Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I'm your host, ramses.
Job, he is Ramsay's joh I am q Ward. You are tuned into Civic Cipher, Yes.
You are, and today we got our work cut out for us. Once upon a time, I remember encountering a story from Meek Mill and he was recalling what it was like walking in the halls at Rockefeller Records after NAS dropped Ether, and I remember him saying, it was a quiet day at the Rockefeller Studios. Well, I am here to tell you it has been a quiet week around the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. Here at Civic Cipher,
this has been a time of reflection. This is a time of introspection and of course, time to strategize and figure out our path forward. Of course, I'm referring to the results of the election. This is something that we are processing and will be processing for some time. I'm not going to pretend like the conversation we're about to have is going to be full of optimism and strategy. Again, we're still working through all of that but we appreciate those of you who have the bandwidth to take in
this show. We're going to do our best to be your brothers again. We are going to do our best to be strong and to heed our responsibility in this moment. Forgive us if we are human, because we are both having human moments. But if you'll stick around, hopefully you'll be able to share with us in our healing and of course get some strategy from us, and maybe we'll get some from you as well. But before we get there, as always to start off with some ebony excellence. So
today's ebony excellence is sponsored by Actively Black. There is greatness in our DNA visit actively black dot com. And today's ebony Excellence comes from the Grillo. So shout out Big Boss Kiki Palmer. She can now add C Suite executive to her already lengthy resume. As reported by Women's Wear Daily, the multi hafen It is joining forces with legacy haircare brand Cream of Nature as its first ever
Chief brand officer. Quote Kiki will be instrumental in shaping how we communicate our overall brand to the end consumer. This according to Shandra Coleman, head of Marketing for hair and personal care brands at Revlon. She goes on to say, quote, her creative input will be invaluable as we strive to innovate and stay ahead in the market. The full scope of Palmer's new gig remains unknown, but both the entertainer and the forty eight year old haircare brand now owned
by Reblan were born in Chicago. Palmer, who has debuted a range of memorable hair transformations in recent years, recalls being raised within a fan for the brand's products. Quote, I grew up with Cream of Nature. It's one of those brands that has always been there, not just among my family, but my community. She goes on to say, we wanted to work with Sorry, the brand goes on to say, we wanted to work with someone who truly understands here and is more than a face for our campaigns.
Palmer's authentic voice and deep understanding of our audience will help us craft messages that truly connect with our consumers. Those messages will reportedly lean into Palmer's natural talents as a storyteller, a skill set she's eager to bring to her new role. So, you know, one of the great honors in this show is that we get to highlight examples of ebony excellence, no matter how big, no matter
how small. We get to remind folks that were not just you know, struggle and death, that we do accomplish great things. And today it has been our pleasure to highlight the one and only Kiki Palmer for the big moves she's making. Shout out to her as the black girl magic. We like to say, Okay, so I haven't talked to you, Q.
How you doing, I'm not doing okay. There's something to the position that we are asked to play. I don't just mean today, I kind of mean throughout society. The black person in this country is asked to play a
very unique position. Love everything about the country that has never been good to you, and if you have anything bad to say about it, you can just go back to the land that we stole you from, the land that you have no bridge to, the land that we assured you have no connection to the land that we assured would be very very difficult for you to find if you ever tried to in the future.
And that has been fully exploited by us as well. So there's not a lot in way of resources there to reinvent yourself.
We will continue to misuse, mistreat, disrespect, conspire against your very sense of self determination, your very sense of pride, you're very sense of aspiration. There's a way that stories are told, from children's books to movies to the Bible itself, where there is always a redemption. There's always something that leads to that redemption. There's always something that points to a light at the end of the tunnel, the sun from behind the clouds. And that seems to be true
for everyone but Black Americans. And my pain is very specific to Black Americans because we are, without a doubt, the ones who have been most affected by bad faith, legislation, racism, the white supremacist history of this country, and we will be the most affected by this election. I have people that I love and care about that are white Americans, some that are white men, some that are wealthy white men, and not much about the way the world or this
country interacts with them will change. They'll get to feel like, you know, things that they say out loud to me are true, just won't impact your day to day life. Vote local when you don't have to really worry about the president. You know, it's hard for me, and I didn't sleep much last night, and I thing stressed me out the most leading up to the election, and why I haven't slept much period, not just last night. But everyone kept telling me how low the stakes were. That's
why I couldn't get unstressed out. Leading up to the election.
