An Interview With Tony Keith, Jr.

I would really love to get into this. Tony Keith Junior, Welcome to the Full Circle Table.

or something. And so just the fact that the collection is sort of evoking these like reactions from people to either say them out loud or to move their body to me like that just brings me a lot of joy because there's a hip hop connection there.

a term of endearment. It was affectionate, it was a joyful thing, like your a little knucklehead. Yeah, you might have a little bit of an attitude problem, but you are sweet. You know, you're unlovable as opposed to the traditional you know narrative that you know knuckleheads or black boys, even girls who are like misunderstood or unheard, or they're stereotyped

or they're judge. I was like, we gotta have another way of thinking of us, and then knucklehead actually write you know, I say something about you know, their knucklehead. We don't all call ourselves we know that we're not blasphemous, ignorant, or dangerous, although we don't call ourselves intelligent, ambitious, or courageous. Right, just sort of this idea, like I wanted us knuckleheads to just think about ourselves in loving ways.

this language makes sense. These are the communities that I care about.

more to the story. But the first nucklehead that I'm writing to is myself, And so the world just probably needs to know that Knucklehead is a collection of poems where most of them are poems that I've been writing to myself over the last thirty years, right, and just dealing with my world as a black gay man in America and in my very first book, How the Boogeyman Became a Poet, I sort of tell this story about how I discovered writing poetry as a way to just

kind of protect and preserve myself and my sanity touring times of stress and anger and confusion, and you know, and I still practice that. And so the poems in that book are essentially poems that I was writing to myself, just dealing with my world, but also reflecting on the different contexts in which I've seen black masculinity show up. And so I write about jails and prisons. I write about playgrounds. I write about what it's like to sort of play sports. I write about what it's like to

fall in love. I write about education, I write about police brutality, but all these different sort of places in which I've experienced myself in my world as a black gay man in America. And then add the additional layer that I'm also gay, right, So like there's this an additional thing to it, and so that collection is me

really just kind of how I wrestle with it. And then the very last part is just their you know poems, you know, about being in pursuit of your passion, you know about you know, I talked in the book, I use this metaphor of the very first letter is, you know, Darren Knucklehead, you know, have you ever had a planet

lodged in your belly? And for me, the planet represents purpose, right, And so part of it is just sort of like that book is also like have you ever just felt like, you know, the world is misunderstanding you, but you know you got a purpose and you might be gay? You know, It's sort of like what it was like those things. So that's what I was aiming for with this collection, which I think I probably answered way too many questions. I mean things in that answer, but anyway, there.

his sexuality or his masculine like I was. No one was saying to me that, Tony, you're reading the works of queer writers gay like I didn't know then, right, And then of course, you know, I grew up in the era where I was reading, at least in college literary works by Elan Harris, you know, and so right,

so I remember, like literature got me through you. Okay, So I'm thinking about like I remember sort of discovering black gay court authors, I guess sort of in my twenties, but like what about my like teens in middle school years?

Like where were they? And all I keep thinking about is like right now, in this moment, I'm like, I really want these young black boys, whether they're queer, gay or not, are questioning or whoever, to like to know that they exist, like right now, like here's a book for young adults, Like here's something written for you specifically for you. Yeah, I really, yeah, I really wanted that. I was like, this is the book that I needed. The poems that would have been like, oh, this makes.

And I'm like, yo, I'm hearing all of these narratives in the mainstream world that I am not lovable, right, legislation is thank you and I'm not lovable. Policy is saying I'm not lovable. There's certain you know, I'm just like that. There's narratives that exist within religious places that say that I'm not lovable. And then there are the people in the world who I don't know, who do love me, who are like, nah, you are lovable, you

are a wonderful person, you do have a person. And so I'm thinking about, like, how do we filter out that noise? Like how do we completely turn off the mess that we've been hearing? And so I think so much about like I'll be forty four years old this year, and I'm like, I've got forty four years old noise

that I'm still filtering through. And I'm like, oh, if I can create better noise for a kid who's fourteen right now or thirteen, or maybe the questioning adult whatever, But I think like now is the time to insert more positive affirmations, like now's the time. And so I appreciate what you to say, because I'm like, yeah, we keep hearing all this stuff about us that we're unlovable, and yet we know that we really are because people.

What was it? I get so lost in my thoughts. Oh got it? Yeah. But the idea that you know, when we are absorbing this as gay queer men, we are absorbing these negative narratives, and then we meet love.

