December 17, 2025 • 40 mins
Anthony "Amde" Hamilton is an original founding member of the Watts Prophets and a native of Watt's California. They recorded their first album in 1969 and stayed together as a group for over forty years and are claiming their place among the originators of modern rap and hop hip. On this pod Father Amde talks about poetry, activism and what he sees as the west coast origins of rap.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Maybe la talk colors completely one and I'm so honored
to welcome into the conversation this morning.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
An original founding member of the Watts Prophets. A native
of Watts uh He started with the group when they
started the group back in nineteen sixty seven and has
been prophesying and poetry ing ever since. Uh Omdy Hamilton,
affectually known as father Omdy, Good.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Morning, Good morning. How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm blessed. How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I'm up and down, spinning around and around, sometimes a
little dizzy, but always smile.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Okay, I should have known. Ask a question, you'll get
poetry in return. Amy, mister Hamilton, you you've been doing
this quite a moment. I think a lot of people know,
but some don't. So share the origin story of the
Wats Prophets. Y'all came out of a writing group, is
(01:07):
that correct?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yes, we came out of the Watchwriter's Works. I started
by Budd Schulberg in nineteen sixty five, and we've been
around both two of us. Two of the other two
guys have passed away, and I'm still here holding on.
I'm still doing poetry. I still write. I'm in this community,
(01:35):
you know, from the merrit Park to Watts. I just
saved the FUNDI institute that I've been fighting to save
it since nineteen in the early seventies, but finally we
saved it. And had not been living, no one would
have known our history. And what so devastating to me
(01:58):
when they told me they were about tear that building down,
which was built by black artists, designed by black architects,
and we signed need to save me. It's a historical
spot now and that's what I've been doing. Well.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Congratulations on that. I mean, it's always amazing when a
long term fight turns up a victory.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yes it is. And what I want to say Alsoords,
you are a phenomenon artists, yourself and what you do
and your creativity on the radio. I remember when you
first started. You've always had a wonderful top flight show.
And when hip hop and rappers started, you were right
(02:50):
there and you're still here.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Thank you. That means a lot coming from you, It
really does. I feel like I've been stamped for success,
do you. I mean when you talk about when hip
hop first started, were you do you consider yourself? You know,
I've been one of the people that pushes back everyone says, well,
it started with cool Heirk at this party on this
day fifty years ago. And I feel like hip hop
(03:17):
was a little bit like a wildfire. There were embers
landing in different places and little fires starting everywhere. And
by little fires, I mean creativity, right, creative moments. Do
you see the watch profits as the origins of hip hop?
Do you see it as hip hop adjacent? Like, how
(03:38):
do you see the creation story of the culture.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Well, rap out a baby called hip hop, not a
hip hop, a baby called rap oh. It was rapped first,
and hip hop is a culture. Rap as of every
evolving language that really start in in Africa and came
over in a sense when we were slaves. When we
(04:06):
were on the plantation, there was thing came from. Ghana
had about eighty different languages or anywhere in the west
of Africa, and the band Tu based languages was over
six hundred and so when we got here, we were
very confused and we couldn't talk to each other. But
being to bringing people that we are, we began to
(04:29):
formulate our own language. We begin to like why people
wonder why we call each other man, because they were
calling us boys, and we changed it to man. We
called each other man. And this every evolving language is regional.
In other words, the yp things and the different words.
(04:52):
If you're in New York, it's a different kind of language,
but you're in New Orleans, and when you're in Los
ange Angelus. As I say, it's regional. And it continued
to grow. It didn't show any happy and it had
to have deceeated in a sense wrap I'm talking about rap.
(05:14):
When we say that's that's bad, we mean good. We
did those kinds. We did those kind of things to
to fool the same master. And as I'd say, it's
every evolving. My generation called a house pad, the next
one called it a crib, the next one of these
(05:35):
youngsters call it a spot. And now it's evolved so
that some of them I can't even understand what it's
You know, God, can you. I mean, it's every evolving
and it's some some of it is very beautiful. But
(05:56):
hip hop is a culture. Again, Rap is ever evolving language.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
So you take it all the way back to the motherland.
You don't just say, oh, it started in the Bronx
or it started in Watts. You take it all the
way back to the motherland.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yes, yes, and the academic world didn't recognize until Paul
Lawn's Dunbar came about and his poetry was it's like rap,
and it was even people artists would do his poetry
just like we do a doctor dre song or whatever.
(06:39):
And it evolved into I look at rapping as catnet,
chanting it, humming it, whistling it anyway that you can
communicate with the void, with all those elements. But hip
hop is a culture and it was basically came from
the East coast. Rap is a West Coast thing because
(07:02):
when I was a boy, I'm eighty six now and
I've been using the word rap since I was about
eight years old. If you lived on Yes, if you
lived in the western part of the United States, New
Orleans to Los Angeles, you use the word rap and
they have kind of you know, most people don't even
(07:24):
know the definition of rap. It just means the tough.
Let me go to Dominique today. Let me wrap to
you that that's really all it is. But it's an
ever evolving regional language.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Do you consider yourself.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I consider myself a rapper.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
You do consider yourself a rapper?
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Yeah? Yeah, But poetry is the basis of it all.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, well, I mean and the tradition, as you point out,
whether it be a grillo or you know, somebody chanting,
a priest, Uh singing refrains of call and response, those
those verbal traditions have always been something that have been
part of our community. I think that the some of
(08:13):
the controversy comes between do we call is the dozens
part of hip hop? You know what I mean is
the is the is the blues part of hip hop?
Is the poetry of folks like yourself and you know
Gil Scott Herron. Is that part of the legacy of
the rap that had a baby called hip hop?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
That's absolutely right, all of that. It's it's as I said,
it's every evolving, it's regional, it's different in different spots.
But all of that, I would say, I think that
very white wrap. Okay, I thank you well. If you
listened to most of his songs he was talking at
(08:55):
the beginning of right, but also people like Uh, Lou Rawls,
many many different people, Oscar Brown Jr. Ella Fitzgero, Louis Armstrong.
They all had a little rap and what they and
it and it was it was in our gospel. People
(09:19):
come to me all all the time, and they kill me.
You you guys didn't start rap. We know we didn't
start rap. We don't even know where the word rap
came from. As much as I reached, I know it's
an African, it's it's I think it's a single word rap.
