh one thing we did encounter was like super racist, like poor white people out there being, you know, saying crazy shit to us, you know, like y'all obviously from the city. Back then we had no concept of the city or, you know, the outskirts of the city, but that's when we started learning, like, oh, out here it's different. Y'all got KKK, y'all got meth, y'all got all type of shit that we ain't got in the city. You know what I'm saying? So, yeah, it's a different culture than where I'm actually from, but I I I understand it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. We were talking about Riza's film. You just, when you talked about the crazy ass white people out there, uh, and shout out to Rizza, he got a new movie, uh, a very Quentin Taratino-esque movie, One Spoon of Chocolate. And uh we went to the screening.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We got to see Rizza talk about it. It's great to see the Rizza level up as a filmmaker. He shadowed Taratino when he was making Kill Bill and he learned how to make films. That was very inspirational and made me want to shadow somebody. But we were talking about the white characters and how they felt like really over the top. And someone asked Rizza about that. And he said that he wanted to make sure that the villains seemed impenetrable. The villains seemed unstoppable. The villains seemed like they had so much power that when the hero overcame the villains, you would get more of a visceral response. And I feel like he achieved that with the movie. But while I was watching it, I was like, man, ain't no white boys gonna be able to do this type of shit ever in real life, for real.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, actually, you were the first point person to point it out. Because I was like, why am I uncomfortable with some of these scenes in this movie? And I think it's exactly that, like the way that uh some, you know, the boldness of some of those white girls, right? And then the type of retaliation that they got back, I was like, yo, that would have been the end of the movie right there. Because you ain't finna come up in here and do this and do this and not expect this to happen. You know what I'm saying? So, not to give it away, y'all. Everybody go check it out. Um, for me, the movie had a very Shane type feeling. Break that down. Where uh at the end, you don't know if he lives, you don't know if he dies. Oh, word, word. You know, what happened actually? Where does it go from here? You know what I'm saying? Like you can make up your own conclusion about a lot of things towards the end of the movie.
SPEAKER_00We actually saw an example of that in real life and real time recently. You know, so not to give it away, because again, we want you to support the Riz of film, but there's a situation where some local white dudes who have problems with the black people in town because they're racist, they come into a diner in broad daylight in the middle of the day and they do some like horror movie level shit. Like they do some horrendous, horrible, violently horrible things to black people. And, you know, our reaction was like, ain't no white niggas too.
SPEAKER_03I mean, really for me, the whole movie, right? Right, because once y'all get the trip and I'm on the phone and it's 50 niggas, what the uh old solo say? I call 50 niggas, they call 50 more niggas, and then they call 50 more niggas. You don't get the green, sorry. My mom is upset now. 50 niggas, 50 mo niggas. It was a it's a rap punchline where old solo, he's a battle rapper, and he says, I go get more niggas.
SPEAKER_00My mom don't like when we say the n-word on this show. She gives me notes. You know, the notes is her n-word. Um, but we've seen it in real life with this guy, Chad the Builder. I know his name is Chad the Builder, but I like Chad the Builder. That's better. You know what I'm saying? Chad the Builder, he is out here, he's like the comment section come to life. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I'm actually glad we're talking about this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, man, the comment section in my life is they hide and they call me the N-word and they call me a monkey, and they be like, don't chimp out, like that, don't chimp out shit. I've seen that in my comments so often since the internet started. You know what I'm saying? And they sending me monkey memes, and then I send the memes with the old white lady lips to be like, y'all lips really look like this. You know what I'm saying? Like, but those people never show themselves and they never show up in person. And here comes this dude, Chud, the builder, who shows up, calls people, the calls black people racial slurs, shows them the weapon, dares them to do something about it. Someone took them up on that dare. Yeah. Someone tested that theory. Yeah. And his theory A true American hero. Wasn't correct. It turns out that his theory.
SPEAKER_03The one that tested that theory is a true American hero. And we need to celebrate that brother. In in the black delegation, we need to put that man on a piece of currency. His children should have college paid for generations upon generations of his family, should be good because he took one for the people. Brother, whoever you is out there, generosa lucha.
SPEAKER_00That's right. He got shot. I should Google him and find out his name. He got shot, but the dude, Chud the Builder, also shot himself.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00Which is like instant karma.
SPEAKER_03This is marvelous, man.
SPEAKER_00Instant karma. Like, it's great when you when that fuck around and find out things happens instantaneously, bro.
SPEAKER_03This is marvelous, man. But you know what? He thought that he was gonna get away with doing this because he had initially, from what I saw, the first video that I saw, he went up on some children. And I said, yo, that's crazy that you think walking up on kids with a gun and calling them the N-word is like really doing it. Joshua Fox. Shout out to Joshua Fox. That's the brother?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but I thought that was wild that he was. A military veteran. That's why he took it. He was he used to go to war. Soldier, I'm telling you, bruh. Mm-hmm. But uh, yeah, he was messing with kids at first.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And yeah, he ran, yeah. That's Insta Karma. I tell those trolls who come on my mentions um when they get upset at me for combating the racism, you should consider yourself blessed. And you should feel very lucky that the only consequence you are likely to face for being a racist troll is I'm gonna call you out your name, or I'm gonna call you a racist. And that's your only consequence. You should count your lucky fucking stars. Because you could be outside running to Joshua Fox. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's real. Damn. Or, you know, I ain't gonna lie. Sometimes when I get messed with by those people, I go find them.
SPEAKER_00I've had situations where I've actually had to find a troll. I had a situation where I had to find this dude, Jason. No, uh, what was his name? Man, I don't want to get his name wrong on the on the podcast, but there was a dude in Texas, a lawyer, who was threatening me and a lot of people. He was a Proud Boy. He actually became the leader of the Proud Boys for a second before Enrique uh Terreri or whatever his name is took over. Um but this guy, you know, I had to find him and track him down, and um and he lost his business behind that. But you had a situation recently.
SPEAKER_03A recent situation with some idiot. Break that down. We were uh uh had this organized thing going on where we were exposing where ICE was uh depoting from, or if that's a word, uh launching from. And um, we just kind of exposed the spots that they were kind of hiding out. You know what I'm saying? We put it on the internet.
