April 21, 2025 • 42 mins
On this episode, Cari sits down with the one and only Malik Yoba. They talk about where they’ve been, where they’re going, and what it really takes to move with kindness in industries that don’t always reward it.
Malik opens up about his journey, from the spotlight to behind the scenes, and we reflect on the power of cultural influence, the pressure of public perception, and the responsibility that comes with using your voice for something bigger. Cari and Malik also get into the myths around celebrity, ambition, and how staying grounded is its own kind of success.
Shifting gears into identity in the digital age, how the words we use and the way we’re seen shape so much of our reality. Vulnerability, intention, humanity. It all matters.
And just when you think we’ve covered it all, Malik expounds on his Flipping the Hood initiative — a powerful push to empower communities through real estate and financial literacy.
Connect @CariChampion @MalikYoba
Learn More: Yoba Development
Subscribe Cari Champion's YOUTUBE Channel
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Naked Sports, the podcast where we live at
the intersection of sports, politics, and culture. Our purpose reveal
the common threads that bind them all. So what's happening
in women's basketball right now is what we've been trying to.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Get to for almost thirty years.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
From the stadiums where athletes break barriers and set records.
Kamen Quark broke the all time single game assists record.
This is crazy for rookies to be doing. Our discussions
will uncover the vital connections between these realms and the
community we create. In each episode, we'll sit down with athletes,
political analysts, and culture critics, because at the core of
(00:40):
it all, how we see one issue shines the light
on all others. Welcome to Naked Sports. I'm your host,
Carrie Champion. If you are listening to this podcast, and
if you're watching this, I hope you are. Hope you're
watching it. On my YouTube page, you will see I'm
(01:02):
fully dressed, I have a scully on and I got
on a very warm jacket. I'm getting hot right now,
but it's cold in New York. It's a real cold.
It's frigid. And one of my guests did his best
to run, literally run to the studio and be here
because I had a short amount of time. But you
all know him from Cool Runnings a New York Undercover.
He's been an actor, a mainstay actor at least for
(01:25):
the culture, for the better part of thirty forty years
if you ask me, and I really have gotten to
know him as a good person off camera. I call
him kind, That's the word that I would use. But
his commitment to building the community and giving back is
one that must be honored and talked about. And so
(01:46):
today Malik Yoba comes on the podcast. He clears up
a few things I know that he was in the news,
most recently for saying he's a non white man, that's
how he's going to identify himself, and that went viral
for various reasons. He explains what he meant by that.
He also talks about, you know, growing up here in
the city and in New York rather and what it's
(02:08):
meant to him and how it's helped him develop as
a man, and why he is so committed to being
just more than an actor a multi hyphen it. As
the kids say, I hope you enjoy this edition of
Naked Sports. So whenever I have a guest on the
podcast that I genuinely know, I like to give an
origin story. But every time I do this without fail,
(02:30):
there's a part of the podcast where we say the
origin story is not true, or the origin story is subjective,
or the origin story looks different. And of course you
are explaining to me before we even start recording when
we met, how we met, what happened when we met,
and it didn't go that way. But okay, because you
said you got you you true talent. You are such talent.
(02:53):
Y'all think y'all know everything your talent.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
I just know what I know.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Okay, So you said it was twenty years ago, But
twenty years ago was would we win? Two thousand and five?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Two thousand.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I lived in Florida in two thousand and five. There's
just no way I was walking the city streets of
New York. I hadn't. There's just no way. I was
a I was a CUB reporter.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I think it was more like two thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Maybe I was in Florida than Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
When did you leave the Tennis Channel?
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I was twenty eleven.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
So it wasn't. It was definitely for that.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
And I started working at the Tennis Channel in two
thousand and nine.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
So maybe you were at Okay, Yeah, I had my recollection.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
I left Local if we had just met, I left
Local News. I had just got fired and hired. Yeah,
so it's two thousand and.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Nine, okay, so you didn't have a job yet.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I was just looking. It was out here, I was,
I was in between gigs, I was hustling.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Because that was the conversation on the roof of the Dream.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Okay, So tell me what happened to you and.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Your girl what's her name again, your best friend Kendrew
were walking down the street and I saw you.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
And I was so, that had to be two thousand
and eight, two thousand and nine.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So you're walking down the street and I'm like, that's
what happened. And then we made it to the roof
and I was.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Like, oh, those you're like, come with me. I'm going
to the Dream.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
No. No, you guys were going and I was going.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
You were staying there, and we were there.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I was going as well, and I just happened to
see you in the street first, and then you were
on the roof okay, and we started chatting. You looked
familiar to.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Me, okay, and then we talked.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
We talked, and part of it was you talking. First
of all, when you talked about how much you loved sports,
I thought that was fly because you're beautiful and black
and talk at sports. And I was like, yeah, that's dope.
And you were like, I'm looking, I'm trying to get
a new gig. So you hadn't had the get yet, and.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So was I not at the tenants So I was
not at the Tennis channel or I I.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Just remember you talking about wanting a job and a
job in sports broadcasting, and I thought that was a
really cool thing. And then cut to a few years later,
you're in ESPN and we hadn't seen each other in from.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Okay, So then that's what it was. Okay. So I
was at the Tennis channel. I was probably looking for
a new opportunity, and I was like, I want a
bigger gig than just being at the tennis channel because
it was a single sport network. So it was like
two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, you give
me that, give me that to be it's some pieces
of our memory. And then and then obviously I was
at ESPN, and then and then you and I did
(05:16):
we connect while I was at ESPN or do it?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
So we did?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, because I feel like it might have been on
Instagram or it might have been a Zita.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
It was a Za our mutual friend who is also
an actress. Well, let me say this to you. Over
the years, I will tell you one thing that I
have noticed about you outside of you being a phenomenal
actor and me being a fan before I even knew you,
because you, for so many of us, have narrated our
(05:46):
our childhood, our teenhood, our adulthood in terms of the
films that you've been in that have been a part
of the culture, that are integrated deeply into the culture.
But coming to know you off camera, you stay very
consistently kind to everyone, like and that is and that's
a hard thing to do in this industry because it.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Ain't about the industry, correct.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
It's about the world. But people don't know that.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, you know that because you one thing I like
about you, you will send me a random as text
like you have such a beautiful heart, You are so kind. Yeah,
and that's all.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
And I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
People I think don't the more and more I'm a
little more and I don't know if you can relate
to this. I'm a little more like socially fine, but
I'm very introverted. I'm very particular. I'm very private, so
it sometimes prevents me from getting to know people. But
I am very observant about how people treat other people.
(06:45):
And you treat other people wonderful, from the president to
the janitor, and I think that speaks volumes to who
you are and I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I think it's important. I think you know, did a
lot of unkind people? Yeah, and I don't understand that.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I do. They're miserable. Oh they want everybody else to
be missed.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, no, no, yes, yes, yes, I understand it from
that perspective.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
But a misery is a choice too.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah. When you look back over your career, and we're
in New York filming this, which is so fricking ironic.
If if someone would have told me that, I would
have been sitting with you doing this podcast and I'm
about to talk about New York kud to cover. I'm like, really,
think when you look back over your life and some
of the roles that you've had, and I know that
you know, people know you from particular places, are you
(07:38):
Are you aware of your cultural impact?
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Yeah, for sure. But so we're in one sixty five
what's forty sixth Street.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
That's where the building is right now where we are filming.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yes, and so this is the Actor's Equity Building. It
used to also be the office for the Negro Ensemble Company,
where I sat in this building and sold subscriptions for
the Negro Ensemble Company, which was the preeminent theater company
from I was there from about sixteen years old to
eighteen years old. And so that was my job in
(08:12):
this in this building back in the eighties, and like
selling newspapers, no, no, no, no, we sold subscriptions. Like so,
now how you buy subscriptions to everything right to the
you know streaming or whatever back.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
In the day you can do it online.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
No, it was it was theater. It was live theater.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So people would there'd be a season and the season
could be from like say September to May maybe, and
you did. The theater would produce four shows a year,
and my job was to call people up, Hey, miss champion,
would you like to renew your subscription for next season?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
We have this amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Play with Felice Richard or Sam Jackson or Angela Massett
who were all part of that theater company Denzel eight
Off Cason.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Wow, So this is where I used.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
To come and dream about being an actor, aside from
the fact that performing ours high school when they danced
in the Street at the beginning of Fame, that was
right in front of this building.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
At the beginning of Fame when they danced on the
street is in the beginning of this is right here
where I am right now.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
You walk out this building, you go to the left,
there's a red stone castle kind of that used to
be performing out of high school. And then my first agent,
Ambrosier and Mortimor, was also in this building, and I
signed with them because I knew Sam Jackson and Angela
Bassett from my time at the New York at the
Negro Ensemble Company. And when I booked Cool Runnings, I
(09:30):
didn't have an agent. It was an open call, and
so when they booked me on the film, they were like,
you need to find an agent to negotiate your deal,
and I chose Ambrosia Mortimor because Sam and Angie were
our clients.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Oh wow in this building. Oh wow. Fact that's a
great story. You want to put your I don't know
how can you put you on any more water? You stuck,
you stuck up under there? You got this or you
can lift it. Look we stuck up under there, and Jay,
why we got my man stuck up under here?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Your work?