But it continued. But the word hip hop. When I
(09:43):
was a kid, any dance that you went to and
anybody my age are a little younger, they called it
a hop. We did the Bunny Out, the Texas Hop,
and then the Hop, et cetera. And we didn't go
to parties. We went to hops, and the word hip
was my generation's word. We put hip on everything that
(10:06):
was hip. That show was a hip card. That's the
hip shoes you got, etcetera. And many days me and
my wife walked out of my hot at junior high
school and turned to each other and said, baby, that
show was a year. Oh these kids think it's all
(10:28):
knew that they invented it, but that's not really real.
Rapp was a colloquial word that was used, as I said,
on the West coast of America. Yeah we're gonna be month.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
He's over here stirring the pot already. We'll go a
little deeper into that. We're talking with Father Amdy of
the Watts Prophets and you are KBLA talk fifteen eighty.
Homby Hamilton is our guest, co founder of the Watts
Prophet been doing poetry since the sixties. You said the
(11:04):
Watch Prophets came together in nineteen sixty seven and you
recorded I think you're first recording late sixties, right.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah, late sixties. I first album was Wrapping Black in
a White World. And you see, rap at that time
was highly revolutionary and that conversation could not continue to
those who ever run dis place And that's how they
took rap, inserted it into hip hop and helped build
(11:40):
a prison industrial conflict.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
When you say that, that's in what ways do you
mean it? It helped build the prison and industrial complex.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well back in the in the early seventies, guy having
to go to a meeting with a very popular rapper.
And when I walked in this meeting, it was over
one hundred men in there, all white. Me and this
young rapper were the only ones in there, and I
(12:12):
didn't know where I was at. I was trying to
figure out who are all these people? So as I'd
sit around and listen to them, I heard them talk
about this new thing that was coming out, hip hop
and that and several other people have talked about what
I'm telling you have been to those meetings and they
(12:33):
started talking about a epop and telling him And as
I sat there a while, I realized this was the
music industry. This was producers, managers, agents, etc. And they
were talking about this new thing that was coming out.
And then they also told them to This is when
(12:56):
I got up and walked out to You'll get invest
in the prison indust chill complex in private prisons. And
if you talk about murdering people, you go on to jail.
If you're talking about staying loaded all the time, you
go on to jail. And that conversation that you just
(13:18):
heard when the nineties came was revolutionary that could not continue.
Whoever runs displace they didn't want that revolutionary conversation and
they took it over, inserted it into wrap and put
it in a minor position. But what would hip hop
be without rap?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
What would hip hop be without rap? It's a fair question.
So it sounds like and I you're right, I have
heard that story from others different parts of it. That
basically imply the music industry, the barons of the music industry,
decided that they were going to use hip hop rap
(14:02):
specifically to criminalize black people or whoever else would go
along with it and warehouse them in in prisons for
a profit.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
And that's what they have done. And there's more prisons
in there. And when we started, uh, and you know,
they're they're they're, I mean, they have degraded our women,
they have you know, and they have changed the direction
(14:33):
of us. The positive myths that we were trying to
bring to our people, all of that has changed. And
there's more prisons and yeah, they you know, I'm just
looking at the gang bang. It's still going on. I
saw something on the web of yesterday by mill Wayne
(14:57):
and uh getting jacked up and just starting like another
little wall. And it continues and they get a lot
of money for them to watchtop the thing never made none.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I feel yeah, no, I mean, I know that's true.
I remember having a conversation with my dad. I was
shocked that, you know, the small amount of money that
he made in his lifetime. And I know that. Still
folks don't want you to speak out. Still, they try
to you know, suppress speech. But I think we've always had,
(15:36):
you know, sort of gangster rappers, right, We've always had
people that I and I mean that outside of what
we would traditionally call rap. I mean that in poetry,
I mean that on stage. I mean that there's always
been people that were profiting off of organized crime. That's
(15:57):
not really rap, right, that's not only hip hop.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
That's correct. And your father was one of the early
well he would rather you call him a poet because
he was a poet, and but he these kids beat
with the beat. Your dad was doing that, and then
universities all across this world, and he was one of
(16:23):
the early guys. You see these kids rapping and beating
on the table or something your daddy always did. And
see rap grew. Wherever there was jazz, there was rap.
Where all the hip hop came from amongst the jazz musicians.
And what's his name, Jag of Hoover, actually had the
(16:49):
jazz musicians investigated because he said they were speaking another
language and he had to be had. But wherever there
was jazz, there was rapp.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Well, you said something when we first started the conversation.
You said that rap is a West Coast thing that
rap is a West coast phenomena, not just West coast
as in California, but the whole Western region. And you know,
New Yorkers don't agree with that. I mean, I'm not
(17:24):
trying to start another war, but I have personal friends
that get angry if you say anything other than rap
originated in the South Bronx.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Well, they did know their history because Johnny Megaz made
an album with Legs and Hughes and Johnny Meanis lived
in Why and that's one of the first albums that
I saw that he went to a poet and got
a poet and they rapped. But the academic world and
(17:58):
the black academic well didn't really look at it and
for never evolving like and looked at it as poetry
and all of the basis of all of it is poetry,
but everybody couldn't wrap it. And you know, predicated pros
most of them, but rap had different elements. You know,
(18:23):
pros is like a sentence and paragraphs. Yeah, rapp is
a bit different than that has broken sentences, and you know,
it's a very very different ats rhythm that like the
watch profits we did uh rhythm and rhyme.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Basically those are the elements. Rhyme.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Do you think that you that the watch profits.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Get the crust free verse.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Rhythm, reverse rhythm, rhyme, free.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Verse, free verse another word. Yeah, we just speak doing
free verse. The rhyme come up, we rhyme it, but
we're always trying to keep it in rhythm, God.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Right, like freestyling. Do you think that the Wats Prophets
get enough credit for both rap and hip hop?
