ALLOW ME TO REINTRODUCE MYSELF

you this my name. As I was really trying to figure out if I could actually do rap for a living because I never thought I actually could, I was substitute teaching, and then during my tenure substitute teaching, I found that I actually really loved teaching. Now, I taught in alternative high school. So like all the juvenile hall schools and the camps in California, we have this thing called camps, which is just it's for juveniles, but it's not exactly jail, like it's not Central or y A,

which is California Youth Authority. But I digress. Anyway, I really fell in love with the craft because I was like, I feel like, I'm I'm really good at this, and maybe this was like my calling in life. Landed a job at high school for the arts in a city called Pomona, last city in l A County. Shook a free from anyway. While I was there, it was like, Yo, you should just go ahead and get your credential and

do this mug full time. So I did. I was already hired, so a lot of the like credentialing program was super easy. I was already through graduate program and it was time to take my c set, which is the California Single Subject credentialing thing. I taught social science. I had in three parts of the test. It was World history and geography, and then it was U S History and Civics, and then government something like that, and then the last one was California History Economics. I flew

through everything until the economics. I detect that mug three times. And it's not that I don't understand economics. I didn't know what they wanted me to say. I didn't know how to answer the question in the language the test spoke. And I never felt so dumb, especially about a topic that I was positive I knew what I was talking about.

I never wanted anyone to have this feeling. Ever, That's why we started herd politics look politics, So what's tell y'all hood politics were prop this episode here is to reintroduce myself kind of led so many different lives in

music and poetry and education, visual arts. That's actually what's the school for Some of y'all know me from the Behind the Police and the behind the Insurrection, staying with Robert Evans for Behind the Bastards, and basically the homie Southie put me on and was like, Yo, we're gonna make you a star. Because some of y'all like know me, know me as in personally we grew up with each other. And some of y'all may know me from music or poetry or Red Couch podcast with my wife, but the

vast majority of y'all are new here. So the story at the top is like, this is a true story. I was working on my credential. And the thing is this economics is easy for anybody who grew up in the city and my mind, actually it is easy for anybody. It's real simple. Don't spend money you don't have. That's easy. Spend money or what makes you money? If you borrow and you gotta pay it back because you gotta pay

somebody to borrow money from. That's called interests. You. I'm basically you have to pay me to loan you this money. I'm not just gonna give you the money because I'm back in zero. I need you to. I need to make money, and letting you borrow money that's interest. And the longer it takes for you to pay me back, the more I'm a charge you. It's simple. I just didn't know the language. I didn't know the words they were using. I couldn't read the charts, but I understood.

I was a straight A student coming out of high school and through college, like I graduated honor Society. I knew what I was talking about. I just didn't know how they wanted me to say it. So I failed them about three times. And I never wanted anybody to ever feel like this again. So when I started teaching, I taught hood kids, and I realized even in reading the like word problems, you know Sally has five apples. I'm like, nigga, I don't know nobody named Sally. This

don't resonate with me. But if you would have said something like, hey, the ice cream truck is coming, and Carlos got five dollars. You got two dollars and you asked me what ice creams we should buy. It's seven of us out here playing outside. We are going to figure out how everybody get some ice cream. We all get some candy. You never go to the ice cream truck and only buy stuff for yourself, You create. That's crazy.

So I knew, okay, if I'm taking money from Carlos, I know Carlos's brother push a whole lot of weight. So the money that Carlos got probably came from drugs. So I need to really count the costs as to should I let him buy me something. You gotta figure out which is more offensive telling him no, because that might really put you in danger, or telling him yes and then owing him something. You know what that's called. I know now it's called opportunity costs in economics term,

but I didn't know that then. I just knew, I don't know, man, Carlos, Carlos family dangers. You gotta be careful you're taking money from Carlos. So in my mind I had to figure out how to translate these questions into terms that I understood and then translated back to what the people was asking me. To answer this question. It took me three tries, dog like, I could not

get it, and I never felt so ill equipped. Yo, and for real, for real, if you really want to know why black and brown children score lower on average and the s A T S is this, These questions aren't calibrated to us. We have to translate things into what we understand, then translate them back to what you understand. We all do this. You have to really be by try and quadri lingual to really understand how any of this works. And I'm not just saying black and brown,

I'm saying poor kids too. It's not calibrated to us, and I feel like that's all of us with politics. The point is this, they're not smarter than you. They just use a different language than you. And you could be the black and brown person in the community, which is the lens that I'm speaking from. You could be the rural kid from the middle of Central Texas. You know what I'm saying, toughest nails. You could be the trailer person in in Pontiac, Michigan. It don't matter to me.

