Wake that ass up in the morning.
Breakfast Club.
Ye's the most dangerous morning to show to Breakfast Club. Charlamagnea god, just hilarious, envyous out but law and Ross and we got some special guests. Uh, The Vall and Kadeen Ellis are here. Good morning, my people, Blessed Black and Holly Favor.
How y'alleel.
I'm happy to be back home.
It's a globe that I feel like I have the minute I hit the Guardia Airport.
It's just being back home in Brooklyn. I feel like it brings us to life again, New York room. I do.
I do have enough to move back to.
Come and get my little fixed, you know, get my baking nugg and cheese like I get.
I get back there.
You go, there you go. Now, y'all are here for a bunch of different things.
But y'all rebranded the Dead Ass Podcast to Ellis ever after discussed discussed the growth for that title.
Yeah, well it was it was a lot for us. So when we first started that Ass podcast, it was just, you know, it was like we were joking about versus women and what husbands feel versus wives feel. But over the course of six years, we watched how that kind of exploded on the internet, And we don't want to take credit for being a reason why there's a man
versus women debate, but the shit is annoying. Yeah, we kind of just feel like we want to put out content that people can say, let's elevate and move forward. So let's talk about topics that really affect us. For example,
we we will take credit for this. In twenty seventeen, we've blogged our third son being born at home right, and we've blogged the whole process for about six months, and a new study came out that as of twenty eighteen, home births in black community have gone up, and we feel like that's a direct correlation for us showing young black girls like there's a different option. And the reason why that happened was because with our first child, we almost lost k and she had to have twenty four
stitches of survven my bad, let me not take me. Yeah, she had to have emergency surgery right after pregnancy. And we did a lot of studies on black maternal health and were like, let's just use our platform to focus on positive So we said ELI several after was to change because this is us after we've evolved as humans on the therapy, working on being a better couple, working on being a better people. So that's what it's about.
So had nothing to do a moving out of New York and not even using the term dead ass no.
More were still.
And the crazy part about it, we had to fight for the name dead Ass initially because you know, if you're not from New York and if you're at these companies that have you know, mostly white folks that we don't know what that means. How will we ever get ad dollars behind a name like that? They're not going to subscribe to that.
So there was a lot of explaining that had to be done. But we start, we stayed true to it.
I think part of us really didn't want to detach from that New York persona for a long time, but it's time.
I do like that.
Who made that exectively, I'll take credit for it, but we always do everything collective, even dead Ass, Like we sit down and talk about it and we're like, what you think about this? What you think about that. We had a couple of the options. We also liked House
of Ellis. We liked that list of a rafter because it was the evolution of after what after all the bullshit, you know what I'm saying, after all the talking about what we had to do to get to this point, and if you ever followed us, that's what we're known for. We're honest about what we've been doing, what we've done. We don't hold back, So tell us what we want to keep doing.
Three years in the game, almost fifteen married. Yeah, you know, people have literally watched us over the past maybe what decade on social media, just putting our life out there, sharing with people and hoping people can relate.
Y'all are definitely the rougherence point for a lot of people because even my son's dad Rome, Oh my god, my first done.
My first son's dad man, he man you and you got to listen with this one, y'all.
Even y'all shows. He follows everything y'all doing. He has five kids by five different you know minds, you know, and he likes to he'll listen to one of y'all poll gusts and he'll be calling them telling him no, no, no, because with developing coady said Dave David, you know, and while he gets home, creates a lot of arguments, but he hain't the developed type.
You just tell him listen to the podcast.
I don't try to preach you ain't, but it's.
Right because y'all real life though, like y'all the way you've been going through stuff on y'all. I watched y'all channel a lot. Way y'all deal with stuff. Y'all were the first time that I saw a young black couple that was still like regular, like.
And like, I was like, oh, they probably hang U. I will go at and stuff like that.
And we still do. Yeah, we walk around and people be like, why y'all without security? Why y'all? And I'm like, cause it's my hood, Like what you mean?
You know?
