Interview: Conversate, with Killer Mike, Chapter One: Conspiracies and Consequence

hip hop programming, so much more. Get this, folks, We're not doing it alone. I can't believe this is a true story. Matt. We are joined live and direct in person with the activists, the musician, the legendary MC and creator of the hit new podcast Conversation with Killer Mike Michael.

we loved it. We learned so much. We started a small production company and one of the first things we shot was this little cooking show that was, you know, we're shooting a pilot for it, trying to get it off, and it was gonna be in Atlanta based cooking show. And the first person that we shot on that show is this guy who went by Kujo, and we were like, but at the time, for me, I have no idea who this person is. I think he's just going by a cool name from a scary movie that maybe dogs

I didn't know who he was. You know, I'm a small town Georgia kid out in the suburbs.

in Rico's basement. I learned about all of y'all and and all of that, and I just wonder what your maybe most positive takeaway is from working in a collective like that when you're starting out when and I call it a collector just because it seems like there's a lot of effort that goes in from everybody, for every you know, for everyone.

around these guys as anybody in the world. The first person that put his arms around me, how they've done your family? Se Low Goodie he was a member of Goodie Mob also, So I just felt honored to be in the league. So whenever asked to do something fun it I wouldn't even help care in the bag that's water shot wrap, you know what. I mean I was. I just felt happy. And Kujo went to my rival high school and I went to He was older than me when I went to Frederick Douglas High School. He

went to bend Rony Mags. And I'm a strong believer that you're as good as your rival. So you need a good rival high school to be your rival because it makes you want to be better at academics, arts programs, sports and everything else. So I believe there's a great symbiotic relationship between two schools. But I just love those guys man for after me, and I felt blessed to be a part of collective because I had literally grown up a fan, you know, while they were developing and growing.

I was the one of those day one thing. And so I feel very honored to be a part of the Dunja Man. That's amazing, And.

you talking about. It's this weird, cool looking white guys telling me you could do it, and I'm just like, man, I don't what is it. I don't even understand podcasts. And I see other people start to do it, to start to take off. I know, I like listening to Joe. I like listening to Joe Rogan, and you know, Joe Budden's I like that, But I didn't think people really cared to hear about me on a regular basis or from me on a regular basis. I just knew when I had a chance to talk, at least try to

leave people in the room more connected than not. You know what I'm saying, Or I said on Shannon Sharp's podcast recently, like listen and converse with one another, right, or conversate with one another to understand the other perspective. But understanding doesn't necessarily mean agreement. It just means I understand now, I understand I may not have understood before.

So I grew with Ramsey kind of peeking it on me a few times a year, a relationship with Ramsey and which prowning into a friendship because he could see further down the road and me, and he understood that as much as we benefit from having you as a rapper, you know, much as you benefit from having you care about politics on a level hyper locally business, that we'd really benefit if you got a chance to talk to a bigger world. And I finally just broke town and

said fuck it all right, and let's do it. And Ramsey's like, I'll do the hard part. I'll go get the equipment. I'll make sure we can we can have, you know, decent lunch at each one of them. But let's start conversing with people. Let's conversate. And I'm glad that I trusted my instincts because a lot of times you may have a skill and you may not. It's just it's just you, so you don't think of it as a skill. Just I have the ability to talk. I sit down on the plane. I still do the talks.

In third grade. Third grade, we took got on the plane and told Eastern Company called Eastern before Delta was the biggest in the world. It was like you sat down and they taught you sit down and introduce yourself to the person next to you. They and at that time, I argue with people about this all the time. You they tell you to put your bags opposite you so you can see your bags. Okay, So I still do that because I'm old and when people try to say, stop fucking with my bags, so I need to see

my shit. But I'll introduced myself and that's how I've met everyone, from people like Laura, Lenny. You know what I'm saying, I'm just like, oh, you play on the bitch, see my wife fucking loves you, and then I end up playing with her best friend. I want to show now the lowdown, you know what I mean. Ramsey was one of those people I'm glad to introduced yourself to me, and I got introduced on it because he saw something in and around me that I couldn't see. Not that

I ain't believe it, I just didn't see it. And my brother put it together and we're I think we're some in the teams now in terms of episodes, but I'm new. I like it because I'm genuinely curious. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, and I'm willing to be coached. And I think that's my greatest asset.

up like a mother. And I'm just sitting there talking. I'm just like, this is dope, Like this is this is getting one of the greatest mayors this city's ever had to tell how it really is. He says, how many deals have really just been homeboys sitting around talking. We got a coupletra billion to build a port in Savannah because of his relationship, but with Barack Obama, Like, if the funk you talking about we worried about these ports?

