It’s Not What It’s Post to Be - When the Story Changes, So Does the Message - Guest Kalilah Wright - TMI

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Tamika D.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
Mallory and it's your boy my son in general.

Speaker 1 (00:03):
We are your host of t M I.

Speaker 3 (00:05):
Tamika and my Son's Information, Truth, Motivation and Inspiration, New.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Name, New Energy.

Speaker 4 (00:14):
Hey Tamika D. Mary, what's going on with you today?

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Going on happening?

Speaker 4 (00:18):
Ah?

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Man, it's a it's a cold day, very cold day
in New York. You know, we on holiday, but we're
still here on holiday.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
It is holiday time, but I just have submitted myself
to the idea that I'm not going to get my
general holiday, you know, downtime, just because it's been so busy.
It's cold, but it's it's not like I don't know,
I'm not. I guess it's not February and that's what

(00:46):
I brace for.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
So I'm getting a little sniffle, so I know, I
know it's getting cool. I don't usually get cold. When
I feel that little sniffle coming, I know it's winter time.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well, I over the cold, the flu that I had,
but still the lingering of the you know, the mucus
and all of that. It doesn't just go away. I
kind of feel like the I haven't been having or
drinking like milk or anything. Like that. But I did

(01:18):
eat something that had some cheese on it, and I
knew immediately like I was getting better quicker, and that
kind of set me back. So for people who are
trying to get rid of your winter, the first part
of the winter, terrible flu, terrible cold, no dairy. That's
like the thing that I realized set me back a

(01:39):
few days because I was at the point where I
wasn't coughing, I wasn't straining my throat and doing all
it and all of that stuff. But as soon as
I ate something with cheese, I forgot. And once I
did that, I got set back really far. Actually I started.
You know, it had been a couple of really bad days,
so I had to go through the whole process again

(02:00):
of the ginger and the this and the dad and
da dah. And I think I'm better, but I can
tell you that the dairy is absolutely out, maybe even
for the whole season.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
Yeah, it's it's what is this like a new strain
of the flu?

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Right, Yeah, that's what they say. They say it's a
new strain. I had lingering effects of it for four weeks.
So and then you know, we have other people, friends
and people who have it and they're fighting their way through.
Still two weeks later, still needing the what you call
the ivy drip, and I know my hairstylist needed to

(02:36):
get some pedialyte. Like it's it's it's significant, it whatever
it is, it's it's It's like, I wouldn't call it COVID,
even though I feel like I did lose my taste.
But with COVID, I was. It put me down, especially
the first time. But this is like, I don't know.

(02:59):
I kept working because I had no choice, but I
felt real weak every minute of the day.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
It was. It's bad.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
I mean, jans ad Is.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
She knows everybody.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
My son was sick for about good four or five days.
So I seen it. God, you know, knock on wood,
and it didn't touch me. You know, I said, I
got me a little sniffle now because I know that
cold start getting into your bones.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
It's also very contagious. It's very contagious. That's the other
thing I noticed is like you could be around somebody
that has it for a brief moment and then it's
like boom, you know, if they call on you the
wrong way or whatever. You know, me, I'm a person
that's very protective of other people. So I'm kind of
like trying to turn my face to the side, even

(03:41):
you know, even in intimate settings, I'm still trying like
not to give people the thing. But other people don't care.
There's no self awareness at all. People do and then
it gets on other people. So, yeah, this is a
this is this is a nasty flu. And my sister
she had at it as well. We think we got
it from my granddaughter and they called it when she

(04:05):
works in the hospital. She's about to be a nurse
practitioner in just a few days, and she went to
had to get tested because she was at work probably
looking really sick. And her people, they her friends, the
other nurses and stuff, are like, are you okay? She
got on three masks because she an't will wear three

(04:25):
masks in a minute. She don't mind. She wears a
face shield and two different masks. That's her regular And
she said that her friends were like, you got to
get tested. They were like, you look puny in the eyes.
And when she tested, it was influenza A. So it
is absolutely a flu.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
Well I'm glad she's better. I'm glad you better.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Everybody's glad everybody's better. Janie looks like, you know, she's
back to life. Yeah, so I'm glad everybody's better.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
All right, let's get this show going. My thought of
the day today as I listened to some of like
the administration Trump administration's announcements, and you know, things that
they say, whether it be press conferences and or you know,
his speech that he did the other day, they lie

(05:16):
a lot, like it's it's it's like overwhelming, you know.
And I'm not saying that all administrations don't lie, because
I can think of things that I've heard from previous administrations,
even in the Abiden administration, and I'm thinking to myself,
this information. I can't say that you are flat out lying,

(05:36):
but you're definitely telling the story in a way that
either covers and or does not go into the detail
that you know, people really care about, Like you're you know,
you're you're you're creating a narrative to protect, defend, deflect,
or whatever. So I think that is a normal thing.

(05:58):
And some of it is that if you say flat
out everything about any policy or any national issue, you
have to account for the fact that there is a
potential for people to panic. So you know they always
are trying to. If you don't have enough information, you

(06:19):
don't want to say what, you don't want to do,
what you don't know. If you do have information, it
may be that you can't tell it exactly. So I
get that, I get it, I understand it. I do
also know that there's a difference between attempting to, you know,
give people enough that they are informed, but not too

(06:40):
much to where it causes hysteria and the media and
everybody is in it and you haven't even been able
to get your hands around it yet, and just flat
out lion making up numbers, canceling the jobs report so
that you don't have to tell people the truth about
how bad things are from a work perspective, those things are.

(07:04):
It's a different level of a problem. And so what
I realize is that all of our platforms, those of
us who are podcasting that have actual good sense and
political knowledge, because there's a lot of trash out there.
But those of us who are podcasting, those of us
who get on TV, those of us who own any

(07:26):
type of media networks or apparatuses, we have a responsibility
to make sure that people are properly informed, especially when
we see things come across our feed that lets us
know that folks are not and that people with major
platforms are helping to spread the lives and the misinformation.

(07:47):
Sometimes they don't know, sometimes they do know, and they're
just you know, they're part of the game that is
being played with us. And so it makes me think
to say, well, what is our responsibility? And I think
that we have to in every turn give information that

(08:09):
elevates people's thinking. Number one and two that dispels these
folks consistent lies. They get on TV. Every time you
turn around and they say that they are working to
get rid of criminals from America. That is what they say.

(08:30):
Every time they say we're working to get rid of
criminals in America. We're you know, we're doing a good
job of getting the criminals out, the worst of them.
The people who came here. They say, Oh, these people
came here, they had criminal backgrounds, they've been in trouble
for this reason and that reason, and then this country

(08:50):
opened their jails and let them all out, and they
came to the United States. This is what they say.
So if you are somebody who believed that, especially if
you're not an immigrant. And by the way, black people
drink the kool aid. As our public advocate Jomanni Williams
will say, like, some of us believe the things that

(09:11):
they're telling. Some of us are mad at the immigrants
for jobs that they don't even have, the jobs that
you would ever be in in the first place. Not
all immigrants, but the ones that they'd be like, oh, yeah,
I can't get a job. Well, where are you applying. Well,
I'm applying for the director of you know, public safety
for the city of Oakland. There is a person who's

(09:36):
undocumented is not applying for that position. Fact so you
are drinking from a fountain of lies that feeds into
your ignorance.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
Because most of those things are so easy to fact check.
It's simply it don't even take two seconds just to
Google and say, hey, can this person get the job?

Speaker 5 (09:55):
It takes two seconds, Right, you are undocumented cert But
when you want to believe something exactly good, because I've
watched people do it all the time, as long as
it support a narrative that they are comfortable and they
want to push anyway.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
They immediately posted it and I said, where did you
get this information from?

Speaker 4 (10:11):
Where did you factor who told you this?

Speaker 3 (10:13):
And they don't have any inform they don't have nothing
else to say, but they'll post it and it's so
it's so irresponsible.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah, so we have to make sure that we share information. So,
like I said, the last few days, I've been listening
to these this spin that they're saying, because what's happening
is that people are watching folks be disappeared off of
our streets. They're watching the violence of Ice. They're watching
women be slammed on the ground. There was a pregnant

(10:42):
woman who was the other day. There's a video that
was viral of her being dragged across the ground and
she's pregnant and she's being dragged and her arm is
being pulled damning out of the socket and everybody is screaming.
There's another video of an ICE agent pulling out a
weapon and pointing out towards people and kind of swinging around.
So as you have more and more of that, they

(11:05):
have to on Fox News and from the podium. The podium,
for people who might not know, that means in the
White House. The podium is the place where different officials,
particularly the White House spokesperson, will go up there and
that's where they basically talk to reporters, and they put
their messaging of the day out almost every day, if

(11:27):
probably every day, multiple times a day. So they have
to ramp up their lives because they know that what
people are seeing with their eyes does not it doesn't
make people feel good. Even the people who are at
you know, who don't care about anybody else, right, they
do not like seeing a woman being dragged and thrown

(11:51):
to the ground, a man having a stroke or a
seizure with a baby in his arm while these blood
thirsty agents quote unquote are trying to kidnap him. Now
you have a JD vance using language like we're building
an army, So the ICE agents are now being classified

(12:14):
as an army. You know, they want to have the
Department of War. This is the mindset that they have.
And so when they say that they've been that they
are removing criminals from the country. The sad part about
it is that they could have stopped at twenty five
percent of those who they have already deported or kidnapped first,

(12:36):
because seventy five percent of all the people that they
have deported have not committed a crime. They don't even
have criminal backgrounds. So these are people who might have
been working in the pizza shop, or might have been
going to, you know, help somebody put up a roof
on their home, or they may have been working in

(12:58):
some other restaurants or some other field. They may have
been just here visiting someone else, trying to figure it out.
Maybe they did travel here illegally to come to this
country to figure out how to have a better life.
But the one thing they did not do was commit
a crime. And that is what the administration said they

(13:21):
were going to be targeting. It's people who are the criminals.
They're the worst of these And nonetheless, out of one
hundred percent of those people who have been deported, you
only did that in twenty five percent of those individuals,
seventy five percent had no criminal background. And on top
of that, there's a percentage of people who have been

(13:43):
wrongfully kidnapped, had to be returned back to wherever it is,
or you've sent people to the wrong place. And I
would say this that it is a clear indication of
the failures of Donald Trump and his business models in general.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
A lot of.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
People see his big towers, the hotels, his neighbors, and
to them that means you're successful. That they don't care
to open up the business and to open up the
Pandora's box and learn about the racism, and to learn
about the failed businesses, the bankruptcies and all the other

(14:24):
things that have happened. And exactly it is in the lawsuits, exactly,
and that is what's happening now in America. They are
lying number one, and then branding things and changing names
and doing exactly what he's done with his businesses to
put on a show. It's a show.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
It's a Ponzi scheme. America is involved in the Ponzi
scheme right now because they're telling you right.