Speaker 3 (19:29):
No? I don't, because you know, I haven't been able
to get a book in a black store here in
Los Angeles ever in the cat's forty years as one
book store would never carry our books. Before that, before
that was doctor Legon, none of those. In fact, I
(19:52):
just got turned down, uh in le Mert Park the
other day. I tried to get my book in the
new book store there, the Wide Rabits, and I've been
able to get a book in a black bookstore in
Los Angeles over.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Forty That just sounds crazy, That just sounds gazy. That
just sounds crazy. I mean, you are ony, so if
you're saying it, I believe it, but it just sounds crazy. Okay,
we have news, traffic and sports right now. Then we'll
continue our conversation with Amy hump Hamilton, when we come
forward only right here.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
I looked at the moon, so full and so bright,
and then at the fireplace where it's flickering light, and
realize why this world will never be right. Then I
threw another log on the fire. Inside these four walls,
I am a king, But beyond that door it doesn't
mean a thing. I pay all my dues till I
have only a partial membership in world happenings, and my
(20:50):
blood runs freely in Vietnam. So I threw another log
on the fire. Why do you insist on keeping us caged?
You know all that it does. This intensify rage, the
word now it sees the time and all power to
the people. Power to the people.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Then I threw another log on the fire.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Putting us in a cage was a mistake. All I
did was intensify hate. Now shackle to our cages. You
expect us to wait while you fool around on the moon,
and from there look for another place to conquer, while
I throw another log on the fire. America, you argue,
is just doing fine. These racial things, however, do take time. Well,
(21:33):
I'm tired of waiting and not getting mind me too,
except however, in Vietnam, where every dead black man is
a credit to his race as long as he remembers
his place. So I threw another log on the fire.
Quick to put pencil to paper. Can't wait, must write,
must explain before it's too late. The flames are at
(21:54):
their peaks now. Can't wait. Too many broken promises, too many,
too many black babies ask and why too many? Too
many restless.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Armies in the ghetto. Too many.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
So I'll just throw another law on the fire.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I'm d Hamilton is my guest can Walk, affectionately known
as Father Omdy of the Wats Prophets founder. Incredible that
you're selling me. No one wants to carry the Watch
Prophets books. What do they say? I mean, what do
these books tell you?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
They just tell us can't carry your book, man, That's
all they ever told of. And I've been sampled every
year since the seventy Wow Wow all over the world.
And uh. The Quincy Jones said that we are no
(22:49):
the Watch Prophets and last forwards, no different than Charlie
Parker did last pie when they he was starting Biba.
He said, we're the same thing. We have sorted a
new art for them, and Rolling Stone magazine said that
we were in the top forty albums greatest albums ever made.
(23:14):
We're number sixteen.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
So where do we get your stuff?
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Then?
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Where do we find your books? I mean.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
I have books here.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I see them on in the Babe. They cost us
a lot of money on eBay.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Well you can get them, you know, just call me.
I'll leave my number and call me and I'll get
some books, you know, I what can I say? So?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Pretty much you're selling your books when you perform is
what's happening.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
That's right, That's basically what's going on. And you know,
they kept us out there and studying us and they
still do. When we first started, you know, we had
an agent and a manager, et cetera. And we've been
to most of the major universities you know, Arvard, Yale, Darts, etc.
(24:11):
But you know, we've never been able to really get
our books out there and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
That maybe that's something about pioneers, you know. It seems
like the pioneers, the early adopters, the early trail blazers
in art form often don't get the love that we
would expect them to go.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Yes, like DD McNeil that you get started on that record.
He was a she was a songwriter promtown and when
she met she was with us two years. We were
together fifty eight years when the first one of us died.
But everybody knows about her all over Europe. But like
(25:01):
I say, we have never really been accepted by the
black community.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Ah, so you think it's the it's us black folks
that are really at the heart of not embracing the
watch prophets. I mean because you mentioned Quincy Jones and
I know you've worked with a lot of big name
folks right over the years. Wow.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Well, I was raised with Billy Higgins, Arnette Coleman, Don Cherry.
Those were my closest friends. They were the only ones
that really encouraged us and told us that we had
something new. Just keep on doing it and people keep.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Coming to see the poetry shows, right, I mean, it's
just it's just the sort of I guess, mainstream acceptance
that's been elusive.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
That's been very elusive for us. But everybody knows about it.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, that's that's wild. I know. I went on eBay
and I see that I can get a copy of
Wrapping Black in a white World for one hundred and
ten dollars.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Yeah, that's something. It's sold for fifteen hundred pounds in England.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Wow, wats PROPHECD one hundred and twenty eight dollars here?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
So yeah. But our first my first album, as I said,
that was called The Black Voices on the Streets and
Whys And that's the one that's number sixteen in the
Greatest Albums. That's with Doctor Dre and everybody that's in
this game. They said we we were in, but nobody
(26:44):
wanted to pay for it. Now that I could say
that people can't even buy an.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Album, what would you like the legacy to be? What
would you like people to.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Remember that we was real. We wasn't playing, We wasn't
looking for a plugs. We had a call. There it's
a difference. Yeah, we wasn't into a dogs. We had
a call.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Do you think that? I mean, who do you like now,
whether it's poets, rappers or other kinds of word smiths,
who do you like that that's out now?
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Well? You know, I forgive them for you know, I
understand they want to make money. One of my favorite
rappers is Mazi and uh, that's not his hard stuff,
but the way he uses the language of rap. It's unbelievable.
(27:53):
They you know, we define our own words. It's sort
of decalanized its the mind in a sense. You know,
we making our own language, our own definitions. It's it's
just like a it's a new language. Like I'm saying,
(28:14):
it's every longing, each generation takes it to another level.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
And how can we how can we be part of
preserving uplifting your.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Legacy and whatever you can do to give us a hand.
You know, we don't have no retirement. Yeah, we didn't
make no money. In differentially, we barely get security.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
That's crazy, but that's that is the plight of a
lot of artists, right they're they're not they're not paying
into Social Security because they're not getting paid anything to
take money off of a check. Coumell Allah wants me
to ask you about the origins of Black Arts West
(29:07):
and what year it started out here.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Well, see that that movement, that's the East Coast movement.
We didn't need black arts wet we already had, I
mean Don sherry On, that Coleman, Billy Higgins. We already
had a black movement, a black art movement here in
Los Angeles. We had our own black Ugan et cetera.
(29:34):
So it didn't it came out here. It must have
been in the because because your dad was a part
of that movement and he came out here and he
was with Ron Karranga.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yep, he was allied with the organization US before they
split rather spectacularly and crazily. My understanding it was around
nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy. But I could be wrong, that.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Could be right. But we already had ourvant guard. Could
you get the down cherry On and Coleman, Jillie Higgins,
Charlie Inga. He didn't need no black yeah, you know.
In fact, when they went to New York, the cats
looked at him like they didn't really know what they
(30:24):
were doing until that they would graduate with some Juilliard
et cetera, and that they really knew what they were doing.