SPEAKER_00And you be doing that. You be exposing shit and putting shit on the internet. That's kind of like your repertoire at this point. We'll talk more about that later.
SPEAKER_03My thing is please continue. Don't do it in St. Louis and think I ain't gonna find out. I'm the watchman, nigga. So uh basically, a white dude jumps in my inbox calling me all types of niggas and saying he's gonna send the people to my house and he's gonna get me deported. Because I guess he thought I was He's gonna get you deported. I was an illegal. You know what I'm saying? And even if I wasn't an illegal, it doesn't matter because he's a fucking racist. So I took that fade on gladly and uh went to his uh page and found out he was an Adam Sandler fan and uh found out where Sounds like Chino Chase.
SPEAKER_00Chino, why was you trolling Tef, bro?
SPEAKER_03Found out a few other things I won't say on camera, but uh yeah, let's just say thank God for my Korean friends. You know what I'm saying? Everybody needs good Asian friends in their life. Um they can find things for you very efficiently. We'll leave it at that. That's all I can say. So I called them though. I ended up calling them. I was like, I've done that one too. So you think it's cool to be on the internet calling me a nigga and shit. And you think you're gonna be able to move around St. Louis and Kiki and go to hip-hop shows and comedy shows, and I ain't gonna bump into you. Oh, buddy, when I bump into you. What was his response when you called him? Uh, you know, he was uh just white white boying out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03White boying out. You know what I mean? Like he ain't really got no response, you know what I'm saying? They think this shit is cute until it's not.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's the problem. Yeah. It's cute until it's not. Yeah. That's all it is.
SPEAKER_00And speaking of St. Louis and the Ozarks, another thing I was thinking about with that TV show, the Ozarks, and the whole racism situation in that area. In that TV show, they talk about how the lakes in that area are buried black towns.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00They had black towns that they would flood the towns for the real estate come up.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00Can you tell us more about that?
SPEAKER_03So I gotta do a little bit more research on that area particularly, but I do know that there were black towns on the riverbeds, on the outskirts of the Missouri riverbeds, that's where they were hiding out and building like these kind of like makeshift cities and townships. And um, similar to other places where folks have to retreat to the swamps, they just got pushed to the extents of the river that you probably wouldn't want to live on. Like, for example, when folks are driving from St. Louis to a city called St. Charles, they crossed this bridge that goes across the river. Right under that river used to be where uh black settlements were, you know what I mean? And people wouldn't even imagine that. But um yeah, I mean, honestly, St. Louis is a black uh discovery. It's a it was discovered by Haitians, uh French Haitians. Um there were black folks there that didn't even see slavery. Pre-English people coming in.
SPEAKER_00Sundown towns. Yeah, it counts as a sundown town.
SPEAKER_03This place the Ozarks is definitely some sundown. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. This place we're at right now, Yellow Springs, is like is this where Dave Chappelle lives, he says it's uh uh like uh Bernie Sanders Island in a Trump sea. Wow. You know, this definitely is a place where you're driving through Ohio and you're gonna see Trump signs, Trump signs, Trump signs, MAGA signs, America flag, Trump signs. And then when you get to Yellow Springs, all the signs is Black Lives Matter, uh Science is real, uh they have like pride flags and trans lives matter, which is pretty ironic considering this is the town that Dave Chappelle lives in.
SPEAKER_03I know.
SPEAKER_00And they are very supportive of trans rights in this town.
SPEAKER_03What's shocking about that is you're right. I've been seeing mad LG TVQ stuff around this town.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I would think with his message, they would try to run him out of town, or at least his assumed message, I should say.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the the the assumed message because in reality, the way that this man, and I'm heavily biased because he's a good friend of mine, but the way that this man lives his life is like a progressive fever dream. Like he drives around listening to NPR. When you hear him making jokes about Terry Gross, it's because he's listening to Terry Gross in the car. His politics are informed from my perspective from that. He lives in the most progressive town in Ohio. Um, the way in which he, not to tell too much of his business, but the way in which he votes and and handles his day-to-day family life and family politic, you would think he's like, you know, the same as any type of like, you know, progressive person in a coastal city, not someone who's in like a Midwest hotbed for Trumpism. Um but because his jokes push the envelope, and not just uh towards gay people, but towards white people, towards women, towards black people, towards everybody. Like because his jokes push the envelope, people assume that the jokes are completely representative of his actual stance, and they're derivative of his stance. But the jokes are a performance. They don't actually completely represent the stance. And when you come into this town and you see how the people of this town live, and you see how this community supports each other, and not everybody in this town gets along, and not everybody in the town agrees on every issue, but you can see it's a real community. Even if we don't disagree, well, I'm gonna see you at the local shop. So, you know, it's like they have to move in a community. It's a real community, and I really respect this town because of that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's dope. Uh it's a different type of Midwest than where I'm from. You know what I'm saying? So it's always a uh culture shock for me coming to Ohio. It's just a little bit different than Missouri. But um I learned a lot being around all y'all, man. You know, I'm like a sponge. And vice versa, bro. I learned a lot being around you. Wow. A lot. It's crazy. But, you know, for me, I feel like, you know, I blinked and walked into uh the underground rapper's dream. You know what I'm saying? Where a lot of my mentors are people who push the ballot, push the boundaries on what can be said, what can be done, and how it can be done. So I got great examples of black men who have walked up to the United States of America, looked it in the face, and said, I'm gonna stand up and challenge you. I'm gonna challenge you with the music, I'm gonna challenge you with the comedy, I might challenge you in sports, I might challenge you in business. Um so as I get older, I learned that there's this more than one way to skin a cat. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because you've met Dave around me before, but uh this is the first trip in which we really get to kick it and he gets to see who you are in like a more uh private, intimate situation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And you talked about people coming to St. Louis and doing things in the shadows, yeah, and how they can't get away with it. Now, we got our sister Jasmine Crockett, who represents the great state of Texas. Shout out to Chino Chase. But the talk around Israel and Palestine and the talk around AIPAC has shifted a lot in her lifetime, in our lifetime. Somewhat artists like us used to get persecuted for saying free Palestine. Now, if you don't say it, in a lot of these circles, people's like something's wrong with you. You know, so recently she came into, you've been making disc records about Wesley Bell and other politicians. We've been talking about it. And one of the reasons that, and you you talk up talked about your uh apprehension of making this songs about Wesley Bell, because he's a black man, and how you felt a little bit conflicted about it, but you felt like you still had to like hold it down for the people. And now you have this situation where there's a video of Jasmine Crockett where she's supporting Wesley Bell, she's supporting doing like a secret fundraiser, or uh it seems to be secret, and um, you know, people that you were down with in St. Louis, y'all exposed that. And it went viral. And um, first of all, like break down how y'all even got involved in that.