What about these ports? These ports directly affect working class men in Georgia. That matters to me from you know. So, I just thought that that was fucking incredible getting a chance to talk to Charlemagne in a room like we talked his friends oftentimes on the phone. And that is amazing because I've seen his career progress from South Carolina to taking over the biggest, you know, biggest artment space in New York. So I love it. I get to converse with my friends and people I may not know.

I get to understand different perspective, even if I don't agree with I get to understand it. So it's something I think I'm gonna do for a while.

everybody's at south By Southwest. They were given an opportunity because it was a special Atlanta gathering at south By Yeah, to either interview Kasim Read or you and the management shows Casim Read and everybody on production team was like, you know, it was.

hey man, my band. Man, I'm late man, trying to get up to the Miss Jane Mount. Sorry, you get on a genuine my band. So there's a there's still a Southern hospitality in in even our rudeness, you know what I mean.

to Connecticut. Hat a cousin who ended up moving with his great grandmother out in Los Angeles. We were stayed. But the culture of childhom and this is the last key kids time. This is when moms had got out and started working, and oftentimes you would be letting yourself in and out. Kids weren't really looked after. Jen Nexters talk about an exciting way, and Lord knows the exciting

but we'd go outside. Parents would know where we were for hours, and these little black boys start disappearing, and no one could answer why, who what happened? No one could answer if it was the clan it was, if it was government doing experiments on children, No one knew what happened. A guy named Wane Williams, who was from my side of the town, from the west side of Atlanta and actually went to the same high school Frederic lenhol was high school, ended up being convicted of killing two adults.

Some people argue the murders never stopped. Some people argue they did with the lock up of him. Some people say, well, the black prostitutes start being killed. No one said or did any think about that. But it was very scared and time. And the weird thing about the time, though, is what kind of liberated us kids who had grown up in this air fear and be home by the time the lights come up and light night lights come on and only moving packs of like four or five

six boys together. So I see the water boys, It reminds me of that time. Now you see the boys on the corner. We had to at that time moving units like that because you didn't want to be caught by yourself, even out to the point. One of my I tell this when I talked to paint on Our

on the conversation podcasts of Mind. There was a time where me and my cousin were walking from school together and a funeral home hers stops, and two guys get out dressed like Lamont Sandford from Sandford and the Sun. Yeah, you know, and with the glass and the afroll and beckons us to come, you know, as though they're lost or something. What And man, we wait half a second, we start screaming, running out and answers up the road just because I'm like, we knew most of the funeral

homes along the Martha King Here corridor. My grandmother had worked for Dawson Funeral. I'm just like, nah, I what the fuck, get the fuck out out and trusted and those guys scooted on the fuck out of there. So I don't know what that was or wasn't, but I know that the times made you, as a child more alert, kept your head on the swivel. And what liberated it, weirdly enough, was the plague of the In my opinion,

reagular administration backed cocaine proliferation and crack era. With the crack era freed us as keyids up because when the proliferational crack hit inner cities and it stopped being cocaine and freebasing, something that was done added after discos and stuff, and started to hit front streets at the car washings and the housing projects. There was just people in the streets then, and even though it was wilder and weirder because of drugs, it felt safer Woa, because people were

out now. Even during the Atlanta child murders, you'd have adults stand out on driveways and in their front yard make sure you got home. But the crack era Man and the Martyr Train when they finally opened up, gave us a train. We were fucking free, man. We were just it was it was just packs of kids that would be jumping on trains going downtown came in for fucking hours. But there was a real freedom in it. And even that brought us all sets of monsters into minds.

But you know, I brought a certain demise of the community. But the monster and the fear of the Atlanta mission and murder kind of dissipated with the lock up of Wane and with the freedom that interestingly enough, the drug air brought on Wow.

work or to dismiss what is being explored. And one of the things that continually is a thread through your collaborations, through your solo work, through your team ups, is always this message of telling the truth of economic uplift, of the things your history textbooks might not have told us if we were growing up. So I'm setting up some stuff here. I'm sorry Matt if I'm going a little long.