I felt like he could relate to y'all because that's like a big thing for your audience.
I will say this about Room, like the vow now, wasn't the the vour when I first started. Okay, the divour when I first started was probably close to the room I was. I don't know him, but I was immature. I lacked emotional intelligence. I didn't understand you know what. But I take pride in showing the growth because I don't want anyone to ever be like I got to be perfect to be accepted. Nahu all that I was never perfect. I'm not perfect. I'm a fuck up again.
Hopefully y'all give me grace if I fuck up. You know what I'm saying. That's what I want people to walk around the earth feeling like you don't got to be perfect for people to just accept you. And if you expecting everybody to accept you, that's a problem anyway.
Yeah.
No, to be honest, we almost just didn't do the podcast anymore.
So last February we had a bunch of live, sold out shows Apollo.
It was like historic, it was great. So we're like, you know what, why don't we go out on a high? You know, we did all we've done.
I feel like we've spoken aloud, you know, dealt with our issues publicly as a form of therapy through the podcast, right, and we felt like we've done all we had to do in the podcast space, and people literally like, you guys cannot do this.
And to your point, we meet people on the.
Regular the airport, random places and they're like, y'all can't stop doing this because you have saved my marriage or you've showed me that I'm able to open up to my partner and bring up these topics that are once taboo or uncomfortable to discuss, you know, and people say, if they wanted the value, you have to be a Kadeen and vice versa.
So tell Row make sure that he's on the straight and era.
And I think one thing that is great about what y'all do is just open lines of communication. That's it now, regardless if you're in a you want to start a podcast, that's what you should have with your partner.
If y'all want to just.
Sit in y'all living room every day and say, Okay, we're gonna talk for two hours, but we're going to talk.
We may not recording and put it out, they're going to talk. It's just about.
Communication encouraging that absolutely.
And you know what's funny, most people when we first started the podcast thought it was so crazy. Y'all talk to each other. And I'm like, you talk about sex, you talk about money, you talk or how could.
You talk to her like that? Like people were offended.
For me, they felt like you were like the super controlling, like arrogant this is all about me.
And I'm from it, but I get it right.
And I had to accept that because you have to show people over time, right. You can't expect people when you first put something out to say know who I am. It took years. We did our podcast for seven years fifteen seasons, won a Webby Award, but it took time. In the beginning, it was so much like pushback of the arrogant, the violent asshole. He always talks down. But what I realized they weren't used to seeing an educated black man speak about his emotions. And it triggered a
lot of women. You know what I'm saying, Like that's the fact, Like I'm not going to sit back here and not say what I need and require, because I'm also going to ask her what she needs and require, and I'm going to deliver on that. But now this is my turn to talk about it. And a lot of people didn't like it. But now it's come more normalized. Like I used to when we lived in New York, I heard Charlamagne every morning talk about mental health. My
sons now know about mental health. It's not taboo anymore, and they speak their feelings. Mom, I don't feel good about this. I'm nervous about that. Now we want to keep showing young men like that's okay.
You know what, especially within our community, black men and women are always pitted against each other. And if we want our black men to open up to us, why not create a space for them to do that. So I'm like, Devout, I want you to be honest with me. It doesn't have to be a little honesty, but I want you to be honest and transparent about how you feel,
because I'm not trying to guess. Like, the good thing about Deval and I for the years that we've been together is that we've always given each other a choice, and the choice happens because we are fully communicative about the things that we want and need.
So every morning I wake up with the choice to be here, and I decide to be here. And it's been working for us.
You know, y'all been together twenty two years. Me and my wife been together twenty six to be twenty seven. I want to ask the ball, when did you and it's gonna sound crazy to some people listening, when did you realize Kadeen was a safe space for you to be your absolute most vulnerableness.
Wow, that's a good question. And I always preface I'm a preface by saying this. The first five years of our marriage was terrible, right, And it wasn't terrible for the reasons people think it was terrible. People automatically assume it's terrible because of infidelity or money, But that wasn't it. It was terrible because I did not feel safe telling her how I felt about things, so I bottled it up.
