Blackness: The State of Blackness 2025

like an anchi litha. So it's like covered in enchilada sauce, Like yo, a turkey, don't slap like mine. Me and the homies just like fried stuff. So brind that mug in occasion and then deep fry it like it's some shrimp and some old baycuz blood you don't eat like me. These collar greens. Listen, my greens. You don't want to smoke with your boy. With the greens, your boy can burn. I put my foot in them greens. The hot water corn bread next to the authorities, both the slang and

the literal. You know what I'm saying, all kind of homemade silicized cuz my mother in laudo play around my swag. You don't want it with folks, you feel me. You don't want it with the mac and cheese. You don't look. You don't want it with the mac and cheese. And then to wake up with a whole bowl of pasola and to my list the next day. Cut you don't want it with my house. Aamn, yams, ain't got no dog on marshmallows on top of marshmallows, don't belong on. No yams is wrong with you. I can get to

the yams, baby sweet yea ams? Sure me? Oh man, you don't want it with my house anyway. I think you do want it with my house. You want to be in myles eating my food. You can't have you can't have none of this. We not sharing nothing. I am talking about nonsense right now. Sent of the year, and oh my god, what a year there's like in this cycle of the contract. It's like, I owe, I heard two more episodes now obviously that's just on this contracting me. Praise the Lord God Almighty. We got renewed

for another season. But yeah, I'm crawling into the end of the year. Just like y'all are. But what we did at the halfway mark, and I can't believe that was the halfway mark, was we did a half a year stated a Blackness address. So now coming into the end of the year, it is now the twenty twenty four end of the year State of the Blackness Address, hook politics, y'all. Yeah, buddy, what a year has been? Man? What do you say? Dude? Like, So let's first let's reflect.

You know, the year started off so promising. You guys may remember it started with Club Shasha and Kat Williams just setting the record straight, just being like, this is the tone. What's going on this year? Is we cleaning house and we shining? Who knew Kat Kat was? I thought I got said in the first time. I thought Kat was gonna give us the phrase we was gonna use forever, but instead he gave us the facial expression

we gonna use forever. Is that man looking at you with his little drinker and just being like I tried to tell y'all, you got to tell Diddy No, who knew? No Diddy, when you want to play in your buttthole, give you five million dollars, You got to tell Diddy no, kat was trying to tell us something. That man exposed frauds inside of the comedy circuit. Some of it was like, yeah, you was being a little salty. Maybe you know what

I'm saying. Like some of it felt like it was a little little sus because he definitely followed up with that Netflix special that I couldn't even finish. I ain't gonna hold you like. I was like, ah, man, I don't. It just ain't doing for me. But that interview when he laid down that you have an unnatural alliance to losers and it's not like you. I was like, Kat is letting us know what the year is twenty twenty four. We done, lion, We've done hiding. We're saying what we

were saying. It was such a great moment for the culture for us. Followed like almost the next day with the dude, the brother that jumped over the bench in the court. You murdered a brother, the flying felon brother jumped over the thing and tackled the lady. Y'all. That's how the year started. The year started with Cat Williams and then the boy jumping over the bench to tackle the judge because she ain't she wasn't listening to what he was trying to say. He's trying to say he

had changed man, but she wasn't. He wasn't. She wasn't hearing it. That's how the year started. It was like, this is this is a wonderful way to start a year. And it started making me think this year is finna be black as hell. And it was like a very exciting time for the year to be black as hell. Because right after that, oh Man Caw Girl Carter came, Beyonce did a country record, and of all the talk around what it means to be a country artist, what country is, and let's let me let me who who

has a day job as being a musician. I understand what it means to be multi genre. I write poetry, I do hip hop. I understand also that I know a lot of rappers right now, right now in sessions with country artists because they're writing songs for him. Why because there's money there. You can't look at what Jelly Roll doing. You can't look at Shaboozi and be like, that's Jay Kwan's song he did, It's what a lick? Right?