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yo?
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Look at Jay's shirt. It says be kind. He knows
what's up.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
He knows what's up. Jay's always kind. Kind, it's kind
of kindness goes a lot, but.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It's different than nice. Right. I hate people debate kind
and nice all the time.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, I wouldn't say that nice would be the first
word you would use to describe me. But you definitely
if you knew me, Eve, you say kind Yeah, yeah, accurate, right, accurate.
Over the years, I think that I don't know what
makes someone a mainstay, but people are mainstays. Do you
(10:34):
actively make sure that is a part of who you
are or it has happened?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Not in terms of like. To me, it's always been
about purpose, right. So I was not pursuing a career
in theater in film and television.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
I actually was more interested in theater.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Growing up as a kid, I wanted to be on
Broadway right down the block I went to high school.
So I went to three different high schools. One of
the high schools is fifty a street between ninth and
tenth right here in time script.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I got shot at that school when I was fifteen
years old, so.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
It's not where how this is a bullet? Wo? Why
when that happened?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
So right between eighth and ninth Avenue, I used to
go to Park West High School. There was and then
there was Printing High School on the same street. So
January eighteenth, nineteen eighty three is two high schools let
out on the middle of midtown. So he got like
three thousand kids in the street. Nine of those kids
were beaten down another kid. One had a baseball bat,
one had a golf club and then beating this kid
(11:29):
within an inch of his life. And I'm leaving school
heading to the train station on eighth Avenue, and we're
all watching this, and so I literally was like, y'all,
I wish it would and they did, and they pushed
me out the way to beat on this kid.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
One of them. I pushed a kid back.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Another kid came up behind me, threw me around, grabbed
me around the neck, threw me on the ground and
told the third.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Kid to shoot me.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
So that's fifteen years old, right here in midtown Manhattan,
and my friend Marvin was standing on the corner.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Everybody watched it and he was like, yo yo, but Yoba.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
They used to come to me Joba in high school
and we ran to There was a hospital, Saint Clair's
on ninth and fifty second Street, and it's that getting
shot at that when I went to that school. And
my father wouldn't let me go to performing our high
school because he didn't want us to pursue our career
and the arts. He said, you know, get a real
job kind of thing. So I was studying engineering over there,
(12:22):
which was crazy. But because I got shot, He's like,
you know what, We're going to switch schools. And there
was another performing arts program called Talent Unlimited that kadem
Hardison went to. Most death went to Lisa Lisa Geene.
Anthony Ray, who was in fame, actually went to the
same program. So that's I was allowed to go to
(12:44):
that theater program. But I had two passions growing up.
One was education, working with kids. It was just always
that kid that other kids came to with their problems,
and I was always I had some kind of wisdom
and I was always tutoring or helping out. And so
the other one was theater, like doing theater, but musical theater.
(13:04):
So I grew up a musician, playing guitar, singing, and
so for me, I wanted to be on Broadway and
I thought I'd be doing musicals, and I was pursuing
music and working with kids. And it was through the
job I had at a place called the City Kids Foundation.
At the time, it was a job before that, but
City Kids really would change my life. I was there
(13:25):
from nineteen to twenty four years old. And so when
the grant that was hiring me, that was paying for
me ran out in the summer of eighty nine, I
told my boss, Yeah, I have a waiter job at
a restaurant uptown, Cafe Luxembourg, and I said, I'll volunteer
for the summer. And so when I showed up at
(13:47):
work one day, there was a flyer on the wall
for an audition because we had a repertory company. And
in that repertory company was Donald Faison, Isaiah Washington, Lisa Lapere,
who's unequalizer now dashed, myha who was on Ray, Donavi
been in a bunch of other stuff, a bunch of kids.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Doulay Hill came through there.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I keep calling dou Lay Duel, but doule.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Doule Doulay Hill. And so.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
That what wealth of talent you grew up with New
York City? Well New York is really special in that way.
Go on.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
So no, no, it's all good. So I go and audition.
So as a science says three twenty five a day.
I was like, oh, I could do that. Twenty five
dollars a day. Yeah, three twenty five days. So I
went in auditioned for that movie. Got the movie. It
was a little film called Seriously Fresh. And that's the
(14:45):
guy who wrote that film was a guy named Jamal
Joseph and he had just gotten out of his role
doing ten years in Levenworth Prison for his role being
in the Black Panther Party. And so he's telling me
the story on set, and I said, yo, I work
with this youth group. I want you to come and
talk to my kids during Black History Month. And so
I was like eight months later, oh, no, four months
(15:07):
later or something like that. And we loved him so much.
He is the person that we end up hiring to
run the city kids of a repertory company. And Jamal
is the dude who called me one day and said, hey,
they're doing this movie about the Jamaican Bobster. That team
from an audition. It was an open call, and that's
that's how it happened.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
That's how you got running.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
So I wasn't ever really trying to, like, I've never
really tried.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
What did you see yourself as? Were you going to
be an activist in the community? Were you going to
You wanted to do Broadway, but what else were you going?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
I was always a multi hyphen in so musically and
my father you say, boy, you need to focus. So musically,
I wanted to be Bob Marley and samk those are
my two, like the way they made me feel.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
I wanted to make people feel. I play acoustic guitar.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I'd be out here on the street singing, and I'd
be in the subway, I'd be in club like you know,
open mics, all that, and so I was chasing the
music because I felt like I could put I can
control that. Yeah, I don't have to wait for an audition.
Because growing up in the city doing theater, all my
friends were pissed when they wouldn't get stuff, And I'm like,
y'all are I'm not doing that?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, I want to do a lot more.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, so real estate, which I do now. Development was
always something.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
We're going to take a quick break because we have
to pay some bills. We'll be right back in just
a few moments. In today's age, people feel like they
can't well, today's age, they do. They are very much
comfortable with saying we are multi hyphen its. It is
(16:43):
the thing. You have to have a lot of things
going on. But back then that wasn't that very popular.
It felt like, like to what your dad said, son,
you need to focus. Did you ever find it a
burden to be so talented in different areas mentally, physically, emotionally.
Did it feel like.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
If you're the way it still feels that way. Why
not a burden that I can't handle? Because when you
I call myself a Swiss Swiss army knife, I'm useful
in a lot of situations.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I could produce this show, I could choose that a
direct that can edit it. I can write a speech
for you. I can sing a song. I can work
on strategy for you. We can talk about development, we
can talk about education. So for me, you know, made
it make sense to me. Martha Stewart, when The New
York Times posted her schedule, I was like, Oh, that's
(17:32):
like school, math, class, science, class, gym, language. Like when
we went to school, you had like eight classes a day.
You did and you tried to get an A or
eighty or whatever we did.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
But why does it feel like a burden? Not a
burden you can't handle.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Well, Because sometimes I really, honestly, like say, my music, right,
the music has always been probably I think it's one
of my greatest talents, but it's not the thing I
do all the time. So the burden of ambition is
more because I'm ambitious in all these different ways that
(18:09):
it's hard to focus on all the things you want
to do, so I try to mash it all up.
Like my development company over Developments at the intersection of
real estate, education and media.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
The reason why we moved the way we move is
because I was able to figure out, oh, telling stories.
I'm a storyteller at the end of the day. So
whether it's development, whether it's owning my restaurant I had
in Times Square forty secondary for years Soul Cafe. Right,
it told a story. You walk in, you felt good,
you saw yourself, the colors, the black people, the menu.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Right, that told what's the Because I'm listening to you
and I'm like, oh, I can relate. I have a
lot of I think a lot of creative people consider
themselves with starby knives. I think you take one platform
and you do it well, and that allows you to
open up doors to do other things. But what is
the what would be the downside of being creative? And
I don't know if there's somebody listening and saying I
(19:01):
want to do it all? Do you get too overwhelmed
in your mind? Do you not have enough time in
the day to accomplish all the things that you want?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
That's part Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
I mean right now we're producing our activation right flipping
the Hood, which is in a month from tomorrow. Sure, right,
that takes all of my time, okay, And so that's
a heavy lift, even though we have a team. So yeah,
I think it's just a friend of mine said recently,
not to do list is longer than the time I
have on the planet, and I relate to that. So
(19:32):
it's not like a burden, like but that was a
joy to be able to wake up every single day
and do what you want to do, pursue the things
you want to pursue. So yeah, I think that the
burden for me has been the public perception of who
people think I am.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Who do people think you are.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
The characters or a collection of characters that you play.