Don Sherriet's one of the fathers a world music, so
we went all over the world doing his son. So right,
(30:44):
we didn't respond to that movement, like you said, because
of the like when your dad came, he could have
brought it, but he came to Karrenga, and at that
time there was many a conflict between the community and
the different people, like.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, the S organization and the Panthers famously and uh yeah,
and you know, I know that they you know, theoretically
they have a truce, but I feel like a lot
of those divisions still remain to this day. But yeah,
because my father was one of the founders of the
Black Arts movement in Harlem. But again, you know, as
(31:27):
I've learned over the years, in radio, LA is a
different animal. You just can't come to the West Coast
and say you're going to do what we do because
you might not think we're special, but we do.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
And you know where to where I consider the greatest
rappers game from here in California?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
What not the Bay Area? Not not not father Omni
shouting out the Bay or too Short, too short.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
To Dubac went there and got school. Everybody don't know that.
What was that guy with the big nose.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Humy you're talking about shock.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
G Yeah, yeah, they were the one they called my
favorite rapper there was folk folk, wrapping, prote.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Father Amdy. So I'm just cracking up. And uh, I
know all the guys you've mentioned because I'm from there.
So it's funny to hear that coming from you.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yeah, well that's that's what they was in the rape.
They was in the wrap. We were learning it, you know,
the cats like he the but uh to me. Oakland
and the Bay Area they had some of the finest
(32:54):
and rappers and they were in the rap.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Into wrap, into the funk. And of course most most
of those coming coming out of the Shock g. Greg Jacobs.
We you know, we were also raised with panther ideology
and progressive politics. I mean even though Hump was Humpty
(33:20):
Hump and the whole Digital Underground crew was about having fun.
They always were down for the you know, for social
justice as well.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Yes, and then you have been involved with all of them,
Copland and Los Angeles, they all love themed you. I
remember your program that you had.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Oh you're talking about street science, absolutely street science.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Well, I'm honored to have been adopted by LA and
raised in the Bay. We're talking with Omdy Hamilton, Father
Omdy of the Watts Profits. Will continue the convo when
we come forward on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. I'm always
flies when you're on the radio. It's like an alternate universe.
Father Omni Omdi Hamilton is my guest of the WATS prophets,
still writing, still poetry ing, and still a teacher and
(34:07):
mentor to so many artists and activists under coming up
under you. You'll you'll never stop that, it seems.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
No, I won't. And you know when you asked me,
what could you do for the WATS profits if if
someone could get with us. See, we own everything that
we've ever did.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Oh, we have.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Our masters, we have We own all of our masters.
We own all of our books because when we saw
nobody would do it for us, we did it ourselves.
And that's why we own everything that we've ever done,
all of our books, all of our albums. And if
someone could help us to get that out again one
(34:52):
more time so that people can get it and don't
have to cost some one hundred and for that right right, So,
anybody that would like to help us do that, Get
our catalog.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Out, we have books, get the catalog out, the music,
the books. Make a donation, buy a book or one hundred.
Where can we reach you? I know you have an Instagram,
unlike some of the other What is it that? What
is it that tande Way called me? Oh an old head? Yeah, yeah,
(35:28):
old heads? You have an actual Instagram, But how can
we reach you? If we If folks want to put
the albums out by buy a CD, sign up to
get you to perform. I know it's Omdi poet on Instagram,
a M D E Poet, om D Poet, om D Poet.
(35:48):
You can find the Instagram. We might be able to
d M you there. I'm following you. But what else
do you want to give.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
My number? Seven seven three six two one one seventy three.
And you know we're always well, I'm the only one
with who I'm always here. And uh, you know, when
you get a little old, you gotta go a little slower.
I've been speed. That's why you see mem hear my
(36:19):
voice up.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
And down too much poetry. You have a poetry overload
on your voice.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yes, I've been doing it for over fifty years.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Oh you know I think about that sometimes on the mic.
You get up in the morning, Is my voice gonna
show up for me? That's why you say, yeah, that's me.
See me drinking this tea every day.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
I got me in front of me.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Kind of honor the voice, father, Amdia. It's such a
pleasure to talk with you. It seems like the wats prophets, story,
the poetry, the influence on if not you know, origination
of up. It seems like it would make a great
movie or a Netflix series, or a documentary or all
(37:06):
of the above. Have you thought about that?
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yes, I am. You know. I was recording with Bob
Marley before he died, but he got spit before we
could get anything done. Actually read it. I could see
as we were scheduled. But I just did a video
with one of his grandchildren, Rebel Marley. He just did
(37:32):
a song called Holy Father, and he called me. Bob
Marley's daughter called me, that's her son. So me and
Bob didn't get to do it, but I got a
chance to do it with his grandson.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I love that. That's a full circle moment. I love
that for all of us and for you. And I
believe that, you know, people are starting people say they
want to give love to the originators. Maybe you know,
not his foundation that he's working with or somebody like
that that's trying to give love, money, benefits to the originators,
(38:10):
to some of the originators who never bene fited from
the movement. Maybe they'll look at you. I certainly hope
they will, and look at the legacy of the watts profits.
We've got sixty seconds here, father, omd, how would you
like to use them?
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Say a little poet. Okay, I hear people say each
and every day that the Internet will send modern man
see like a dolphin in a sea. Now that statement
completely confused me. That's when is the net said anything? Free?
My simplements, I regret, But where's the freedom in the net?
(38:50):
Fishermen make nets, fighters weak waves, both the traps. The
spider knows all in his way. He keeps it in sight,
dead at night, rap real real with a click and
a bike is an online mean you know, download and
download where's the freedom? And the net still traps in
your laps? At zero Hero sky tail and tail DSL
(39:13):
E email tell tell Tale processing your personal soul for info.
No telling where it go. Only the netmaker really know.
