Alicia Keys Interview and more

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ain't not and Charlomagne the guys the breakfast Club is
I love coming here. I'm never not gonna come here.
You guys are good to me. And Lautna them away
was gonna be good deal for a lot of people
in hip hop generation. The breakfast club is where people
get the information on the topics, on the artists and

(00:22):
everything like that. In that aspect, Radio Student port the
breakfast Club for my name, Come on, respect you. Good
morning yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo
yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo
yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo
yo yo yo yo yo yo yo Good morning, angela Ye,

(00:42):
good mon, Charlomagne, the gout piece of the planet. Happy Friday. Now,
this is one of those times when we're pretending like
we're here but we're really not. But we got new
content for you, like we got Alicia Keys coming up
next hour, Judge Faith Jenkins later on in the show.
But I want to tell y'all a tonight tonight tonight tonight,
ten pm, Comedy Central, my late night talk show, The

(01:05):
Gods on His Truth. This is the last episode of
this year. We'll be back next year with fresh new episodes,
but tonight we have Kamala Harris. Vice President. Kamala Harris
will be on the Gods on His Truth tonight at
ten pm on Comedy Central. Make sure you scream The
Gods on His Truth on Paramount Plus to catch up
on all the episodes, but make sure you tune in

(01:25):
tonight at ten pm on Comedy Central. Vice President Kamala
Harris will be joining me on The Gods on His Truth.
And we're gonna be having a healthy discussion, not me
and Kamala, but me and Chico being in the Man
de sales, We'll be having a healthy discussion about who
really runs Christmas if he Jesus a Santa Hu find
out the night ten pm The Gods on His Truth
on Comedy Central. All right, we got more coming up

(01:47):
next with a Breakfast Club. Did your time to get
it off your chests? Whether you're man or blast, so
you better have the same instry we want to hear
from you on the Breakfast Club? Hello, who's this shams? Now?
They get it off your chests? No, I just wanted
to say I love listen to y'all. Y'all help me
every morning. And what up though? From Detroit and Angela

(02:13):
when you need a new guest for a little service.
I'm trying to get on the show where you got you?
And Detroit? Still, Yes, I live here. What's your what's
your qualifications? Tell me what you do so that I
can know what you want to talk about. What's a
radio and broadcast and so I do have experience with that.
I'll recently have my own podcast, but I'm trying to
rebrand everything and starry fresh with my own show. All right,

(02:35):
this thank you Friday. Give me a topic. Let's say
it's freaky Friday. What uh dark fantasy? All right? What
is it doing something in the car and it's so
very real dark in the park or nobody can see you.
Sounds like a hired movie waiting to happen. Yeah, thank

(02:57):
you for calling with your freaking all right? DMN, Hello,
who's that? Hey? This is Chevine. Good morning to everyone.
Good morning. Okay, So in our community, the black community,
we should normalize raising our kids without abusing it. It's
just something that shouldn't be done, like why are we

(03:19):
beating our kids? And like and then people are quick
to go to the Bible and say, oh, you know,
you know they like the rone the towel. But don't
we all remember in school that the ride means the
ride of corrections and not like necessarily disciplining with pain,
you know you but you know you know that's something
we learn from our oppressing you know, you know, that's

(03:42):
that's what I'm saying, Like we need to stomp it,
like there are some people like that, you know, I
whipped her bud or I did this. What about getting
down and speaking with your child? That's right. My oldest
daughter is um thirteen, and you know, I think her
when she was like young, like you know, two years old,
and I felt so stupid and I always say to

(04:03):
myself like how could my parents you know beat me
with the stinching cards and everything else? And be okay,
how did that not bother? And that's and that's what
I'm saying. And you're you're so right. It is coming
from our oppressors, but I think we needed to be
more conscious of where it's coming from. Like bread the

(04:25):
word talk to each other because this is so sixty
so sick. Yeah, that's awful, Thank you mama. Oh of
course you guys have a great one, you too. Now, Hello,
who's this what I'm getting off your chance, brother, man
one than guard. I'm leaving today, going to work. Man.
Tell Joe body talking man. I feel you all right, Brod,

(04:51):
y'all have y'all have a good day of min Yes
that last one too, brother. Hello, who's this? What's up? Man? Virginia?
What's up? Seventy five seven? Get it off you chest?
I just want to get it all my chest. I'm
feeling blessed to drop the album this one. I'm called
block man, black man. Okay from my little brother. He said,

(05:11):
what a part of Virginia you're from? From Chesapeake? Okay?
All right, so you wrapped? Yeah, all right, spend some
real quick this morning. I say, I'm motivated on the
greatest thing underrated, pockets overweighted. No you hated, won't believe
a lit I told you, lady, just to hold my babies.
You see the wings this year, ain't no Mercedes walcome
to the room. He going crazy because I ain't got

(05:32):
no shirt on. They will have been on my six packs.
Some two needs to work on chilling me as might
as will try to hurt home pack like the nurse home.
I got the wave you can hurt phone and a
whole lot of dough. That's a biscuit number. How old
are you? Brother? How old are you? Sir? Every one? Okay,
do you really have a six pack? Yeahs so what
you want to see a picture? Now? I'm just asking.

(05:53):
I gonna make sure you'll just following my id b
l okay at and I got some happen. Was it
called YouTube videos for k thing? Bro? Bro? All right? Brother? Hello?
Who's this? Dorian? Hey, Dorian, get it off your chest, sir.
I just wanted to send all the positive message to

(06:14):
everybody and also ask about therapy. Yes, sir, Hey, I
just wanted to tell everybody out there struggling. If you're
going through anything, it's all a part of your story,
don't give up, keep on pushing, and just keep on
believing in yourself, trusting yourself in visualize the best version
of yourself. You gotta trust your life, you gotta trust God,
and you gotta trust your life. That's it. That's it. Now,
what's your question of therapy? It's time for me to

(06:36):
start working on myself because it's a lot of stuff
that I've been holding, man, and it's time for me
to really start to grow more. Hey, best decision I
ever made. In my life back back in twenty sixteen.
Man started going in twenty sixteen once a week every Friday.
Whatever makes you feel comfortable, you can go in person.
You know, it's a lot of tele therapy that you
can do nowadays. You just gotta do some research and

(06:57):
find the best therapist for you. What do you what
do you think you need to go for? I went,
I went for my anxiety and about the depression and
ended up peeling back all kind of layers of trauma.
But what you think you need to go for? I
just need to go forward, like just for my health,
well for my mental health, because I'm real bad with
my emotions. They'll affects everyone else around me. We just

(07:18):
put the golf and say, okay, it'll be all right.
Well I will tell you man, just just just find
somebody that's you know, in your area that you think
is best suited to fit your needs. That's what I
would tell you. And you can. You can go to
my website, go to go to the Mental Wealthalliance dot org.
And you know we have a list of providers. You

(07:38):
probably can find somebody in your area. Okayiate Mental Mental
Wealthfarelliance dot org. All Right, brother, thank you man, Get
it off your chest eight hundred five eight five one
oh five one. If you need to vent hit us
up now it's the Breakfast Club. Good morning, the Breakfast Club.
I'm I'm telling what's all? This is your time to

(08:03):
get it off your chest, whether you're mad or blast.
Eight hundred five eighty five one five one. We want
to hear from you on the Breakfast Club. Hello. Who's
this Yes to morning. I just want to bring it
to the attention of these gas station attendance. Why why
wouldn't you tell them to put one amount in your car?
They put another amount on the gas pensers tending the

(08:25):
foot tween eyes in my car? People? Forty what's the
months ago for the gas stakes attendance? Put tween eyes
in my car? He seals it up and put all
those And you know what they want to make me
mad because it's the language. It's the lad that's what
you got to say. Look, all I got is twenty dollars.
This is all I have. This is what I asked
you for. They go get your car. Oh your carn

(08:47):
so didn't already have your car? Right? Something that has
could be done. And I don't know if this news.
A lot of them, Um, don't speak the language. You're
doing other things when that happened. You're not tying to
attended because you expect them to do what they would
you ask do correct. Well, I think since this has
been happening to you a lot, just make sure that
you actually pay attention now when you get gas. You

(09:07):
don't never want to act like Trump to people who
don't speak the language. Yeah, if it happened a bunch
of times, you gotta you know, you gotta start watching. Yeah,
but if you don't speak the language, that's never happened
to me. He was alway stopped. Bro, they get stopped. Stop.
Everybody knows stop clearly not hello. Who's this hello? All right?
Oh my god, I can't believe I got through. Good morning,
breakfast up, queen you all everything that you do. Um,

(09:32):
oh my god. I just want to start out all
the US Army veterans out there. I am a US
Army veteran um part of mental health. I got out
of the Army and after two years of fair and doubt,
I launched my boutique, Fashion's House Um the house it
sells ah a usum in German. Because that was my

(09:52):
first duty station and I launched it on Veterans Day
last year. It has something easy, but I'm finding joy
through the process. And you know, basically, my sister and
I we just made the choice to live consciously and
to face our goals and live intentionally right. And so
she also has a podcast. It's called Incommenstible. Podcast is

(10:16):
pushing to the idea that we all are unique and
we have to think for ourselves always, and I just
want to share it with you. I'm so nervous, guys,
you have no reason to be it. I love your
mission statement. And by the way, that's not an idea
that we all are unique. We definitely all are unique.
Are none of our DNAs are the same? Absolutely? Absolutely?