We fall in love, romantic love, and you're in romantic love with someone who's also been hearing the same mess right that they're unlovable, and then the two of you get together and y'all trying to figure out what love like, what really loving each other looks like when the world was telling you that you can't right, so like even trying to figure out what love looks like between two gay married men is something that I also wrestled within this book because I'm like, I want I didn't. I

was like, I didn't have any books like this. I had no All I had was my imagination, and honestly, it wasn't until Robert Jones Junior wrote the Prophets. It's an incredible novel. If people don't know essentially it's it's fiction,

of course, but it's about essentially gay enslaved men. And I thought to myself, like, what a wonderful story to tell because we only can rely on our imagination because there were no documented stories of this at least that you know, written like what that experience was like, but of course that were gay and queer enslaved Africa, like

of course. And so for me when I write, when I'm writing my books, I'm like, if anything, I want to awaken the imagination of the questioning of the little black boys who might be like, yah, I wonder what it's like to be in love with another man. I wonder what it's like to get married. I wonder just so they can wonder, you know, mm hmmmm hmm.

out the closet is gay? And how I discovered poetry sort of is this thing that I continue doing well into my adulthood, right, And so inside this book, it's really cool because there are hand copies of I mean copies of the actual handwritten poems I wrote as a kid. I kept them, and so some of them are in that book. But anyway, but I tell this story about how I remember growing up as a kid in the you know, late eighties and early nineties, hearing about an uncle.

I have an uncle. He passed away. In the book, I call him ut he passed away in the early nineties. And I just remember, I say in the book, how I remember him being, you know, soft, I just remember him being a little soft, a little just a little I don't know, light on his feet. I don't know how to describe it other than that. And then little sweet,

a little sweet. And then you know, he dies of complications of AIDS and like the mid nineties, and that is it probably is, you know, at the time, well the height of the narrative and the epidemic that this is a gay disease. And I'm processing his death in an interesting way because I'm like, well, I don't understand how he got this thing, because he wasn't gay. He's got a son, you know, and I know that he

had a girlfriend. It's like, I know, look, there was sort of this confusing anyway, So my point is later on many many years, many many many years later, you know, the family begins to start discussing, and then later comes out them uncle was indeed gay, or at least by but certainly he was not straight. And I have a there's a picture that I reflect on in the book where it's in my grandmother's photo album, and it's a picture of my uncle and he's literally kind of like

hugged up with like another man in this picture. And I remember as a kid asking my family, I was like, who is that man? And all they would say, and this is gay queer people. Oh, that's your uncle's friend. And I'm doing hair quotes for people, that's your uncle's friend, and you know what I mean. So I think so much about, like how even the concept all we had in our imagination was a friend, you know. And I'm like, nah, we need something more concrete for people nowadays. But I'm like,

that way, we don't. I'm not hiding, you know, I'm not my uncle, you know, But I'm like, oh, what story he probably could have told me about what was going on with me because I was so confused. Nobody I knew was openly gay, Nobody in the nineties that I knew was openly nobody.

had been around that could tell me stories. Yes, and you know, think about yeah, so many people with so many stories that never really got told because we the people around them, didn't have the wherewithal or the courage or the knowledge that they could have questions answered.

it was a wild was wild. And what I started noticing was that even a lot of most like a lot of the white students is I'm going to say this for a very particular reason, would come up to me and show so much love, and I'd be confused by sort of their reactions, right because and my point is read I'm saying this is what I realized is I'm so openly gay and free with who I am that white kids come to me and tell me they're gay, like they're coming out to this white kids and then

black kids too. I mean that's also it's sort of like there's this reaction from people and I'm trying to sort this out. In what I realized is like, oh my gosh, none of these kids have ever met and openly gave black man before, you know what I mean, they've let alone a poet, alone an author, you know

what I mean. Like they've never and so they come up to me with sort of this like, wonder this not fascination because I don't think it's like you know, in the book, I write about romanticized voyeurism, like when white people look at me, that's racial microaggressions. What we could talk about later. But I think there's something we said about, like you've just shown me something about yourself,

you know, And I even think about. Last thing I'll say is because these thoughts will connect is last year, my husband and I we had a kid, a little black boy come to stay with us from the Child Family Services, right who's placed with us? He needed to be. That's I don't know. I can't get in too much of the details, but we are sincely a kid from foster care, six years old, and it's crystal clear that he had never he didn't underst and that two black

gay men were sort of taking care of him. And so the short story is one evening he goes, hey, mister Tony, you know, where do you live? And I said, do I live in this house?

and I said yeah. He goes, oh okay. But you saw the way his little mind was sort of figuring something out. And I think so much about these kids who I'm meeting at these conferences again, who they've just said have never seen or understood a different narrative, so, you know, and so I don't know. I sort of see myself in my book doing those kinds of things. It's like awakening a little bit of a possibility in someone, you know.

