7. Spring Cleaning

This week BD speaks on the concept of Spring Cleaning, fears around the Hantavirus, cruises, thoughts on the Kevin Hart Roast, the danger facing the voting rights act, and the AP & Swatch collaboration. 

Good vibey flow state episode from ya boy. 

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But we are here for episode 7 of the Big Dream Show. My favorite podcast, if I do say so myself. Ryan Solo this week. Special thank you to Kirsten for coming through last week. Also a special thank you to all the all the folks that love voicemails last week. It was it was an entertaining time. It's always fun for me to get to hear from y'all and feel like I'm not in here by myself or talking into a vacuum. So please make sure y'all y'all check out everything that Kirsten got going on at Kirsten Alexandra with two A's. Shout out to Taji too for making his rap debut on the on the voicemail line. And shout out to y'all, shout out to y'all, the good, the good people, the good folks of the what should we call this? Let me know if y'all got a name or some shit, but I want I wanna call my people something. The Big Dreams Nation, that sounds kind of like corny and generic. Can't be the dreamers, J Cole, J. Cole and Mick Mill, they already they got the LLCs and the trademarks for them shit. So the Big Dreams army, the Big Dreams Militia, the the the biggest. That's stupid. We'll figure it out. You got any ideas? Send me a voicemail, text message, or audio voicemail, either way, or hit me on the DM, or just, you know, you can see me out. It's about to be summertime. It's getting warm outside. The semester over, so you might you might see me at a couple spots. You might see me in a couple places. One thing for certain, one place where you most certainly will see me, is on Saturday, May 30th, at Carroll Park. Me and the guys and FJR, my friends from a lot of my friends from high school for a high school childhood and Taji's case. We're throwing a cookout, we're throwing a little function. So be sure if y'all are free that day, if y'all not going up to the roots picnic to go sweat and see Hove and Erica Badu, y'all should come through, have a good time. Holla at me, holla at at Creddy Dre, holla at Gator's not on Instagram right now. Holla at me, man. Fucking holler at me. If you want to come through, if you need a link to the cookout, it's it's gonna be a good time. It's gonna be a good time. We we really we try to restore that feeling of just sitting outside with with your homies and maybe playing games, maybe just looking cool, drinking, doing other extracurricular activities, just having a good time, man. No violence, no bullshit, no no haters, just grateful for the moment. And everybody usually does bring something. That's the cool part too. We don't charge for tickets, but usually our community and our people show up. Alright. Any other any other plugs, any other stuff that I gotta get out the way? I mean, as y'all saw, if you follow me on Instagram, pretty exciting announcement. Uh I've signed with with Eighth House, and that's A Y T H dot H A-U-S, so make sure to follow them. But they're gonna be helping me handle my like my publicity, my media, my marketing, my press, all the all the things that'll turn me from the humble host that y'all know and love into uh a Hollywood superstar that wears sunglasses on the on the sunglasses at night and shit. And big times, nigga. So yeah, y'all got judging by my judging by my character, y'all got probably a year at most two until I go Hollywood, until I turn my back on everyone and everything I love in the pursuit of just, you know, vanity and greed. So enjoy me while you can. Enjoy the humility while you can. I can't wait to switch up. Can't wait to pop champagne and laugh at the plight of my enemies. It's gonna be a really exciting time for me, but I'm just trying to stay present and stay in the moment. And speaking of staying present and staying in the moment before we get into the bulk of this episode, another kind of hodgepodge mixed back episode, but it's a lot of different things going on right now. Let's get into our ground rules. So, if you if you're new here, the ground rules are just a way for me to kind of get everyone on the same page. Excuse me, before I really start going in, how I be going on. I want to make sure everyone understands what they're here for, everyone understands kind of what kind of program this is, all those type of things. And as always, if you are a steady listener to me, if you've been listening since episode one, feel free to fast forward 30, 45 seconds ahead. If you're new here, stay tuned, because these are about to be pretty important, pretty crucial. I don't want you to be lost in the sauce when I I start wilding, so. Ground rules. Number one, first and foremost, these thoughts are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of any family, friends, partners, affiliates, or associates. Don't go tell them niggas what BD said, because BD the one that said it. Which leads me to number two. We use vulgar language. I say bad words, I say I cuss. I'm a cusser. Shout out to my pops. My pops was listening last week to the episode about Jermaine Jackson's hairdo, and he said, Son, you're very intelligent. I just wish that she would say nigga less. So for you pops, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna make an attempt to not not you know not not overindulge in the in the in the nigga in the nigga. I'm trying to get them all out now, get them all out the way now. But you know how it be sometimes when you with the home, you just chopping it up and it start to sound like the barbershop a little bit. But the rule is, the rule is, the rule is, say it three times like Dr. Umar do. The rule is that I say bad words. So if you're not in a place to listen to somebody cussing, if you're not in a place to hear bad words, to hear vulgar language, to hear grotesque metaphors and sick ass similes, you might want to put your headphones in, your airpods in, your beat spot. Do people still wear beat spot drag? Whatever your your preferred listening receptacle is to preserve your privacy, or if you like fuck it, I don't really care. Let the neighbors know that I was to this nigga BDJ. Hey, go ahead. But again, just want to get a disclaimer off top. Let's roll threes, because I'm I'm dragging. That's why I gotta pre-record this shit. I keep saying every time, but I gotta fucking pre-record it. Number three, follow me. My brain, my mind, it goes all over the place. If you want to blame astrology, I'm a I'm an Aquarius Pisces Cusp, if you know what that is. I mean I got a whole bunch of Aquarius and a whole lot of Pisces, which means my mind can be dreamy and abstract. And so my I hate astrology niggas. Y'all like, oh my god, this nigga BDJ1 and damn, I said nigga again. Fuck! Yeah, so my mind goes all over the place. My mind goes everywhere. And we live in an era, we live in a generation where we're often incentivized to do multiple things at one time, to pay