That's what's up. Family. It's your girl to mek A D.
Mallory, and it's your boy my son a general.
And we are your host of street politicians, the place in the streets and politics.
Me what's going on, mister Lennon.
I'm blessing Holly favored, humble, blesseding Holly favored.
That is me today, that is you today. You seem like you're awake today.
It's very well awake. You know. I've been drinking my vitamins, drinking my water, and mine of my business. You know, my birthday, I'm trying to stay healthy. Birthday just passed, you know, just trying to stay healthy, you know, because I'm getting getting LOLd.
In that it was your birthday. Happy birthday, Thank you, thank you. How old are you?
I am forty seven years of age?
Wow? Forty seven? Forty seven. It's funny because the years just go by.
Time is passing, and it's going fast, because you know, I don't know what was it ten even years ago.
Now we weren't this old. Let's just put it that way.
It was thirty something, and here we are now you're forty seven. I'm about to turn forty three. Yeah, forty three. After a while, you really don't even remember.
Used to do that. I thought they was bullshitting, but it's true.
Yeah, you missed you a year two every now.
And then and I can't. I can't always remember my child's age. I'll be having to call him like, are you twenty three or twenty four?
He's twenty four. I bet you who's age?
I do know?
And that's my green baby.
I bet you do. No, hege, you ain't gonna never forget that.
He's seven months and she'll be eight months as of June sixth, two days before my birthday.
My little my little g pops baby boy is moving up on two, you know, saying his birthday was in March.
Now he's going on to three. No, the two, No, he's gonna be three.
What about what happens he's gonna be three.
He's gonna be tree if your gonna be tree exactly?
Period three.
Well, anyway, I just want to ask this one question. Is it just sports?
Is all year?
Yeap sports?
And why they have they have fights and games NBA playoff games the same time. I mean, it's just it seems to be extreme.
I mean, listen, the playoffs been heating up. You know, a lot of upsets Lebron and it's looking like he's about to go fishing, as they say, and that means you're about to lose. So you go home and you go fishing. You on vacation, so you can go fishing, You can go on anything you want to do. But you out of the you out of the you know, the playoffs.
So it looks like you can.
Like so yeah, no, he kids, he wants, you know, he wants to cement his legacy. He wanted he put together a team that he felt was gonna be able to win a championship this year and barring a miracle, which has never happened in NBA history, no team has ever come back from being down three zero two win a championship, so barring America.
So he's not playing light skin?
Who what? Who's light skin? What do you?
Steph Curry?
No, they beat Steph Curry. They beat Steph.
That's my son, seem Steph Curry.
They got they got rid of Stephan them. Now it's Denver. There's another light skin dude, Jamal Murray. Jamal Murray's out there killing.
Yeah, I see him, I see him on the end so he out.
There putting a lot work in so they didn't get past that lif skin one light skined. W is a vengein the other light skinning?
Yeah, girls, the girls called Steph Curry light skin.
Okay, light skin did it? He light skinned it? So yeah, you know they's looking it's it's not looking too good for them. The Boss and Celtics, who was another favorite to either win the championships, not looking too favorable for them.
Miami a minute, So it's not down to the final two teams yet.
Man still fourteen.
Yeah, that's ridiculous.
There's a lot, you know, but what was more, it was more of point of emphasis. This weekend this Saturday was the fight you know between Devin eighty and Vasilli Loman Checko.
I don't know, you probably not into them.
There's a lot they were fighting for the unified titles this weekend and a lot of people feel, me being one of them, that Loman Checko was was jerk. You know. I watched the fight, and I've been watching fight for my whole life, and I know, you know, when or fighter wins and losers, and the majority consensus h even people who are Devin Haney fans I'm not so much
not a fan of his. I haven't seen many of his fights, have seen a couple of them, but even his own fans and people who betted on him, you know, are saying that he didn't win that fight. You know, I watched the fight twelve rounds, and there was no round to me. And this is me being a just suspectator. There was no round to me, not one round where I looked and said that Devin Haney clearly won a round.
There's certain things they look for. They look for, who's the aggressor in the fight, right, who's landing the moves shots, who looks like the other person's punches are hurting them? Right? Those are those are like probably the three main things you look And when I looked at the numbers of each round, they pretty much were hitting each other the same amount of times, and I guess they will buy Devin Haney was doing a lot of body shots, you know, and I never really see Loman check or hurt by
any of those body shots. He was connecting with the body shots, but I never seen Loman check or any and he was the aggressive usually when you he's a smaller guy and he's not usually that aggress He usually lets the fight come to him. But in this fight, he was hawking him down and he was throwing punches and he.
Was you feel like the other guy thought harder or better? Yeah, he didna win.
I felt Loman check on one. I felt Lemon checko for harder. You know, usually he's a slow starter in his fights. He comes out one of two rounds, three rounds, he doesn't. He's not aggressive, you know, he just sees what's happening and he takes two or three rounds off. This fight, he didn't do that. For round one, he was throwing punches, he was aggressive, you know, he was throwing flurries, he was doing a lot of stuff that normally, you know, as he got later in his career, that
he stopped doing. And you know, and then it was about two rounds where he completely dominated to where one of the rounds he it looked like he could have knocked Devin Heenyuh, Devin Hainey didn't even look like he was still there, you know. And then you know, and then the last round, I still felt he was dominating that last round. Some people you could have went either way, but I'm just trying to say, for the majority of the fight, it looked like Lomancheko was the aggressive fights.
You know, there were two to three rounds where I felt like he completely dominated those rounds and I never seen no round where Haini was completely dominated. It could have went either way in any of those rounds. So you know, at best it could have been a draw. You know, they could have said, look, we're gonna draw this fight, We're gonna rank this fight a draw. But Devin Handy, there were there put a lot of all getting back and forth on line about that.
Just on line.
I was in the gym today in my boxing gym, and my god, it was loud. Everybody was going back and forth and there was only like two people who were like, nah, y'all are bugging. He did win, it was fair and square. But for the most part, there was like a resounding cry out from all of these different men that know, you know, he didn't win. It was stage. It was this it's about money, da dah dah.
So my gym was a pretty much with you. I go to a gym that is not like there are other boxing gyms that I've heard of.
In fact, one of our friends, uh In fact.
Actually, well, we won't put people's business in the streets, so folks can't find people on their jobs.
But so when we know they they.
Have a family member who works in like one of those pretty gyms, and you know, and I see him all the time, I'm like, wow, I should be in these types of gyms. I go to a gym that is not pretty. It is for men. It smells like men, it looks like men, it acts like men. It's men all men.
Yeah, I love it. Actually, yes, it should work out.
You know, it's a it's a legacy gym. You know. You know, I'm not putting your business people. You know, the person whose gym it is is a boxer, you know, for the title, he's he's a well renowned, well loved boxer. So it comes from that essence of the streets. You know, my gym survived from forty one, you know where in Mount Vernon. Shout out to my brother. It's a dope gym.