(10:38):
I want to share with you. Oh your phone, hold
on a second, mama, Hello, who's this? More than this? Jerome?
Jerome was up? Good morning, man, get off your chest,
good morning. I don't know, I'll just remember a couple
of months back, says, you don't don't know us with

(11:00):
no cats, man, We know what cats? Cat? Cat? Oh
animal cat cat. But yeah, I just wanted to let
y'all know I have blessed cats and the dog and
the name Tina and Turner. You can follow them on
Instagram right now. I love cats. I'd rather have a

(11:22):
cat than have a dog. They are a lot more
little maintenance. Nah dog protects the crib. Yeah, and cats
make sure you don't have bugs or rodents. Had called
a couple of weeks ago, and I was talking about
the little girl in a period or whatever, and I
wanted to apologize to d J. Henry because I told
him I wasn't because he didn't understand what I was saying.
But that was it, and y'all happy holidays, everything, all right. Yeah,

(11:49):
we grew up with cats in our house that we
had three cats and a dog. No, we never had
no cats. We always had dogs. My wife had a
cat growing up. There's nothing wrong with people who like cats.
Just said, I don't know anybody. If I said I
don't know, I just don't know any men with cats.
That's all I said. I don't know know man with cats,
being a man who has here, you can leave a

(12:11):
cat in the house for like three days and they'll
be okay. Mike Tyson had a white tiger. That's the
closest person I know that I don't know. Let's shout out.
Tell other guys with cats. How you get it? A
few chests eight hundred five eight five one on five one.
If you need to vent hit this uping now it's
the breakfast Club. Good morning, the Breakfast Club. I want
to show the Breakfast Club Charlomagne and God Angela Ye

(12:32):
dj Envy had to step out. But man, we have
the author of one of the best books I read
this year, Resumm men of Kim, author of My Grandmother's Hands,
Racialized Trauma in The Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.
First of all, it is a pleasure to sit down

(12:54):
and talk to you. How are you. I'm doing well, man,
I'm doing well. Busy but well. Absolutely absolutely. Now tell
folks what this book is about. So brother, the book
is really about racialized trauma and how more often than not,
when we think about racism and white body supremacy, we
think about it from an intellectual place like you know, uh,

(13:17):
you know, dates and times and stuff like that. But
my whole work is really around how trauma lives in
the body and gets passed down, and how it gets
passed down through generations. What is of happening is that
we don't just learn from our caregivers in terms of instruction,
we also learn from what their bodies recoil from and
lean into. Trauma in a person over time can look

(13:41):
like personality. Trauma in a family over time can look
like family traits. But trauma and a people can look
like culture. And we and we missed those pieces. And
so the whole book was about my journey, my own
personal journey, you know in Afghanistan. Want to raise the Milwaukee,
Wisconsin and my journey in terms of my people and

(14:02):
my grandmother. Can you talk about what white body supremacy is? Yes,
So when we say the word white supremacy, a lot
of times what happens is that people move to the head.
They start trying to say, well, I'm not racist, or
I'm not this or I'm not that person. Did that
I'm not the person? Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And so what

(14:22):
ends up happening is is that we end up having
an intellectual conversation and not how this stuff actually impacts
the body. And so white body supremacy is my attempt
to get us to begin to think about what shows
up when we're having these types of interactions, What shows
up when we see a black body being murdered on
the streets, right, And that actually may not just be

(14:44):
your own personal piece. It might be historical, it might
be intergenerational, it might be persistent institutional, and then your
own personal stuff gets combined with it. You know. It's
God bought this book in my life at the right time,
you know, Angela RAI kept telling me to get it.
But it came in my life at a point where
I started doing healing exercises. I started actually doing things

(15:06):
that helped this this trauma move to my body. Explain
why that's not necessary? So I so if you notice
in the book, brother, I don't call him exercise, I
call him practice it why it's because whenever we think
about trauma, and specifically racialized trauma, we think about something
we need to just purge. Right. But in an actuality, race,

(15:29):
the concept of race has a four hundred to five
hundred year old charge to it. So when we start
to begin to deal with it, that charge can overwhelm us.
And with your experience, and I've listened to you quite
a bit, and so some of the experience when you
have when you yourself have been traumatized, right, in addition
to the historical trauma, that gets passed down in addition

(15:51):
to the intergenerational trauma, you don't really know how to articulate,
so the practices are designed to go slow. One of
the things about the practices that if forces you to
work with to learn discernment, Oh this is more resource,
or this really scares me, or this is more constricted
in my body when we're traumatized. That's all blended together.

(16:12):
We don't know how to discern one one sensation from
an image. You have to condition and temper your body
to be able to withstand the trauma and the stuff
that has happened, so you can metabolize it over time
and not just be overwhelmed when it shows up. And
then practices for white people as well, Oh hell yeah,
what happens with white folks? Right? We live in a

(16:34):
structure by which the white body deems and has deemed
itself the supreme standard of humanness philosophically and structurally. It's
the catstem that's it. So what ends up happening is
that in that process, the acceptance of whiteness right made

(16:56):
white people have to give up part of their humanity
in order to be white. They had to You can't
participate in brutalizing people right without disrupting part of your
own humanity. And so the practices in the book are
really designed to help white people begin to confront that
thing that had the ways that they've been standardized as

(17:18):
human and me and you've been standardized as deviant from human.
They're normal, they're the normal, and we're deviant, right, and
so it is standardized so they don't even feel like
they need to even do nothing about it. That's why
I have the practices in there for for white bodies. Okay,
we got more with the great resume of Minician when
we come back discussing his book My Grandmother's Hands, Racialized

(17:40):
Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
on the Breakfast Club. Hey, I want to make sure
to tell y'all to tune into the Gods on Its
Truth tonight at ten pm on Comedy Central. That's my
late night talk show. And tonight we have Vice President
Kamala Harris on the show. So tune in ten pm
tonight on Comedy Central, my late night talk show to
Gods on Its Truth. The Vice President Kamala Harris will

(18:02):
be joining us tonight, and you know I got questions,
All right, we got more. Don't move. It's the best
of the Breakfast Club, the Breakfast Club. Yes, it's the
world most dangerous. Want to show the Breakfast Club. Charlomagne
and God Angela Ye dj Envy is off today and
we're talking to Resma men Kim. He's the author of
My Grandmother's Hands, Racialized Trauma in the Pathway to Mending

(18:24):
Our Hearts and Bodies. Now, can we talk about the
title of the book, to my Grandmother's Hands and what
that does represent as far as the work that you've
been doing so soon. My grandmother was a small woman,
but when we were young, like seven eight years old,
we would go over there and stay with my grandmother.
And my grandmother number one, she would be in the

(18:45):
kitchen and she would hum. And when you notice in
the book I talk about the hum and the legal nerves,
it's a very important piece. One time I was rubbing
the hands and I was comparing her hands to my hands,
like my hands are very thin and angular. Grandmother had
these thick digits, like thick, and then a thickness inside

(19:05):
of her palm, and the thickness on the back of
her palm, and so I was. I was rubbing, and
I said, Grandma, why are your hands so fat? Why
are your hands fat like that? And without missing the beach,
she goes, oh, boy, that's from picking cot. I'm seven
to eight right, and I'm like okay, And she must
have heard the space divide. So she turned and this
and their cadence picked up right. I knew I didn't

(19:25):
know what it was, but I knew I needed to page.
She goes, well, you ever seen the cotton plant? No? Man,
She goes, complante got these birds. This is where she's talking.
And I said okay, and she said, when you reach
your hands in there, And at four years old, I
started walking up and down on Rose where I was four.
My daddy was a sharecropper, So when you reach your
hands in that stuff, your hands bleed. And I did
not remember that story again until I started reading the book.

(19:47):
I started writing the book, that's amazing because then the
calysis protect her hands bleeding, and then it just gets
used to that's exactly right. And then I took that
and said, whoa, that's how trauma works. You know. I
wanted to ask you about Sunday because me and my
home girl dad was talking about this yesterday. It was
a Instagram post somebody posted and they say, not everything
is a trauma response. And they say, the point here

(20:10):
is we can't just slap a label of trauma on
the everything. We can't understand all behavior as trauma responses.
We have to think more about the roles culture plays
and creating and sustaining trauma responses. And trauma responses aren't
necessarily all bad. Yeah, absolutely, Okay, So trauma is personal

(20:30):
and particular me and you maybe homeboys, and something happens
in front of us, right, A necessary component of trauma
is stuck. Right, no matter what I do, is stuck.
Something that stuck. That's a necessary component. Something back and
happened to both of us at the same time, and
you get stuck and I don't, Right, So when it
comes to trauma, right, But but but there's a higher

(20:53):
propensity to get stuck, right when the thing that happens
happens to a man of people. Right, And I believe
that you will more likely get stuck in trauma when
children are involved. Right. What I would say is some
people get stuck with that and some people don't. It
does it? But it but but but I also don't

(21:16):
want to take the culture off the hook, right and say, well,
not everybody is traumatized, so it's not really a big deal.
It is a huge deal because the trauma that we're
talking about has compounded over time and has been decontextualized.
So now we take it out on each other. Right,
And so I have to say, well, you have to
you have to do both. You have to keep the

(21:37):
vertical and the horizontal when you're viewing this stuff around race.
You have to keep both of them on the table.
You know, you say that a healing racism begins with
the body. Do you think that takes precedent over legislation. No, No,
Here's what I Here's what I believe. I believe that
legislation is fine, and it is inadequate. It is unsustainable.
It can't just be policy changed. It can't be policy changes. Look,

(21:58):
look we had to we had the Voting Rights Act, right,
Look a look at what we're doing right just yesterday,
trying to implement the voting Right from sixty You see
what I mean. What I believe is that as we
created at what I call a living embodied anti racist culture,
as we begin to do that, the emergence will will

(22:20):
will open up so much room and so much feel
and so much power that our politicians will either have
to comply or get the hell out of the way.
But because we haven't done that, because we because we
haven't worked our own pieces, they can keep skirting around
what they should be doing for us as a people.

(22:40):
One of the things I appreciate about what y'all do
here is that y'all pub people and do things for
people without expecting something back. And what that does is
creates a cultural glue, right, And so those pieces matter.
The more you do that, right, the more you develop
these structures of trust not transaction. And at the same time,

(23:03):
when stuff happens between us, right, I can hold it
with you and help you move communally through that trauma
if it's a trauma response, help you move through it
and not just cast you all. That's the pieces. So, yes,
legislation is fine. Anybody that's on a journey, journey of healing.
You gotta get my grandmother's hands. You have to racialize

(23:26):
trauma in the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies.
It's available everywhere you get books now, Resima, thank you,
my brother. It was an absolute pleasure man than it's
the Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club, your mornings will never
be the same. Search Like Pictures presents the new film
Nightmare Alley, directed by Academy Award winner gim Odell Toto.

(23:49):
When a charismatic grift to endures himself to a traveling
carnival group, he crafts a golden ticket to success, using
his newly acquired knowledge to scheme the wealthy elite of
New York society with the help of him mister psychiatrist,
who might be his most formidable opponent yet. Nightmare Alley
stars Bradley Cooper, Kate Blanchet, Rooney Mara, and David Strathern.