attention to multiple things at one time. You could be listening to me, playing a video game, have your laptop screen up watching basketball, or you just be doing a million a you can be doing a million other things. So all I ask is that you try to pay me some attention. If you're listening to this, I appreciate you. But please try to follow along and listen to what I'm saying. Because if you get lost in the sauce, I can't come and save you. And you don't want to be backtracking rework reverse 30 seconds, 4 or 15, and try to figure out what fucking point I'm making. Just listen. Just listen. I promise it's not. It's not too crazy. You don't need a PhD to understand this shit. It's not like J. Cole music. Number four. Number four, number four, number four. Tell me if I'm tripping. I'm human just like y'all listening to it. And I'm sure it's a couple AI bots out there that are trying to figure out how to take my voice. But y'all, y'all can't steal this sauce, man. I ain't even gonna hold y'all. Y'all can't steal this sauce. It's not no shit, no bot or no AI can spit back out. I just I this shit's straight from the source, baby. I get this shit from the divine. This is this is bigger than me, man. I was gonna be this motherfucker. A hundred years in the past, a hundred years in the future. Drop me off at any point in the top line. I was in the timeline. I was gonna be this. I was gonna beat me. But with all that being said, tell me if I'm tripping, if I'm saying something that doesn't make sense, if I'm if I'm I'm out of pocket, if for whatever reason, if I've done anything to offend anyone or even just presented false information, whatever. Pull my cart. Feel free. I'm not too big, I'm not above the program. It's it's better, it's better we all are in positions where we can hold each other accountable. Because that's the beauty of community, that's the beauty of having people that care about you. If y'all get a chance, there is a documentary on YouTube about the Black Panther Party, and the Black Panther Party, as y'all know or may not know, I hope you know, we're instrumental in like before school programs, after school programs, tutoring, really being engaged with the children. Why am I saying this? What's the point of this story? So, there's one particular part where the children are tutoring each other. And they gotta, well, tutoring each other as well as like holding each other accountable for their poor behavior. And it's such a poignant quote. One of the one of the children in the room at the time, she says a method correction is an act of love. Meaning, if you love me enough to get me on the right track, if you love me enough to tell me that I'm fucking up, I'm making a mistake, then I owe it to you to heed that. So that's the essence of number four. Number five, help this thing grow. Like, rate, subscribe, review, leave voicemails, text. Shit. I might print out some flyers, give out some flyers. I might, I might, I might dress up like a shark, stand in the middle of the street with a microphone and a boom box playing this shit. I don't know. I might do something, but it's something it's on us to help us grow. This is this is not a big podcast. This is not, I'm not on no podcast network, I'm not signing nobody. This is me thugging it out for the love of the game every week. So if you support it, if you love it, and not just that, but I do a lot of other things out there in the world, whether it be my work at Graves School of Business and Management, shout out to Big Graves, whether it be my contractual work with Black Hill Institute, shout out to BYI, whether it be work that I've done in schools of making sure that kids are on the up and up, whatever it may be. If you like it, support it. It don't cost nothing to show a motherfucker some love. If you want to come out your pocket and show love, that's a different story. But I like a repost, word of mouth, it ain't nothing. Last and certainly not least, and this is especially poignant for this episode, because there are gonna be some things and some concepts that I talk about that I'm not the most well-versed on. I'm gonna do my best to try to give y'all the spark notes understanding of it. But do your research. Do your research. Don't let me be the end all be all. Don't let me be your source of what's going on in the world. Read newspapers, fucking go on websites, use your social media to follow people that you feel like are a good source of information. But always, always, always do your research. Always do it for yourself. Always make sure you got a steady understanding of what somebody else is talking about or telling you. So that you can kind of, you know, reference it against yourself, reference it against does it make sense, does it not make sense? Blah, blah, blah, and all that other, all that other shit. Got it. Get it, got it good. Alright. So I want to start this episode a little different than the last couple. Maybe more reminiscent to the first episode. Which go back and check that out if y'all haven't. Check out my whole catalog. I'm putting in that pain right now. But shit, so I wanted to kind of do something I haven't done in a long time. And I'll start off with a brief story. So I got a I got a buddy by the name of Score Swayze. Y'all might know Score. You may or may not. He's a very talented creator of media. He's someone who can rap, put out a mixtape, do a music video for the mixtape, had a music video be a banger, and the mixtape be a banger. And also he he's done his thing in the media side too. So during the pandemic, Score started a show called Inside the Rapper Studio. And inside the rapper studio, of course, is a take-on inside the actor studio. But he was going live like every night during the pandemic for a stretch. Just interviewing folks, interviewing folks, interviewing folks, interviewing rappers, people from Baltimore, whole bunch of dope shit. So I had the pleasure, this was season one, I had the pleasure of being the host of this series for season two. And one thing that I I take with me from that format, aside aside from like all the dope people I met, all the dope conversations I had, yeah, it was a really fun time. But outside of that, he used to do he used to have me do this thing called an opening monologue. And every episode I opened with like a monologue or a sermon or whatever that was just on my mind and my heart for that day. So I would like to bring that back this week, and I'd like to talk a little bit about this idea of spring cleaning, you know what I mean? So we in the middle of spring. Summer is about uh a month or so, give or take away. And if you're anything like me, you've always heard this idea of spring cleaning, spring cleaning, spring cleaning, out with the old and with the new. Another metaphor that is kind of relevant is like April showers bring May flowers, but just this idea that the spring is the time of birth, the spring is a time of renewal, the spring is a time when you come back or you evolve. And then if you look at, you