It is Jae Kwan's song One here comes the two to the three to the four, everybody drunk about the dance floor. He just changed the word from club to bar. Everybody at the club getting tips, everybody at the bar getting tips. It's just like, why would you not that dude. Dack's the other black dude rapper that was on the Corner list. And I mean, you say what you want about him, but yeah, like he was on the Corner rapper list. But I'll tell you what. He over there

in country music making his bread. Now do we have the right to do that? Well? As Beyonce so eloquently pointed out, country music is black. We were. We have a right to be here because we made it. I have a song called Gentrify on a record called Crooked that I did in twenty seventeen. Matter of fact, the first uh it could happen here stuff that it had the song crooked as like the theme word the Grandpop's good and fathom the Obamas is Yeah. So that was

from the album Crooked. And I'll have a song on there called Gentrify where I'm gonna quote myself because I'm that shallow. I ain't saying you ain't welcome. Please be our guest just know the city limits beat in our chest. So it's not so much that we feel as though what we create isn't for everyone. It just doesn't mean that you get to if you're welcome into my house, you just can't rearrange my furniture and start putting your name or all my stuff. That's this. This is what

I'm trying to tell you. You not allowed to. You can't just this ain't your house. You can't just act like it's your house. So what Beyonce did was remind everybody and to highlight other black country artists that's been there the whole time. That's like, well, we never left, We've always been making country music. And then she made a music that and she made an album that like, I mean, it's the other part that kind of made me mad. I'm like, we is. I mean, it's pop music.

Like I don't understand why y'all so mad about this. It's pop with a country feel. And let her live. She did that already with the Renaissance record, which was reminding everybody that house music, it's Chicago, queer, black black people. Man, this our year cause And I was excited until the worst kept secret in all of entertainment slid out and that is Diddy, p Diddy, Sean Puffy Comb's nasty ass. It all kind of all kind of stumbled out videos

of him beating the mess out of his girl. All the NDA's about him diddling p Diddy diddling kids is we still haven't confirmed whether that mug happened to Justin Bieber and maybe us should brought him over where. It was like, Okay, this one situation, these Diddy parties, this one thing could take down like almost all of black entertainment, unless you like Kendrick Lamar, which was like, I stay

in the crib, but we'll get to Kendrick later. So Diddy gave us new phrases no Diddy, right, and just the amount of people that were mixed into that thing, Meek mill, it's still people talking about how jay Z is paying millions to keep his name up out of that right, I don't know. Jaguar Wright started telling everybody

all started telling everybody's business. The drugs that they take, the uppers and the downers to stay in that party, the women that they flew out there, and how and a lot of times Didd he ain't even interested in the women and just the memorable level of a thousand bottles of baby oil. It's just this is disgusting, but it couldn't have been more funny. Here's the thing about

black people. Just like we said in the last one, we could be deeply unserious about very serious things, and we could be very serious about un serious things and never really lose sight as to what is important and what was not. That man diddy House got raided and he was gone, and he left his boys. Bad. Oh this private jet on his way to a play as a way to a place that don't extradit. This nigga left is getting the nigga looking like George Bush flying

over Hurricane Katrita. Why his kids is being the Oh my god, oh my god. Speaking of which, we were still on a high from Aquamane and the Montgomery brawl, the fade in the water. We were still on a high from that. I'm telling you, man, this was supposed to be our time.

Alexandria Cassio Ortez Cortes. The thing that like, if you have not figured this out by now, if you listen to my show, you are not going to If you if your ancestors is from the equator in any way, shape or form, you are, You're never gonna roast us better. We will always like we're gonna cook you. Why because of the culture and the families for which we were forged in You have to understand our aunties, our uncles, Our theos are theias, our theitos are the thoughts. They're merciless.