It's also you know, so it's so many different gyms you could go to, you know that that have different essences that the essence in our gym is still it still has that from the mud, but it's you know it's not as grindy, but I've been to your gym and it's grindy, like I've shot videos and never And I love it though, because it gives you that it reminds me of Rocky by Ball when he was training.
If you if you go watch Rocky now, go watch Rocky now and then watch your gym and then you be like it gives you a more of a feel and love for what Rocky was doing when he was trained.
Yeah, it's funny you say that because first of all, all the those people are on the walls. There's so much history there, and there's so many older men that's sitting around and there training people without even standing up, just like sitting on this, I mean all men and they sitting on the side like that ain't nothing.
You know, let me see this and that and the third.
And these guys are quick on their feet, like they really are at it without them even touching them at all. They training, So I know that it's a real professional atmosphere. They have a lot of people that are out there boxing. My trainer is the bomb. He's the bomb, he really really is. And all the kids love him. Everybody's parents has their kids going to my training. So anyway, it's a great experience. I love I love my boxing. I
mean right now, I physically hurt so bad. I can't even move my arms because one of the things I realize is that when you have a crazy work schedule, you still have to find some kind of way to stretch and work out your body, because if you wait in and go back, it's just like you start all over again from the beginning, and it's harmor So let's
talk about the news. We're still observing Mental Health Awareness Month, the month of May's going on right now, and so we have a guest coming up that's going to talk to us more about mental health. We've been talking to some great mental health experts and we'll have one today.
But for our news stuff.
Oh and by the way, I just want to celebrate all the graduates, because you know, we talk about you know, winning, losing or whatever, and through a pandemic, through so many different things that people are dealing with. It's a pandemic. It's a depression, it's a recession. It's murder's murder, death, kill constantly, something happening. Politics are terrible, Everything is going on,
and yet these students. Many students are still fighting through and they're graduating, getting high school diplomas, getting degrees, going to college, nursing schools, this and that, and so shout out to all the graduates that are out there. I see prom pictures from celebrities their children. Diddy's daughter Chance going to the prom. I think Lebron's son going to the prom. Like that's what it's all about. That and
those types of things. Let us know it's not all bad everything that's happening.
There's also people accomplishing goals.
Y're definitely shout out to all the graduates, all of them.
Yeah, all the graduates. Let's talk real quick about Cop City. I think we need to kind of get into that. There's a whole other topic that I want to talk about, Panini America, which is a campaign that Until Freedom and Black Church Pack are working on together, but it takes
more time to sort of lay it out. I would like to talk about Cop City, though, and I think that even though next week is still Mental Health Awareness Month, I believe that we should take some time to have on the show some of the folks who are on the ground in Atlanta fighting this fight against Cop City.
So for many people.
Listen Atlanta, Atlanta, all the Atlanta residents who are followers of street politicians or followers.
Of my son or me or and me, we need you to listen to this. There is a huge, big, big, big, big.
Big problem in Atlanta, and we need you to tune in and listen to this.
Again.
Next week we will have more of the on the ground grassroots activists Queen Jainastah and others to come and talk to us about what's happening. But in short, there is something happening in Atlanta where a small part of Decab County is being built into Cop City. That's the name of it, Cop City. So it is a place where so many hundreds of millions of dollars are gone.
I think it's like three hundred million dollars us going into building this place where cops live, where there's training facilities, and and cops from all over the country will go to this particular training site so that they can you know, some of them live there, some of them stayed there during the time while they are being trained. The resources that will be poured into this particular area are extra like you know, big numbers, millions, hundreds, of millions of
dollars are going into building something called cop City. Now, we could sit here in debate all day about why we don't even think that cop city and additional training is necessary because cops are already being trained at the highest levels of training. They are receiving more money. The budgets for law enforcement and policing across this country is
completely imbalance to all the other things. It's Mental health Awareness month, and you should find out from your elected officials how much money are they spending, how much money is allocated towards mental health support versus.
What the police get.
In these local municipalities around the country, the militarization of police officers is problematic.
It does not seem that the training that has been.
Put forth is working because in our communities still our people are dying. There is still a disconnect between the relationship with police and community.
But now we won't.
Argue that because there's some people who are probably like nah, I can kind of see why maybe this facility is gonna help them. They're gonna get better training and is going to be more about our communities and maybe this is what we need, is a place where you know they're in one environment where they could come in and it's real, rigorous training and support for police officers. Maybe this is the answer. I've heard people say that. Well, let me tell you why it's not. Because the training
is going to be done. It will be conducted by a group called the IDF, which is the Israel Defense Forces. Now that is the military that is currently in place in Israel that has helped to displace the people of Palestine.
And don't take my word for it. I just want you to.
Go and do your research and look at how the idea kills Palestinians on a regular basis so that they can steal the land of the Palestinian people. Now, this is a hot topic. A lot of people don't like to get into it because as soon as you start to say it, there are some people within the Jewish community and some conservative Jews who will say that you are anti Semitic just because you dare to talk about the Palestinian people struggle.
That anti Semitism.
Absolutely absolutely exists and we stand against it. However, speaking about what is happening with the Idea and the military force that is on the ground displacing people from their original.
Land is not being anti Semitic. It is the truth.
And so the group of individuals that are responsible for training people at cop City are people who in Israel kill children, women, okay, families every single day and they guard communities that allows the is rallies to walk the streets. We saw with our own eyes the Israelis can walk the streets certain areas and the Palestinian people cannot. And it is the idea that maintains the control for those individuals that are free in Palestine or Israel, and the
others do not have their freedom. So this is a very serious thing because basically what it maybe if the training was being conducted by something else I don't even know what it's called or whatever, I can sit here and say, well, hey, maybe this is gonna work, but it is not.
So already they're starting off.
With a group of a defense mechanism, a military that is responsible for the murder and the destruction of a particular brown group of people.
So what do you no, You're right, you know, I think the reality of the situation is in order for police to have proper training, as you would call it, it would have to include people from the community. Right, having other.
Police doing that Also, you know what I'm saying.
I'm saying it would have to include relevant, respected people from communities, in communities where people want it to happen. Right, You can't impose your will in communities that people don't want certain things in. Secondly, what we know is that
police do not prevent crimes. Right, So the fact that we constantly put money and resources into enforcement and and penalization of crimes and arresting people for crimes instead of prevention, the crime prevention it should be what our money goes into. We put hundreds and millions and billions of dollars into all Right, you killed somebody, you shot somebody, gonna rest you. We're gonna make sure you go to jail. We got
officers who are prepared to do that. Instead of having the services and all of the everything needed to prevent the crimes, that people aren't starving in the communities, the mental health issues of being addressed, like we need to pour that money into that. You know, this cop city thing is just it's stupid to me. It doesn't make sense.