I suppressed it. I would go in the bathroom, sit on the toilet, turned the shower, and I'd be crying, trying to figure out where, you know, what I was going to do with my life. Because I just come from being in the NFL making a lot of money. I had to start all over again, and I felt like less of a man. But I can't tell that
to my wife. And it was one day she was pregnant with Cairo, and I had said to her, we were having a whole argument about stuff, and I was just at the point, and you know how it is when you're a man, you get to the point where you just don't care no more. I was done. We was getting divorced, and I was like, you know what, you lazy, don't You don't trust me, you don't believe in me, don't do all this and She's like, if I'm not lazy, I'm fucking pregnant. And I was like,
the hormones, like the attitude, like the nausea. She was like, I was trying to find a way to surprise you and tell you. And I said, well, why didn't you just tell me? And then when I said why didn't you just tell me? It hit me. Why don't I just tell her what I'm going through? That was the moment I wrote about it in our book We over Meet New York Times best seller, by the Way, But it was that moment I said to her, why don't you just tell me? And then it was like, why
don't you tell her? And from that moment on it was twenty and sixteen. The minute I feel something sometimes she don't be in a mood. I was like, yo, we gotta sit on talk and she'd be like, and I tell her. And the minute we've done, we've made a decision that we're not going to argue about it. We're not gonna harbor no resentment. If we don't agree. We don't agree. But that's how I feel, this is how you feel, and we work towards, you know, being better.
That's why I asked, because it doesn't matter how long you're with a person, and it don't have anything don't do with you.
It really just us as men. Absolutely, when do we realize, Okay, this is a safe space.
Is this woman that I have devoted my life to the mother and my children is a safe space for me.
It's hard for men to find safe spaces. Man, we don't.
I can't even find safe spaces amongst my boys. Forget a woman. If I go to tell my homeboy that I'm feeling a way nigga, you soft jazz, and it's like, am I you know what I'm saying? You asking? Am I you know what I am? Let me tough en up. So if my homies feel like that about me, I can't tell my girl I'm going through it. It took maturity. It took me to realize that I chose this woman and she chose me to spend the rest of our
lives together. What my homies think don't matter, what the world think don't matter as long as we can get on the same page. So she's always the first person I go to now. But it wasn't always like that, and that's when we struggled the most.
Yeah, and it's a resilience there because think about it, we could have thrown in the towel a long time ago. So when we meet people now and they're dating phases and they're just like, what should we do?
They're writing for advice on the podcast all the time, and.
We're just like, I feel like this generation at least coming up, nobody wants to put the work in. Nobody wants to tough things out, Nobody wants to be honest. You show up as a representative of yourself and you're expecting someone to be honest with you. You know, it's really hard out there.
So we went through that.
Together, and it was hard as individuals trying to grow at seventeen, eighteen years old.
Now we hit the fourth floor, y'all, you know, forty one.
It's like so many years of trying to grow together, to respect each other's space, figure out who we are, grow as individuals, raise children at the same time. I mean, when I look back on our years, it's it's insane.
Yeah.
I love how transparent y'all are with the public and even with y'all fans, Like you know, y'all built so it's like a fan base for like marriages and you know people who been even divorced, like look for y'all, look to y'all for advice because y'all put it out there, the highs and the lows.
Right. How do y'all handle disagreements in front of your kids?
Though?
Because if y'all y'all real with us, right, how is it? And then you know, parents, you got two types of like situations like that. A lot of parents don't like their kids to see them like it's not realistic.
Though, So we handle disagreements as a family spot on. If we disagree on something and the kids are there, we're going to have a discussion. And the minute we have a discussion, I will go to Jackson and say, you see how I spoke to your mom? You see how I don't got to be disrespectful. You see how I don't got to raise my voice. Do you understand what it means to have empathy towards someone who thinks differently than you? And they be like, yeah, I see it,
And I'm like, now I understand this. Me and your mom may disagree, but that's my wife. Because they going to be somebody's husbands someday. They have to see what it's like. So I never wanted to put my kids in a situation where I was. My parents never argued in front of me, but then they would go in the room and be screaming and hollering. I'd be like, yo, what is going on? Then your pops come out. You're like that, why are you talking to mom like that?