know, like religious traditions, you got Ramadan in the spring, you uh Easter in the spring, which is Resurrection Sunday, Passover, if I'm not mistaken, is also in the spring, along with some other holidays. And it also, they also coincide kind of pretty pretty soon after the new year or the Chinese New Year or whatever, whatever new year you subscribe to. What are you trying to say, BDJ? What is the point of all this shit? The point is, I feel, and if you're listening to the sound of my voice, hopefully you feel the same. But I feel that we are in a moment of spring cleaning, like spiritually, universally, psychologically, physically. So I'm challenging you as a listener. What are you going to do to clean up this spring? What do you need to get out of your space, out of your energy, whether it be emotions that are holding you back, whether it be trauma, whether it be pet failed relationships, whether it be just you're not on your shit, how you want to be on your shit, what do you need to clean up to make this the best spring, summer, fall, so on and so forth? What do you need to do to push that momentum forward? I've been internally thinking to myself, I'm also, I know I say it every episode, and I already said this episode, but I'm also in school, right? So as of Monday, your boy is on summer vacation. What does that mean? What does that have to do with anything, BD? So I got all this time now. I got all this time to re-examine shit. I got all this time to look ahead to what do I want to go better in my next semester when I come back in the fall? What do I want to change? What do I want to get into this summer? How do I want to change myself mentally, physically, emotionally? This podcast, for example, was a big step towards me kind of changing up my energy and changing up what I was putting out to the world. Because it's something I wanted to do. But until I took the initiative to do it, and then on top of taking the initiative to do it once or twice, consistently, week after week showing up, that's a step towards me wanting to be the medium person that I see myself as, or the cultural commentator, or the thought leader. All these fancy words that just say the same shit that I speak and people listen. But I had to do that. I had to do that. Other things that I'm just thinking of. Split my diet up, cutting back on, cutting back on some of the on some of the brewski's and some of the some of the liquor, some of the alcohol, cutting back on fried foods and sweets and really trying to get that on point. Thinking about what it would look like to get another tattoo here or there, or you know, a whole bunch of ideas. My my main thought though, and back to the school point, just generally speaking, my main thought is like I have a year between now and graduation. So what can I do to maximize my time right now, maximize this year in terms of myself personally, in terms of my relationships, in terms of my career prospects, in terms of my creative output, my creative freedom. What can I do right now and what do I need to clean out spring cleaning-wise, so that summer feels different, fall feels different, winter feels different, so on and so forth. So I I encourage you, I challenge you. If that's the voicemail prompt that gets you going, I would love to hear what your spring cleaning looks like, what your reset looks like. And yeah, we're gonna we're gonna keep moving. So I'm excited to have this be an ongoing conversation. I'm excited to, in a couple weeks from now, come back and say, yo, I said I was going to do this, I did that, I said I was gonna be here. Yeah, man, I'm excited. If y'all can't tell, I'm excited. I guess for for more transparency, I'll just go all the way transparent on this episode. Last year I got into a real bad car accident on St. Patrick's Day of last year, so I think that's March. It's March 17th every year, because my birthday is February 18th, so I got an accident March 17th, and I woke up March 18th, like, damn, this is what it's like, this is what a month into my new year is gonna feel like. But I say that to say I feel like I kind of missed out on my spring because I just spent so much time recovering. I spent so much time just trying to trying to get back to the quality of life I was accustomed to, get back to the level of independence that I was accustomed to. So now that I'm a year removed from such a traumatic experience, mostly healed up, I'm kind of dealing with the ramifications in another way. I'm dealing with the the mental things that I didn't address. I'm dealing with the things that I thought made sense at the time, like go all in, you know, go back to work, go back to school, work on the side, do this, do that. I end up burning myself out. But I'm just re-examining these things and looking at these things and thinking, okay, I know I'm blessed, I know I'm grateful, at the same time, I know I'm capable, I know I'm competent, I know I'm confident, and I know that there's something special about me that I can contribute to the world. So how do I bring all that together? And then what do I need to what do I need to cross out? How much money do I need to save? What other money endeavors do I need to make? Where do I want to travel? What trips do I want to take? I don't want to show up online, I don't want to show up offline, so all these things are just in my head constantly over the net over the next couple weeks. And like I said, I'm excited to see what what benefits they reap. I'm excited to see who I am on the other side of all of this, but yeah, man, I challenge you or encourage you, whatever whatever motivates you more, whether it be telling you you're not going to do shit and you're a failure, or telling you you are going to do that shit, you're successful, I don't know. Cut out whatever parts you need to be motivated if you need that. But yeah, I encourage all of us to just do a little spring cleaning. Really, really reinterrogate everything. From the books we're reading, the people that we're in a relationship with, the w they the day the way we spend our time. I fucking can't talk. It's always so funny because I have no I have no recourse or no recoil to be like, oh, let me just pivot here, let me just be smooth. It's like the word stops, and then I try to push the word out, and that just makes shit worse, and I end up just just you know stumbling over my words, but it's all good. It's all love. We family here. You listen to this joint, we locked in for sure. So spring cleaning, that's the name of the game. We got a lot of other things to talk about. Like I said, a a very miscellaneous bag. Let's talk first about the hantavirus. I don't know about y'all. I'm not I'm not built for another panty. I'm not built for another pandemic. I'm hoping that this and of course goes without saying, but I'll say it regardless, thoughts and prayers to those affected or deceased from the virus. Sick that no pun intended, sick that these things can seem to keep happening on cruise ships. I'm a big cruise guy. I love