You know, it's never been when the elected officials, including the black man who's the mayor there, agree to things and I'm not even sure.
Listen, I want to give the mayor some.
Leeway here that maybe he doesn't know what the IDF is, because a lot of people don't know. Most people will not know what the hell I'm talking about what we're saying on this show today. Okay, they're gonna have to go educate themselves. There are a lot of people that don't know. But the fact that the IDF is even involved tells me that they are lobbyists and other political forces who have talked the mayor into something that they make it sound good because they're going to try to when.
You say that there needs to be people.
Involved who are from the communities and all of that, they are going to say that that's exactly what they're doing. They're gonna say that they have all types of training. It's not just the idea is this is that in the third but the mere fact that the idea is involved at all is problematic. But how dare you Atlanta have the type of homelessness that exists in that city when you are staying downtown as I stay all the
time in downtown Atlanta. Will now don't because my grandaughter lives in Bucket, so I have to go with bucket. But when I did, I stayed in downtown Atlanta all the time, at the Ritz Carlton Downtown.
Let me tell you something.
The level of danger that I feel, and I am not afraid of black people. That's not something that I where people like, oh, you shouldn't go here by yourself and do this. I love black people. Black people don't harm me, right, and even if something happens, I'm not gonna look at it as I can all black people are bad or all.
Black people are dangerous.
We know that there's all types of people that can hurt you and incidents that can take place. I have never been afraid to walk the streets, no matter the time of day, around my people in Atlanta. However, the level of mental illness and the people who have displaced, the level of houselessness and all the things that's going on there, it is dangerous. I had people run up in my face. I've had somebody chase me into a bank.
I've been through so much in downtown Atlanta. It is no joke there in terms of all those people who are living out in the street. And you mean to tell me that you're gonna take your money and put hundreds of millions of dollars into more training for cops and a place for cops to be comfortable and spread their legs and be out in communities and shoot this one and beat this one up, versus getting those people off the street and making sure that they have the necessary resources.
To be whole, to have homes. This is outrageous.
That's what they're gonna tell you. They're gonna tell you that that's more of a priority. It's more a priority to employ more police services and you know, deploy more police services to our communities in which they seem to escalate more situations than they de escalate. You know, they seem to constantly arrest people instead of stopping situations from happening, and they don't do anything that's really necessary to further the community, to grow and be peaceful and to be
the beloved community. The only thing they do is arrest people. And I'm tired of that, and I think.
More people are.
And I want to say that I hope that Mayor Andre Dickens as the city council meetings are packed with people. Their whole thing is, Oh, these people don't even live in Atlanta. It's outside agitators. By the way, I've been told by Queen and No Sieh and others that the last meeting they were at, it was overwhelmingly a major, overwhelming whatever overwhelming majority excuse me of Atlanta residents. But
many people don't know. And that's why we're using street politicians and every other platform to ensure that people know what's happening, because too, unfortunately, too often, we find out about stand your ground laws after Trayvon Martin has been killed. We find out about gentrification and rezoning and all these things after it happens, because they keep it quiet. So it's not that the Atlanta residents don't care, it's that
they don't know. And that is why it is our responsibility to work with the local grassroots organizers to use our national platform to make sure they know. And my thought of the day is, Mayor Andre Dickens, is.
This who you are?
Is this who you are that you will support the idea which murders children every single day in the Palace Sinian community. Palestinian people murders babies, shoot women. We have it on video, It's on camera, Maya Dickens, and are you a person that stands with that and will allow the same people who murder folks across the seas every single day to come and have training for police officers that are already killing black people every day right here in the United States.
What the hell is this?
That's the thought of today? Ain't none know? We can end the show with that one.
Huh, it's ridiculous.
Well, we should definitely put our guests through because something is wrong with everybody's mental health if this is okay, So in keeping with our mental health awareness theme for the month of May mental Health Awareness Month, you know, as I said, we are not stopping. We're making sure that every week we bring someone to you who is an expert in this area. I personally think, and I know my son you agree that this is probably one
of the most important conversations we could be having. I mean, obviously the economic stuff is important, our politics are important, but keeping people stable and focused in a time when the nation is so out of control, it's also it's
probably the most important thing. I want to I don't know that this artist's name there, but my son sent me an image or of some slides of a young man who was an artist who wrote on social media and his stories all the people he was angry with and the people he loved and the people that supported him right before he killed himself. Recently, this just happened. I'll look it up while you know, once we introduce
our guests. But this just happened, and a young man was ranting about so many things and he took his life. And he's a seems to be a well known rapper, and so you know, they're there. We're in a very very very very delicate time. And I have been very specific about wanting as we had doctor Michael Pratts my
psychologists on last week. I've been very intentional about us finding black men who are in this particular field because we know black women we always talk about our mental health and self care, but black men certainly need a real focus on mental health and mental and and and mental health awareness. And so today we have mister Elliott Connie, who is a Texas based psycho therapist or psycho yeah, psycho psychotherapist, I think yes, And he is the founder
of the Solution Focused University. Welcome the street, politicians. Thank you so much much, mister Connie for being with us.
Thank you so much.
Yes, And it's mister not doctor or a psychotherapist, not a psychologist, but.
Thank you our solution base like that that is for me, that's the key to everything. I think everyone focused on what the issue is and points out everything that's wrong. What made you wanted to call it solution base and what does that actually entailed?
I gotta tell you a little bit of my story in order to answer that question. So I grew up in a really, really difficult environment. I was born on the West side of Chicago, Illinois. My family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and in both scenarios, I lived in really really rough areas. And my mom is the most amazing strong woman ever, and she wanted to make sure her children got good education. So she moved us to the suburbs of Boston when I was in middle school to to just make sure
I was getting a better education. And my dad was like super abusive, and I spent most of my childhood really suicidal, like not just talking about it or thinking about it, but like like attempting and like like I remember when they built like a taco bell in my area, and I was like, Oh, I'm sad, I'm never gonna eat at that taco bell because I'm not gonna be
alive when it's built like that kind of shit. And when I went to college, like, you know, God loves me enough, he blessed me with the ability to play baseball, and that got me into college. And when I got into college, I started thinking about things like hope and love and warmth and like kindness of self. And I can't really tell you why I started thinking about those things, but as a nineteen year old, that's what I started
thinking about. And I decided to major in psychology, and I went on this journey like not really realizing it, but like when you go to graduate school and study psychotherapy, there are literally zero black people in our textbooks. Like sometimes say like, oh, there's no black people do that, but there's like a few. There are literally zero. The number of people we see in the textbook educating us about psychotherapy that are black or brown are zero. And
I was so that tripped me out. I was just like, that's crazy to me. That either means black people have not contributed to the psychology of this field or you've ignored black people's contribution to the psychology of this field.