Standard English. They needed the oral tradition. And so what I want to offer to you know listeners also is that yo, I self narrated both audiobooks, the audiobook for How the Boogeyman Became a Poet and Knucklehead, so you can also listen to this book so you get it in the traditional oral tradition style because I speak it

exactly how I speak. So for those of you who are interested in what my performances are, like, listen to these audio books and I just do a quick little flex is How the Boogeyman Became a Poet recently won an Odyssey Award from the American Library Association, which essentially means I have one of the top audiobooks for young adults in the country right now. And so these audiobooks get busy, so you know. So we've got the written and the spoken. So yeah, you're right. I'm like for me,

I'm like, now it's preserved. Now this is preserved. It's curated in the memory of the world. At this point, there's nothing no one can do. It's it's written and it's spoken. Done.

and created his illustrations on his own. So there's a picture in this book of a little poet superhero with a cape.

Snapchat or Instagram. Instead, you'd find me on the stage, usually with a piece of paper in my left and a pin in my right. My mouth would be wide open and a vein poking out of my neck. My eyes would be shut tight as I focus on every single breath, just to make sure that my lungs have enough capacity to create words that defy the laws of gravity and that swirl up into a vortex of knowledge, causing supernatural catastrophes. And why my poem ain't no tragedy there.

This might be some casualties. If you're not prepared to battle me. You want me to keep going, oh I, But if you're feeling froggy, then jump. Because my poems are not for tricks, and they certainly aren't for chumps. I do this for a reason. I write this for those of you with terminal diseases. I write this for those of you who want to have sex, but your parents are preachers. I write this for those of you who want to learn, but you lack of loving mentors

and teachers. I write this for those of you who love your mama, but all she does is scream at you. I write this for those of you who love your daddy, although his eyes have never seen you. I write this for those of you who miss getting a good night's sleep. I have to hear in your grandma sing the sweet song to you. I write this for those of you with negative energy and so like a magnet, bullshit just

clings to you. I write this for you. I write this for those of you whose sexuality is unacceptable until it's received some societal stamp of approval. I write this for those of you who work so hard to create change. You get frustrated, but you still may. I write this for those of you who don't have answers, yet one is always being forced from you. I've learned that sometimes saying I don't know is a lie, and that's sometimes

saying I don't know is the truth. I write this for those of you who want to earn love but don't know that it's already been given to you. I write this for you've been battling poetry into my ink bleeds black and blue. I'm just a superhero with a cape made of metaphors, trying to use my words to simply save you. And yes, some of the words and my poems do rhyme, but I've been doing it for a while, so it just happened sometimes. And yes, memorizing

a poem would make any performance good. But if I could, I would pick up this book and read my words, just to make sure that my messages are never misunderstood. I do this for a reason, and this gift is not temporary. It's not changed with the seasons, which means I can spit fire while the sky is hot, or I can cool it down while the water is freezing. And if words having power isn't something that you believe in.

Then I can spit on my fingertips, reach my poems and turn these written words on pages into a spoken altar call, and I can start saving all of you heathens because I care about your futures. I care about your destinies, I care about your legacies. And I want y'all to know my name. I want y'all to look up in the sky and scream out. And if this was an open mic, I say, is that a bird? And they would say, is that a bird? And I say, is that a plane? Is that a plane? And I'll

be flying by shouting No. It is poetry. And I'm a poet, a social agent of change, piecing letters to words, and words to sentences, and sentences to sounds. I can leap over metaphors with a single bound. I am powerful enough to spark protests for equality, and ghetto communities talk slicker than silly politicians, creating policies that grant rich folks immunities. See, I didn't choose to be saved by poetry. Poetry chose me.