I'm trying not to fanboy. But one thing when we were all brainstorming our conversation today one thing that immediately stood out as we said, well, Michael, what do you want to talk about? Won't get to hang out? And the top thing on the list, you said, the thirteenth Amendment. Yes, yeah, okay, So I'm just gonna I'm gonna read the clip of the thirteenth Amendment. Yes, I'm not gonna do a voice.

I really want to, but this is serious. So the thirteenth Amendment says, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States deep breath, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

the dirty work. And doing the dirty work was him being a negotiator with and foreign at the direction of doctor King for the SELC partnering with Snick and John Lewis. Was before John came on to SELC. Andy had a hell of a run, you know, in terms of having to do the dirty work while while people were you know, mobilizing people. I didn't realize that he had gotten in trouble for essentially saying similar that they were political prisoners

in the United States that had tons of them. Him and Carter, you know, Carter hand picked him the ambassador. That was one of the things where Carter's president had said, God damn it, now, you can't make the country look bad, so we gotta figure this one out. But Banandi told the truth, Black people, working class people, and poor people period are political prisoners more than not in this in this country because slavery and involuntary servitude shouldn't exist, except

that's a big one. Accept and if you're a poor white boy in the Lower Appellachian northern Alabama, you're the accept. You're a poor white boy from Middle Georgia and Florida, you're the accept. If you're a poor white woman eastern Alabama, Mississippi, you're the accept because we may need to use your body for six or seven years, similar to the way they use the Irish as indentured service. Similar to those ways,

you're the accept. And I said, if you're poor and white, now, if you're poor and black, you're the accept for the rest of your fucking life, if we can get you. I just interviewed a man named ak Bar Pray who had been a drug distributor in New Jersey. He gets locked up in nineteen ninety with a lifetime sentence. Now, other people who have gotten locked up who don't look like him don't get lifetime sentences. And I asked him, you know, what do you think you deserve? Or one?

When I calls asks he's ho twenty there's a man who's responsible enough to say okay. Under the louder the guidelines, I would have ate twenty years. He was locked up thirty six years in three months. He was given a release date April nineteenth. I believe, well, what April up twenty nineteen, and then right at then they told him, oh, we made a mistake. Holy sh and I don't know how to fuck He didn't go kill itself, you know

what I'm saying. But here he is now seventy seven year old man and his only mission for the rest of his life is to make sure other boys don't put themselves in a position and women don't put themselves in a position to be locked up for the rest of life. So we do have a system of slavery in this country. And you know when you have private prisons thanks to raign that are allowed to proliferate and say, okay, we're gonna build a private prison in Bubble Funck, Georgia.

Whether they're no jobs, this is gonna guarantee three hundred jobs. This helps transform it and keep this economy. But we have to stay eighty four percent in bed capacity. So how can you guarantee an eighty four percent feel rate if you don't have a loophole in that make sure I can feel it, you know. So now petty crimes become major crimes. Five grams of cocaine crack cocaine, and he goes five hundred grams five hundred folks. You got don't know, man, when you start talking about five grams,

isn't even worth two hundred bucks. Five hundred grams as a half a kilo? Wow? You know? So there is there is a grand conspiracy to keep slavery alive in this country because bullshit laws allows this country to lock up poor and I usually say it hurts us worse than first black people, but poor people in general are allowed to be used as free labor, and we should all be concerned with that because it gives reason to

justify prisons, and especially private prisons. So when you talk about that prison that our president was clicking his heels about down in Florida that's surrounded by alligators, the fucked up part about it is that prison, no matter what Fox News says, it's going to house a lot of poor white folks too. It's not poor white folks in Florida, right. And at the same time, I'm seeing a black girl, well a young woman on there saying, hey, man, if you a CEO, will have the credentials to be a COO.

They're starting pay is higher than other places. So sit here. So now you get a position where facilitily race aside. Class becomes the issue because as a CEO, that's a good job. Shit, you in the middle of fucking nowhere, Florida, You all of a sudden make fifty sixty seventy grand a fucking year for watching a bunch of poor people no one gives a fuck about, and put alligators around them. Even it's gonna be hard not to like capitalism. Then you know what I'm saying, you won't.

don't we unlike we used to. At times, we're not sending in people for prison sentences and bringing out better people, people who've had a chance to have some psychological diagnoses and find out what's really going on, People who may have gotten a chance to learn dis from the structure, don't get out of enough time that they're young enough to use it to be They don't have trades programs in school, they don't even have you know, exercise equipment

and federal presents anymore. So it's a very weird thing that we're using people's labor, and we use prisons for cheap labor too, And you know, it's just very weird to me that in this country, this republic that's so proud of freedom in our propaganda, that we don't push for freedom on at home, you know, on this clay.