And I had.
Turned inward and gone on my own own journey and I wanted to touch people. So my son, to answer your question, why do I call it solution focus brief therapy, because that was the only approach I was studying in school that made sense to me. When I was in school, I was studying a bunch of stuff that had to do with assessment and interpretation. And I do know cross culturally, it's very hard for some affluent white person to understand my background and what I've learned. Even more in adulthood,
I actually think it an impossibility. I don't know about you, guys, but I've gotten real, real tired of trying to explain the plights of black people to people who do not and or refuse to understand what it's like. And that's like a trauma that we all live with consistently. And if you're not capable of understanding the very nuanced trauma
that we experience, and you can't help me psychologically. So I decided in that moment, like this is ridiculous that there's no black people doing this, So I wanted to change that. I remember thinking like I either want to be the black person in these textbooks or I want to inspire the black mind that will show up in these textbooks, and now it's happened. Like the Solution Focused
Universe is the largest training organization in our field. We train about fifteen thousand new psychotherapists every month on how to do this type of therapy. And my favorite emails I get from people saying, like I saw you in the textbook, an answer to a test question in graduate school, and those sorts of things. So it just became super important to me to make a difference in this field because we need it.
So you are in the textbooks, now I.
Am in the textbooks. Now you like to grad school.
They don't know how long did it take to get to that point.
Uh, it took me about a decade. Actually it took it took me a while. Like it was, it was a hard it's a hard nut to crack, I'll say that. And and the field, like the status quo in this field was was just old, male and white, and they did not love a black man becoming a leader in this industry. So I had to overcome some things.
You studied to become a psychotherapist, which is different from, as you said, being a psychologist, which is what I have. So talk about that a little bit, what's the difference?
Yeah, Like, so in the helping professions, we have psychologists, social workers, marriaged family therapists, life and posessional counselors. Uh, and all of us are credential to do psychotherapy. I'm like licensed professional counselor. And really the only difference is let me know the difference. Actually, it's all kind of universal. We all do psychotherapy. The only difference really in our field is psychiatrists can provide medications.
So this is a deep question, right because I always I've never I've never contemplated suicide. I've been through a lot of different things, like I've been the worst points and I've been and I've deal and I know I deal with levels of trauma that come from those points.
But as a as a psychiatist who studies, can you try do you have you figured out like what is a therapist psycho psychotherapists who studies, who studied the field, can you have you kind of like pinpointed or kind of figured out what is the thing that makes certain people want to commit suicide or or contemplated what like for you when you were contemplating suicide, yea, what was the thing that mostly triggered you and made you feel like this was something that you wanted to do.
Yes, died by suicide, not commit suicide. They have changed the language yes.
Yes.
So when I was going through those thoughts, and a lot of people think that suicide adallyte is attached to depression, and it's actually not. It's attached to levels of hope. And some people are better at holding on to hope than others. And I'll use myself as an example to tell you what I mean by that. If I'm going through something hard and it doesn't matter what it is, if I have hope that it will one day end, then things will be better, I'm significantly less likely to
die by suicide. If I lose that hope, then I'm significantly more likely. So in my experience, it was all attached to the trauma of my father, who was a very abusive dude, like the way he treated his wife, his three kids. It was super duperank kind and it went on for so long that the best way I can describe it is I would look around the world and I would think everybody else seems to have gotten this great life, and I got this like shitty life, and my father would tell me constantly like you are
nothing and you're never gonna be nothing. And when you start to believe that, you lose hope for your own future, and that's when your life becomes in peril. If you can hold on to the belief that one day things will be different or even positive, then you can essentially go through anything. And there are certain people that can do that. Like my personal hero that has ever walked on this planet is Medeba Nelson Mandela, Like that is
my guy. I've been to South Africa a bunch of times, and I've gotten to talk to people that walked with him and rode with him.
And there are.
People like him who could sit through a prison sentence of twenty seven years and he had this ability to always believe that he would be able to create change. I don't know why people like him could hold onto that for twenty seven years, but some people can hold onto it. But that's the key is being able to hold on to hope for a different future. And once you can do that, then your life is significantly safer.
So what do you think was the change for you that made you say they gave you the hope? Where do you see that you started to get home.
So I'm super stubborn, like I'm crazy levels of stubborn and competitive and not in the like I'm rooting against you way, but like to drive me to be a better version of me kind of way. And when I was nineteen, which is probably the worst, it got like
the closest I got to ending my own life. For some reason, I was laying in my college dorm room and I was thinking about my eulogy, like somebody eulogizing me, and I started thinking that people would say, like I didn't know Elliott was sad, and I didn't know Elliott was in trouble, and I didn't know Elliott was going through these things, and I didn't I couldn't live with that, Like I didn't want people to think I was dying
because of an issue with me. I wanted them to know the truth, which was that dude abused me for nineteen years. So I decided in that moment, I have to outlive my trauma so I could tell my story. And I started feeling like I got hope that I
can do it. I started feeling hopeful that I could outlive this trauma just so I could tell people the truth, and then I realized I wasn't the only black youth in that situation, in that scenario, and then it became bigger than me, and I think that's what changed my life.
Wow, that's really that's powerful, just wanting to outlive your trauma.
I never even thought of something like that. I made a decision. I was nineteen. I like, if I decided to take my life, I can do that at any point, so it's easy for me or at the time, you know, it was nineteen nineteen year old thinking I could take my life the day after I share my story, not realizing that sharing my story would saved my life. I just wanted to outlive this trauma so people could know the truth.
So you you, you tricked yourself into saving yourself.
I accidentally tricked myself.
Accident tricked yourself into saving you and so so so you've been so how long have you actually been doing this work?
Let me see, I graduated in two thousand and six, so I've been doing this a minute, well since two thousand and six. Yeah, I got my master's agree in two thousand and six, so I've been doing this and doing this a minute. And in that time I had my own practice, which I still do. I've traveled the world teaching people how to do solution focused brief therapy. I've written now five books about this. It's literally everything I do.
Five books. What are the names of the books I want to go out and get him? Send me your address, I'll send them to you. Yeah, yeah, Well, give me give you two names. What are your two favorites.
The solution focused brief therapy diamond and let me see you one two favors, and the solution focused marriage.
I'm glad you brought up the marriage piece because I noticed that you you work with married couples, and you work with marriage counselors, right training marriage counselors and working with married couples. And I noticed that, you know, when you think about Twitch, the gentleman who was on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, and you see all of these beautiful moments with his wife, the dancing, the celebration, the family.
I noticed when I'm reading some of these stories that a lot of people who are dying by suicide are married, either very young teenagers and or people who are in you know, committed relationships. Let's not necessarily marriage. So can we talk about like what is that? What is there something? Is it just by coincidence or do you think that there's a particular stress in this moment that's happening with married couples.