You understand, and this stuff it's just set in a different language. So it makes you feel like they're smarter than you. These people ain't smarter than you. Now, in this episode, I'm gonna attempt to give you a treatise as to why I'm your guy, a little bit of my background, and what I hope to accomplish. Um, you kind of heard what I hope to accomplish just now, but I'm gonna try to go into it a little more and give you more examples of how this applies

to politics and why I'm your dude. But first, your boy's background. Who is propagandia? So for me, all of it started in south central seventy third San Pedro. That's where my family is, my my father's side. At least, I'm gonna name a lot of places. Since most of y'all really probably aren't from l A, you won't know

what I'm talking about. I'm also gonna not name names because it's a high possibility that, you know, there's plenty number of people to listen to this that do actually know me personally, so I'm trying not to name names because that's not fair to them. And also the fact that these people listening to me that do know me would be able to call bullshit. So I'm gonna keep

it a whole buck with y'all. Seventy three of San Pedro my father's side, almost all of his aunts and uncles on his mother's side all kind of came to

South Central and South Los Angeles. So Watts Compton, South Central. Uh, A few of us kind of spread out to Currenchhaw District, Inglewood, they kind of moved west, but we all kind of like came around here during the sixties in the Watts Towers projects when Jim Crow was ending and black people were allowed to own homes in a place that was never a slave state, you know, as far as slave as far as black people are concerned. So we landed in this area. That's where a lot of my roots

kind of sprout from. My first five was spent right on that street with my grandmother babysitting me. That's where I learned that I wasn't set out for gang life on that street. If you listen to my music, I've talked about it before. The Alleyway on Florence in Maine, behind this burger joint called the Golden Ox was, yeah, where I saw my first gun, where I realized I was ten years old, where I realized Uh, yeah, gang life ain't for me. I was like, Yo, these y'all

signed up for this, you know what I'm saying. But what you learned quickly is like, even if you don't sign up for it, having to navigate street stuff is unavoidable. No matter how square you are, it's you have to at least know how to navigate it. I was in an art you know. I was an art kid, you know what I'm saying. And I fell in love with graffiti, and graffiti became uh and hip hop became the way

that I spent most of my formative years. The story about the Alleyway and behind the Golden Knox is a whole other story that we don't got enough time for this podcast. But just no, that was a squad car you know what I mean by squad car that handed the homies these guns. Anyway, my family moved twenty minutes east to the San Gabriel Valley, which is right outside of Los Angeles. Like I said, twenty minutes east, right

outside of South Central I moved to. This neighborhood was predominantly Mexican, very Latino, but predominantly Mexican, which was another reason as to why I didn't join my neighborhood set because I mean there was Vatos, you know, it was Tolo, so like I would be a liability to these dudes.

But again, this was my neighborhood that sort of I kind of cut my teeth in fell in love with hip hop where I scraped my knee from first skateboard where I figured out how to hop the bus to the l a river and you know, throw your jacket over the barbed wire to hop the fence to clack clack, scribble your name on the wall, you know, and then how to throw the backpack somewhere else and you know, stash it in a in a bush on the off ramp and come back at eleven to come pick up.

I shouldn't be telling you all this stuff. It's also how I got into the system because of like the gang sweeps and gang injunctions of the nineties and two thousands in Los Angeles, because stupid me wrote my name on every folder that I had and then put it on walls so then the popo could be like, uh, is this you? You can't be like nah, because that's the same name that's on Well, we were so dull.