He looking at you, like, boy, that's my wife. I'm checking. I'm like all. But then that didn't give me any emotional maturity to deal with my wife for the first five years. So there was a couple of days where I came home and I was making making money, she wasn't working, and the fool wasn't ready because she had accident. I'm like, what's going on? Because I'm thinking that this is what a man is supposed to be, and she was like, from well, that's not the response.
Starts to go in.
It just started to realize that that's what that wasn't the way like the stuff that we saw growing up, and we just felt like if I emulate this, I'll be successful. Wasn't making me feel good.
We didn't know no better we did it.
I mean that's what you was learning from just observing, like there's no manual that comes with any of it. That's why, you know, I give my father a lot of grace because when me and my father had a real conversation and he told me about his mental health issues and I knew about his substance, it just made me realize, Oh, he just the man trying to figure it out, like I was.
Two months ago.
My dad stayed with us to help with the Oh yeah, that's a story.
And I'm gonna try to talk about this without crying because I watched my dad and my mom came and it was the same thing happened, and my dad was kind of short with my mom and I was in the car, and now I'm grown, so I'm and my dad gets short with my mom and I'm like, yo, you having a little tantrum for no reason. I need to chill right, And my dad looking at me like, nigga, I'm still your pops. But he's still like, you know what.
We talk about this later. We go in the living room and we have like a three hour conversation, and just like your dad, he was telling me all the things he'd been through, all his fears, all his worries, and for the first time I saw my father as a human and I said, Yo, you were just trying to do that. You got married at twenty one, you had me at twenty two to my brother at twenty four. Wow, Like who taught you? My grandfather was an army guy,
didn't talk much. You know what I'm saying, Dudes, I say not as I do, following my lead, like nobody spoke. So after speaking to my father, man, my heart got so big because I saw him as a person, like now he' my dude. Now like, yo, pops, just talk. And here's the funny part. He said to me at the end of it, I got to be better for your mom. I was like, that's why I said, I'm trying to do it, not cry, because my mom is my heart. You know, you grow up in the house
and you my mom's small on status. She's five too, and my dad is six footy, big right, And I see sometimes my mom's be like I'm like dealing with him today. And I told her my mom don't have a voice in his house because sometimes you don't give her a voice. And he looked at me and said, I'm gonna do better for your mom and for the
rest of the week I saw him try. Now, he still had to slip ups like we all do, like I do, you know, but he tried, and I was like, this is making me feel good because it's not always about paying it forward. Sometimes you got paid back. Teach that generation how we do things now, and he's open to it.
Our podcast even we meet people who are older than us and they will be like, wow, you guys.
You guys are younger, but you guys are talking about things that I've experienced my entire life. We've actually opened up the gates for discussions too. With my side of family as well. I've been from a careeran household, like having discussions about how you feel about things like that wasn't really a thing. And my mom has opened up to her son, she hasn't even opened up to me.
I feel like as a family unit, intergenerationally, we're starting to just heal so that way we can pass sat down to our boys, you know, and to piggyback off of deval with your question, Jess. They see sometimes the disagreements, but there's such an abundance of love in our house that we sometimes.
Get flat for about you know, grabbing my ass or you know, walking past.
And kissing and you know kiro our second, So we'll be like getting away from each other. But the love is so abundant that the moments that we may have disagreements, it far is like outweighed by what they see between mom and dad and.
The love that we share.
Now, you said that your mother in law's talking to you now like differently, now, like what are the conversations like now at this stage of the of the marriage.
This is where they were.