They think that you're driven by being a celebrity. They
think that you think you all the whatever is in
their head that they want to assign to you. You
deal with it as well. I'm sure right people you
think you know, you think I think I'm that. So
what I've learned is there is the person I am,
(20:08):
they are the collection of characters I've played, and then
there's a persona that has been developed based on those perceptions.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
So you're a little bit of all.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
In the eyes of No, I'm the first dude, like
you said I'm you said I'm kind to people, right.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Doesn't mean all those other people can't be kind that No.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
No, what I'm saying is that I think that people
will want to sign a value to you based on
who they think you are. So people like if I'm
I posted something about my real estate, right, so oh
you celebrities think, No, I ain't doing this because you
think I'm a celebrity. I'm doing this because I'm purposed
to do it now the value you want to sign
to that is on you. So and there are people,
(20:48):
as you know, who are really into being celebrities. There
are people who really work on it, make sure that
every event.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I'm a little reads a lot of work. It's a
lot of work to try to be famous up with
the do a lot of work trying to do all that.
What do you think the biggest misconception of you would be?
Like if you are walking down the street and someone
talks to you, or if you meet some morning, you
hear what people say about you. What is the one
(21:14):
thing that you hear about yourself that isn't true?
Speaker 2 (21:17):
That isn't true. I think back to the whole celebrity thing.
I think that you know, I don't need to tell
you our stand up for things that I think are
important to see people. I think we all deserve to
be seen. And there are times when I've certainly said
things that people have been.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Like why is he saying that?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
And I say it for the same reason you said
at the beginning of conversation because I'm a kind person,
because I see humanity. I don't care who you are,
and I think people can conflate what you say you
stand for or who you may support with who you are, right,
So don't get it twisted that I'm something other than
a beautiful black heterosexual male.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
We say black lives matter, we say we are pressed
and we should be supported. But we are the first
to come after each other.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
A few weeks ago, I just said I'm a non
black man. I'd said it to my daughter to Nate before.
I was like, you know what, So working in the
federal government, because we have a federal business contracting business
as well, and having friends in the federal business and
the federal government and in contracting, you know that there
are certain words that are being looked for to identify,
(22:30):
to say we're not gonna allow that. Bipod right, black,
first woman.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Yeah, all of those words. Right.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
So my point in jest was, well, are they going
to say that about non white Are they going to
specifically say that if.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
You say I'm specifically non white?
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Are they going to say you don't deserve an opportunity
because you're not white.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Because you're saying I'm not black. I'm just saying I'm
non white.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Right, and I'm not saying I'm not black.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I cannot you're keeping it real generic and you're playing
the word seal of game that they play. So you're
sitting here the exactly and made it and made it
something that was exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
They took wo they're now using civil rights legislation.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Woke and they're saying it's unfair.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Sure, so they're taking get what you're saying and weaponizing it.
And so you're you're going to take the language that
they weaponize and use it for your benefit. Yes, so
I'm non white. No, I'm saying that's what you're saying.
You go online white. It was a joke, okay, so
you're being silly.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I was walking to a meeting on my page, just
posted something and people you're just talking, just talking, talking
that talk, and so people said, what's wrong with him?
But that speaks more to our trauma. That speaks more absolutely,
it speaks to how dare you separate yourself from me?
And those are the things that people have a hard
time understanding when you're a person that is driven by
(23:57):
your humanity. Now by celebrity, not by fame, not by money,
not by anything other than my purpose is to make
the world a better place. I was raised. We were
raised to leave places better than they were when you
found them. So if somebody is driving in front of
me and they toss them out their window, I've chased
cars down. Like yo, bro, what are you doing? Somebody
(24:20):
toss up in the street. You don't open the door
for an old lady. You don't you know, you don't
say excuse me. You don't like all those things that
can connect us as humans, that would allow us to
see each other, to be kind to each other, to
trust each other. The a lot of people that move
in this world like I ain't trusting nobody because people
(24:40):
are shady. That ain't how I really move. I move
with an open heart and an open mind to say
that in every space I'm in, I belong and I
have one purpose, and that's to be light.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
If you're a person like Lghts, yes exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
So, if you're a person, I truly believe that you're
a child of God. And if God is love, then
I love you. I don't have to know you. Why
do I do work in community? I have to know
these kids that we serve. I don't have to know
why am I doing everything I'm doing in real estate,
particularly around educating other people. I don't have to know
you to say I know what I know, I know
(25:19):
what I don't know. So if I put you in
a room with me and you got something to share,
I got something to share. We're going to be strong
if we're doing this together in collaboration. And that is
what Yoba means. Yoba means lasts from the slaves, a
new generation. That's how we were raised. My father was
very much on some You ain't doing what everybody Your
name is not like everybody else, your religion is we
(25:39):
were raised Muslim. Your religion is not like everybody else.
You're not moving like everybody else. Since kids, right, you
get in trouble at school, you're like yo. But you know,
Michael said, I don't care what michaels.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, I don't care what Michael eaton and saying yeah,
it's very interesting when you said a few things that
I think are very true. But to have that type
of heart and have that mission and to be as
free as you are, God bless you, because that's hard
to be in a world.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Why do you think it's hard because I just.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Think, well, you're not as sensitive as I am. Like
you just said, some people will be like, I'm not
gonna I'm not doing that, and that would be me.
I'm like, I would get exhausted after, you know, and
I think that I pick and choose who I give
that love and light to. I doesn't. It doesn't sound
like you pick and choose. You give it freely, And
to me that is that's a tough ask because because
(26:31):
of what comes with all of that. While your intenders
are great and you're trying to live in a world
and do right, everyone doesn't have that. In fact, the
majority of people don't.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, well I don't know who I would be if
I ever lost that And don't lose it.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
No, I can't. No, I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
You know that that I was cyberbullied when I stood
up for that community, for the community right in that way.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
And that's the community.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
When I stood up for our community, because these are
are others and sisters and our children, right, we're still
black people.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
We're still I see.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
What you're saying. You're saying when you sit it for
the black people in the trans community people or or
or black men or black whomever, You're still being bullied.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
No, what I'm saying is that.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Having that experience with the level of vitriol, the level
of misinformation, the level of intentional pimping my pain for
people's profit.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
When you decide to put a.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Caption that says Milik, Glba says he's no longer black Milik,
ioba's gay Milik whatever this thing, I'm like, really, this
dude who has represented every single one of us and
everything I've ever done. When you see me play a
black man in anything I've ever done, there is a
level of vulnerability that I think is important to imbue
with every single character because so many of our black
(27:54):
men are afraid to be vulnerable because they don't understand
that the strength is actually in the vulnerability. It's in
the ability to be human and sensitive and to see
you and to feel you, and to vibrate on your frequency,
no matter what it is. So I study Buddhism, right,
if you've seen what's love got to do with it?
(28:15):
Like when Tina Turner was channing numb Yo horangeyeto devotion
to the mystic law of cause and effect, through sound vibration.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
That's what that means. Numb yo horanguekeo.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Inherent in every human being at a ten essential life
conditions hell, hunger, anger, animality, rapture, tranquility, learning, absorption, Bodha,
and buddhahood. So in any given moment, we can be
in hell, sure, hunger, anger, animality, rapture, tranquility, right, so
(28:47):
on and so forth, and so from a Buddhist perspective,
if I see a person that may be in hell,
may be in anger.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Maybe is supposed to help.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Not help, But I can recognize where you may be,
knowing that you have the potential for enlightenment trump putent.
All these cats sugnate puff people still have. That's what
Christianity talks about redemption, to be christ Like, to be
light in the world.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
And so for me, if you can recognize those inherent
life conditions in people, it's not very hard to be
kind because all of us have those life conditions. So
I could choose to be I could stay in the
gutter with a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Sure I choose not to.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
It's harder to stay out of the gutter. I think
it's easy to be in the gutter. I think it's
easy to.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
When people don't understand that they have higher life conditions
that they can achieve. And so how do I even
have this information where I studied it? If I didn't,
If I didn't, I had a certain sort of orientation
as a kid. My mother told me when we were
when they were getting divorced, her my father. I was
(30:04):
ten years old. She said, you have tried to fix
it if I told.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
You what was going on.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Oh, so I know that that was my orientation, but
then being able to bolster that with deeper understandings about
philosophies that may be different than how I grew up
as a Muslim, or what am I to learned from
my Christian friends and my Jewish friends? For me, when
I started studying Buddhism as a seventeen year old, that
was a game changer and.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
A changer whole perspective. Which is why you have been
able to be successful in many areas, and which is
why you have been to me, what I'm just thinking
as I'm like, why why are some people cultural mainstays?