They have that your your age don't matter. They don't do age appropriate, like you're merciless. I understand a lot of times in the Asian community it's a little more like it's a little different. No, it's not a little different, because I've heard from my Asian friends they're like, are you walking the door? Your grandma will be like you're fat. Now, like listen, so they very direct for us. It's jokes like she gonna say that about you, but it's gonna be a joke. Like you, I don't know how else

to say this. No one is safe in our only No one's safe in our homes. Grandma, Grandma cook you. You come in there wrong. Listen, listen. You happen to walk in. You happen to bring your little white girlfriend in here. And she insisted on bringing her vegan muffins, like Grandma is gonna cook her like, and she gonna cook you right after you, just like, listen, you have to listen. Listen. I'm in an interracial relationship now. Granted mine is Mexican, so it's a little different, you know

what I'm saying. And she like her granddaddy black is hell like they from southern Mexico is different, right, And she looked Mayan, like my wife looks indigenous. So the point is, we have a few more cultural Oh, of course we have our differences, but we have a few more cultural overlaps. But listen. I still had to prepare her last year. She said she wanted to take a shot at making the macaroni and cheese. And I said, okay, now, let's do a trial run. Okay, before you bring this

to the rest of my family. Okay, they love you, they like you. You have to understand our meals. This is what you understand about black people. And probably Latinos. No, yeah, for shaw Latinos too, but specific Latino said. Look, it's a little different, but with black people, it's a meritocracy. Like you earn the dish you are. You are assigned it. You don't get to pick it. You're assigned the dish that you bring. I don't care if you like making mac and cheese, my nigga, you bring in the collar,

you bring in the greens. You're better at greens. That's what you're bringing. And look if you can't, if you can't cook, you just bring the drinks. It's fine, Brendana baby, you brown and bring the alcohol. We'll do the cooking, you know, because don't it ain't nobody gonna eat it, right. You're gonna waste all that money, all your time, and we're gonna make fun of you for bringing it. We already told you not to bring that dry ass corn bread in here. We told you not to do that.

I don't know who told you that was okay, so I listen, you need to prepare your melanin challenged partners prepare them. So I prepared her, and she went on YouTube. She found somebody, an old woman from Louisiana that uh and when I tell you like she's I mean, my wife's a PhD. She knows how to follow directions. She followed that recipe to a tea and let me tell

you something. That mac and cheese was smacking. It even had the right crust on the top of it, like, you know, we can go get the corner, like the corner was right, y'all, listen, I'll look, I'm not telling y'all you already know. You already know the test the tests. At that point, I was like, you can absolutely bring this around my family because I don't want her to feel what we felt as children. So let me bring that back to Congresswoman so Marle Marjie Taylor Green. I mean,

this was such an amazing clip. Was just running her mouth, just leaning back, running her mouth, you know, and and and just being just being completely rude and talking about eyelashes and men and making comments about the phys appearance of Congresswoman Jasmine and the thing about again, I keep having a school, y'all. This's the state of the Blackness address we are required to, especially as black men, or specifically as black men, and very specifically as black women.

Specifically as black men, we have to keep our cool because we'll get murdered. So're you like any show of aggression or discontentment as a black man, you have to really calculate, like how much I can't just lose it like these white boys can lose it. Like we can't just lose it like that, Like we have to maintain a certain level of decorum because we're fighting stereotypes and just the anti blackness, the fear that that strikes in people's hearts when we just raise our voice or even

are just having fun. Like there are times like you know, it's like from the hood is thing called park day, where like park Day it'd be I mean, it could get rowdy, but most of the time, like we're playing like Niggas is playing kickball and like you know, like barbecue,

are having a fun time. Niggas is just loud, Like if we're playing Domino's, like we may like we just loud, you know what I'm saying, And it's just for some reason, it just be terrifying for people, Like I was having this conversation even with my own wife, like about I had to take I like taking public transit these days

because gas prices is crazy. But I was taking the train home and I was like, yeah, nah, this train gets rowdy, dog And she was just like, oh, it's a lot of a lot of young young hoodlums and I was like, no, I'm completely comfortable around them. It was a whole lot of old people that was yelling at each other. Who was elderly folk hitting there and they wheelchairs just mad at everything. I was like, Yo,

this is getting rowdy. And the poor bus driver there's two people in these wheelchairs, was yelling at each other. One of them was having like a delusional moment where she was like, they say, I'm a murderer. I can't even get out of my chair right. I was like, Yo,