I kept hearing people say how it wasn't that big of a deal, how not much it's going to change, how And I kept looking around and looking in the mirror and looking at my phone and reading the newspaper and whatever, trying to figure out if I was in some type of silo by myself, and I was the only person that had access to the information that I had, the only person that had access to the videos that I watched, the only person that had access to the transcripts that I read. I wish it was hard to
understand why people like that guy. I wish it was confusing. I wish I was less informed. I wish I had less in the way of information. I wish I knew less because it wouldn't feelless awful. I see rappers, black celebrities, and really just black people defiant in their support for him, and for some of them, the defiance is the whole thing.
Right.
You can't tell me what to do, you can't tell me how to think, so it does not matter that I'm wrong. It does not matter that this person represents everything that's contrary or antithetical to my people. You can't tell me how to think, and you can't tell me what to do. So to show you how free thinking and defiant and strong I am, this is what I'm doing,
no matter what. And then you have to realize he's like every petulant preteenager's dream, right, because there's something to the character in the story that can do or say whatever they want with impunity. I'm strong, I'm powerful, you're weak. Your rules don't apply to me. I don't care about
anyone but myself, and there's no consequence to it. So everything I've been taught to believe, my whole life is in question now, from the King James Bible to the first movies and stories I was ever told weeping man door for a night, it says in Psalms, But joy comes in the morning when and for who? Not me, not my mom and dad, not their parents, not their parents, not their parents, not their parents, not their parents, And now not my kids. So joy comes for who and
when answers to what prayers win? Redemption from my people, win, reparations from my people, win, a success story, a win, some form of joy for us win. Someone explained, I'm the reason I'm supposed to be hopeful moving forward when more than half of the people I share this country with, knowing all they know, would still vote for that man, would encourage me to vote for that man. Thirty four felony counts, convicted, not just charges, two cases felony still pending,
impeached twice, bankrupt six times. That's the record on paper. We're not even taking into account the things that he says, the things that he plans to do, the things that he wants to do, the things that he said. We don't have to do an investigation. We don't have to pull up secret paperwork. We don't have to subpoena and
his phone and look through his messages. No, I'm talking about the things that he says out loud that he wants to do to us, our mothers, our sisters, our wives, our daughters, our brothers, our sisters, our nieces, our nephews, our uncles, our family members, our friends, everyone that doesn't think, believe, pray, and love the way that he does, and I don't. I probably can't imagine that he does love. I don't think he views the world that way. I don't think
he've used life that way. I think it's all the transaction to him, and if it benefits him, it does not matter who it brings harm to. I agree with everything he says, and he loves you, and he'll lift you up. Disagree with one thing that he says, and he will stomp on you and convince everyone who has now yielded their power, yielded their autonomy, yielded their independence of thought to him. They will jump you to He will break line with you while you're fighting for him.
Google Mitch McConnell if you don't believe me. I have not been able to sleep. I have not been able to give myself any form of optimism. And everybody's saying it's gonna be okay, isn't paying attention. I wish there was some way to escape. I see people saying they'll move to another country. Where you're gonna go where this country doesn't have power. He's somehow broken us. And I
don't mean black people. I mean everybody, because he's even shown when he proves out to be awful, so many of those that support him have just said, so what, So when he does inevitably impact their lives negatively, we won't even have a moment to be like, hey, you guys, we told you so. No, they're gonna come up with the way in their head for that to be okay too. It does not feel like we can come back from this.
How how are we here again? I'm supposed to figure out some reassuring story to tell my kids, so I'm supposed to look at them and lie to them that reassurance is based on what? And again, when when does this story work out for us? I have not seen stories. I have not read reports. I think I shared with you already. I felt and saw this going bad fast and did not take the final results to happen.
I saw.