Speaker 4 (14:49):
So, okay. They first they started with dogs.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Hey, with dog is going to get us billions of dollars,
trillions of dollars back once we cut these government things.

Speaker 4 (14:57):
Watch trillions of dollars they got.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
We got all of this spending from the government that
these people are stealing and it's wasteful money. And watch
how it changed the deficit. And they did all that
and nothing happened. They showed they told you you was
gonna benefit from it, you didn't benefit for it. Just disappeared.
Those just miraculously disappeared. Then they said tariffs, we're gonna
get tariffs. It's hundreds of trillions of dollars every day
in Tyroft's coming back, Our deficit is gonna go back,

(15:20):
America's gonna be great again. And now they did all
this terrorft shit, and you don't see no benefit from
the tem Well.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
The tariffs are causing businesses and to know what.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
I'm saying, benefit, you know what I'm saying, there's not
one benefit for so now they had to pull back
the tariffs. But they told you all of these days,
who's gonna benefit you? But you know, Key's benefiting every
time they do that. Him and his partners, they line
they pockets. When they they rigged the stock market and
they put all these things up and they said we're
gonna do this today, and the stock market went up

(15:49):
and down, and they made a billion dollars and the
trillion dollars.

Speaker 4 (15:52):
Here and there.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
They kept making money while you lose. Now the stock
market all the people that said, oh, we was making
money and this none everybody is sitting there trying to
figure what to do because the stock market is so unstable.
So they constantly made you believe money was somewhere, and
you invested in you you thinking this money so where
and they haven't. It hasn't the the deficit hasn't gone down,

(16:14):
it's actually going up. Inflation is getting higher. They keep
trying to tell you something that's happening.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Well, I was listening to a report where they said
inflation on certain things are down, but it's higher in
other places. And that just brings you to what took
place with the holiday shopping. They said people spent more
money than before, like than ever before. Online, people spent
more money than ever before. And what they try to

(16:41):
use that as a way of saying that the boycotts
don't work because people are spending more money. But what
they're not telling you is that people are spending more
money on less iris exactly. So they bought last year
they may have bought, or the year before they may
have bought seven things and spent two hundred and thirty dollars.

(17:02):
Now they's bought two things and spent two hundred and
fifty two dollars because things are just that much more expensive.
I mean everything I'm just thinking about in the last
couple of days, just trying to travel around New York
City using Uber and Lyft, which I often have to
use to get around. The prices are so high. I've

(17:25):
been like, I'm gonna get on the train because it's impossible,
and I'm probably not dressed appropriately for the train, you know,
probably definitely overdressed to be on the train. Like if
I made a decision when I leave my house, I'm
gonna take the train today, i would dress completely different.
But I'm going to meetings and brunches and things with

(17:47):
people that everybody is dressed fashionably or at least suitably
for the occasion, and it's really not for the train.
One it can be dangerous. We know that that's a
real thing. And so you walk in and click a
clacking around with your shoes, running up and down the
stairs and trying to keep up with the pace of

(18:08):
what's moving. That's just not something that I would generally do.
But I've had to make that decision because when a
uber cost me two hundred and twelve dollars plus an
hour and a half to get home, it's just it
doesn't it's no way. So my thought of the day
is very simple that when I think about the Trump

(18:29):
administration and just something is as not as simple, but
something as clear as the numbers on their immigration policy
and this deportation crisis that I believe is absolutely a
kidnapping of people. Seventy five percent of those have not

(18:50):
had a criminal background, and that means that it's a
failed model. Okay, whenever you have a business model. I've
been running businesses for long time, when you have a
business model that you are outweighed on the side of
it not working versus the side of it working. So

(19:11):
if it was seventy five and twenty five with twenty
five percent of the people being those who just kind
of you know, it just it is unfortunate, it's unfortunate.
But at the end of the day, we still got
seventy five percent of the people who had criminal backgrounds
and we deported them. Then that's how you go out

(19:32):
and say you've been successful, when it's the other way around.
It's a failed model. And the failed model of what
is happening with the kidnapping deportations is the same failed
model that Donald Trump has used within all of his businesses,
where they put on the show, then they tell you
a lie, they want you to believe whatever narrative they

(19:54):
continue to spend and because of your own biases, because
of your own issue that you're dealing with, you feed
into it and then turn around and on the other
side of the coin, the truth is there and what
they're telling you is not real. And that is the
same exact thing that's happening across the country in so
many different ways. And hopefully all of us who have

(20:16):
platforms will take the time to actually talk about this
stuff so that the American people are not rocked to
sleep because now you had media companies that are being
purchased by people who don't want you to know the truth,
and so you really got to dig to get real information.
Speaking of that, I was listening to a person on

(20:40):
YouTube the other day. Somebody sent me a link and
I was just listening to this person and they had
like forty thousand views on this particular video, and the
whole thing was so full of lies. I mean, just
lie at the at the line. And I was like, wow,
we as the people are truly in trouble when there
are really not a lot of sources to get real information,

(21:03):
and then the sources that are out there with real information,
you don't really follow those sources. You know, most people.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Because you've been conditioned and taught to believe that those
sources are lying, right if I can, if I constantly
tell you something over and over is a lie, and
you hear it more often, and that's what that's what
the algorithm does. The algorithm puts something into your ear
over and over, so you grab that as it's truth, right,

(21:32):
it becomes your truth right.

Speaker 4 (21:34):
Perception is reality.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
So what happens is our algorithm and this administration has
has grabbed up all of it. I just watched, you know,
I was looking at the shareroom today and they put
some shit on there and I was just sitting there
like wow, So now y'all.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
Do everybody's doing the same thing.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
CBS just took off the especially where they was talking
about the immigration and how people are being shipped to.

Speaker 4 (21:57):
Jails, and they vetted it.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
They did, four or five people fact checked it over that,
and they still pulled it because it didn't fit into
the narrative that all of the immigrants that was going
over there were criminals and things were going properly, and
they did not want that to be seen. So they
are they are intentionally taking proper information from the American people,
and they intentionally pushing misinformation on purpose. You know, when

(22:19):
we talk about the immigration policies, and we're talking about
Trump's the people that he is partning. He's pardoning criminals
like big high level criminalis. Oh, these men are high
level criminals. So when you partner high level billionaire criminals, right,
these are the people that employ these little people that

(22:40):
you say is the worst people in the world, the
little Venezuela and the MS thirty, all these little people,
they being employed by the billionaire to do their dirty work.

Speaker 4 (22:49):
You partnering drug lord, you part crypto.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
These people are hiring these little people that you're saying
is the worst scum.

Speaker 4 (22:56):
But these is the people.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
You're selling the high level green cards for millions of
dollars and telling people this is an Express Express green card.
You're selling the American freedom right to people who are
actually criminals. They got billions and perions of dollars because
they're criminals, and you don't care about that. But you
want to focus on people that don't have nothing and

(23:18):
might commit some low level crime to try to survive
and make us demonize them while y'all praise the real criminals.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah, it's a Ponzi scheme, like you said, but it's
even more than it being just a Ponzi scheme. It
is also a culture change, like it's a cultural shift
that's happening.

Speaker 4 (23:38):
It's it's just cold. It ain't even cultural because.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
It doesn't mean. But the reason why I'm saying that
is because you can, you can force yourself to tune
it out so you don't have to deal with it,
and then you start to become it. Believe it, see it,
spread it, speak about it as as if it is fact.
The only way you can fight off the un content
or the intended consequences is to feed yourself with information

(24:07):
more than you watch all of this other nonsense, garbage
stuff that we all participate in, we all partake in,
you know, whatever, whatever your advice may be, but when
you have again, it's a failed model. If you spend
seventy five percent of your time on social media, on

(24:27):
some you know, looking at mindless TV, and only twenty
five percent of your time reading and educating yourself, that's
a failed model. Whatever you wherever you spend the most
of your time is where you're putting your most investment,
and it becomes a culture shift in your personal life.

(24:48):
When you say I'm actually going to read more than
I scroll, I'm actually going to write more than I
watch TV. Right, that's when you start to see, oh,
you know what, I actually I'm actually, I'm actually not
as interested as stupid shit as I used to.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
But you know, there's the gift and the curse with that.
And I say to myself, the more that I unplugged
from the matrix, the more you feel depleted and defeated, right,
Because the more that you educate yourself about what's going
on right now and you see how many people are lost,

(25:26):
it'll have you.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
In a level of trauma, right.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
It's it's levels of stress, it's trauma, it's anxiety, like
you just don't believe that so many people are being
you misled, and it's people that you think have some
level of intellect and you watch them say and just
feed into this bullshit, and it really it could drive
you kind of crazy, you know. They said, well, the
more educated you watch throughout history, the people who become

(25:52):
more educated became more secluded.