a good cruise. It's been a while since I went on one, but I love a good cruise. I love being able to wake up and just go to the pool or eat and drink all day, and then the boat's moving, so you pop up on a different location there. I love a cruise. I might never go on a cruise again now. I might never go on a cruise again just because the level of viruses, the level of virality, all that shit that we're saying is nah. Nah. And as I mentioned earlier, I got into an accident last year. So this time last year, I spent a lot of time in the house. And I vividly remember when the news report came out that RFK Junior had fired or got rid of the people who were in charge of maintaining like cruise ship safety standards. So he cut them. So cruise lines, they have their own, they have their own internal gauge of what they consider to be like adequately clean, adequately healthy. And you can look this up online. You can look up like the internal. I don't know what the actual I don't remember what the actual keywords were, but you can look up what cruise ships have the like highest internal safety ratings and all that type of shit. While there's no national standard anymore, which means that the the the floor is in hell, that means that there's no bottom to how wicked they can get. They also there are also different cruise lines that do uphold a certain standard. But like I said, JFK got rid of the the national standard that we had a This cruiser fucked up. Hansa virus got him on a cruise. They said the they said the man. I'm not gonna. You'll I'll I'll let you guess. I'll let you guess what kind of man he is. But they said that the man was bird watching near uh a dump. And yeah, he contracted this sudden this Ebola-esque very fucking fatal virus. Yeah, no, I'm good. I'm good, bro. I'm hoping there's more H1N1 and more SWA flu where we were in panic about it. We were we were afraid, but the effects weren't a global pandemic. Also, what are the chances of two global pandemics? I know I I did this before too. I think it was episode five, where I talked about the assassination. I talked about there being three failed assassination attempts. And I said, like, what are the odds of that? I also would like to know what are the odds of two global pandemics within a what six-year period? Because the last one was in, it was the Spanish flu in 1919, 18. It was in the early, it was in the early 20th century. So if we went a hundred years more or less between pandemics, and then we go hopefully we don't, but we go six years between them. That just doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense. I think I said that three times too. So hoping that this is the first and last time I I talk about this virus. I'm not I'm not trying to get low again. I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to be I'm not trying to live through another pandemic. I mean, loss of life aside, excuse me, fucked up fucked up economic implications aside because our supply chains are still jacked up from the pandemic. I'm just not trying to do that. I'm not trying to do that, bro. Especially not like Nah Nah. Hey guys, spring clean, spring clean that virus up out of here. I believe in you. Alright, let's talk about the mayor who was a Chinese spy. Did y'all see this story? Did y'all hear about this story? Hold on, let me, because we got technology and shit. We in the studio, so California mayor quits after admitting she was a Chinese spy. So this woman was the mayor of Arcadia in Los Angeles County. A suburb. She faces 10 years minimum behind bars after admitting one count of acting in the United States, acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government. And not like the story from a few weeks ago. This story is real. This shit really happened. So this woman was allegedly covertly doing the bidding of the Chinese government as as the mayor. My mind goes here. My mind goes to how much how many more of these instances are there that we just don't know about? And I'm not even necessarily saying on some on some Chinese spy shit, but it just makes you think. You know what I mean? It makes you think, it makes you wonder, it makes you question, like, oh, hold on. So if someone it makes it makes you question, I'm gonna alright. There's a way that I want to articulate this thought, but I want to articulate it in a way that makes sense. So bear with me. And if you know, if you get what I'm saying, you'll get what I'm saying. I'm not gonna come out and say it, but you'll understand what I'm saying. It makes me wonder how influenced members of like our elected officials, elected officials, people in positions of power, as well as I put like business owners in there, more so like international business owners like your app people from Apple, people from Facebook, like these large multinational corporations and conglomerates. But it makes me wonder how many people that make decisions about us and the lives that we live every day, whether it be on a state level, whether it be a local level, a state level, a federal level, all the way up, how many of them are compromised and or serving interest of people who are not us? How many people in positions of power that we look towards are making decisions in the interest of other groups and actors who are not us? I just let that I'll let that sit for a moment. And you get what I'm saying, you you get what I'm saying, but it just opens up a whole can of wor worms. It makes you wonder, similar to the the Mike Variable Diana Rossini story that we covered a few weeks ago. If we're presented this world that everything is on the up and up and on the straight and narrow, and then we're and then we're educated or taught or shown or it's revealed, that's probably the best word, it's revealed that things are not what we think that they are and they don't operate the way that we think that they do, then what then do we as citizens, do we as members of communities, what do we do as people? That's something to sit with though. That's something to sit with. That's not what not we gonna answer there or figure out right now, but just the fucking Chinese the Chinese in in 20 the Chinese mayor is crazy in 2026 is crazy, and President Trump is visiting China right now, so I wonder if he probably don't even know that shit happened. Or he's hyper aware that that shit happened, no in between. But yeah, just food for thought. Just food for thought. That's what this episode is. Maybe that would be the title, little, a little food for thought, a little little saddler, little little Costco bag out here. Alright. I said a few weeks ago that I wanted to do some more research to look into what's going on with the Voting Rights Act. Didn't do the research I was supposed to. I know that the big case is Louisiana versus Calais. And if I'm not mistaken, they ruled that race is not a pretext to determine like voting districts. They they ruled that the district relied too heavily on race and kind of nullified what went on. So we're talking about the 1965 Voter Rights Act. That was the act that was passed through the efforts of numerous civil rights leaders. Of course, you got Martin Luther King, you got your Ella Baker, you got your Bayard Rustin, you got your SchNIC, your Southern Nonviolent Christian Coordinating Committee. Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, I I probably got the letters wrong. But you got your SchNIC, you got your SCLC, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, you got all these boycotts and all these things happening. The Voter Rights Act was really to give black people a fair shake. If you saw Selma, I think Selma did a very good representation. Of course, I'm speaking from someone that was born in the 90s, so I wasn't there doing getting poll tax and taking tests and shit, but I feel like it did a good job of just showing how hard it was for black people to vote, how hard it was to, and how unfair it was, how arbitrary that you could be in a racist ass area study for this test, and then if they deem it that you didn't get the fucking answer right, then you can't vote. Let me see actually if I can find an example of a of a vote and test from the 60s, because the questions was crazy. This is called dead air, you're not supposed to have that on the radio. Okay, so 1964 literacy test. It would actually questions like draw a line through this through the longest word in this sentence, spell backwards, forwards, draw a triangle with a blackened circle that overlaps only its left corner, print the word vote upside down, but in the correct order, write the word noise backwards and place a dot over what would be its second letter, should it have been written forward. Like just bullshit. Just bullshit. And these are from 1964 Louisiana test. So you know, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, you know, you go you go Jim Crow. You know they had that going on. But the Voter Rights Act helps uh helped to nullify that, helped to really give people a shot at voting. And even to this day, voting is still important, voting is still crucial. And this is tough because a lot of a lot of the district district district thing, fuck, that's a word. A lot of the district district king, I can't say district king, a lot of a lot of our voting maps and voting districts are built upon demographics. So predominantly black areas, predominantly Latino Latinx areas, predominantly white areas are represented in this way. So y'all might have heard the term gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is the redistricting the fuck is redoing these maps. Gerrymandering is redoing these goddamn maps in ways that either benefit Democrats or Republicans. So the thought is that with this ruling over in Louisiana, the thought is that now it opens the door to redistrict and gerrymander in a way that eliminates a lot of predominantly Democratic districts. Because as it stands the reason, a lot of districts that lean heavily Democratic have more diverse populations than those ones that are leaning majority Republican. So, what this means is it changes the toll of the midterm elections, it changes the toll of just elections going forward. And yeah, it sucks. It sucks. I've heard people older than me, smarter than me, wiser than me, lamenting the fact that they felt like they didn't do enough to protect these type of things. People in their 80s and 90s saying we didn't think that we would need to encounter this type of problem again. People in their 40s and 50s and 60s, like, oh, we took it for granted. We thought that the work done in the civil rights movement was enough to push us forward. When in reality, we we moving backwards. They they got they gutted the the They're gutting the Civil Rights Act of 1965. It's not that long ago. It hasn't been that long that we had this shit, so something to keep an eye out on. Something to something to definitely be mindful of in terms of like what can what can we do. We just gotta stay informed. We gotta make sure we make it out the vote. Yeah, Karen Hunter, shout out to Karen Hunter. I listen to her show a lot, more serious XM, the Karen Hunter show. She's a post-prise-winning author, post-surprise-winning editor, been in radio for decades, former teacher, former college professor. But she always talks about this idea of black people taking their political power and finding ways to exploit it. Whether it be if a district is Republican, then we run people with the same ideals that we believe in as Republicans, and then we wield power through that way, or we move somewhere so where black people can be the majority, and we can exercise greater power over our interests, rights, resources, so on and so forth. So there are a lot of ideas and a lot of thoughts. And I'll I'll be on the sideline. Also, folks like LBS, like Dave On Love and Lawrence, the homie Neo Numir, and the work that they do over there. There are a lot of people. I can only speak for the general era I live in, but there are a lot of people willing to educate and also willing to organize and willing to mobilize. So it ain't it ain't no now and never. It ain't no now and never when it comes to our personal dream and our personal ambitions. But it ain't no now and never when it comes to this voting shit, when it comes to this politics shit. It really is now. We really are in critical dark times. It doesn't mean bunker down, it doesn't mean be afraid. It doesn't mean not to have joy or not to have rest. But it does mean that there are going to be things that are required of us and the way that we move and the way that we act in this world that must be different than the way we've been showing up now. Because we're at risk of losing a lot of the freedoms that we built, that people bless, sweat, die for, got beat for, got dogs signaling for, got hoses sick looking for. Like a lot of the shit that we took for granted as just this is our way of life, this is our quality of life, is under fire and under attack. And we still got a good amount of ways to go with this current administration. And even once this administration is gone, and footnote in the history book, actually a footnote, probably more like a chapter. But once this administration is gone, and there's something in the history books, the the damages and the impacts of the laws that they passed, of the things that they got rid of are still gonna be felt. So we gotta prime ourselves now. We gotta get ready now. We gotta be on point now. We gotta make sure that we can be the best whoever you are listening that we can be. So we can face these challenges and also so we can fucking live the lives we wanna live. So that's our politics talk. Another slightly politics, slightly not. I saw some clips from the Kevin Hart roast. I didn't watch the full thing. Shout out to Cat Hart. Cat Hart, fuck. Cat Hart would be a funny motherfucker, though. I see Cat Hart is even like a hilarious comedian, someone's pet kitten, or the newest wrestler that is competing between WWE and AEW against. Damn, I brought a wrestler in the game.