Now you used to be able to shred it, but
now that's giant. The hard driver is always a lie,
rap real real tight with a kick and a BikeE
bider man can pull you up tonight. Freeman Freeland and
(39:37):
a net will one day experience regret because there's no
freedom in the net. Fishermen control their nets. Fighters control
their webs who my friend controls the worldwide Web. Eaterine
what despite ass you and its website rap real, real
tight with a click and a pipe.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Father d thing. Thank you so much, it's a pleasure
to talk with you. Tavis Smiley's up next. He's got
a jam packed full show for you today. Like my mama,
the poet Lauriate of San Francisco, Diane de Prima used
to say, history is now, like I always say, we're
making it together until tomorrow. One love,
Maybe la talk colors completely one and I'm so honored
to welcome into the conversation this morning.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
An original founding member of the Watts Prophets. A native
of Watts uh He started with the group when they
started the group back in nineteen sixty seven and has
been prophesying and poetry ing ever since. Uh Omdy Hamilton,
affectually known as father Omdy, Good.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Morning, Good morning. How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm blessed. How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I'm up and down, spinning around and around, sometimes a
little dizzy, but always smile.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Okay, I should have known. Ask a question, you'll get
poetry in return. Amy, mister Hamilton, you you've been doing
this quite a moment. I think a lot of people know,
but some don't. So share the origin story of the
Wats Prophets. Y'all came out of a writing group, is
(01:07):
that correct?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yes, we came out of the Watchwriter's Works. I started
by Budd Schulberg in nineteen sixty five, and we've been
around both two of us. Two of the other two
guys have passed away, and I'm still here holding on.
I'm still doing poetry. I still write. I'm in this community,
(01:35):
you know, from the merrit Park to Watts. I just
saved the FUNDI institute that I've been fighting to save
it since nineteen in the early seventies, but finally we
saved it. And had not been living, no one would
have known our history. And what so devastating to me
(01:58):
when they told me they were about tear that building down,
which was built by black artists, designed by black architects,
and we signed need to save me. It's a historical
spot now and that's what I've been doing. Well.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Congratulations on that. I mean, it's always amazing when a
long term fight turns up a victory.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yes it is. And what I want to say Alsoords,
you are a phenomenon artists, yourself and what you do
and your creativity on the radio. I remember when you
first started. You've always had a wonderful top flight show.
And when hip hop and rappers started, you were right
(02:50):
there and you're still here.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Thank you. That means a lot coming from you, It
really does. I feel like I've been stamped for success,
do you. I mean when you talk about when hip
hop first started, were you do you consider yourself? You know,
I've been one of the people that pushes back everyone says, well,
it started with cool Heirk at this party on this
day fifty years ago. And I feel like hip hop
(03:17):
was a little bit like a wildfire. There were embers
landing in different places and little fires starting everywhere. And
by little fires, I mean creativity, right, creative moments. Do
you see the watch profits as the origins of hip hop?
Do you see it as hip hop adjacent? Like, how
(03:38):
do you see the creation story of the culture.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Well, rap out a baby called hip hop, not a
hip hop, a baby called rap oh. It was rapped first,
and hip hop is a culture. Rap as of every
evolving language that really start in in Africa and came
over in a sense when we were slaves. When we
(04:06):
were on the plantation, there was thing came from. Ghana
had about eighty different languages or anywhere in the west
of Africa, and the band Tu based languages was over
six hundred and so when we got here, we were
very confused and we couldn't talk to each other. But
being to bringing people that we are, we began to
(04:29):
formulate our own language. We begin to like why people
wonder why we call each other man, because they were
calling us boys, and we changed it to man. We
called each other man. And this every evolving language is regional.
In other words, the yp things and the different words.
(04:52):
If you're in New York, it's a different kind of language,
but you're in New Orleans, and when you're in Los
ange Angelus. As I say, it's regional. And it continued
to grow. It didn't show any happy and it had
to have deceeated in a sense wrap I'm talking about rap.
(05:14):
When we say that's that's bad, we mean good. We
did those kinds. We did those kind of things to
to fool the same master. And as I'd say, it's
every evolving. My generation called a house pad, the next
one called it a crib, the next one of these
(05:35):
youngsters call it a spot. And now it's evolved so
that some of them I can't even understand what it's
You know, God, can you. I mean, it's every evolving
and it's some some of it is very beautiful. But
(05:56):
hip hop is a culture. Again, Rap is ever evolving language.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
So you take it all the way back to the motherland.
You don't just say, oh, it started in the Bronx
or it started in Watts. You take it all the
way back to the motherland.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yes, yes, and the academic world didn't recognize until Paul
Lawn's Dunbar came about and his poetry was it's like rap,
and it was even people artists would do his poetry
just like we do a doctor dre song or whatever.
(06:39):
And it evolved into I look at rapping as catnet,
chanting it, humming it, whistling it anyway that you can
communicate with the void, with all those elements. But hip
hop is a culture and it was basically came from
the East coast. Rap is a West Coast thing because
(07:02):
when I was a boy, I'm eighty six now and
I've been using the word rap since I was about
eight years old. If you lived on Yes, if you
lived in the western part of the United States, New
Orleans to Los Angeles, you use the word rap and
they have kind of you know, most people don't even
(07:24):
know the definition of rap. It just means the tough.
Let me go to Dominique today. Let me wrap to
you that that's really all it is. But it's an
ever evolving regional language.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Do you consider yourself.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I consider myself a rapper.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
You do consider yourself a rapper?
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Yeah? Yeah, But poetry is the basis of it all.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, well, I mean and the tradition, as you point out,
whether it be a grillo or you know, somebody chanting,
a priest, Uh singing refrains of call and response, those
those verbal traditions have always been something that have been
part of our community. I think that the some of
(08:13):
the controversy comes between do we call is the dozens
part of hip hop? You know what I mean is
the is the is the blues part of hip hop?
Is the poetry of folks like yourself and you know
Gil Scott Herron. Is that part of the legacy of
the rap that had a baby called hip hop?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
That's absolutely right, all of that. It's it's as I said,
it's every evolving, it's regional, it's different in different spots.
But all of that, I would say, I think that
very white wrap. Okay, I thank you well. If you
listened to most of his songs he was talking at
(08:55):
the beginning of right, but also people like Uh, Lou Rawls,
many many different people, Oscar Brown Jr. Ella Fitzgero, Louis Armstrong.
They all had a little rap and what they and
it and it was it was in our gospel. People
(09:19):
come to me all all the time, and they kill me.
You you guys didn't start rap. We know we didn't
start rap. We don't even know where the word rap
came from. As much as I reached, I know it's
an African, it's it's I think it's a single word rap.