Speaker 4 (25:55):
A lot of them felt like they didn't even fit here.
No more.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
The more that I learn and I pay attention to
what we're dealing with right now, it's like I don't
see the pathway. I don't see the pathway to where
we're moving away from it. It looks like we're moving
further and further into doctors. So a lot of us wanted.
I can't focus on that all day because I lose
my mind. So what I want to do is enjoy
myself a little bit. When I go over here and

(26:21):
I unplug and I get involved in this little TV show,
I scroll on some more funny things, like you got
your little funny things that you like to watch it
on Instagram because it brings you a level of joy.
And when you get so caught up in what we're
dealing with now, you can lose your joy. You can
actually lose your joy.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
But what I'm saying is I think a little bit different.
Number One, I still talk about the balance of not
spending more time on entertainment and less on education. But
the other thing is that even though this time period
in our world looks different from previous times when we've
dealt with the attempt that authoritarianism and fascism in our

(27:00):
worlds right, because we have examples of it all over,
not just here in the United States. The more that
we educate ourselves, which is not going to come from
social media, it's not going to come from current posts.
It's going to come from getting back in the crates
of the books and reading about other nations and understanding
like what did they do. That's the type of work

(27:22):
that I'm saying should be taking precedent over our entertainment
in this moment, because there are ways to overcome, there
are ways to fight back, there are ways to resist.
But you and if you just watch seeing in MSNBC,
Fox News and whatever other chance, yeah, you'll lose your shit.
But it's good to be able to read about warriors

(27:46):
and people who were fighting, because that gives you the
inspiration and also puts you in a mindset of what
was it that they had to do? How did they
have to start thinking and operating in order to fight back?
So I'm saying that we just all have to find
a balance where you got a little bit of entertainment,
a little bit of edutainment, a little bit of or

(28:06):
a lot bit of education, educating yourself, and of course
some inspiration and bring it all together. And what I
find today a lot of us are seventy five percent
on entertainment and twenty five percent on anything else. And
then in that twenty five percent. You gotta work, You
gotta learn your craft for the new job you're trying
to do. You gotta build your business. You got so

(28:29):
much to do that trying to understand the politics of
what's happening around you becomes a zero sum almost, so
I you know, that's that's just what I find. So
that brings us to the TMI today. And as you
always say, it seems like we always have to talk
about this administration, but it's almost like it's necessary. Like

(28:51):
I finally settled into my mind that we just cannot
let these people get away with saying whatever they want
and then and there's no counter. Right after all week
shit's happening, there has to be a counter. And of course,
the big news of the weekend was Nicki Minaj going

(29:12):
to the Turning Point America fest or something. I don't
know the name and I'm not going to try to remember, but.

Speaker 4 (29:20):
It was focused on was it really yeah?

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Oh okay, so Turning Point USA they had a conference
this weekend this past weekend, and Nicki Minaj was there.
The TMI is not even that Nicki Minaj was there.
That's not the TMI because you know what, people have
free physical reiin to go and do whatever it is

(29:47):
that they want to do. The the TMI, what was
too much for me? And other people are gonna say,
I don't think it was too much. She's still shit,
you know. Just like you have free reign to go,
you should have rewign to speak. The TMI for me
is the things she said. When you listen to the
actual words that she spoke while being in that space,

(30:13):
it is as if she went there not just to
be a guest at the conference, which is bad enough
for most of us. Again, some people may not feel
that way, but it is the chastising of black women
that I think was her bottom. That was the lowest point.
Even even saying that you appreciate Donald Trump and you know,

(30:41):
and admire him and all of that stuff. Those things,
I think it's terrible, But the bottom for me was
the attack against black women and the lie, because it
was a lie that she told that there are black
women who are trying trying to stop white women from

(31:04):
feeling good about themselves. I have never in the history
of my forty five years, and I want other people
to chime in because perhaps there is a world that
I'm not in where black women are sitting around saying
that they want to stop women with blonde what does
she say, blue eyes and blonde hair or whatever, white

(31:27):
women from celebrating themselves. I have never ever, ever been
in any room. What we have said is if you
steal from us, don't go out there and try to
say you created corn rolls, because that's a lie. It's appropriation.
What we have said is get out of our way.

(31:49):
Stop trying to make us feel like we have to
live up to certain cultural their norms in order for
us to be beautiful. What we have said is just
leave us alone. That's what we have said. What we
have said is stop harming our communities with your white tears.
Stop being a Karen. That's what we have said. I

(32:12):
have never heard a black woman sit around and say, well,
I don't know why the white women want to feel beautiful.
What the hell are you even talking about? So she
went up there and told a bold faced lie. And
then when you listen to someone sit on the stage
and say that they admire Donald Trump and they admire jd.

(32:37):
Vance and that this administration is giving them hope and
making them feel seen and all of that. So what
we are now going to be I need to be
clear about what I'm hearing. I need to be clear
about what I'm hearing. I understand that you Nicki Minaj,
agree that it is okay that almost a million black
women have been pushed out of the work for us

(32:59):
from from January to October of twenty twenty five since
Donald Trump has been in office, because of one, the
federal government layoffs, that's one, and two because of the
attacks against diversity, equity, and inclusion. You support that because
you said you admire them and they're doing wonderful. People

(33:22):
are being deported, People are being kidnapped, people are being detained.
Some of them, we now know the majority seventy five
percent of them have never even committed a crime. And
as an immigrant yourself, you adore that these people are
being kidnapped off of our streets and sent to places
that they were not born and have no relationship to,

(33:45):
because you know you admire them. Health Care costs are
completely out of control. You've got people who were paying
four hundred or five hundred dollars a month and now
their premiums are eight nine hundred dollars one thousand dollars.
People are now saying that they are going to have
to let go of their health insurance because they cannot

(34:06):
afford to keep the insurance plan that they have. Food
prices are out of control. So I'm just trying to
get my head around, what is it that you adore?
What is it that you respect and honor so much
about these people? They are blowing up votes with people

(34:27):
that have never ever been charged with a crime, and
they have not shown us any evidence to prove that
these people are doing anything illegal, and you admire them.
You admire an administration that is banning black history from
schools right and from institutions in general. You know, and

(34:49):
while we're talking about this administration that Nicki Minaj has
so much admiration for, do you know that they have
a list of words that the federal government has released. Now,
this is a list. If you are federally funded or
if you are an educational institution, again, you work for

(35:10):
the government, you feder you have to have federal funding.
These are some of the words that have been banned. Okay,
activism has been banned, Anti racism has been banned, biases
ban black and LATINX, Black and LATINX ban, clean energy ban,

(35:34):
cultural heritage ban, disability ban, disparity ban. These are some
of the words that have been banned. Now, I just
told you black and LATINX is banned on a list,
but white it still is not banned.

Speaker 4 (35:52):
Well, JD.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
Van said today, you know that you don't have to
be shamed to be a white man anymore because you
used to have to be.

Speaker 4 (35:58):
I guess you know you you you.

Speaker 3 (35:59):
Can show half in the population, you could show most
of the wealth in America, but you had to be
ashamed to be a white man. It's the hypocrisy and
the cognitive dissonance that we're dealing with in this moment
is just like I said, it's scary to me because
I wake up one and I start. Now, I'm really

(36:21):
starting this thing called the twilight Zone, because I feel
like this is literally the twilight Zone, like everything to day.
Just say, I found a clip from the Twilight Zone,
like the guy who was in the Twilight Zone and
he was explaining about pretty much what's going on right now,
and he was talking about dictatorship and how soon when
he's trying to control everything, and he really broke it
down and one of my friends put me on and

(36:43):
I didn't realize that the Twilight Zone was actually created
to address the racial racism in the country and have
it to be on a TV screen.

Speaker 4 (36:57):
We didn't. I never realized that's what it was.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
He said, when you do that, And I started looking
it up and it actually was. And I remember seeing
a couple of episodes, and it's one I always always
point out.

Speaker 4 (37:09):
It was you could never see the faces of the people.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
And they had the people in a hospital and they
made them feel like they was the ugliest people in
the world. There's like, these people the ugliest people in
the world, the people, the ugliest people in the world,
and you never see the faces, and you just keep
seeing the doctors walk in the room and they doing
operations on them. So one of them had an operation
done and he's like, we're gonna try to fix it.

Speaker 4 (37:33):
And he was talking to the girl. It was a girl.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
She was talking to a guy and he was in
the room with her. He was waiting for her to
get her operation. And when they took the mask off,
they unbatters. Oh my god, she's still remarkably ugly, remarkably ugly.
And it was just a regular but she was a
white woman, but she was a pretty white woman. And
the people that was doing the operation had pig faces.
Everybody else had a pig face, and they was telling

(37:58):
her that she was just the ugliest person in the
world world and she needs And it just made me
realize the time that we're in. They're telling you that
that the ship that you know is right is wrong.
It's like it's in a reverse world that we're in.
And that's one of the things that it pointed out
to me. So I really think that we are in
a twilight zone right now, like we are literally in

(38:20):
a warp zone.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
But I tell you that I don't give Nicki Minaj
that much credit to say, oh, it's the twilight zone
or she's been sucked in. I don't believe that. I
think she's making very conscious decisions. And I tell people
all the time when they say, because because here's the
thing for me, we got to make up our minds.

(38:41):
We can't sit and say that this woman is one
of the greatest entertainers or rap of women women rappers
of all times. That she has you know, fans, which
is true, that spanned the entire world. People love Nicki Minaj, Right,

(39:03):
you say something about her, there are thousands of people
who will come to her defense. So if she has
that type of support, then you can't say that, oh, well,
she was so isolated and so sad and so whatever.
That takes self accountability.

Speaker 4 (39:19):
I think she's dealing with mental health as well. I
really I think.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
I think I think you say she's dealing with mental health,
and I'm not saying that she's not. Because all of
us got a little bit of touchness going on with
all types of different things that we are dealing with.
That does not mean that she is not still making
a very conscious decision to choose the direction of MAGA
because she is looking for a place to platform herself.

(39:44):
That is not that is not father. Yeah, but it's
not her father, it's her brother.

Speaker 4 (39:50):
It's her father as well.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
Oh, I didn't know that her husband. I think one
of them is federal, so one of them would not,
excuse me, one of them is on the state level,
so they would not be pardoned by her by the
Trump administration. I don't know all of those things that
that I hear people who are online, Oh she's look,

(40:12):
she needs this, and she's looking for a pardon for this,
and that. Those things are great, especially when you're trying
to find layered reasons to understand why somebody may or
may not have done something. And guess what, if you
are a supporter, you love people, you love Black people
in general, you're gonna try to find a way to

(40:33):
make sense of when they disappoint you. So I'm not
I don't, I don't. I'm not gonna argue with anybody
whatever your reasons are for why you think Nicki Minaj
may be doing what she's doing.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Good.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Great, make up all the reasons you want, and five
or six of them may be true. But at the
base the foundation of this, this is a person who,
to my knowledge, has made some very sound business decisions
over her career that helped to catapult her to where
she is. She likes to talk about coming from Queens.