Why are people always in the zegeist if you will,
whether it's consistently or every so often, but that is
(30:51):
this magnetism that you have. We're going to take a
quick break because we have to pay some bills. We'll
be right back in just a few moments. A couple
of weeks ago, you invited me to and I won't
(31:13):
call it a fundraiser, but it was a bit of
a celebration.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
It was a fundraiser. It was our first charity dinner. Okay,
and foundation and buy my lovely daughter's right off camera.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
I will show her to her beautiful self. She's gorgeous.
And you talked, you cried a lot. You cried a lot,
and I was like, well, he is so full of emotion.
It was a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing to
see a black man cry and be overwhelmed and excited
and have a bevy of emotions that we all could relate.
(31:45):
To tell us about the event, the fundraiser that I attended,
and what you're working on.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
So thanks for coming. First of all, you are with
your lovely friends who I know through you, Keisha at
the NBA Players Association and her team Erica and some
other folks was there. So you know, we have you
over development the LLC, which is my development company. That's
at the intersection of real estate, education and media, which
(32:10):
I talked about, And our slogan is builder of people,
places and things, And so we run a lot of
education programs for a high school, college, and community level
around how can we level up in terms of having
access to information on the built environment. And when people
think about development and cities being gentrified, they didn't always
(32:32):
realize all of what is that entails. They might just
see buildings grow up and don't understand but who financed it,
and who's the engineers and those the designers, who's doing
marketing and who's telling the stories and right, and these
are places that we're woefully underrepresented in architecture, development, finance,
all that stuff. And if we don't have a seat
at the table, or we don't grow up in families
(32:55):
that are in this space. For instance, eighty percent of
commercial real estate in America is owned by one percent
of families.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
It's crazy, that's crazy. But I can see that because
I see the same names everywhere I go.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
I see the same names on residential and commercial properties.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Everywhere, every city, every state.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Yeah, yeah, and summer around the world.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
And so we're not at the table. So we don't.
We're not in that game. I've been in the development
game since two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight.
Shout out to my brother Dan Bythewood, who Reggie Bythewood
we might know from Loving Basketball, Gina and his wife.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Reggie, Reggie's cousin.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
We met on the set of New York Kind of
Cover and when I told him I wanted to get
into development in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
he gave me a seat at the table. So started
over development in twenty seventeen, when I decided to start
my own thing, even though I still rock with my brothers.
That gave me my first seat at the table for
development in Baltimore. So I was involved with that for
(33:55):
over a decade. Still involved. But that's where I learned
the game. And the whole time I'm learn the game,
I'm like, I want to teach this to people. You know,
folks should know how this really works. Right, And number
one with that family, the Bythewood family, that first round
was friends and family.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
So he went to friends and family, say hey, would
you like to be a part of this. Susan Taylor
is in that deal. People like Reginald van Lee, Susan
and her husband Keeper and a bunch of other black
folks that we know were the first investors in that deal.
And so for me, being the educator that I am,
right that history goes back to the eighties, I just
(34:30):
felt like, I want to find a way to, you know,
share this information with our community because I'm learning so much.
And the first, the biggest money ever made in one
transaction was a real estate It wasn't in film and teavurse.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
That's where the money is, that's where the money resides.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
So that's what really got me saying, you know, I
need to take this thing seriously and so try to
keep the story short. So in twenty eighteen, I'm doing
a show called God Friend of Me, and I'm playing
a real estate developer and we're on set in Bushwick
and construction site and there's film cameras and I'm like, yo,
my world's emerging. A few weeks later, a few days later,
(35:08):
we're at a site at Brooklyn Navy Yard. Across the street,
a friend of mine is developing entire city block. A
guy named Scott Reckler, one of the names you see
all over the place. RXR right, And so the projects
are down the block, and I'm saying to myself, how
many people from the projects walk by film sets and
construction sites and have no idea about either space. I'm
(35:31):
in both spaces. I want to find a way to
bring all three of these together. And I shared that
vision with a woman and a group of women who
are trying to start a nonprofit with me. At the time,
I was like, nah, I got this for profit company
I haven't done anything with and by now it's like
twenty eighteen, and I said, I want the focus of
(35:53):
my company to be on educating our community about real
estate while I'm pursuing deals, but I want to used
film somehow. Two days later, she sends me a deck
it says I build New York. And she took my
vision and made turn the thought into a thing.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
And I took that deck to my friend Scott. I said, Yo, Scott,
I want to figure out a way to bring more
black and brown people into this game.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
It's good for a year.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
He says, you know what, I'll fund it. And when
he said that, I said, you know what, I'm gonna
shoot the documentary and so for six weeks from.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
July.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
In July twenty nineteen, we went from New Hampton to Newburgh,
New York, which is upstate, and I took seven young black,
seven Black and Latino young people from eighteen to thirty eight,
and I introduced them to my roller decks as I
went pursuing my first development deal in New York, and
I filmed the whole thing Ali Anthony Bourdain, Parts unknown.
(36:54):
That became something called the Real Estate Mixtape, which is
a ten part doc series that I I'm not going
to try to sell it to a network or streamer.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
You just use it to show what you division.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
And I use it in community, right.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I use it at the high school level, at the
college level, and we do community work. And so that
then became the basis of a curriculum called the Eyebuild
New York Curriculum that we introduced the high school students
to introduce high school students to real estate development partnerships
with PRAP. In the last three years, I've been to
fifty one city, six countries screening the dot. It leads
(37:28):
to development deals, it leads to me doing stories on
other entrepreneurs, other black developers. I'll be in Austin in
a couple of days I'm working on a documentary on
black women developers, an organization called Big Austin, which is
a CDFI, which is you know, community development, financial development,
(37:48):
community development financial institution. So I'm doing a doc on
these black women who actually, by the way, had won
an RFP to build a Tesla plant, a Tesla campus,
which we'll.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Get into that another time.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
But when I met them, it was like a hidden
figure story.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
I was like, people is amazing.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
So the dinner you came to I finally said, you
know what, let's start the foundation. And I asked my
daughter in like three years ago to do the paperwork,
was like just file five one D three so she
could learn that process. And then one of the things
we do is called flipping the Hood, which we have
coming up on May ninth and tenth at the Brooklyn
(38:27):
Navy Yard, which in the hood is a mentality. Sure,
the first real estate we owner is in our minds, sisterhood,
the brotherhood, the fatherhood, the familyhood, the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Right, we have to not.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Just flip a house for myself and my family, but
how do we flip entire communities? And we can't do
it without education. So we did the first one in
twenty twenty three. My daughter at the end of the
year of that year said, Dad, I feel like I
need to step my game up. And I said, Okay,
shout out to Morgan Stanley, Globals and Entertable.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
They were our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
But I really wanted to position my daughter in a
place of leadership that I got to experience at her age.
May ninth and tenth the Brooklyn Navy Yard two days
of We call it an activation because once we activate,
we don't stop. So the first year we did it,
we had about a thousand people over two days, about
fifty five million dollars in business activity was generated. That
(39:25):
was primarily through business loans in the real estate side,
but everything from technology, AI, crypto supply.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Chaine, just educating financial literacy.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Teaching community building right, building.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Up the community that you have.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Just through Yeah, yeah, So how do we co invest?
As a wonderful woman named Nicki Murkison who as a
platform called pair gap. So you don't have all the money,
you got the credit, your sister, your brother, your neighbor.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Does it together? Community?
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, equity shares another one you.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Have the three c's. It was community. I was reading something.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Oh, community connection and capital.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Community connection and capital. And I thought that was really smart. Yeah,
I thought that was really smart.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
Yeah, that's that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
It goes back to what I was saying about you earlier,
me being kind. It all full circle.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Well, I honestly, I just feel like I'm being obedient
when I tell you in this chapter in my life,
I noticed people that go, like, yo, when does his cat,
Like when did he start doing real estate or whatever?
You've been doing it twenty years? Right, You've been doing
I owned since before that.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
It really has been in obedience. Like when I was
doing a show called God Friended Me where I had
this vision whose vision was given to me, and I've
just been obedient to it. Literally, It's like I heard
the words flipping the hood. This is what it is.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
It's not like I started with a corporation saying here's
a big check, go do it. It's like, nah, it's
me picking up the phone, me reaching out the folks saying, hey,
this is the vision.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Do you support it?
Speaker 2 (40:54):
And the best part about it is that for every
adult that buys a ticket, a high school a college
student gets I'm for.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Free, get to what come for free. Oh all right,
so we got to put that out there, flipping the
hood y'all gotta support all the naked listeners and those
who are watching as as my guy elogantly gets this
water and drinks it and slides it and moves it
and then does it. This is he's given us full action.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Movie, sports and politics.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
We didn't have time. We did not have time. I'm
so bummed, and it was my fault and your fault.