No, well that's a super complicated question. So I do think it's more of a coincidence, like it's not. That's not to say people are married are more at risk of dying by suicide than people who aren't, But I will say the pressures of this world are really really high. And when you are married and you have children, you have you have a pressure to provide, You have a pressure to contribute. But I actually think the biggest pressure
and that the death of Twitch. That that hit me kind of hard, actually, because my whole adult life has been motivated to impact people's mental health, in particular like black male mental health. And I'm just a psychotherapist. My
practice is in Texas. And then because I make social media content, I get discovered by this Hollywood world and making TV content and I'm meeting meeting all these people and talking to them about mental health, and I my heart broke that I hadn't yet had the opportunity to reach him. I think the biggest issue we have is the issue of performance versus authenticity, and I think as a as a black man, it's very very difficult to
unmask yourself and be your authentic self. And being your authentic self is so healing and so protective, and we were not always comfortable doing it. Now. Of course I'm hypothesizing. I've never I never spoke to Twitch, but I am saying, like, we live in a world where we can't just be who we are, Like we get judged harshly, we get criticized roughly, we never get the benefit of the doubt.
And that's a pressure that all of us, all all African Americans carry and that weight is very, very heavy, and we get to a point sometimes where it's like we cannot we cannot handle it, Like we get to a point right now we lose our ability to believe that there's a day after this level of pain and trauma and to be honest with y'all. Like when I got on, the first thing I said was I'm fans of you guys. I don't know if you guys have thought about how important you are to the culture, but
you're incredibly important. Like to Mek, I knew about my song, just I knew about my son because back in the day when you were fans of record labels as opposed to artists, I was a fan of Rough Riders, and I remember like Lefty gun up in that right, like my song was a rapper that I followed, and then he disappeared and I found out my son did time and he came back with this ridiculous freestyle in twenty seventeen,
And I was just following you as a rapper. But now to see the work you do as an advocate and Tamika I found you in early twenty twenty. What you guys do for our culture is you get angry. And the reason that that's so incredibly important is I think after the death of George Floyd, a lot of black people didn't know what to do, like we were
just crushed. And then I see this video to Mika Maori like going off on a podium, Like that's so important because we get to see like it's okay to have our authentic feelings from people demonstrating that in an unapologetic way, like neither one of you and in those moments cared how you were being perceived. You didn't back down to the powers that be. You could live withever consequences came your way. We need more of that because we have to be free to express our authentic experiences.
And sometimes our authentic experiences is rage, like outright anger, and I don't know that as a black man, I can walk around all the time and feel comfortable expressing that, and people like you, guys and several others. Of course, we need to see those examples, and I think that
saves lives. And I would be willing to bet a lot that Twitch was dealing with the battle between performance and authenticity and sometimes get wrapped up as if I'm too authentic, I'll lose endorsements or lose money, and I'll lose whatever problem.
That's the big issue.
I mean, we listen. It is not easy. What you see is a work in progress. It takes a lot of prayer, and it takes a lot of support from our community to say that. You know, I've had people walk up to me who have resources and say, you will never go broke again in life.
You will never. We will make sure that you have food on the table.
Now, how that materializes when you're actually going broke, I don't know. But if damn Suore feels good to think that there are people who will make sure that I don't have to go as Coca Cola, PETSI, you know, Walmart, and the list goes on. Not to say it's anything wrong with those relationships, because they should be inad in the movement, but I don't have to rely on them, and so therefore it gives me the freedom to speak
and to speak truth to power. It's not easy when you don't know where your next meal is gonna come from.
So I am sure not.
Necessarily about twitch, but there are a number of people. They are artists every day. My son knows he deals with it all the time. They are artists and others who are in the industry that you can go to them and say this is a really important issue, and they're like ski, I mean literally shaking about even being seen next to you. Forget about speaking on the issue. They don't even want to be in the same room.
I look, I agree. Like the celebrities I talk to, the number one thing that they they come to me
about is fear of being canceled. And I think, while I understand it, we have to we have to be able to prioritize our own authenticity because when we feel comfortable being our authentic selves, we have strong enough mental health and we understand, like, I'm not guaranteed like the seven figure business, and I like, I would rather be be real and work as a cashier at a grocery store than be fake and be world famous, because that
actually crushes your soul. And I learned that like when I was when I came into this field, and I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, but like I got to tell the truth. When I graduated with my master's degree, I told you I was super motivated to contribute to this field. And no black person in my industry had written a book, like nobody had written a book of my color about solution focused brief therapy. So within a year, I wrote the first book by a person of color.
It's called The Art of Solution Focused Therapy. And I was so excited. I was like, oh my god, I just did this. It never dawned on me that psychotherapist would be racist, and I know that's stupid, but at the time, I just thought, like, if you're interested in mental health, you're not gonna allow yourself to have bigoted views. And I went to this conference, and I'd never been to a conference before, and even I started performing. Like I called one of my white colleagues. I was like,
what are you gonna wear? And he was like, I'm gonna wear a polo and slacks, and I'm somebody like I like to wear sweatsuit and a hoodie like everywhere I go, but I'm not gonna do it at my very first conference is back in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, and for for I don't know, five six seven years, like, I put on the uniform so I could be taken seriously. And what I learned was it didn't matter how I dressed, it didn't matter
how I talked. They were gonna hate me regardless. And before I knew it, I felt like I didn't even recognize who I was seeing in the mirror trying to trying to like be accepted in this community that is designed not to accept me. So it pissed me off, it motivated me, and it helped me shift towards my authentic self and to be honest with you, that's where
healing is. And to mek it like it is not easy, Like there were in days where this whole field was upset with me, and a few people would email me saying, you got to keep doing what you're doing, and I will invest in you and I'll keep doing those things. And that was like a lifeline, Like that was so important because those days are not easy, but they're so important because like nobody said healing was easy, and nobody
said authenticity was consequence free. But it is important. It is the thing that we should prioritize above all else.
Wow, it sounds like you just in my mind right now. I'm listening to you because those are things that I'm faced with every day. Yes, and being in this field
coming from where I come from. You know that I come from hip hop and the culture and come from street culture and wanting to be you know, be strong and be an advocate for our people and bring people from where I come from to this space because there's so many people from the whole who are you know, embedded in communities, you know, impoverished communities, who have backgrounds of crime and have done things you know that are not celebrated by our community, who want to do better
for our community, who want to be able to utilize their voices, who want to be on the front lines who want to stand by me, but they don't see their faces in it, you know. And that's how I got in this. So keeping that authenticity of who I am and what it is that I represent, and still coming into rooms where people you know, are coming from different backgrounds and they're more cultured, and they're more educated and have degrees and all these things, and still coming
in with what it is that I represent. It's hard, you know. It's people saying, well, you need to do this, or you need to do this a little bit, or maybe don't talk about this that much or look this way or sound this way, and it's a constant fight, and I don't And I'm one of those people that I believe in me so much it don't matter what you tell me, Like I don't give I really just don't give a fuck about how you feel about what
I feel. And sometimes people make you feel like you're wrong, like your selfish because this now need to do this, And it's like I wouldn't be me if I capitulated to certain things.