(24:10):
Nightmare Alley only in theaters today. It's topic time called
eight hundred five eight five, one oh five one to
join it to the discussion with the Breakfast Club, talk
about it. Warning, everybody is DJ Envy, Angela Yee, Charlomagne

(24:30):
the guy. We are the Breakfast Club. And now ifew
just joined us, we're asking have you ever fell in
love with a stripper? A gentleman out in age town
lent the strip of two thousand dollars, a laptop and
some Harry Potter DVD's and he suited her because he
said they broke up. So we're asking, have you ever
fell in love with us stripper? Now? I frequently DJ
strip clubs all the time, and I remember one particular

(24:52):
time our camera guy up here. He was feeling sad,
so I took him out for his birthday, which one
nick now No, Steve, oh, Steve, okay. Set. I was
out of the club at about three o'clock. I said, Yo, Steve,
ready to go. He was like, nah, I'll think for
a little bit. It's like, Steve, you know nobody here.
He was like no, but you know the stripper is
feeling me. I said, no, she's not feeling she's not

(25:14):
feeling you, sir. She's feeling the money that you're throwing it.
He's like, no, no, no, I think we have a connection.
I said, well, hit me when you get home so
I know you made it home safe. Steve waited there
until about four twenty until she got out of work.
That's how much in love he was with that stripper.
What happened after that, I don't know, but he was
definitely in love. It's a scripper's job to give you
attention guys, it's a completely transactional relationship. Yes, you're throwing

(25:38):
your ones, she's dancing. That's what the Script club is for.
It's like literally going into a barbershop, paying the barber
to cut your hand and saying, yo, I think I
think he's feeling me. Yo, he's playing on my neck. No,
he's cutting your hair. Okay, it's the same thing with
a scripper. But but I will say this, and for
the strippers out there, when the stripper is dope dance

(25:59):
and they have conversations with their h Mark, I'll call them,
that's when it gets a little they're having conversations to
see if you got some goddamn money, to see if
they should be wasting their time with Your conversation makes
the mark feel special because he's like, Wow, you dance
for everybody, but you're sitting down talking to me. I
think like, that's why Scripple was a great hole. Drop
on the clues, bonds fall of scripts out there. That's
why they're amazing at what they do because they make

(26:21):
you feel special. They make you feel wanted, and that's
how you have to make somebody feel if you want
them to throw the money, salute to all the scripples. Man, Yeah,
you ever fell in love with stribble? I no, I
absolutely haven't. I have a lot of franzy with strippers,
of former strippers. I mean I never fell in love
with a scribble. I mean you know I've been I've
been fond of one in my day, okay, but never

(26:42):
fell in love. The first time you got was that
a strip club? Yeah? That was I was a kid though,
Like that wasn't even I wasn't even old enough to
be in the script club. I'll tell you this too.
We need to be asking this question about the bottle girls,
the bartenders. The bottom the generation might have definitely fell
in love with a couple of bartenders, a couple of
bottle girls before the scripples. Well, hello, who's this? Yes, hello,

(27:05):
this is showing showing. It sounds like you fell in
love with the ship or a bottle girl. Oh, don't
do anything like that. Yeah, I'm falling in love with
the Hooters girl. Back in the day, me and my
friends we used to go up there up in se
Kid and she was a beaune before brown skin for
a minute and I would tip for a lot and
I ended up she ended up for natural being to

(27:26):
pay for a car payment, damn. And then I remember
I would come into Hooters and at one point in
time she wouldn't giving me the energy or the love
that I thought I deserved. But yeah, yo, goddamn fragile ego,
she didn't give me the love I deserve. What the
hell you mean? Well, you know I was tipping her nicely, man, nicely? Ego, bro,

(27:49):
you leading with ego? Bro boy? Poor you? That's all ego? Hello,
who's this? Hey can here? We can hear you? What's
up about? You? Would love? You fell in love with
a stripper? And it was sir lemain and yeah, man, like,
how y'all doing? Man? I want you to know I
definitely appreciate, appreciate what y'all do. What you got going on? Man?
What's up? Brother? Then I fell in love with a
stripper man back in my high school day. And can't

(28:11):
hear them? Yeah, sir, tell us all about it? Yeah? Yeah,
her name was Essence. Man. I'm still I'm still in
love with her. How long has it been, sir, yestre together?
It's been about a good five six years. Man. The
girl she has a fat, foody man body shape to tattoos.
She I mean she looked good. She looked Hello, good man.
I just I ain't been to the strip plus since

(28:32):
every time I go. Honestly, I fell in love with
strippers every time I go. So I just got to
stay away from him for real. Hello, who's this nick?
You fell in love with the strip of bro? Yeah,
but I think I'm a lott one war maryl what's
her name? As a baby? This a Marril flaws. Y'all
start playing with me. Lord. Have you tried to highlight

(28:52):
her outside of office hour? With her when she's not working? Yeah,
I mean, we're not got to Instagram or whatever. I'm
talking to her. You know, we talked a little bit,
but it's a hard to get her out of the club. Man.
A lot of money in the club on her. Oh
I fent a decent amount, but I think would have connected.
Came out on the podcast. She came on your podcast. Yeah, yeah,

(29:16):
you know the podcast. She came on two different episodes,
but she called Stripersole. So we had her and a
couple other people. But you know, just getting the sender
interviewer and talk to her, I'm like, I don't think
I want a girl. So won't you tell her? Won't
you be like y'all gonna be honest with you. I
really like you. You know what I'm saying. Maybe you can,
maybe you can offset her her her lifestyle. You got

(29:36):
enough money to offset her lifestyle. I make a decent amount.
But I think you know, see, she get a lot
of money already. For the money ain't gonna get her.
You know. So life, show a love, show a real love,
like like like court her. You know what I'm saying,
like like treat her the way you would want like
somebody to treat your daughter. You would want your father

(29:58):
to treat your mom like you. Show some real love.
Good luck? Man? Why not? Why not? Hello? Who's dance?
What this? Prince German? Chris? What up? Man? You fell
in love with the strip of bro Oh yeah, gonna
Miss Melfid's man? Oh my gosh, she blew my mind.
She gave you a lap dance and blew your mind
and your love. What's your name? Miss Melford's man? So

(30:19):
I got the lap dance, and I got a number
and all that, and I hooked the bull again, and
that the second time my hostel put up. When I
went to the Gas season, I got all kind of
pills and still man, I couldn't even finish I was.
I got my money for it. I take you that
damn you got. All right, man, man, have mercy on

(30:41):
my poor soul. What's that? Man? The story? I mean,
there is no more to the story, y'all. Brother, just
gotta stop letting y'all ego lead man, because some of
y'all ego be making y'all believed things that don't exist,
like y'all relationships with these scripples. All right, all, oh,
scripple old you is a dance. That's it. And that's
only because the relationship is transactional. You paid for the service,

(31:02):
she provided that service. That's that. Y'all get to know
each other outside of that, and you know, something happens
great other than that. Goddamn tippic keeping moving, No, allright,
we got more, don't move. It's the best of the
Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club, The Breakfast Club. Your morning's
will never be the same morning. Everybody's DJ Envy Angela Yee, Charlemagne,

(31:28):
the god we all the Breakfast Club. We got a
special guest in the building. Yes, indeed, the first time
on the show. And yeah, she's never been up there,
you'd be busy. Seriously, Yes, Alicia, Keys's happening. Everything is everything,
just trying to feel like I've never been in this
room with y'all think, so, yeah, here we go. It's
pretty disgusting in here if you look around? Is it

(31:49):
you prefer not to be in on? It's beautiful? This
is your space writes the essence to it, you know
what I mean? The first time doing a double album,
it is my first time. You got a lot of music.
It's a lot so much you just have so much music,
or during the pandemic, you like, I just feel like working.
It's originals and unlocked, so yeah, it's definitely you know,

(32:10):
really it's a lot of the songs are the same
because the one side is original, so that's like more
stripped down piano vibe. The other side Mike Will and
I sampled the original, so it's really two perspectives of
the same song. So if you really break it down,
it's probably like fourteen joints times. Oh that's why I
said unlock some of the tracks. Usually you don't work
with just one producer like you did with Mike Will

(32:32):
on the Unlocked version. How is that process now it
was great. I mean, you know, you know, to just
kind of bring it back down to the basics. I
think at the beginning, I always it was just mostly
me and at the time I had my partner crucial
that we always worked together. But after that I started
to explore more different collaborations. So coming back to the
basics of just like being just me on the originals

(32:54):
and then just me and Mike unlocked it it's just
it's it's it's fluid, just feels kind of easy and
it flows, especially for now. Obviously we're not all getting
with a thousand people right now. It's about keeping the
circle tight. First of all, how are you? I don't
think we said that. How are you? How are you?
How's your energy? Thank you? My energy is amazing. I
was actually gonna ask you, how the hell are y'all good?

(33:15):
I'm good. I appreciate you. It's a good time of
the year now, holidays. I feel beat. I know it's
a it's a weird time still though last year was
really weird. This year is still a little weird. But
you got new music out and the best time I
feel like to drop music. It's keys miss That's what
I'm calling that Keiths miss. That chain is nuts. Thank you?
Where my tests beautiful? That it's so hip hop and soul,

(33:45):
that's dopey. I figure everybody else bring out their chains. Actually, Swizzy,
he gave me this for his birthday. His birthday, he
gave me this. I thought that was kind of fire.
So what you know, we've been seeing you now doing
doing more and more interviews, More and more people are
starting to know who Alicia Keys really is. We really
didn't know, like you did do what what? What what?

(34:07):
And then it just Keys took off and then we
really didn't see you know what type of keys? This
part of Keys? I think you right, And I guess
I didn't ever realize it because I live with myself,
so I know who I am, and I know how
I feel, and I know what I do, and I
know how vibe and all of my friends and people
that rock with me, they know me. So I guess
I didn't. And every time I come to an interviewer,
I come to a thing, I'm always the same person.

(34:30):
You can't say like I'm acting differently. But I guess
I just never realized that you people didn't actually get
to connect with me. I think because of maybe the
type of interviews they were, so it didn't allow us
to like get into the zone the way that maybe
some of these ones more recently have felt. Who is
Alicia Keys in twenty twenty one, We're going into twenty twenty?

(34:53):
Who are you now? Who had twenty twenty two? It's crazy?
Um Man, you know, I'm a lot of the same
person and that I've always been. I'm definitely I'm definitely
that same kind of empathetic, relatable, boots on the ground
type of girl woman. Um But I definitely have a
lot more wisdom. I have a lot more confidence. I

(35:14):
have a lot more understanding of just just what's real
and what's fake. I think sometimes this you know, this
world is game. This industry can really be confusing, you know,
you know, you get confused about what's actual and what's not.
So um So anyway, but just like having an amazing
time I'm on my music. Fully, I'm better than ever
on that on that side, and I just feel like

(35:35):
I'm just a person who is really clear about who
I am and what I want and where I'm going.
Do your kids understand they have famous parents. They're so
mad they'd be like you gotta go again, you have
to go again, and they always try to guilt chip
me extra like, but I'm gonna be right back every
time I go, I come back and you can perform

(35:55):
with me. Yeah, they're starting to like that. I'm noticing
my younger genesis. He's very, very shy. He is the boss,
and he don't play no games. He don't like you.
He's like, no, he don't care what He's not trying
to do it be like nice to anybody. But he's
starting to like being on the stage a little bit,
which is a shocker because he's super shy. The other

(36:16):
day he was like, Mommy, why he didn't call me
on stage. I was like, uh, I try to play
you like you want to go off there? Yes, so
anyway that yeah, they do like that now. I remember
back in the day, there were some things about management,
right that people were talking about and speculating on when
you had first on a deal because you got signed
at an early early age, right fourteen, And then I

(36:40):
remember hearing that like they were charging you like some
crazy percentage and then you had to get rid of management.
What was the real story behind that? Really? Um? You know,
I was really with the same management for a really
a long time, and I don't think that it was
like some crazy percentage. To be honest, the commissions in
the business is just you know, it's like they're too high.