This is my fault. I'm gonna take the hell.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
I'm so proud of you, though.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
We cannot talk about me. I don't like attention. I'm
gonna say wonderful things about you that are going to
make you quye at the beginning of the podcast, but
I won't give it to you now. Thank you for
being light, thank you for being a beautiful black man,
and thank you for being vulnerable. We don't get to
see it alive. I'm naked, you naked. Fully Naked. Naked
(41:54):
Sports written and executive produced by me Carry Champion, produced
by Jockey's Thomas Sound Design, and mastered by Dwayne Crawford.
Naked Sports is a part of the Black Effect podcast
network in iHeartMedia
Welcome to Naked Sports, the podcast where we live at
the intersection of sports, politics, and culture. Our purpose reveal
the common threads that bind them all. So what's happening
in women's basketball right now is what we've been trying to.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Get to for almost thirty years.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
From the stadiums where athletes break barriers and set records.
Kamen Quark broke the all time single game assists record.
This is crazy for rookies to be doing. Our discussions
will uncover the vital connections between these realms and the
community we create. In each episode, we'll sit down with athletes,
political analysts, and culture critics, because at the core of
(00:40):
it all, how we see one issue shines the light
on all others. Welcome to Naked Sports. I'm your host,
Carrie Champion. If you are listening to this podcast, and
if you're watching this, I hope you are. Hope you're
watching it. On my YouTube page, you will see I'm
(01:02):
fully dressed, I have a scully on and I got
on a very warm jacket. I'm getting hot right now,
but it's cold in New York. It's a real cold.
It's frigid. And one of my guests did his best
to run, literally run to the studio and be here
because I had a short amount of time. But you
all know him from Cool Runnings a New York Undercover.
He's been an actor, a mainstay actor at least for
(01:25):
the culture, for the better part of thirty forty years
if you ask me, and I really have gotten to
know him as a good person off camera. I call
him kind, That's the word that I would use. But
his commitment to building the community and giving back is
one that must be honored and talked about. And so
(01:46):
today Malik Yoba comes on the podcast. He clears up
a few things I know that he was in the news,
most recently for saying he's a non white man, that's
how he's going to identify himself, and that went viral
for various reasons. He explains what he meant by that.
He also talks about, you know, growing up here in
the city and in New York rather and what it's
(02:08):
meant to him and how it's helped him develop as
a man, and why he is so committed to being
just more than an actor a multi hyphen it. As
the kids say, I hope you enjoy this edition of
Naked Sports. So whenever I have a guest on the
podcast that I genuinely know, I like to give an
origin story. But every time I do this without fail,
(02:30):
there's a part of the podcast where we say the
origin story is not true, or the origin story is subjective,
or the origin story looks different. And of course you
are explaining to me before we even start recording when
we met, how we met, what happened when we met,
and it didn't go that way. But okay, because you
said you got you you true talent. You are such talent.
(02:53):
Y'all think y'all know everything your talent.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
I just know what I know.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Okay, So you said it was twenty years ago, But
twenty years ago was would we win? Two thousand and five?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Two thousand.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I lived in Florida in two thousand and five. There's
just no way I was walking the city streets of
New York. I hadn't. There's just no way. I was
a I was a CUB reporter.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I think it was more like two thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Maybe I was in Florida than Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
When did you leave the Tennis Channel?
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I was twenty eleven.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
So it wasn't. It was definitely for that.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
And I started working at the Tennis Channel in two
thousand and nine.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
So maybe you were at Okay, Yeah, I had my recollection.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
I left Local if we had just met, I left
Local News. I had just got fired and hired. Yeah,
so it's two thousand and.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Nine, okay, so you didn't have a job yet.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I was just looking. It was out here, I was,
I was in between gigs, I was hustling.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Because that was the conversation on the roof of the Dream.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Okay, So tell me what happened to you and.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Your girl what's her name again, your best friend Kendrew
were walking down the street and I saw you.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
And I was so, that had to be two thousand
and eight, two thousand and nine.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So you're walking down the street and I'm like, that's
what happened. And then we made it to the roof
and I was.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Like, oh, those you're like, come with me. I'm going
to the Dream.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
No. No, you guys were going and I was going.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
You were staying there, and we were there.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I was going as well, and I just happened to
see you in the street first, and then you were
on the roof okay, and we started chatting. You looked
familiar to.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Me, okay, and then we talked.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
We talked, and part of it was you talking. First
of all, when you talked about how much you loved sports,
I thought that was fly because you're beautiful and black
and talk at sports. And I was like, yeah, that's dope.
And you were like, I'm looking, I'm trying to get
a new gig. So you hadn't had the get yet, and.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So was I not at the tenants So I was
not at the Tennis channel or I I.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Just remember you talking about wanting a job and a
job in sports broadcasting, and I thought that was a
really cool thing. And then cut to a few years later,
you're in ESPN and we hadn't seen each other in from.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Okay, So then that's what it was. Okay. So I
was at the Tennis channel. I was probably looking for
a new opportunity, and I was like, I want a
bigger gig than just being at the tennis channel because
it was a single sport network. So it was like
two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, you give
me that, give me that to be it's some pieces
of our memory. And then and then obviously I was
at ESPN, and then and then you and I did
(05:16):
we connect while I was at ESPN or do it?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
So we did?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, because I feel like it might have been on
Instagram or it might have been a Zita.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
It was a Za our mutual friend who is also
an actress. Well, let me say this to you. Over
the years, I will tell you one thing that I
have noticed about you outside of you being a phenomenal
actor and me being a fan before I even knew you,
because you, for so many of us, have narrated our
(05:46):
our childhood, our teenhood, our adulthood in terms of the
films that you've been in that have been a part
of the culture, that are integrated deeply into the culture.
But coming to know you off camera, you stay very
consistently kind to everyone, like and that is and that's
a hard thing to do in this industry because it.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Ain't about the industry, correct.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
It's about the world. But people don't know that.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, you know that because you one thing I like
about you, you will send me a random as text
like you have such a beautiful heart, You are so kind. Yeah,
and that's all.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
And I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
People I think don't the more and more I'm a
little more and I don't know if you can relate
to this. I'm a little more like socially fine, but
I'm very introverted. I'm very particular. I'm very private, so
it sometimes prevents me from getting to know people. But
I am very observant about how people treat other people.
(06:45):
And you treat other people wonderful, from the president to
the janitor, and I think that speaks volumes to who
you are and I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I think it's important. I think you know, did a
lot of unkind people? Yeah, and I don't understand that.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I do. They're miserable. Oh they want everybody else to
be missed.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, no, no, yes, yes, yes, I understand it from
that perspective.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
But a misery is a choice too.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah. When you look back over your career, and we're
in New York filming this, which is so fricking ironic.
If if someone would have told me that, I would
have been sitting with you doing this podcast and I'm
about to talk about New York kud to cover. I'm like, really,
think when you look back over your life and some
of the roles that you've had, and I know that
you know, people know you from particular places, are you
(07:38):
Are you aware of your cultural impact?
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Yeah, for sure. But so we're in one sixty five
what's forty sixth Street.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
That's where the building is right now where we are filming.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yes, and so this is the Actor's Equity Building. It
used to also be the office for the Negro Ensemble Company,
where I sat in this building and sold subscriptions for
the Negro Ensemble Company, which was the preeminent theater company
from I was there from about sixteen years old to
eighteen years old. And so that was my job in
(08:12):
this in this building back in the eighties, and like
selling newspapers, no, no, no, no, we sold subscriptions. Like so,
now how you buy subscriptions to everything right to the
you know streaming or whatever back.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
In the day you can do it online.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
No, it was it was theater. It was live theater.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So people would there'd be a season and the season
could be from like say September to May maybe, and
you did. The theater would produce four shows a year,
and my job was to call people up, Hey, miss champion,
would you like to renew your subscription for next season?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
We have this amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Play with Felice Richard or Sam Jackson or Angela Massett
who were all part of that theater company Denzel eight
Off Cason.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Wow, So this is where I used.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
To come and dream about being an actor, aside from
the fact that performing ours high school when they danced
in the Street at the beginning of Fame, that was
right in front of this building.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
At the beginning of Fame when they danced on the
street is in the beginning of this is right here
where I am right now.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
You walk out this building, you go to the left,
there's a red stone castle kind of that used to
be performing out of high school. And then my first agent,
Ambrosier and Mortimor, was also in this building, and I
signed with them because I knew Sam Jackson and Angela
Bassett from my time at the New York at the
Negro Ensemble Company. And when I booked Cool Runnings, I
(09:30):
didn't have an agent. It was an open call, and
so when they booked me on the film, they were like,
you need to find an agent to negotiate your deal,
and I chose Ambrosia Mortimor because Sam and Angie were
our clients.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Oh wow in this building. Oh wow. Fact that's a
great story. You want to put your I don't know
how can you put you on any more water? You stuck,
you stuck up under there? You got this or you
can lift it. Look we stuck up under there, and Jay,
why we got my man stuck up under here?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Your work?
