Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm a homegrown that knows a little bit about everything
and everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
You don't know if you don't lie about that, right,
Laurie came, Hey, y'all, what's up.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
It's Lauren l. Rosa and this is the latest with
Lauren L. Rosa. This is your DELI dig on.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
All things pop culture, entertainment, news and the conversations that
shake the room. Now today if we're checking in behind
the scenes of the Grind And no, we haven't checked
it in a while. It's been some time. I don't it's
not that I don't know how I feel. I guess
that there's like a level of.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Shock and sadness.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yesterday the news broke that Malcolm Jamal Warner uh tragically
passed away in a drowning.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
He was on a family vacation in.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Costa Rica when he went into the water and was
taken down by a current and did not survive. He
was pronounced dead on the scene after being rescued by
some bystanders and you know, just didn't survive. Which man
just even talking about it right now, we're talking about
it this morning on the Breakfast Club. Make sure you
(01:11):
guys will check out all our coverage over there as
well too. When we got finished our first segment, I
said to Just and I'm like, yo, I'm literally shaking,
And I think what the feeling is is just like man,
death is.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
It can be so sudden and just so unplanned.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Not that anybody plans, you know, something like this, but
I feel like he's been such a staple in entertainment
and black storytelling my whole life. So it felt like,
you know, this was somebody close to me, because I
think I text someone and said, man, like, this is
just so crazy. It came out of nowhere, and the
response was, that's normally how death happened. We're getting on
(01:49):
into the latest right now, because you know, as we
talk about, you know, the passing of Malcolm Jamal Warner.
You know, it's all over the news today, right and
it was yesterday, all over the headlines, all over the news.
It's anything everybody is talking about any and everybody are
talking about it.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I went on like a deep dive just now.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
And prepare for the podcast because I'm like, you know,
I want to talk about michaelm Jomo wanna on the podcast,
but I don't want to just report it as news
like I don't want to just say, Okay, here's what
happened here, how here's how you passed away. We did
that in the beginning. You guys got that, But I
think that with this, it's like it's hard to just
treat this as just a headline, which is very crazy
(02:33):
for me to say, because you know, I live in
a world of headlines. But this just feels so different
because of the you know, untimely like the untimely passing,
like you know, just how this came about and the
story behind it, and you know, hearing him talk so
much about family and his daughter and you know, his
wife being in love with his life, and his daughter
(02:54):
being a lover of his life, and just having to
think about, you know, all the people that loved him
being without him now. I don't know, it just doesn't feel
good to make this just a story, just the headline.
So I wanted to dive a bit deeper here and
have a conversation about the passing of Malcolm Jamal Warner
and some of the work that he left this earth doing.
And I think a lot of people, I know for myself,
(03:17):
when we think about what we want people to say
about us after we can't say it ourselves anymore. I'm
always thinking about like impact and what that looks like
and how am I shaping that even if in the
beginning the beginning stages, and I went to Malcolm Jamal
Warner's podcast, i'd seen, if I'm being honest, I'd only
seen one episode of his podcast prior to this, and
(03:40):
then I saw the promos of Envy and Gia on
his podcast prior to this. But this was my second
episode that I watched, And this episode that we were
going to feature today in our conversation is actually one
of not even one. It was the last sit down
episode that Malcolm Jamal Warner did on his podcast. So
(04:02):
it's an episode called why the Hood Deserves More Respect?
Georgia and Me speaks the truth and it features a
conversation that is extremely interesting.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
So in this episode Not All.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Hood, which is the NA podcast by Malcolm Jamal Warner
and his co host Kandae Kelly, they sit down with
a poet. She's also an actress and an activist. Her
name is Tamika Georgi and Mee Harper. So she's known
for being a part of HBO's Deaf Poetry Jam.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
She was also on.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Broadway as well, and they have a real conversation. The
description here says, this is a masterclass and radical self love, hood, pride,
and the resilience of Black creativity.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Georgia me apologetically uplifts the.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Hood as a sacred space of community, survival and joy.
She also delivers powerful insight on the gentrification of Atlanta,
the misrepresentation of black stories in the media, the commodification
of struggle, and the need to honor working class Black
America Americans. So they have a ton of conversations here.
In this conversation, they start off just talking about the hood.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
For anyone that was raised in the.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Hood, whether you stayed and you built your life, you know,
in the neighborhood you grew up in or you moved
and you know, do you go back and forth to
where you're from or whatever the case may be, You
instantly kind of get the sense of what the conversation
is like that tribal. It takes a village feeling that
you really understand only if you grew up in a community.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Interlocked being black and growing up in the hood.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
It has its things, but the sense of community and
I'm gonna stand next to you, not behind you or
in front of you, because we need to do this together.
Is different, especially if you're from different generations as well.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
So let's take a listen to the conversation on the
hood and how the hoood is shown in the media.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
What the media shows us is one side of black culture.