You know what I'm saying, I wouldn't raise my hand to speak in this part of the conversation. We need therapy, we need podcasts, partner therapy right here, right now.
So you get you a hat that says I'm a.
Psychotherapy, They're gonna get my hat.
You gotta put your so But I do and I respect what my son a saying because what he brings to the movement is exactly what we needed, especially in until Freedom and other spaces that we've been in. And you know, so I agree with that, but I do think that there is always room for growth. And just because you feel like you're being one hundred percent authentic, sometimes we have to figure out like authenticity and growth
have to happen at the same time. So, for instance, what I try to explain to him is that everything he thinks he can't say why because you also run an organization and there are people on payroll and folks who are depending on us to make payroll to keep the organization going.
And we have to be really sure when we decide we're going.
To go and speak on an issue or we're going to be engaged in something, whatever it is, we have to make sure that the stakes of it is something that we are willing to throw the whole thing in the garbage behind, right. We have to make sure because we could tank could we could. He knows we've done it right. When people told me I had to denounce Minister Farakhan, I said, that's something I just can't do.
So what happened.
I lost all the speaking engagements to this, to that and the third. But it was something that regardless of whether I agree with Minister Farrakhon about a number of things that he says, it is not my language, it's not the way I would speak, and I don't agree with him on the number of point. I still will never find myself as a black woman denouncing a black man because.
White people told me I have to do that. I just can't do it. I can't do it right. But now me getting into a battle with somebody else.
But see that the problem is this. You can't. You can't. You can't have both of those statements.
I want to say.
I just want to finish my point, and when I'm finished, you're gonna understand where I'm going. Me getting into a battle with somebody else on the internet, I have to make sure that that fight is one that I'm willing to go down all the way. Don't care what people think or whatever, and all I have been saying to my son is that I'm for what he speaks on because the things that he speaks on, my son needs to hear it his So there's a group that's outside.
To hear it like I needed to hear it, Like my son inspires the psycotherapy.
Like my son.
If you go into your Instagram and find my Instagram page, you will find a message for me that I since you're like twenty eighteen, saying to you like we like you inspire me a random psychotherapist who wants to be authentic. And I think, Tamika, what you're saying is one hundred percent true. Like authenticity doesn't mean this stubborn like I'm gonna go in I'm gonna cuss out the president Like
fuck that, Like that's not what I'm saying. What I'm growth is a part of authenticity, and so to our mistakes. And one of the things that do you guys run the organization together? Is that true. So one of the things that my son has done is he's decided to collaborate with an incredibly powerful black female voice who cares about him. So he might say, I'm gonna go in there and do this, and you are strong enough to stand up to him. You are strong enough to tell
him your truth. He is humble enough to listen to you. We gotta give this man permission to make mistakes, absolutely, and he's he's making different mistakes. I don't know how old you are, my son up, I don't know forty Maybe I'll.
Guess I just turned forty seven actually two.
Days you see, okay? Oh man, Well, I'm sure if I disrespect him at forty seven, I'm gonna get a different response than I would have gotten at twenty seven.
See, And that's what I need people to realize.
It's I give you my point, miss the kind.
But you're still gonna get a response though, So call me elliot, call me ellie, elly.
They act like see, just because I'm removed from certain responses, you know, the level of the response is. You know, I'm not gonna get in the mud with you, but we still might roll around on the ground. We might.
Let me give you an example. Let me give you an example. My son did something a couple of months ago that is an example. Like I told you, I followed both of y'all like, and I'm gonna give you an example from each of you doing exactly what I'm saying that's important. A couple of months ago, a basketball player named Angel Reed did this and this crazy dude whose name I'm not gonna name, said something super disrespectful, and my son said, not on my watch. We need
to see that now. We need to see as a black community that we have people that got our back publicly and in those moments. It's important to see it. And that's what I mean by authenticity. Something triggered him to feel disrespected and he needed to go protect that queen. Now, is he gonna go put his hands on that person? Maybe maybe not who cares? But she saw it and was like, someone out there cares about me to stand up. That is incredibly important.
I agree with you, Elliott, and my son knows. This is how I deal with it because to your point, you said that we put so much judgment on people and make people feel so bad, and we're constantly challenging, especially black men. As black women, we have to be very careful because when we open our mouths to our men, we can take them up or down. And I know that I recognize that, and my son and other men have checked me on it as it relates to my own son.
Right because out of fear for.
Him getting in trouble or getting hurt or whatever, I'm out here like motherfucker, I said. But I said, and they're like, yo, you can't talk to him, Like yeah, you gotta build him up. I'm still a work in progress. But what I do is that I let I give mice or go ahead on tell him they snitches, they liars, They they're that and the third. But I always can see the twinkle in his eye when his ego starts to drive the rest of the ending of it. It
starts becoming a different thing. And as soon as I start seeing that, I'm like, uh, we're in the car and everybody's and then now break break, break, break, break break, and.
I have to pump him down because he's gone with it.
But that's that's the brilliance of him. Like and so, Mike Son, this is my first time talking to you, but I'm gonna bet you your capacity to listen to a woman like Tamika is different at forty seven than it was at twenty five.
What you did.
So one of the brilliant things about him is in his strength, in his resilience. He maintains the humility to be able to listen to someone else who cares about him because we none of us can just be all rounded like we all have.
To do it.
And I told you I was gonna give an example from each of you on Tamika. I remember following you and I'm just going through social media and I see a picture of you in a bathing suit on a beach somewhere and someone was like, you ain't supposed to be showing up like that, and you let that person
have it. And young black women or young women period, but specifically black women need to see like it is okay for me to stand on the steps of the Capitol Building and speak truth to power because of an injustice. And it's also okay for me to be proud of my body in the way that I look like. We need to see that. And every now and then you might go too far, and it's my song's job to be like to me, But that's the beauty of it. Is a partner partnership that brings out the best in
each other and protects each other. And so being authentic really just means like, I use my voice and we're going to make mistakes. I decided to use my voice and I got a master's degree in counseling because I wanted a very particular group of people to listen to me, and I knew I needed credentials to do that. But it's really really important to use our body. Like I've had to stand up to some of the biggest people in this field, and I don't give a shit what
they think. I'm telling the truth. It really irks me when people ask me, like, why don't black people go to therapy, because the insinuation is there's something wrong with black people. Like they come to me and they say, like, why don't black people go to therapy? Like the black community is not accepting a therapy and it really irks me. And I've had to tell some of the most famous
psychotherapists in the world stop doing that. The reason black people don't go to therapy, it's because therapy wasn't built for us and it's not currently being provided by us. So if you want black people to go to therapy, you should create an environment where more Black people become therapists.