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yo?
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Look at Jay's shirt. It says be kind. He knows
what's up.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
He knows what's up. Jay's always kind. Kind, it's kind
of kindness goes a lot, but.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It's different than nice. Right. I hate people debate kind
and nice all the time.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, I wouldn't say that nice would be the first
word you would use to describe me. But you definitely
if you knew me, Eve, you say kind Yeah, yeah, accurate, right, accurate.
Over the years, I think that I don't know what
makes someone a mainstay, but people are mainstays. Do you
(10:34):
actively make sure that is a part of who you
are or it has happened?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Not in terms of like. To me, it's always been
about purpose, right. So I was not pursuing a career
in theater in film and television.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
I actually was more interested in theater.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Growing up as a kid, I wanted to be on
Broadway right down the block I went to high school.
So I went to three different high schools. One of
the high schools is fifty a street between ninth and
tenth right here in time script.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I got shot at that school when I was fifteen
years old, so.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
It's not where how this is a bullet? Wo? Why
when that happened?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
So right between eighth and ninth Avenue, I used to
go to Park West High School. There was and then
there was Printing High School on the same street. So
January eighteenth, nineteen eighty three is two high schools let
out on the middle of midtown. So he got like
three thousand kids in the street. Nine of those kids
were beaten down another kid. One had a baseball bat,
one had a golf club and then beating this kid
(11:29):
within an inch of his life. And I'm leaving school
heading to the train station on eighth Avenue, and we're
all watching this, and so I literally was like, y'all,
I wish it would and they did, and they pushed
me out the way to beat on this kid.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
One of them. I pushed a kid back.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Another kid came up behind me, threw me around, grabbed
me around the neck, threw me on the ground and
told the third.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Kid to shoot me.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
So that's fifteen years old, right here in midtown Manhattan,
and my friend Marvin was standing on the corner.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Everybody watched it and he was like, yo yo, but Yoba.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
They used to come to me Joba in high school
and we ran to There was a hospital, Saint Clair's
on ninth and fifty second Street, and it's that getting
shot at that when I went to that school. And
my father wouldn't let me go to performing our high
school because he didn't want us to pursue our career
and the arts. He said, you know, get a real
job kind of thing. So I was studying engineering over there,
(12:22):
which was crazy. But because I got shot, He's like,
you know what, We're going to switch schools. And there
was another performing arts program called Talent Unlimited that kadem
Hardison went to. Most death went to Lisa Lisa Geene.
Anthony Ray, who was in fame, actually went to the
same program. So that's I was allowed to go to
(12:44):
that theater program. But I had two passions growing up.
One was education, working with kids. It was just always
that kid that other kids came to with their problems,
and I was always I had some kind of wisdom
and I was always tutoring or helping out. And so
the other one was theater, like doing theater, but musical theater.
(13:04):
So I grew up a musician, playing guitar, singing, and
so for me, I wanted to be on Broadway and
I thought I'd be doing musicals, and I was pursuing
music and working with kids. And it was through the
job I had at a place called the City Kids Foundation.
At the time, it was a job before that, but
City Kids really would change my life. I was there
(13:25):
from nineteen to twenty four years old. And so when
the grant that was hiring me, that was paying for
me ran out in the summer of eighty nine, I
told my boss, Yeah, I have a waiter job at
a restaurant uptown, Cafe Luxembourg, and I said, I'll volunteer
for the summer. And so when I showed up at
(13:47):
work one day, there was a flyer on the wall
for an audition because we had a repertory company. And
in that repertory company was Donald Faison, Isaiah Washington, Lisa Lapere,
who's unequalizer now dashed, myha who was on Ray, Donavi
been in a bunch of other stuff, a bunch of kids.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Doulay Hill came through there.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I keep calling dou Lay Duel, but doule.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Doule Doulay Hill. And so.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
That what wealth of talent you grew up with New
York City? Well New York is really special in that way.
Go on.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
So no, no, it's all good. So I go and audition.
So as a science says three twenty five a day.
I was like, oh, I could do that. Twenty five
dollars a day. Yeah, three twenty five days. So I
went in auditioned for that movie. Got the movie. It
was a little film called Seriously Fresh. And that's the
(14:45):
guy who wrote that film was a guy named Jamal
Joseph and he had just gotten out of his role
doing ten years in Levenworth Prison for his role being
in the Black Panther Party. And so he's telling me
the story on set, and I said, yo, I work
with this youth group. I want you to come and
talk to my kids during Black History Month. And so
I was like eight months later, oh, no, four months
(15:07):
later or something like that. And we loved him so much.
He is the person that we end up hiring to
run the city kids of a repertory company. And Jamal
is the dude who called me one day and said, hey,
they're doing this movie about the Jamaican Bobster. That team
from an audition. It was an open call, and that's
that's how it happened.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
That's how you got running.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
So I wasn't ever really trying to, like, I've never
really tried.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
What did you see yourself as? Were you going to
be an activist in the community? Were you going to
You wanted to do Broadway, but what else were you going?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
I was always a multi hyphen in so musically and
my father you say, boy, you need to focus. So musically,
I wanted to be Bob Marley and samk those are
my two, like the way they made me feel.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
I wanted to make people feel. I play acoustic guitar.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I'd be out here on the street singing, and I'd
be in the subway, I'd be in club like you know,
open mics, all that, and so I was chasing the
music because I felt like I could put I can
control that. Yeah, I don't have to wait for an audition.
Because growing up in the city doing theater, all my
friends were pissed when they wouldn't get stuff, And I'm like,
y'all are I'm not doing that?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, I want to do a lot more.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, so real estate, which I do now. Development was
always something.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
We're going to take a quick break because we have
to pay some bills. We'll be right back in just
a few moments. In today's age, people feel like they
can't well, today's age, they do. They are very much
comfortable with saying we are multi hyphen its. It is
(16:43):
the thing. You have to have a lot of things
going on. But back then that wasn't that very popular.
It felt like, like to what your dad said, son,
you need to focus. Did you ever find it a
burden to be so talented in different areas mentally, physically, emotionally.
Did it feel like.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
If you're the way it still feels that way. Why
not a burden that I can't handle? Because when you
I call myself a Swiss Swiss army knife, I'm useful
in a lot of situations.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I could produce this show, I could choose that a
direct that can edit it. I can write a speech
for you. I can sing a song. I can work
on strategy for you. We can talk about development, we
can talk about education. So for me, you know, made
it make sense to me. Martha Stewart, when The New
York Times posted her schedule, I was like, Oh, that's
(17:32):
like school, math, class, science, class, gym, language. Like when
we went to school, you had like eight classes a day.
You did and you tried to get an A or
eighty or whatever we did.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
But why does it feel like a burden? Not a
burden you can't handle.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Well, Because sometimes I really, honestly, like say, my music, right,
the music has always been probably I think it's one
of my greatest talents, but it's not the thing I
do all the time. So the burden of ambition is
more because I'm ambitious in all these different ways that
(18:09):
it's hard to focus on all the things you want
to do, so I try to mash it all up.
Like my development company over Developments at the intersection of
real estate, education and media.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
The reason why we moved the way we move is
because I was able to figure out, oh, telling stories.
I'm a storyteller at the end of the day. So
whether it's development, whether it's owning my restaurant I had
in Times Square forty secondary for years Soul Cafe. Right,
it told a story. You walk in, you felt good,
you saw yourself, the colors, the black people, the menu.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Right, that told what's the Because I'm listening to you
and I'm like, oh, I can relate. I have a
lot of I think a lot of creative people consider
themselves with starby knives. I think you take one platform
and you do it well, and that allows you to
open up doors to do other things. But what is
the what would be the downside of being creative? And
I don't know if there's somebody listening and saying I
(19:01):
want to do it all? Do you get too overwhelmed
in your mind? Do you not have enough time in
the day to accomplish all the things that you want?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
That's part Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
I mean right now we're producing our activation right flipping
the Hood, which is in a month from tomorrow. Sure, right,
that takes all of my time, okay, And so that's
a heavy lift, even though we have a team. So yeah,
I think it's just a friend of mine said recently,
not to do list is longer than the time I
have on the planet, and I relate to that. So
(19:32):
it's not like a burden, like but that was a
joy to be able to wake up every single day
and do what you want to do, pursue the things
you want to pursue. So yeah, I think that the
burden for me has been the public perception of who
people think I am.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Who do people think you are.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
The characters or a collection of characters that you play.