it's getting hectic in here. I'm a whole bunch of like Now, granted I'm not delusional, I understand, like I got Antenna's, but generally, if a bunch of like a bunch of actos, a bunch of like, you know, young black dudes, get on, get on the train, I'm like, nigga, ain't me like you know what I'm saying. Like I don't know, like that doesn't But anyway, if they're being loud, I'm not scared. I'm annoyed, you know what I'm saying, because I'm like, nigga, put your headphones on, okay, like

you do't like what is you doing? Homie? Like you know, and it's more like as a big hummy, like you know what these people think of you? You feel me like you're gonna be targeted, but scared so and with black women probably which you know, an extension to all women, but I'm not talking about all women. I'm talking about black women. They got attitudes, they difficult, you know, and if she likes show her rage, then she's an angry

black woman, you know what I'm saying. So you got to really calculate and like you got to really get us there, because to get to the level of Congress, like Congresswoman Jasmine had to like really know how to control herself and the things for which she needs to say, because you got to be able to move in areas that are very foreign to us and don't understand our ways of communication. So but Margie Taylor Green ain't got to worried about that, so she popping off. Sister. Oh man,

y'all remember this. She said, Okay, we're talking about bodies. Well, it is it appropriate if I call if I say this this bleach blonde, bad built, butch body, like you, like, did you have to understand that that comes from decades

of training and that like it is. It is fifty percent possible that she thought of that off the head, that she just looked at her right there like oh you're trying to oh you got something to say, and that alliteration bleach blonde, bad built, butch body just flew out of her soul just because we just had that kind of training. Or it's fifty percent possible that she thought that the first time she saw her. It just had been holding it because it's inappropriate to talk about

somebody's body parts on the Congress floor. But either way, she lit that girl up. And at that point I was like, oh, nigga, this is our year. I was like, yeah, this is doll this this is the blackest year on record. This made me so happy. But the only thing that could top that was the light skinned Canadian had the nerve to pop off and the People's champ corn Roll, Kenny Pullitzer, Kenny jumped on the tape with Future in Metro Blooming and was like, it's not about the Big three.

Nigga is the big Me and that's set off. And now you know what I'm gonna include. I'm gonna include Draking. This Drake hav black. He counts this, although he proved he not really part of our culture, but that he loves the culture. But you know what he gave us. You know what they gave us something we have not had in a long time. A really good hip hop battle that didn't end in death. That wasn't petty. It was the sophistication. And I'm gonna give because it can

only be a battle. If if Drake wasn't a hit maker, this wouldn't have worked. This wouldn't have brought our culture the joy that it brought us, if Drake wasn't the villain that he is, which made basically the hip hop Avengers and X Men wrapped in one come around and show y'all the very premise of what I mean by this show, which is, if you understand the hood, you understand politics, you can't move the way Drake moves and expect people to come to your defense. That's why nobody

came to his defense. Kendrick showed you you be a man of your word. You stick to your guns, you go to work, you go home. You keep your integrity, and you let your work do to talking. And for a span of two weeks, we got really to witness two of the best, two of the top. Like, think about this for a second. The two top in what sport is it really and truthfully, the two best teams make it to the finals. This was truly the two best artists in hip hop for the decade. We got

to witness them go to head to head. And what all of us predicted who was in the culture was, first of all, you don't want it with k Dot. We already told y'all you ain't want it with k Dot. But the fatal mistake was the AI two pac. That's where Drake went wrong, because that went from Drake to Kendrick to Drake to the West coast. You made this a coastal thing by invoking our heroes. Not only was it corny, it just wasn't good. But when you do that,

you've set in motion. You woke a sleeping giant, you poked a bear, and at that point, the run from Euphoria to Meet the Grams to six sixteen in it's just the raps that we got from that, all culminating dropping on Sinko Demio Da Da Da Da. They not like us, They not like us, They not like us. The man gave us the song like this year will This year is gonna go down in history because it gave us an anthem of the ages, DJ Mustard, the anthem of the ages, y'all, the brother streak of the