unknown 35:54

Damn it.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

One episode I'll go when I'll bring it up. But the Kevin Hart roast, right? I saw Tony Hiscliffe make a joke about George Floyd. Not sure why George Floyd had to be in hell in the joke. I think, you know, I think I think the joke could have been funny. I don't I don't understand what this thing is about people making fun of George Floyd. I f I I never have understood that. I might never understand that if if I got any conservative or any listeners that dwell in those online spaces that I try to stay out of. Maybe you can let me know what the obsession is with with turning George Floyd into a punchline. I don't think it's anything funny about a man who had a goddamn knee on his neck and cried out for his mother before he died. And on top of that, y'all motherfuckers try to gaslight us, like, no, he was high on fentanyl, that's why he died. Like, even if that is the case, I'm sure the goddamn knee on his neck did not help matters. I don't know. What do I know? I I don't do fentanyl, so what do I know about what it takes to kill a man? But shit, I ain't I wasn't really feeling that. I wasn't really feeling that. And again, that's a clip, that's an excerpt. And Kevin Hart had the full creative control, but it brings me a lot. It brings me back to shit like that. It brings me back to, unless it was live. If it was a lot, if it was live, that'll take everything back that I'm about to say. But it reminds me of that award show where Michael B. Jordan and Del Roy Lindo got called niggas by that man that had Tourette's. And my thought was like, one, y'all set him up for failure, but y'all set everybody up for failure. Y'all let the man with Tourette's be by microphones, first of all. And y'all didn't edit it out. So it makes me think like, huh. If that shit wasn't live, and again, if it is, if it was live, it was live. But kind of hard. You could have edited that shit out. I don't I don't know. I don't know. And I always find myself having these, having these kind of internal battles, because I'm a fan of comedy. Like, I I love comedy, bro. Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, fucking you name him. George Carlin. I love I you might see me at the comedy factory around the way. Carlos Miller, we see him live. Saw a lot of comedians live. Carlos Miller, Sam J, Tommy Davison, Mr. Cooper. I can't think of Mr. Cooper's real name right now. Guy Tori. Yeah, but the point being, I I find myself in these, I find myself grappling with comedy, with the idea that comedians are supposed to say whatever the fuck they want. They're supposed to be the truth tellers of society. They're supposed to be able to look at things critically and analytically in a non-emotional way than we would. They're supposed to make you laugh by pointing out things. Shit like that. Like, I understand all that. I understand the premise of comedy. I understand the premise of it's one of the last bastions of quote unquote free speech. Like, you're not gonna really get freer than the barbershop or the or the comedy club. Like, I understand all of that. But some shit just whack, bro. Some shit just whack. And that shit is fucking whack. And I don't know if I should expect more from Kevin Hart. One of my favorite phrases back in the in the podcast days when we did the Work and Tedd podcast, we used to always say, we don't know these niggas. You don't know these niggas. I don't know these niggas. Sorry, dad. I went a while, but we back at it. But prevailing thought was like, we don't know these niggas. We can listen to their songs, listen to their raps, watch them on YouTube videos, watch them in movies, TV shows, reality shows, or war shows, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, whatever. So on and so on and so on and so on. But we don't know them. We don't know him in real life. So I feel like the shit is whack. I don't know Kevin Hart to say that he is anti-black. I don't know Kevin Hart to say that he's a I I don't know the motherfucker. I don't know. But I can say that that shit is whack. That shit was whap. I appreciate Cat Williams, though. Cat Williams was Cat Williams was hooping. Cat Williams went for a cool 50, 50 points. So shout out to Cat Williams. Real. It's nice to see Cat Williams be his flowers, because it could have went dark form. It could have went could have went black. I remember he got he got beat up by an elementary schooler or some shit like that. And I remember he was trying to erase children or something like that. Shout out to Atlanta, man. I feel like Atlanta was a big turning point when he got that role on Atlanta as the alligator, man. That brief cameo. I feel like that was a that went a good job towards his image rehab. Another understated conversation, just how Atlanta was rehabbing niggas' images. Because on Atlanta, we got we got that Cat Williams joint. We got Liam Neeson post his controversy of saying, shout out to Books if you're listening, of him saying that he was looking for any black man he could find with a cosh after his a friend of his got assaulted by a black man. And a cosh is is a is a word for it, like a big ass stick or some shit like that. So he said he had a cosh and he was just looking for the first the first nigga he could find. He said, he ain't say nigga, he's he said, yeah, he said, he said something else, but he was on Atlanta, and I think his shit started to pick back up after that. And then Kevin Samuels, Kevin Samuels was on that classic episode of Atlanta with the real light skin boy, and they had to take like a test to show how black he was. Classic. Another classic episode. His image didn't really change because he died. I think he died like I think he died, then that shit came out, like um, like lollipop with static major when it's like, damn. This shit hard. I like how yo giving Oh, RIP graphic at the end. Alrighty then. Nah, so yeah, I forgot what the fuck I was talking about. Shout out to Kat Williams, Kevin Hart. Yeah. Dave Chappelle got a new special coming. I'm sure we'll we'll talk about that when it's time. Yeah, man. Let's talk about this. Let's talk about this this swatch. This this Artemar Arnimar forget swatch collaboration. I'm real interested in this one. As I said time and time again, and we'll continue saying, because it's one of my favorite accomplishments right now. I am getting my MBA. I'm an MBA candidate at the Graves School of Business and Masters. Business and Management, shit. I hope y'all are not listening to that. I'm an MBA student at the Graves School of Business and Management on the campus of Morgan State University. So studying a luxury retailer like AP, linking up with SWATS to offer up a more cost-effective option is really interesting. Case study. And you understand the motivations for sure. I can't speak to what spending has looked like in the luxury segment. I would assume it's down like the rest of the economy, but also we know that the economy is moving in. It's moving in a way to where the rich are getting richer regardless. So their luxury spending may not be down. But what they did with this move was two things, at least from my um from my identification, two critical things that happen. One, they put themselves in a conversation in a different kind of way. It's one thing to hear rap is rap about APs, want your future, oozy, hold. Like we we heard it before, time and time again. But it's different when that conversation is being driven by me and you, when it's being driven by me and my friends in group chats talking about would you cop one? Would you not cop one? You think it's a good deal, you think it's a good move? When a luxury brand or a yeah, when a luxury brand is putting