They think that you're driven by being a celebrity. They
think that you think you all the whatever is in
their head that they want to assign to you. You
deal with it as well. I'm sure right people you
think you know, you think I think I'm that. So
what I've learned is there is the person I am,
(20:08):
they are the collection of characters I've played, and then
there's a persona that has been developed based on those perceptions.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
So you're a little bit of all.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
In the eyes of No, I'm the first dude, like
you said I'm you said I'm kind to people, right.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Doesn't mean all those other people can't be kind that No.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
No, what I'm saying is that I think that people
will want to sign a value to you based on
who they think you are. So people like if I'm
I posted something about my real estate, right, so oh
you celebrities think, No, I ain't doing this because you
think I'm a celebrity. I'm doing this because I'm purposed
to do it now the value you want to sign
to that is on you. So and there are people,
(20:48):
as you know, who are really into being celebrities. There
are people who really work on it, make sure that
every event.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I'm a little reads a lot of work. It's a
lot of work to try to be famous up with
the do a lot of work trying to do all that.
What do you think the biggest misconception of you would be?
Like if you are walking down the street and someone
talks to you, or if you meet some morning, you
hear what people say about you. What is the one
(21:14):
thing that you hear about yourself that isn't true?
Speaker 2 (21:17):
That isn't true. I think back to the whole celebrity thing.
I think that you know, I don't need to tell
you our stand up for things that I think are
important to see people. I think we all deserve to
be seen. And there are times when I've certainly said
things that people have been.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Like why is he saying that?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
And I say it for the same reason you said
at the beginning of conversation because I'm a kind person,
because I see humanity. I don't care who you are,
and I think people can conflate what you say you
stand for or who you may support with who you are, right,
So don't get it twisted that I'm something other than
a beautiful black heterosexual male.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
We say black lives matter, we say we are pressed
and we should be supported. But we are the first
to come after each other.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
A few weeks ago, I just said I'm a non
black man. I'd said it to my daughter to Nate before.
I was like, you know what, So working in the
federal government, because we have a federal business contracting business
as well, and having friends in the federal business and
the federal government and in contracting, you know that there
are certain words that are being looked for to identify,
(22:30):
to say we're not gonna allow that. Bipod right, black,
first woman.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Yeah, all of those words. Right.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
So my point in jest was, well, are they going
to say that about non white Are they going to
specifically say that if.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
You say I'm specifically non white?
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Are they going to say you don't deserve an opportunity
because you're not white.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Because you're saying I'm not black. I'm just saying I'm
non white.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Right, and I'm not saying I'm not black.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I cannot you're keeping it real generic and you're playing
the word seal of game that they play. So you're
sitting here the exactly and made it and made it
something that was exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
They took wo they're now using civil rights legislation.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Woke and they're saying it's unfair.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Sure, so they're taking get what you're saying and weaponizing it.
And so you're you're going to take the language that
they weaponize and use it for your benefit. Yes, so
I'm non white. No, I'm saying that's what you're saying.
You go online white. It was a joke, okay, so
you're being silly.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I was walking to a meeting on my page, just
posted something and people you're just talking, just talking, talking
that talk, and so people said, what's wrong with him?
But that speaks more to our trauma. That speaks more absolutely,
it speaks to how dare you separate yourself from me?
And those are the things that people have a hard
time understanding when you're a person that is driven by
(23:57):
your humanity. Now by celebrity, not by fame, not by money,
not by anything other than my purpose is to make
the world a better place. I was raised. We were
raised to leave places better than they were when you
found them. So if somebody is driving in front of
me and they toss them out their window, I've chased
cars down. Like yo, bro, what are you doing? Somebody
(24:20):
toss up in the street. You don't open the door
for an old lady. You don't you know, you don't
say excuse me. You don't like all those things that
can connect us as humans, that would allow us to
see each other, to be kind to each other, to
trust each other. The a lot of people that move
in this world like I ain't trusting nobody because people
(24:40):
are shady. That ain't how I really move. I move
with an open heart and an open mind to say
that in every space I'm in, I belong and I
have one purpose, and that's to be light.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
If you're a person like Lghts, yes exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
So, if you're a person, I truly believe that you're
a child of God. And if God is love, then
I love you. I don't have to know you. Why
do I do work in community? I have to know
these kids that we serve. I don't have to know
why am I doing everything I'm doing in real estate,
particularly around educating other people. I don't have to know
you to say I know what I know, I know
(25:19):
what I don't know. So if I put you in
a room with me and you got something to share,
I got something to share. We're going to be strong
if we're doing this together in collaboration. And that is
what Yoba means. Yoba means lasts from the slaves, a
new generation. That's how we were raised. My father was
very much on some You ain't doing what everybody Your
name is not like everybody else, your religion is we
(25:39):
were raised Muslim. Your religion is not like everybody else.
You're not moving like everybody else. Since kids, right, you
get in trouble at school, you're like yo. But you know,
Michael said, I don't care what michaels.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, I don't care what Michael eaton and saying yeah,
it's very interesting when you said a few things that
I think are very true. But to have that type
of heart and have that mission and to be as
free as you are, God bless you, because that's hard
to be in a world.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Why do you think it's hard because I just.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Think, well, you're not as sensitive as I am. Like
you just said, some people will be like, I'm not
gonna I'm not doing that, and that would be me.
I'm like, I would get exhausted after, you know, and
I think that I pick and choose who I give
that love and light to. I doesn't. It doesn't sound
like you pick and choose. You give it freely, And
to me that is that's a tough ask because because
(26:31):
of what comes with all of that. While your intenders
are great and you're trying to live in a world
and do right, everyone doesn't have that. In fact, the
majority of people don't.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, well I don't know who I would be if
I ever lost that And don't lose it.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
No, I can't. No, I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
You know that that I was cyberbullied when I stood
up for that community, for the community right in that way.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
And that's the community.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
When I stood up for our community, because these are
are others and sisters and our children, right, we're still
black people.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
We're still I see.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
What you're saying. You're saying when you sit it for
the black people in the trans community people or or
or black men or black whomever, You're still being bullied.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
No, what I'm saying is that.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Having that experience with the level of vitriol, the level
of misinformation, the level of intentional pimping my pain for
people's profit.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
When you decide to put a.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Caption that says Milik, Glba says he's no longer black Milik,
ioba's gay Milik whatever this thing, I'm like, really, this
dude who has represented every single one of us and
everything I've ever done. When you see me play a
black man in anything I've ever done, there is a
level of vulnerability that I think is important to imbue
with every single character because so many of our black
(27:54):
men are afraid to be vulnerable because they don't understand
that the strength is actually in the vulnerability. It's in
the ability to be human and sensitive and to see
you and to feel you, and to vibrate on your frequency,
no matter what it is. So I study Buddhism, right,
if you've seen what's love got to do with it?
(28:15):
Like when Tina Turner was channing numb Yo horangeyeto devotion
to the mystic law of cause and effect, through sound vibration.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
That's what that means. Numb yo horanguekeo.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Inherent in every human being at a ten essential life
conditions hell, hunger, anger, animality, rapture, tranquility, learning, absorption, Bodha,
and buddhahood. So in any given moment, we can be
in hell, sure, hunger, anger, animality, rapture, tranquility, right, so
(28:47):
on and so forth, and so from a Buddhist perspective,
if I see a person that may be in hell,
may be in anger.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Maybe is supposed to help.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Not help, But I can recognize where you may be,
knowing that you have the potential for enlightenment trump putent.
All these cats sugnate puff people still have. That's what
Christianity talks about redemption, to be christ Like, to be
light in the world.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
And so for me, if you can recognize those inherent
life conditions in people, it's not very hard to be
kind because all of us have those life conditions. So
I could choose to be I could stay in the
gutter with a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Sure I choose not to.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
It's harder to stay out of the gutter. I think
it's easy to be in the gutter. I think it's
easy to.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
When people don't understand that they have higher life conditions
that they can achieve. And so how do I even
have this information where I studied it? If I didn't,
If I didn't, I had a certain sort of orientation
as a kid. My mother told me when we were
when they were getting divorced, her my father. I was
(30:04):
ten years old. She said, you have tried to fix
it if I told.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
You what was going on.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Oh, so I know that that was my orientation, but
then being able to bolster that with deeper understandings about
philosophies that may be different than how I grew up
as a Muslim, or what am I to learned from
my Christian friends and my Jewish friends? For me, when
I started studying Buddhism as a seventeen year old, that
was a game changer and.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
A changer whole perspective. Which is why you have been
able to be successful in many areas, and which is
why you have been to me, what I'm just thinking
as I'm like, why why are some people cultural mainstays?
Why are people always in the zegeist if you will,
whether it's consistently or every so often, but that is
(30:51):
this magnetism that you have. We're going to take a
quick break because we have to pay some bills. We'll
be right back in just a few moments. A couple
of weeks ago, you invited me to and I won't
(31:13):
call it a fundraiser, but it was a bit of
a celebration.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
It was a fundraiser. It was our first charity dinner. Okay,
and foundation and buy my lovely daughter's right off camera.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
I will show her to her beautiful self. She's gorgeous.
And you talked, you cried a lot. You cried a lot,
and I was like, well, he is so full of emotion.