That's where I learned all this stuff. I went to high school twenty minutes east of there to the sort of the Inland Empires, what we call it. I went to high school out there, very diverse. It was brand new, sort of like planned community. The thing about California suburbs is like they're not as white as they seem. They're actually very diverse, and like every family had the same idea, which was, man, let's get a little money and get

our sons or our daughters out of these environments. So we just basically took l A and such and just moved it to nicer houses. I had a chance to sort of like live in a predominantly black neighborhood, predominantly Latino neighborhood, and then in a white community that happened to be sprinkled with a whole lot of other, uh diverse pockets. So that's kind of the childhood sort of

the story. I felt, like I said, I fell in love with hip hop in those early stages of my life, started rapping, battle rapping and doing a lot of graffiti and all those different things that kind of come around being a part of hip hop where you kind of all over the city in all different types of communities that you know, you're jumping in the schools, you jump ditching school to go to the neighbor to the rival high school to battle somebody like I'm not out here

like you know it was. She was battling like I wanted to. Like we had some breakdancing battles, you know what I'm saying, during the lunch break at a school down the streets. So if I was ditching school, it wasn't to go smoke or nothing, although we were smoking, but it was over there to bust some windmills. Was over there to slaughter whack um. See you know what I'm saying. And you know it is you got the testosterone go on his hot heads. And again gang life

is unavoidable, so some people start set trivi. You start serving this full he from his block. He got his homies out there. Now you gang banging. It's just like this stuff all overlaps. But you just see so much of the world and just being in love with hip hop, and if you live in Los Angeles, like the undercurrent of all this stuff is still what set you claim when neighborhood you're from, because that kind of explains sort

of the the metal for which you're made of. Do you got some strengthen you do got some stay in power? And if I like, if I try to test your jaw, which basically means if I punch you, you know, do you got a glass jaw? Or is there somebody else I gotta worry about? If I punch you, can you call somebody? Can you make a call? And the El

Dorado come around the corner. That's why a lot of times when they're asking you where you're from, or why it's so important for California's or hood people to say where they're from, because it it it tells you all of that in that one sentence. So that's sort of the personal narrative. The school narrative is what's to school for illustration and intercultural studies? Then, like I said before, when you got my teacher and credential in history and

social science. My father was a black panther, so ideas of justice and blackness, even though I was in a predominantly Latino space, these were unquestioned norms. The reality of racism in America, the reality of the oppression of poor communities everywhere was was there was no option. You're going to participate in justice. You're going to participate and interact with government in law because duh, they wrote it into the constitution. Y'all told me I have a say, and

I'm gonna make you honor. That's really the attitude you get from being raised by a black panther, you know what I'm saying. My parents split when I was in high school. My father sort of stayed around the l A San Gabriel area. I kind of bounced back and forth between my mom's house and my father's house, in between nice neighborhoods and hood hoods, really getting my passport stamped and pretty much in community, whether it was Filipino or Pacific Islander, and you know, tongue in Samoan Latino.

I speak decent Spanish, you know. And back back home to South Central I just got to see the world in a lot of different arenas, and then being able to go off to college in Orange County, which was if you know Orange County in Los Angeles, those are the people that Orange County is where they had the anti mass protests. So I'll let you draw your conclusions

by Orange County. That's where I went to college. So you just traversed so many different spaces and gives you a lot of ways to sort of like understand how everybody is looking at the same thing and drawing these different conclusions. So finished school. I taught high school for six years. And during this whole time that I was finishing school teaching high school, I was doing music battle rapping.

And then one day, actually the day I got my first record deal was the same day I got higher full time at the high school I taught, which is pretty funny, but I had no delusions of grandeur. I kept working, but I kept getting, you know, more and more involved in hip hop until the day came that I kind of had to make a choice. Am I going to continue to do music? Because I wasn't doing either of them well. So I had to decide whether

I was gonna keep doing music or keep teaching. And I just decided I'm gonna strike while the iron's hot with music, and I started pursuing that full time. I have no problem working. I cleaned toilets for a little bit, you know, I painted a garage one month to make meet rent. I went on tour, uh with some big names, you know, depending on how old you are, went on to over care us one. I was on the war tour.