Everybody screenshot it. Kendrick has seven tweets this year, and they're only just links to the songs and videos, and then the announcement that I'm also performing in the super Bowl. How do you like? What the how do you knock a year out? The part work. We didn't even got to his album that just dropped. I haven't even screamed my side yet. What a year, What a year for the coast, What a year for black people. But it wasn't all good. We'll talk about the next things that

weren't all good next. All right, we're back. This year also brought us, obviously, the fall of Diddy, like we talked about before, a reckoning that absolutely needed to happen, and was long overdue. But we also found out that we can now play R Kelly music again. Why is that because all of the money from playing his music and streaming his music goes to his victims. So like, hey guys, you can listen to R Kelly again. Now

we also had some deaths, oh I forgot about. The good thing is like the Kenny and Friends pop out on Juneteenth where he actually brought one hundred different hoods and united them on one stage to bring peace to Los Angeles. I've never seen anything like this. It was almost like this was Pok's dream. He did it. This was Nipsey's dream. Nipsey and Pac walked and ran, so Kendrick can fly. It was just absolutely beautiful. But we

lost some heroes. Man, we lost James Earl Jones. Now, for you white people, that's the voice of Darth Vader. But for the rest of us, he is the royal king of Zamunda. He is Prince Takim's father. I'm not even gonna explain that to you. For the rest of us, he's sold his royal oats. Words would fail me to tell you the ways for which we are connected to James Earl Jones We lost John Amos, who was the

adult version of Kuntikine, and then was James Evans. Yeah, John with James Evans on good Times, America's favorite Black, America's favorite daddy from the ghet To. You may not know what good Times is, but you ever heard somebody say diin't no mind. That's from the show. That was JJ Walker and he was junior on good Times? Do do good Times in it time? You need a permit? Good Times time? You be afreed any time. We're out

from Manda. So, yeah, so we lost him. We lost the dude that played candy Man, Tony Todd, you know the scary movie candy Man. We lost him, y'all. We lost Quincy Jones this year, the greatest songwriter of all time. You could quote me. Where do you where? You want to start with Quincy Jones? We are the world. You want to start with Lionel Richie. You want to start with Michael Jackson? Where you want to start Quincy Jones.

You may have known them as you may have known him as Rashida Jones daddy, but we know him as the responsible for Thriller and Billy Jean. There is no Michael Jackson without Quincy Jones, y'all. I would love for you to, at some point today or over the over the holidays, just google Quincy Jones's catalog of song of songs he's written, and just you know, good luck, good luck finding time to listen to anything else that was tough and hip hop. We lost DJ Kark Kent do

your googles, ca, y'all. We lost rich Homie Kwan Dang, y'all. We lost Frankie Beverly in the maze or not the maze. We just lost Frankie Beverly. Uh, you don't know Frankie Beverly is. You don't know what maze is? You ever seen black people do the electric slide? You know what song came on that immediately made us do the electric slide? Dun Dun do do do Dune Dun dun whoa before I let go? That's it's Frankie Beverly. We had a good time. I'm gonna make sure them righter. Oh you know,

oh you know Beyonce's version done and dun dunk. Yeah, it's Frankie Beverly. We lost Frankie Beverley. We lost Fat Man Scoop. Here we go now, here we go now, fat Man, scoop y'all. Tito Jackson as in Michael Jackson's brother, d Kimbamo Tumbo, the wag Finger. Come on, man, kim Bemo Tumbo, one of the greatest sinners in all basketball history.

We've lost some giants this year, man. We've also had some tragedies when the continuation of police brutality in the police state just now is reported that twelve men in a Virginia state prison self motified themselves, Like yeah, I said that weird self emole emulation. They set themselves on fire. In twelve of them. They were in solitary confinement. The first two were in solitary confinement, and they said it was the egregeous, exhausting amount of racism that they had

to deal with. They were there for two months solitary confinement, shouted at food spit in just a horrendous experience, so much much so that they set themselves on fire in protest. Guys, We've had some good times, but we've had some bad times this year. This year. In one of the episodes, I told you who child let me put you on I'm cops in Minnesota, or nam cops in Mississippi and tied up up, tied up two men. They went in there,