Prior once again understanding where to meet my mother in law. My mother in law is a West Indian woman from Jamaica, came here when she was seventeen. There's a lot of intersectionality between West Indian people and American people, right, but there's also a lot of disconnect right coming here, a lot of West Indian people just thought that Americans were lazy because we wouldn't do the jobs that they were
willing to come over here and do. And I had to explain to her I thought process as black Americans and what we fought for, but us even talking about history as black people led to me understanding like why did you come here? She's I came here from seventeen from Jamaica looking for a better life. I came here by myself, had to live with my mom's friends. If I came home late from working at Burger King, I had to sleep in the hallway on the floor because
they thought that I was out gallivanting. I started to see her. When I started to see her and realize who she was and realized how she protected the things she loved, I understood why she was so hard on me when I was coming after and courting her daughter. So once I was able to put my wall down because I saw her, I was able to understand. And then once I put my wall down, she put hers.
And now in the house. That's my biggest ally because when she's my mother in law will be like Kadeen, when that last time me going on the dates, it be like I'll have the kids. She'll tell her like, yo, go put on something nice, go take And I'm like, this is the things that when people people need to see that because we hear all of the messed up stuff you live with your in laws that'shit crazy. And
I'm like, yeah, but maybe it's not. Because maybe I could take my wife on a date because the grandkids are taken care of by their grandparents and people that I never thought about it like that, Yeah, their grandparents.
Yeah, you're able to survive. That's why we're here today, you know, back home.
Also, man, just everything I'm here to just just have conversations with your parents, have conversations with your in laws, like they had a life before they were yours, and there's so much you can learn from that about where you are.
Yes, absolutely, I look more about her by speaking to her parents.
Yeah, I think we worried about that in the book as well.
By speaking to the in laws, you're able to kind of get a better understanding of your spouse and the things that make them tick and why they are the way they are. There's certain things about develop like oh that was a.
Direct correlation between what happened with your mom or why your dad.
Is the way he is.
So it's just about getting to have a better understanding across the board.
I watched you on The Lover's Yeah. One of the things that y'all talked about. I was like, you guys are so honest about this. The conversation when he wanted you to dress up like the main Yeah, it was a maz right.
Yeah, it'd be a different character.
Yeah, yeah, because it but when you said that, you like y'all were talking about the fact that when he actually do it, he was like, I don't really know about that, but we can meet in the middle.
And he was like, no, this is what I want.
And I'm like, Yo, if I had that conversation in my group chat, my friends probably would hate my person after that because they would feel like, hold on, what's going on here? Because you should be able to make your choices. But for you, it was like, well, I want to make sure that my men, you know what I mean, Like.
Because who are we trying to appease the group chat or man?
Yeah, I'm saying but even talking about that publicly, I was like, oh, like they y'all be really getting to the ships.
Well, Lauren, don't she don't have a man.
Like the group chat.
She was with girls this weekend in Atlanta. We had the Black Podcast Festival. She was surrounded by and she went to Magic City got with a scripple.
Like you said, do you guys discuss how far you're going to go in those real conversations, because getting into the bedroom, I was like, dang, nothing's off limits.
I mean really Yeah, everything's pretty much been on the table with us, like there's nothing that's and we feel like if we show up as our true shelves, nobody could hold nothing against me, nobody.
There's no room for you to create a narrative.
You know. It's funny we have with the evolution of the podcast now a new segment that we've introduced that people are loving so far, and it's called op or no op, and it's pretty much do you have an opinion about this better?
Or do you not? Okay?
So we've realized that with social media, everybody got a phone, everybody got so everybody got an opinion sometimes about things you have nothing, no knowledge about, no facts, no expertise, but everybody wants to comment on something. So we're trying to now push forward about the bat the sexes is done. Now we're trying to push forward, thinking to myself, do I am I a sound mind? Do I have the facts to be able to comment on something and have an opinion? Or can I just let some things go?
You know, like let's start that as a culture, we don't always have to have an opinion about something.
Yeah, like you don't.
I don't need to know if you think you can be the gorilla's.
Doing that, Like, what do I think about? I don't know what's the scenario of this is happening right now?
Anything in and the Barack Obama stuff.