(41:06):
You don't come from Queens and just become Nicki Minaj.
It's not. It requires you to monitor the relationships you
get in, the people you work around, how you maneuver
within your business and in business spaces. She is making
a conscious decision that she wants to elevate herself to

(41:27):
a particular level, and she's using a vessel to be
able to do that. She was available. That's the thing
about the Maga cults. They look for blood in the water.
They can smell it. They know when people are looking
for and she did. And by the way, see I
watched all of this, I watched it happen. She did

(41:48):
a She did a bitting job, right, because if you
go back and watch what she was doing some months ago,
she started tweeting at them people. Now guess they did
use a clip of her song or something like that,
but she started sweeten at them people. She started, you know,
putting little things out there in the air, and then

(42:11):
they see it and they sucked it right on up,
and they said, okay, you can come out and be
a part of different activities. And I knew when she
went to the United Nations, and I said it, if
you watch the clip of the video that I put
out when she went to the United Nations, I said,
there will be consequences for her actions, and it won't

(42:34):
be long before we see it happen. And she may
not believe it, and other people who are part of
her world, the Barbs and the Kens and all these folks,
may not know it now, but her stock value went
down when she sat on that stage with the wife
of a man who didn't like her. We didn't even

(42:56):
know who spoke against her and who at his core,
at his core, he was racist, period. Charlie Kirk was
at his core racist. Did he deserve to be shot
to death on tea, on it at all, whether it
was at home or on TV or whatever. No, he
did not deserve to be shot to death in that way,

(43:19):
especially for the entire world to see it. His family
shouldn't know that. I do not believe in that. But
what I can tell you is that he was racist.
He spoke against our community. And for you to sit
up there with his wife who was saying that she's
going to carry forward his legacy, and then to exalt

(43:39):
and and and and to praise people who are doing
all the things that I listed, from black women not
having employment as we you know, being pushed out of
the workforce at such high rates, higher than any other
group of people. These are the types of things that
you support. You support immigration, no, But well, actually, actually

(44:03):
black men have been more unemployed for a longer period
of time. We're just talking about a short period of
time from January to October, but black men have been
dealing with high numbers of unemployment for a long time.
These are the people. This this man, Donald Trump, is
the person that you choose to sit up there with.

(44:25):
And guess what, it is a stain that is on
her career for the rest of her life. And it
is the collateral consequences of standing next to a racist,
demonic group of people and saying that you admire them.
At least, And I don't agree with when Snoop went

(44:46):
to do the performance, I don't agree with Nelly, I
don't agree with any of them, but at least they
went up there and did the sing in the dance
and then moved on. It is something else to be
said about you sitting there saying words that's a damn lie.
And don't you put on black women that we have
time in our schedule to worry about what a white

(45:07):
woman looks like, because it has never ever been the case.
You are lying on your own community so you could
sit up there and be in the presence of them people,
them evil ass people.

Speaker 4 (45:18):
Yeah, it's really sick.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
But the crazy fault because I was reading some of
the comments, and most of the comments were saying most
of the backlash came from white women, but it wasn't
even majority black women that were saying that what they
did was wrong or whatever that commercial was. It was
a lot of white women saying that they didn't like the.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Real talking about the American Eagle or whatever it was,
the commerce that it still doesn't. It doesn't. It's like
someone said to me, why don't you sit down with
NICKI Minaja have a conversation. I would never, and not
because I don't want to, but because the poor sister

(45:57):
couldn't even have a conversation with me. She wouldn't even
be able to explain half of the things she's talking about.
And I know it because I saw it when you
were speaking yesterday.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
Yeah, and you thought that you were saying something that
was profound. And the thing is, they think that you
said something profound, and it's really sad. And that's why
I'm saying, this is the matrix. And I'll be looking
at I'll be looking at the TV like is it me?
Like is this really the shit that's happening? Like this
is really happening? And people are telling me that this
is this is it. But the thing is what gives

(46:33):
me hope is that the world rejects it. Right, because
if you just if you get caught up in social
media and the media and the news, and you just
look on there and then you go outside and realize, well,
they just did a rally with over two hundred thousand
people saying fuck all that. And they did another rally
with three hundred thousand people saying fuck all around the world.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
So the world is rejecting it. We not alone. They
want you to feel isolated.

Speaker 3 (46:54):
They come to your page, they send bots, they send
two hundred bots, and you feel like, damn my voice.
So I don't want to say nothing because I'm not
in the status quote.

Speaker 4 (47:02):
No, you actually met, But.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
I'll tell you something. I'll tell you something. When I
made the video, the initial video, and again people were like, oh,
you should sit down with her and y'all should talk,
and I'm like, I for what reason, there was a
time to talk before the situation happened. But nevertheless, what

(47:24):
I noticed was that people came to my comments section
when she went to the United Nations to speak for Nigeria.
I laughed because it's comical. I sat and read comments
on the Shade Room posted it a couple of different places,
I think, like Hollywood Unlocked. And then there was actually

(47:46):
a post that I was. We were at an event
somewhere and the people collaborated with me and so I
posted it. And this was like right in the middle
of the time when I just said the stuff about
Nicki Minaj, and there were all these comments of people
being like, all you know, you know, you don't know

(48:09):
what you're talking about. She said, she said it that
it's not about picking sides and saying about her support
and Donald Trump. It's that she's she's trying to help
the people in Nigeria, Like how dare y'all? And it
made sense to it made sense, not even to them
if you listen to them, like yo, y'all mad at
somebody that wants to help the Christians in Nigeria, Like
what is your problem? But again, the elevated mindset, like

(48:34):
when you can think at a higher level, you realize
that this is all a chell, it's a shell game.
They don't give a shit about helping people in Nigeria,
because if you did, why don't you come the hell
up out of there? Creating chaos? You and the EAU
and all these other nations that are involved in African
politics that's basically dividing their people and creating the conflicts

(48:58):
that we see happening on the ground because you're over
there stealing resources. So when people were saying that, I'm
thinking to myself, perhaps she believes that that's her position
on this board, this chessboard, but I knew better. But
what I will tell you is that after and I
know it, and I said, I said in my video

(49:19):
you will see. And then remember, I had to do
a follow up statement because people were like, oh whatever,
And I did a follow up statement to say, I
know what I'm talking about. I'm not telling you what
I think. I know exactly the path that this sister
is traveling down, and I'm telling you I know where.
And guess what. Now, in the last twenty four hours

(49:40):
since we spoke on this, you know her being wherever.
It might be three people who've made a comment to say, oh,
you know why y'all hating on her. For the most part,
people are saying, damn, you were right. In fact, people
have gone back and found the clip of what I
originally said and they started sharing and saying, you know

(50:01):
what I have to I have to give it to
the system. I knew what I was talking about. I've
been doing this for thirty years. Of my life. I
can smell, I can see, and I know when somebody
is engaging or getting themselves politically in something that will
hurt them in the long run. I may not have

(50:23):
always been able to see it for myself, but I
could definitely see it for other people.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
Okay, sometimes when you speak from the heart, you know
they're gonna throw stones at you.

Speaker 4 (50:32):
Man, they crucified Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Well, listen, let's not I did that already. It got
being a whole lot of trouble for using that example.
All right. So we're still deep in our series where
we're talking about what it supposed to be online, right,
it ain't what it supposed to be. So often what
we see is wonderful because we put forward the best

(50:58):
moments of our lives. For the most part, we do
sometimes tell people about the hard things, but most people
pick up the inspiration of what we've built, what we've created,
and how we got to the finished product, and they
don't always know that there's so much more happening behind
the scenes. And today we're excited to have a conversation

(51:20):
with Khalila. Khalila right a mess in a bottle, and
Khalila is a sister, who first of all, many of
you know because you're already following, because you know, I'll
go on there and peek and see what's going on
in your world, and you actually come up a lot
on the Explorer.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Pinions because I'm always like, is this thing working?

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Is it on a lot on the Explore page? And
that's a good thing, right, So people are getting an
opportunity to see what you have created. You started out
in a row house in Baltimore. Now I've been on
the Baltimore and I've been to row houses, and most people,

(52:03):
not that, none of them, because many people have come
from some of our community's most challenged pockets and they
made major successes of themselves. But you came from a street,
a rowhouse that you own, where you were supposed to
be studying architecture and instead created a brandy And now

(52:26):
here you are sitting, you know, and being interviewed, people
coming to you for advice, for advice on culture and
all of that. And we're excited to have you here
today because I also know, which we'll talk about later,
that what it supposed to be, there's a lot more
that's going on behind the scenes. So you certainly have

(52:47):
had some challenges. So thank you for joining us much.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
Thank you guys so much for having me.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
Thank you for being here. Actually, so I want to
know what was the shift, Like you went to study
architecture and then you ended up studying own business. What
made you shift to that?

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Well, great question.

Speaker 6 (53:03):
It sort of aligns with you know what you guys,
the important work that you guys do. So in twenty sixteen,
I started messing a bottle and it birthed from a
row home in Baltimore because Freddie Gray, as you guys know,
died while in police custody and that happened in my
Baltimore City community. And so I was going to work

(53:24):
working for a large retail company and doing architecture, and
it felt like I needed to give the world a
message during that time because people really didn't understand the
plight that we were truly feeling. And as I watched
the uprising happening in my community, my local CVS is
the one that burnt down on Pennsylvania Avenue, so there, yes, yeah,

(53:48):
so that you know, just watching it on television and
you know, then seeing the ruins after, I was just
like it's more important, Like I needed to give the
world a message.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
And that's how mess in a bottle was birth mess.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
In a bottle. Yes, talk a little bit about that
mess in a bottle, So it's all you know. I mean,
I know the answer, but for someone who's listening, is
everything in a bottle? Or no?

Speaker 2 (54:15):
Is it so messing a bottle?

Speaker 6 (54:17):
It comes from the two hundred and ten BC form
of communication and receiving a message in the ocean, And
so that's kind of how the concept came about. And
because things were such a mess, I was like, it's
a mess in a bottle. It's not a message in
a bottle. So the messages are a part of your mess.
And so we put them on T shirts and then

(54:37):
the T shirts come packaged in a bottle.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
What was just said? What happened? What was that moment
where people were like, oh, I love this right?

Speaker 2 (54:46):
So I think one significant moment for me.