but nothing was the prison a pre pension plan. And even beyond that, when you look at places like Cabbage Town, there's this huge fucking warehouse using rule Georgians that they brought up, paying them not in the US treasury bills but in meal money, and then and then tripling the price of goods they would only buy from the meal store. So they don't give a fuck. In case you motherfuckers don't know, they don't give a fuck about you niggas

or crackers, because the same people made both names. There's a planner class here. What they call that. We hear parents grandparents says that means master. It's a nice word for master. That means there's I don't give a fuck how much money I have as a rapper. My last name is not Cox. If your last name is Cox and fucking Georgia, you're not getting a ticket, Yeah you're not.

looking past our differences to solve the bigger difference. Yeah, you know, we have to stop. I'm from Comings, I'm from Athams' man. I'm sure our mother's had about the same amount of power. The question becomes, when do we unite that power and just say we can't do this anymore. We need to change the thirteenth Monument.

We know those people aren't just going to get together unless it's at the model of fucking outlets. They're trying to get in and out of there. But let's have those conversations. Technology gives us the ability to have those conversations, but let's filter through organizations we trust, whether it's a

local five oh one, C three or church. Then let's have these church I remember being young and you'd have these church meetups, and you know, the Presbyterian churches were great about it about reaching out to black churches, and then they'd have these fellow meetups, and shit, we need to start doing this. So we just have honest dialogue. And out of that dialogue you have conversation, you create an understanding. It does not mean agreement, but you at

least have understanding. And through that understanding, I believe you can start saying, well, what are the things that affect us both now? Right now, the Supreme Court is about to make a judgment or hear marijuana and guns. I'm a big proponent of marijuana and I'm a big proponent for guns. You should not give up your Second Amendment rights. With that said, the fucking Court should not force you to give up your Secondmendment rights because you smoke marijuana.

Forty percent of all gun involved violence and shooting our alcohol involved. There is no goddamn plan on banning tequila if you own a three fifty seven mag's just not This is fucking Georgia. Most shiving guns go together. That I'm never gonna did a fucking commercial with guns. Shouts out the gun, shouts out to governor, kill right does the gun? And I was like, I felt that commercial dad daughters like you, but he's not gonna call the

band the gun. But in Georgia right now, if you go to get a Georgia medical license, then you're gonna have to evoke your well, we don't need him anymore to have to giving up your concealed carry license. I don't get I don't think we should make stoners don't want to kill anyone Supreme courts. Stoners ain't trying to kill anyone SOLDI as trying to shield the fuck out, get high, go to sleep. Why you're gonna say what happened?

So when you think of it, though, if I think of it, if I'm a tyrant and I want to see Benillavant, you know, I do something that ss banilla and I keep people laughing on Twitter and ship. But what's the good way to d arm half the population if half the population smokes marijuana? You revoked the right to own a gun by saying because you smoke, Manuaza, it's your choice.

So when I said I kne him, I kne him. They sent us down, slept in their house. Fucking pick got eggs from under the chickens, We got water from the well. Like knew these people. And to know that these people were related to someone that was using the experiment that they ended, I don't think ending until seventy two, seventy, you know, so it was forty years easy. But to know that, and our farm is only two miles from

the school from Tusky University. To know that I have that history, to know that on my father's side we're owned by were owned by the laws by Crawford Longs family father's side, but yeah, we were owned by them, yep. So for you know, my father's fucking fair skinned man with curly hair. So somebody was fucking and those weren't voluntary fucks. So you know that you're a private the rape on that side, This country's been an interesting country, and I'm a patriot. I love this Republican what could

potentially be of it. But with that said, I can never ignore the fact when I hear dumb motherfuckers talking about how I didn't experience slavery. It was so long ago, it was far. My great grandmother's mother was enslaved. She taught her mother to read, she taught her children to read.

I knew that woman until I was nine, held her hands, sat on her lap as de mentor robbed of who she was, and she went from calling me Michael the Feller and slowly withered away in front of my grandmother's I knew her, I knew her husband, my great grandfather N. H. Black Man. The farm they brought with both their names on the DS is in my phone. I look at it every single day when I pray and think about me and my wife and what we're trying to grow. So I know my parents were both born in apartheid.