Things that seemed insane to me in real time, and I knew right then, oh no, here it is. Here we go again. Way before all the boats had been tallied, I saw it. I got rid of all my socials. I don't know what I'm supposed to say. I don't know. I can't a lot of people I can't pretend. I can't get on this mic and pretend like I feel like everything's gonna be okay, because I don't. I don't feel okay. I don't feel like everything's gonna be okay.
And I know for some people that no matter the outcome of this decision that they've made collectively, there won't even be that moment where everybody says, man, we messed up. Nope, because he's already shown it. That's what I'm saying. This is not some science project where we haven't gotten the results of the experiment already. He's already shown and already told us exactly what he was gonna do, and people said, yeah, that's fine. So we won't even have that moment where
people will say, man, we messed up. Nope. Everybody's too dug in. Everybody wants to seem prolific, provocative, a free thinking individual. So I'm smarter than everybody else. That's why I did this thing that nobody else does, because I'm not a sheep and you are, so even when it proves out to be an awful decision, they won't look at the mirror and say, man, man, we didn't get this right. Because he's shown that there's nothing he can
do to lose their support. There's nothing he can do to make them say, man, maybe I was on the wrong side of this. So it does not feel like there is any coming back from it, or like we'll even have the chance in four years to do anything about it, because oh yeah, we got JD Vance in the wake in case you haven't been paying attention to
that lunatic. So no, I'm not okay, man, And I don't have anymy to tell you guys that I'm that I'm gonna be okay or that it's going to be okay, because that's just not how I feel.
Well, thank you for that. This is again our first time having this conversation. Normally i'd have something a little bit more optimistic and to throw into the conversation, but unfortunately, I feel like the long road that we have been on just got a lot longer. I feel like there was a decisive action that put all of the goals of you know, of my life, the things that I believe in, the things that I want to fight for.
It puts those goals beyond the time frame of my life, so I won't see these things happen within my lifetime. You know, it feels like, you know, the Supreme Court justices are going to retire once he's sworn in, and he's going to appoint newer, younger Supreme Court justices to ensure that there's a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court
for decades. Obviously, there's a book that was written for his presidency that he now no longer has to distance himself from, you know, not or specifically speaking about a Project twenty twenty five. So you know, he doesn't have to hide behind Agenda forty seven anymore. He can lean into Project twenty twenty five because he doesn't have to
seek reelection anymore. And he's got unfortunately, that was a decisive win for that election, and so he's got the House, and you know, he's you know, he's got everything that he needs to shoehorn Project twenty twenty five and that framework into American society. And so again, I don't necessarily have anything to contribute here that feels optimistic, but I will say that there are a handful of us who don't have any quit in us, you know what I mean. I know that I'm a fighter, and I know that
my boys my two sons, my children. They are kind souls. I don't know that their path will be mine. And even if there are some things that won't happen in my lifetime, I owe it to their children to try so I will, you know, and you know, I believed in a world where you know, we could get climate change under control. I believed in a world where we could get rid of the filibuster and get some some
actual police reform. I believed in a world where we could take on less visible problems like environmental racism and you know, housing discrimination and things like that, the X problems, because everyone wants to focus on police violence and you know, affirmative action. But you know, there's some other problems that I thought that we'd be able to really tackle now, and it feels like, you know, we won't get to
those anytime soon. I hope I'm wrong. I hope all the people that have been kind of rubbing their their Trump victories, their texts in my face, I hope that some of them are right when I point out that they're rubbing that in my face and they say, oh, that wasn't what I was trying to do. You'll see one day, America is going to be whatever they think it's going to be under his leadership. You know, why
not hope that they're right. Maybe this guy was lying for I don't know, nine years, and I don't know, it sounds absurd to say that, you know, you said it best. He's shown us exactly who he is. But yeah, I will, I will say that there there just is no quit in me. You know, I'm one of those people that will fight to the death and I'm not dead yet, So yeah, I again, I don't think we got on the radio today to pretend like everything was okay.
We're processing it the same as everyone else, and you know, this feels like the moment that we had to take to just kind of talk about where we are. And I want to, you know, spend the next half of the show kind of dissecting why we are where we are. So my hope is that you'll stick around for that because I think that we can learn a lot from that.