You guys created this incredibly exclusive environment and then expect me to just walk my black culture into your environment and allow you to oppress me with your extraordinarily biased way of doing psychotherapy, Like that's just not gonna happen. If you want more black people to come to therapy, you have to create more black Eliotcani's. You have to create more black people who look like us and are of this culture, and then black people will come to therapy.
And I know that because I'm getting emails and contacts from black people everywhere. And it's so wrong to say, like black people don't come into therapy because of this flaw, like the flaws in the field itself. So I love that my son every now and then goes too far because if you're not being authentic, the only way to not make mistakes is to overperform. So I have to make mistakes like that. That's part of the healing journey is every now and then I'm gonna go too far.
And my son through however way, He's decided to partner with with this woman named Tamika who's got his back, and she's able to advocate for him to the world and and sometimes advocate for him to him. And I think that's important.
Yeah, I appreciate doctor a missing.
Mister Connor, you got you sound like you know you might know a thing or two about a you're gonna be our doctor. We're gonna need to talk to you a couple of day. We have to get the whole team to talk to you. And and we're gonna get the whole team asion we know you know, we could have this conversation for about another whole hour, but we have a whole show to continue on. But we want to say thank you. Definitely leave your contacts so we can let people follow. Tell everyone how to find you.
Yeah, the easy way to find me is on social media, like on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Elliott Speaks. Make sure you spell Elliott with two l's and two t's. You can just search my name Elliot Connie. There's not a whole lot of them. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I'd love to be in contact y'all too. Have to follow me, man, I've been following y'all for years. We definitely and I and I really mean it, man. Like the work y'all do in this field is so
incredibly important. And I don't know anybody in the world who doesn't have strong mental health that isn't they have hot people with strong mental health here's the last thing I want to say. People have strong mental health tend to have high levels of authenticity, authenticity, high levels of humility, and high levels of gratitude. And I think that the two of you are such amazing examples of all of that. Like my song through his music, like I've my favorite
like and I'm not I'm not even bullshit. Like my favorite album for a really long time was your uh the Remix. I probably listened to that, like wow, you put on like I didn't know how to get it, and then you put on Facebook. It was on Dat PIV and I was like, I gotta go get that. I listened to that like on repeat for about two years, bro, and.
Such good music, such good But the.
The reason I bring it up is like, yeah, it's good music, but it's also a good message in representing authenticity, Like here's where I've come from, Here's where I've gotten, Here's what I now know that I didn't know before, and here here is like the mistakes I made because I didn't know this before, and now I want to create healing where I used to create pain, Like like it's so important to have high levels of authenticity, high levels of humility, And when I say humility, I don't.
Sometimes we confuse humility like humility is I don't acknowledge I'm great, But humility is I don't acknowledge. I acknowledge that I don't know everything. So I listen to other people and high levels of gratitude. So I want all of y'all to represent that continuously, and people listen will be inspired to do that. And I love y'all. Thank you for having me.
Thank you those.
Things, and we have much gratitude for you. Join the Street Pops today, mister Elliott Connie. We have renamed him doctor Elliott Kannie so much.
Love y'all, thank you, Thank you too, King appreciate you. Shout out to our new doctor.
Wow, he's good too. I like you.
He's really good and he comes from a place and you could tell he's he's the authenticity that he comes from, like knowing he knows a lot. He knows a lot about my music and things that I'm like, Okay, you really.
All of that.
If you're gonna work with black folks, I guess anybody but you know we're black, so we don't work with black folks. You really do have to have a range of understanding. You got to have your hand in many different places. Your is to the street. You gotta know the gossip, you gotta know the politics. You gotta because we have a lot. We're multidimensional.
You can't have one. That's one of the.
Reasons why people don't like to go to therapy because the therapist has been trained in a very white space and they deal with life and culture and whatever mental health different from us. So with us, it's flavoring the food.
You know.
It's like when we cook, we got neck bones in it, all types of seasonings. Gonna make some corn bread, fried chicken. The fried chicken have.
Mustard on it. You know.
Like we do a lot of things going on, but all that to help to get us straight. And you have to be able to understand our trauma.
That only we have.
There is literally no other group of people period that suffered enslavement for five hundred plus years, nobody slave man.
It's just it's not even just the enslavement, it's all of the mental issues and all of the dynamics that come came even as a result after slavery. Right, there's never been any recourse. Right, there's never been anything given to atone for what's happened to us there. So we basically still living in the dynamics of slavery without the
slavery name of it, you understand I'm saying. So it's so many things that we can we the only we are the only people who don't have a lineage to their culture, right our culture is completely stripped of us, like we don't have We have to completely search and it's so many different dynamics of people saying, this is what your culture was, and this was no this was our coachure from so many different every other ethnicity and culture can give you back to their getting and say
this is exactly what it was because nobody destroyed their history. Nobody tried to hide it from them. You know what I'm saying that there's one place that they all come
back from. Even there people that said we didn't come from Africa, we came from this, and we did this, and we were so many different dynamics of what people try to tell us, even though we know that we come from Africa, there's so many different people tell us what our language was, what our religion originally was, we were the more, it's so many different things and people are divided. We're the only culture, We're the only nationality.
That they did a great job.
The people that tell us that I'm not African, I'm American, Like, what the fuck are you talking about your American? Like you understand that you'll never hear people Asian communities and say those things. They know exactly what their culture looks like. They know it's that you understand what I'm saying. So even when you look at the Jews, right, they know what their their culture is. They can they can trace back this is what our coach is, this is where we come from.
Oh yeah, I mean and even there, even those people who believe that Israel in its current state in Palestine or however people want to say it. I'm sure there's a politically correct way to explain it. But they are able to trace back a time when Jews were there, right, So it's it's there are Like you said, most people are able to at least points.
There's ramifications. Yeah, even if you change too, they've given they're saying, okay, we acknowledge this happening. We this is y'alls now right, We're gonna be able to pay you back for this, all right, since you didn't you displaced, we're giving you this unis. We've never had any of those things. None of that has ever happened for black people.
Right.
They didn't even want us to know that going to Africa was viable.
Exactly. Nobody ain't saying, hey, we're gonna give all of the people who've been misplaced here when you can go back to Africa and we're going in this way here is you can find somewhere to live here. Right, That doesn't happen.
For us, but the people of Africa, they do want us to understand.
They're trying.
But it ain't like you could just go look at commercials here or there's some mainstream way that is being promoted.
It's an underground railroad.
We have to discuss it among ourselves and educate our people.
And that's why we're getting ready to go a few months from now.