(37:01):
And then you have a management commission, you have a
business management commission, you have a lawyer commission, and you
add all those commissions up and you end up with
less than all of them. But you know what I mean.
So I think that it's not that they were doing
something that wasn't standard. The problem is that industry standard
is incorrect and so as a young person you don't
really know those things, and so you just do what

(37:22):
you think you're supposed to do. And then finally five
years down the line, when I was looking at my
bottom line and my you know, management, business managers and
lawyers were coming back with more money and I was
on the road for two years straight, I was like, oh,
what's happening. So again, it's just an education process. I
don't think it was like some major drama or thing
that they were like stealing from me. It was more
that this is what it usually is, and did you

(37:45):
manage that? How do you adjust that? You just got
to tell you I'm not paying you that. Yeah, Like
I'm like, that's not happening. I get it that that's
what the standard is. But what has to happen for
me is I need to have a long term you know,
I need to be able to This needs to be
a long term thing for me, not a short term thing.
So you reapproached them and you say, I'm comfortable doing this.
I won't do I want to do hourly. I don't
want to do percentages. I want to monitor it, I

(38:06):
want to see it. And you just got to get
on top of your So once I figured out what
to do, I could actually execute it. But at first
you're in there like what it might do? You know?
So once I got past that, that's all. I think.
It was just that to clear it up. It never
see it never seemed like you had trouble gaining creative
control and freedom throughout your whole career. Even in the
early days. They let you just do you. I have

(38:28):
to say they definitely always I always had control of
my music for sure, and I do think my first
management was really instrumental on that. They were really about
like me being at the head of my table, so
they knew that I was playing. They knew I was producing,
they knew I was writing, they knew this was my sognic,
my sound, and it was really about like how to
get the best out of it. And we tried at

(38:49):
the beginning, we tried to do like all of the
things where all the other producers do the thing. It
just didn't work because it didn't sound like me. It
wasn't New York enough, it wasn't like the vibe enough.
So I think it definitely. I think it definitely. I've
always had control of my sound. That's one thing I
really appreciate it. It was in marketing and promotions that
in your first deal they couldn't get a grasp on,
you think, because clearly you blew up after that first deal,

(39:11):
so you think the very first the very first deal,
they just was corny, right, But you know, I think
it just wasn't the right place for me. You know,
now that I know and I believe in divine timing,
you know, you realize that it just wasn't right. So
I was I had to move out of there so
that I could move on to the next thing. So

(39:31):
I'm actually grateful that they were corny and didn't understand
what I was doing because then um, I could move on.
All right. We got mored with Alicia Keys. When we
come back, don't move It's to Breakfast Club. Good morning
morning everybody A CJ Envy, Angela Yee, Charlomagne, the guy
we are the Breakfast Club was still kicking it with
Alicia Keys. It's crazy, is this is the Alicia Keys that?

(39:53):
I don't think everybody ever seen it in their life,
you know. I mean just when I'm hearing you on
drink Champs. Oh, she's a just the cockiness, just how
you feel, just the authentic. But we never got a
chance to hear you speak. And I think it's a
different side, you know, because we loved the music, but
we didn't know eight Keys, right, you know what I mean?
But now it's like New Yorker. She was punch you
in your face, like this is that that vibe which

(40:15):
I loved? I was gonna ask at twelve, what got
you into singing and playing the piano and being a musician?
At twelve, coming from New York City Hell's kitchen, Everybody's
running around outside? What got you say? No, this is
what I want to do. I don't know what always
attracted me to the piano. It was almost like a
calling kind of. I think, I just I don't even
know nobody. I really nobody had no played. My grandmother played,

(40:37):
but I barely saw her because she lived in like
a whole other place. Um, so I didn't There wasn't
somebody that was around me that kind of led me there.
So I think it was a calling on the piano side.
And then once I got a chance to have have
access to one, because it's like who has a piano?
Like that's that's the world we don't use because we
don't have them record, you know what I mean? So
so I think, you know, oh, that's what it was.

(40:58):
I got. Um there was like a a strange gift
that was a person kind of was moving and they
didn't know what to do with this kind of piano
they had in their family or whatever, and they said
like could you use it? So it was one of
those weird things that would never happen ever and did.
And so I think that was kind of the door
that opened it up, right? And how did you get
into the Industrycause they said your mother was a paralegal,

(41:19):
so how did you How did m know about the
music industry. She did, like, how did the family know
about getting you a deal? Like how she did it.
I wasn't raised by my father, so my mother definitely
was both for me and she she didn't know. She
didn't know. Um, we happened to stumble on we were
at the pl doing all of these uh kind of

(41:42):
we were putting together a group and rehearsing at PL
on a hundred thirty seventh like every day after school,
and so, um, she didn't know anything. These guys kind
of were like, hey, we you know, we think your
daughter can do some stuff, and this is what we
could do. And I remember they be in our little apartment.
In our apartment was like tiny and they were kind
of big. They'd just be sitting there taking up all
the space. And I think she just I think she

(42:02):
probably felt really distrustful. I think she just had to
she decided to kind of go with it. But I
don't think she knew anything. Now. On the first record
on the album sample Truth, Yes, I love push Man.
I just felt like he has such an energy a zone.

(42:22):
Um you know, I love how he flows. It feels
like he just zooms right into the truth and paint
you a picture that voice is so like you just
feel like you're right there with him everywhere. It's a
movie to me every time that he rhymes. So I
can't believe I never worked with him before. I've always
admired him and that that temple of the Truth and

(42:42):
the song that I wrote it is called Plentiful. It
feels like his lane right there. So it was perfect.
Why that sample, because that sample is just so so good.
Can I don't feel like anybody used that. I don't
know how that woman under the radar and I didn't
even realize that that Yay producing. I didn't really realize that.
So obviously, Yeah and I have history in regards to

(43:03):
music we've made, so it was kind of fresh to
come back there, not only with Yay, but obviously with
the Truth Beanie Big love to Beanie and then push it.
But it felt, you know, it's all about keys. This
record is all about keys and those that organ and
the way that I put the keys on top of it,
it felt like it had this urgency and this darkness
that and I like how the vocals I chose were
like a jazzy zone, So I liked this mixture of world.

(43:26):
It felt like it was a nice way to lure
you into the world. I didn't know you did you
don't know my name? What? I don't know why. I
never thought now that I feel you like I didn't
know it did the truth? Did you know he did
the truth? I did when I tried to sample it,
I tried. I tried to sample it to use for
a commercial from my team. I hey, now that's fire. Also,

(43:48):
they said you would do another verses You're open to
it another versus another verses. Yes, I don't know who
I'm trying to kill. When I'm listening to you on
on drink chips, it was like, yeah, that John Legend
was cool? You know that was that was like, you know,
it was obvious. But I'm ready for that war. I'm
ready for that action whatever. I love that. Who would

(44:11):
be the one? Who? Do you? Do? You do? You know?
I mean I agree with them at the end. Look
record one of my favorite records. I need to Beyonce,
the Rihanna, the Maridos, one of those three. Okay, yeah,
do you feel like you don't get mentioned in that?
That spear enough? No, I don't feel like that. I

(44:34):
feel like I'm in my own lane anyway. Definitely. Yeah,
So I could see why people wouldn't because I don't
really belong there, And sometimes I feel like Alicia Keys
was born in the wrong era musically, What you mean
you don't belong there? I just feel like I belong
in my own space, you know. I just felt I
occupy my own space that really doesn't fit. Actually, And

(44:55):
even that when he said you believe you know my
name wouldn't get mentioned within that, I don't even feel
like it fits quite in that group. But I do
feel like I was born in the wrong era too,
I really do. I was probably missed it by a
decade or two. Even when you listening to the album now,
you're like, all right, wait a minute, where we at? Yeah?
I mean it's like you feel Billy Holliday like that,

(45:17):
you see me see those movies where it's like the
bars and the lights are low and everybody's smoking cigars cigarettes,
Like that's how Let's feel moves. I know, I know
what you mean, and that's why I fit perfect here
right now, because it's meant to be like that, and
it's meant to have that mixture. So I don't, actually
I don't I disagree like you splin gass like you're
a fifteen term Grammy Award winning artists. I don't. I

(45:38):
don't think people heard of for her lane. She don't like,
but you never do rb she do. The pop doesn't
really make like that. There you go. It's kind of
like that. Yeah, I feel like that's I think what
you thought I was saying was as if I don't
fit in that lane, as if I'm somehow not belonging there.

(45:58):
I'm mormented, as if it's maybe it's unlaneable. It's not
a comparison. You can't put this song against this song
because they're no, they're not. They just don't. They're not
in the same space or whatever. But she got me,
she got you, and she got I like that drink Champs.
You told the story about Prince right now, Has anybody

(46:19):
else ever not cleared a sample for you besides Prince um,
because I can't imagine Alicia Keys comes right and she's
like when you told that story, though it was respectful,
but you understood. Yeah, I understand that Prince is very
into ownership and making sure the right people get the money.
But I can't see somebody saying they have We're not

(46:40):
going to sign off on this Alicia Keys record. You
know what I mean, I guess I don't have any
that comes to my head. That was like super super disappointing,
you know, when I was like no, um so yeah,
and I don't remember another one that was my best
that's my best one, you though, No, he loved me,
which is why he said no. Record. He loved me,

(47:01):
which is why he said no. And I actually appreciate
he said no in a way that it wasn't no
for me. It was no who owned what would come
of it? It wasn't no to me, you know what
I mean. I learned a lot of things about ownership,
like did you and Prince have those type of conversations?
So I understand now. And he was very obviously super vocal.

(47:22):
He didn't he didn't overpreachum when we were I was
with him, I feel like he was more concerned about
me cursing Prince. He hated it because he was you
know what I mean, So at that point, you know,
that was the most important thing to him, and he
knew I was gonna slip up. You know when I
met Prince, that's the first thing I said, because I

(47:42):
couldn't think of nothing the only thing he what did?
He said, Because it's Prince. I didn't think I'll be
you A certain people you get around, you don't realize
you started scrugg Hey, you know I was reading your
whole witness too, I think to say. And then he
asked for a picture in princeon No, that picture. He
tried to sneak one anyway. We first we see prints,

(48:03):
we go high. I go high, he says, how he
goes witness. Yeah, we'll talk about that one day we're connected,
talk to me. We're talking about that. Princess. No, he said, no,
I don't. He's I don't want to take pictures right now. Okay,
he tried to sneak a picture while Prince is walking off.
I did. He took a picture and it was there.

(48:24):
It was Prince floating away right literally, which is just
it that represents him perfect. And guess what ten seconds
later that's in my phone. That was just black true
story back the picture. And then it was gone, oh
that hurts so bad over het. No, that's when I
let me let me know Princess other worldly being. Question.