Poetry crept up inside my mama's wounb and poetry started tickling me, I've been speaking in rhythmic pattern since I was in grade three. I'll just continue till I'm through. So who am I? Well, I'm just a simple souper with a kate native metaphors, trying to use my words to save you. Oh yeah, thank you, thank you. Also a quick thing for listeners, y'all should also know I mentioned you know, I've been speaking in rhythm patters since I was in grade three. And how the Boogeyman became

a poet? I write the story about how I wrote my first poem in third grade and emceeded at a school event. So since grade three. The two books are in conversation, the little nuggets that kind of go on both.

my dissertation. And my husband, who I had just gotten married to a year before, he had just got laid off from his job too, and this was like We're living in this tiny, little two bedroom apartment in northeast washingt DC. And the only way that I knew how to make money was on the side. I was always performing poems or featuring someway or getting I was gigging, if that makes sense, and gigging and also doing some

kind of consulting I do working. Like it's funny because I have to now say, well, I can't say DEI anymore. But that's kind of the world that I was in, and that anyway, it was in that world you can say whenever you want you right, Dan, Right, I was

in that world. I was in that belonging equity and shit in education, right, And so I'm in that space, and so like, I just kind of go heavy on doing that, and I start writing grants and fellowships and like, I just figured out a way to survive twenty nineteen on just the poems, and thankfully my husband found a job later that fall, and I defended my dissertation successfully that fall. But I entered a job market in Washington, d C. And no one wants wanted to hire someone

like me. My PhD is in education leadership, and I focus on hip hop and spoken word and poets who do work in education and anyway, there was just no place that was looking for someone with my particular kind of skill set. And so then so I'm like, well, whatever.

So that's what my dissertation is all about. So I entered this world with this PhD, and I don't want to be a principal. I don't want to be a superintendent. I don't want to be a chancellor of schools, like I want to run a bureaucrat, and like I don't want to do that, and so, and I also am not fully sure I want to be like a full time assistant professor. So anyway, so I go heavy with applying for jobs, and right now poetry is paying the way. And so in February of twenty twenty, I'm at the

University of South Carolina, Charlotte. I mean, I keep saying that I'm at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina, Okay, And I'm there for a writer's retreat for some young people with my friend and fellow author, Jason Reynolds. So the world would certainly know the name Jason Reynolds if you're into young adult literature. He is a beast to be working with, but also one of

my very dear friends. Love him very much. Anyway, twenty twenty, and he's talking about his life as a young adult writer. So being someone who writes on the page, he's also a poet on the page, but I am a poet on the stage. I'm performing. So we're talking about our careers in that regard. And after every event, there was always a book signing for Jason and because he's got tons of books, and I'm used to sitting at this table with Jay because and he's my friend. So it's nothing.

And I'm in my phone just doing nothing, typing something, and this little black boy gets out of one of Jason's get out of the Jason's line with this black woman and they walk right up to me. And this little boy says, mister Tony, where's your book? And I was like, book, I don't. I don't have a I don't have a book. And it is twenty nineteen. I don't. I don't have a twenty twenty. I mean like, I

don't have a book. I don't write. I don't write books, you know, I write academic papers I published on the page. I say something silly, and he sort of looked a little disappointed and was like okay. And I think that his mom or the lady he was with might have said something like, well, let us know when you write one. And I remember going back to my hotel room that night, like what up, you know, Like, what in the world

are they talking about? And I decided in that moment, I was like, I'm going to write a young adult version of my dissertation. That's word. That's I was like that. I was, I'm gonna translate this big old academic thing, and I'm boom, I'm gonna write this thing. Yeah, And I get so excited about this, right. I put five hundred words down on the page that night, and I go tell Jason the next morning, I'm, yo, Jay, I think I'm gonna write a book, bruh. And He's like, Okay,

Tony sure, and I'm not serious. I think I'm write a book. So we fly back to Washington, DC, and then March twenty twenty hits and COVID boom. So education landscape changes, the art spaces changed, like everything changed. My economic reality changed significantly, right, I was like, oh my gosh. And so that's when I was like, Yo, the only thing that I know I might be able to do to get some money down the line is I gotta

probably work on seriously publishing this book. So I'm writing for more grants and I decide to write this book. So I write this manuscript that I think is a young adult version of my dissertation. And I learned that what I got to do is get a literary agent, and I learned how to query a literary agent, and I got an agent within like two months, which apparently is unheard of in the industry. I got a literary agent very very fast, and so I got someone willing

to represent me. But she said, this is how I'm going to connect the dots, Tony. The thing that you are writing is not a young adult version of your dissertation. The thing that you are writing is there's something you want to tell, a story about yourself, about you being this little gay black boy. Because apparently I didn't realize, but I had woven that narrative into what I thought was my young adult book, like I was somehow embedding the story about me in the story about my dissertation.