they called him. They was like a team. They went in there on purpose to tie up these these people in torture them tie up these black people in torture. That lady that had that that got shot up because the cop thought that he was he was scared she was gonna throw boiling water on her. Things still happened to us all the time. Now, while this was going on, so was the presidential election. And there was a moment where I thought this episode that I'm doing right now

might end with us having a black female president. This year, we did see a black woman. She's black and Indian, I know, but like you also know, oh black woman be on the top of the ticket for president. Ye'ah. We could have had a black woman president. But it didn't end that way for a million reasons that I'm pretty sure you've heard. But it didn't happen, and it was for the for the culture. Was a little disappointing. Now granted, you know, obviously you take a guess who

I voted for. But she wasn't a perfect candidate, you know what I'm saying. She had her flaws, she had. They ran a campaign that was frustratingly doing its best to Playcate the right rather than just standing on business, which I wish she would have done. But you know what do I know? But it was a beautiful thing. I'm not gonna hold you. It was a beautiful thing to hear, you know, wipe me down in the background at her headquarters. It was kind of cool to be like,

this is sorority sister that went to Howard University. It was pretty dope to see stuff like it was dope to see you know that her silk press, you know what I'm saying, Like it was, it was dope to see it. It was dope to see the culture on display and at the level that she could. But she lost, and I thought that that's what was going to be the death knell in the blackness of the year until until squabble up, Squabble up, squabble up, get the gout my fires. Until Kendrick Lamar came to save the day

against so black people. We got us an anthem, We defeated a Canadian. The dark Skins is back up. Lebron actually had to practice some nepotism. It was kind of cool. To see black people do the nepotism thing by putting Brownie into a game that boy average point one points a game. He definitely needed to go to the G League, but it was really cool to see this time. For example, you know, a black man bringing his unqualified child into a position that he shouldn't have. That felt good to me.

Do you know what I'm saying? We got us an anthem, We got us a super Bowl, we got us a fiery discussion as to whether Lil Wayne has the right to be mad or not. We got bleach blonde, bad built, butcher body. But also we got Phoebe l drizzy. What a year, y'all hood politics.

to pay him. This is his argument ungng ain't want to pay him what he feels like he worth, and a way to make sure that they don't have to pay him as much as he's asking for. They was like, well, we need to just like you know, lower his brand value. And how we lower his brand value is we push Kendrick's value up. So what he's saying is like, y'all ran the bots to run up the numbers on not

like us. I'm suing that's not real. And where he got this data from was because some dude on Academics stream said he got paid five hundred hours to run up the streams plus some points on the album. Do you know how points on the album means, like percentage

of ownership of the song. What you're telling me is Universal Music Group was willing to rather than just pay their own artist what these words, they was willing to tank their own artists and then pay some rando's ownership of the song to make sure that his numbers would run up so high as to lower Drake's value so they don't have to pay him what he's asking. That's what the lawsuits saying. Now, if that's the case, that's trash. I just can't I'm just saying, I don't understand why

a label would shrink the artists numbers. I don't know either way. What a year of y'all other politics? All right, now, don't you hit stop on this pod. You better listen to these credits. I need you to finish this thing so I can get the download numbers. Okay, so don't stop it yet, but listen. This was recorded in East Lost Boyle Heights by your boy Propaganda. Tap in with me at prop hip hop dot com. If you're in

the Coldbrew coffee we got terraform Coldbrew. You can go there dot com and use promo code hood get twenty percent off get yourself some coffee. This was mixed, edited and mastered by your boy Matt Alsowski killing the Beast Softly. Check out his website Mattowsowski dot com. I'm a speller for you because I know M A T. T O S O W s Ki dot com Matdowsowski dot com. He got more music and stuff like that on there,

So gonna check out. The heat Politics is a member of cool Zone Media, executive produced by Sophie Lichterman, part of the iHeartMedia podcast network. Your theme music and scoring is also by the one and overly mattow Sowski still killing the beat softly, so listen, don't let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living, you understand politics. These people is not smarter than you. We'll see y'all next week.