I did to smoke out for a while, but none of it cracked until I started taking the poetry side serious. When that happened, I had a few poems go viral. I started getting on some sort of a couple believe it or not, evangelical events that put me on arena stages faster than I was prepared for it to happen. But it did happen, and uh, I was off to

the races. But a funny thing that happens when you get into evangelical spaces is they tend to believe that you are just like them, which brings me to the final part of the introduction, which is the faith part. Every other blackground we went to church. You know what what I'm saying. M Some of y'all who have been checked in with me for a while know where I stand. Know that my background with music has been in a

good amount of Christian spaces. I've I've been able to like navigate a lot of different arenas with my music and with my poetry. But ultimately, at the end of the day, like you know, you can you can't lie. A lot of y'all saw me as a Christian artist. So here's the thing. New people. New people are old people. I honestly believe the worst thing a person can do is have their faith tied to their income. It's just it's just a death nail dog. You can't because you

can't do either of them. Well, you know what I'm saying, Like you not allowed for your thoughts to evolve. You know what I'm saying, You may think something a certain way because listen, anybody who got the same views and thoughts they did ten years ago. Like, that's a problem. You you gotta grow, Like at some point you should be growing. And then there's this quote from like Upton Sinclair, which I really feel like, like nails what I'm trying

to say here. It goes like this, It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Do you know how many d ms I get from pastors who have been atheists for years? You know what I mean? Foods have come out to me, either in person over some beers or some weed or some dams that are like, I just can't share this with nobody else. It's just the space, don't allow for nuance, don't allow for you to change

your mind in any way. So you're either gonna lose your faith or you're gonna lose your job. I was like, if I'm a deconvert or dig my feet into stand, it ain't gonna because of y'all. I mean, I'm not like a disembodied voice. I mean I'm a real person and I got real people in my life that actually know me that are making sure Like yo, are you are you're giving credit where credits due? Are you loving your neighbor? Are you being as humble as possible? Are

you taking care of your family? Are you you know what I'm saying, Are you taking care of your soul? Are you, you know, taking care of the globe? You feel me that? Like, I mean, so many people worry about your theology don't actually know you. I look, I came from a hood church. I love them families. My uncle Billy ray My, you know what I'm saying, My uncle COR's gene. This was Citizens Design Missionary Baptist Church, Compton, California. Like I grew up, like every other black person grew up.

We went to church, you know what I'm saying. But when we say we went to church and we was Christians. A lot of times that conjure up that Western evangelical idea that most of y'all have, because they built an industry out of their faith. The problem is, I don't come from that. I don't understand how a book that took place in the Sinai Peninsula, Nibia, Egypt, Ethiopia somehow translated into a white Jesus and white supremacy that these

people believe in Rome. You the occupiers, do you understand you following the story Roam the bad guy in the story. I just I don't. I just don't have no understanding about the Christian nationalism, the patriot the garden country. I don't get none of it. I'm just sending up a slave. I don't understand what the hell they talking about? What are y'all so worried about? Why you only care about babies in a wound like I don't what about when they are out? Like? I just the hell I care

about a Puritan? I didn't come from that. I came from an inner city space. I just didn't come from this like culture war, sort of like arrogance of thought that we're the onliest people. With the rightest answers about all the stuff and then honestly, like real ship, I mean,

I'm real cool on a lot of this. How I'm gonna look my grandma to face, my great grandma in the face, my ancestors who somehow got through them slave ships, somehow got through the nigger corters, thinking, these Negro spiritual and these families in and around our city who just cared about us so much and worried about, you know, for better or for worse, what our soul was doing, and became the people that they I can't look them

in the face and say they're tripping. But I do know the yang they talking ain't the yang y'all talking? You feel me? So for me, Look, I ain't gonna talk to you about peno substitutionary atonement of super lapsarian is um like this ain't the show for that, and it's not where I am. You know what I'm saying. I don't let go of a lot of stuff I used to think, and there's a lot of stuff that still ain't true. But look, I ain't here to argue

about his facial features. I probably shouldn't invot Kanye, but you get the point, I'm just saying, damn man, chill, you know what I'm said. But in the spirit of the show, let me give you a hood example about this. I have fourteen I think I think I have fourteen first cousins, and I ain't gonna tell you which side because my family listening and I love him. Now, this could be hypothetical, it could not be hypothetical. I don't name names. The point is, I know y'all can relate

to this, So just just follow me here. Other fourteen first cousins, there's a there's a few of them who are just them niggas is trashed. I don't know what else is saying. They just they're criminals because they all saying like this, this my cousin. I love him, but they're dangerous. That is dangerous. Yeo, I'm saying, I'll walk there around my children. I don't like it when they're around my my mama. You know what I'm saying, Like, I love my auntie, that's my cousin, but I am nothing.