SPEAKER_03So here's the thing. Um, I know a lot of information privately that people don't know publicly. And so I talked to Corey Bush, who is currently um our former congresswoman running against Wesley Bell, who is a black man who has kind of been a career politician in the area, and to me is a bit of a charlatan. You know, like a lot of men put on a suit and a tie and make sure they hair are good and make sure they got the smile together and they can kind of use the twinkle in the eye to tell you anything. We got to go from the crackhouse to the White House. So like my dude from Black Dynamite. So, in short, um, I have considered myself a defender of not just Corey, but uh pretty much any black woman that was in office locally whose politics I did find some semblance in. So I have supported her in the past. I have supported Tasharla Jones, I supported Kim Gardner. Um, but that don't mean that I always have agreed with them on everything that they've done or represented. So to be clear, you're not a single issue voter. Not at all. And I'm not even a single issue uh so-called activist. Like I'm I'm I'm not just sitting back looking at these people and going, oh, they said this, let me strike. You know what I mean? Right.
SPEAKER_00And you don't have to agree with everything someone says to support them is what I'm getting from you.
SPEAKER_03Facts.
SPEAKER_00It's about, you know, net positives.
SPEAKER_03I'm wearing the positives and the negatives landing where it's where I where I think if the pendulum should righteously land. Right. And so for me, a lot of times when people don't even understand, before I do something like this, I pray, I meditate, uh, I put myself in a position where I know it's gonna be some kickback from doing certain things. And but at the same time, it's like that's the fade that I take on for the sake of my community. So um with this situation, it's not that I didn't have any respect for uh Jasmine Crockett. Uh it wasn't even about striking on Jasmine Crockett for me. And I want to also be clear is that I didn't, I wasn't motivated by her taking APAC money because we don't really necessarily even know if she actually takes APAC money. We just know she has some soft landed APAC analysis and opinions and adjacent with Wesley Bell. We know he is directly taking APAC money and a lot of it. You know what I'm saying? To the point where we should consider what he's doing to be local election meddling. Um and that's the part that I want to expose at large, is that she just went through a situation that we can consider election meddling, right? That's right. And there's multiple ways to get different things done. And I think that as a person who is an intellectual voter that does lean left, meaning I probably would vote Democratic 99% of the time or independent, um I'm in insulted by the what the party is doing to true black progressives. Speak on that. That's a very important point. I feel the same way. There's these coup d'etats that are happening all over the country. Uh what was the brother's name? Jamal Bryant?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Right? Um, he didn't get the support he should have got from the party, right? Uh, and a lot of, you know, like meathead dudes try to make it seem like I'm um out here caping for a particular style of uh black female candidate, which in reality, that's not even it for me. It's just I have a hardcore political line that I do represent. And for me, I enjoy being able to walk around my city because people know that I ain't drunk the Kool-Aid, I ain't took the needle in the arm, I ain't in the back of the room telling you one thing and then coming out here representing another.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So my peace and my inner My peace and my sanity are motivated by my my political position.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So the way we get involved in all of this with the situation is uh several folks from the community sent us videos of what appeared to be an endorsement of Wesley Bell. She said it wasn't an endorsement. She even said my videos was fake, you know what I'm saying? Or the videos was fake because they weren't just my videos. Um and that's the part where it was like, we're not gonna play a game of schematics with these people, man. Like, at the end of the day, we being nice about it. Y'all warmongers and um approvers, y'all are approving of things that I don't approve of. So if we really want to have the conversation, let's have it. But what you're not gonna do is just say my content was fake or the information that we're giving the people in the community.
SPEAKER_00Let's be honest about the information, have an honest strategy, strategy, and tactics conversation about the best way to move forward because there's a lot of issues we might agree with uh each other about, but there's also a lot of issues where you're gonna get some pushback from the community on.
SPEAKER_03And I think right now what's happening is folks are trying to ossuage their sins through the abominations of Trump.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So Yeah. Like, it's the easiest thing in the world to say Trump is bad, Trump is evil. Okay, but what else you got?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So if I can oswage my sins through the abomination of Trump, if I can get y'all back to more of a liberal Obama-centrist way of things, where you cool with going to work at Wendy's again? You cool with you 15, fight for 15, you getting your 15, my nigga. You know what I'm saying? Uh you cool with with regular life, you got a car, you you great. You can, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, you can pay your rent, gas is in your tank, mama got food, health care. Oh, Obamacare, it's gone, but we got something like that again, right? People want to get back to that so badly that they'll cozy up to these devils a little bit harder than what we've seen in the past. And they also get to also point at the jackass that's fucking everything up and go, well, I'm the only person on the hill fighting this bastard. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00Jackass is a great symbolic metaphor because what's the symbol for the Democratic Party?
SPEAKER_03Voila.
SPEAKER_00Jackass.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So it's not that I'm in the business of tearing down black folks or even in the business of exposing shit, because I'm not. But uh what I am in, I'm in the business of protecting where I lay my head. Yeah. Right? And I I consider where I fly back to every time we link to be my home. So y'all heard it in my raps. I'm the St. Louis Cuban Demiss Cuban Missile Defense System. They don't need nobody else as long as I'm there. Because if I see some bullshit, if I interact with some bullshit, I'm gonna do my part to circumvent it. Now, that don't mean that I'm always right. You feel what I'm saying? So I'm not standing up here saying with it with like super righteous intent that I'm always right. But I am saying that it's just not a place where you can come ball in the mud and think you're gonna get away with the dumb shit.