But it continued. But the word hip hop. When I
(09:43):
was a kid, any dance that you went to and
anybody my age are a little younger, they called it
a hop. We did the Bunny Out, the Texas Hop,
and then the Hop, et cetera. And we didn't go
to parties. We went to hops, and the word hip
was my generation's word. We put hip on everything that
(10:06):
was hip. That show was a hip card. That's the
hip shoes you got, etcetera. And many days me and
my wife walked out of my hot at junior high
school and turned to each other and said, baby, that
show was a year. Oh these kids think it's all
(10:28):
knew that they invented it, but that's not really real.
Rapp was a colloquial word that was used, as I said,
on the West coast of America. Yeah we're gonna be month.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
He's over here stirring the pot already. We'll go a
little deeper into that. We're talking with Father Amdy of
the Watts Prophets and you are KBLA talk fifteen eighty.
Homby Hamilton is our guest, co founder of the Watts
Prophet been doing poetry since the sixties. You said the
(11:04):
Watch Prophets came together in nineteen sixty seven and you
recorded I think you're first recording late sixties, right.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah, late sixties. I first album was Wrapping Black in
a White World. And you see, rap at that time
was highly revolutionary and that conversation could not continue to
those who ever run dis place And that's how they
took rap, inserted it into hip hop and helped build
(11:40):
a prison industrial conflict.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
When you say that, that's in what ways do you
mean it? It helped build the prison and industrial complex.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well back in the in the early seventies, guy having
to go to a meeting with a very popular rapper.
And when I walked in this meeting, it was over
one hundred men in there, all white. Me and this
young rapper were the only ones in there, and I
(12:12):
didn't know where I was at. I was trying to
figure out who are all these people? So as I'd
sit around and listen to them, I heard them talk
about this new thing that was coming out, hip hop
and that and several other people have talked about what
I'm telling you have been to those meetings and they
(12:33):
started talking about a epop and telling him And as
I sat there a while, I realized this was the
music industry. This was producers, managers, agents, etc. And they
were talking about this new thing that was coming out.
And then they also told them to This is when
(12:56):
I got up and walked out to You'll get invest
in the prison indust chill complex in private prisons. And
if you talk about murdering people, you go on to jail.
If you're talking about staying loaded all the time, you
go on to jail. And that conversation that you just
(13:18):
heard when the nineties came was revolutionary that could not continue.
Whoever runs displace they didn't want that revolutionary conversation and
they took it over, inserted it into wrap and put
it in a minor position. But what would hip hop
be without rap?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
What would hip hop be without rap? It's a fair question.
So it sounds like and I you're right, I have
heard that story from others different parts of it. That
basically imply the music industry, the barons of the music industry,
decided that they were going to use hip hop rap
(14:02):
specifically to criminalize black people or whoever else would go
along with it and warehouse them in in prisons for
a profit.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
And that's what they have done. And there's more prisons
in there. And when we started, uh, and you know,
they're they're they're, I mean, they have degraded our women,
they have you know, and they have changed the direction
(14:33):
of us. The positive myths that we were trying to
bring to our people, all of that has changed. And
there's more prisons and yeah, they you know, I'm just
looking at the gang bang. It's still going on. I
saw something on the web of yesterday by mill Wayne
(14:57):
and uh getting jacked up and just starting like another
little wall. And it continues and they get a lot
of money for them to watchtop the thing never made none.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I feel yeah, no, I mean, I know that's true.
I remember having a conversation with my dad. I was
shocked that, you know, the small amount of money that
he made in his lifetime. And I know that. Still
folks don't want you to speak out. Still, they try
to you know, suppress speech. But I think we've always had,
(15:36):
you know, sort of gangster rappers, right, We've always had
people that I and I mean that outside of what
we would traditionally call rap. I mean that in poetry,
I mean that on stage. I mean that there's always
been people that were profiting off of organized crime. That's
(15:57):
not really rap, right, that's not only hip hop.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
That's correct. And your father was one of the early
well he would rather you call him a poet because
he was a poet, and but he these kids beat
with the beat. Your dad was doing that, and then
universities all across this world, and he was one of
(16:23):
the early guys. You see these kids rapping and beating
on the table or something your daddy always did. And
see rap grew. Wherever there was jazz, there was rap.
Where all the hip hop came from amongst the jazz musicians.
And what's his name, Jag of Hoover, actually had the
(16:49):
jazz musicians investigated because he said they were speaking another
language and he had to be had. But wherever there
was jazz, there was rapp.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Well, you said something when we first started the conversation.
You said that rap is a West Coast thing that
rap is a West coast phenomena, not just West coast
as in California, but the whole Western region. And you know,
New Yorkers don't agree with that. I mean, I'm not
(17:24):
trying to start another war, but I have personal friends
that get angry if you say anything other than rap
originated in the South Bronx.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Well, they did know their history because Johnny Megaz made
an album with Legs and Hughes and Johnny Meanis lived
in Why and that's one of the first albums that
I saw that he went to a poet and got
a poet and they rapped. But the academic world and
(17:58):
the black academic well didn't really look at it and
for never evolving like and looked at it as poetry
and all of the basis of all of it is poetry,
but everybody couldn't wrap it. And you know, predicated pros
most of them, but rap had different elements. You know,
(18:23):
pros is like a sentence and paragraphs. Yeah, rapp is
a bit different than that has broken sentences, and you know,
it's a very very different ats rhythm that like the
watch profits we did uh rhythm and rhyme.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Basically those are the elements. Rhyme.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Do you think that you that the watch profits.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Get the crust free verse.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Rhythm, reverse rhythm, rhyme, free.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Verse, free verse another word. Yeah, we just speak doing
free verse. The rhyme come up, we rhyme it, but
we're always trying to keep it in rhythm, God.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Right, like freestyling. Do you think that the Wats Prophets
get enough credit for both rap and hip hop?
Speaker 3 (19:29):
No? I don't, because you know, I haven't been able
to get a book in a black store here in
Los Angeles ever in the cat's forty years as one
book store would never carry our books. Before that, before
that was doctor Legon, none of those. In fact, I
(19:52):
just got turned down, uh in le Mert Park the
other day. I tried to get my book in the
new book store there, the Wide Rabits, and I've been
able to get a book in a black bookstore in
Los Angeles over.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Forty That just sounds crazy, That just sounds gazy. That
just sounds crazy. I mean, you are ony, so if
you're saying it, I believe it, but it just sounds crazy. Okay,
we have news, traffic and sports right now. Then we'll
continue our conversation with Amy hump Hamilton, when we come
forward only right here.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
I looked at the moon, so full and so bright,
and then at the fireplace where it's flickering light, and
realize why this world will never be right. Then I
threw another log on the fire. Inside these four walls,
I am a king, But beyond that door it doesn't
mean a thing. I pay all my dues till I
have only a partial membership in world happenings, and my
(20:50):
blood runs freely in Vietnam. So I threw another log
on the fire. Why do you insist on keeping us caged?