Speaker 6 (54:49):
I created a message and it says I'm just a
bad chick with the ball head living life. And I
did that just to embrace me having short hair and
just wanted to feel like, you know, a powerful black
woman in a room. And I had cancer patients who
were white. We're Asian and they're like they wore it
to ring their bell when they crossed over that. And

(55:10):
now for me was like I had a young child
with alopecia at seven and her mom was like, can
you make this message for her?

Speaker 2 (55:18):
So she feels empowered and she feels like a bad chick.

Speaker 6 (55:21):
And when that happened, I was like, you know, going
to architecture and being in a space with architects and
it's a you know, white male predominant feel being able
to create something that spans so far where people everywhere
connected with the message. It made me realize I was
doing the right thing and launching the right thing ten

(55:43):
years ago.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
So most of your shirts, oh, since since we're talking about.

Speaker 4 (55:48):
It, they have like a message. Yes, right, let me see.
This is one that she gave me that is dope
and it says one.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
I felt like you needed that. I felt like represents.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
You know, just just watching your success, you know as
you grow, what has changed, like structurally, like the process?
Do you have the scale, upscale down skills.

Speaker 6 (56:13):
Oh that's an amazing question because I think what you
alluded to earlier is that with business there is mess.
It's never clear, there's never a clear path and so
unfortunately on social media, a lot of people do show
from the start to the finish.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
But I read a book a couple of years ago.

Speaker 6 (56:33):
It's The Messy Middle, and that really describes this path.
And I bought it just because it had the word
messing it. But it is a book about entrepreneurship and
how the middle. No one talks. Everyone glorifies the beginning.
The beginning is this beautiful thing. There's not that much
naivete in the beginning because you're like, you know, like
you're so enchanted with like the possibilities.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
But hard it can be still hard.

Speaker 6 (56:55):
It is right, but it's still but the unknown. Yeah,
you like, yo, it's about to you know, like you
feel so empowered. But then when you get to the middle,
or it can the middle could feel like the end.
You don't even know if it's the end of your
journey or not, you know, or the end of that
chapter within your business. And so I think that, you know,
I try to do this thing where I'm honest with

(57:18):
myself because it brings me back to reality. Like one
of the reasons I guess I'm so transparent on social
media is I don't want to trick myself you know,
and so I'm like, the more I could really be
honest and talk about the mess is the more that
I could remind myself like it's okay, and that everyone
in business goes through ebbs and flows and you know,

(57:40):
and it's not you don't need to glorify just the
winds and the successes like that. There's that part in
between that's like a little bit rough that you have
to go through.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Well, what's your mess in the middle, ben Like, lately it's.

Speaker 6 (57:53):
Been really really feeling rough, and I'm happy that you
guys asked me to you know, be on here, especially
just even for the mental health part of it.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
You know.

Speaker 6 (58:02):
Again, me being honest with my messengers as I call
the people that support me, it helps me to be
in this place mentally where I could be like, I'm
not okay. I'm a good person that like I do
well with showing up smiling. You know, I have children,
I have a great partner, and so I do a
lot of you know, smile and everyone thinks like, oh,

(58:22):
you're good, You're one of the strong ones. I am,
but I so need a hug at times as well.
And I think that when you reach a level of
success that people think you're really successful, you know, like
you can't complain as much because then they're like, Okay,
what you're complaining about your mortgages, I'm still trying to
find rent or you know, and so things like that

(58:43):
become a little bit hard for you to express yourself.
So this middle part that I've been experiencing lately, it's
been rough, especially when it's like you come from a
place where along the journey, like you know, and to
answer your question before like I start, it would just
mean and then maybe pandemic or like maybe three to

(59:04):
five years into the business, I hired my first employee.
Then I had like a team team I try to
make everything official. I had maybe nine or ten employees,
you know, a handbook, hr stuff going on, like I
really a payroll was you know, like there was all
of that, and then things started to decline. Things started
to change, and you go from people checking for you,

(59:28):
calling for you, wanting you on stuff, to now nobody's calling,
nobody's checking, no one's asking you, you know, no one's
checking for your message like that, and so it makes
you question like sort of not just my identity within
this company and what I've built but it questions you,
and that part is hard because then I'm.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Like, am I not that girl that I thought I was?

Speaker 6 (59:51):
When it comes to the design and who I am
and what I've created?

Speaker 2 (59:55):
It was it all an illusion?

Speaker 6 (59:56):
And you know, so those are the things that I
try to say out loud so that other people who
may be too afraid to say it, that they can
resonate with it too and normalize the feelings, because that's
you know, I got a.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Therapist on deck.

Speaker 6 (01:00:10):
I may not be able to afford my monthly bi
weekly visits like I once did, but I have people
where when I'm starting to feel and doubt myself, I
can actually articulate it, say it out loud and make
myself know that these.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
Feelings, it's okay that you're feeling like this.

Speaker 6 (01:00:28):
Not enough people are saying that, and so I want
to be one of the ones that continue to say
it's okay.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
I love the transparency in it because we've been talking
a lot about how black women have been pushed out
of the job market, have lost a lot of retail.

Speaker 4 (01:00:44):
Do you think retail, I mean not retail.

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
I have lost a lot of resources, and you know,
business just based off its administration. Do you think that
when you talk about your mess, do you think that
disadministration and the DEI and all those things have hindered
your growth?

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Oh man, one hundred and ten percent.

Speaker 6 (01:01:02):
Like not just you have down to grants and certain
things that you know would keep businesses afloat, would help
to push people forward.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:01:11):
It is now like we're in a space everyone every
man for themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
Like I've been seeing it.

Speaker 6 (01:01:16):
Everyone is trying to secure their own dollars, trying to
make sure they have enough to feed their families.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:01:22):
So things are shifting, not just black owned businesses, women
owned businesses. You know, it's such a trickle down and
so it's unfortunate, it's sad, but it is also forcing
me to think differently about how I'm doing business as well,
and to be smarter with what I'm going into and
how I'm navigating you know, business.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
That's the thing is that, especially for black folks, we
take every opportunity to figure out like the areas where
we could do better, you know, how we can grow
in general, because we're so used to being in hot water.
So and that's not a place I want us to
stay as a people. But I appreciate that our forefathers,

(01:02:07):
if you will, our elders, taught us what it is
to take a terrible place that you may be in
and figure out how not to go back to this
exact place. And if you ever make it here, you
know the tools. You have the tools to fight your
way out. And I feel like that's kind of like
the moment that we're faced with because we weren't always

(01:02:28):
employed at the level that we you know, because by
the way, everybody knew and sometimes it's bad to put
out their data because it makes people jealous of us, right,
right that the fastest growing entrepreneurs, the most educated, we
have the most degrees, and we vote together more than

(01:02:51):
any other community. Black women's right, so that it's clear
that they sat down and they said, how do we
disrupt this? Because this thing is foundational for their community,
and if we want to destabilize them, we got to
break up that black girl magic because that's where the
secret sauce is. And it's okay, you know. So I

(01:03:14):
just feel like looking at listening to you say even now,
you're like, oh, well, I can't afford to go to
my therapist as much as I did before, And I've
been saying on this show the same thing. For me,
It's like I got on the train the other day,
which is not a thing that I ever really do,
but I couldn't afford to pay two hundred and twenty

(01:03:36):
dollars to get where it is that I'm going. People
don't generally say those words in public. You know, you
feel uncomfortable exposing yourself because it just it just feels
like your people want to be like, you don't got it.
You know I don't, and you don't need that, you
know you do. Bless you, I know, SiZ.

Speaker 6 (01:03:56):
Yeah, it's a hard space to be in. But I'll
tell you you so many people have said thank you
when they see me, strangers, you know, like they're like,
thank you, thank you for being honest, thank you for
saying the thing that no one has said. I recently
posted that my car got repossessed. That wasn't a hard thing.
I got it back, thankfully, and you know, we're going
to continue to try. But that was hard, you know,

(01:04:19):
especially even for my partner, for you know, like for
me to put something so vulnerable out there. And I'm
like we all, you know, like the a couple of
years ago, things were popping. Money was flowing a bit,
like you know, the administration was different and so you know,
things were different, and because of that, we all got
to a level of, you know, maybe comfort in certain

(01:04:41):
spaces where we were either financially doing stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
You know, things were flowing a lot better.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
And it was your highest sales like we're.

Speaker 6 (01:04:48):
Cool, like two point three million, ye yeah, yep, about
two point three if not a little bit more than
that a year.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Y'a out, it's great. Bit, No, I don't. I mean,
we're we're really and it's well.

Speaker 6 (01:05:02):
I also say this, I'll preface it by saying I'm
transitioning because you know, though I have my pretty bottles
out and stuff, I know that there's volume, like you
need volume for it to sustain. And also within I
have to tell myself, I've had a baby in the
last two years, like oh yeah, grew up, Yeah I did.
And also what I want has changed. I've been doing

(01:05:24):
my business for the last ten years. So it's not
per se that like sales just completely numb it. No,
it's more mean there's the difference there is and the hustle.
It's doing two point three million and a few hundred
thouars and even nothing and even that, like you know,
maybe a year ago we made like maybe a million,

(01:05:44):
a little less, and my account is like, you are right,
like meaning you I cut advertisement, I did certain things
and he's like, and you got rid of employees. He's like,
you did certain things. So even if you're making a million, you're.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Still you go.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
But that's like the nastural shift of business. Like most
of the businesses die in the first two years. This is
the first independent business in the first two years. They
don't even survive, right, So like we've all had to
go through that. There's these up and down and it's
the ability to adjust and then understand, Okay, I have
to scale back here, I have to change marketing here,

(01:06:20):
I have to look at the demographic I have to
understand the trends.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
And you know, you're right, my son, because we had
John Hopebrian on for He's also was a part of
this series and it ain't what it supposed to be.
And he said that if you have a business and
your income has changed, but yet your response your expenses
are still the same, you're automatically going to go broke.
Like it doesn't work. So you're talking about Look, I

(01:06:45):
knew I could see it coming, and we started changing things,
cutting things, and making the necessary changes to be in
the reality of where you are versus where you want
to be.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
But look, I'll I didn't do it fast enough. I
ain't gonna lie. I didn't do it fast enough.