I don't know why, but my brain was doing that. So she helped me tease all that stuff out. And what came out, of course, was how the Boogeyman became a poet. And so what happened was so anyway, So while I'm trying to figure out how to write how the Boogeyman became a poet, I'm also still writing poetry. And so my agent, after about a year and a half of working with her, She was like, Tony, look,

it's been a while. It seems like you're still trying to figure out this memoir thing you want to write. Why don't we just go with the poetry collection. Publishers in a young adult space don't really you know, buy poetry collections, but you know, we can just get your feet wet. We'll see. I say, okay, So I put together the collection Knucklehead. I was like, I got these poems that I've been writing to myself for the last

couple of years. We can go with this. She goes, okay, But in my book proposal, I say, I'm also working on this memoir and I think it's going to be a memoir written in verse called How the Boogeyman Became a Poet and I'll tell you by that title in a second. And so we send this out to publishers. Publishers then right back sort of quickly, and they're like, wait a minute, this Knucklehead collection is interesting, but what

is this memoir thing? What is that? Right? And so my agent was like, Tony, yo, how fast can you try to put something together? And I think I locked myself in my office for three days straight and just wrote as much as I possibly could, and I think I got like the first thirty or forty pages or something out of something that I thought would be the memoir How the Boogeyman Became a Poet, and HarperCollins bought both and they said, but Tony, the publishing world does

not know you. Your memoir needs to come first first, yeah, and then your poetry collection. And I'm so glad it worked out that way, because after I wrote How the Boogeyman Became a Poet, I didn't realize how I wanted to format a Knucklehead. So listeners should know that Knucklehead is not a traditional poetry collection in the sense that there's not a table of contents, and it's not like

there's like a themed section. It's not like, oh, I want to read the love poems, let me go to I mean, it kind of is that way, but not really. It's something that you are. It's not design for you to recover the cover. So the titles of the poems sort of are like transitions in the story of the poems, if that makes sense, and How the Boogeyman Became a Poet flows the same exact way the titles in the

book flow as transitions throughout the entire book. And so that's sort of like my writing style and the last thing I want to share because I think this is all important in this story, because this is how I knew I was gonna be a writer and how it's gonna be connected with the poem. It's also in twenty nineteen or twenty twenty, when all this turbulence is going on.

I'm enrolled in therapy. Okay, here we go. I'm enrolled in therapy, and I am because I'm going through all kinds of things and I don't and I write about this and knucklehead, I'm fussing at my husband about stuff that I got none to do with him, and he's telling me like, look, I don't know what's going on with you, but you need to figure this figure this shit out, like you know what I mean. And this is okay because I don't know what it is, but

it's not me that you whatever. And so I'm in therapy and my therapist is like, yo, Tony, and this is talk space, so I'm typing to someone right and my therapist is like, yo, Tony, it sounds to me like you have a lot of repressed anger and sadness and confused like it, and you're projecting this. It seems to be probably on your partner, and so you need to figure out where this comes from. He says, didn't you tell me you were a poet? I say yeah.

He said, how long you've been writing poetry? I was like, since I was a kid. He's like, you got any kid poems? I'm like, yeah, I got tons of them. I kept them. And so what readers need to know and listeners need to know is I had a box of poems that I've been hoarding around since I was a kid, and I write about this and how the Boogeyman became a poet. It was blue and blah blah blah. But I took the lid off and I spent a weekend reading through those poems I wrote myself as a kid.