You know all that it does. This intensify rage, the
word now it sees the time and all power to
the people. Power to the people.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Then I threw another log on the fire.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Putting us in a cage was a mistake. All I
did was intensify hate. Now shackle to our cages. You
expect us to wait while you fool around on the moon,
and from there look for another place to conquer, while
I throw another log on the fire. America, you argue,
is just doing fine. These racial things, however, do take time. Well,
(21:33):
I'm tired of waiting and not getting mind me too,
except however, in Vietnam, where every dead black man is
a credit to his race as long as he remembers
his place. So I threw another log on the fire.
Quick to put pencil to paper. Can't wait, must write,
must explain before it's too late. The flames are at
(21:54):
their peaks now. Can't wait. Too many broken promises, too many,
too many black babies ask and why too many? Too
many restless.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Armies in the ghetto. Too many.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
So I'll just throw another law on the fire.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I'm d Hamilton is my guest can Walk, affectionately known
as Father Omdy of the Wats Prophets founder. Incredible that
you're selling me. No one wants to carry the Watch
Prophets books. What do they say? I mean, what do
these books tell you?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
They just tell us can't carry your book, man, That's
all they ever told of. And I've been sampled every
year since the seventy Wow Wow all over the world.
And uh. The Quincy Jones said that we are no
(22:49):
the Watch Prophets and last forwards, no different than Charlie
Parker did last pie when they he was starting Biba.
He said, we're the same thing. We have sorted a
new art for them, and Rolling Stone magazine said that
we were in the top forty albums greatest albums ever made.
(23:14):
We're number sixteen.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
So where do we get your stuff?
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Then?
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Where do we find your books? I mean.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
I have books here.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I see them on in the Babe. They cost us
a lot of money on eBay.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Well you can get them, you know, just call me.
I'll leave my number and call me and I'll get
some books, you know, I what can I say? So?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Pretty much you're selling your books when you perform is
what's happening.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
That's right, That's basically what's going on. And you know,
they kept us out there and studying us and they
still do. When we first started, you know, we had
an agent and a manager, et cetera. And we've been
to most of the major universities you know, Arvard, Yale, Darts, etc.
(24:11):
But you know, we've never been able to really get
our books out there and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
That maybe that's something about pioneers, you know. It seems
like the pioneers, the early adopters, the early trail blazers
in art form often don't get the love that we
would expect them to go.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Yes, like DD McNeil that you get started on that record.
He was a she was a songwriter promtown and when
she met she was with us two years. We were
together fifty eight years when the first one of us died.
But everybody knows about her all over Europe. But like
(25:01):
I say, we have never really been accepted by the
black community.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Ah, so you think it's the it's us black folks
that are really at the heart of not embracing the
watch prophets. I mean because you mentioned Quincy Jones and
I know you've worked with a lot of big name
folks right over the years. Wow.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Well, I was raised with Billy Higgins, Arnette Coleman, Don Cherry.
Those were my closest friends. They were the only ones
that really encouraged us and told us that we had
something new. Just keep on doing it and people keep.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Coming to see the poetry shows, right, I mean, it's
just it's just the sort of I guess, mainstream acceptance
that's been elusive.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
That's been very elusive for us. But everybody knows about it.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, that's that's wild. I know. I went on eBay
and I see that I can get a copy of
Wrapping Black in a white World for one hundred and
ten dollars.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Yeah, that's something. It's sold for fifteen hundred pounds in England.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Wow, wats PROPHECD one hundred and twenty eight dollars here?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
So yeah. But our first my first album, as I said,
that was called The Black Voices on the Streets and
Whys And that's the one that's number sixteen in the
Greatest Albums. That's with Doctor Dre and everybody that's in
this game. They said we we were in, but nobody
(26:44):
wanted to pay for it. Now that I could say
that people can't even buy an.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Album, what would you like the legacy to be? What
would you like people to.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Remember that we was real. We wasn't playing, We wasn't
looking for a plugs. We had a call. There it's
a difference. Yeah, we wasn't into a dogs. We had
a call.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Do you think that? I mean, who do you like now,
whether it's poets, rappers or other kinds of word smiths,
who do you like that that's out now?
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Well? You know, I forgive them for you know, I
understand they want to make money. One of my favorite
rappers is Mazi and uh, that's not his hard stuff,
but the way he uses the language of rap. It's unbelievable.
(27:53):
They you know, we define our own words. It's sort
of decalanized its the mind in a sense. You know,
we making our own language, our own definitions. It's it's
just like a it's a new language. Like I'm saying,
(28:14):
it's every longing, each generation takes it to another level.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
And how can we how can we be part of
preserving uplifting your.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Legacy and whatever you can do to give us a hand.
You know, we don't have no retirement. Yeah, we didn't
make no money. In differentially, we barely get security.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
That's crazy, but that's that is the plight of a
lot of artists, right they're they're not they're not paying
into Social Security because they're not getting paid anything to
take money off of a check. Coumell Allah wants me
to ask you about the origins of Black Arts West
(29:07):
and what year it started out here.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Well, see that that movement, that's the East Coast movement.
We didn't need black arts wet we already had, I
mean Don sherry On, that Coleman, Billy Higgins. We already
had a black movement, a black art movement here in
Los Angeles. We had our own black Ugan et cetera.
(29:34):
So it didn't it came out here. It must have
been in the because because your dad was a part
of that movement and he came out here and he
was with Ron Karranga.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yep, he was allied with the organization US before they
split rather spectacularly and crazily. My understanding it was around
nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy. But I could be wrong, that.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Could be right. But we already had ourvant guard. Could
you get the down cherry On and Coleman, Jillie Higgins,
Charlie Inga. He didn't need no black yeah, you know.
In fact, when they went to New York, the cats
looked at him like they didn't really know what they
(30:24):
were doing until that they would graduate with some Juilliard
et cetera, and that they really knew what they were doing.