Speaker 6 (01:07:02):
I still was like, but maybe, but well, and that's
also the honesty that we have to have with ourselves.
I definitely didn't do it fast enough. And like now
this year I'm feeling the pressure.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
Was like, oh, you should have been got rid of that,
you know, And I'm like no, but you hold on.
There's so much hope in it.

Speaker 6 (01:07:20):
You're like, well, things are gonna and you know, we
are right now hoping that the economy gets better, and
we know it's not gonna get better before. It probably
gets a little bit worse with everything going on unfortunately
in the administration. So those are the things that we're
faced with, and it's like, no, you gotta make the changes.
I think this year for the first time, and I
think a lot of people because I'm seeing it on

(01:07:41):
a lot, you know, how everybody do the like the
timeline for the year, and everybody's like ooh, this yeah,
has been a little rough, and so I think that
what is happening now, I'm feeling like you gotta do
hard things, you gotta do things you don't like. And
that's the kind of coaching that I'm doing to myself
and telling myself, like, if it doesn't feel like kind
of hard, if it doesn't sting, you probably need to even.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
Make much too.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
No.

Speaker 6 (01:08:06):
No, I'm saying, if you whatever you are doing, if
it doesn't hurt, if it doesn't sting, if you're not
feeling like then that means that you probably could turn
it up a little bit more and make more sacrifice
to the thing that you don't like. You said the train, right,
like you said, you got on the train, and it's
just like that's not but look, it's not the sting.
It is that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
But but if you stop eating expensive meals that cost
three and four hundred dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
Well then there's that. Look, look, then there's that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
That's as much anyway, because I'm over expended in the
back of the and we don't have time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
For new clothes.

Speaker 6 (01:08:42):
See, it's a trickle down attack and you don't need that.
But that's the type of stuff where it's like we
have to really make those hard, hard hard six and
also be uncomfortable. I don't think that, you know, I'm
not uncomfortable enough, like you know, and not to bring
out all in my business, all in my mess. But
I just told my partner, like we were in the house,

(01:09:02):
my son, he walks around, I'm from Jamaica. He walks
around like it's Jamaica. Like I'm like, the heat built
is up. You need to walk around. We need to
feel that uncomfortableness. And we're so used to being comfortable.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
We're so used to like, oh the heat on seventy
five eighty.

Speaker 6 (01:09:19):
No, bring that down, you know, because when you start
to look at stuff and it's that and that is
what I'm trying to bring into the new year. How
can I be comfortable in my most uncomfortable state?

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
Ooh, that's a mess?

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
It that's it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:37):
When you create these messages like you just came up
with something like that, like what is the process? Does
things just properly a head? You look at the trends
like it does.

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
It's a little bit of both.

Speaker 6 (01:09:46):
I think sometimes I will see, like what what the
world is talking about? And you know, right now everything's
a mess. So I think that there's a lot of
sound bites. There's a lot of things that come out
of things that crazy people say, you know, at the
podium at the White House. So I think that allows me,
feeds me to be able to create messages. But again,

(01:10:09):
because the state of the world is so heavy, it
has also put so much pressure on me in a
negative way where creating has become hard because it's like
every five seconds it's like, oh, there's some other mess
that I could put on a shirt. So it's also
being strategic smart as a business owner. So one of
the things I teach a T class and I teach

(01:10:29):
other people how to create their own T shirt companies,
And so one of the things I say and think
about is like the longevity of your message. So I
don't try to create something just for the moment in time.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
I'm like, what's something that we could.

Speaker 6 (01:10:39):
Create that has that will grow legs, that has you know,
some form of longevity that I could say in the next,
you know, couple of.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
Months, because then that goes back to sales.

Speaker 6 (01:10:48):
You know, sometimes when you create these little things that
somebody says or that it just dies so quickly that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
The statement was reclaim in my time. Right, that was big.
It was big and it will always have some some
relevant but it's not it was hot hot time.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
But like a couple of years, right, a couple of years.
You know it's like a right bad but but yeah, that's.

Speaker 6 (01:11:20):
So that's the thing, Like you want to be strategic
about the messaging. And that's where you know, I think
that I've been a good wordsmith and making sure that
and I know what resonates with the people. I want
something that when you walk through the airport, you're either
getting someone you know, I created the message so that
people it's to start conversations. You want someone walking in
the airport to be like, yeah, I feel you sis

(01:11:42):
Like that that makes me know I created something a
message that people get and if they're not feeling the message,
they're going to ask you about it. So what you
mean by that? Like what does this message mean? You know,
what does a black woman created this mean? Is it
that your mama created this? Is that the person who
created the shirt? So all of those things. That's like
when I know I have something to have a powerful

(01:12:03):
mess So about yesterday, right, I put it in these
paper Now yes, every day? I mean you know Honestly,
I'm grateful. I've said it before, you know. When you
guys sent me a message, I was like, thank you,
thank you for seeing me. You know again, you question,
you start to think, like is what I'm doing? Is
it what I'm supposed to be? You know, like and

(01:12:25):
I don't know, like I'm really in a place right now,
you know, I have to think about how does it
feed my family? How does this stop being so prescire
feel for me? I have two children and my son
is at you know, middle school age. He needs me
as well, you know. So this became a thing that
I enjoyed, that I love, that resonated.

Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
But I am at a place where I'm okay.

Speaker 6 (01:12:46):
With accepting if the mess is over for me in
this state, you know. And it's not to say messing
a bottle or the message is over. It may mean
me creating T shirts is no more, and that's okay too.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:13:00):
Maybe my message resonates and show up in a different way.
Maybe it's like this. Maybe it is you know, doing
something on trains or TV or whatever, you know, and
doing something with.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
Interviewing people you know, who knows.

Speaker 6 (01:13:11):
But I think that that's also the beauty in like
figured this life journey that we're on. And so it's
like I've been again coaching myself over the last year
and mourning the loss of my business the way it
was because it was once happened in people and employees
and I, you know, I got to understand what that
felt like. And now it's me by myself in a

(01:13:34):
room making shirts, and it doesn't feel as good, you know,
And it's kind of scary because now it's like this
thing that I've done for the last ten years is shifting.

Speaker 1 (01:13:43):
So what do you do? Do you shift with it?

Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
Do you end it? You know?

Speaker 6 (01:13:46):
And I've been I'm really in this place where am
I stopping myself from what's next because I'm still holding on.
Like I did a whole announcement maybe like in August,
and I was like I've done you guys, and you know,
go out on a high. And then two months later
I turned it all back on, turn the website back on.
I turned and it's just like, no, it doesn't. I

(01:14:07):
don't think that that's that's where I'm supposed to be, but.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
It could, but it could be. And you know what,
something came to me as you were speaking just prophetic energy. Okay,
just came through me, and I'm like, what happened to
the architecture.

Speaker 6 (01:14:25):
So I'm actually teaching architecture right now. I'm Morgan State University.
And so that's been beautiful too. Again, this journey, this mess.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
Is forcing me can tell us that like now, okay, right,
so well it just started.

Speaker 6 (01:14:42):
So again I brought people in on the journey with me.
I said, I don't know what the fall is looking like.
I'm going to knock on doors. I have to feed
my family. And so I went up to Morgan. I'm
an alumni. I have my master's degree in architecture, and
I went there and I said, hey, you guys have
any classes in the.

Speaker 2 (01:14:57):
Fall that I could teach, and they said, we actually do, And.

Speaker 6 (01:15:00):
So I started teaching this fall I had, you know,
I taught third year architecture, so juniors, and it's been
beautiful again a journey experience. I have a master's degree
in architecture. Yeah, it's like you have to figure out
what your message is.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
You have a master's degree in architecture, so it's not
like you started building something or started studying and then
just dropped it so that you could go build mess
in the bottle. You completed your education in architecture and
created messing the bottle, launched that, leaned into where God

(01:15:37):
was giving you, like energy, and then now you're able
to fall not so much fall back on, but you're
able to lean on for sure a skill set that
you invested in. Because I know two people who completed
their masters in architecture and it's hard. It's not easy.
The number two fields that I watched people close to

(01:15:59):
me go through and I know it's hard. Well, I
was gonna say lawyer too, but that's not the one
is nursing and architects.

Speaker 2 (01:16:08):
Architects. People underestimate how different it's not.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
Architecture was really lots of numbers, a lot of you know,
I would say, just and I don't know much, but
I'm I'm also there's a designer in me, not a
web designer like, but like a designer of things and
and building. It's in me somewhere. And so I was

(01:16:33):
a little bit interested. And what I realized is so
many common sense theories to like how you get to
an end goal, and not everybody has the ability to
like think right in terms of architecture, building things, that's
a lot of work. So you're telling me you were

(01:16:53):
doing that, like getting your education and building this at
the state they ran.

Speaker 6 (01:16:57):
So no, So I've in twenty ten is when I
graduated my master's Yeah, got my master's degree. And then
in twenty sixteen is when I officially launched Messing a bottle.
So in between that time, I've done a lot of
Like I was working for a firm I was, you know,
so I was on my trajectory to become a licensed architect.
So just so you know, and for the numbers, point

(01:17:18):
zero two percent black, like African Americans are become licensed architects,
Like that's how low the numbers are. And both of
the people that I know are men, yes, yeah, and
so especially for women, it's even lower.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
You know, it's a very small number.

Speaker 6 (01:17:33):
So I'm not licensed in architecture, but I having my
master's degree so I could practice and do stuff. So
I've been doing that for a while, five years before
I decided to start my own business. And so I
just knew that I was a creative, a designer, and
I didn't know if I wanted to really get into
the numbers and take exams, like it's really difficult. But
now I'm back at that place, and now I'm revisiting

(01:17:54):
it all ten years later. So even looking at teaching
architecture right now, I'm like, huh, you know, like it's
a thing where maybe I want to do residential, maybe
I want to do a little commercial architecture. So it's
really just figuring out what this next, and how to transition,
you know, to whatever's next, and making sure that it
can sustain me and my family.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
But there was a time, this is what came to me.
There was a time when architecture, what was built in
society was a message, right Like a building it said something,
It represented ancient this or whatever, an era or a storyline. Nowadays,

(01:18:38):
we have so many cookie cutter models so that we
can quickly get up the biggest the capitalism. Yeah, it's
all about like the most fancy, tall high whatever and
the idea of good shit by the way, like sustainable
things that have quality to it. We've lost that so much.