SPEAKER_00You know what I'm saying? I'm glad we're having this conversation on the podcast because we had a very intense private conversation. But all of us, when you came, first pulled up at Yellow Springs, you had driven for five hours from St. Louis and we got into like an intense conversation about all of this, because we all care so much about black people, and we all care so much about the movement for for black lives and our liberation, because our liberation, we are the moral compass for this country. Our liberation is going to be everybody's liberation.
SPEAKER_03The reason I'm so strongly against political Zionism also is in my city, and this is why I took so gross offense to her standing next to a pro-APAC candidate, in my city, black men lead the death toll on both sides of gun violence.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03By by abnormal proportions compared to other large American cities. So that means civilian gun violence, we the number one number by a very crazy amount of bodies. And then police, state-sanctioned violence, we the number one body. Yeah. So there's no place of refuge for us, right? And then when you take the fact that the police in Missouri have developed relationships directly with Israel, where they're sending officers to Israel to train. I learned about that when I got to Ferguson. And they're learning how to surveil black people with Israeli tactics and Israeli technology.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03I know a young man, well, well, I don't know him, but I stood in the streets for a young man named Von Derek Myers. He was killed by a rogue off-duty police officer who worked for the same private security firm that patrols the West Bank in Palestine. He was killed in St. Louis, black boy, south side St. Louis. The same comp, the off-duty cop that killed him, worked for the same damn security force that's patrolling in goddamn Gaza, nigga.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So when people say, what do they got to do with y'all? It originally had nothing to do with us till y'all started killing us. Y'all made it about you. Now that you started killing us, you done woke up America's greatest nightmare, the educated street niggas. So now y'all want me to have some coop about it. And I'm like, well, stop killing us first, and maybe we could have a real conversation. But until y'all recognize the fact that we don't deserve to die, just like the next person, I don't know how much chill I can have about it.
SPEAKER_00That's the problem with people who are progressive, except for Palestine. And what Jasmine Crockett has exemplified, what I'm rooting for her, um, is that that's going to backfire on you. Even that that type of politics even touches the roast. When you look at Shane Gillis, who I'm a fan of, people would expect me to not be a fan of his, but I am. Um you look at the jokes he did about Chelsea Handler. Chelsea Handler dealt with a lot of jokes about her being a whore and her sleeping with black guys. And as a fan of comedy, I like the fact that she pushed back on some of that stuff. But the craziest thing he said was he said Chelsea Handler's a Zionist, and he just let that hang in the air. And we're in an era where I never imagined us being this place. Every community that I rock with has a lot of people who are progressive, except for Palestine. The black community, the gay community, Chelsea Handler is from uh the Jewish community, and and that man, that's that's an issue. You can't be progressive on everything, but then you're not able to see what's happening in Palestine as being very, very wrong, as it being a genocide, as it being apart-time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's um it's also an issue of Pan-Africanism, too. You know what I'm saying? I mean, Malcolm X was an anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist uh representative of our people. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00Man, the internet uh have you believing he just hates Democrats and, you know, he's just a conservative. Yeah, which is wild. Every time I post about Malcolm X, some white boy post, you know he said that, you know, liberals, he don't like the Democrats and the liberals. You know he's tell me about what the fuck Malcolm X said.
SPEAKER_03Who the fuck, they was a lot of what Malcolm was speaking on, we had to define as uh like my elders, shout out to Jamala Rogers, shout out to Percy Green. Uh Percy Green is a black man who climbed the St. Louis arch to press. Oh, yeah, you spoke about him before. Um brothers not getting jobs down there when they were building it. He probably the greatest activist that ever lived in St. Louis next to another brother named Ivory Perry. Uh Ivory Perry invented the um, or started the what they called it, they called it die-ins in our generation. I hated that they called it that because we want to die-in something. But they where you lay down in front of the car and block it in traffic, Ivory Perry was one of the first people to start doing that. So people got to understand the way that I am is because I'm I'm literally still, Percy is still alive. You know what I mean? Sometimes I have breakfast with this brother. He scold me about shit I do right, shit I do wrong. So uh I say that to say um OBS, Organization for Black Struggle. Shout out to OBS. They taught me that liberalism is defined as a particular thing. And a lot of what Malcolm X is speaking on is classic liberalism. Yeah. People are thinking, totally taking what he's uh talking about and misconstruing it in what because he's not even talking about modern liberals in a particular way, because he never lived in a world with a moderate liberal. That's right. He's talking about a very particular classic liberal or liberalism as an ideology. So that's just to even try to take that and say he's talking about Nancy Pelosi, you you're wrong. That's not who he was talking about. Um did you see that, Rose? Did you see any of it? I didn't watch it because uh for one, when we were in LA, I was for the Netflix is a jokes festival. I was hearing different um murmurs of things. Like not really hearing no jokes or nothing, but just murmurs of things, you know, in traffic with people moving around.
SPEAKER_00And I could- Well, you was with us when we saw some of them work, we saw Shane Gillis working. I bet a lot of black people never heard of Shane Gillis until they seen that rose, but we saw Shane Gillis working out his jokes, and then we seen Kevin Hart come on stage and work out the jokes right after with Shane.
SPEAKER_03So we gotta So I don't know, my spirit just had the vibe that it just wasn't gonna be something I wanted to see. So I just wasn't pressing the issue on going. Yeah. Just off of how I was feeling with some of the stuff I was interacting with around it. I just felt like, yeah, that ain't gonna be something I wanna see.