Don Sherriet's one of the fathers a world music, so
we went all over the world doing his son. So right,
(30:44):
we didn't respond to that movement, like you said, because
of the like when your dad came, he could have
brought it, but he came to Karrenga, and at that
time there was many a conflict between the community and
the different people, like.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, the S organization and the Panthers famously and uh yeah,
and you know, I know that they you know, theoretically
they have a truce, but I feel like a lot
of those divisions still remain to this day. But yeah,
because my father was one of the founders of the
Black Arts movement in Harlem. But again, you know, as
(31:27):
I've learned over the years, in radio, LA is a
different animal. You just can't come to the West Coast
and say you're going to do what we do because
you might not think we're special, but we do.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
And you know where to where I consider the greatest
rappers game from here in California?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
What not the Bay Area? Not not not father Omni
shouting out the Bay or too Short, too short.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
To Dubac went there and got school. Everybody don't know that.
What was that guy with the big nose.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Humy you're talking about shock.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
G Yeah, yeah, they were the one they called my
favorite rapper there was folk folk, wrapping, prote.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Father Amdy. So I'm just cracking up. And uh, I
know all the guys you've mentioned because I'm from there.
So it's funny to hear that coming from you.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yeah, well that's that's what they was in the rape.
They was in the wrap. We were learning it, you know,
the cats like he the but uh to me. Oakland
and the Bay Area they had some of the finest
(32:54):
and rappers and they were in the rap.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Into wrap, into the funk. And of course most most
of those coming coming out of the Shock g. Greg Jacobs.
We you know, we were also raised with panther ideology
and progressive politics. I mean even though Hump was Humpty
(33:20):
Hump and the whole Digital Underground crew was about having fun.
They always were down for the you know, for social
justice as well.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Yes, and then you have been involved with all of them,
Copland and Los Angeles, they all love themed you. I
remember your program that you had.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Oh you're talking about street science, absolutely street science.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Well, I'm honored to have been adopted by LA and
raised in the Bay. We're talking with Omdy Hamilton, Father
Omdy of the Watts Profits. Will continue the convo when
we come forward on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. I'm always
flies when you're on the radio. It's like an alternate universe.
Father Omni Omdi Hamilton is my guest of the WATS prophets,
still writing, still poetry ing, and still a teacher and
(34:07):
mentor to so many artists and activists under coming up
under you. You'll you'll never stop that, it seems.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
No, I won't. And you know when you asked me,
what could you do for the WATS profits if if
someone could get with us. See, we own everything that
we've ever did.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Oh, we have.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Our masters, we have We own all of our masters.
We own all of our books because when we saw
nobody would do it for us, we did it ourselves.
And that's why we own everything that we've ever done,
all of our books, all of our albums. And if
someone could help us to get that out again one
(34:52):
more time so that people can get it and don't
have to cost some one hundred and for that right right, So,
anybody that would like to help us do that, Get
our catalog.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Out, we have books, get the catalog out, the music,
the books. Make a donation, buy a book or one hundred.
Where can we reach you? I know you have an Instagram,
unlike some of the other What is it that? What
is it that tande Way called me? Oh an old head? Yeah, yeah,
(35:28):
old heads? You have an actual Instagram, But how can
we reach you? If we If folks want to put
the albums out by buy a CD, sign up to
get you to perform. I know it's Omdi poet on Instagram,
a M D E Poet, om D Poet, om D Poet.
(35:48):
You can find the Instagram. We might be able to
d M you there. I'm following you. But what else
do you want to give.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
My number? Seven seven three six two one one seventy three.
And you know we're always well, I'm the only one
with who I'm always here. And uh, you know, when
you get a little old, you gotta go a little slower.
I've been speed. That's why you see mem hear my
(36:19):
voice up.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
And down too much poetry. You have a poetry overload
on your voice.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yes, I've been doing it for over fifty years.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Oh you know I think about that sometimes on the mic.
You get up in the morning, Is my voice gonna
show up for me? That's why you say, yeah, that's me.
See me drinking this tea every day.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
I got me in front of me.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Kind of honor the voice, father, Amdia. It's such a
pleasure to talk with you. It seems like the wats prophets, story,
the poetry, the influence on if not you know, origination
of up. It seems like it would make a great
movie or a Netflix series, or a documentary or all
(37:06):
of the above. Have you thought about that?
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yes, I am. You know. I was recording with Bob
Marley before he died, but he got spit before we
could get anything done. Actually read it. I could see
as we were scheduled. But I just did a video
with one of his grandchildren, Rebel Marley. He just did
(37:32):
a song called Holy Father, and he called me. Bob
Marley's daughter called me, that's her son. So me and
Bob didn't get to do it, but I got a
chance to do it with his grandson.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I love that. That's a full circle moment. I love
that for all of us and for you. And I
believe that, you know, people are starting people say they
want to give love to the originators. Maybe you know,
not his foundation that he's working with or somebody like
that that's trying to give love, money, benefits to the originators,
(38:10):
to some of the originators who never bene fited from
the movement. Maybe they'll look at you. I certainly hope
they will, and look at the legacy of the watts profits.
We've got sixty seconds here, father, omd, how would you
like to use them?
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Say a little poet. Okay, I hear people say each
and every day that the Internet will send modern man
see like a dolphin in a sea. Now that statement
completely confused me. That's when is the net said anything? Free?
My simplements, I regret, But where's the freedom in the net?
(38:50):
Fishermen make nets, fighters weak waves, both the traps. The
spider knows all in his way. He keeps it in sight,
dead at night, rap real real with a click and
a bike is an online mean you know, download and
download where's the freedom? And the net still traps in
your laps? At zero Hero sky tail and tail DSL
(39:13):
E email tell tell Tale processing your personal soul for info.
No telling where it go. Only the netmaker really know.
Now you used to be able to shred it, but
now that's giant. The hard driver is always a lie,
rap real real tight with a kick and a BikeE
bider man can pull you up tonight. Freeman Freeland and
(39:37):
a net will one day experience regret because there's no
freedom in the net. Fishermen control their nets. Fighters control
their webs who my friend controls the worldwide Web. Eaterine
what despite ass you and its website rap real, real
tight with a click and a pipe.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Father d thing. Thank you so much, it's a pleasure
to talk with you. Tavis Smiley's up next. He's got
a jam packed full show for you today. Like my mama,
the poet Lauriate of San Francisco, Diane de Prima used
to say, history is now, like I always say, we're
making it together until tomorrow. One love,
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