It's the hood side, and of course, and the hood side,
you know, ALTI historically is what has always created American
culturehood and then it becomes mainstream exactly. But I just
loved your I just I loved your take and your
(06:12):
reminder that the hood should be as celebrated as the
rest of the lanes of black culture.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
We thrive because there's devised planned for our demise every day,
so for you to still smile, still find ways to
make it.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
And then in the hood, we help each other.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Poor people help each other more than rich people.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
All day.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
In my neighborhood, my whole life growing up. We don't
just borrow some sugar. Ain't no thing about no sugar.
I might borrow a whole chicken from missus eighty across
the street, make a whole dinner.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
And bring her plate. Get what I'm saying, that's my hood.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
They then get into a conversation right, because once you
then once you start to have a conversation about the
hood and the way it's.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Perceived, and you know kind of how things used to be.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
To an extent, I think right now because of the
things that we're dealing with, like you know, people really
really don't have money, they really really don't feel like
there's hope. You have all of the things that people
have dealt with before in our civilization and in our neighborhoods.
But now things are personified because you have social media
personifying everyone who's not in the hood or even the
(07:23):
people in the hood that are doing well. So it's
easy to make one person feel less then because of that,
or it's easy to paint a picture of a neighborhood
or a group of people from a certain area for
lack thereof right.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
So then they.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Start getting into the conversation of black excellence in black love.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
And this stems from comment.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
That Malcolm Jamal Warner made about his experience or like
his learning of black soldiers like actual soldiers.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And it was that conversation. So before I have a thing,
we talked about a lot of time. I have a
thing about black excellence and black love. Like you, when
you put black in front of it, it makes it
a subset of that thing. But then when I started,
you know, having this argument with him, not argument with
discussion about the history of black soldiers for the first time,
(08:16):
it made me think of black excellence in a different way, right,
like the because black excellence now is attributed to fame
and money. Never so that's been my issue never for
me with it. But now when I'm looking into the
story like black Black survival in end of itself, is
(08:39):
black excellence.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Because we've always had to supersede do better and more
things that have been putting our way to cross over.
Now the reason why I thought that this was like
fire and I'm like, yo, if I'm an you know,
do a segment on Malcolm Jamal Warner for Malcolm Jamal Warner,
for the Latus with Laurna Rosa. I want to have
a conversation almost like a teaching of like Okay, here's like,
you know, some thing that he was, you know, set
(09:03):
on teaching and putting into the world.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Because I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
I was watching this episode and I'm like, you know,
I might not agree with everything that's being set here,
but the notion that we need each other more than
we are willing to allow ourselves to act on. In
twenty twenty five, I felt it.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
It's like it's hard to get around.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
It's hard enough to think about, it's hard enough to
have a conversation about.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
As a media personality.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
I remember when I moved to LA, I was told,
don't do the black stuff, like you don't want to
be the black girl, Like, make sure if you're doing
you know, the beets or the this or the that,
you don't just cover black news or black music or
black this or black that. And if you do get
a job outside of the black entertainment realm, make sure
(09:56):
you don't become the black girl that only does the
black things. And then I remember coming to Breakfast Club
and feeling so good about being able to do the
black things and being able to really speak to those
things because those are the things I grew up on.
Some of the stuff I can have conversations about in
my sleep because I grew up hearing it, watching it,
knowing who these celebrities are, watching them grow in their
(10:18):
careers and things of that nature. Y'all, Like it f'd
my mind up when I made this transition because for
so long I was like to Malcolm Jamal Warner's point
of putting black in front of things, black love, black excellence.
Right even with like me having a conversation about being
a business owner, black business owner, black entrepreneur, black.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Journalists, I always felt like.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
If I leaned into those things, I would always end
up with less than And that is not the way
that I was raised in my neighborhood, and you know
what I mean, Like those are not the morals and
the backbone of the things that made people where I'm
from great. Understanding who you are and like understanding why
black is so amazing, and understanding why being able to
(11:10):
go out into the world as a person who knows
all of that is such a superpower. You get into
the world of things where you're then hearing so much
about the disparities and what we don't get and how
things are unfortunate and just all these things right for me,
it was like I wanted to run from it. I
didn't want to be black excellence, Like I just wanted
(11:30):
to be excellent.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Conversations like these.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Where people are like behold on, but why not, like
let's reacenter and really think about, like how much of
a privilege it is to even be able to be
a part of Like think about your family reunion, right,
or like whatever tradition.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Is amazing in your family.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And I'm talking to black people specifically a lot like us.
I don't know if I go how many white listeners
I got or others any other race. But right here,
this is a this is for us. But think about
something really sacred in your family. So for my family,
it's our family reunions. And we do this thing called
the mother daughter sleepover. And we've been doing it since man,
(12:10):
like I was maybe two years old, and it's so
special and it's something that not everybody gets to experience.