Oh and Kanye said, you know he was talking his cousin's pens.
Somebody.
How you feel about that? I don't feel about about Kanye. I'll go do interviews, I'll go do press, and it'll be pressed about the book, right And the first thing I sit down is like, you have a book coming out, Kanye West said, And I'm like, what the fuck does that with my here? And they like, what do you think about it? Don't think about it?
Then?
Until you told me about it, I didn't know what happened, So I don't have an opinion on it. And it's like you don't get from that he was, because let's think about the world.
I wouldn't.
I would coming on the family tip like, well, Kanye said he can't see his kids because he came out.
I would have asked, well, I mean that's that's how they tried to like yeah, but ultimately is clickbait because what they wanted was to be like d Val talks about Kanye Yep, that's ultimately what they wanted. So we're trying to create a trend where it's like, say, for example, sel Main just asked anything about it, and then the interview goes, I don't have an opinion.
And then now you're disappointed.
Yeah, I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to talk about any of that. I do want to bring up something though, what's that? Because Lauren brought up about the sex thing, and I do want to bring up this point. Right, if a man says this is what I required, this is what I want. The first thing in the group chat all the girl is not you should be able to have a choice, right, But as her husband, I asked her, what do you want? What you required? In the minute she says what she
wants to require. There's no negotiating. So for us, what we're trying to show people is that there doesn't have to be a battle of the sexist. She said that her man wants this, she's gonna do it. He said, his wife wants this, he's gonna.
Do Why would we not want to do that for each other.
I'm not pledging allegiance to my gender. I'm pledging allegiance to my partner, like this is make sure I get that on Camelon what I'm saying when I've seen that, my God, make sure you get that and make sure you're zooming real quick what I said again, because I'm not pledging allegiance to my gender, pledging allegiance to my partner partner.
But no.
But seriously, though, that's why it's easy for me to just be honest, because it's just like if your boys are upset, man, you said that, yeah, so like we ain't working, Like, well, you're not gonna do nothing for me, so yeah, so my wife wants this. This is what I'm doing.
I could if you let me, do you like.
What happens in those moments though, where you or her are like yeah no, but I'm just sitting on it.
I don't want to do that.
Then we talk about it and see there's been times. There's been times like I'm like, yo, yo, you ain't gonna dress up. She's just like.
I'm like word raine check check, like range check rae.
But then in the morning, I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna be get a tap and I'm gonna open my eyes and she's gonna be in that nurse outfit or something, because sometimes she's not. We don't understand that.
Man, business is this stuff going on?
You know you ain't trying to the night? Okay, there go the rest of our life.
Bro.
Yeah, you know what I'm saying, Like it's never a deal breaker, Like if you wan't doing this tonight, then you want to be a problem. You don't want to dress up tonight? Fine, well sometimes she'll be like, you know what, I ain't dressed up tonight, but I'm gonna bless you though, and ill dress up tomorrow. You know what I'm saying that we talked about.
You know, has there ever been a role that you ain't want to play? Like I ain't doing that.
That's not not.
I got I got stories, bro, anything like it was like, you haven't dressed like a white girl, and he dressed up like the black guy like doctor she was. I was doctor Umar and my bad Doctor Umar. I know that's not sacrilegious to me. I don't want to go that would actually be a really good role player, you know what I'm saying.
I just want to California.
Yes, I know that's what he was doing.
Bro. I was very specific, what did you ask for?
It was like, down to a detail.
I had color contacts, and I think I had done like a photo shoot or something.
This is fun this is funny, right, she had did a photo shoot with you now, but she had on these hazel colored contexts on this big curly.
Like yeah, it was a big looked like different.
She didn't like herself like somebody else. I was like yo. I was like, yo, I want you to put on a cheerleader outfit.
Bomb right.
So now she's like, I got you, babe. This was this was New Year. We were at our parents' house. We was having quiet sex for a couple of days.
It was over it.
I want I'm trying to back back.
You know what I'm saying.