themselves in that kind of conversation, to me, it's a good move just in looking at how the economy is reflected. I know that there have been times where it backfired. So a big thing that happened with polo back in the day was polo was seen as this luxury brand. You know, polo was the shit you're low, it means something. So when they started going to discount retailers like your Marshalls, TJ Maxx, Ross, kind of the mystique around polo was lost. So people that were holding it up as this luxury brand, as like some shit that you wear when you really try and get fly or really trying to make a statement, they began to feel that the product was being diluted because you can get it everywhere at cheap prices. And I can't even speak to like the material makeup being different, but I know that from time to time the shit you get at an outlet. It's sometimes different than the shit that you would get at a store. So that was one way that it bit them in the ass. But on the other hand, you got all these luxury brands that that do do it to success, like Armani, and then you got Armani Exchange. You dig what I'm saying? Or you got Versace, and then you got Versace jeans. So it is it is something that we've seen before. And someone else recently, it was Mac, it was Apple. Apple came through with uh a discounted MacBook Air. And previously, what like 10 years or so ago, they had the iPhone 5C 15, whatever the fuck it was, but they had the iPhone that was like a a more affordable option. So you're driving the conversation in that way. But also, it's smart to me to try to get a whole new consumer base, especially considering that the people that aren't in that luxury segment, their disposable income is getting lower and lower and lower as we see based on wages, inflation, shit, the money that they might have spent or might have been saving is going in that gas tank now or going in the grocery store to bills. So to me, it makes sense at such a volatile time to introduce something for lower cost. Design-wise, I feel like the shit kind of whack. I like the renderings better where they look kind of like APG shocks, like real slick G Shocks, real slick, real colorful. Yeah, it seems like they're more pocket watches. I'm not sure if you can purchase a band for them the way that you will purchase a band for an Apple Watch or so. I need to do some more research on that. If I'm uh I'm probably not, I'm not. I'm not gonna do no research because I'm not gonna fly. They're also in person only, so I'm not gonna fly nowhere to spend four or five hundred dollars on a on a watch that may or may not have a ban. I don't see that happening for me. Also, shout out Kev on Stage. I don't know if y'all follow Kev on Stage, but so one thing Kev on Stage did was with all the hype and conversation around these AP and these luxury watches, he spotlighted nine black-owned watch brands on his Instagram page that he has in his collection. So if you're not trying to spend that money or you're against it, you don't like the idea, you don't like the design, whatever, I'm gonna encourage you, whether it be watches, whether it be clothes, whatever it may be, I'm gonna encourage you to shop black-owned, I'm gonna encourage you to to get some shit that people don't have, people, people haven't seen, that people don't own. And at least for smaller businesses, a lot of times you can feel the the gratitude and you can feel the the material like payoff of you made this thing, I bought the thing, the money that I used to buy the thing, I can see where it went back into your business, or went back into your marketing, or went back into your branding or whatever it may be. So yeah, dope, dope, dope, dope. I think not I think, but I'm interested, there goes my favorite phrase, I'm interested to see if more brands adapt this kind of strategy as the economy. I my prediction, economic-wise, and I'm not an economist, I'm a I'm a business student with a degree in communication and a certificate in African American Studies, but my prediction is that we move towards stagflation. Stagflation was like if you look at the 1970s, I think the late 70s, if I'm not mistaken, stagflation was an economic condition where wages weren't growing, but inflation was. So that's why stagnant is stagflation. Yeah, I I was beating that recession drum, that recession is coming drum, and I still think that we are moving towards even unshakier economic times, but for now, I think that it's just gonna be the stagflation piece. Yeah, let me know. Are you buying a swatch? Are you buying the the A-P swatch? Are you Are you like fuck it? Are you getting back in the G-Shocks? I would like to get back in the G-Shocks. I also want to get some KCO got some cool stuff. I'm I'm a watch guy. My pops is more of a watch guy than me. Like he he he's a big Rolex man. He's he's big, he's a big watch man. More so I need something functional, but I need to look cool too. So yeah, let me know. Let me know. I'm excited. I'm excited. I also didn't know so many people wore watches or cared about watches no more. I thought that the the Apple Watch, Apple Watch Wave kinda killed the watch game a little bit, so we'll see. But last but not least on this topic list, I had to sneak this one in there. Real good movie that I saw not too long ago. Project Hail Mary. If y'all haven't seen Project Hail Mary, go out your way to go see it. I would recommend seeing it in theaters, like IMAX if you can, or some big ass nice screen. But yeah, just a just a great movie, man. Ryan Goslin. Ryan Goslin and a a rock alien. That's all I say. Ryan Goslin and some Alien Rocks. One of the best movies I've seen this year. No spoilers. I don't want to spoil it for you, but yeah, man. What a goddamn movie. Alright. Hold your head. Hold your head for the week. I only got one, and it's it's La One Ball. Who is LaWan Ball? Uh LaMelo Ball of the Ball family, the ball, the ball basketball family. You know, they sort of like the Jacksons when it comes to that basketball shit. Lavar was like Joe. LaMello is actually Michael. You know, we don't gotta get too much into it, but but LaMelo Ball had a son, a son over the weekend, and congratulations, peace and blessings. Very, very happy that the baby seems happy and healthy. But he named the brother Lawan. He named the baby Lawan. L-A-O-N-E. La one ball. So hold your head, Lawan. Hold your head, because you wanna have to deal with a lot of packs, a lot of jokes, a lot of bullshit. Hey, you know, if you was my pair, I might have got a last Armstrong joke off on you. La one ball, you get it? But hold your head, little baby boy. Hopefully the word exists long enough for you to make it through all the pack sessions and you come out strong on the other side. And regardless or not, you your people's is rich. Um, so you should have the finest of facilities. Yeah, your dad got a shoe deal, so you shouldn't want for shoes. So, you know, it ain't gonna be that bad, but it's gonna get rough around that around that elementary school, middle school age, it's gonna get rough. So hold your head, young boy. As far as shoutouts to the homies as we wrap this thing up, and I still don't got my jingle for shout out to the homies. I might have jingles. I keep telling y'all, I'm gonna have jingles, I'm gonna have pre-recorded shit. Just watch, just watch semester over now, so I'm I'm about to be back cooking, but I want to give two shout-outs to the homies. Let me make sure I get everything right before I do these shout-outs, because we are building the plane while flying it right now. We are not reading off a motherfucking yeah, but so I want to shout out uh number one, Big Stowe, at Big Stowe on Twitter, on Threads. I think it's still the last on Threads, but all