And when I speak from that experience or when I
operate in the world as a person that grew up
in love like that, right, like a family that is whole,
that gets together, that loves on each other, when I
operate in the world off of that, the way that
(12:31):
things are received literally has changed my life. One of
the biggest things that people say to me a lot
is is they talk to me about my family, like
how I was raised like my mom, my grandmother, And
I didn't realize it until I begin to talk about
it that like everybody don't have that, Like, not everybody
has a family that gets together for every holiday that
(12:52):
celebrates the mothers in their family. And it's a legacy
tradition that really understands wholeness and like, you know, that
warm feeling of tribe and community. Not everybody has that.
When I got in LA and I got any spaces,
like you know they're talking about, like Malcolm Jawon Warner said,
these soldiers were fighting for these privileges that they didn't
even get to enjoy. Right, the only difference between journalists
(13:15):
and black journalists is the experience and the expertise that
I bring. And that's an asset anywhere, and I might
not be able to, you know, always get to enjoy
all of the fruits of my labor because you know,
I'm black and I'm a woman and all of these things.
But like, who's to say that what I'm doing isn't
(13:36):
excellent and that I can't love it and I can't
continue to do it and work for it. And you know,
like this conversation made me think about that feeling of
and maybe that was like an identity battle too, right,
because you're in these spaces where you feel like you
have to convert, you have to shrink the world as
a black woman who shows up Like I'm telling you guys,
(13:56):
like I think when you are part of a community
in a neighborhood and the hoods like what they are
talking about, and you think about the good things that
come from it, the learning to survive, the understanding of culture,
of family, of I got you no matter what, of
whatever you need right, being able to hold those things
and those pillars that you learned throughout your whole life
(14:21):
literally changes your life. It puts you on a pedestal
that is so amazing. Like you have these black soldiers
that Michael Jamal Warner is talking about, who you know,
even though they're trying to erase it, they're being written
about in these books right and and talked about throughout history,
not just because they're like, you know what, we just
want to go be soldiers.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
You couldn't get around the fact that they were black soldiers.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
And I'm sure that their upbringing, their families, their faith
that they were in still with made them operate in
ways that allowed them to achieve the great things that
they did.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Even under those circumstances.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Where they didn't even get to enjoy the fruits of
their labor, but it made them great talking about them today.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
So as I'm thinking through like the.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Malcolm Jamal Warner passing, and you know, just man, I remember,
I remember watching a Cosby show and that was my
first time ever seeing a black family all in one house.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Like I swear to you, that was the first time
I ever saw it.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
In that way where like they weren't struggling, like they
were dealing with life, but they weren't struggling like they
were doctors and they were astute, and their kids were
going to college. And think about that, like, imagine if
Malcolm Jamal Warner has said, I don't want to be
on this show because I don't want to be the
black son on the black show that's talking only two
(15:41):
black people. What I'm talking about is a sense of
pride that these hoods and these neighborhoods instill in us.
And when I put that parallel to like the life
and the legacy of Malcolm Jamal Warner from what I
grew up watching and how I felt about him from
my you know what I mean, like just watching him
and my household and growing up on The Cosby Show
and things of that nature. It's like taking who you are,
(16:06):
where you're from and being able to teach through whatever
gift it is that God gave you to be able
to do so can literally change people's lives and you
can't run from that, and he didn't. He was so
intentionable about the things that he did. I'm thirty three
years old, and I will say that this year has
really taught me about intention and being intentional. And I'm
not the best at it all the time, you know,
(16:27):
but I've learned a lot about it. But when I
you know, look at people like him and what he's done,
that wasn't just a one off show for him. He
lived every moment after that and intentional, intentionally speaking to
black people and doing things that bettered people, even if
people didn't agree with him all the time. So definitely
want to send, you know, a rest and peace to him.
(16:49):
And man, I can't imagine what his family is going
through right now if we feel like this, and you know,
we're you know, selfishly because this is a character.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Well he had a character that we grew up on.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
But you know, Charlottinne was talking a lot today on
the show about like the man, you know, Malcolm Jamal Warner,
the man and not THEO the character we you know
in our loving Theo from the Cosby Show. The character
are devastated and we're shocked and we just have so
many questions. But imagine those who loved and got to
(17:20):
experience malolm Jamal Warner as the man and how they
feel right now, you know, like, so definitely take some time,
send a prayer for them. Legacy, like that's that's just
the only place you can end something like this is
legacy and thinking about legacy because if nothing else, those
(17:42):
you know, family members, those friends who know Malcolm Jamal
Warner the man, that is what they're going to have
to hold on to. Now, thank you guys so much
for tuning in. This has been another episode. I know
that this episode was a bit different. I hope you
guys enjoyed our conversation that hopefully shape you know, shakes
your room. You can't run from your you can't run
(18:05):
from the things that are still pride in you from
the beginning. And when you choose not to run, you
build real legacy. Look at the life of Malcolm Jamal
Warner and go check out his podcast. The podcast you
can find on YouTube, Not All Hood in Ah on YouTube,
there are some episodes there for you to check out.
And at the end of the day, you guys could
be anywhere with anybody talking about all these things, because
(18:27):
there's always a lot to talk about.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
But you guys are right here with me, my low Riders.
I appreciate you guys. I'll see you in the next episode.