So we get home and Kelly, right, I'm sitting at the edge of the bed. I'm waiting she come out. There's no weave, there was no contacts, and she had on the leotar.
It was this real cute sava.
It was.
With it and I was like this and he was like, that's not what I asked for.
She walked over all seductively.
She had music. We had a fireplace. She put the fireplace on.
She's I'm sitting like.
This, right, So she get down, she got her hands on my knees. She going down like then she gets to the bottom and she like what's up?
Like this is like, what's this not for you?
Sir?
I'm like with the contact, she's like the vout. I'm downstairs right now handling business. I said, no, we've no contact. And you got on this dirty ass leotard.
That's this dusty ass leotar.
I'm like, first of all, it's not a leotard, it's a teddy.
And I had a stain.
It was.
Because it wasn't what I wanted wanted.
I was just mad.
I was just mad because you did not get exactly what you asked for.
I'm still here to do the job.
And she didn't even have heels on.
So I got mad, right, So I got up and I go in the bathroom. Right, But it just so happened. When I walk in the bathroom, I seen all her heels lined up in the closet and we just moved to this big house. I said, you got all these heels, yet you ain't put no heels on. So going there and I threw all the heels off the closet.
The thing I'm standing up.
I was like, you gotta pick every shoe up? Are you kidding me?
She says to me, look at your stupid ass in there throwing heels around and your dick's still hard.
That's what broke me out of it.
I looked at her, I started laughing and we sung.
After that.
It was a wrap. It was just like look a look at us, like look at like, look at us.
And I was picked all the shoes.
Yeah, so that's the shoes.
We said that, we picked the shoes up, and we got time.
Like he asked for one thing and I was like, here, I'm doing something else.
Cute and he was like yeah.
He was.
Sounded like a tyler per.
Ye did y?
Y'all never thought about doing the reality show.
We've turned out it.
On YouTube channel, So why not crazy because.
We control everything everything. One thing I fear because we sat down with it and I don't want to put producers out there. We've sat down with number of producers, right, this is always the first thing.
This is.
So and so I know, I know, y'all, look you're perfect. I get it right. So there's nothing that you don't have Anybody like she's not there, and I'm like, the first meeting, you're coming to me and asking me things that disparaging things that I can say about my wife may get a funk on my face. I'm not doing this. I got I got four sons, and that's what you want me to do. No, I personally, I know this is going to get some slack, But I love Bill Cosby right, not for the things that he did, but
for what he represented. This man was so brilliant in the fact that he had a black psychologist on the set of The Cosby Show every day to make sure that everything they put out didn't show black people in a disparaging way. Right, Like when you think about The Cosby Show, a different from world, Lil Bill, this is the content we want to create. We have a cartoon series that we've been pitching for about our kids called The Elisis and the time Machine because we wrote a
book called The Lysis and the Time Machine. Why do we have to say black lives matter? And it's an animated series about history. These are the things I want to do. I don't want to get on television and argue with my wife about trivial stuff. I'm also not going to include my friends right, for example, your friends with just hilarious?
What she like?
I know that's the stuff they ask and I'm like, I'm not doing that. So it's like we're not doing the reality show thing unless we own it.
How y'all deal with people trying to bring out the like what like the negative or whatever? Because I remember when people were a lot of people do still a couple goals? You guys, but I remember you guys had a conversation I think you had it again on the Lovers by shampodcast too, about how when people post y'all as couple goals, people instantly are like, it's no way, it's as happy and as good as it was all the time.
And people it's funny because we have a contingent of people who've been following us for so long, literally since our Brooklyn apartment days when that was holding up his iPhone to now we have people who will jump in and be like, no, don't come for the aalysis like if you're new here, clearly you don't understand the track record that they have and what they've shared over the years, and it hasn't always been perfect, but they've actually led us in to have a front row seat to see
them work through their issues.