unknownYou know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I'd like, I've been paying attention, I'm a huge fan of comedy. Um, I know a lot about the Friars Club Roast. The Friars Club Roast started back in the day, and it was like old Jewish comedians got together in a private room and told jokes about each other and took each other down a notch or two. But Jeff Ross, who's the Roast Master General, who he's a legacy builder in that community, in the Friars Club community, he's one of the youngest people invited into the Friars Club. So Jeff Ross is really like the king of that shit. And he talks about, he's, you know, form roast battle at the comedy store in Los Angeles. You only roast those you love, is how it's supposed to be. And when the intention behind it is family and only roasting those you love, you and me could be at a family gathering at Thanksgiving and snapping on each other and playing the dozens. But if we take that and put that on Netflix, where everybody gets to comment, it becomes a different thing. Um, we take that and put that in the arena. The arenas, arenas were invented for people to see blood. People come to the arena and see blood. Roast battle, roasting in the arenas, roasted on Comedy Central, roasted on Netflix. All of that has destroyed for me what the beauty of a roast can be. So I'm still a fan of the roast and of it as a thing. And I don't, I think there should be no rules in a roast. Everything is on the table. Race, sex, whatever, politics, everything. I'm I'm no holds barred. But not everyone needs to be invited to that. And when the wrong people are invited to that, the energy shifts. Tony Hitchcliffe does not need to be at the Kevin Hart roast. He's there because he has a relationship with Netflix. He's a very successful comedian on Netflix, so he has to be up there. But he shouldn't have been there. Um, Cheryl Underwood, Shane Gillis said he was gonna ask Cheryl Underwood for permission to do the joke about her husband who was deceased. And Dave told a story about how depressed she was and how Bernie Mack had to get her out of that. I didn't know that story until I heard Dave tell that story, but that made me feel icky when I thought about the joke. Because I'm a fan of Shane, and I was around him when he said he was like, I gotta ask Cheryl Underwood. And I thought he would, but Cheryl Underwood came out and said they told her that they were gonna go hard, but they didn't say exactly what it was. And I gotta salute Cheryl Underwood because as a fan of jokes, I don't like Tony Hitchcliffe at all. I don't think anything he did was dope. But I like Shane's structure. Shane's jokes were s were good jokes, even if they were mean. You know what I'm saying? And Cheryl said the same thing. She said, uh She said she's not mad about the jokes because she felt like they were well-crafted jokes. And she's a comedian. However, she said, she said, yeah, they were mean-spirited, but they were well-crafted jokes. But it's not me that you have to worry about. You have to worry about the person who's waiting for you outside who didn't agree that that joke is funny. And she said, I ain't got nothing for you. If if somebody outside wants to get you because of the George Floyd joke or whatever, you're gonna have to just deal with that. And I agree with that. And and to follow up on that, what Marla Wayne said, I think was very, very, very poignant and important. He said, you can joke about a tragedy, but if you're gonna joke about something as tragic as George Floyd, the joke has to be so good, it has to be so funny that the family of George Floyd laughs. And the family of George Floyd enjoys the joke. And if the family don't enjoy it, then you failed at writing that joke. And Tony God smote his tongue immediately because he stuttered when he said that bullshit.
SPEAKER_03You know what I'm saying? Also, I don't know what white men's fascination with George Floyd is. It's kind of weird. It's like this sexual, homoerotic type thing going on where they just obsessed with this. It's like uh what they call it, when you just obsess with a dead person sexually. Like, that's what it feels like at this point. Like, let it go, bro.
SPEAKER_00You know what I think it is? It's that the community, and it was Breonna Taylor and George Floyd that year. And the community rallied around these people, particularly around George Floyd, uh, because we saw his death. We didn't see the Breonna Taylor thing as horrible as it was. But we saw them on that man's neck for almost nine minutes. We watched him die in real time. We watched police brutality, the highest form of police brutality, a racist police murder. We were able to all see it. And George Floyd became the name that symbolized the movement because the police murdered him in such a heinous fashion. And what white racist people don't get is that he wasn't made a martyr because he was out there doing community work. He wasn't our Martin Luther King. And they think that because we celebrate him, because he died so tragically, that we're celebrating that somehow we're seeing him as this Christ figure or this MLK figure. And no, what we're saying is fuck the respectability politics. That man didn't have to be perfect. No black person has to be perfect, a perfect little angel that we all respect and agree with everything they say and do for them to deserve to live.
SPEAKER_03So that's the hat trick of the white man, right? They move the goalpost on everything. You know what I'm saying? Women don't make as much money as men because of this, this, this, and this. Uh, black people can't do this because of this, this, this, and this. European patriarchy exists as a concept because they don't have the talent to compete without it. So they don't have the natural ability to compete without it. They don't have the moxie to walk in a room without the social advantage, without the points being up by 30, without there being a generational lead. So, like, I take pride in the fact that I know what it's like to crawl. I know what it's like to start off with nothing and end up in the same room with a motherfucker that's got everything, because I had to do the work. I had to go through the process of figuring it out. These people don't know that shit, man. All they know is manipulation and constipulation. And until we start having real conversations about it, we not even having an honest dialogue. Because, like, what we are describing here is you asking a man that was raised in poverty to be perfect. And it's impossible to be perfect if you was.
SPEAKER_00You're asking him to be perfect in order for him to earn the right to live.
SPEAKER_03Facts. Which is crazy. Facts. And you can't be perfect in poverty. Show me somebody that's perfect in poverty, man. Yeah. You gotta do something every day that's inhuman compared to other people's normal socialized living standards.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03And then that's the whole, it all, it's all connected for me personally. Because this is the reason that a lot of black men don't want to vote. Because until we start talking about the fact that it's actually cool to go on TV and talk about this man being dead for com for comedy's sake, for this, for the seeker, for the sake of comedic pleasure. And then we we at large also talk about how, like, for most marginalized black people, they don't feel safe in society. Nigga, I don't feel safe in society. I could turn on Netflix and it's a whole fucking white boy talking about how it's okay to kill niggas. You know, it's crazy for I don't understand the world.
SPEAKER_00Like, as a black American or a black person born in America, to be more accurate, the craziest thing in the world is that I get to a town that has all American flags, well, I feel very unsafe. I feel like I'm not welcome to.
SPEAKER_03That's your cue to get the hell out of there. That's right. You know what I'm saying? Like, you see, you start seeing those American flags too too many places, man, you in a whole situation.
SPEAKER_00But then they want you to be proud to be in America and they want you to be patriotic. Samuel Johnson said, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. That's one of the most important quotes I've ever heard.
SPEAKER_03They always been on some crooked shit, man. Them uh indigenous folks saw them boats coming. They said, Oh damn, them niggas come and go grab the spears. Them niggas got off the boat with gunpowder. They always been cheating. They never f they never had a gave you a fair fight. They never gave you a fair fight.
SPEAKER_00And then they're proud of it. They're proud of being colonizers and imperialists. Like, they look at that like manifest destiny, like, yeah, like of course be one. Like, that's not something to be proud of at all.