(48:45):
Now I get it all a little movie. We got
more with Alicia Keys when we come back it's the
Breakfast Club, Good Morning Morning, everybody is DJ enjy, Angela Yee,
Scharlom and the guy we are the Breakfast Club was
still kicking it with Alicia Keys. Yeah. When you recorded
this album, Keys and you were riding has where you
home during the pandemic, doing during doing this very much
in love, it feels like, definitely, I feel like a

(49:07):
lot of people pick up on the love and it's
I am in love, and so that is actually right.
And I also feel like I've also become able to
express my love for myself, So I think a lot
of the love that you feel is also me loving
all myself and expressing like that love too, So it's both.
It's obviously the love I have for my family, the
love I have for Swiss, and the love that I

(49:27):
have for myself. So I think that's what's coming out.
Letting him hear these songs while you were writing them
and recording them, m oh man, you know, he he definitely.
He always kind of stays out of my way because
he just, you know, lets me have my space, and
he really likes that. But I love to play him
songs after I'm finished, especially when I love them and
when he loves them as fresh. You know, he sees

(49:49):
extra overdramatic about everything. So I love I love that energy.
But have I always been and um not the way
that I thought I did. I thought that I thought
that I was very much clear about what self love meant.
But I realized that I didn't have that confidence and
I didn't have that actual love. If I did, I

(50:10):
would have probably made different choices, or I would probably
have demanded more for myself in a lot of ways,
which is what I understand now. So what about worthiness?
How long did it take you to get to a
feeling of work? Yeah? The worthiness, that's a deep one
because I always you know, I was raised by a
feminist for sure. I always felt very much like I

(50:31):
would talked about I'm worth it and as I'm a
superwoman and all these things, which I actually knew when
I was writing them that I didn't feel that way.
I didn't quite feel the ways I was writing, which
is why I need to write them. But I didn't
realize that it was actually a worth a self worth
issue that I had. So it took a minute longer
than I wish. I wish I got it earlier, but

(50:54):
I would say it within the past, you know, probably
in the past three three to five years. Same. Why
is that? Is that about December twenty nineteen, I got
to the place of worthiness. Who absolutely and do you
know what it was like or just like kind of
accumulated anything. It was a seed somebody planted in me
when they told me that even if you don't feel worthy,
just know God knows you're worthy. And it was like,
you're just gonna You're just gonna feel it. And literally

(51:17):
I remember sitting in the house around this time twenty
nineteen and it just hit me, like, you know what
I'm worthy? You know that's that's a hard one. I
really feel like we don't feel like that a lot.
When you remember when you got to that point, you
remember the moment. I remember the moment I realized that
I didn't feel worthy um and I realized that that

(51:38):
was you know, I realized by being almost so accommodating
that expressed that I didn't feel worthy to fight for myself.
You're trying to please e anybody else. But I also
realized it's something to fighting for yourself. You have to
be like, guess what I want this? What are you
gonna do about it accommodate me as opposed to me

(52:00):
always accommodating you. And so I started to recognize that
that's what I was doing. And I thought it was humility.
I thought it was you know, fluidity. I thought it
was kindness, I thought it was whatever. But I realized
it was actually I felt some type of way about
I didn't have the self worth that I should have had.
It was because of guilt, too, because of when you
come from a certain environment, you have all this success

(52:22):
and you're the breadwinner and all this other stuff. Is
it that too, yep, yep. I think that there was
definitely a lot of a lot of unneeded guilt about
my success and feeling like I had to fit in
and wanting to um, you know, I just didn't want to.
I want to be with the same people I've always
been with. I didn't want to feel like I wasn't
able to they weren't able to relate to me, or

(52:44):
I wasn't able to relate to them. So I think
it's in a lot of ways, I would kind of
just act that way. So yeah, I did think but
that was my own thing. They didn't even feel like that.
That's the thing we do we project for other people.
They didn't even feel like that. So that that's you
know how that goes. Said first you and Swiss, you
didn't see Swiss as that type of person, Like I
didn't have a connection at first, How y'all didn't have

(53:05):
that connection? What didn't you see in Swiss at first?
I was like, Naby, come on, it's like we literally
day and night. And at least I thought that, noting
that that's what I'm saying, y'all, we actually did. We're
exactly the same, but I didn't realize that at the time. Um.
One thing I guess that we are a bit different
is is that he is one million times more flashy

(53:26):
than I am. Definitely, I am, definitely, but I mean
but I'm exercising, I'm practicing, and I love it. I'm
with it. But the but I think that's probably the
biggest one. You know, he he would the first car
he probably got, you know, with some probably Ferrari mans
of Rieti and Zoe something, you know what I mean.

(53:47):
The first car I got was like a mins of
six to six, Like I was just like you know
what I want to me? That was fresh as hell.
I was like I was excited, but I didn't even
think that I could have more. You know, it's always
just kind of about like just doing the basics type
of thing again, which goes back to where we were.
And also I want to actually drive in the street
and actually like be able to go places. And I

(54:09):
realized that now. I didn't understand that then, and so
for me that would probably be what I felt was
so so day and night. He was like super over
the top everything everything. But but I realized that was
just some exercising what he deserves. And that's the thing
that's the thing difference between him and I, and I
think we actually have balanced each other in a beautiful
way with that. It's like you get to express what

(54:31):
you deserve. I think we're taught that we're not supposed
to have nice things because it's somehow unholy or not right.
And I think what happened where that comes from. I
think it's just because people can take that and get
confused about it and get very selfish about it as
opposed to being given. But one thing that Swiss is

(54:52):
is super given. He never does anything for himself before
he makes sure that everybody is straight. So that's the fact.
My first b check. Ever in this business because of Swiss,
you didn't have to do that for me at all.
He's that guy, He's always that guy. So I think
that's what happens. You get might get misconstrued, and then
you start only thinking about yourself as opposed to making

(55:14):
sure that everybody is good. So as long as that's
happening and there's a balance, and there's nothing wrong with happen.
I heard the first piano that you got, he tried
to get you to get rid of it and get
something way nice, and he was like, no, first first
piano she ever received. When I guess when you signed
the deal, they gave you a piano right, and you
wouldn't get rid of He was like this way better pianos,
more expensive piano, and you was like, Nabby, you know,

(55:35):
he wanted everything to be liver Rachi, so you know,
but the I don't think he knew. He didn't realize.
So in our house, it is my first piano, and
that's the piano that I was given by Columbia when
I was sixteen, and so that's like a memory. They
could put it in another room because you guys got
plenty of rooms. We like this one we like. Now,

(55:58):
when did you come up with the idea to do
unlocked and originals? What made you say this is how
it's going to happen. I really wanted to, but first
of all, the originals, the concept of Keys definitely was
always about the piano, and I really did want it
to have that just that stripped backfield. There's something about yeah,
and so I think Keys was really like coming back

(56:19):
home and so that you're just really wanting to be
about the piano and writing it and making it all
about that. And as I did that, I loved it
and it was it was fire, but there was there's
also this other side of me to what you're saying
that I think it's hard to show all of you,
for all of us, I mean, for all of us,
it's hard to really display that you know or have

(56:41):
an opportunity to display that. And it felt like doing
this unlocked piece, not only was it exciting because it
allowed us to reinterpret this these originals, but it allowed
it to be the other side of me that I
wouldn't have wanted just a whole album of unlocked, and
I didn't Maybe I would have wanted a whole original,
but I love them together because it's full speed. I
have a little movie, got more with Alicia Keys. When

(57:02):
we come back. It's the Breakfast Club. God, Morning Morning.
Everybody is DJ Envy, Angela Yee, Charlomagne the guy we
are the Breakfast Club were still kicking it with Alicia Keys. Chalomagne.
You got a song called a Nat King Cole on
the project. Yeah, he's clearly a musical hero of yours, definitely,
And I think it was just the theme that we
started to write. I wrote that with a woman named

(57:23):
Natalie Hemby, who's super fresh, and the theme that we
wanted to write was about because the theme of Keys
and the theme of my life right now is really
about completely never holding back ever again. And to you,
you actually are allowed to be on your bullshit? Who

(57:44):
said you have to tune down? Toned down? Like, where
did that come from? So that was a part of
my life for a long time. I rejected, I don't
want to know more and so and so that song
really describes that, like tear down the chandeliers and be
like your most majestic and to me, Nat King Cole
represents that there's like an elegance and a prowess and

(58:05):
like a legacy and some really a power that he represents.
And that's why that's why we wanted to call it
that ill though, because a lot of people actually don't
even know Nat King cole believe it or not. I
think there's a whole generation of people that don't, you know.
And that's fresh though, I think, because you know, because
I think it turns people on to like, well, who

(58:25):
was that and what is that? I think you know,
like a song or two because you over the holiday
as you hear like unforgetable, you know what I mean,
and you're like ter exactly. But but so that that wordplay,
it was more about be unforgettable like Na kincole Um.
By the way, the Wayne verse on that, to me
is so masterful. I love how he I love that verse. Well,

(58:47):
what when for somebody who doesn't fit into an era musically?
What is your inspiration? What do you have into everything? Everything?
I love to I love to listen to everything. I
love to listen to things that I love new discoveries.
I love listening to new artists. I love, you know,
taking it back to like the errors of the thirties

(59:09):
and the fifties and the sixties and the seventies going
through the errors are ill. So I just think listening
to everything and then just allowing it to kind of
be in there and then go wherever it goes. It's
part of what creates the time is I think it's
because I actually love all the errors that it sounds sexual.
I was listening to Drink Champs. You were talking about
the Empire State Record, and you said when you first
did it, you did it in LA and Jay called

(59:29):
you and was like, could you change the vocals? What
was your mind frame at that point, like you know
who you're talking to was wasn't at that at any point.
I feel like he probably had a really hard time
making that call. I don't feel like he wanted to
make that call. You can't have it, nobody have the engineer,
Jay said, you know, um, so I feel like it

(59:52):
was like, hey, how you doing, how's the kids? How's moms? Like? Yeah,
can you change your verse? Yeah? Now he was just
like a sub and and I was like, hey, you know,
I was excited because I was like, okay, we got
the record, and I knew I was really trying hard
to meet his deadline, and so I worked hard to
get it and so I was like, yeah, you got it,
you heard it. And I feel like right when I
asked him you got it, you heard it was right

(01:00:13):
where he was like yeah, and then he was just like,
you know, I was thinking. I was just thinking that.
I was wondering, do you think you could do one
more time? Could you do it one more time? And
I definitely remember I was like what In my head,
I was like, what one more time I did this ship?

(01:00:34):
But he was like, because I just I just feel like,
maybe one more time really gonna get the vibe. And
I had to respect it, because you know, you do.
It's true. There's an energy on a record and you
can feel it right away, and it was his record.
He knew what he was looking for, so I had
to respect that I possibly could have gave it one
more time. And I did realize that I was sick
because I sang it sick because I was trying to

(01:00:55):
hit the deadline, and so you know, it's just you
could tell. But I think what he really wanted was
me to talk more on it, because he was like,
could you do more of the you know you go, uh, yeah,
you do all of that. Can I can I get
a little more of that. So he just had the
direction that gave me I can and I took it.
If you could do a collab album with somebody, who
would it be? Oh damn. I would want it to

(01:01:17):
be something crazy, like three or four people from like
whole different universes. I think that would be so ill.
Who would it be? Got it? Okay, it's gonna be
Um Kendrick M that's it. Yeah, that's what it is.