Born in nineteen fifty five, nineteen fifty nine. They were born into a world where they couldn't had their parents not being people who are highly respected, they could have not walked in front doors at some of the stores that I tend today. So it's just like, Man, get the fuck out of here. I don't I don't want to hear you know, what was so long agoing? Was that because these things affect African American steal and.

In here. Nobody knows you by your name, just another number living under bitch ass rules of a broken game. They put me in here to die and left me angry and alone for the crime of being old. They threw me in this nursing home.

no matter what side you are. You know what I'm saying. I don't give a fuck what you're saying. I give a fuck that you have the right to say say it. Yeah, what you're saying, I don't give a fuck. I got some shit I'm gonna say after you say that stupid shit you say. So I'm not bothered by a lot of the people who don't agree with what I'm saying. I'm not bothered by what they're saying because my thing is if Elija Muhammad city years ago, if you take a glass of water that's dirty, you put it there.

You don't offer people in alternative. They're gonna have to drink it. They're gonna, well, you need water for substance. But if I put a clean water right next to it, and people are gonna be attractive. And so it's simply my job to put my version of what I think the best water is out there and in the public or pubicler be pulled to on the side. But I'm very worried when people that I see myself an alliance agreeance with I, you know, philosophically, start to say I

want that other side of silence. Yes, that that that starts to spook me. Chompsky talks about it. Yeah, to watch the old man when he talks about it. He pissed a lot of people off, for this is the truth.

simply because they want to get you riled up. And the best way to effectively show someone that I truly believe in the First Amendment is to simply say, go go here. This is a black campus. You can talk all that Charlie kirks you if you want to. We got classes to go to. Nobody's gonna pay you much attention, Bubba. We'll see you at the end of the day when no one's engaged you. I don't have a reason to

fucking engage you. I already know I don't agree with you, but I already know you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You're just saying things to incite people, and I give you that. You know the stokely Carmichael called me to her said, you know the powers not in your ability to call me nigga. Fuck you called me nigga. The powers in it if you tell me when nigga, you can't do it and your power is effective.

See nin nigga, you can't vote if I keep walking to vote, but vote, I don't give a buck with you. But when you can put state patrol in front of that boating room and say nigga, you can't vote, oh, then niggas got to heck up. Then we got to go to war with you under state patrol because now you're denying me my right by use of force. Then the word nigga has has someone wait to it because you're preventing me through an armor of government. And that's

what people. Don't stop giving your power to government. Be uncomfortable. Just go ahead and be fucking uncomfortable because I'm in the UK. I'm stolen as a motherfucker, and I know to shut the fuck up because they have hate speech laws there, and I'm like, yeah, I'm an American. I don't give a fuck about the monarchy, you hate speech laws. I don't give you know what I like. I like your breakfast because my grandfather ate beans and fucking blood

putting from breakfast too. But yeah, you guys ain't got it fucking right. That's why we fucking left, you know what I mean? In Americans need to realize that, like, don't become your fucking parents.

meditate with Russell Simmons. There's no weed there, I said, we can go to fucking Destined and get house fucking koba weed be out the deck stays smoking the rest of the weed. Yeahn't because give it back to you. Yeah, it's like, yeah, party, you don't have enough, like yeah, fucking Destined Like it's like, bro, you We truly have

an amazing country. We have an amazing country if you drive from coast to coast in terms of what it looks like, the different geography you gotta see, we got an amazing country in the terms of the things you can see in people, you can experience, the place you can experience from the houses of the hot coast. We have an amazing country. Take some time to if you can't get out the country, to get around the country. Take some time to converse with people who don't look

like you. You know who don't I have a friend. Man's names Mike Man oh Gi, Mike and Ohio. I met Mike on a plane coming from the on coming from one of the car auctions man, and we just have become buddies. He's a great old man and that's time we talk. He said, I don't imagine you have the same political abuse house, Like you'd be fucking surprised on the guns Mike, like he owns millions of dollars in fucking old muscle cars and shit, and find lf

like how the buck did you get rich? Like I know how I got Negro rich service, how you're fucking rich? And you were overalls? And he's like I was in college. I wasn't very much interested. So I started drawing out some stuff out of improved farm equipment, almost like this large farm equipment company. She's rich and shit. I've grown as a human from knowing him because we have a common interest in old cars. But he has so much

wisdom and energy to give and poor to me. This kid that he doesn't even know which way I vote, but he doesn't give a fuck. He just cares that I get to enjoy the American dream. He loved the fact that I'm a father and a dad and that I'm respectful. I love the fact that he breaks every old white man stereotype, you know, beyond like he dresses like an old white guy, looks like an old white guy. You know what I'm saying. I might be the only rapper he listens to, but you walk in fucking his garage.