It was a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing to
see a black man cry and be overwhelmed and excited
and have a bevy of emotions that we all could relate.
(31:45):
To tell us about the event, the fundraiser that I attended,
and what you're working on.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
So thanks for coming. First of all, you are with
your lovely friends who I know through you, Keisha at
the NBA Players Association and her team Erica and some
other folks was there. So you know, we have you
over development the LLC, which is my development company. That's
at the intersection of real estate, education and media, which
(32:10):
I talked about, And our slogan is builder of people,
places and things, And so we run a lot of
education programs for a high school, college, and community level
around how can we level up in terms of having
access to information on the built environment. And when people
think about development and cities being gentrified, they didn't always
(32:32):
realize all of what is that entails. They might just
see buildings grow up and don't understand but who financed it,
and who's the engineers and those the designers, who's doing
marketing and who's telling the stories and right, and these
are places that we're woefully underrepresented in architecture, development, finance,
all that stuff. And if we don't have a seat
at the table, or we don't grow up in families
(32:55):
that are in this space. For instance, eighty percent of
commercial real estate in America is owned by one percent
of families.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
It's crazy, that's crazy. But I can see that because
I see the same names everywhere I go.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
I see the same names on residential and commercial properties.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Everywhere, every city, every state.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Yeah, yeah, and summer around the world.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
And so we're not at the table. So we don't.
We're not in that game. I've been in the development
game since two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight.
Shout out to my brother Dan Bythewood, who Reggie Bythewood
we might know from Loving Basketball, Gina and his wife.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Reggie, Reggie's cousin.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
We met on the set of New York Kind of
Cover and when I told him I wanted to get
into development in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
he gave me a seat at the table. So started
over development in twenty seventeen, when I decided to start
my own thing, even though I still rock with my brothers.
That gave me my first seat at the table for
development in Baltimore. So I was involved with that for
(33:55):
over a decade. Still involved. But that's where I learned
the game. And the whole time I'm learn the game,
I'm like, I want to teach this to people. You know,
folks should know how this really works. Right, And number
one with that family, the Bythewood family, that first round
was friends and family.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
So he went to friends and family, say hey, would
you like to be a part of this. Susan Taylor
is in that deal. People like Reginald van Lee, Susan
and her husband Keeper and a bunch of other black
folks that we know were the first investors in that deal.
And so for me, being the educator that I am,
right that history goes back to the eighties, I just
(34:30):
felt like, I want to find a way to, you know,
share this information with our community because I'm learning so much.
And the first, the biggest money ever made in one
transaction was a real estate It wasn't in film and teavurse.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
That's where the money is, that's where the money resides.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
So that's what really got me saying, you know, I
need to take this thing seriously and so try to
keep the story short. So in twenty eighteen, I'm doing
a show called God Friend of Me, and I'm playing
a real estate developer and we're on set in Bushwick
and construction site and there's film cameras and I'm like, yo,
my world's emerging. A few weeks later, a few days later,
(35:08):
we're at a site at Brooklyn Navy Yard. Across the street,
a friend of mine is developing entire city block. A
guy named Scott Reckler, one of the names you see
all over the place. RXR right, And so the projects
are down the block, and I'm saying to myself, how
many people from the projects walk by film sets and
construction sites and have no idea about either space. I'm
(35:31):
in both spaces. I want to find a way to
bring all three of these together. And I shared that
vision with a woman and a group of women who
are trying to start a nonprofit with me. At the time,
I was like, nah, I got this for profit company
I haven't done anything with and by now it's like
twenty eighteen, and I said, I want the focus of
(35:53):
my company to be on educating our community about real
estate while I'm pursuing deals, but I want to used
film somehow. Two days later, she sends me a deck
it says I build New York. And she took my
vision and made turn the thought into a thing.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
And I took that deck to my friend Scott. I said, Yo, Scott,
I want to figure out a way to bring more
black and brown people into this game.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
It's good for a year.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
He says, you know what, I'll fund it. And when
he said that, I said, you know what, I'm gonna
shoot the documentary and so for six weeks from.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
July.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
In July twenty nineteen, we went from New Hampton to Newburgh,
New York, which is upstate, and I took seven young black,
seven Black and Latino young people from eighteen to thirty eight,
and I introduced them to my roller decks as I
went pursuing my first development deal in New York, and
I filmed the whole thing Ali Anthony Bourdain, Parts unknown.
(36:54):
That became something called the Real Estate Mixtape, which is
a ten part doc series that I I'm not going
to try to sell it to a network or streamer.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
You just use it to show what you division.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
And I use it in community, right.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I use it at the high school level, at the
college level, and we do community work. And so that
then became the basis of a curriculum called the Eyebuild
New York Curriculum that we introduced the high school students
to introduce high school students to real estate development partnerships
with PRAP. In the last three years, I've been to
fifty one city, six countries screening the dot. It leads
(37:28):
to development deals, it leads to me doing stories on
other entrepreneurs, other black developers. I'll be in Austin in
a couple of days I'm working on a documentary on
black women developers, an organization called Big Austin, which is
a CDFI, which is you know, community development, financial development,
(37:48):
community development financial institution. So I'm doing a doc on
these black women who actually, by the way, had won
an RFP to build a Tesla plant, a Tesla campus,
which we'll.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Get into that another time.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
But when I met them, it was like a hidden
figure story.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
I was like, people is amazing.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
So the dinner you came to I finally said, you
know what, let's start the foundation. And I asked my
daughter in like three years ago to do the paperwork,
was like just file five one D three so she
could learn that process. And then one of the things
we do is called flipping the Hood, which we have
coming up on May ninth and tenth at the Brooklyn
(38:27):
Navy Yard, which in the hood is a mentality. Sure,
the first real estate we owner is in our minds, sisterhood,
the brotherhood, the fatherhood, the familyhood, the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Right, we have to not.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Just flip a house for myself and my family, but
how do we flip entire communities? And we can't do
it without education. So we did the first one in
twenty twenty three. My daughter at the end of the
year of that year said, Dad, I feel like I
need to step my game up. And I said, Okay,
shout out to Morgan Stanley, Globals and Entertable.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
They were our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
But I really wanted to position my daughter in a
place of leadership that I got to experience at her age.
May ninth and tenth the Brooklyn Navy Yard two days
of We call it an activation because once we activate,
we don't stop. So the first year we did it,
we had about a thousand people over two days, about
fifty five million dollars in business activity was generated. That
(39:25):
was primarily through business loans in the real estate side,
but everything from technology, AI, crypto supply.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Chaine, just educating financial literacy.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Teaching community building right, building.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Up the community that you have.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Just through Yeah, yeah, So how do we co invest?
As a wonderful woman named Nicki Murkison who as a
platform called pair gap. So you don't have all the money,
you got the credit, your sister, your brother, your neighbor.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Does it together? Community?
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, equity shares another one you.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Have the three c's. It was community. I was reading something.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Oh, community connection and capital.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Community connection and capital. And I thought that was really smart. Yeah,
I thought that was really smart.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
Yeah, that's that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
It goes back to what I was saying about you earlier,
me being kind. It all full circle.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Well, I honestly, I just feel like I'm being obedient
when I tell you in this chapter in my life,
I noticed people that go, like, yo, when does his cat,
Like when did he start doing real estate or whatever?
You've been doing it twenty years? Right, You've been doing
I owned since before that.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
It really has been in obedience. Like when I was
doing a show called God Friended Me where I had
this vision whose vision was given to me, and I've
just been obedient to it. Literally, It's like I heard
the words flipping the hood. This is what it is.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
It's not like I started with a corporation saying here's
a big check, go do it. It's like, nah, it's
me picking up the phone, me reaching out the folks saying, hey,
this is the vision.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Do you support it?
Speaker 2 (40:54):
And the best part about it is that for every
adult that buys a ticket, a high school a college
student gets I'm for.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Free, get to what come for free. Oh all right,
so we got to put that out there, flipping the
hood y'all gotta support all the naked listeners and those
who are watching as as my guy elogantly gets this
water and drinks it and slides it and moves it
and then does it. This is he's given us full action.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Movie, sports and politics.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
We didn't have time. We did not have time. I'm
so bummed, and it was my fault and your fault.
This is my fault. I'm gonna take the hell.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
I'm so proud of you, though.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
We cannot talk about me. I don't like attention. I'm
gonna say wonderful things about you that are going to
make you quye at the beginning of the podcast, but
I won't give it to you now. Thank you for
being light, thank you for being a beautiful black man,
and thank you for being vulnerable. We don't get to
see it alive. I'm naked, you naked. Fully Naked. Naked
(41:54):
Sports written and executive produced by me Carry Champion, produced
by Jockey's Thomas Sound Design, and mastered by Dwayne Crawford.
Naked Sports is a part of the Black Effect podcast
network in iHeartMedia
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