(01:01:39):
I feel like that would be almost impossible to get
done between Honestly, it's gonna be a chicky one, but
I think it had sound out reading yea hou at
least a record. Yeah, let's go. I feel like we
could get an EP, maybe four songs, it's something, let's see.
I'm gonna push for it. I feel like you might
be just planting the seed. I think that might be
already done, maybe a record or something. I wanted to ask,

(01:02:04):
what would this version of Alicia Keys tell Alicia in
two thousand and one? I think she would tell her too,
like don't back down, don't back down, like what you
what you see, what you feel, what you need, There's
nothing wrong with that, and that you deserve it, so
ask for it, like before you before you think you
gotta pivot or change or fix or accommodate, like ask

(01:02:28):
for what you want first, and definitely like to know
that you you know what you're doing, nobody knows what
to do better than you, because I think that that
happens to a lot of us. We start to listen
to a bunch of people that we think no more,
or they've been in the game longer, or they done more,
or they we think they could take us somewhere we

(01:02:49):
can't take ourselves. But that's actually fake, It's not real. Son,
Did you ever backdown? Because I don't see you as
a as a somebody that would backdown. It was more
in little ways, not like you know, not liking I'm
definitely strong minded, strong headed for sure, but I do
feel like I could overcompromise. I remember you told the

(01:03:09):
story about a photographer who made you feel uncomfortable and
had you like I'm buying your pants a little and
now do this and yeah, and for women out there,
you don't have to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable.
You feel like this is all right. I'm just I
don't want to be difficult and I'm just yeah, or
you feel like again, Man, this is a really this
is a major photographer. They shoot all the time. They

(01:03:31):
shoot the biggest this and the biggest that. And if
he says that I should probably unbutton the top part
of my pants, maybe that's okay. That's probably good because
he no, it's good. It don't feel good. Don't ask
me to unbut my pants? Are you crazy? You creek?
Like you know, it's okay, it's okay to like, it's

(01:03:52):
okay to like guard protect yourself, man, protect yourself. Nobody's
gonna protect you, So protect yourself. And that's what I
would tell her, right absolutely. Album is out right now, Keys,
and we appreciate you for joining us that hopefully we'll
have to be another eleven years before you come home. No,
it's Alicia, kids, It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning, the
Breakfast Club. Your mornings will never be the same. It's here.

(01:04:14):
The most darsteaded black western ever made. The Hearted Day Fall,
directed by James Samuel, alongside a killer soundtrack that features
original songs by jay Z, Kid Cutty and Moore. Watch
now on Netflix and stream the soundtrack now on all platforms.
Can make sure you're telling the watch out for Florida.

(01:04:35):
The craziest people in America come from the Bronx and
all of Florida. Yes, you are a donkey. The Florida
man a chapped and atm for a very strange reason.
It gave him too much money. Florida man is arrested
after definitely say he's rigged the door to his home
and an attempt to electro kid his pregnant. White police
arrested in Orlando man for talking a familia the Breakfast

(01:04:56):
Club Bitchy Donkey Other Day with Charlom Haine, a guy
I don't know what y'all keep, then he can get
you elected. Well, little dude ball Okay. Not only am
I getting them like this, I gotta get Jacksonville to Day. Okay,
Donkey to Day goes to a Jacksonville woman named ken
Yeta Gordon. Salute to everyone who listens to the Breakfast
Club on ninety three point three to beat in Jacksonville.
Salute to the young man Quail p Okay. That record

(01:05:18):
he got out titled Charlemagne. When the world officially opens
back up, you know, not like Florida open. I mean,
you know, like open open, not I don't give an
f open back up. But opens back up, so the
rest of us who don't take risks like you Floridians
can move around. When I come to the nine or four,
I want everybody to sing my name like Quail PR.
I'm not responding. Let's practice NB, say my name Charlemagne,

(01:05:40):
Hey yo, Quail P. What's happening my brother? How you
young king? What's happening to nephew? See how I ignored
Envy because he didn't sing my name the way I
wanted him to. Okay, but Quail P did it right? Now?
What did your uncle Charla always say about Florida? The
craziest people in America come from the Bronx and all
of Florida, and today once again through all of us

(01:06:01):
who notice to be true correct see ken yet To.
Gordon was arrested and charged with strong arm robbery and
possession with intent to use drug parad familia. I personally
don't think anyone who gets arrested on an intent to
use charge should be sent to jail. They should be
sent to a rehab facility. But that's just my opinion
and has nothing to do with this story. Really, But
what did can yet To do to get arrested for

(01:06:22):
strong armed robbery. Well, according to police, she robbed the bank. Look, man,
times is hard and the slums we're from, I tell
y'all all the time, people are starving. Your stomach. Don't
stop growling because the check is on the way. Your
stomach stops growling. When you get that check, cash it,
and now you got some bread to buy, some bread
to feed yourself. Okay, not making excuses for this woman
at all, because we all make choices in life and

(01:06:44):
have to be held accountable for the consequences of our actions.
And when you rob a bank nine times out of ten,
you're going to jail. I'm just simply trying to get
you all in the mindset of this woman. Okay. Now,
whenever I think about bank robberies, first thing I think
about is how much did they get right? Second thing
I think about is how did they get away? What
was the getaway vehicle? There's literally nothing you can't find

(01:07:06):
online because I google top ten getaway cars for robbing banks.
Let's run them down real quick. Number ten is the
nineteen thirty two Ford V eight. That's the old black
cars you see in all the old black and white movies.
Number nine is the Toyota Corolla. Number eight, it's an ambulance.
See it's all about something that is fast, is something
that blends in. Nothing blends in like an ambulance. Number
seven is a Cadillac CTSV wagon. Number six is the taxi.

(01:07:27):
Yet again, another vehic blends right in. Number five is
the General Lee. You know, the bright orange Dodge charge
you the duke boards you're driving duke for hazard, you
know that one. Number four is the Alpine armored Cadillac Escalade.
Don't know where you just find one of those. Number
three is the Porsche Cayenne Turbo s. Number two is
the Dodge Charger SRT three ninety two. That's for speed.

(01:07:49):
And the number one getaway car for bank robberies is
the incas Hearing APC. That's the big armor truck that
the SWAT team draft. No regular civilian is gonna have that,
so I don't even know that's on there. But the
point of all these vehicles is either for speed are
to blend in. Well, ken Yeta must have been going
for the blend in part because she damn show wasn't
going for the speed. Would you like to know what

(01:08:10):
her getaway vehicle a choice was? Whould you what is it?
Let's go to WJA XTBS forty seven for the report police.
The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office is releasing the identity of a
woman accused of robbing a bank from her wheelchair. This
is a new mug shot of ken Yetta Gordon. Actually,
news Jacks broke the news yesterday when police say that
a woman became angry while discussing her account at the

(01:08:32):
Region's bank in downtown Jacksonville. She's accused of telling a
worker that she was going to kill everyone inside and
that this was a robbery. She left, they say, in
a motorized wheelchair after getting the cash. She was arrested
just a few blocks away. Stop. I don't like when
you go rogue drop. All right, Jesus, what the flaida

(01:08:55):
is going on here? All right? There's only three people
who could have truly gotten away with this crime. One
Rolling Ray okay. Two Snoop Dogg's Character and training Day
Three Professor Charles Xavier. Those are the only three individuals
who who could have gotten away with robbing a bank
in a wheelchair. Now, let me tell you something. This
is why Florida is full of brilliant idiots. Because robbing

(01:09:16):
a bank in a wheelchair, truly is the best way
to blend in, even if you don't really need a wheelchair.
If you roll in the bank, rob the bank, then
roll out, okay, all the block of two, all right,
once you get up and walk, ditch the wheelchair. Now
you don't even fit the description of what the bank
teller saw. It's genius, yes, all right. The sad part

(01:09:37):
is this woman didn't have a plan. I'm not encouraging
people to rob banks, No, I'm just saying, can yet
them picture a plan before you picture yourself rolling into
a bank asking for a big bank roll and listen,
just because I have understanding of this woman's situation, meaning
I understand why she would be in the mind frame
the robber bank simply because I understand the current economic

(01:09:58):
condition a lot of people are facing. It's easy to say,
can ye to, should have just rolled with the punch's
life was throwing at her, But no, folks is broke
and you can't tell people to just roll with it. Okay.
In life, we all have a role to play, but
sometimes what your casted ass is out of your control.
Remember when Kodak Black said he can't even roll in peace?
Remember that neither ken ken Yeida, because she's starting waiting

(01:10:23):
on this damn government to roll out these damn stimulus checks.
By the way, she's only thirty nine, only thirty nine.
I'm inspired by people who keep rolling no matter their age.
But she's just thirty nine, and she's at the point where,
even though she's disabled in a wheel, just she has
to rob a bank at thirty nine. Think about that, Canda.

(01:10:46):
I feel your pain. But even though I feel your pain,
I still have to give this story the credit it
deserves for being stupid. But can Yida, I'm praying for you.
I want you to get the help you need for
your drug problem because they found a crack pipe on you. Yes,
she was riding dirty for real, But I'm telling you,
can you to? I want you to get clean, put
the bs behind you, and one day, I promise you,

(01:11:07):
the good times will roll. Please give can you to Gordon?
The sweet sounds of the Hamletones. Oh No, you are
the dogee of the day, the dogee oh the day.
Ye Oh. We're not gonna play a game. Ya don't

(01:11:30):
want to play a game. We're not gonna do that.
We're not gonna play a game I don't want to play. Well,
I have no problem rolling out a game of Jess
what race it? Alright? Alright, here are the context clues.
All right. I don't even know if he's a contact clue.
I don't even know if I use that correctly. But
can you to Gordon? Okay, Jacksonville, Florida, robbed the bank

(01:11:52):
and a motorized wheelchair. Oh you want a description? I
need to give a description. I don't give a description.
A little quick descriptions. Com you the description that the
police were using. Hold okay, this is the description. Hold on?
You see if I could find it? Hold on, officers
are looking for an adult, blank female, thirty nine years
of age with short blonde hair. Oh, I got you now.

(01:12:13):
We thought it was easy. I thought it was easy.
You thought short blonde hair? Can YadA? I said, can
you do? Can you you know that's how you pronounced it?
Can you eat the garden? Ramirez? All right? Who said Ramirez?
I'm down for the profile and but go okay, Porter Angelie,

(01:12:34):
are you sure you don't want to play? I think
it is a white man, a white man, white man? Okay, okay,
all right, all right, I see where we take it.
It uh, And I ain't telling y'all whether y'all wright
or wrong. We're just gonna lead this. Why didn't you
ask me to sing your name? Why you only asked
um Envy? Well, now I asked him the same my name.