We'll be back on the Motherland, in the Motherland, learning, meeting people and building our alliances so that we can find ways.
It's not that people have to leave the US or leave any.
Other place in the world, but you should at least nowhere home is and have some allegiance, alliance connection and more importantly, your children need to know the truth about our history, our culture.
Because it helps you to stand.
You see, our kids, they kill each other, some of them, not all of them, some of them they kill each other.
They're going through all these things. When you go to Africa.
The one thing that I know happens to almost every person, every person that I know from the United States that travels to Africa, and you can attest to this mic when you come back from there, you don't really want to fight your own people because you know that the struggle is so much.
The level of unification and understanding that just comes with it. You know, Unfortunately in America, black people only unite through trauma, right, that's the only.
Thing or dance or dance happy moments we do unite.
We do.
We do funerals and birthdays and weddings, funerals and weddings, but we do have a bigger, unfortunate reaction to trauma.
Yeah, so you know, unfortunate, that's what we live with. But we know what we dealt with and we know what the process is gonna take for us to get where we are. So once again, shout out to mister our doctor Elliott Connie for his his gracious him gracing our platform today. Man, I'm definitely gonna go follow him and you get into him. But he the theme was authentic, right,
and authenticity that's something that I live by. If you look at most of my things, authenticities is one of the major themes of it, you know, and that brings me to my I don't get it this new AI thing, right, the fact that you can take the voices of people and recreate them right, and the average person can't tell if it's actually that person or that I was listening to a song. I was listening to many men fifty cents, many men song that had Biggie and tupacom and it
was it was. It was crazy, but it was disheartening for me. It was really disheartening in the head, like, damn, y'all did that to the great Biggie and the great Tupac. Y'all took their voices and you immulated it to the point where somebody who doesn't know right, and they don't even get the credit for it. It's not even who they are, Like you've just taken their authenticity and you recreated that to make to make them just some common people.
You understand I'm saying, like you're trying to common, You're trying to common people who have reached icon status. They can now take voices and put them on average songs, where anybody could just say, I got me a song by Twopa, I got me a song by Biggie right where they were exclusive at one point where Biggie had a body of work that he did that was only you, the people he wanted to have his voice, who he
wanted to be all songs was on it. Now you could just take somebody that's iconic and put them on anything. You know. I don't get why we even want to do it. I don't think it's something that's good. I don't even think it's something that shit should even be considered. But it bothers me, Like I was listening to a Verse the jay Z and I'm like, wow, you know, like,
why do we want to do that? Why do we want to water it down and take away somebody's greatness by just putting their voice and their likeness on anything.
I mean, I'm so mentally beat down with a number of thousands of thousands of problems and things and issues that I haven't even begun I haven't begun the process of approaching all the dangers of AI, and I know it's there, and I see people talking about it, and folks have tried to like engage me in a conversation. I'm like, yeah, well, right now, I'm fighting diversity issues within corporation. So my focus is on like the fact that black people who work for Panini America could do
not rise to positions of like senior level. And they also don't recruit and bring people into the company who are black, specifically black, not you know, brown too, but specifically black, because seventy five percent of their business model is based upon the black athletes that they have signed
for their memorabilia and trading card company. So they don't have any black people as senior levels within the company that we can find, and they haven't come forward to say, oh, excuse me, we're talking about down and on the bottom you know, with the back call, there's a chief so and so and a senior so and so that's black.
So they don't have them. But anyway, so I've been focused on that.
So the AI thing is like, oh my god, this is yet another thing that is very, very dangerous. But the one thing that I did say to I think it was our se like my makeup artists of other day, and I'm like, we have to have a code.
For families, right like and friends that this is my code.
My code is shout out to Let's say it was Trili, which is our brother chi Ali's brand, Trili. If that was the code, we have to have that so that if someone tries to call you with my voice and they say to you, oh, my son, come and get me, send me some money on this, or that I'm in trouble or whatever, anything anything they might say that you could you if you feel skeptical, you could say what's the code or who is this? Because I think people are going to start using it for worse things than
what you're describing, which is bad. I definitely don't want to hear artists of the past. I watched the Whitney Houston movie last night. I don't want anybody to recreate her voice to put it on something different.
I don't want that.
In fact, I was feeling funny about the fact that in the movie, you know, it's her singing and not the person. In a lot of different you know, I'm sure the actress can.
Sing, but you hear it's with me, right, I.
Was feeling a way, Not that I didn't think it should happen. I'm just saying it made me.
Feel emotional, right.
I remember those songs, so I'm just saying they're gonna it's gonna be worse.
It's going to be worse.
And I don't know if there's a movement or you know, it's something we all have to think about. Are we supposed to be fighting it? How do we fight it? Is it too far gone? We just talked about that in the earliest segment when we talked about how people don't find out until it's too late about standard ground laws, gentrification, all of these things that happened who was running for office. We find out about it's so late or we don't pay attention to it, and the next thing, you know,
is problematic. And I don't know how you fix the AI situation. But I also see some of our our brethren out there supporting it and promoting it.
I think it's I think it's very strange and dangerous, and it's moving us further away from authenticity. It's like cloning. If you can clone Lebron James, you know who is ugly one of the best plays. You can just keep cloning him. Then what makes him unique? What makes him significant? Why do I need him? I can clone him, I can make I can recreate you at any given time that you don't capitulate to whatever it is that I need, you know. So it's we're moving so far away from consciousness.
Not that with that rapper who was it like one of these record labels, remember it was a Columbia. One of these record labels had a rapper that was like white, I think, but dressed with like gold chains. Maybe he wasn't white, you remember that, And he was supposed to be the newest artist that they were releasing, but it was it wasn't a real person. It was called fing mik It because I know, I think about it just because it's got my name.
Oh yeah, it was an AI artist. Yeah, they were trying to.
Pull that back because people were like no.
But the thing is, the more they realize time, it's like they got to get you comfortable, They got to gradually move you into stuff.
So that's great.
Yeah, they keep on playing the AI voices and people are, oh shit, this shit is dope, and they keep doing it and then you start. Next thing, you know, they have an AI artist and they be like, yo, this this ship is fired.
Anyway, it was a great show.
It was a great show. Once again. Shout out to our doctor mister Ellie and Connie. Go follow him. Elia speaks on Instagram, he said, Facebook, all of the all of the social media platforms. He's a dope guy. I'm going to tune in with him. He seems like he knows a lot and he's solution based. That's what we need in this time. So thanks for another dope show. Number one podcast, Street Politicians. We're moving. You see my
hat the general see that four seven. Shout out to my brother Trioli with the trilill go get you some of that and with that, we're gone. Man, We're gonna see y'all next week. I'm not gonna always be right to me. It's not gonna always be wrong, but we both always and I mean always, be authentic.
Peace.
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