He has, fucking man, it's got like half a million dollars and whiskeys from across the world. I'm just like, he's one of the most renaissance man I've ever met. Yet he just looks like any guy walking out of the appellation with a bottle of shine. And if we don't start to value that about him ourselves, James Balbin talk about is having to come to a recording because ain't going to pick up and move back to Africa. Whites ain't definitely ain't feel I know, the Scott's and

Irish ain't going back. They're like, fuck that we worked hard in the first seven years. Bee, we're here. If we don't take some time to re establish who we are as individuals. What makes you feel good? Your family, your communities. But realize that America's like these quills said my great grandmother used to make. My great grandmother would have us in the summers, come down and bring your old clothes. So you brought your old blue jeans, your old sweaters and stuff. And then she would just take

the next few days. She just cut all the shit up in the squares, triangles, whatever, and then she starts sewing. And by the time we were leaving or people were leaving my grandmother's house, everyone we have a blanket. But your blanket wasn't just your shit. It was your cousin's patchwork. It was your patch it was other cousin, you know what I mean. And we still have these blankets. My sisters and now another family member still have these. That's

what this country is. We're not a big bowl of suit where everybody kind of dissipates with the boiling water boils down who you are. We're not that, you know. We're not a salad where people can just kind of pick out the parts they don't like and don't like, and you know, you just eat the parts of Like us, we are quilt. Some parts there that quilts going to be dinom so she put a softer thing on the

other side. Some parts of the piece are going to be a piece of your polo shirt that was your favorite, your mom hated it, you know what I mean, There's going to be parts of your fucking dad's old playboys shirt on their and shit. But if it really is a connector all I've wanted to be, what's a thread that kept that connection going? Because as much in as many differences as we have in this country, there's some things that make us uniquely American that are so beautiful.

Bautist Republic, we have not truly exercised him our First Amendment rights to one of them. These guys are some assholes sometimes, but I watch to kind of kill time the First Amendment auditors. The auditors, come on, come on, all right, those these guys that go out on the fucking curve and they just fucking start filming shit. Yeah, Oh they're ballsy motherfuckers.

D No. If you can't articulate reasonable suspicion or an actual crime I've done, I'm not required to give you a D. This is the best way to teach the Amendments. I'm like, why doesn't this happen in schools? Why the fuck could man to read? The way I learned civics was Miss Ellison, who was a fucking tyrant. She was a shape like a little bowling ball. She had a fucking three stooges haircut like fucking Larry you know, whichever one's going to have, and she had a peg leg.

It was impossible not to laugh, right, Why dare you do it? This motherfuck was? My mother had her at fifteen while pregnant with me. Oh wow, she told my mother, and my mother laughed at her. Okay, okay, we'll see you again. My mother had to take the Sibby's class back over as a singer.

her mother's name is Denise Denise? What I said, her name is Denise Smith? What was her name when she went here? I said, what name is u? Zella? Zella class? Oh? Go ask your mama about me? Wow, somewhere home as my mom els exactly crazy, brother, And she's like, you shut the fuck up. You said the funning class, You shut the fuck I came the next day and Miss Elton I said, it's back calling out home and she went in to see me. Shut the fuck up. Miss

Ellison said, Michael. I said, yes, ma'am. She says, and it's the class not quiet. She says, did you talk to your mother? I said, yes, ma'am. What she tell you? She told me to sit at the front of the class and to shut up. She said, well, there's a spot for you here. I walked my ass up, sat next to Shari read so me and Shari Read. I was just like, God, damn, this bitch got a target

on my back. Brother. And for the rest of that semester, that woman taught me why to love America in terms of how principle it could be because she was a tyrant. She was a tyrant. I knew I deserved that a in that class. I knew Shari Read was reading off my fucking paper. That lady gave me a B plus.

said hey. Plus she brought me down to ay. That brought me down to be plus I was mad, I was dyslectric, so my writing might have been fucked up. But she that conditioning, you know, along with later reading Chomskin things like that, really conditioned me to love the potential. But what we are has to be maintained. It's not something that's static and just we can just accept it is. It has to be the line has to be pushed on a constant and consistent basis.