I will say this though, when you learn to have empathy for people, right, I can understand that if you grew up and you've never seen a positive black family and all you've seen is just despair and violence and anger, when you see this on Instagram, there's no way you're going to believe this is real. So I understand that. That's why I don't get upset at it. I got to look at some of my family and they look
at me. These are people who know me and be like you and King really always happy, all y'all, and I'm like, NA, were not always really have people We talk about the stuff and they're like you really talk And these are my family members. So if a stranger who's never met me before feels that way, then I understand you've never seen it. How could I be mad at something that you've never seen before.
I have empathy to ages a part of it, because like for me, I never before I got here and saw like Charlotmagne and be be young in a marriage and the happy and I don't know young people who are just like happily married.
Maybe you're like it's like they're old.
That's why they're happy, because they're like, it's where else you're gonna go, right, Versus y'all are young, living life, your kids are growing up.
Y'all doing things. Y'all both for working and y'all are figuring it.
Out, absolutely figuring out. And then people always ask us to why how do you guys keep this up for so long? I mean, you've been in the social media game doing all this for ten years.
Y'all work?
How do you keep it up?
And it's like, this is not a facade, there's nothing to keep up. We're not trending on something or I legit love her to death, Like this is just us literally recording and putting out our life.
Oh you put out so much? You gotta share everything?
We don't.
We share a sixty second video that's in a day.
If you go back and look, there's one four hundred and forty minutes in a day, right, I share one minute video that means you know, one one thousandth of what happened my day.
You don't know these people get that, don't But we also got.
To understand that they don't know us. So if they're commenting they're commenting from their own experience. Oftentimes it's projections. I'm never going to let someone else is projecting projection define my day, Like I can't sit back and look at the comments and then just be like all these people. No, unless you know a hit dog holla and you feel seen and you're doing something unsavory and I was like, damn, they see me. That's when you kind of feel a way.
But I don't I know what my intentions are. So, hey, you feel this question.
When it comes to personal issues between y'all, do you feel like you have to work it out in the public because of how much of y'all lives y'all.
Share with the audience.
Definitely not.
No, there's a lot of things that happen behind closers. Again, to davals point, you see a portion of what we share, you know, but we may after the fact talk about it on the podcast, like, hey, guys, we were going
through this in this moment. Here's how we were able to internally process it, deal with it, overcome it, agree to disagree, and then we'll share it on the podcast and say, hey, guys, has anybody ever been in a position where this has happened, and then more times often than not, you realize, damn, I'm not the anomaly here in the situation.
There are other couples, there's other.
Men, there's other women who are dealing with the same things. We've even realized that sometimes there's women who are more like.
I agree with the val on this one.
Sorry, k like happen with me all day, or vice versa. The guys would be like, hey, you, my girl, I felt you when you said this. So no, you know, some things we do still believe are for private places and other things can be for public consumption.
Because people will feel like they know your life based off that one minute that you would.
Tell for sure, and then they create a whole narrative around.
A whole narrative, like when I'm fourteen, our second my cousin Dick, he could have been on the honor roll, he could have won the basketball game that day in school.
People listen, man, the ball ellis.
I love talking to y'all because growing as individuals is a lot by itself, but growing as a couple is insaneess. Not constantly communicating, you know, you might wake up one day and not know who that person is.
So we can learn anything from y'all. Constantly communicate with your part.
Yes, indeed, and thanks for growing with us.
To Charlemagne, I mean we've been on the Breakfast Club a couple of times of course the years A third time.
I appreciate you for always rocking with us.
Appreciate it so great to.
Thank you.
That's work.
Thank you and y'all making other people the same thing here, like the things y'all are doing here talking about mental health. I can't stand politics because it gets on my nerves. But bringing the information to people, that's all we can do.
Right.
The greatest thing you can give humans is inspiration, and the Breakfast Club is inspiring people. I hope y'all know that we appreciate y'all and this has been a part of our lives since living here.
Thank you.
Yes, my kids know y'all too.
We keep them still very very New York.
It's the ball Dean Ellis.
Make sure you subscribe to the podcast ELI ever After if you're not subscribed already.
It's the Breakfast Club.
Wake that ass up early in the morning. The Breakfast Club.
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