(01:19:00):
So you know, I feel like there's somebody out there
who right now is looking for the person to build
their vision, not just like another house, another you know,
building or something like that. Yeah, there's there's a message.

Speaker 5 (01:19:15):
Still thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:19:16):
Well, I'll definitely receive it.

Speaker 6 (01:19:18):
And I think the thing is, especially with going back
into education, it's been helping me also to build my
confidence back into architecture. Like I've been out of the
profession for the last ten years, you know, so it's me.

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):
Getting my feedback way and figuring out how where do
I fit into their you know, into that understanding.

Speaker 3 (01:19:35):
So as you continue to go through both of these things,
would you suggest entrepreneurship to someone.

Speaker 2 (01:19:42):
Oh, one hundred and ten percent.

Speaker 6 (01:19:44):
I feel like, you know, entrepreneurship is so beautiful right now,
just because there's so many different paths roads, you know.
And also one of the reasons that I stopped doing
architecture when I did was I felt like there was
a glass ceiling there.

Speaker 2 (01:19:59):
Was in certain rooms and all this other stuff.

Speaker 6 (01:20:02):
I created my own you know, box and my own ceiling,
you know, and it's up to you to decide how
you want to do and how well you want to do,
and what you want to make and all that, you know,
all that other stuff. So I think it just really
I like entrepreneurship because it's how I look at the
world right now. The white men that are pulling the

(01:20:22):
strings and doing stuff. It's because they have entrepreneurial spirit
and money and whatever. They were trained a different way
of thinking. So I enjoy creating my own rules these days,
and like, you know, there's so much flexibility and opportunity
for us out here to really create our own spaces.

Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
That's what people love. They love the originality of like
the difference, right, because now you see everybody trying to
do the same thing. I've heard twenty five thousand people
tell me they're studying they're gonna be a esthetician. I'm like,
everybody can't be everybody. And if you are, hey, then
what what is gonna make your skincare different? Different from

(01:21:06):
everybody else's because everybody's doing it now. I have a
you know, I have some younger people in my life
that one of a younger person, my granddaughter's mother. She's
an esthetician, and her approach to everything is so fabulous,
like you you know, it's just so it's so different,
so so, oh god, what is the word that I'm

(01:21:29):
looking for? Innovative? Innovative? So I can see that, but
I can't imagine that she would just go get her
a table and just start trying to take faces because
it's five hundred million people doing the same thing. Everybody's
making a T shirt, everybody is got a podcast, everybody's like,
what makes you different? That's the thing that we all

(01:21:51):
have to focus on.

Speaker 6 (01:21:52):
But I think it's it's social media. Like I think
that social media is warping so many minds and direction.
No one wants to be an electrician anymore. Like I
was looking at, you know, because I have an ev
car and I'm fucking like, okay, well, how can I
become licensed so that I can service the CV cars
so I could.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
Create an app?

Speaker 6 (01:22:12):
Like's the that's the mindset of where I'm going into.
You know, I think that so many people look at
social media and of course we're rewarding, you know, the
content side of it, and we're rewarding like the craziest
things get millions of views and now you're getting paid
to be on it and all this other stuff. So
it is training their minds to just go in this linear,

(01:22:36):
you know direction unfortunately, and so it is you have
to be careful definitely with what you consume as well.

Speaker 3 (01:22:44):
You know, it's so crazy because I was just having
that conversation with my younger brother, my sons and I
looked online and you're saying that the next millionaires are
going to be those who do HVAC, who do construction,
who build the things, and who are skilled and electricians
and or And these kids don't see that because that's
not what they've been taught. Right now is the trending thing.

(01:23:08):
What would you say right now to the eighteen year
old youth.

Speaker 2 (01:23:14):
I would say it's okay to be a mess.

Speaker 6 (01:23:18):
Being a mess has taught me so much, and it
has let me explore so much in different areas. And
at first, you know, you hear all the time, like
whether it's parents or friends, like you're such a mess,
and like, you know, it makes.

Speaker 2 (01:23:33):
You feel like you're all over the player. Yeah, you're
all over the place.

Speaker 6 (01:23:36):
And I remember I got so self conscious about that.
But being a mess has really forced me to explore
so many different areas. Fashion, this, that, interior design, whatever
it is, you know, going to other countries, touching textiles,
you know, like and I love that, honestly, even at

(01:23:56):
my big age, I am here like I could be
whatever I want to be. I could start over tomorrow,
like and that is beautiful to me. And so I
want to tell the you know people out there that
are trying to reinvent and figure it's okay to be
a mess because the mess is going to definitely bring
you to the message.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
When you can't stay a mess forever.

Speaker 6 (01:24:17):
You can't, but that's where the message will reveal itself
and you'll know where to land.

Speaker 1 (01:24:21):
And that's what's happening to you right now, the mess.
You've gone through the mess and here you are coming
out on the other side where it's not like you're
leaving it all behind, but you're taking it to your
next level. And I see it. It's like it's almost
like there is a screen here and I'm watching your
life play out because there's no way that you came

(01:24:42):
this far for nothing, Like you're not even starting over.
You're really just a continuation in a beautiful direction. So
we support you hundred percent. It's really good to sit
down and listen to a person who is like and
everybody in this series, everyone who we talk with has
been so transparent about how tough it is. It's not

(01:25:05):
just in business, it's just in life in general, because
while you're building a business, life is also happening. And
if you didn't do your tax as well, before you
started a business.

Speaker 2 (01:25:16):
You're not gonna do it now now that you got
a business, now that you.

Speaker 1 (01:25:19):
Have a business. So it's also life skills, things that
no one tells us, no one teaches us. We have
to learn it as we go. And it's just good
to know that you are so willing to be open
about your journey and what you've had to learn along
the way.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
Man, Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:25:35):
I just want to ask one final question for what
do you want your legacy?

Speaker 2 (01:25:40):
Ooh?

Speaker 6 (01:25:43):
So I'm grateful because I always ask myself like if
you go today, like is it okay? And I think
it's all right. I definitely feel like I put my
mark on the world. I'm excited to see what's next.
You know, God willing, I got another forty fifty more
years and I could do other amazing things, to write
books for whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
But I feel like I've.

Speaker 6 (01:26:02):
Touched a lot of people through my messages and I
didn't know that I was gonna come out on this
other side and tough things. And so you know, I'm respectfully,
I'm from Brooklyn, so though i'm you know, Baltimore girl
who has really you know, raised me and I was
able to start a business. I'm from New York and
so you know, it's like, yeah, so it's been a

(01:26:25):
beautiful journey and I think my legacy has been really
rooted in me doing like the unknown and being okay
with just traveling this journey.

Speaker 2 (01:26:36):
And like I've always showed up and done my best.
So I'm grateful. Yeah, sound grateful for that.

Speaker 3 (01:26:41):
Well, we appreciate your your story, your energy is amazing.
Thank you, and you're definitely going to continue to be successful.
Whatever you do, You're going to be successful because you
speak that energy. A lot of people don't understand that
their energy and their words.

Speaker 4 (01:26:57):
Create their vibes in their life. Continue to be great.

Speaker 1 (01:27:01):
Thank you. Yes, it's awesome, awesome to meet you, Khalila le.
To be in your space is to be around somebody
who's a light. You have a light on you and
God bless you along the way.

Speaker 2 (01:27:13):
Thank you guys so much.

Speaker 4 (01:27:14):
Thank you for me. Shout out to Khalila Wright. She
is an amazing woman.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
Yeah she is. I've been following her for a little
bit and she's actually like she's like, you know, like
one of those I made, I built it from the
bottom up, for real, for real type of people. So
she's she's really a great sister.

Speaker 3 (01:27:35):
Yeah, I've been I've heard the name a lot. I
heard about Messing the Bottle, and I've seen her online.
But you know, just when you around people and you
just feel the energy, like I always tell you all
the time, when you around people, and you be around
people for a minute, you could tell either why they're
successful or not successful. And you know her success is
because she has energy that that you know, just exuberates

(01:27:57):
and grabs on too success. So okay, I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:28:03):
So I mean that sounds good, like now that she'll
be going back into probably her architecture, and I can
see what you're saying, like her energy is like, no
matter what it is, I'm gonna make it work. And
I like that she's talking about, you know, I need
to be able to feed my family. That's a real
thing that you know, it always is in the back of,

(01:28:24):
you know, of most people's minds, but you don't always
talk about it because you don't want to feel like
you started something and you failed or you're not able
to make it happen. So again, she's a dope sister,
and I definitely want to support her in whatever her
next steps are because I think that's another thing that
people need to see that just because this thing didn't

(01:28:45):
happen does not mean that it's the end. But instead
you can actually pick up from where you have left
off and start and maybe travel in a different direction
and still be successful. And folks need to see examples
of that that you don't have to die with the
brand that you loved so much. You don't got to
die with the woman or the man that you loved

(01:29:06):
so much, or the thing that was just like an
anchor is holding you down. You need to be able
to know when is time to way, they say, know
when the whole and when the fold.

Speaker 4 (01:29:16):
That's part of life, man, It's about evolution. It's about growth.

Speaker 3 (01:29:19):
Some things you grow with, some things you outgrow, and
you just keep moving, you know. So and that brings
me to my I don't get it today, you know,
shout out to twenty one Savage. He did an interview
with Big Bank and he was talking about a lot
of things that were going on inside of Atlanta and

(01:29:40):
that stemmed I mean, that caused him to go online
right and after the interview he started talking to Young
Thug and talking to Gunna just trying to get everybody
to come back, and he was just talking about a
lot of his truth and one of the things that
he started a hashtag, and it was fuck the streets, right,

(01:30:01):
and a lot of people grab on.

Speaker 4 (01:30:02):
You seen young thugs tweets fuck the streets.

Speaker 3 (01:30:05):
You've seen g Herbo, you know, you see a lot
of different people started tweeting fuck the streets and it
started becoming hashtag. And I initially when I heard the hashtag,
I was like, Okay, I'm all for it.

Speaker 4 (01:30:19):
Yeah, like like.

Speaker 3 (01:30:19):
Fuck the streets, because we understand the streets is it's
only two ways out the streets. It's either jail or
the coffin. And that's when you've experienced the streets. You've
delved in the streets, in every arena in the streets,
from negativity to positivity, just the overall the overarching reality
of the streets is that there's really no real success

(01:30:41):
in the mindset that comes with it.