(01:12:57):
I thought you want to him to sing it? No,
he said say it you want to say? I can
say his name ahead, Charlo, go ahead, quail P. I'm
not telling y'all's black three month. I'm not telling y'all.
All right, all right, what can you to go again?
Thank you? Interpretation O charmckay, y'all guess figure it out
on your own, go do your own research. I'm not

(01:13:18):
telling y'all white man, I agree with you. That's what
I saw. All right. We got more. Don't move. It's
the best of the Breakfast Club. The breakfast Club, the
breakfast Club. Your morning's will never be the same. Everybody's
DJ Envy Angela Ye, Charlomagne, the guy. We all the

(01:13:40):
Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building. Yes,
indeed we have Judge Faith Jenkins. Welcome back, Hello, thank you.
I'm doing great. It's been years. It's been three years
since I've been here. Twenty times twice. Yes, wow, wow,
I know what I changed for you in three years.
A lot changed three years. I got a puppy, Cooper.

(01:14:03):
He is a cavalier Yorky Poodle mix, very energetic little guy,
but a lot of responsibility. There wasn't expecting that. It's
a dog a lot on the bad. No, okay, good, No,
he's got a lot on the bad. He sleeps in
his own room. We's his own room. Well, yeah, because
I wanted him to learn very early on to be independent,

(01:14:23):
so we put him. We create trained him early on
with two things we were able to do. Create train
him and potty train him. Okay, if you don't do
that from the beginning, then they hate it. Yes, yes,
you don't train them to get used to that, and
they'll go in there. Like my dog would look all
sad every time, because in the beginning I would let
her just like roam around. But then I was like, okay,
sometimes we have to put her up if she's been bad. Yeah,

(01:14:44):
and she'll look all sad and then I feel bad. Yeah.
But what the trainer said, from the very beginning, the
biggest mistake people make is they give the dogs too
much freedom. Absolutely, and so you have to rain that
in early on, but yeah, a lot a lot of
other things change. I got married married, yes, thank you,
thank you, and that I'm sure early on kind of

(01:15:13):
trade over so everything applies. Uh so got Mary started
divorce court, switch judge shows you also judge faith and
they alm on divorce Court. And then of course I
wrote system settled the court. It's interesting, is the show
real like when you say, when when you go to
the divorce court after all you divorced? Or is it
more after that? Really they change the premise of the

(01:15:35):
show several years ago where you can be on the
show and don't have to be married. So there's a
there's a there's a different aspect of the show before
Your Vows where people come in they've been in their
relationship for a while and they're just they're trying to
decide to get whether to get married or not. So
that's a part of the show where we address the

(01:15:56):
dudes and don't and if if they actually should perceive
and move forward to the next level in their relationship.
So it's really opened up to where it's not just
married couples. And then legally, do we give divorces on
the show? No, we give advice on what to do
when you're at this breaking point, and people sometimes bring

(01:16:17):
their papers and we will refer them to other attorneys.
Friends could come on the show and friends, no, no, no,
we haven't gone that far opening up. It's it's it's
real people in relationships with real issues. I didn't know that.
I didn't know that. I thought that when they go
to the voice court, they get legally. Legally, we cannot

(01:16:39):
grant a divorce per se, but we can give them
advice on how to proceed in going to the next level.
I had someone come in and she'd been married for
eleven years and they have two children together, and he
has three other kids. And it was really crazy because

(01:17:02):
this man would take her kids and go to the
other women and the other kids. They all knew each other,
but she remained uninvolved but just knowing about the other relationship.
And I thought, how do you get to that level
in your life where this is such a painful experience
for you, but you're accepting it under some kind of

(01:17:24):
premise in your mind that it's better to stay in
this marriage because you think having him around would be
better than nothing at all, staying in a toxic relationship.
A relationship that's not good for you, doesn't help your children.
All you're doing is normalizing really inappropriate behavior in front

(01:17:44):
of them, and they in turn, they see it all
and it affects what their relationships would be like later
on in life. Some people feel like once they take
a vow, then they can't break that vow because it's
no matter what, or for better or worse the best.
And I've heard some people feel like, you know, they're
relying on that. Some people treat women if they leave

(01:18:05):
a relationship or leave a man for doing something like
they're wrong because they didn't stick through it, because you
got to be right or die. Yeah, that's a that's
a mistake that people make because you know, at all
times in your life there are a lot of people
that you love in your life, and one of the
tough things about life is a lot of times you
have to walk away from people that you love in
order to protect your peace. Now, that's kind of like

(01:18:27):
the chapter in your book, are dealing with rejection When
life set you free? Yeah, I mean when one of
the big chapters in the book, one of my favorite
chapters is the chapter on rejection. Because we all go
through rejection, and for a long time I didn't know
how to handle it. So and I moved to New
York right after I got out of school, so I
was in the city trying to figure all of this
stuff out. And I'll never forget one of the first

(01:18:48):
times I got rejected. I was I was actually in college.
There was an annual event called Casino Night at my
school and I wasn't dating anyone. I didn't date much
in college at all. I was really about the books
and all the organizations, then cheering and all that stuff.
And I asked a guy to go to Casino Night
with me, just innocent, not a really a date, but
just go to this event. And he hesitated, he paused,

(01:19:13):
and then he told me no. And I remember because
he was We were friends, and he was a good
looking guy, he was cute. I knew he was single,
so I thought, well, you can't just go to Casino Night.
But he told me no, and I remember being embarrassed
at the time and avoiding him for the rest of
the semester, not wanting to see him. Well, five years later,

(01:19:34):
I was walking down the street in my college town
and I ran into him and he pulled me to
the side. I was with some friends. He pulled me
to the side. He was like, Hey, can I talk
to you for a second. I said, okay. He said,
do you remember several years ago when you asked me
to casino night? He said, well, I wanted to tell
you that I really liked you, but I didn't have
a suit. I didn't have anything to wear. And I
was too embarrassed to tell you that I didn't have

(01:19:55):
a suit or anything to wear. But I thought it
was really interesting because how many times do we take
rejection or someone telling us know, and then we go
down a rabbit hole and we make it about us
that's right? Wow? Am I not good enough? Am I
not smart enough? Am I'm not pretty enough? And it
could absolutely have nothing to do with you, And everything
to do with them is something that they're going through

(01:20:17):
or their perspective, or some guy who just doesn't have
a suit. So I learned from that experience and then
going through other experiences dealing with rejection in my life,
how not to internalize it and take it so personal
all the time, whether it's with a love interest, a job,
whatever it is that you're dealing with rejection. Most often

(01:20:37):
it's just not about you. So Luke to Judge Phi Jenkins.
We're talking to her right now. Her new book sys
Don't Settle, How to Stay Smart and Matters that a
Heart is out right now, and I want to tell
y'all to man, make sure y'all tune in tonight to
my late night talk show, to God's Honest Truth. It
comes on at ten pm on Comedy Central. Okay, you
need to get in tune. If you're not in tune,
and you need to tune in tonight because we got

(01:20:59):
Vice President Amala Harris joining us under God's Honest Truth
on Comedy Central tonight at ten pm. Join me, why
don't you? And why you're watching? Use the hashtag TGHT.
We'll be back with more. Judge Faith Jenkins. The Breakfast
Club was still kicking it with Judge Faith Jenkins. Show
me if you weren't Judge Faith Jenkins, we have came

(01:21:19):
up to you five years ago and apologizing all that
it was five years later. I was. I was just
running into him at the school. So we try to
ask you that again, be like, but I got a
money for a suit now, No, I think he just
wanted to tell me. It was like he wanted to
get that off of his chest. He really wanted me
to know because he gave me no explanation at the time.
A lot of you know a lot of times, and

(01:21:40):
we have to release ourselves from wanting to know why
because I you know, I talk about this in the
book too, how I would call people and try to
find out, Well, I just want closure and I want
to know why this didn't happen. You know what's going
on here, and you have to release this need to
want to know why. Closure doesn't come from other people,

(01:22:01):
it comes from you. Because I always say, don't give
anybody else that kind of power over your life. No
one should have the power. When I got married to
my husband, Kenny always say that he um. When I
got married to Kenny, I remember at being a time
and this was just a year and eight months ago,
by the way. So I spent a long time out

(01:22:22):
in these dating streets, living, learning, growing and really having
an appreciation for what I knew would work for me
in a relationship and what wouldn't. What I was willing
to compromise on, what I wasn't willing to compromise on.
All my likes and dislikes, This is what you should
be doing when you're single, figuring out who you are.
You're you know, you got married and everybody's path is different.

(01:22:44):
You got married at an early age, so you grew
up together with your wife, whereas for me, I was
single for so long and very independent. I was wondering,
how am I going to mesh with somebody else when
I haven't lived with anybody even since college. So all
of the things you're thinking about. But I remember at
the time when I got to the place where I
knew I was at a point in my life I

(01:23:04):
wanted to get married. I was so happy with where
I was in my life, and I thought, I want
to bring somebody in my life who's going to add
to this happiness, not make me happy. And like you said,
sometimes people get married and they think once we get married,
he'll turn into the person, or still turn into the person.
Things will stay to be and that does not happen.

(01:23:25):
Like that. Marriage doesn't change anything about anybody. It may
change your last name, but that's it. So people come
in they want they're dating their reality, but they want
to marry potential. And that is a big mistake because
you have to learn radical acceptance accept this person for
who they are, and if their core values aren't lined
up with your core values, what about a wedding do

(01:23:46):
you think is going to change that? Because all it
does when you get married is really revealing more about
who people are. It's revealing what's already there. And so
if you don't like what's there, nothing about getting married
is going to change that. It's only going to a
exacerbate any problems that you already see on the circle.
What did you mean, Kenny? And how did you know
he was the one? I met him through a blind date? Really? Yeah,

(01:24:09):
I had just gone through a breakup six months prior
to meeting him, and I had a conversation with God.
I had a real honest conversation and I said, I've
learned all of these lessons in my life at this point,
what else is there for me to learn in the
relationship space? I really believe it's time, And I wrote,
I took a sheet of paper down and I said,
within this next year, this is what I want to
see happen in my life. And one of those things

(01:24:31):
is I want to be my husband. And I took
that sheet of paper down and I wrote that, and
I go through this stage, all this this process in
the book of what I did to manifest what I
wanted to happen in my life. And six months later
I met him and I was not just out there
like every day, okay, is that is that him? Is
that my husband? Like with everyone? I was just living
my life. So I decided I was going to go

(01:24:52):
and take some singing lessons again. I was going to
put out a Christmas album and well, you got bored
down to fa. I was gonna put out a kid
hit single, hit single and uh. And so I started
taking some voice lessons. I met up with this super producer,
Aaron Lindsay, and the moment I sat down with him,

(01:25:14):
he said, for him it clicked. She should meet Kenny.
He said, there they would be perfect for each other.
And so he set us up and we met. In
the rest is history. We just went to lunch, no pressure.
We sat and talked for two hours. What does the
pressure like for you? And people asking all the time
when are you gonna get married? When are you gonna
have kids? Because you discussed that. Also, Yeah, it's hard

(01:25:35):
because being single in my twenties and in my thirties
and being from Louisiana. So I would go home for
the holidays, and I had this one uh aunt, Freda,
who would show up with her watery mac and cheese,
but always, you know, questioning me and my relationships. Some
names have been changed, but she could show up. And