that he's a creative artist and marketing consulting, a best-selling author, helps people with strategy, helps people with publicity, all these type of things. So I gotta have a conversation with Big Stow. He was doing free conversations and he helped me to put some things in perspective in terms of just marketing myself, just putting myself out there, just thinking through my story, thinking through opportunities. So I want to give a shout out to him. If you're someone that's a, I'm not just gonna say an artist or a creative, if you're someone that is trying to fine-tune your your public profile, your public persona, your thought process, the way that you share your your thoughts and ideas with the world. Holla at Michael Stover, Big Stowe, man, the myth of the legend. Also want to give a shout out to Jeffrey Holmes. Unfortunately, I don't have any, I don't think I have Jeffrey's Instagram. I'm trying to see if I can find it right now as I talk. That's why I'm talking. This is really just me talking to Phil Space while I look shit up, so it's not just y'all listening to Dead Air. Okay, boom. So Jeffree's Instagram is investing with Jeffrey. He's a financial planner, CFP, black man, Morgan State graduate. Yeah, man. And the same way that I sat down with Big Stowe and I talked about all right, Stowe, I'm trying to move into my podcast being this, my other media creations and my other media outputs existing, and then move into some other things. I'm gonna keep it on raps. I'm gonna keep it on raps, but I'm trying to move into some other things here and some other things there. He helped me kind of gave me gave me the first steps, but of course we'll meet more, we're gonna talk more extensively. Jeffrey did the same thing for me. Jeffrey did the same thing for me and helped me to examine my finances, examine my accounts. I'll put y'all on game right now. If y'all don't have these things, make sure y'all have these things. An emergency fund with at least six months of expenses. And for that, you gotta have a budget. If you don't got a budget, you just gotta have an inflow, outflow. If you don't even have a full budget, just know how much money you're bringing in, how much money you kicking out, take that money you kicking out, do a tie six. I would say time 12, because job market fucked up, economy fucked up. So take that money, high that. That's your emergency. Then from there, if your job offers a 401k or 403B or any kind of retirement account, make sure to maximize that up to the employer match. Usually your employer will match a certain percentage of what you contribute to any employer-sponsored retirement accounts. So if it's 5%, put 5% of your check in there and then let your employer match it, and then rock out with that. Also, Roth IRA. I would recommend a Roth IRA. That's another kind of retirement account. But the thing about a Roth is you don't pay taxes on the back end, you pay your taxes on the front end because you already paid taxes on the money. So that's another way to save and invest. Brokerage accounts, Robin Hood, Charles Swab, Fidelity, it's a whole bunch. I use Robin Hood and I use Charles Swab for my brokerage accounts, but that's where you'll invest in the stock market. That's where you'll invest in cryptocurrency. That's where you'll invest in things like that. Trust, will, it's all types of stuff. So on my personal financial journey, I've been building, I've been accumulating these assets for years. I've been putting money from every check into the stock market. I've been putting money into these retirement accounts. I've been making sure that I got the high yield savings. And again, you want the high yield savings versus your traditional checking account because your high yield savings is going to give you a larger return on your money. I think I'm not sure what interest rates are right now. I want to say that it's somewhere between three and four. I can look it up. I looked up every other every other goddamn thing. So interest rates on a high yield savings account. So right now it says that. And I'm just on you can you can Google this shit. It's it's it's easy. But I'm on NerdWallet right now, and NerdWallet is saying that they have high yield savings accounts for CIT Bank has four four percent back, four point one percent back, excuse me. ETrade has four percent for six months back, Capital One has three percent, SoFi has four percent. So basically, the difference between a high-yield savings account is literally in the in the phrase high yield, you're yielding a greater return on your money. And while five percent, four percent, three percent might not seem like a lot, in our traditional checking accounts, a lot of times we're getting like 0.001%. You feel me? Like you'll get 80 cents back at the end of the year. So the more money you got, the more advantageous it is to put it in a high-yield savings account. I've always been somewhere, I looked at money as money is meant to be deployed, money is meant to work for you even when it's not directly in front of you or not directly in your pocket. So I'm gonna invest in the stock market, I'm gonna invest in in these retirement accounts, I'm gonna put money towards life insurance in the in the case that I need it, I'm gonna put money in a higher-year savings account, I'm gonna have money in my checking account. I'm gonna have my money in a bunch of different places where it can work for me. But in doing this, I ain't always had the guidance. I ain't always known the game. So that's where someone like a Jeffrey comes in. Where, okay, boom, he's like, alright, this is what you're doing, this is what makes sense, this is what you're doing that doesn't make sense. You should switch this over, do that. So always be willing, always be willing, always be willing to learn from people who are smarter than you, greater than you, have more experience than you. Just always be open to learn. Always be an open book, because there's always someone that that can get you together in a different kind of way. So one of my goals for my spring cleaning period is to also find people that I can I can lean on and learn from. And and these two folks, these two homies that I mentioned, Dick Stowe, Jeffrey Holmes, they are uh two people that I'm I'm gonna look towards to build myself up even further. And I'm grateful, I'm grateful to be in a relationship with them. So there we are. That is today's episode. How long did how long do we go for? This shit is 58 minutes? Damn, okay. It doesn't feel like I Hell no. It's 58 minutes. It doesn't feel like I talked for an hour down there, but hey, we made it happen. Hope y'all enjoyed the show. As always, like, rate, subscribe, review. We'll be back every Friday. Friday morning is what I'm aiming for every week. If life gets in the way, life gets in the way, but I'll be sure to communicate it. But yeah, I'm just I'm just excited, man. I'm in a real good place. Outside of deadly viruses and them trying to strip the voting rights acts that our ancestors fled and died for. I'm in a good place. Because even to be honest with y'all, even the shit that's not going well, even the shit that I don't feel like is in alignment, even the shit that I feel like I need to purge, I need to spring clean, supremely confident in my ability to make the changes that need to happen, as well as in God, the universe, fate, my ancestors, my guardian angels, what whoever's looking out for me, whoever got their eye on me, they hand on my heart, they they hand on my shoulder, whoever is guiding my steps and has been guiding my steps, I got the utmost faith that they're not gonna leave me hanging there. So with that, y'all be easy. And God willing, I'll highlight y'all next week. Peace.