And what sucks is like when you come around the hood, Like if I come around the hood, I got the same last name. I come around the hood, and the whole hood like, oh oh you word you you from that family, And I'm like wait wait wait, wait, wait wait wait, wait, time out. I'm like family, it's fifty others of us that ain't like that. I don't know what he owned. This man had made his own decisions. We just share the same grandma. Yeah, and my grandma

one of the most honorable humans on the planet. I just I admired my I love my grandma, so out of honor of my grandma, I can't disavow this nigga like heat my family. I mean, we got the same grandma. What you want me to do? But hell yeah, the trash, I don't know what you want to say. Man, that's really the way I feel. I don't know what's going on with this white supremacy stuff. That's just white being white. I don't know what's up with this purity culture. That's

just Victorian. I don't know about this colonialism stuff. That's just colonial that's what colonialism do. They just put a Christian name on it. That's just what they do. I ain't got nothing to do with that. I don't understand none of that stuff. I don't know what to say, y'all. But that's my that's my backstory. You know you're gonna go through music, you won't hear a lot of Jesus stuff. But trust me, Jesus I'm talking about that ain't the same nigga. You know what I'm saying. I'm cool. Look

the earth older than six thousand years. I got you. I get it yourself saying y'all reading that mug all wrong. I'm cool with the gays. You feel me like, I ain't got know homophobic ball to my body. You know what I'm saying, Like, I'm that's not me. I got trans folks, I got trans family. Because like I'm not listening, I got not to do it. I don't know what they're talking about. I'm just as outraged as you are. Trust me all that to say this, I come from

this really diverse background. I've seen a lot of different things. Now, I should never be your source of news. This should never be the first time you heard a story. This is more about. You heard a story in the news, something going on in politics, geopolitics, whatever, and you're just like, wait, wait, what I kind of feel like is this? But maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm here to tell you yes you do. And the reason why I feel like I know I could say that this is

because I've had to traverse so many different worlds. Whether it was the evangelical spaces, whether it was hood spaces, Latino spaces, Asian spaces, academic spaces, street spaces. I've just had to at least learn how to understand the way that they saw the world. And it helps me go, Okay, this is what you're trying to say. That sounds a lot like this. When you're talking about foreign allies. You just mean being clicked up. Who's gonna jump in? That's

what they're trying to say. Whatever you hear a word about these are our allies. These are fine. They're just asking you who're gonna jump in? If you're getting jumped, that's that's That's all that is. See, that's what I'm trying to say. It's not that hard. You feel me. You're talking about terrorists. That's that's a bolic buying box. All my Penoise shout out, Boli buying box. You just pulled up from Manila. You feel me. She in the house. She got this whole box of all kind of stuff

that's for everybody. Trust, she had to pay to get this in the house. That's a that's that's a tariff that's coming in. It's just just think by buying box you feel me. It's easy, y'all. And all I wanna do. I just want to direct traffic. You smell me. That's all this pot is about directing traffic. So that's me in a nutshell. I know we didn't talk about any particular topic, but I just want to introduce myself with

this one. And as we keep going in, we're gonna dive into more things that have to do specifically with really understanding politics, because politics, after all, it's just gangbanging in nice suits. Allowed me to re introduce myself. My name allowed me to re introduce myself, y'all. This mug was recorded and edited by me Propaganda right here in East Low's boil Heights, Los Angeles. Y'all can follow me

at prop Hip Hop on all the socials. You could follow the Hood Politics pot itself at Hood Politics Pod, where we'll be trying to make takes on stuff that aren't really big enough for a whole episode, but definitely needs a little bit of clarity. This mug was scored, mixed and mastered by the one and Only Headlights. Y'all go follow my dog Matt. I was Swellski. I still don't know how to say his name. I'm glad he

changes your headlights. Follow him on his socials at Headlights underscore music telling you hear all these new other fly tracks, this food be making, and the theme music was done by the One and Only Gold Tips Gold Tips d J Shawn p. Y'all remember every time you check in politics, y'all is just gang banging in nice suits. Shouts to I Heart Media for making this happen. Myself allowed me to reintroduce myself.