SPEAKER_03I think also, you know, I talk about how you could be in a relationship with somebody and be sharing a different version of reality than they are sometimes. And I think that's what our relationship with the white populace is. Like, we've reached the point in the discourse where we can no longer assume that just as black people, uh, we are having the same experience. Like, sure, we are going through some mutual experiences, but I can't say overall that there's a blanketed black experience. Sure, there are things that are macro and micro within the experience, but where we are now, people's politics are being so determined by class, access, availability, positionality, and personal power that we have become somewhat victimized by the capitalist project in ways that our ancestors and forefathers told us. They said, yo, if y'all don't slow down on the consumerism, if y'all don't slow down on the sexism, if y'all don't slow down on the misogyny, it's gonna be y'all job in future generations to have a critical analysis around this. And I can't fully say we exist in a generation where the uh the thought creators and the thinkers and the even the so-called revolutionists have even really remixed the remix. Like, we still in a position where reading for known makes sense and shit, because niggas ain't really moved the dial that much. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and we're too willing to forgive and forget, and we're too willing to follow grifters down a path of irrelevance. Like, I'm watching Candace Owens try to rebrand herself in the same way that Marjorie Taylor Green try to rebrand herself. MAGA, these these MAGA motherfuckers, they hate women. You know what I'm saying? So Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Green, Candace Owens, those are the first ones that are gonna get like persecuted in that movement. That's always the women in the world. Yeah, but she's on the she's on the you know, apology tour, and she's, you know, she's uncovering conspiracies about Charlie Kirk. And that's another thing, not to go back back to the George Floyd thing too much, but they think that we think that George Floyd is Martin Luther King because they think Charlie Kirk is Martin Luther King.
SPEAKER_03Well, they think Charlie Kirk is Martin Luther King because when you live in a white man, what Tupac called this in this white man's world. In this white man's world, Charlie Kirk is Martin Luther King. He represents everything that they are willing to die on the cross about. That's who they are. Like, I'm not finna start, I can't re-imagine white supremacy for you. You know what I'm saying? Um, it is what it is, right? And we all on the prison planet, like I said before. So I just so happen to be banging the black card, you banging the white one. Let's go ahead and have this goddamn fight and see how it is, my nigga. But I'm not finna goddamn re-associate your image and do all of that. I'm clear on who the fuck you've been for a couple uh millennia at this point. So yeah. Um that's when you ever when you see white people saying crazy shit like that, that's because uh whiteness as a social construct validates that shit. Period. It ain't nothing to it ain't nothing to really think about. You know what I'm saying? Like they believe that shit, man.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, I wanna make people like our. Very confused about the Charlie Kirk thing and people celebrated him because he died tragically. But I want to read some of these Charlie Kirk. I think it might have been an inside job. Oh, that's Nazi or Nazi violence, man. We gotta stop this Nazi and Nazi violence, man. It's really a problem in this country.
SPEAKER_03I don't like to speculate publicly like you said, I stole that from you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But it's looking like y'all killed y'all, boy.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. I mean, I was that guy was a graper or something. Listen, okay, here's some Charlie Kirk quotes on race. If I see a black pilot, I'm going to be like, boy, I hope he's qualified. Uh if you're in the WNBA, if you're a WNBA pot-smoking black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States Marine? Uh happening all the time in urban America, prowling blacks go around for fun to target white people. That's a fact. It's happening more and more. Uh if I'm dealing with someone in customer service who's a moronic black woman, I wonder if she's there because of her excellence or is she there because of affirmative action? Okay. If we would have said that Joy Reed and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Katandy Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they're coming out and they're saying it for us. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person's slot to go be taken seriously. Wow. Wow. On gender and feminism and reproductive rights, reject feminism. Submit to your husband. You are not in charge. Oh, he said, submit to your husband, Taylor. You are not in charge talking to Taylor Swift. What do you got to do with that lady business? Hey man. We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately. Wow. Um, on gun violence, I think it's worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. That's a hell of a thing to say right before you get shot. Yeah, bro. And I'm not anti-gun at all, but uh I am pro-karma, and that's on immigration. America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We shouldn't be afraid to do that. The American Democrat Party hates this country. They want to see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white. The Great Replacement Strategy, which is well underway every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different. Google the Great Replacement Strategy. The Great Replacement Theory. It's a Nazi concept. This man is a Nazi. On Islam, America has freedom of religion. Of course, we should be frank. Large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America. Islam is the sword of the left. Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America. Jesus.
SPEAKER_03Well, all the the white man laws is fucked up, right? Like, there is no law, like a American law that constitutes your rights that's really like existing for the sake of your total benefit. So, like, uh, sure, we got public education, but it sucks. Uh, sure. Uh you can smoke weeds so long as we can regulate it and put chemicals in and shit. So now, niggas is acting like with these gun laws, that these motherfuckers don't got some crazy ass angle to depopulate the my the minority race and shit.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, so I'm not saying that I'm anti-gun because I own guns, right? But I also live in a city where owning a gun is mandatory because it's open carry. Yeah. So you could all you need is an ID to go buy whatever the fuck you want. And people walking around with crazy shit, driving around with crazy shit, going through manic depression and uh losing their jobs and uh psycho men out there ain't touched a women, a woman in who knows how long. So they want to go shoot one in the face. It's it's like you SL behavior. You have armed a society that was not stable to begin with, and then I'm supposed to, as an intelligent person, allow you to rest your case for giving all these niggas whatever artillery they want based upon your righteous intent, which you never had to begin with. It's just a fucked up situation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the idea that the oppressor does anything out of the kindness of his heart or righteous intent is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's like when Master come out to the outhouse and say, all right, y'all, y'all can eat today, but when you go in there and eat it's chitlins, they are week old. We eating, it's food. You can eat whenever you want, but should you be eating it?