Speaker 4 (01:30:43):
So I tweeted.

Speaker 3 (01:30:44):
Out, you know, I tweeted out about it. Well, I
didn't tweet I posted on my Instagram about it because
I seen other people who are just not good individuals,
who just what I call rats and turncoats, tried to
grab on too who that hashtag and said, oh, look see,
I've been telling y'all F the streets, but y'all were

(01:31:04):
saying F the streets because y'all told on people and
y'all was too weak to deal with the consequences. So
now you want to attach with these individuals who actually,
you know, went through the ups and downs, took their consequences,
you know, and just as they grow, they realized that
it really was no future in the streets, and they're
telling people to come behind them that there's really no
future in the streets. So I posted minds, you know,

(01:31:27):
just coming from that angle. But then later on there
was so much backlash. A lot of people I seen
Boozy talking about all y'all saying F the streets, Well,
don't talk about the streets. And I seen a lot
of these young kids saying, how you're gonna say F
the streets? A lot of people that was just from
the streets, How you're gonna say F the streets? And
it was such a big backlash. You know, a lot
of people didn't understand why. First I was just like, well,

(01:31:49):
why would somebody have an issue with somebody evolving, you know,
so my I don't get it is First I did
not get why people didn't get while we were saying
f the streets. But now I actually get it right,
and I actually get what the issue is. And a
lot of us that come from the streets have evolved

(01:32:11):
from the streets. But there's a lot of people who
haven't evolved.

Speaker 4 (01:32:15):
From the streets. All they actually have is the streets.

Speaker 3 (01:32:18):
Is a person living day to day, and they looking
at people who want to glorify the streets who come
from the streets as their motto, and that's all they are.
All they have is the streets. They go to the
corner every day. Some of them might be hustling, some
of them might just be outside, but they love their block.
They say, I'm from the streets. That's the only identity
they have. So when they hear you saying fuck the streets,

(01:32:40):
they take it as you saying fuck them right. They
don't think that you're saying the ills and spills and
the negativity that you Some people have got shot, you
lost friends in the war, You lost people that's never
coming back, some's in jail. You know, you've seen backstabbed.
Because the lord of the streets is killer, be killed.
The survival of the fit is they don't identify with

(01:33:03):
that right now because they've never experienced that. So when
they hear the terminology fuck the streets, they actually take
it as you you're saying fuck me, because I'm in
their mind they actually are the streets. So understanding that
I think that we have to do a better job
at messaging. You know, I was having this conversation with
D One a long time ago. I love D One,

(01:33:25):
and D one whole thing is that we gotta change
the message in hip hop. You know, the hip hop
the message has been detrimental. It's killed us. We've glorified drugs,
we've glorified crime. But he started identifying individuals who did it,
and rather than people taking the message, the individuals felt defended, right.

(01:33:46):
And when we're saying fuck the streets, the individuals who
feel like all they have is the streets are gonna
feel attacked.

Speaker 4 (01:33:54):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:33:54):
So we have to figure out how do we make
this message to the kids that were actually trying to
save this in the streets, and even grown folks who
haven't evolved from the streets because that's the only thing
their claim to face. How do we help them if
we really if our goal is actually to save the
streets and make sure that these kids don't go through
the same you know, consequences and lose the things that

(01:34:18):
we lost in the streets. If that's what our goal is,
we can't attack the people that we're saying we try
to save that we love. So, you know, as much
as my sentiment is, I'm not losing my life for
the corner, no more, I don't have anything to prove.
I'm not going out on the corner to prove to
you that I'm tougher, to you that I'm real. I
have no interest in crashing out in that way, right

(01:34:42):
and that's my message. Unless it's about my family or
my own survival. There's nothing that I need from the streets.
I don't need validation from the streets because I validate me.
At this point, at this age in my life, I
understand that only person that I need to validate me
is myself. As long as I'm comfortable with the decisions
I make and the man that I.

Speaker 4 (01:35:03):
Moved, I don't need to prove to you that I'm tough.

Speaker 3 (01:35:05):
I don't need to prove to you that I can
go through all of these things, and I'm this and that,
and I can beat you, and I can out say
tough stuff to you.

Speaker 4 (01:35:13):
I don't need none of that no more. And that
comes with evolution.

Speaker 3 (01:35:17):
So my goal is to try to make sure that
these kids know that at fifteen and sixteen and they're
not going out killing each other because somebody said, oh
he said you solve right, or they trying to prove
to somebody the internet that they somebody right. So I
think for me, the message is, now, how do we

(01:35:40):
make sure that these kids understand that we care about them?
And when we're saying fuck the streets, it's not saying
fuck you because you and you not the streets. And
by the time you find out you not the streets,
we don't want you to be in a jail cell
for one hundred years because you try to show the
streets that you actually represent the street, because the streets
don't got no love for you. That is brick and mortar,

(01:36:00):
and when you die in that corner, somebody else is
gonna come to that corner.

Speaker 4 (01:36:04):
The corner ain't going nowhere.

Speaker 3 (01:36:05):
The streets that we love and we fight for, we
don't even own the property on the streets.

Speaker 1 (01:36:10):
But I wonder what does it mean to be the streets.
I still I heard what you said, and I understand
the people who might just be outside, you know, the
corner boys and girls. You know, I heard you with
the hustlers. But I'm still trying to understand. What is

(01:36:33):
the thing that you're that you are claiming.

Speaker 3 (01:36:35):
Well, this is how I can give it to you.
It's a it's a real big understanding. When I look
at young Jeez, right, Young Jeezy had his model was
I am the streets like I am the streets, and
we looked up to we lived our life.

Speaker 1 (01:36:55):
His name is young Jeezy.

Speaker 3 (01:36:56):
Yeah, it was Jesus, it's Jeezy now, but it was
young as it was. It's part of evolution. It was
young Jeeze right, and he was the streets. He encompassed
everything that we thought the streets was. And we wanted
to be like Jiez. A lot of people wanted to
be like JIZI wanted to be a hustler, wouldn't have
the money at the girl. We wanted that lifestyle. And

(01:37:17):
as he evolved, he took the young off his name.

Speaker 4 (01:37:20):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:37:21):
He started telling you about listen, we ain't trying to
We're trying to buy the block now now we're not
dying on no corners no more. And we watched this
man now performing the album that was the Streets, that
was that pretty much modeled what hustling was and surviving
in the streets was in the late nineties.

Speaker 1 (01:37:40):
Telling the story of it.

Speaker 4 (01:37:42):
Exactly the album.

Speaker 3 (01:37:43):
And we watch him now as a grown adulte man
putting on a suit, evolving, right, and he's telling you like,
I'm no longer need that like when you like I
had the conversation with him, you know about him and
Gucci Maine and versus, and it's it's the evolution from

(01:38:04):
the streets to understand that I don't need validation from you, right,
And at that point he shifted into a next level
and a person who really is so engulfed in the
streets didn't even see that. And that's what that's. That's
that's the transition that a lot of people don't understand.
When when Gucci Man said all this and he was
saying we're gonna smoke on Pooky Log and this and that,

(01:38:26):
and that man said this ain't even about that. He
didn't need validation from the streets no more. The people
that was gonna say, Yo, Gucci man punked you and
this and that I don't I know he didn't punk
me because you think that that's when you I'm I'm
way at a different space. I could crash out and
lose my life and us lose our life. And we
put up and we put on a show. And to y'all,

(01:38:47):
I did something tough. But as a grown man, me
understanding my evolution, understanding what my purpose is, I don't
have to do that right.

Speaker 4 (01:38:56):
And that's what evolution is.

Speaker 3 (01:38:57):
And that's what we got to try to teach these
kids before they before they continue to crash out because
they get validations from people who can't.

Speaker 4 (01:39:05):
Really validate them.

Speaker 3 (01:39:07):
Most of the people are looking for validation from people
who don't even have validation for themselves.

Speaker 4 (01:39:13):
And that's the trap that I watch a lot of
our kids.

Speaker 3 (01:39:16):
So I want to say shut out to twenty one Savage,
but I want us to figure out how do we
message what we're actually trying to say to these kids
into the streets that we actually trying to say because
a lot of us come from these streets. When I
think about my block, I always I'm proud to be
from the Bronx. I'm proud to be from Hoghbridge. I'm
proud to be able to go out there and be
able to influence these young kids positively.

Speaker 4 (01:39:37):
I clean merriam, I do marry them day.

Speaker 3 (01:39:40):
So yes, a part of me is always going to
be that block, right, and I want that, But I
don't want the negativity that comes from I don't want
to feel like I have to die in the corner
because somebody said something to me.

Speaker 4 (01:39:52):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:39:52):
I don't want to feel like hustling and doing all
these negativity, negative things that's gonna wind us in jail
or dead. Is what encompasses me, what identifies me, and
I want our kids to understand you don't You don't
need to be identified by the streets. The streets don't
make you, but they damn sure.

Speaker 4 (01:40:11):
Could break you.

Speaker 1 (01:40:13):
Well. I could say things, but I think you've said
it all.

Speaker 3 (01:40:19):
And with that said, we've come to the end of
another episode. Shout out to Kalila Wright messing about le
continue to do your thing. We had an excellent interview.
I can't wait to see what she does in the future.
I know she's probably gonna do some architectural things that
are gonna be amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:40:33):
With a message I think I was gonna say that.
I just want to.

Speaker 3 (01:40:37):
I think she's gonna combine both of those things. Right,
She's gonna combine both of those things. It's gonna be
greater because she's scaling back, but she's understanding and as
things trend, she's gonna figure out a way that she
does her purpose and her passion and her skill set,
and she combines both of them.

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
Well, listen, it ain't what it supposed to be.

Speaker 5 (01:40:56):
It is.

Speaker 3 (01:40:58):
I'm not gonna always be right to me get the marriages,
and I could always be wrong, but we will both always
and I mean always, be authentic. That's ho

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It’s Not What It’s Post to Be - When the Story Changes, So Does the Message - Guest Kalilah Wright

Episode Transcript

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Mysonne

Tamika Mallory

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;} It’s Not What It’s Post to Be - When the Story Changes, So Does the Message - Guest Kalilah Wright