Some of them made me cry, some of them made me very angry. A couple of them I set on fire. But it became this spiritual practice because I realized that as a kid, I was using poetry to filter out the noise. I was writing stuff about what the world

was telling me about myself. But then I was also writing positive things, and so what the world needs to know is that I those are the hand copies poems that are in how the Bookman became a poet, And so that same process that I was using as a kid is the same process that I use now as an adult, which is how the poems and Knucklehead came to be. So that's how these things sort of flow together. And that's how I knew I was gonna be a writer. Was when I realized, like I was meant to be

a poet. My planet in my belly is to be a poet. This is the thing, and I'm gonna keep pushing with it, and readers should know. The last poem in Knucklehead is about what it's like being someone who's sole living is on his poems. That's the only thing I've been doing for the last six years. I never got another full time job except for the one I've created for myself.

wound up winning a lot of awards. It's called EDMC Academy, and we do education, tsulting, and a lot of us are poets, spoken word artists, rappers and MC's ed MC's educational MC's we move crowds and education YadA YadA, YadA, right, or as we say, master conditions for student Learning and Engagement. Well, a lot of our work was around DEI and so what's happening now is a lot of our contracts that I'm used to us getting have now been canceled right right,

And so I'm sort of back in this position. Back in like twenty nineteen, it was like, well, brouh, what else you're gonna do? You know what I mean? And I'm like, I got these books and so the world should know. Yeah, I'm thinking about writing another book.

the contract child Like. I'm like, you know, someone called my husband a faggot not too long a child Like. I'm just thinking to myself, like get out the way, you know, just moves to me.

his addiction and his relationship with me. And so in Knucklehead, you know their poems and I write about my dad and you know all that kind of stuff. But I think so much about your point about just even like connecting health, mental health, your physical health, your spiritual health sort of with these positive nerrors that we need. And so yeah, but you mentioned, you know, sobriety addiction. I meanly thought about, like y'all write about that too.

But I am a performer all day. And the other thing is, you know, because you mentioned like sort of being high up in Doctor King another doc that I want to connect this and I've said this in several interviews, but poetry I understand this, I really really do now, Like it is a it's a spiritual exercise. It really is like sometimes a download from ancestor sometimes it's a real thing that sort of happens, and with that download

comes a rhythm sometimes. And this is why I tell people that I'm a poet, but I'm not a rapper. And don't be wrong, most rappers are poets, or at least should be, because rap ain't nothing but poetry spoken over time beat that must rhyme, and a lot of rap know about poet anyway. But I'm like, yo, because for me, what comes first, Like if I'm feeling heavy about a thing that I just need to write something, what comes first for me of the words right, I'll

just like write words down and then I'll read. I'll read what I've been writing, and then there's like a natural rhythm that just kind of happens. And so each poem and Knucklehead kind of has its own rhythm and cadence. There's a someone was telling me the other day there's a musicality in my poems, almost like Langton Hughes and you know, and I think so much about like yeah, I'm like, I don't know where it comes from, but

there is a rhythm. And so when you said that, I'm like, yeah, when I read my work, this is this is what's new for me is so many poems in Knucklehead are ones that turned into spoken word poems. So I'm used to performing them and so holding the book while reading them, and even in the book they've been edited just for more clarity for the reader, you know. So even having to like read my book is now become a different kind of performance for me, you know.

And so to hear that, you know, it's still resonating. That's kind of a cool experience for me because I'm used to this no book on a mic, just going and so now to have something and then to read it. It's just a different way of experiencing the work.

it always throws me off. And so there was one time my friends made a joke where I'd like literally turned around and told the band. I was like, can y'all just stop playing?

so surprised by all the things that they did. And I've now been listening to Knucklehead and the way that they've incorporated music in the background, the way that they've incorporated almost like typewriter sounds. They have somehow connected musicality and I think in a really really cool way, something that I would not have known that I would have been able to do. But yeah, yeah, yeah, you got to check out the audiobook.

so cool listening to you just do it. M h m hmm, right, because I'm like, that's what I you know, I'm used to hearing that. But when this book gets in the hands of readers, I may never hear their response, right, you know. And so for me it's an interesting thing. And I'm just like, oh, I hope, if anything, I hope they hear my call, you know. I hope they hear my call, you know. And if anything, and hope

they hope they know. I want to hear your response right right, right right, you know, or I hope you're responding whatever that might mean, you know, writing in the margin or doing something you.

I was absorbing culture. Hip hop. Culture's music is rap music, right, And so I like to make that distinction because I'm like, yo, Whenever I think about hip hop, I think about the culture of hip hop, and it's about peace, love, unity, having fun and joy. And when I was coming up, it was about socially conscious music and knowing who you are and the fifth and the hip hop is knowledge of self and all the way. So I do consider myself an MC meaning I can move a crowd, don't sleep.