SPEAKER_00But I started this part of the conversation start talking about Candace Owens apology tour, right? And she, Candace Owens, called George Floyd a thug and then started a GoFundMe campaign for a business owner who lost his business after calling George Floyd a thug. And Candace Owens was supportive of white nationalism, and she's supportive of uh the way that Hitler moved around the world. Her and Kanye had the White Lives Matter t-shirt. Uh, she has said and done a lot of hateful things. But then she gets up there and she apologizes to a rich white man, Hunter Biden, for calling him a crackhead. Yeah, what was that about? And she apologized, she said she felt shitty, she said she felt like indoctrinated from the right. But here's look, I'm all for apologies. I've said before apologies.
SPEAKER_03Wasn't he really smoking crack?
SPEAKER_00Well, tabling the fact that he actually was doing said things, you know what I'm saying? Um, so many people in our community were willing to, oh, she's changed. She's she's flipped over a new leaf, and you being too hard on her, tell her, because look, that's not no real change. Her apologizing to a white man, and when she apologized to him, in her apology, she said, she talked about how white people in the comments will call someone the n-word and then will hold it against them for the rest of their life. So, in her apology to a white man for calling them a crackhead, she defended white people calling us the N-word. Of course she did. That's not an actual apology, bro. That's not something that we should be like lauding her for. You know what I'm saying? That's not actual atonement. And that's just crazy how people are so willing, because she is a like an attractive media personality. They're so willing to be like, oh yeah, let's welcome Candace Owens back. Man, fuck Candace Owens, man.
SPEAKER_03Man, people like her, agents, you know what I'm saying? Whether we can Willing or not. Whether they're actual, like paid agents. Don't gotta be willing to be an agent. That's the crazy thing.
SPEAKER_00No, you could be an unwilling agent. You could be an unwilling, or unsuspecting agent is better.
SPEAKER_03She's just the most dangerous type because, like, that's that's that's what white supremacy is currently doing. It's like when Genghis Khan uh used to conquer a village, he would sometimes take the children from rival races and cultures and make them his children. Yeah. So Thanos did that too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but it's also white supremacy is on his last legs and it only exists, it's only powerful because of accomplices of color. White people are a global minority on this planet. If all black people, this is never gonna happen in my lifetime, if all black people stopped supporting the white supremacist structure, it would collapse on itself.
SPEAKER_03Well, Michelle Obama had a good quote that I recently did like. And people gonna wild, it's some people gonna wild on me in the comments on this episode. Hey man, we are a nuanced people, man. But hold on. So many things can be true at the same time. No, Michelle Obama did she did say something I respected. And I respect Michelle Obama. And I think a lot of times she has the most crystal clear uh left political analysis.
SPEAKER_00Michelle Obama said when they go low, we go high, and everyone thought that they would talk about, she was talking about them. She was talking about her. You know what I'm saying? Michelle Obama, you stay high. The rest of y'all niggas get low.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but like if I was a Democrat, like a for real Democrat, then you know, I would probably be a lot in alignment with her, but I'm not, so sometimes I don't be agreeing. But um she said basically, you can't just broad stroke all these people as racist. I heard her say that. And people got in the uproar about it.
SPEAKER_00I, you know, I I I think there's some nuance to what she was saying. I do. And I understand the point she was making, but I don't think she worded it properly.
SPEAKER_03I totally understand it because a lot of those people getting in an uproar about it. You haven't been in a Uber in Kansas.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And the person driving the Uber is pro-MAGA. Yeah. Right? They are indoctrinated by Donald Trump, right? But they might have a goddamn multiracial child. Right? So Joe Rogan got a black door. Some of this, what we're experiencing, is this country intentionally creating generations upon generations upon generations of stupid people. And we assume that people, just because they're they're involved in the popular discourse, have read a book before in life. Some people ain't even read, they don't even read a daily news blog, let alone an entire book. It's niggas giving whole political dissertations on the internet every day, never even read a fucking chapter in a book. Tell it. Speaks. So that's what we're greatly experiencing right now. Like the underclass is searching for something, like she said. And they're trying to make the position that they're in make sense. So even if I'm white, right? And I see this all the time, because I was one of the first rappers in my community that went into Southern Illinois and brought white boys across the bridge to rap with us. And niggas was like, Tef, why you got all them white boys on stage? Because I was able to talk to niggas according to a class line.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know what I'm saying? And I'm able to identify a symmetry within the experience. So you go through this, I go through this. You live like this, I live like this. This is what this is, this is what this is. And you gotta think I'm on stage saying the wildest shit with some white boys with me that's with it. You know what I'm saying? So I understood what she was saying because I know those types of people where if a person like you or a person like me don't get in front of them, then the next person will get in front of them. Yeah, and that becomes where they get indoctrinated. You know what I'm saying? It's not the old days where hip-hop was used to wake people up no more. So even in the pieces of hip-hop that they picking up, a lot of the rappers that they listening to, they signed to Republicans. They got a Republican adjacency, they got Zionist adjacency. And this is a lot of the shit we don't unearth in hip-hop, right? So, of course, you got 99 songs talking about who the baddest bitch is, because all the bad bitches assigned to some type of Zionist entity at the end of the day. Yeah, right? You know what I'm saying? We don't want to have no real, real conversations about this shit. You know what I mean? Like, it's it's an intentional, uh, and it's nothing wrong with like certain shit existing because you need a balanced society. That's right. But what I'm trying to say is like we getting to the point where the where the the bottleneck is so slim that you can't assume none of this shit is organic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, agreed, man. These are great points. I love having these conversations with you. Your analysis is always so so much on point, brother. I'll try, man. Yeah, man. Um, before we get out of here, I've enjoyed this conversation, but can't get out of here without sharing some of my feelings about what's going on with Ray J. I gotta talk about it because it's something that is uh Ray J is very important to our culture. There was a time in black culture, particularly people in the West Coast, where it was like no Ray J slander shall be tolerated. And apparently we are past that time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, man. I remember Ray J used to be the, well, I ain't gonna say used to be. Ray J was what you wanted to be. He was young, he had the money, he was bossed up, he was like a if you knew people outside the industry don't know that though. Ray J was the dude on the West Coast, like the man man on the West Coast. You know what I'm saying? Like a lot of shit went directly through Ray J. That's right when you went out west. You know what I'm saying? That's right. So it's it's wild to see the shit go down like this.