(01:26:00):
but then I started getting it from strangers, right. And
if you're not careful, you can really internalize that and
can make you feel like somehow you're lacking. Because no
one asked me do you want to get married? They
would just say why aren't you as if there were
no other option for me, I get wrong. And so

(01:26:20):
if you're not careful, though, that pressure can get to
you and you can start to feel like, is me
being single something I need to explain to other people?
Is this something I need to defend. No, there are
almost eight billion people on this planet. We can't all
be doing the same things at the same time. We
all have a different life path, a different life journey.
Please stop asking people when they're going to get married,

(01:26:40):
when they're going to have kids, and let people live
their lives. So I talk about that in my book
How do you navigate when the questioning comes for you?
I will tell you this. I was never unhappily single.
I lived my life. If I had waited, I would
have lived half my life just existing because I just
got married last year. So I just made a determination

(01:27:01):
that I was going to live my best life. And
guess how I met my husband going to do something
that I just loved doing, going to pursue a different hobby,
something that I was interested in, singing again, and that's
how I ended up meeting my husband. And I hear
so many other women talk about that, how they were
doing something that they loved in their own lives and
that's how they met the person that they ended up

(01:27:23):
having this authentic love experience with. So in my book,
it's really a practical guide because I did not have
these huge examples of love, like I said, And this
is the book that I would have wanted to have
when I moved to New York at twenty five years old.
I wish somebody would have given me something like this
to read, as you were a whole and happy when
you met Kenny Austin. When I think that's important too,

(01:27:44):
because sometimes people feel like they need the other person
to complete them, when really you both should be complete
people when you come together to have a great relationship, yes,
and that happiness and wholeness. As you know, it's a
journey because as you get older, it's actually hard harder
to fall in love as you get older, especially you know,
being single in my twenties and thirties, because you've been

(01:28:05):
through heartbreak. And if you're not careful over time, you
can become very cynical about love. And you cannot be
a cynic about love and expected to attract it in
your life at the same time. Break that down here
you talking about that in a book. I think, I
think that's very important. Well, you can't be a cynic
about love and expect to attract it in your life
at the same time. At some point you have to

(01:28:25):
be able to work on releasing the past. You can't
say all men, all men are dogs. I want one
exactly exactly because I went through that time where all
of those things were really about fear of opening myself
up to love again, and I realized that that fear
wasn't serving me. All it was was poisoning my perspective.

(01:28:46):
And so if you really want love, you can't have
this poisonous mindset about what you really think about it
based on your past. But I also don't believe that
you can just, at the drop of a hat say, Okay,
I'm gonna free myself from my past. Nothing about my
past is gonna bother me anymore. I'm not going to
bring this to my next relationship. That's not realistic. What
is realistic, though, it's recognizing what your triggers are and

(01:29:09):
working on it. It is a process so that you
don't make somebody new come in your life and pay
for something they had nothing to do within your past.
All we Little movie got more with Judge Faith Jenkins.
When we come back, it's the Breakfast Club. Good morning,
the Breakfast Club more everybody to see j Envy, Angela Yee,

(01:29:30):
Charlemagne the guy we are the Breakfast Club was still
kicking it with Judge Faith Jenkins. How does he propose
here in Central Park than Paul? Yeah, and my wife
in Central Park? Yeah? So who sings better then? Who? Oh? Yeah?
Well come on down there. I'm dealing with a professional
here who's been doing this a long time, twenty five years.

(01:29:51):
But I don't sink in front of Kenny was was
was therapy a requirement? Because all my sister friends and
he refused the data man right now, or even take
a man serious if they're not doing the work on themselves.
We took things a step further. We went to pre
engagement counseling. Wow, what is that? Before we got engaged?

(01:30:12):
We did counseling sessions with a pastor. Because for me,
I think after you get engaged and you've announced and
you've told people, and then when you go to counseling
or therapy sessions, it's harder for people to say, well,
hold up, wait a minute, is this what I really
want to do, because everybody knows there's that extra pressure there.
So for us, things were going, things had gone so well,

(01:30:34):
and a lot of people think, by the way, oh, well,
what's going on? Are you having problems? Is that? Is
that where you were going to counseling? It was the opposite.
We weren't having these issues and we were we were
so in sync on what our core values were. I thought, Okay,
I haven't been married before. Are there questions I'm not asking?
Is there is there something else that I need to

(01:30:56):
delve into that I'm not so, what's the best way
to find that out? Go to a professional? It was
my idea. It was my idea. I said, So was
he nervous when you said that? Because not at all,
not at all. And I thought that's a good way
to be proactive. So proactive because I do feel like
in a relationship, because you won't always get along, you

(01:31:17):
have to know how to handle each other when issues
come up. Absolutely, how to deal with conflict in an
emotionally mature way, how to deal with anger and an
emotionally buture way, because that's really the key. The quickest
way to ruin romance in any relationship and marriage is unkindness.
I think you got to hang first. Corinthians thirteen. Was
it four through eight? Up in your house? As a

(01:31:40):
constant reminder, Yeah, because that's when you talk about therapy,
you talk about counseling, that's what you're talking about. You're
talking about getting out in front of it something. You
don't wait till the wheels fall off and then try
to go and salvage the relationship and go to therapy.
Then wait till your house gets ribbed to get an
alarm system exactly exactly, so you're out in front of
it and you're doing the work in advance. And so
that's what we did when we went to our pre

(01:32:00):
engagement counseling before we ever got engaged, when we were
talking about getting married, and then when we did get engaged,
we did it with so much peace because we've been
through these counseling sessions. And I remember at the end,
and by the way, Kenny was like, if he weren't
a singer, he would be I think he would be
a preacher. I think he would be I think he
would be a counselor. There's the wisdom that came out
in those sessions. I remember my counselor turning because he,

(01:32:22):
you know, he's been through I didn't marry somebody who's
who hasn't been tested right like I have. We both
had relationships that didn't work out for one reason or another,
and we've both been tested in those areas, and so
when we went through those counseling sessions to hear the
wisdom they came out of him. I remember the pastor
turning around at one point and he was looking like, Okay,
what do you have to say. I heard what he said,

(01:32:44):
what's your response to that? And I was like, uh,
you know. But at the end, I remember him saying,
I have no reservations whatsoever in blessing the two of
you and moving forward in marriage A plus, and counseling
we got an A plus. Fires I know you talk
about triggers and red flags also in the book, So

(01:33:04):
for you, what were some of those? For me? I
would not date someone who had a history of infidelity.
I'm not saying that people don't change, right, but for me,
um patterns in people's lives reveal a lot. Most guys
aren't going to admit to you that they have a
history of infidelity either. You have to do your due diligence.

(01:33:26):
And that's a section. That's a section in the book.
You do your due diligence. You do the best you can.
I mean you sometimes I'm not saying turn your house
into a cside lab in the back end and pluck
a hair while he's sleeping, But I'm just saying, do
your due diligence, if you know, But if you know.
See a lot of people know, though, Angela, and they
still choose to look the other way. It's like, Okay,

(01:33:47):
there's a red flag, but how red is this red flag?
Or how exactly how far back have you going on
Instagram and you're snooping? Yeah, I perused history of infidelity. Yeah,
a history of infidelity is a red flag to me. Um, honesty.

(01:34:07):
If you tell me you're a vegan, but I see
you on Snapchat with wings, you know, it's like, just
be just be honest, don't don't don't try to present
yourself as somebody that you're not, because to me, those
little things really do add up if you're not really
anything else. Also, work ethic a good work ethic because

(01:34:29):
I'm very ambitious and so when you know, though, when
you just know what you're just know what your red
flags are, what things are important to you. If you
know you don't want to date long distance, don't complain
to me about your boyfriend not calling you from Dubai
if he lives in Dubai. So, Um, just knowing what
they are and identifying them and recognizing them, you know,

(01:34:50):
red means stop. People will not change for you. They
change for themselves. And no one wants to change because
you put a gun to their head. It has to
come from within. Do you think your healing journey your
love journey, it's part of your healing journey anyway. I
don't project on my husband or on people in my

(01:35:11):
life or responsibility that they have to help me heal
in every aspect. I think when people come in your life,
in your life, they are a part of your journey,
but that responsibility really has to come from you. And
when I have women in divorce court and they're very

(01:35:33):
broken and they've been through a lot, and I tell them,
I say, you know, the trauma that you experience in
your past was not your responsibility, It was not your fault,
but your healing really is. So I never wanted to
project any hurt from my past onto somebody else for
them to take their responsibility to heal me, because again,

(01:35:54):
that power had to come from me, you know. In closing,
I do want to say, sis, don't settle. Some people
have only that settling down means you settle, right, They're like, oh,
it's in the word settling down. So you can't have everything,
and sometimes you have to just compromise and say, Okay,
I'm willing to settle. But to see how you've managed
to wait to find the right person and not settle

(01:36:16):
and get exceed the expectations that you had, I think
as a testament to making sure that you can know
that you can have it all right. Your career, your
relationship and in your own timing and not have to
worry about what anybody else has to say. Right, your
life's journey is your journey. And I think that especially
as women, we have to embrace and love what our

(01:36:39):
journey is. No comparison is the thief of joy, and
stop comparing our lives to somebody else. And you know,
have these milestones and your happiness can't be tied to
getting married, Your happiness can't be tied to having children.
Your happiness can't be tied to your next TV show,
your next job, because then you'll always be chasing a
carrot on a moving stick. So what this really is

(01:37:01):
about is learning to be happy right where you are.
Look at everything that's happened in the in the past
year and a half and what we've learned about life.
If you don't love today where you are today, then
you just missed out on a day of living your life.
Because there are a lot of people who wish they
could be in your shoes right now, just living. So
when I talk about not settling, it really is about

(01:37:21):
embracing your journey and being at peace where you are
and not allowing somebody else to pressure you to be
somewhere where you're not supposed to be because this is
your journey, this is what you're doing, all right, well, sis,
don't settle faith, Jenkins. I had given Steve Harvey a
run for his money quote in the front of the yes, yes, yes,
he's a good friend and supported my book and I

(01:37:41):
really appreciate that. And all of you too joining us
this morning and thank you. No, that's not your first
Christmas together. Second, it's our second. Yeah, that's an amazing Christmas.
Thank you duet or something for us where for Christmas?
Your Christmas song? Duet? Oh you know, Angel, don't put
me on the spot like that. Maybe one day, Jenkins.

(01:38:02):
It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning, So Breakfast Club, Your
morning's will never be the same. One of y'all is
dj NV. You could save over five hundred dollars on
car insurance with the General Insurance. You heard that right.
Take a closer look at the General and call eight
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(01:38:25):
Some restrictions applying everybody, DJ Envy, ANGELA Yee, charlomage mcguy.
We are the Breakfast Club. Now, Charlomagne, you got a
positive note. Yes, the positive note of to day is
simply this, never blame anyone in life. The good people
give you happiness. The worst people give you a lesson.
The best people give you memories. Remember that, especially during
the holiday season. Breakfast Club, you know I'm finish for y'all.

(01:38:48):
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