I'm just not a rapper. So for me, like when I think about hip hop, and I just want to say so to people, just to know that when I'm writing about hip hop and I'm talking about hip hop, I'm talking about the philosophy of it, you know, beyond the music. But yes, but what I listened to is a hip hop instrumentals because I'm listening to other words, it'll throw me off, but I do. I bob my head while I'm writing. Yeah. Matter of fact, before I hopped his interview, I was working on something and I

got my hip hop beats music instrumentals playing. But yeah, yeah, but I listened to a lot of non mainstream artists people probably wouldn't well, people do know about. But I listened to a lot of j I d or Jed. I listened to of course Doci. I listened to Lula Fiasco, Tyler the Creator, you know. I listened to sometimes Rico Nasty, I like Rhapsody. But a lot of artists I listened to most people probably wouldn't here on mainstream radio, and I'm okay with that. But I like, I'm into lyricists.

I like good lyrics. I still listen to Lauren Hill and Missy Elliott mc queen Latifah. I'm still very much into nineties hip hop.

Hip hop is all about community and coming together. Hip Hop culture was created because black and brown kids needed an outlet to deal with racism and oppression and poverty, and you know, gay people needed to deal with you know, homophobia, and trans folks deal with like these things were happening. So they created poems and they performed those poems as rap music. You know what I mean. I'm like, people

understand where it came from. My enslaved African ancest has already had rhythm and drum right where they were a slave. Let's be clear, hip hop has always been about freedom and black people's joy. It's never been about shoot them up. It's never been about.

I love a good debate, right you know. But then when and they ask me who's some my favorite artists are the only ones that I know they recognize is Laurence Hill. And sometimes I'm always wondering, you know, what it is, but they specifically always know when I say Lauren Hill. When I mentioned others, they don't, And I tell them, I'm like, y'all gotta understand that doctor Keith is about to be forty four years old and I just don't listen to the same music y'all are listening

to right now. And I was like, I'm officially at that age where I get to say, yeah, I say things like I don't know what these little kids listen to it to, you know, but I don't judge you, you know what I mean. I'm like, but I'm not judging y'all. Hip hop is always going to be a youth created culture, and so y'all are the ones moving it forward. I just want to remind you. I'll let you know the history of the culture so that you also can filter out some of the noise and maybe

create something that's counter you know what I mean. Just know that, you know. So I'm like, I'll never judge you, but I don't know little YACHTI I don't know a little baby. I don't know.

You know, I'm also listening to you know, Tupac was also, you know, someone who wrote from sort of multiple sides of himself. So I'm thinking to myself, like, there was at least some balance. You know, we could still party and maybe shoot them up a little bit, be ratchet, but there was also social consciousness. And I think that for me, I'm like, I just missed the balance. I just missed the balance. And I also I'm so curious about the spaces in which black gay men find themselves

within the context of hip hop. I think about this quite a bit. Within hip hop, I wouldn't be loved musically, but within the hip hop context of education, I'm loved greatly.

write raps and can probably wrap in a studio. And then there are people who can you know, write raps if they are writing their raps, who can like perform live and like move a crowd, who can MC like I think I think about I sort of always make a bit of these distinctions, and so for me, I would love to like be because I'm like, yo, gay people, we some of the best mcs when you think about ballroom culture is the one who's literally moving that entire crowd,

right but with the rhythm and you know, I'm just have so many something.

same shit what I'm talking about. I'm gonna find it and I'm gonna send it to you.

as well, we made it love. Like there's a bunch of different things, and so within the imagery is you know, two black men, Me and my husband were floating in the skies, and then all of a sudden there's you know, things blowing in the breeze, and then there's a lifting of public and private parts. And then I'll give you this nugget because I think this is a wonderful Easter egg. Because I'm a lyricist, I believe in embedding things and poems, and so there's a stanza in that poem that's called

we Made It Love, and I know his thing. I know that honestly, like very few people will get this unless I start saying this exists, or they might. But in the one two I guess it'd be the third stanza. And we made Love, I say, where our breath became versus written into the breeze, and so we hang glided across the tops of tall trees, suspending ourselves high above the bottom of sturdy bridges that were built on nothing but trust alone. In that stanza, I use verse top bottom.

We can do Barns and Nobles of course as Amazon, and you can also get it at your a lot of local public local like neighborhood public libraries. You can get it Enkindle. It's available in audiobook and yeah, so those are love it?