SPEAKER_00For me, it's even crazier because uh Deshaun Raw, super hot fire, uh, him and his crew came over to my crib back in the day to talk about doing a sketch with me, a skit. We never got it off the ground, but I like what I like that movement. I like what them young dudes was doing. And my ex used to DJ for Ray J. If you see that video, wait a minute, my ex-wife is in that video DJing. She used to, so I used to be around Ray J a lot. And I would have never imagined some 15, 20, however long it was years later, that I would see this. And um, as entertaining as the whole thing is, and with respect to Ray J taking the L that he took, um, it's it's very entertaining. But I hate the fact that it's all done to line the pockets of someone like Aiden Ross.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That part of it feels uh. I got something I want to ask you. I know we're talking about Ray J. I've been Aiden Ross before. I've been Aiden Ross with streams before I was Aiden Ross with streams.
SPEAKER_00Let's get into that after the Ray J thing. But yeah, that's part of it, right? The whole Kendrick analysis about Drake being a culture vulture. He's not doing himself any favors by aligning with someone like Aiden Ross. That's a well-written bar. As a writer, I'm like, that's a good bar.
SPEAKER_03Somebody brought out a good point on the internet. I don't know who it was, I forgot. I've been watching a lot of different takes on the whole Iceman and MAGA adjacency. Um and somebody said, yo, you ain't gonna see him come out and disown the White House for putting the MAGA shit on his album cover because behind the scenes, that's most likely a part of the fucking rollout.
SPEAKER_00But the whole, like, two black dudes who are not fighters fighting to make money for Ada Ross, I didn't like that. It's disgusting. Um, I didn't like that at all. It felt like um It's the new Sambo era, dog. It felt like that James Brown movie. You ever seen the James Brown movie and with uh Chadwick, and they they were blindfolding the kids and making them fight for the old white people. And that's what that felt like because neither one of them were skilled in that arena. Yeah. So it felt like they might as well have blindfolds on. A prison in St.
SPEAKER_03Louis got shut down for that. Uh workhouse, they used to call it, because they used to uh had them boys on their buck fighting, like take them out of jail and make them fight each other. Yeah. And sometimes they'll make them fight to the death. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, man. Yeah, that's what it gave me. That's what it was given. And um, I'll say this Deshaun Raw is very talented. He has a comedic. That press conference when he was trolling Ray J, security, security, that's one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. It was hilarious. Um, I don't like that it was at another black man's expense, but it was hilarious. Just Deshaun has a lot of talent. Ray Jeson is dope. Has a lot of talent. Ray J is an actor. He can rap, he can sing. Ray J adds a lot of beauty to the world. But when you stop trading on the beauty that you add to the world, and you start trading on nothing but your fame, you end up lining Aiden Ross pockets. You end up looking goofy. You end up like, and I don't like, I'm saying this to encourage artists, never lean into that fame thing. Because you don't want your only commodity to be your famous name.
SPEAKER_03I ain't gonna lie to you, bruh. For me right now, it's tough being a black man because I personally don't want to see shit like that. You know what I'm saying? Like, and I don't think that my mind should be subjected to every day I wake up, I just gotta see total bullshit. Like, I don't see niggas doing nothing that stimulates me, inspires me, motivates me. And I used to get that from black men in the public uh discourse. You know what I'm saying? Like, damn, this this is some innovative shit they doing. Or damn, that's crazy creative. Or these two men in particular, Deshaun and Ray J, I've gotten that from them. So it's it's hard, you know what I'm saying? And even as a person that's a creative, sometimes I go to create, and I'm saying, like, what am I actually drawing from if everything out there is just total bullshit? Right? Because now it's it's putting me in the position where as a person that makes a slightly more sophisticated sense of art, I gotta figure out how to communicate with niggas that's way back in the stone age on shit. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So we've reached that point now where even as a skilled MC, you really gotta think about the goddamn audience in a way that you've never had to think about before because we are intentionally not producing a smart consumer, a smart listener. We are teaching people to not even give a fuck about smart shit in the in the conversation in general. So that's really how you get Ray J being Ray J, who you could have said, damn, he was a songwriter, he was a producer. Now he just turned into smut TV, Ray J. You know what I mean? Like straight bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. And don't nobody want to say it because everybody's scared of being blackballed, everybody's scared of not being included, everybody's scared of looking like the nigga that don't want to make no money. Everybody's scared of looking like a real person. In this whole situation, everybody wanna be plugged into the matrix however they can. So we're literally on the Titanic, the shit is sinking. Some niggas is off the boats in the life raves watching this motherfucker go down, but it's a lot of you niggas that's finna sink with the ship.
SPEAKER_00That's right. Man, Tef, thank you once again for that beautiful analysis. And I want to end this episode by saying we spent a lot of time in this episode talking about black people. We talked about Jasmine Crockett, we talked about Candace Owens, we talked about Ray J. But this is said with revolutionary love. We are not saying this because we are calling these people out. We are saying this because we are calling these people in. And we love these people, and we want these people to do better at life. So, you know what I'm saying? In the spirit of revolutionary love. I don't want no smoke. And let me say this.
SPEAKER_03Let me say this in real in real life. I'm not perfect either. So it's not like I'm approaching this shit with like this crystallized uh version of myself that's trying to fake Martin Luther King or fake Malcolm X or fake Tupac or fake Ice Cube or fake Farrakhan or whoever the next nigga you want to insert. So that's not what I'm on. I'm a person that's still in a working class position. I gotta think about things that other people don't gotta think about. And I got nieces and nephews and people in my family coming up in the world where they don't have the time to be as informed about these things as I do. So uh I take the responsibility of that mantle for my family and my community in a way that I just can't drop the ball on. And it's not like I'm putting pressure on myself to be this big bad revolutionary. It's just that for me, that's the utility of a man. Are you reading? Are you staying informed? Are you taking care of your body? Can you fucking be there when it's time for a nigga to be there? You know what I mean? Don't none of that shit matter until they come knocking on the door. So they're knocking on the door now. So I'm responding how I gotta respond, not if my door is being knocked.
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's right. Ladies and gentlemen, I am Talim Kwali. Tough pole, man. Let me ask you this. We'll be back next week. We ain't going back without that trip. We ain't coming back to the brook without that trip. We ain't coming back without that trip.